“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” So spoke The Guide in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and so true it is. Kokogiak has illustrated that point on only the tiny scale of our Solar System with his excellent composite showing 88 known objects that have a diameter greater than 200 miles. Click the image to be taken to the blog entry where you can find the full sized version.

Based around the Earth as a visual axis 1000px in diameter it encompasses everything from the Sun down to the asteroid Davida with a diameter of 203 miles. It’s a really nice piece of work and puts things nicely in perspective.

And if you’re not satisfied with that then the lovely people at Nikon have put together Universescale, found via Astronomy Buff. It is a cool Flash application spanning 42 magnitudes in size, from femtometers (10^-15 meters) up to the size of the universe which it puts at 13.7 billion light years. For each discrete size it uses a well known object such as the Blue Whale, the Orion Nebula or Ayers Rock and puts it in perspective by showing something that is small in comparison and then something that is big. Each object gets a nice description and each unit of measurement is also given some history and perspective. It’s a neat little application to play around with and makes you feel rather humble.

Technorati Tags: solar-system, space, scale, perspective

Space Rock Nears Earth!

Ok, so the headline is an exaggeration, there is no need to call in Bruce Willis or Frodo, but as reported on the BAA site via Dave’s blog, over the next couple of days the mile-wide Asteroid 2006 VV2 passes closest to Earth – the closest an Asteroid will approach until 2036 (based on current known Near Earth Objects I assume) according to JPL. According to the news release there are the following important events:

• the asteroid will reach 10th magnitude around March 31st and April 1st
• it will pass close to the Leo Triplet (M95, M96 and M105) between 19:00 and 20:00 UT on March 31st

If this miserable weather ever clears I’m going to aim to try and observe this with my telescope.

Saturn vs. Spirograph

Speaking of weather, according to this article on space.com, a wonderfully geometric storm that was spotted by the Voyager probes more than 20 years ago is still going strong close to Saturn’s north pole. So far it is a feature unique to Saturn and may provide further clues as to the nature of the planets inner regions and its magnetic field. The effect is fairly easy to create in the laboratory, as shown by this nature article, and is an example of rotational dynamics in liquids. Further work will be carried out by NASA researchers to determine exactly how this feature has arisen on Saturn.

Supernova in Purple Spiral Galaxy

The European Southern Observatory has released a beautiful image obtained using the VLT. The subject is NGC 5584, a barred-spiral galaxy slightly smaller than the Milky Way located to the west of the Virgo cluster, approximately 75 million light years from Earth. Not only is the picture wonderful but a Supernova, SN 2007af, now blazing at magnitude 13.3, is visible to the lower right of the galatic center. It was discovered by Koichi Itagaki on the 1st March and is the brightest Supernova discovered this year. At that magnitude it is at the limit of my telescope’s capability but I may try for it given some amazingly clear, dark skies in the near future!

Image of NGC 5584 ESO 2007

Technorati Tags: astronomy, asteroid, saturn, supernova

I had another opportunity to get out with the telescope this evening. Today had been a perfect spring day, sunny and warm, and with evening came clear skies, Venus shining brightly in the west and the Moon high overhead. I decided to get the telescope out in order to tick a few Messier’s off the list but as the darkness grew it became clear that the night was just as misty as it had been a couple of days ago and was getting worse. Instead I went for a quick tour of the brighter targets in the sky and tried some eyepiece projection photography with my camera.

I successfully observed Venus, Saturn, M103, M42 and the Moon before conditions deteriorated to the point where I was forced to go inside. I tried photographing Venus and Saturn with my camera – the first time I had tried this since getting it – with mixed results. I’ve put a picture here of Saturn which you can see is recognisable but lacking in focus and fine detail. It is an encouraging start and one I aim to improve on over the next couple of weeks.

Read the full report on Looking Into Space.

Technorati Tags: astronomy, observing-report, venus, saturn