Category Archives: Hubble Space Telecope

astronomy, Hubble Space Telecope

Freebies from Hubble

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End of Summer Drawing for Cool Images

The galaxy NGC 1300, as seen by Hubble Space Telescope. Courtesy NASA/ESA/STScI.

I’m a sucker for cool Hubble stuff. It’s probably because I wrote a lot about HST a few years ago (published a couple of books about it, did a couple of fulldome shows about it, you know, like that).  In Hubble Vision, both the book and the fulldome show, I tried to show people what great imagery and data were streaming from this venerable telescope.

Now, the cool thing about Hubble imagery is that it has always been available for download from the Hubble Site web pages. I’ve been active “image miner” there ever since I was working on the first of my two books (with John C. Brandt) about HST science.  And, I know a lot of people who do the same, downloading images as soon as they come up.

Wouldn’t it be cool to get some of those images in 16×20 print size?  I know I’d love it.  And, the folks at HubbleSite are having an End-of-Summer Hubble Picture Giveaway. It’s a random drawing that you can participate in on  HubbleSite’s Facebook page.

They’re planning on drawing three winners a day from Sept. 4-16 — and, here’s an important note:  the app for entering goes live on  the Hubblesite Facebook page on the 4th of September, so mark your calendar and get ready to enter! Each lucky person whose name is drawn will receive one 16 x 20 print of one of three images, selected randomly: Mystic Mountain, The Helix Nebula, or Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300. You can see them at the links below.

Mystic Mountain: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/pr2010013a/

Helix Nebula: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire/pr2004032d/

NGC 1300: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/pr2005001a/

This isn’t the first time that the HST folk have done these drawings, but this one’s special. This time, they’re offering an extra chance to win for users who enter a promo code in the appropriate field.  That promo code is:  SPCEWRITR

HubbleSite’s Facebook page is at http://www.facebook.com/HubbleTelescope, so head on over there, check out their page and on September 4th, you can start entering the drawing to get a free print image! And be sure and enter in the promo code above.  I don’t get anything out of it — it just gives your entry extra oomph to win an extra image!

Just think about how great a print of one of these three fabby images will look above your desk, or framed and hung in your living room. Or, how it would make a great gift for that space lover in your life.   You really don’t need a good reason to enter — if you like space and love cool space imagery, then here’s your chance to get some for your wall.

hst news, Hubble Space Telecope, transit of venus

Sic Venus Transit Solis

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Hubble Spacium Telescopium Vigilabo

There’s this event coming on June 5/6 called the “Transit of Venus” and as I read about it, the Latin translation of it jumped into my head. My mind’s funny like that. Sic Transit Gloria Venus and all that.

So, what’s it all mean? The Transit of Venus is when the planet Venus will move in its orbit between us and the Sun in a sort of mini-eclipse.  It happens very rarely. In fact, after this one, there won’t be another transit of Venus as seen from Earth until the year 2117.

This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. reveals lunar features as small as roughly 560 feet (170 meters) across. The large "bulls-eye" near the top of the picture is the impact crater, caused by an asteroid strike about 100 million years ago. The bright trails radiating from the crater were formed by material ejected from the impact area during the asteroid collision. Tycho is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide and is circled by a rim of material rising almost 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the crater floor. The image measures 430 miles (700 kilometers) across, which is slightly larger than New Mexico.The image was taken in preparation to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun's face on June 5-6. Courtesy NASA/ESA/STScI

As you can imagine, such an event presents some cool scientific opportunities.  One of them will be for the Hubble Space Telescope, believe it or not.  Hubble, as you may know, can’t look directly at the Sun, and it has a heck of a time looking at Venus simply due to logistics, as well as brightness. It can look at the Moon, and for this reason, astronomers have come up with an ingenious method to ‘watch’ the Transit of Venus by using the Moon as a sort of “mirror”.  They tested it, coming up with the image below.  This type of observational technique isn’t new. It’s very similar to one being used to sample the atmospheres of the giant planets as they pass in front of stars as seen from our point of view on Earth.

For the Venus observations, since astronomers already know the chemical makeup of its atmosphere, they’re going to test this technique on a planet they “know” to see if it can be used on the atmospheres of distant planets around other stars. If it works the way they think it will, then it could help them tease out the very faint fingerprints of the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet, even one that might be habitable for life.

During the transit, Hubble will snap images and perform spectroscopy, dividing the sunlight into its constituent colors, which could yield information about the makeup of Venus’s atmosphere. Hubble’s main instruments will get a workout in this test.  The telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, Wide Field Camera 3, and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph will concentrate their attention on wavelengths of light ranging from infrared to ultraviolet.  The whole operation will take seven hours starting before the transit begins and lasting until well after it ends. Because the astronomers only have one shot at observing the transit, they had planned a practice run to see if their idea would work, which included the test observations of the Moon that resulted in the image above.

This is one of those experiments that’s so elegant and cool because it demonstrates the many-faceted ways that astronomers can study objects. You don’t always have to look directly at something; sometimes indirect observations  get you to the same place. And, that’s glorious!

If you want to do a little transit-viewing yourself, visit the Transit of Venus page for details on safe viewing (because the Sun’s involved, you really have to be careful… and NEVER look directly at the Sun. With that caveat, I recommend you check it out. This is the last time this century sky watchers can view Venus passing in front of the Sun and it’s just one of those cool things you can brag about at the next family picnic or company party.