Pic of the Week: Cosmic Smokescreen

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): NGC 6530 as captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESO, O. De Marco)

This week’s image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows a fantastic array of colors from a portion of NGC 6530, which is about 4,350 light-years from Earth.

Here is more about this image from the European Space Agency (ESA):

A portion of the open cluster NGC 6530 appears as a roiling wall of smoke studded with stars in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope…The cluster is set within the larger Lagoon Nebula, a gigantic interstellar cloud of gas and dust. It is the nebula that gives this image its distinctly smokey appearance; clouds of interstellar gas and dust stretch from one side of this image to the other.

You can also watch this short video that pans over the cluster.

RIP: Marilyn Lovell, Wife of Apollo 13 Commander

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Astronaut James Lovell and Marilyn Lovell at a 1969 news conference. (Paul Shane/AP)

Marilyn Lovell died on August 27th in Lake Forest, Illinois at the age of 93. She is the wife of astronaut James A. Lovell Jr., who commanded the troubled Apollo 13 mission. You can read her full obituary at the Washington Post site.

I just wanted to highlight one interesting piece from the obituary. It relates to the Lovell’s viewing the 1969 film Marooned shortly before the 1970 Apollo 13 crisis. The film, starring Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman, was a fictional account of three astronauts in a capsule facing possible destruction after a rocket failure. A short time later her husband would be one of the three astronauts facing a real crisis in a crippled capsule, while she worried below.

They say life is stranger than fiction. Luckily, Apollo 13 ended better for the crew. You way want to check out this trailer for Marooned and even rent it one of these days.

As for Marilyn Lovell, she led an amazing life here on Earth with her husband (now 95) and large family.

Rest in peace.

Planetary Society’s Day of Action

Posted on by onespaceman2000

On September 17 and 18, the Planetary Society holds its Day of Action to advocate for space issues before Congress.

For those who already registered for the event, they can expect:

  • Online and in-person advocacy training from The Planetary Society’s space policy team;
  • A minimum of three meetings with congressional offices booked for you by The Planetary Society; and
  • Access to special events, social gatherings, and space-themed experiences for you and fellow members while you’re in D.C.

It is too late to sign up for the upcoming event, but you can still assist in other ways such as pledging to take online action:

By pledging, you commit to taking some form of individual advocacy action on the Day of Action. We will email you with a number of opportunities that can be done on your own schedule, including social media posts, prompts to call Congress (if you live in the United States), and online petitions and messages. We will email you updates and background information before the Day of Action itself; no prior training is required.

The Day of Action website has all of the details as well as a video from the 2020 Day of Action, which was on February 10, 2020 or about one month before COVID caused the Congress to abandon the office place. Fortunately, in-person meetings are possible again.

Check it out and see how you can help. Maybe you can attend next year if you missed the window for this year.

India Has Been Busy – It Now Heads for the Sun

Posted on by onespaceman2000

Over the weekend, India launched another important space mission. The mission of the Aditya-L1 spacecraft is to spend four months studying the outer layers of the Sun.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is overseeing the mission, which will come to rest at the L1 Lagrange point from where it will observe the Sun.

For more details on the mission, check out the ISRO website where you can find details about the spacecraft’s objectives and scientific equipment.

This latest mission comes right after India’s successful landing on the Moon, showing all of us that it is not resting on its laurels. The country clearly wants to be in the forefront of the space and science race.

Space Quote: Has the JWST Changed Astronomy Forever?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): On June 25, 2023, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope conducted its first near-infrared observations of Saturn using its Near-Infrared Camera. (NASA, ESA, CSA, Matthew Tiscareno (SETI Institute), Matthew Hedman (University of Idaho), Maryame El Moutamid (Cornell University), Mark Showalter (SETI Institute), Leigh Fletcher (University of Leicester), Heidi Hammel (AURA))

“Physicists and astronomers are starting to get the sense that something may be really wrong. It’s not just that some of us believe we might have to rethink the standard model of cosmology; we might also have to change the way we think about some of the most basic features of our universe — a conceptual revolution that would have implications far beyond the world of science.”

-Statement by guess essayists Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser in a New York Times article about the James Webb Space Telescope titled “The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel.” Dr. Frank is an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester. Dr. Gleiser is a theoretical physicist at Dartmouth College.