Not that any time lapse video of the Very Large Telescope complex at Paranal in Chile would be normal, but this one by Farid Char caught something pretty unusual: what appears to be a Chinese rocket boosting a satellite to orbit!

Did you catch it? From 14 – 18 seconds in, you can see it as a bright object moving against the setting stars to the west. If you pause the video, you can see what look like two plumes of gas coming from the object (though I wonder; a cone-shaped plume might look like this too seen from the side due to limb-brightening). Given the time, it was most likely the Chinese satellite FengYun 2-F moving into its transfer orbit (or possibly just venting some fuel), and it will slowly boost itself to a final geosynchronous orbit over the next few weeks.

These time lapse videos are always pretty cool, but they’re even better when they get a surprise like this!

Tip o’ the lens cap to eundas on Twitter.

[Update 2 (18:40 UTC): According to the US Strategic Command, Phobos-Grunt re-entered over the Pacific ocean, not far west of Chile. This is unconfirmed, but STRATCOM is usually quite reliable. As I write this, I'm pretty sure the spacecraft is down, and hopefully we'll know more about where it came down in the next few hours.]

[Update 1 (15:50 UTC): The predicted re-entry time is now around 17:20 UTC or so, but still not exact (Eastern US time is UTC - 5 hours, so 12:20 in the afternoon). The Russian space agency Roscomos has created a map of the predicted final orbit:

That's over more land than I would've expected, but still lots of water. And remember, even if it falls over land the odds of it hitting anyone are incredibly low. Follow PhG_Reentry and me on Twitter for constant updates.]

I’ve been referring to Phobos-Grunt as "the doomed Russian space probe". Today, that name gets verified: it’s due to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere today, sometime around 18:30 UTC (plus/minus 3 hours), though the exact time is still unsure.

Emily Lakdawalla at The Planetary Society has an excellent blog post with lots of details on what we know. Basically, the third stage on the rocket failed to ignite, stranding the spacecraft in Earth orbit. The air is thin up there, but still exerts a small force, dragging the spacecraft’s orbit lower and lower. In the past few months it’s been dropping, and sometime today it will get low enough that the Earth’s air will consume it.

Since there are too many variables in the re-entry, it’s impossible to know when it will come down with any real accuracy until right before the actual event. And since it’s moving at about 8 km/sec (5 miles/sec), being wrong by five minutes in time means a difference of 2500 km in distance. That’s half the width of the US, so that’s why it’s not known where it will come down. Since the Earth is mostly water, the chances are it’ll drop into the Pacific, but that’s just statistics. We don’t know for sure.

If you want constant (and somewhat technical) updates, follow PhG_Reentry on Twitter. As we get more info, I’ll update this post, as well as tweet about it and post on Google+ too.

Almost exactly one year ago, I posted a beautiful picture of a phytoplankton bloom as seen from space. And here’s another one, and it’s way, way more spectacular!

Holy wow! [Click to enalgaenate.]

This shot of a bloom in the southern Atlantic Ocean was taken by the ESA’s Envirosat, which — duh — is designed to observe our environment. In this case, scientists keep a keen eye on phytoplankton blooms: while this bloom is breathtaking and gorgeous, many can be hazardous. Besides producing toxins that can harm sea life, they can also consume more oxygen in the water than usual, which is obviously tough on any life in the area. The color of the bloom can be found quickly using satellite imagery like this, and the algae species determined. Also, phytoplankton are sensitive to some climate changes, so observing them can act as a "canary in the coal mine" for climate change.

Sometimes, the best view of the Earth around us is from above. And sometimes that view is amazing, but a reminder that our ecosystem is a dynamic balance… and it’s best that we understand all the forces that can upset that equilibrium.

Tip o’ the petri dish to Alan Boyle on Google+. Image credit: ESA

Fraser Cain (from Universe Today) and I are trying something new… and by new, I mean new. We’re going to be holding a live video weekly astronomy and space roundup on Google+! We’ll have a roundtable group of scientists and science journalists discussing the latest cosmic news, explaining it, and letting you know what it all means. We have a pretty good group of folks lined up for this, and the first one will be held today, Thursday, January 5 at 18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. Eastern US time).

[UPDATE: We're live now!]

These will be held on Google+ using Hangouts on Air – a live video stream that can be watched by an unlimited number of people. You have to be on Google+, and then circle Fraser Cain — that’s G+’s version of adding friends. He’ll have the link to the video feed in his stream once it’s set up (and I’ll update this very blog post as well). And once you’re in, you can ask questions for us in the comments section on the post! You can read more about this on Universe Today.

I’m very excited about these live video news session. For one thing, we’ve done this a few times already in a rather impromptu way, and it’s worked out really well. We can talk about news, switch from one person to another, and take questions from people watching. It’s all live and real-time — yesterday, we even had a live feed from a telescope in Bucharest where we observed the Moon! That was amazing.

Also, Google+ is turning out to be a really cool place to be, with a lot of very intelligent and thoughtful participants. It is not Facebook, with endless announcements of games, ads, and such. It’s far more of a discussion and an exchange of ideas. The addition of live video conferencing is a huge benefit too. Fraser and I think that this will change a big chunk of the internet… and maybe more. If you’re on G+ please circle me, and if you’re not, you’re missing out.

We have big, big plans. Just you wait.

But until then, I hope to see you on G+ for our roundup!

In November 2011, the Russian space agency launched the much-anticipated Mars probe called Phobos-Grunt (which means "Phobos dirt" or "ground"), which would go to the Red Planet, soft-land a probe on the tiny moon Phobos, and return a sample of the surface to Earth. Unfortunately, the booster that would take it from Earth orbit into a Mars-intercept trajectory failed to fire, stranding the spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. Atmospheric drag has doomed the mission; it will most likely burn up sometime in the next two weeks.

Phobos-Grunt is visible to the naked eye as a bright star if it happens to pass overhead. Astronomer Thierry Legault, an expert in nabbing incredible images of objects in orbit (and no stranger to this blog!), traveled to Nice, France to observe it, and (as usual) got great video of it:

You can actually see detail in the probe; he provided a helpful picture to make it more clear:

The solar panels and other parts are pretty obvious.

Like UARS and ROSAT last year, Phobos-Grunt is making an uncontrolled re-entry, and it’s not entirely clear where it will fall. Odds are it’ll be over water, since the majority of Earth’s surface is ocean. The predictions I’m seeing look like it’ll be on or around January 15th. The actual location of re-entry won’t be known pretty much until the moment it comes down; it’s moving at several kilometers every second, so being off by a few minutes in the time means being off by thousands of kilometers in the location! There are a lot of variables involved too, including the orientation of the satellite (which changes the drag it feels from the atmosphere), solar activity (a solar storm can make the atmosphere puff up, speeding up the date of the spacecraft’s demise), and so on. I’ll write more information as I hear it.

In the meantime, you can check to see if Phobos-Grunt will pass over your location and you can see it; I suggest using Heavens-Above.com.

Image and video credit: Thierry Legault, used by permission. Slight edit of image done by The Bad Astronomer to compress it horizontally.

Mynd you, Møøn bites Kan be pretti nasti…

Today, NASA successfully put a new mission into lunar orbit: GRAIL, for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory. Great acronym, weird name, right? What this mission will do is map the gravity field of the Moon, and use that to probe the interior composition. The basic idea isn’t all that complicated: fly a probe around the Moon. If it goes above a region where the density is higher, there will be a slightly stronger gravitational pull, and the spacecraft will accelerate a bit. By carefully measuring the spacecraft position and velocity, you can make the lunar gravity map.

In detail, that’s a bit tougher! What NASA has done is launch two probes, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, that will fly in the same orbit, one behind the other^*. They’ll stay in constant communication, sending radio pulses to each other. The timing of these pulses allows an extremely accurate determination of their separation: their distance will be known to an accuracy of about a micron: that’s a hundredth the width of a human hair, or the size of a red blood cell!

So how does that help? If one of the two probes speeds up or slows down, the radio signal timing will change, taking more or less time to get from one probe to the other. The amount of change is related to the force of gravity felt by the probe, and that in turn is related to the density of the material below. In practice, making a gravity map this way is extremely complex, but it’s been done before here at Earth using probes like GRACE and GOCE. It’s tried and true.

(more…)

When Expedition 29 astronauts Mike Fossum, Sergei Volkov, and Satoshi Furukawa returned to Earth from the ISS on November 21, Dan Burbank stayed aboard the station and got this dramatic picture of them coming home:

[Click to deorbitenate.]

See it? The returning Soyuz capsule itself is the bright dot in the center of the picture, and you can see the trail of plasma behind it, pointing almost straight down. It’s almost lost against the city lights below it.

I couldn’t find this picture on NASA’s Gateway to Astronaut Photography, unfortunately, but a little sleuthing gleans some info anyway. (more…)