Bad Universe

Phil Plait, AKA The Bad Astronomer, is a legendary advocate for sense and reason. Today he's announced a new series coming to Discovery Channel called Bad Universe. This looks absolutely amazing.

Partial Lunar Eclipse Tomorrow

Tomorrow (Saturday June 26th) at around 10:30pm, make sure you get outside to see if the Moon is visible. The weather forecast isn't promising but if you can see it, the Moon will be in partial lunar eclipse until around 12:30am. The best view will be around 11:30 - 11:50pm.

What will it look like?
Lunar eclipses only happen at full moon, so that's what you'll see first. Soon after 10:30pm you'll see a darkening and reddening in the bottom left area of the Moon. Over the next hour this spreads until about half the Moon's surface will hopefully look a really spooky red colour. By 1:00am it will have returned to normal.

Simulation using free Stellarium software

What's happening?
The Moon is passing through the edge of the Earth's shadow, which is what makes half the Moon go dark. The interesting effect is the redness - that's caused by sunlight passing through and being refracted by the Earth's atmosphere. Blue light tends to scatter in our atmosphere, leaving the red wavelengths of light to continue towards the Moon.

This is the same effect that gives us a blue sky (from scattered sunlight) and red sunsets (from light travelling through more atmosphere, losing its blue light and leaving the red).

The first image below shows how our atmosphere splits up sunlight like a prism, and how the Moon becomes red as it goes through the eclipse. The second image shows an imaginary view from the Moon, with the Sun hidden behind Earth.

Image credit: Adapted by Dave Owen from public domain files at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_eclipse

Constellation Launch Abort System

It sure would be nice to salvage something from the Constellation program. Although on balance I think the decision to cancel the program was the most pragmatic option, I hate waste as much as anyone. Hopefully the new launch abort system might be one development that can be used by someone.... or am I clutching at straws? Is this test just a complete waste of time and money?

Apollo 11 Launch Slo-Motion

Here's an amazing and unusual view from the launchpad of Apollo 11, July 1969. Shot at 500 frames per second and then slowed down, the result shows 30 seconds of action spread over 8 minutes. Boring? No. Check it out...

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

Discovery Launch Video

Check out this stunning video of Discovery launching on Monday. The plumes are illuminated by the pre-dawn Sun.

NASA TV is Boring

David Ferrell has written an article for the LA Times criticizing NASA TV for being too boring. It's an interesting criticism and one that I have often thought about making in this blog. Although I've previously gushed about how NASA TV can be reality TV at its best, it's true that it can also be as watchable as a monochrome test pattern.

There are several problems.

• People are used to high-voltage reality TV with pacey action. Extended shots of mission controllers monitoring their stations doesn't cut it.
• The reality of space exploration isn't like science fiction. It does involves lots of nothing.
• NASA TV's annual budget of around $1.5 million just isn't enough to create compelling TV 24/7.

There's inevitably some debate over whether the solution is to lift the excitement factor or to encourage viewers to appreciate space exploration for what it really is. I think a compromise is required. I'd hate to see NASA TV become a clone of mainstream programming but I'm also a pragmatist. The only time I can convince anyone to watch NASA TV is when there's a launch or EVA (spacewalk). Even then I have to provide my own commentary to counter the terminally dull science-speak interspersed with looong segments of silence.

I often daydream about what I'd do with NASA TV if I was in charge. Given a budget I'd start by sorting out a lot of simple technical issues, for example, making sure that Q&A sessions included audio of both the question and the answer(!). There are plenty of improvements that could be made easily but I'm sure the whole situation is more difficult than it seems. I don't envy them having to work with such high expectations and such a limited budget.

For now another option is to look at various re-broadcasts. Like most NASA media, NASA TV is copyright-free and able to be re-packaged by other content providers. SpaceflightNow.com has a channel on Youtube and a live stream on LiveStream.com. I encourage users to check these out and Google for other channels. I also encourage content providers to look seriously at using NASA material for programming. It's cheap to acquire and with a little work it can satisfy the huge demand for exciting live TV.

Moon Hoax Theory put to rest?

One of our national news websites today rather optimistcally reported:

NASA has put to bed conspiracy theories that humans never landed on the moon with the release of the first high resolution images of the lunar surface showing the lander and flags left by astronauts in the 1970s.

The images (below) are great and they are indeed solid evidence that the Moon landings happened. However this isn't new - various images have previously provided similar evidence, and of course NASA has a large body of other convincing evidence that can only be explained by real live Moon landings. The sad fact is that none of this will ever put the hoax theory "to bed". People who promote the theory are too heavily invested in it, and followers suffer from True Believer Syndrome which prevents them from ever accepting any proof.

By tomorrow hoax believers will be claiming the latest photos are all part of the conspiracy.

Eventually humans will land back on the Moon, and eventually the original landing sites will be revisted and preserved as historical sites. Hoax believers will continue to say it's all a cover-up.

This is an argument that will never end.