Possum Holler Blog

Since July 21 1969 the landing sites of the Apollo missions had not been seen until the LRO, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, photographed them earlier this year.  Launched earlier this year the LRO’s mission was to take the highest resolution photographs ever of the surface in preparation for future moon landings.  Here is a photo released in July for the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.  This photo and the original photos of the other landing sites were taken before LRO settled into its close orbit.  Here is Apollo 12, ClickThePic to visit the LRO website and see the high resolution versions.

Apollo 12 Landing Site

Now that LRO has settled into its permanent orbit the resolution is much better.  Depending on lighting and angle it is able to capture as little as 20 inches per pixel.  So what do we see with better resolution?  Check out the Apollo 11 landing site.

Apollo 11 Landing Site

Remember the story of how Neil Armstrong saw that the computer was going to land them in a boulder field near West Crater.  If you look closely to the left of West Crater you can actually see some of the larger boulders strewn out towards Little West Crater.

Here’s a closeup of the Lunar Module Descent Stage.

Closeup of the Apollo 11 Landing Site

That darker line over the unmarked arrow towards Little West Crater are Neil Armstrong’s footprints, the brightest spot in the center is the descent stage.  The small crater to the left near the descent stage was photographed by Armstrong.  Here’s the picture from the Nasa Gallery.

I don’t believe that anything captures my imagination more than these incredible images.

bob

I wish I could have shared this sooner, but the week leading up to Oct. 16 was John, my brother, and my Elk Hunt so I was busy getting ready to go.

In the morning sky at daybreak, 3 planets were in clear view.  The dimmest and closest to the dawn sun was Mercury.  The brightest was Venus and the third was Saturn.  You could see all 3 planets throughout the first 2 weeks of October if you were up before dawn and on the 16th a special appearance was made by a crescent moon.   John was able to share this view with me from 6700 feet up in the mountains on my friend John Toner’s property.  Clear skies, unseasonably warm weather, 15% humidity and no light pollution made for great observing and camping – but lousy elk hunting.

Oh well, at least we enjoyed the night sky even though the daytime was a bust.

Lucky elk.

bob

Have you been watching that bright star near the moon the last few nights?  That’s Jupiter.  Get out your binoculars and look for the 4 Galilean moons, those bright pin pricks of light near the planet.  Left to right will be Ganymede first, then Europa second and Io right next to the planet.  If you ambitious look for Io’s shadow on Jupiter through your telescope.  On the right will be Callisto.

On October 2nd all 4 moons will be on the right side of Jupiter.

bob

My last post in January, Saturn Goes Commando, is about Saturn at its equinox.  This means the rings are now edge on with the sun and at their thinnest from our vantage on earth.  You cannot see the rings at all from my astrobinoculars.  Check out this picture from Ciclops http://ciclops.org/view/5815/Shadow_South_of_Another?js=1

Saturn at Equinox

Ciclops.org is the official website for the Cassini mission.  Check it out.

If you look on the sphere of the planet you can see the razor thin shadow line of the rings.  That little bump on the ring shadow is the shadow of the moon Enceladus.  Enceladus is not in the picture since it orbits beyond the rings but it still casts a shadow on Saturn.

Man I love this stuff.

bob

     The jewel of the solar system, Saturn, is going naked from our viewpoint for a while.  If you have a telescope, watch the ring plane disappear and reappear over the next few months.  The actual disappearance will be in September, but will be unobservable.  Saturn will be on the opposite side of the sun from us. 

     Saturn has a tilt of approximately 26.7 degrees, the Earth has a 23.5 degree tilt.  That means every so often our viewpoint crosses the ring plane and the rings disappear.  The rings are incredibly thin, a few yards at most, yet the full diameter of the rings is over 124,000 miles.  That ratio means that the rings would be far sharper than a razor in relation to its diameter.  Here’s a classic view of Saturn’s rings from www.spacetelescope.org.

Classic view of Saturn

     But this how Saturn looks now.  Seems almost naked without the rings.

Saturn Almost Naked

Here’s one of the latest of thousands of photos from the Hubble Space Telescope.

That’s the moon Ganymede in its orbit going behind Jupiter.  Ganymede is the largest of the moons orbiting not only Jupiter, but the largest moon in the solar system.  It is slightly larger than Mercury with a diameter of 3,270 miles, (Mercury is 3,032 miles).  That means if it were in orbit around the sun, it would be classified as a planet.  It also gives the scale of the size of Jupiter.  Ganymede is approximately 40% the size of Earth.  If you look closely at the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, which is a gigantic storm that’s been raging for centuries, Earth would easily fit inside with plenty of room to spare.

bob