*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***

A quick visit to Pluto:


New Horizons, begins with Pluto flying in for its close-up on July 14; we then pass behind Pluto and see the atmosphere glow in sunlight before the sun passes behind Charon. The movie ends with New Horizons’ departure, looking back on each body as thin crescents
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A date for the diary:

September 28th early morning: A total Eclipse of the Moon

From 01:12 BST until 06:22 BST we will, if clear, be able to witness a total eclipse of the Moon. Not just any Moon, but the 2015 Harvest Moon and a Supermoon to boot with an angular diameter of 33.5 arc minutes - the largest apparent angular diameter of the year! The full eclipse lasts for three hours and twenty minutes with totality starting at 03:11 BST and ending at 04:23 - over an hour. The Moon is passing through the southern part of the umbra so we should expect the southern limb to appear brighter than the northern limb. At the mid point of the eclipse at 03:47 BST the northern limb just reaches the central part of the umbra. The Moon will then lie at an elevation of 27 degrees above the southwest horizon. As the Moon leaves the umbral shadow 05:27 BST it will lie some 15 degrees above the horizon in the dawn sky.
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Find some time to watch this great lecture which surveys the various regions of light, ways that we normally encounter them, as well as the observations, insights, and implications from telescopic observations:

 
Some great new images of Pluto have arrived:

NPHqoCF.jpg​

This synthetic perspective view of Pluto, based on the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) above Pluto’s equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, informally named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains informally called Sputnik Planum. The entire expanse of terrain seen in this image is 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) across. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers).

Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
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You can find more stunning images here:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-pluto-images-from-nasa-s-new-horizons-it-s-complicated
 
Another amazing Mars panorama from Curiosity. This time petrified sand dunes from a ridge on a lower slope of Mount Sharp:

GjsY3h0.jpg

The scene combines multiple images taken with both cameras of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Curiosity on Aug. 27, 2015, during the 1,087th Martian day, or sol of the rover's work on Mars. It spans from east, at left, to south-southwest. Figure 1 includes a scale bar of 200 centimeters (about 6.6 feet).

Sets of bedding laminations lie at angles to each other. Such crossbedding is common in wind-deposited sandstone of the U.S. Southwest.
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More:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4716
 
Nice week at Kelling Heath star party this week, 1 good clear night and another half-decent one, pretty happy with the 12" dob overall :)

Probably the last time I can use it though before heading off to uni next weekend :(
 
Tibbz2 said:
Nice week at Kelling Heath star party this week, 1 good clear night and another half-decent one, pretty happy with the 12" dob overall :)

Probably the last time I can use it though before heading off to uni next weekend :(
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Have they got an astronomy society or maybe there is one nearby?
 
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