This weeks column sent off today

This week sees Jupiter looking very prominent in the morning skies about 6 hand spans above the Eastern horizon an hour before sun rise. Jupiter is the largest of the planets in our own Solar System. It has a mass of 1.90 * 10^27 kg, more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined and a radius 11 times that of the Earth at 71,492 km.

Observed by Galileo, in the 1600’s it still amazes first time backyard viewers and just like him they can see its four largest moons, Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. Nowadays we know that Jupiter has at least 63 moons.

As of Saturday, the International Space Station is the now the second brightest object in the night sky. Unfortunately unless you caught over the last few you have missed out for at least another week or so until it becomes visible to southern viewers again. It will now be brighter than Venus with only the moon being brighter. The astronauts of the STS-119 mission successfully deployed the solar array truss segment, known as Starboard 6. Weighing 14,000 kilograms and measuring 5 metres wide and13.8 metres long and filled the whole of the shuttle’s cargo bay. The ISS now has four solar panels on each end of its power truss. This gives a total surface area of all the arrays of approximately one acre. This is capable of generating 84 to 120 kilowatts of useable power.

Another interesting note about this shuttle mission is that there are two teachers aboard and although they won’t be teaching from space – they contributed to the deployment of the solar panels and in fact carried out two space walks as part of the mission. Another piece of trivia – a bat was seen clinging to Discovery during launch – trying to hitch a ride perhaps?

There has been a lot of coverage in the media lately about small asteroids – or pieces of rock passing relatively close to the earth. On March 2nd, 2009 DD45 a 35 metre rock passed about 72000 kms above the earth, then last week 2009 FH a 20 metre asteroid passed 80,000 kms away and on Friday 2009 DO1111 a much larger rock passed 1.2 times the distance from here to the moon away from us. None of these posed any threat to the Earth and with improved technology more and more will be found. The surveys are out there searching for asteroids which are a threat to Earth and the plan is map all asteroids greater than 100m in diameter.

Coming up in April is the IYA 2009 cornerstone Project, 100 hours of Astronomy. It should be the single largest event taking place this year world wide. The event will take place over four days and nights, from 2-5 April 2009 (local time). During this period, amateur astronomer will share the experience of observing the sky. Locally a number of National Parks are running Starry Starry Night events and in a number of towns folks will be doing sidewalk astronomy – where we take our telescopes out onto the streets and show off the sky. Check out www.astronomy2009.org.au for what is happening around the region.

Don’t forget Earth hour next Saturday March 28th from 8.30 to 9.30pm. Turn off your lights and do your bit for climate change and also see the difference that turning off lights has on the night skies. Remember light pollution is the singles greatest threat to optical astronomy in this country.