2015 Took Us to Pluto and Beyond!

It’s that time of year again: time to celebrate the past 365 days of life on planet Earth. The New Year officially starts on January 1, 2016 and with it, the next generation of science and astronomy news events and stories.

I’ve been doing TheSpacewriter blog since 2002, but began my Web presence in grad school in the early 1990s. I’ve been writing about space and astronomy for ever longer than that, and each year, I find events and discoveries that really are exciting!

Every year all the space bloggers suddenly get the urge to post their favorite pictures and space/astronomy news stories “in review”. I’m no different — there are stories I really palpitated over this year, ones that I kept writing about over and over. So, let’s look at a few of the stories that boosted MY jets this year.

Who Ordered THAT!?!

Long-term readers and followers already know that I went ga-ga for Pluto in a big way. That’s because — hey, it’s the last of the planets to be explored. And, wow, did it show us some cool stuff. The data are still streaming back to Earth from the New Horizons spacecraft, and the mission folks are putting them out as fast as they can get them.

So far we have seen jagged mountains, icy glaciers, a thin escaping atmosphere, and a slew of fascinating moons. The details of how this planet got the way it is, its past, and what will happen to it in the next few years as it goes farther away from the Sun in its orbit are all part of the story the New Horizons scientists will continue to tell us over the next year.

Now the New Horizons spacecraft is on to looking at Kuiper Belt Objects and studying comets and asteroids up-close and personal. You can be assured that TheSpacewriter will be there to write about whatever they find “out there”!  And, you can keep up with the mission by surfing every week to the New Horizons web site for the latest images.

TheSpacewriter Spies Cometary Goodness from Rosetta

Which brings me to my second favorite topic this year: Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. I’ve typed and said that name so many times that it just rolls off the fingers and tongue. The Rosetta spacecraft has been circling around the comet for more than a year, sending back amazing images of the nucleus. The most jaw-dropping ones come from the OSIRIS camera. However, since the team operating that camera didn’t feel particularly enamored of sharing those images (they have proprietary rights, which they apparently define as “be stingy with the images the taxpayers paid for”), we have been treated with a near-constant stream of really great images from the spacecraft’s NAVCAM. Of course, now we DO get to see OSIRIS images, but not nearly as often as we do those from NAVCAM. You can check out all of the Rosetta mission images here.

The comet itself has revealed a lot about its ices and dust, enough so that astronomers studying it have figured out about where it came from in the solar system. They have also figured out that the two-lobed nucleus is gently cemented together and that its two parts are basically a glued-together rubble pile of ice and dust. It spouts out gas and dust jets as the surface is warmed. This comet is well worth what taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have paid for its exploration.

Rosetta also deployed a tiny lander that was supposed to stick itself to the aft end of the comet and take images and measurements. It DID land, several times. Then, it snuggled up next to a cliff and went to sleep after a few hours of data-gathering because its solar panels weren’t getting enough light to charge up the batteries and power up the instruments. It sat there for months, then suddenly woke up mid-year and again a week or so back. So, the story of the comet and spacecraft pair continues on — with more cool images and data to come.

Hubble Amazes Me… as Always

My next favorite topic is anything from Hubble Space Telescope. It has been part of my life since 1989, when I went to work during grad school on one of the instrument teams. I co-authored a book about its imagery and data with John C. Brandt, and of course — being a planetarian — I’ve written a show or two about it. TheSpacewriter web page was also born during this time, so we all go back a LONG way!

This year HST brought us fascinating looks at everything from planets to starbirth, stardeath, and distant galaxies. There have been some pretty jaw-dropping images. You can’t go wrong with a great nebula image, so here are two of my faves for this year. You can click to embiggen each image for more detail.  The first is the Pillars of Creation, seen here in a new view. This starbirth region is undergoing radical changes that will cause it to disappear in a few tens of thousands of years. So, enjoy the view while you have it!

HST also took another look at a newborn star shooting twin jets out into space. The object is called Herbig-Haro Jet HH 24, and the folks at the Space Telescope Science Institute thought the jets kinda, sorta looked like light sabers. That makes sense, since the image was released the same day as the opening of the new Star Wars movie.

Go figure.

Still, it’s a fascinating look at just one step in the birth of a star. Our own Sun may have looked like this some 4.5 billion years ago, when it was a protostellar infant, eating its way out of its stellar nursery.

Up and Away!!!

Space travel is another of my favorite topics, and we certainly had plenty of it this year. The two most recent launches nd safe return of the Blue Origins New Shepherd rocket and the SpaceX launch of Orbcomm and the Falcon 9 first stage landing back on Earth were like watching old science fiction dreams come true. I remember reading old Heinlein stories where space-going travelers would venture out to the beyond, and then settle back to Earth — tail first — at the launch pad. It was the way things were done in the future, and I couldn’t wait to see it done in MY time, with rockets returning people from near-Earth orbit, the Moon, or even Mars!

Someday soon we’ll have those reusable rockets that used to populate the Heinlein stories I grew up with as a kid. For now, we have a competition to do it right, and that’s good. I don’t particularly care that one launch only went a short ways while the other went up, deployed a payload and then returned. The point is — those companies did something very difficult to achieve, and they deserve the kudos for all their hard work and efforts.

So, it’s been an amazing year in space and astronomy and impossible to cover it all. These are just a few of the many great images and missions this year, and I look forward to a great 2016 in space. I hope you do, too.

In Memoriam

This year marked the passing of two important beings in my life. My father died in September; he was the first to get me excited about space and astronomy. Throughout his life, he encouraged me and shared with me a love of the stars. He was a Sun-watcher, charting sunspots for many years. Thanks to him and my Mom, I’m TheSpacewriter — and more. Daddy has now returned to the cosmos, and his memory remains with our family forever.

The other feller who passed was our cat Laz R.S. Long Katt. He was my little boy, and also spent a lot of time sitting next to the computer while I worked on books, scripts, and articles.  He was almost 13 when he passed, suffering from a tumor that couldn’t be healed. So, he’s also out in the cosmos somewhere, playing catch with the dust bunnies of the universe.