Venus and Spica continue their predawn conjunction in the southeastern sky.
Venus near the star Spica in the predawn sky, Nov. 27, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.Mars is high in southern sky after sunset all week.
Mars is high in the southern sky after sunset on Nov. 27, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.The International Space Station will pass very near Saturn low in the southwestern sky at 5:42 PM ET on Nov. 27th.
The International Space Station passing near Saturn low in the southwestern sky at 5:42 PM ET on Nov. 27, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.To be honest, when I saw this in Stellarium I thought something was a bit weird – I knew there wasn’t going to be a bright star near Saturn … then I clicked on it to find it was the ISS. This ISS flyover will only be visible in southeastern Michigan (sorry). To check of you can see the ISS this week, go to heavens-above.com – you can get charts like this:
ISS flyover passing near Saturn on Nov. 27 2018 around 5:42 PM ET – visible from southeastern Michigan.The nearly third-quarter Moon will appear very near the star Regulus in the southeastern predawn sky on Nov. 29th.
The Moon near the star Regulus hight in the southeastern sky at 5:00 AM on Nov. 29th.The Moon
The Moon is a waning gibbous, rising after sunset, high in the sky after midnight, and visible to the southwest after sunrise. On Nov. 30th the Moon will be at third-quarter, rising around midnight, and visible to the south after sunrise. Starting in December, the Moon will be a waning crescent, low to the east before sunrise.
The Moon from Nov. 27-Dec. 3, 2018. Visualizations by Ernie Wright.The Sun
Vlosw-up of fading sunspot, Nov. 27, 2018. Credit: NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.Spaceweather.com claims the Sun has been spot-free for 1 day; I’m going to challenge that with this SDO close-up from Nov. 27th – There are two dark areas that happen to coincide nicely with the bright active region on the Sun’s equator in the animations below. They ARE tiny tho, and fading fast.
Coronal holes are still open at both poles; a large “>” shaped coronal hole is rotating into view, and a smaller equatorial hole is rotating out of view. SpaceWeather.com says “Geomagnetic storms (G1-class) are likely on Nov. 30th or Dec. 1st when a stream of solar wind is expected to hit Earth’s magnetic field. The gaseous material is flowing from a large hole in the sun’s atmosphere. This is a long-lasting hole that has lashed Earth with solar wind about once a month since July. The last time it happened on Nov. 4th, auroras were sighted in multiple northern-tier US states.”
Prominences galore! WOW the last couple days had some spectacular long-lived prominences, and some really tall short-lived pillars…
The solar wind speed is 372.4 km/sec, with a density of 8.5 protons/cm3.
A “sundiver” comet can be seen in this Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) video from Nov. 24, 2018!
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.
Observing Target: Sun-Grazing and Sun-Diving Comets
Sun-diving comet captured by NASA’s Solar & Heliospheric Observatory, Nov. 24, 2018. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechWhen I was working on the Sun portion of this post (above), I noticed that the live-feed from NASA’s Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) showed a comet plunging in to the Sun! The SOHO website has a movie gallery of comets that have grazed the Sun and flown-by, and some others that did not survive the encounter.
You can “observe” these comets from the comfort of your office or living room.
[show_if device=desktop]I shamelessly copied and pasted the SOHO Comet Gallery below:
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Two comets plunging into the solar corona
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Two sun-grazing comets racing towards the Sun (June 1/2, 1998)
MPEG (798k), MPEG (260k), QT (853k)
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Exclusive views of Comet 96P/Machholz swinging past the Sun
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CME’s and planet transit – LASCO C2 (Mar. 20 – Apr. 10, 1999)
MPEG ( 14M), MPEG ( 4.1M), QT ( 6.9M), QT ( 1.4M)
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Sungrazing comet plunging towards the Sun. LASCO C2. (Apr. 30, 1998)
MPEG ( 1.4M), MPEG ( 185k), QT ( 562k), QT ( 87k)
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Four planets and the Pleiades. LASCO C3 (May 15, 2000)
MPEG ( 11.6M), MPEG ( 1.5M), QT ( 9.8M), QT ( 962k)
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Comet Neat (Feb.16-20, 2003)
MPEG ( 12M), MPEG (420K), MPEG (420K),
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The 2003 Mercury Transit
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Comet Hyakutake
MPEG (4.5M), MPEG (512K), QT (9.3M), QT (1.2M)
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Christmas Comet (Dec. 22-28, 1996)
Movie available in the following formats and sizes:
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Sungrazing Comet & Venus from LASCO C3 (Jan. 3, 2010).
MPEG (3.6M), QT ( 31M), QT (2.1M)
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Sungrazing Comet from LASCO C2
MPEG (2.8M), QT (5.6M), QT (296K)
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Asteroids
Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
| Asteroid |
Date(UT)
|
Miss Distance
|
Velocity (km/s)
|
Diameter (m)
|
| 2018 WD |
2018-Nov-24
|
4.5 LD
|
13.6
|
49
|
| 2009 WB105 |
2018-Nov-25
|
15.2 LD
|
18.9
|
71
|
| 2018 VT7 |
2018-Nov-25
|
8.2 LD
|
2.3
|
10
|
| 2008 WD14 |
2018-Nov-27
|
7.4 LD
|
9.3
|
93
|
| 2001 WO15 |
2018-Nov-28
|
13.6 LD
|
11.7
|
107
|
| 2018 VE4 |
2018-Nov-30
|
15 LD
|
4.8
|
30
|
| 2018 WN |
2018-Dec-01
|
14.9 LD
|
4.4
|
17
|
| 2018 TG6 |
2018-Dec-02
|
3.9 LD
|
1.4
|
13
|
| 2013 VX4 |
2018-Dec-09
|
4.1 LD
|
6.6
|
65
|
| 2001 XG1 |
2018-Dec-10
|
7.9 LD
|
14.2
|
78
|
| 2018 VX6 |
2018-Dec-10
|
16.5 LD
|
11.2
|
70
|
| 2015 XX169 |
2018-Dec-13
|
17 LD
|
5.8
|
12
|
| 2018 VO9 |
2018-Dec-15
|
2.6 LD
|
2.9
|
15
|
| 2017 XQ60 |
2018-Dec-21
|
11.3 LD
|
15.6
|
47
|
| 163899 |
2018-Dec-22
|
7.4 LD
|
6.2
|
1232
|
| 418849 |
2018-Dec-23
|
16.6 LD
|
17.6
|
269
|
| 2014 AD16 |
2019-Jan-04
|
12.9 LD
|
9.4
|
12
|
| 2016 AZ8 |
2019-Jan-07
|
11.6 LD
|
9.1
|
224
|
| 2013 YM2 |
2019-Jan-09
|
7.3 LD
|
4.3
|
20
|
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: 184, this year: 1806, all time: 19204.
Potentially hazardous asteroids: 1936 (as of Nov. 20, 2018)
Minor Planets discovered: 789,069 (as of Oct. 30, 2018)
Fireballs
On Nov. 26, 2018, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network reported 29 fireballs.
(29 sporadics)
In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits from Nov 26, 2018 intersect at a single point–Earth. Source: Spaceweather.comFireball seen over Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Île-de-France, Bretagne, Centre-Val de Loire, Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie on Saturday, November 24th 2018, AMS Event: 5221-2018
The Solar System
This is the position of the planets and a couple spacecraft in the solar system; The Parker Solar Probe has recrossed the orbit of Mercury, and InSight has successfully landed on Mars – more below!
Position of the planets in the inner solar system, Nov. 27, 2018. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.
Position of the planets in the middle solar system, Nov. 27, 2018. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.
Position of the planets in the outer solar system, Nov. 27, 2018. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.Spacecraft
Mars InSight – Lands Successfully!
Happy mission control specialists and engineers are happy! This NEVER gets old! I LOVE that they are all wearing custom logoed shirts! I think this needs to become “a thing” with NASA missions.
The first image from the surface of Mars was returned in mere moments; I’m not sure if this is a tradition or what, but the first image returned for the last few landers seems to be the “dusty lens cover view of the horizon.”
Jason Major posted this image processed to remove the dust
Image from a camera on the lander’s robotic arm
The two MarCO CubeSat attendants preformed perfectly; you can expect to see more spacecraft like them in the future.
OSIRIS-REx
(No change from last week)
-Data from the NASA Exoplanet Archive
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.
2018 is NASA’s 60th Anniversary!
