Volcano on Io

Io (pronounced EYE-oh) is one of the four largest moons of Jupiter, the so-called "Galilean satellites", named after their discoverer Galileo Galilei (the father of modern science) in 1610.

Io is one of the more interesting moons out there. It is the fourth largest moon in the solar system (after Titan, Ganymede, and Callisto), and it is larger even than Pluto. But more noteworthy than this is its volcanism. The Voyager missions revealed in 1979 that Io is volcanically active--and perhaps the most volcanically active body in the solar system, with hundreds of volcanoes covering its surface. Uniquely, these volcanoes are powerful enough to spew their ejecta at speeds that exceed Io's escape velocity. In other words, Io has volcanoes that are ejecting right into space!

The New Horizons spacecraft (previously blogged about here), en route to Pluto but currently at Jupiter orbit, captured on February 26, 2007 the first ever movie of a volcano erupting on Io. You can watch it here: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/pages/051407.html

This comes after years of incredible discoveries about Io, starting with spectroscopic and radio telescopic observations in the 1960s, to the Pioneer missions of the early 1970s, to the two Voyagers, to the master Jovian explorer of them all, the Galileo spacecraft of the 1990s.

FYI: If you know where to look for Jupiter in the sky, you can resolve the Galilean satellites with steady hands and a pair of binoculars, but they look even better through a modest telescope.

Further reading: Wikipedia articles: Observational History of Io; Name (incl. naming scheme for its features).

Hat tip: Jeff Bryant via CUAS listserv.

New Horizons

(This is a post I drafted in late February, but had forgotten about until now.)

On February 28, 2007, the New Horizons spacecraft reached Jupiter orbit, and took the below photograph.

For those unfamiliar with this spacecraft, New Horizons is destined for Pluto and the other small, icy worlds beyond the orbit of Neptune. Neither Pluto nor these worlds have been photographed before, so there is something particularly significant about this mission: it truly represents the final frontier in this, our Age of Exploration of our solar system.

(Uranus and Neptune were studied by NASA's Voyager missions of the 1980s; Jupiter and Saturn have been visited even more times--with the Cassini spacecraft presently giving Saturn the most in-depth look we have ever obtained of that planet; see December's National Geographic).

As if this weren't exhilarating enough, New Horizons is also the fastest spacecraft ever launched. Upon its launch last year on January 17, it passed the orbit of the Moon in just nine hours. Nine hours! If that doesn't mean anything to you, consider that the Moon is 239,000 miles away from the Earth, and that it took the Apollo astronauts of the 1960s and 70s a full three days to reach it.

So, New Horizons has now arrived at Jupiter, a planet which at this particular moment happens to be a waystation along the path to Pluto. It will circle Jupiter just once, using the planet's immense gravity as a slingshot to give it one last boost off to its end goal. How fast is New Horizons travelling?

33,000 mph!

Even travelling at such great speed, it won't arrive at Pluto until... 2015. That tells you something about how far away Pluto is.

....

I think of my parents as having grown up at the dawn of the Space Age, and therefore having had the great fortune of watching its pinnacle with the Apollo missions of 1963-1972. But what many of us don't realize is that my generation has been growing up in a veritable Second Space Age. Those who have been willing to look, have been witness to the first in-depth exploration of Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. And this is to say nothing of the astounding achievements of our great space telescopes--especially Hubble--which for nearly two decades now have been making entirely unprecendented observations of stars, galaxies, and a plethora of celestial oddities from quasars to black holes. (The Hubble Heritage Project, since 1998, has been working to keep the public informed of the most awe-inspiring of these discoveries each month).

It is said that for the last Apollo mission, just three years after the first landing, the television networks did not even carry live coverage of the event (in fact the remaining missions had already been scrapped by the government for lack of popular support).

Far, far too many today make the same mistake of our fathers, who were, at best, blind to the achievement (and at worst, numb to it).

Let us resolve not be among these blind.

Aurora TONIGHT in North America

Here we go again with celestial events...!

This just in from Mark Haun, owner of Aurora-Announce (and inventor of Aurora Alarm):

"Conditions over the past hour have become favorable for aurora. The current activity is due to a large solar flare which occurred Tuesday evening. The leading edge of the CME (coronal mass ejection) arrived at Earth this morning ~6 a.m. PST. Since then, the magnetic fields embedded in the disturbance were pointing the wrong way, until about 4 p.m. PST. Now the field is oriented southward, antiparallel to the Earth's magnetic field---the conditions necessary to fire up the aurora. If these conditions persist for a few more hours, we could have a very nice show in the US and Canada.

A major winter storm has all of Washington under cloud cover, so you should not expect an alarm on aurora-northwest, unless the aurora manages to trip the detector through the overcast. So, if you can get to a dark, clear site, I suggest you leave now. Good luck!"

(From aurora-announce mailing list)

Earth Lickin' Good

"KFC has the honor to be the first brand to be visible from outer-space, according to company officials. The 87,500 square feet logo was created by tiles placed in the Nevada desert, near the super secret Area 51. The stunt marks the revamp of the KFC logo, which now features a more streamlined image of Colonel Sanders."

Continue reading: http://michaelcastellon.blogspot.com/2006/11/kfcs-logo-first-to-be-seen-from-space.html

Cassini Spacecraft Observes Hurricane at Saturn's South Pole

+_View movie

(Source: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) "NASA's Cassini spacecraft has seen something never before seen on another planet -- a hurricane-like storm at Saturn's south pole with a well-developed eye, ringed by towering clouds.

This 14-frame movie shows a swirling cloud mass centered on the south pole, around which winds blow at 550 kilometers (350 miles) per hour.

The 'hurricane' spans a dark area inside a thick, brighter ring of clouds. It is approximately 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) across, or two thirds the diameter of Earth.

'It looks like a hurricane, but it doesn't behave like a hurricane,' said Dr. Andrew Ingersoll, a member of Cassini's imaging team at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. 'Whatever it is, we're going to focus on the eye of this storm and find out why it's there.'"

More info: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-release-details.cfm?newsID=703

Holidays in Space: Book Now!

http://www.virgingalactic.com/

“It seems almost unbelievable, but it is the reality.”

Clarification: The reason I have linked to the above, is that there is a movie there you should see. Once you click on the link, wait for it to appear (then click on it, when it says "View the Movie").

Who is Richard Branson?

If you have any interest at all in experiencing adventure in life, you owe it to yourself to be able to answer the above question, for even the most imaginative adventure novelist couldn’t begin to dream up a protagonist so extraordinary. And Mr. Branson lives right here, in our day and age. Branson doesn’t realize it, but his entire autobiography is a perfect, concrete answer to the question: “What is the purpose of life?”—not in the particular details, but in the approach.

I’m very glad to know of this man (thanks to a friend’s high recommendation of him), and I’m shocked that prior to reading his autobiography, I had only the faintest familiarity with his name or what he has accomplished. To name one of these, (semi-relevant to the theme of this blog): Branson was, with co-pilot and engineering genius Per Lindstrand, the first person ever to enter the turbulent, 200 mph+ winds of the jet stream (which is about 7 to 8 miles up, by the way) in nothing more than a pressurized capsule secured to a hot air balloon, and cross the Atlantic Ocean. On similar trips, he just narrowly missed crossing the Pacific Ocean, and circumnavigating the globe. For this alone—and I’m asserting here that this is only one little part of his adventurous story—Branson deserves a place in the history books.

But if we will remember him for only one thing, let it be his current venture (see above post), for above all he is an entrepreneur, and this has got to be the greatest enterprise he has yet undertaken.