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In the Sky This Week – May 21, 2019

By Robert Trembley  |  21 May 2019

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This entry is part 20 of 248 in the series In the Sky This Week

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is Unraveling!

As I was writing this post, I came upon this story on SpaceWeather.com:

Around the world, amateur astronomers are monitoring a strange phenomenon on the verge of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS). The giant storm appears to be unraveling. “I haven’t seen this before in my 17-or-so years of imaging Jupiter,” reports veteran observer Anthony Wesley of Australia, who photographed a streamer of gas detaching itself from the GRS on May 19th –SpaceWeather.com

Jupiter, May 19, 2019. Credit: Anthony Wesley.

I realized I should probably headline this topic when I immediately stopped what I was doing, and went upstairs to tell my wife about it!

Jupiter returns the the evening sky, rising in the southeastern sky around 10:30 PM.

Southeastrn sky Jupiter rises in the southeastern sky around 10:30 PM this week; the location of dwarf planet Ceres is in the red cross hairs. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The Moon dances with Saturn and Jupiter for the next several days in the predawn sky:

Mars will soon be lost on the glare of the sunset in the west-northwestern sky.

West-northwestern sky Mars in the west-northwestern sky at dusk, May 21, 2019. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley

Globular cluster Messier 68

Messier 68 “A ten billion year stellar dance.” Messier 68. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers this delightful view of the crowded stellar encampment called Messier 68, a spherical, star-filled region of space known as a globular cluster. Mutual gravitational attraction amongst a cluster’s hundreds of thousands or even millions of stars keeps stellar members in check, allowing globular clusters to hang together for many billions of years.

Astronomers can measure the ages of globular clusters by looking at the light of their constituent stars. The chemical elements leave signatures in this light, and the starlight reveals that globular clusters’ stars typically contain fewer heavy elements, such as carbon, oxygen and iron, than stars like the Sun. Since successive generations of stars gradually create these elements through nuclear fusion, stars having fewer of them are relics of earlier epochs in the Universe. Indeed, the stars in globular clusters rank among the oldest on record, dating back more than 10 billion years.

More than 150 of these objects surround our Milky Way galaxy. On a galactic scale, globular clusters are indeed not all that big. In Messier 68’s case, its constituent stars span a volume of space with a diameter of little more than a hundred light-years. The disc of the Milky Way, on the other hand, extends over some 100 000 light-years or more.

Messier 68 is located about 33 000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra (The Female Water Snake). French astronomer Charles Messier notched the object as the sixty-eighth entry in his famous catalogue in 1780.

Hubble added Messier 68 to its own impressive list of cosmic targets in this image using the Wide Field Camera of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. The image, which combines visible and infrared light, has a field of view of approximately 3.4 by 3.4 arcminutes. – ESA/Hubble & NASA

M 68 Location of M68 May 21, 2019. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley

I wondered what our Sun would look like as seen from Messier 68, so I went there in SpaceEngine and found out!

Artist view: near Messier 68 looking in the direction of the Sun (cross hairs). Credit: SpaceEngine / Bob Trembley.


The Moon is a waning gibbous, rising after sunset, visible high in the sky after midnight, and visible to the southwest after sunrise.

The third quarter Moon occurs on Sunday May 26th; the Moon will rise around midnight, and visible to the south after sunrise.

Moon The Moon from May 21-27, 2019. Visualizations by Ernie Wright / NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

Moon News

You've heard of earthquakes. But what about moonquakes? Like a wrinkled grape drying out to a raisin, the Moon is shrinking as its interior cools causing wrinkles or faults to form on its brittle surface. When enough stress builds, it releases the quakes: https://t.co/H3ixgywT1p pic.twitter.com/OxNrVveAQk

— NASA (@NASA) May 13, 2019

Shackleton crater lies at the Moon’s south pole and is a permanently shadowed region, a crater that never receives direct sunlight and likely contains water ice! We're eager to learn more about the south pole when we land there in #2024. Image by @LRO_NASA https://t.co/QtSEYdSdYa pic.twitter.com/6LHmtbAMVG

— NASA Moon (@NASAMoon) May 20, 2019


The exciting sunspots from last week have rotated out of view, and the Sun has been spot-free for 2 days. Coronal holes appear at both poles, and a small hole appears between the south pole and the equator. SpaceWeather.com says: “Solar wind flowing from a weakly-organized hole in the sun’s atmosphere is expected to buffet Earth’s magnetic field this week. This will cause geomagnetic unrest, but probably not geomagnetic storms, on May 21st through 23rd. Photographic auroras mixed with moonlight are possible at high latitudes.”

https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/dailymov/movies_1080/20190520_1080_0193.mp4

Some exciting prominences on the limb of the Sun over the last few days!

https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/dailymov/movies_1080/20190520_1080_0304.mp4

The solar wind speed is 387.7 km/sec (↓), with a density of 3.3 protons/cm3 (↓).

SOHO LASCO C2 Latest Image Animated LASCO C2 Coronograph showing the solar corona above the Sun’s limb (the white circle). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
You can view the Sun in near real-time, in multiple frequencies here: SDO-The Sun Now.
You can create your own time-lapse movies of the Sun here: AIA/HMI Browse Data.
You can browse all the SDO images of the Sun from 2010 to the present here: Browse SDO archive.

Sun News

A @NASA #SpaceWeather expert has won a patent for an idea that, if fully implemented, would create the world’s largest scientific instrument for mapping large-scale geomagnetically induced currents, which have caused power outages in the past. https://t.co/bCWW7Npan6 pic.twitter.com/pwC1n0AY9P

— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) May 20, 2019

It's #SunDay! ☀️ Space isn't empty — it's filled with particles flowing out from the Sun, called the solar wind. ? Scientists use a combination of satellite observations and computer models to trace the solar wind back to its source on the Sun: https://t.co/E7r0pePhrw pic.twitter.com/KdxlA6IOSn

— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) May 19, 2019


Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2019 JF7
2019-May-24
14.7 LD
10.9
37
2015 KQ18
2019-May-25
10.7 LD
13.1
30
66391
2019-May-25
13.5 LD
21.5
1780
2003 LH
2019-May-28
15.6 LD
7.4
32
2011 HP
2019-May-30
12.3 LD
8.4
135
2019 JX2
2019-Jun-06
13.8 LD
7
44
2014 MF18
2019-Jun-06
8.8 LD
3
22
441987
2019-Jun-24
7.7 LD
12.6
178
2008 KV2
2019-Jun-27
17.8 LD
11.4
195
2016 NN15
2019-Jun-28
9.6 LD
8.4
16
2015 XC352
2019-Jul-01
11.9 LD
4.1
26
2016 OF
2019-Jul-07
12.8 LD
8.5
85
2016 NO56
2019-Jul-07
3.4 LD
12.2
26
2016 NJ33
2019-Jul-12
15 LD
4.5
32

Notes: LD means “Lunar Distance.” 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. Table from SpaceWeather.com

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) discovered this month: 100 (+10), this year: 1259 (+427), all time: 20241 (+10)
Potentially hazardous asteroids: 1983  (+16) (last updated  May 8, 2019)
Minor Planets discovered: 795,071  (+20)



On May 20, 2019, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network reported 3 fireballs.
(3 sporadics)

Fireball Orbits 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/LifeWithWeather/status/1130470272329506818

 

This is the position of the planets and a couple bodies in the solar system:

Solar System News – Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Is Jupiter's Great Red Spot unraveling? Could it disappear within our lifetime? Learn more from Spaceweather: https://t.co/ghy6QsrOhy pic.twitter.com/RhZJPuFpE8

— Kalamazoo Astronomical Society (@kzooastro) May 21, 2019


OSIRIS-REx – Possible Sample Site in a Crater (left)

It's Friday, so let's change it up. First, how about 2 images? These were taken 8 minutes apart and you can see the same dark boulder in both.

Secondly, these aren't oriented north-up. I couldn't do that to you people.https://t.co/fL0lAn2SSFhttps://t.co/o2kwGp8KcR pic.twitter.com/t6kucsLTjD

— NASA's OSIRIS-REx (@OSIRISREx) May 17, 2019

Juno – Exploring Jupiter’s Magnetic Field

The winds of change: I’ve made the first definitive detection beyond Earth of an internal magnetic field that changes over time. Atmospheric winds deep inside #Jupiter are likely responsible for variations in the planet's powerful magnetic field. Details: https://t.co/qMrpjCV3Mw pic.twitter.com/cMqcIas9tG

— NASA's Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) May 20, 2019

Climate

In a few days, the Austrian World Summit @R20_AWS kicks off in Vienna on May 28. UNOOSA director @SDiPippo_OOSA will be on stage with former @NASA astronaut @StationCDRKelly , the @UN Champion for Space, to talk about the importance of #space #tech 4 combating climate change. pic.twitter.com/gpUIkSn8sS

— UNOOSA (@UNOOSA) May 21, 2019

You should have heard of this young woman by now:

TIME's new cover: ‘Now I am speaking to the whole world.’ How teen climate activist Greta Thunberg got everyone to listen https://t.co/cnQsN5gElW pic.twitter.com/0eeDfhjMG2

— TIME (@TIME) May 16, 2019

Exoplanet

All Exoplanets 3970  (+18)
Confirmed Planets with Kepler Light Curves for Stellar Host 2350 
Confirmed Planets Discovered by Kepler 2343  
Kepler Project Candidates Yet To Be Confirmed 2421
Confirmed Planets with K2 Light Curves for Stellar Host 393
Confirmed Planets Discovered by K2 360 
K2 Candidates Yet To Be Confirmed 535 
Confirmed Planets Discovered by TESS 15  (+2)
TESS Project Candidates 639  (+23)
TESS Candidates Yet To Be Confirmed 392  (+22)

Data from the NASA Exoplanet Archive

Exoplanet Artwork by Bob Trembley

Exoplanet artwork Artist view of sunrise over super-hot, super-Jupiter exoplanet HD 220074 b. Credit: SpaceEngine / Bob Trembley.

LIGO Detects a Multiple Black Hole Mergers

A bumper morning for @LIGO and @ego_virgo as we announce another candidate event – that's 2 in 5 hours! If #S190521r is confirmed then it's almost certainly a binary #BlackHoles merger, with a false alarm rate of about once per century. It's raining #GravitationalWaves! 1/3 pic.twitter.com/K0Zvf4YY4Z

— LIGO (@LIGO) May 21, 2019

Inexplicably, gravitational lensing has been on my mind for the last couple days; when the Muse strikes, go with it!

A gravitational lens is a distribution of matter (such as a cluster of galaxies) between a distant light source and an observer, that is capable of bending the light from the source as the light travels towards the observer. This effect is known as gravitational lensing, and the amount of bending is one of the predictions of Albert Einstein‘s general theory of relativity. (Classical physics also predicts the bending of light, but only half that predicted by general relativity.) – Wikipedia


Apps used for this post:

NASA Eyes on the Solar System: an immersive 3D solar system and space mission simulator – free for the PC /MAC.
I maintain the unofficial NASA Eyes Facebook page.
Stellarium: a free open source planetarium app for PC/MAC/Linux. It’s a great tool for planning observing sessions.
Universe Sandbox: a space simulator that merges real-time gravity, climate, collision, and material interactions to reveal the beauty of our universe and the fragility of our planet. Includes VR support.
Space Engine: a free 3D Universe Simulator for the PC. VR support coming soon!

Section header image credits:
The Sky – Stellarium/ Bob Trembley
Observing Target – Turn Left at Orion / M. Skirvin
The Moon – NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Sun – NASA/JPL-Caltech
Asteroids – NASA/JPL-Caltech
Fireballs – Credited to YouTube
Comets – Comet P/Halley, March 8, 1986, W. Liller
The Solar System – NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley
Spacecraft News – NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley
Exoplanets – Space Engine / Bob Trembley
The Universe – Universe Today


2018 is NASA’s 60th Anniversary!
APOLLO 50th Anniversary July 20, 2019 is the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon.
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More Posts in this Series:
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78  |  What Do We Lose When We Sacrifice Science?

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19  |  In the Sky This Week – October 15, 2019

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21  |  In the Sky This Week – April 2, 2019

By Robert Trembley  |  2 Apr 2019

22  |  In the Sky This Week – April 9, 2019

By Robert Trembley  |  9 Apr 2019

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