As I’m going to be away for a week, Astroengine is going to be quiet for seven days. I’m heading down to Cornwall, UK where I hope to go to Goonhilly Earth Station (on the Lizard) to try to get some more information on its shutdown. Last year I was shocked to hear that the station and its operations were being moved to the South East, so the majority of the satellite dishes will be dismantled. This is such a shame; those dishes are synonymous with the Cornish countryside. When they’re gone it will be like a good old English cream tea, but without the scone… but hey, everything changes, but I want some answers, so I intend to get some!
It’s that time of the week again, when all the space enthusiasts get together for one big party. This week, the Carnival is being held over at the Space Cynics. They may be a cynical bunch, but they’ve put on one great, enthusiastic gathering. Like a huge art gallery, they’ve looked at the artistic merit of each entry and turned it into something beautiful…
My entry (filed under “Audio Gallery”), was the great interview I had with Dr Adrian Brown, CRISM scientist and SETI Institute member. It was aimed toward the Mars Foundation, so there were lots of fun Mars settlement ideas. Have a look at the Mars Foundation for the full interview, or here for a summary…
This is quite possibly the most stunning photograph I have seen for a long, long time. In Chile, a volcano has erupted, blasting huge quantities of ash and gas into the atmosphere. As the plume of ejected material rose through the cooler atmosphere, electric charge was built up through electron exchange between plume and surrounding air. The resulting electrical storm produced some terrifyingly beautiful images. Thank goodness I spotted the lead on this story, from a tabloid newspaper in Bristol’s city centre…
It’s one of those iconic media images, something so unworldly and terrifying that it takes some time to understand the scale of what you’re seeing. Sitting outside a pub in glorious (and rare) UK sunlight, flicking through the Daily Mail, I stumbled across page 20 of the tabloid (dated May 7th). A double-page spread of a scene that was more reminiscent of an apocalyptic movie. My first thought was that it was some sort of nuclear explosion, but then, on reading the text I realized it was in fact a huge plume of ash and smoke being blasted from the Chilean volcano that had erupted last Friday. But something was strange about the image. A vast quantity of electrical discharge could be seen, lightning strikes threading through the plume and more lightning bolts being emitted by the surrounding cloud cover. I knew this was something special, so I checked to see if the newspaper ran a story online too.
Fortunately they did, and no one else seemed to be following it out of the mainstream UK media. I’ve actually been trying to find a way of including the Chaiten Volcano event in the Universe Today for the last few days, but apart from doing a minor story of an International Space Station snapshot from orbit, I couldn’t find much bulk for the report. The Daily Mail ran some stunning images of the event, but it was the volcano triggered lightning that got me interested. Have a look at the story I ran on the Universe Today (it’s proving to be pretty popular…).
As far as I can see, the violent lightning storm would have been caused by the rapid updraught of hot ash. Friction between the hot cloud and cool surrounding atmosphere would have created a vast charge generator, sparking to life as electrical discharge.
Chaiten Volcano, lightning strikes from atmospheric cloud cover (UPI)
What with all the surprise activity of the Sun at solar minimum of late, I’ve found myself looking around the solar observation sites an awful lot more than I used to. During all the commotion back in 2003 when the Sun was blasting out record breaking X-ray flares one after another, I really didn’t think I could be surprised with anything else the Sun would do. That was until, very much unannounced, three sunspots rotated into view, blasting another X-ray flare into space… at solar minimum. The strange thing was, that these sunspots weren’t even from this solar cycle, they were from the previous one that ended some time around December 2007! And now we get a stunning, detailed view of more unexpected solar activity from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), a hi-res video of dynamic coronal loops… Continue reading “Dynamic Coronal Loops as seen by STEREO (Video)”
In my capacity as Mars Foundation Communications Officer, I was asked to approach one of the mission scientists working with The Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The Foundation has an acute interest in CRISM as its main task is to look for water (past and present) and certain minerals on the Martian surface. We are currently investigating Mars settlement designs, so any indication about the location of these quantities will be of huge interest to us (especially as our “Hillside Settlement” will require colonists to use local materials when and where possible). In an enlightening interview, SETI Institute principal investigator Dr Adrian Brown detailed some of the important discoveries to come out of CRISM and how it may be of use to future colonists… Continue reading “Interview: Dr Adrian Brown, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Scientist”
One year on, the Carnival of Space has gone from strength to strength. After astroengine hosted the Carnival last week, I realized just how many diverse space blogs there were out there. I counted 30+ entries; trying to organize that huge number of blogs, whilst doing them all justice, is a hard task. This week it seems everyone has been typing hard and finding their best stories for the Anniversary Edition hosted where the Carnival was born one year ago. Week 52 has a science fiction theme, which has given me the perfect opportunity to display a picture of my favourite sci-fi program of all time: Babylon 5. Check out the Why Homeschool blog with Henry Cate for this weeks massive collection of space news from around the web.
astroengine.com 