The Night Sky Guy

Future of Kepler and Planet Hunting

After news of a malfunctioning rotation wheel that helps point NASA’s planet hunting spacecraft Kepler last week, astronomers are bittersweet about what the future holds.  But while so many space pundits are chatting up a storm on the web about what may or may not happen, the Chief Scientist on Kepler is very hopeful and excited about what is to come in the coming months and years.

Check out my exclusive interview with NASA’s Principal Investigator for the Kepler mission at National Geographic News.

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Best Night Sky Photos of the Year

Photograph courtesy Zachary Grether, TWAN

The Fourth International Earth and Sky Photo Contest announced it’s winner this past week.  Founded by TWAN and the Dark Skies Awareness project, the annual contest invites photographers to submit their best shots of landscape astrophotography—pictures that showcase both the Earth and the sky—as well as images that capture the battle against light pollution.  Photographers from 45 countries submitted 685 entries to the contest this year and were judged in two categories: “Beauty of the Night Sky” and “Against the Lights.”

Check out all the stunning winners and runner-ups on my gallery at National Geographic News.

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Best Shots of May’s Solar Eclipse

The first total eclipse of the sun occurred earlier this month in Australia and stunned skywatchers. A solar eclipse occurs when the Earth, moon, and sun line up so that the moon’s shadow is cast on the Earth.  A total solar eclipse occurs when the sun’s entire disk is covered by the moon. During an annular eclipse however, the new moon’s apparent diameter is smaller than the visible disk of the sun, making the covered sun appear for a few minutes as a striking annulus (ring)—otherwise known as the ring of fire.

Check out my photo gallery of the best images from this amazing eclipse at National Geographic News

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Hubble Spies a Cosmic Bauble

Hubble sees the ashes of a star gone supernova. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgement: Claude Cornen)

The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped an amazing image of a supernova remnant-  dubbed SNR 0519-  located in one of the Milky Way’s small satellite galaxies  150,000 light years from Earth.

Wispy shells of blood-red colored gas filaments appears to float peacefully in space however it marks the site of a cataclysmic event that occurred 600 years ago.

The shell of material we see in this image was once part of a white dwarf- an Earth-sized elderly star that may have looked a lot like our own sun in its younger days.  This stellar progenitor was in a close binary star system where gas from its neighboring star was gravitationally pulled onto the surface of the white dwarf.  Over time this gas accumulated and eventually detonated in a thermonuclear explosion that resulted in the beautiful deep-sky object that we see today .

As the years go by this gaseous envelope will continue to expand and ultimately, after many millennia, dissipate into the surrounding interstellar medium.

SNR 0519 is found within the southern constellation Dorado (the dolphin fish) within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) – the fourth largest galaxy in our local collection of islands of stars known as the Local Group.

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Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower This Weekend

If you have clear skies early this Saturday (May 4) night through Monday (May 6) morning, watch for a minor meteor shower with a famous pedigree.

Known as the Eta Aquarids, this annual shooting-star show is set to peak in the predawn hours of May 5, with rates of 10 to 40 meteors an hour.  While not a spectacular show like its August cousin, the Perseids, the cool factor for sky-watchers is that all those modest meteors are bits of debris from Halley’s Comet.

Get your full observer’s guide at National Geographic News

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New Closeup Pic of Comet ISON

Hubble has taken its first close-up views of the much anticipated and potential ‘comet of the century’. On the night of April 10th, the space telescope snapped an image in visible light of Comet ISON while it was still at a whopping distance of 394 million miles from Earth (386 million miles from the Sun)- a bit closer than the orbit of Jupiter.

Check out the new image and read what Hubble has learned about this exciting, new comet at National Geographic News

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Wow! Horsehead Nebula Seen Like Never Before

In honor of its launch 23 years ago the Hubble Space Telescope snapped a breathtaking, never-before-seen view of one of the most photogenic cosmic vistas in the night sky.

Horsehead in all it's glory. click image to enlarge! Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Dubbed the Horsehead nebula because of its obvious resemblance to a steed or chess piece in profile,  this dark cloud of gas and dust sits 1,500 light years from Earth in the winter constellation Orion and has been a favorite target for generations of backyard stargazers.

Read the rest of the story at National Geographic News

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Lyrid Meteor Shower Viewing Conditions

Based on the latest weather forecast models here are the expected weather conditions across the north American continent for Sunday night into the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning, April 22nd.

Lyrid shower viewing conditions for 2013 peak. Credit: Courtesy of Accuweather.com

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Video: Weekly Space News Interview

Check out some of the cool space news hitting the wire this past week on my weekly CTV News Channel interview.

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Ancient Star Factory Breaks Records

A newfound primordial galaxy nearly 13 billion light-years away is breaking distance records and may unlock the secrets of how and when some of the most massive star factories were born in the early universe, according to a new study.

Using the infrared mapping capabilities of the European Space Agency’s Herschel space telescope, a team of astronomers have spied the faraway light of a starburst galaxy—one that exhibits a high rate of star formation—from when the 14-billion-year-old universe was just 880 million years old.

Why is this cosmic discovery exciting the scientific community and how will it change our understanding of what the Universe was like when it was young? Read all the details at National Geographic News.

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