Television: The Orville Returns (Shortly)

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: The crew of the USS Orville from 20th Television.

Season three of The Orville was supposed to return this week, but is has been pushed off until June 2nd. Hence, it will have been more than three years since the last episode on April 25, 2019.

Seth McFarlane, also known as Captain Ed Mercer, tweeted that the delay relates to COVID, indicating that the long tentacles of COVID reach many years into the future as well.

I am not sure why it needs to be re-branded The Orville: New Horizons, except that it is now part of Hulu rather than Fox. Regardless of the name, this parody of Star Trek took some time to grow on me (not until season two, in fact), but I now look forward to this new season. Where else can you see the words of Dolly Parton being used to inspire a new society on a distant planet?

As Star Trek gets darker, this warped version (not pun intended) remains lighter, though this sneak peak of season three may seem to say otherwise. Maybe The Orville will be somewhat darker going forward.

If you need your space fix now, check out the second season of Star Trek: Picard. It premiered just last week.

In Case You Missed It: The Vatican’s Space Observatory

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: The telescope domes on the roof of the Vatican Observatory, at the Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo from Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images.

Just in case you missed it, I recommend you read NPR’s June 2021 article, “The Vatican’s Space Observatory Wants To See Stars And Faith Align.” You can read about the interplay of astronomy and the Catholic Church. For instance, did you know the idea of the Big Bang originated with a Belgian priest? Or that the Vatican Observatory coordinates with NASA on space issues?

You can learn more from the article. You might also want to visit the Vatican Observatory’s website or listen to one of the podcasts from the Observatory.

Click the image of Brother Guy Consolmagno for a video.

Pic of the Week: Lunar Transit

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: Thierry Legault

This week’s photo is a “lunar transit” of the International Space Station (ISS) taken on January 18, 2022. The details in the photo are impressive, including Tycho crater. The Mashable article accompanying this image states:

The silhouette of the space station is so clear, observers can make out a faint grid pattern on its solar panel arrays. The attached SpaceX Crew-3 spacecraft, which brought up NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer in November, is easily identifiable.

Viewing the Dark-side of an Exoplanet

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: Artist’s image of WASP-121b from Engine House VFX.

It was not so long ago that we were questioning the very existence of exoplanets, and now we are measuring their dark-sides. MIT News has a story about a recent paper discussing the findings of astronomers observing an exoplanet approximately 850 light years from Earth. About twice the size of Jupiter and tidally-locked with its host star, the exoplanet has a very strange water cycle. The article states:

While on Earth, water cycles by first evaporating, then condensing into clouds, then raining out, on WASP-121b, the water cycle is far more intense: On the day side, the atoms that make up water are ripped apart at temperatures over 3,000 kelvins. These atoms are blown around to the night side, where colder temperatures allow hydrogen and oxygen atoms to recombine into water molecules, which then blow back to the day side, where the cycle starts again.

The article and paper go into many more details, yet I am most impressed with this level of observation already possible using a spectroscopic camera aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. With the James Webb Space Telescope soon to go online, we can only hope for more fascinating insights into distant exoplanets.