In the Sky This Week – December 31, 2019

By mid-February 2020, I will be a grandparent! Thoughts of what the world might be like when my granddaughter is an adult naturally come to mind. What new things will astronomers have discovered in the cosmos? What new inventions will change society forever, again? I also have to give a thought to my granddaughter’s quality of life, and in this I have to admit to no small amount of trepidation…

Before I started writing this post, I was collecting notes about what I wanted to discuss – the list of topics grew WAY past my expectations, and needs to be an article all by itself. Many, but not all of the topics relate to pollution in its various forms: microplastics, air pollution, light/electromagnetic pollution, compromised city water systems, PFAS, space junk – the list goes on and on… Let me condense all those notes into one single question:

Do you believe humanity is acting as adequate stewards of this Earth, and has the best interests of all its various lifeforms in mind?

I know how I’d answer that question, and my family members are taking steps to reduce their carbon output, plastic use, and we have been encouraging others to do the same for years now. I want to see a shift in mindset where billionaires and multi-national organizations all compete for a prestigious annual award recognizing those who helped to restore/repair Earth’s environment!

On Sept. 4, 2019, a loose chain of tropical cyclones lined up across the Western Hemisphere. At the time of this image (1:10 p.m. EDT) Hurricane Juliette in the East Pacific and Hurricane Dorian in the Atlantic were both category 2 storms. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Fernand packed sustained winds of 45 mph and had just recently made landfall over northeastern Mexico. Gabrielle strengthened into a tropical storm on September 4 over the eastern Atlantic, and had sustained winds of 50 mph around the time of this image. Data for the simulated natural-color image were acquired with the Advanced Baseline Imager on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) 16. GOES-16 is operated by NOAA; NASA helps develop and launch the GOES series of satellites. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens; NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. Caption: Kathryn Hansen.

The star Capella is nearly overhead shortly after 11:00 PM this week.

Capella – nearly overhead shortly after 11:00 PM on 2019-12-30. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley

From Antananarivo, Madagascar, the star Rigel is nearly overhead shortly after 10:30 PM this week.

The star Rigel is nearly overhead shortly after 10:30 PM this week seen from Antananarivo, Madagascar. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley

Mars continues to appear above the southeastern horizon before dawn this week.

Mars above the southeastern horizon around 6:30 AM this week. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley

On New Year’s Eve, the waxing crescent Moon joins Venus and the star Fomalhaut in the southwestern sky at dusk.

A waxing crescent Moon joins Venus and the star Fomalhaut in the southwestern sky at dusk on New Year’s Eve. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley

The waxing gibbous Moon appears near the star Aldebaran high in the southeastern sky at 8:00 PM on Jan. 6^th.

A waxing gibbous Moon appears near the star Aldebaran high in the southeastern sky at 8:00 PM on 2020-01-06. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley

The Moon is a waxing crescent, visible toward the southwest in early evening.

The first-quarter Moon occurs on Jan. 3^rd,  it will be visible high in the southern sky in early evening.

After Jan. 3^rd, the Moon will be a waxing gibbous, visible to the southeast in early evening, and up for most of the night.

The Moon from 2019-12-31 – 2020-01-09. Visualizations by Ernie Wright / NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

Moon News

This tweet was pretty cool! It’s a video showing a researcher very happily unpackaging and running experiments on lunar soil samples!

The Sun has been spotless for 4 days – apparently we had a spot in middle of last week. The coronal hole at the Sun’s north pole has shrunk, while the southern hole has grown and is now enormous; a couple small coronal holes appear in the southern hemisphere.

The Sun seen in 193 angstroms (extreme ultraviolet) Dec. 30, 2019:

LOTS of prominence activity over the last couple days!

The Sun seen in 304 angstroms (extreme ultraviolet) Dec. 30, 2019:

Facebook: SolarActivity

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10220786708678454&set=gm.2886259081385417&type=3&theater&ifg=1

Solar Corona

Solar wind speed is 303.2 km/sec (↓), with a density of 3.0 protons/cm³ (↓) at 0810 UT.

Near real-time animation of the corona and solar wind from the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO):

Animated LASCO C2 Coronograph showing the solar corona above the Sun’s limb (the white circle). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech-SOHO

Sun News

Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

Notes: LD means “Lunar Distance.” 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. Red highlighted entries are asteroids that either pass very close, or very large with high relative velocities to the Earth. Table from SpaceWeather.com

Asteroid News

https://twitter.com/AstroBalrog/status/1211938483297816576

On Dec. 30, 2019, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network reported 16 fireballs.
(15 sporadics, 1 Quadrantid)

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point–Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). From: Spaceweather.com

Fireball News

https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork/status/1209945992914784256

Position of the planets and a couple spacecraft in the inner solar system – the Parker Solar Probe has flown-by Venus, and is on the way to perihelion on January 29, 2020:

Position of the planets and a couple spacecraft in the inner solar system, 2019-12-31. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.

Position of the planets and a couple bodies in the middle solar system:

Position of the planets in the middle solar system, 2019-12-31. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.

Position of the planets in the outer solar system, the orbit of Pluto is highlighted:

Position of the planets in the outer solar system, 2019-12-31. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.

I highlighted Pluto in the image above, but I wanted to talk about one of Pluto’s several small moons, in this case: Nix.

Nix

Processed image of Nix. Credit: NASA/JHU-APL/SwRI/Roman Tkachenko – Roman Tkachenko

Nix is a natural satellite of Pluto, with a diameter of 49.8 km (30.9 mi) across its longest dimension. It was discovered along with Pluto’s outermost moon Hydra in June 2005 by the Pluto Companion Search Team. It was named after Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night. Nix is the third moon of Pluto by distance, orbiting between the moons Styx and Kerberos.

Nix was imaged along with Pluto and its other moons by the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew by the Pluto system in July 2015. Images from the New Horizons spacecraft reveal a large reddish area on Nix that is likely an impact crater. – Wikipedia

I was playing around in the Pluto system in SpaceEngine; The surface detail of Pluto and Charon are taken from actual photos and look fantastic! The minor moons, not so much… yet; you can see in the image below that the model for Nix does not match the photo – however the view of Pluto and Charon from Nix would be like the image below:

Artist’s conception of Pluto and Charon seen from Nix. Credit: SpaceEngine / Bob Trembley

NASA’s Interactive Real-Time Web-based Orrery:

[iframe src=’https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/orrery/’ height=600 percent=100 style=””]

International Space Station

Mars InSight – Drill has dug a bit deeper

NASA’s InSight Mars lander acquired this image on December 30, 2019 (Sol 388), using its robotic arm-mounted, Instrument Deployment