The weather has been typical of a British summer the last few days. Hot and humid conditions have dominated with clear skies at midday rapidly deteriorating as evening approaches to leave muggy and cloudy nights. This has put paid to any hope of seeing any spectacular displays of Noctilucent Clouds as well as general observing.

Thankfully these days the internet offers a plentiful source of distraction and it seems that both Chris Lintott and Tony of Astronomy Blog are out doing real observing at the moment.

According to his blog Chris is researching into star formation using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. He recently linked to a page full of information, including several webcam views from the island which are definitely interesting to take a look at. Star formation seems to be quickly rising to the top of the research ladder as an area of enquiry, and rightly so as it has the potential to answer many questions fundamental to our own existence on this “insignificant little blue-green planet” of ours. Even my Religious Education teacher back during GCSE times used to talk about how we are highly evolved star dust and this area of work seeks to understand the mechanisms behind the overwhelmingly complex set of processes that have acted together to deliver us to this point today. Not bad going for stardust if I do say so myself. Almost as important though is the fact that star formation delivers some of the most astonishing and spectacular visuals in the night sky, including the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades star cluster and the infamous Pillars of Creation.

Tony meanwhile takes a slightly more esoterical look at solar observing and brings in the tribulations of being far away from home, often cut off from mobile phone signals and loved ones. I imagine that being a professional observational astronomer can get incredibly lonely at times though the post’s take on this is in Tony’s particularly witty style. I believe the work described is studying the Sun’s corona, the very outer layer of the Sun (and other stars) which is much less dense than the solar surface (the photosphere) but many times hotter. The coronal heating problem considers the reasons behind why the temperature of the Sun’s corona is millions of Kelvin higher than that of the surface. Initially it seems that the second law of thermodynamics must be violated by this process (it is as though the air around a glass lightbulb is hotter than the surface of the glass itself) but solar physicists are starting to understand the mechanisms behind this which are referred to as wave heating and nanoflares (or magnetic reconnection).

Over the weekend I followed the progress of STS-117, Atlantis’ mission to the International Space Station. The launch was spectacular as ever and so far the only minor setback has been the discovery of some slight damage to part of the thermal blanketing around the engines. NASA do not believe this will jeopardise the mission and work is progressing fast aboard the ISS. I attempted to observe the Shuttle passing overhead on Saturday evening but mist foiled the plan (and the fireworks at Durham’s Illuminate Festival) however it should be possible to see the ISS and Shuttle pass overhead if the skies clear during the next few days.

Finally, did you know that Vulcan Point in Crater Lake on Vulcano Island in Lake Taal on the Island of Luzon in the Phillipines is the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island in the world? No, and nor did I until I saw this page earlier today.

Image Credits

1. Antenna Galaxy – NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

2. Solar Corona – Luc Viatour (Creative Commons License)