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Space News Update — July 29, 2013 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

Progress M-20M arrives at ISS with spacesuit repair tools

Story 2:

The Weakest Solar Cycle in 100 Years

Story 3:

Opportunity rover Days Away from Mars Mountain Quest

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

Space Calendar

NASA-TV Highlights

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. Progress M-20M arrives at ISS with spacesuit repair tool

Russia‘s Progress M-20M spacecraft, known in NASA‘s numbering

scheme as Progress 52 (52P), launched from the Baikonur

Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 8:45 PM GMT on Saturday. The

spacecraft then dock to the ISS just six hours later, delivering some

vital spacesuit repair tools to the station crew.

Following liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome atop a Soyuz-U

booster, Progress M-20M initiated a by now well-practiced four-orbit

fast rendezvous with the ISS, conducted over a period of around six

hours. Immediately following launch however, all eyes were on the 4AO-BKA Kurs automated rendezvous

antenna.

On the most recent Progress launch, Progress M-19M back in April, the 4AO-BKA Kurs antenna failed to

deploy immediately after launch, leading to fears that the undeployed antenna could have impacted and

damaged the ISS during docking.

Ultimately, the antenna finally deployed when Progress M-19M undocked from the ISS in June, luckily

resulting in no damage to the ISS.

For this Progress, the antenna appears to have worked as advertised, although the crew were still challenged by

poor quality TV from the resupply ship as it approached the ISS.

However, following a series of expedited rendezvous burns, Progress M-20M docked to the ISS at the Docking

Compartment-1 (DC-1) ―Pirs‖ port at 2:26 AM GMT.

The port was vacated two days ago on by Progress M-18M, which undocked carrying with it the venerable

Treadmill with Vibration Isolation System (TVIS).

TVIS has been a mainstay of ISS operations since the first ever crew, Expedition 1, arrived at the station in

November 2000. Ever since, TVIS, located in the Russian Service Module (SM), has been heavily used for

exercise by every ISS crew to have lived aboard the outpost.

However, as Progress M-19M in April delivered a new treadmill, called BD-2, to the ISS, M-18M disposed of

TVIS when it disintegrated upon re-entry into Earth‘s atmosphere following undocking.

The day following docking, Progress M-20M‘s hatch will be opened and its cargo will begin to be unloaded.

Among the cargo will be some tools to aid in Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) troubleshooting efforts

following the leak of water into ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano‘s EMU helmet during the cut-short US EVA-23

on July 16.

According to NASASpaceflight info, ―tools and hardware to support the R&R of the fan-pump separator and

the condensate water relief valve in addition to a vent flow ring and associated pliers (will be) launching on

52P‖.

There was a last-minute rush to launch this hardware on Progress M-20M, and NASASpaceflight notes state

that it was hand-carried to Moscow in order to make it in time.

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Progress M-20M was originally scheduled to be the final vehicle to dock to the Pirs module, as it was tasked

with disposing of the Pirs module in order to free up the Service Module (SM) Nadir port for the arrival of

Russia‘s Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) in December.

Under this plan, instead of undocking from Pirs, Pirs itself would instead have been undocked from the ISS on

18 December 2013, with Progress M-20M (still docked to Pirs) performing the necessary departure burns, and,

later on, the de-orbit burn for the disposal of Pirs.

According to NASASpaceflight.com info, ―52P has a modified CG (Center of Gravity) to support the

undocking of DC-1″.

This proposal however assumed that MLM would launch in December.

Since then, NASASpaceflight.com sources have reported that the MLM launch has slipped into April 2014, and

so now the plan appears to be to undock Progress M-20M from Pirs as normal on 4 February 2014, with

Progress M-22M instead being tasked with disposing of Pirs in April 2014.

This plan however has yet to be officially confirmed.

Source: NASA Spaceflight.com Return to Contents

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2. The Weakest Solar Cycle in 100 Years

The Sun is acting weird. It typically puts on a pageant of magnetic activity every 11 years for aurora watchers

and sungazers alike, but this time it overslept. When it finally woke up (a year late), it gave the weakest

performance in 100 years.

What‘s even weirder is that scientists, who aren‘t usually shy about tossing hypotheses about, are at a loss for a

good explanation. Three scientists, David Hathaway (NASA / Marshall Space Flight Center), Giuliana de Toma

(High Altitude Observatory), and Matthew Penn (National Solar Observatory) presented possible explanations

at this month‘s meeting of the American Astronomical Society‘s Solar Physics Division, but their results

sparked a lively debate rather than a scientific consensus.

A well-behaved Sun flips its north and south magnetic poles every 11 years. A cycle starts when the field is

weak and dipolar—basically, a giant bar magnet. But the Sun‘s rotation is faster at its equator than at its poles,

and this difference soon stretches the field lines like distended rubber bands around the solar surface. Frenetic

activity ensues, with magnetic tangles producing sunspots, prominences, and sometimes flares and plasma

explosions. All of that dies down when the Sun-wide magnetic field lines finally snap into simpler

configurations, re-establishing the dipole field and beginning the next cycle.

The Sun has been doing all of that, just to a lesser degree. ―Not only is this the smallest cycle we‘ve seen in the

space age, it‘s the smallest cycle in 100 years,‖ says Hathaway, who took part in the Solar Cycle 24 Prediction

Panel back in 2007.

The panel members were split at the time on whether the next solar activity cycle would be strong or weak, but

their middle-of-the-road estimate anticipated 90 sunspots as a peak value near August 2012. Instead, the peak

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sunspot number seems to be less than 70, and the maximum arrived later than expected. Cycle 24 should have

peaked in 2012, 11 years after its last minimum in 2001, but the Sun overslept by a full year, waking up in 2013

instead.

And its waking has been asymmetric: the north pole has led the cycle since 2006, with the south pole lagging

behind. ―It‘s not uncommon to see hemispheres going out of phase . . . Usually this [asymmetry] lasts a year or

so and then the hemispheres synchronize,‖ de Toma explains. ―We don‘t know why this is lasting for so long.‖

It‘s possible that, weak and weird as it is, Cycle 24 is still part of the Sun‘s normal variation, even if it‘s one of

the weakest cycles yet recorded.

In fact, both Hathaway and de Toma think the 11-year cycle might be part of a larger one. Historical records

show weak cycles at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, so it could be that the solar cycle tapers every 100

years or so in what‘s known as the Gleissberg Cycle. It‘s not easy to establish the existence of a cycle that turns

over on such a long timescale, and even Hathaway admitted, ―Certainly I don‘t understand how it works.‖

Doug Biesecker (NOAA), chair of the most recent prediction panel, says, ―I remain highly skeptical . . . [Even]

if you believe there is a 100-year cycle, then that still doesn't tell us why. Just that it is.‖

Penn offered another, more catastrophic option: the sunspot cycle might die altogether. His team uses sunspot

spectra to measure their magnetic fields, and his data show a clear trend: the magnetic field strength in sunspots

is waning.

―If this trend continues, there will be almost no spots in Cycle 25, and we might be going into another Maunder

Minimum,‖ Penn states. The first Maunder Minimum occurred during the second half of the 17th century.

Almost no spots were seen on the Sun during this time, which coincided with Europe‘s Little Ice Age.

But Penn acknowledges that magnetic field measurements from other studies don‘t always see the same trend

he sees. Some observations show that sunspots‘ magnetic field strength varies with the solar cycle, and others

(including de Toma‘s) show that sunspots‘ magnetic fields aren’tchanging with time. De Toma was even able

to reproduce Penn‘s results by excluding small sunspots, suggesting Penn‘s trend might result from the way his

team selects the sunspots they measure.

Another word of caution came from Hathaway, who notes that the Maunder Minimum might have been a

catastrophic event rather than a gradual trend. ―Many of my colleagues are poring over historical records to find

out . . . what did lead up to the Maunder Minimum?‖ he says. ―New observations suggestion that the cycle

before the Maunder Minimum wasn‘t particularly small.‖

Regardless of what‘s causing the Sun‘s strange behavior, Hathaway and Penn, who are both in the solar

prediction business, anticipate that Cycle 25, expected to peak in 2024, will be the weakest yet.

Penn‘s prediction is based on the weakening magnetic field he sees within sunspots; Hathaway‘s are instead

based on measurements of the Sun‘s polar field and the meridional flow, the flow of magnetic flux from the

Sun‘s equator to the poles. A stronger flow would help strengthen weak fields, but meridional flows have been

completely absent in Cycle 24 so far. We might have a long wait ahead of us to see if and when the Sun

recovers.

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

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3. Opportunity rover Days Away from Mars Mountain Quest

Exactly a decade after blasting off for the Red Planet and discovering a wide swath of water altered rocks and

minerals in the ensuing years by exploring countless craters large and small, NASA‘s intrepid Opportunity

rover is just days away from arriving at her next big quest – a Martian mountain named Solander Point that may

possess the key chemical ingredients necessary to sustain Martian life forms.

―We are parked 200 meters away from the bench at Solander Point,‖ Ray Arvidson told Universe Today

exclusively. Arvidson is the mission‘s deputy principal scientific investigator from Washington University in

St. Louis, Mo. Furthermore, this area exhibits signatures related to water flow.

Solander Point also represents ‗something completely different‘ – the first mountain the intrepid robot will ever

climb.

―This will be Opportunity‘s first mountain and the view from the ridge crest should be spectacular,‖ wrote Larry

Crumpler, a science team member from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, in his latest

field report about the 10 years ongoing Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission.

Indeed the rover is now just a few short drives southward from making landfall on the northern tip of the point

in her current trek across the relatively flat plains around the rim of Endeavour crater.

―We are now only about 180 meters from the new mountain, Solander Point.‖

But before moving onward, Arvidson explained that the rover will briefly pause here ―at dark terrain‖ for some

exciting science due to water related spectral observations from the CRISM instrument captured by NASA‘s

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) circling overhead.

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―CRISM data [from Mars orbit] shows a relatively deep 1.9 micrometer absorption feature due to H2O-bearing

minerals,‖ said Arvidson.

This past spring, Opportunity made the historic discovery of clay minerals and a habitable environment on a

low hill called Cape York at the rover‘s prior stop along the rim of Endeavour crater.

Solander was selected as the robot‘s next destination because it simultaneously offers a goldmine of science as

well as north facing slopes – where Opportunity‘s solar wings can more effectively soak up the sun‘s rays to

generate life giving electrical power during the next Martian winter.

But since Opportunity is currently generating plenty of power from her solar arrays and arriving with a bonus

cushion of time before the looming onset of her 6th Martian winter, the team decided to take a small detour to

the southeast and spend several sols (or Martian days) exploring an area of intriguing geology of outcrops,

gypsum signatures and more on the bench surrounding the base of the mountain.

―We slowed down this week so that we could check out the rocks here where there is a strange hydration

signature from orbital remote sensing,‖ says Crumpler.

―This is also an area that appears to have more large blocks in the HiRISE images [from Mars orbit], so we are

checking out one of the blocks, ―Black Shoulder‖.

―We are hoping that the rocks on the ridge crest will be spectacular too,‖ notes Crumpler.

Opportunity is using the science instruments on her 3 foot ( 1 meter) long robotic arm to conduct brief in-situ

investigations of ―Black Shoulder‖ with the Microscopic Imager (MI) and the Alpha Particle X-ray

Spectrometer (APXS).

And …. it‘s ‗Mountains Galore‘ from here on out for the remainder of Opportunity‘s Magnificent Mission to

Mars.

Why? Because Opportunity is nearing the foothills of a long chain of eroded segments of the crater wall of

Endeavour crater which spans a humongous 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide.

Solander Point may harbor deposits of phyllosilicate clay minerals – which form in neutral pH water – in a thick

layer of rock stacks indicative of a past Martian habitable zone.

The rover team is discussing the best way to approach and drive up Solander.

―One idea is to drive part way up Solander from the west side of the rim, turn left and then drive down the

steeper north facing slopes with the stratographic sections,‖ Ray Arvidson explained to Universe Today.

―That way we don‘t have to drive up the relatively steeper slopes.‖

―The rover can drive up rocky surfaces inclined about 12 to 15 degrees.‖

―We want to go through the stratographic sections on the north facing sections,‖ said Arvidson .

Source: Universe Today Return to Contents

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The Night Sky

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

Monday, July 29

Last-quarter Moon (exact at 1:43 p.m.

EDT). The Moon rises around midnight

tonight, shining below the stars of Aries. As it

climbs higher through the morning hours, look

well to its lower left for the Pleiades.

Tuesday, July 30

Bright Vega shines nearly overhead these

evenings, for those of us at mid-northern

latitudes. Look southeast for Altair, almost as

bright. Above Altair by a finger-width at arm's

length is its little orange sidekick Tarazed, 3rd

magnitude.

Wednesday, July 31

Find Altair again high in the southeast after

dark. To its right, by about a fist and a half at

arm's length, is the dim but distinctive little

constellation Delphinus, the Dolphin, jumping

leftward.

Thursday, August 1

The asteroid 3 Juno is brightest at

opposition this week, glimmering at

magnitude 9.0 at the Aquarius-Aquila border.

Pick it up with your scope using the finder

chart in the August Sky & Telescope, page 51.

Friday, August 2

As summer begins to wane, The Big Dipper

hangs diagonally on the wall of the

northwestern sky during evening. It's about as

high as bright Arcturus, shining left of it in the

west.</p

In early dawn Saturday morning (you can set

your alarm), the waning crescent Moon hangs to

the upper right of Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury

low in the east-northeast, as shown at right.

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ISS Sighting Opportunities For Denver:

Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Tue Jul 30, 3:05 AM 1 min 11° 10 above NNW 11 above N

Tue Jul 30, 4:42 AM 2 min 15° 11 above NNW 15 above NNE

Wed Jul 31, 2:17 AM < 1 min 12° 12 above NNW 12 above N

Wed Jul 31, 3:54 AM 1 min 12° 10 above NNW 12 above NNE

Wed Jul 31, 5:29 AM 3 min 37° 10 above NW 37 above NE

Thu Aug 1, 3:05 AM 1 min 11° 10 above NNW 11 above N

Thu Aug 1, 4:41 AM 3 min 25° 11 above NNW 25 above NNE

Fri Aug 2, 2:17 AM < 1 min 10° 10 above NNW 10 above N

Fri Aug 2, 3:53 AM 2 min 19° 10 above NNW 19 above NNE

Fri Aug 2, 5:29 AM 6 min 79° 10 above NW 12 above SE

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA‘s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Daylight Time)

July 31, Wednesday

9:30 a.m. - ISS Expedition 36 In-Flight Event for the European Space Agency with the Italian TG1 Network -

JSC (All Channels)

August

August 2, Friday

12:45 p.m. - ISS Expedition 36 In-Flight Event with Minnesota Public Radio and the U.S. Navy‘s Emerging

Media Division - JSC(All Channels)

Watch NASA TV online by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

Jul 29 - South Delta-Aquarids Meteor Shower Peak

Jul 29 - Asteroid 3 Juno Occults PPMX 9823370 (11.3 Magnitude Star)

Jul 29 - Asteroid 5760 Mittlefehldt Closest Approach To Earth (1.692 AU)

Jul 29 - Asteroid 7225 Huntress Closest Approach To Earth (1.799 AU)

Jul 29 - Asteroid 7934 Sinatra Closest Approach To Earth (1.933 AU)

Jul 30 - Cassini, Orbital Trim Maneuver #356 (OTM-356)

Jul 30 - Mercury At Its Greatest Western Elongation (20 Degrees)

Jul 30 - Comet C/2012 S3 (PANSTARRS) At Opposition (1.341 AU)

Jul 30 - Asteroid 3 Juno Occults 2UCAC 30446947 (12.3 Magnitude Star)

Jul 30 - Asteroid 2003 DZ15 Near-Earth Flyby (0.023 AU)

Jul 30 - Asteroid 2013 BO76 Near-Earth Flyby (0.053 AU)

Jul 30 - Asteroid 1213 Algeria Closest Approach To Earth (1.981 AU)

Jul 30 - 75th Anniversary (1938), Seth Nicholson's Discovery of Jupiter Moon Carme

Jul 31 - Mars Spring Equinox

Jul 31 - Comet P/2013 N3 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (2.370 AU)

Jul 31 - Asteroid 69230 Hermes Closest Approach To Earth (1.681 AU)

Aug 01 - Alpha Capricornids Meteor Shower Peak

Aug 01 - Comet C/2012 S3 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (1.338 AU)

Aug 01 - Comet 204P/LINEAR-NEAT At Opposition (3.951 AU)

Aug 01 - Comet C/2013 G8 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (4.310 AU)

Aug 01 - Comet C/2012 C1 (McNaught) Closest Approach To Earth (4.558 AU)

Aug 01 - Asteroid 16761 Hertz Closest Approach To Earth (1.386 AU)

Aug 01 - Asteroid 5382 McKay Closest Approach To Earth (1.771 AU)

Aug 01 - Maria Mitchell's 195th Birthday (1818)

Aug 02 - Comet 278P/McNaught Perihelion (2.098 AU)

Aug 02 - Comet 227P/Catalina-LINEAR At Opposition (4.297 AU)

Aug 02 - Asteroid 2013 OF Near-Earth Flyby (0.068 AU)

Aug 02 - Asteroid 2579 Spartacus Closest Approach To Earth (1.101 AU)

Aug 02 - Asteroid 2710 Veverka Closest Approach To Earth (1.612 AU)

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

A Weird West Tale and the Hunt for Planet Vulcan

One of the most fascinating stories in modern astronomy

involves the pursuit of a world that never was.

Tomorrow marks the 135th

anniversary of the total solar eclipse

of July 29th

, 1878. With a maximum totality of 3 minutes 11

seconds, this eclipse traced a path across western Canada and

the United States from the territory of Montana to Louisiana.

A curious band of astronomers also lay in wait along the path

of totality, searching for an elusive world known as Vulcan.

Long before Star Trek or Mr. Spock, Vulcan was a hypothetical

world thought to inhabit the region between the planet Mercury

and the Sun.

The tale of Vulcan is the story of the birth of modern predictive

astronomy. Vulcan was a reality to 18th

century astronomers- it

can be seen and the astronomy textbooks and contemporary art and culture of the day. Urbain J.J. Le

Verrier proposed the existence of the planet in 1859 to explain the anomalous precession of the perihelion of the

planet Mercury. Le Verrier was a voice to be taken seriously — he had performed a similar feat of calculation

to lead observers to the discovery of the planet Neptune from the Berlin Observatory on the night of September

23, 1846. Almost overnight, Le Verrier had single-handedly boosted astronomy into the realm of a science with

real predictive power.

The idea of Vulcan gained traction when a French doctor and amateur astronomer Edmond Lescarbault claimed

to have seen the tiny world transit the Sun while viewing it through his 95 millimetre refractor on the sunny

afternoon of March 26th

, 1859. Keep in mind, this was an era when solar observations were carried out via the

hazardous method of viewing the Sun through a smoked or oil-filled filter, or the via safer technique of

projecting the disk and sketching it onto a piece of paper.

A visiting Le Verrier was sufficiently impressed by Lescarbault‘s observation, and went as far as to calculate

and publish orbital tables for Vulcan. Soon, astronomers everywhere were ―seeing dots‖ pass in front of the

Sun. Astronomer F. A. R. Russell spotted an object transiting the Sun from London on January, 29th

, 1860.

Sightings continued over the decades, including a claim by an observer based near Peckeloh Germany to have

witnessed a transit of Vulcan on April 4th

, 1876.

Incidentally, we are not immune to this effect of ―contagious observations‖ even today — for example,

when Comet Holmes brightened to naked eye visibility in October 2007, spurious reports of other comets

brightening flooded message boards, and a similar psychological phenomena occurred after amateur

astronomer Anthony Wesley recorded an impact on Jupiter in 2010. Though the event that triggered the initial

observation was real, the claims of impacts on other bodies in the solar system that soon followed turned out to

be bogus.

Still, reports of the planet Vulcan were substantial enough for astronomers to mount an expedition to the

territory of Wyoming in an attempt to catch dim Vulcan near the Sun during the brief moments of totality.

Participants include Simon Newcomb of the Naval Observatory, James Craig Watson and Lewis Swift.

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Inventor Thomas Edison was also on hand, stationed at Rawlins, Wyoming hoping to test his new-fangled

invention known as a tasimeter to measure the heat of the solar corona.

Conditions were austere, to say the least. Although the teams endured dust storms that nearly threatened to cut

their expeditions short, the morning of the 29th

dawned, as one newspaper reported, ―as slick and clean as a

Cheyenne free-lunch table.‖ Totality began just after 4 PM local, as observers near the tiny town of Separation,

Wyoming swung their instruments into action.

Such a quest is difficult under the best of circumstances. Observers had to sweep the area within 3 degrees of

the Sun (six times the diameter of a Full Moon) quickly during the fleeting moments of totality with their

narrow field refractors, looking for a +4th

magnitude star or fainter among the established star fields.

In the end, the expedition was both a success and a failure. Watson & Swift both claimed to have identified a

+5th

magnitude object similar in brightness to the nearby star Theta Cancri. Astronomer Christian Heinrich

Friedrich Peters later cast doubt on the sighting and the whole Vulcan affair, claiming that ―I refuse to go on a

wild goose chase after Le Verrier‘s mythical birds!‖

And speaking of birds, Edison ran into another eclipse phenomenon while testing his device, when chickens,

fooled by the approaching false dusk came home to roost at the onset of totality!

But such is the life of an eclipse-chaser. Albert Einstein‘s general theory of relativity explained the precession

of Mercury‘s orbit in 1916 and did away with a need for Vulcan entirely.

But is the idea of intra-Mercurial worldlets down for the count?

Amazingly, the quest for objects inside Mercury‘s orbit goes on today, and the jury is still out.

Dubbed Vulcanoids, modern day hunters still probe the inner solar system for tiny asteroids that may inhabit the

region close to the Sun. In 2002, NASA conducted a series of high altitude flights out of the Dryden Flight

Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California, sweeping the sky near the Sun for Vulcanoids at dawn

and dusk. Now, there‘s a job to be envious of — an F-18 flying astronomer!

NASA‘s MESSENGER spacecraft was also on the lookout for Vulcanoids on its six year trek through the inner

solar system prior to orbital insertion on March 18th

, 2011.

Thus far, these hunts have turned up naught. But one of the most fascinating quests is still ongoing and being

carried out by veteran eclipse-chaser Landon Curt Noll.

Mr. Noll last conducted a sweep for Vulcanoids during total phases of the long duration total solar eclipse of

July 22nd

, 2009 across the Far East. He uses a deep sky imaging system, taking pictures in the near-IR to

accomplish this search. Using this near-IR imaging technique during a total solar eclipse requires a stable

platform, and thus performing this feat at sea or via an airborne platform is out. Such a rig has been successful

in catching the extremely thin crescent Moon at the moment it reaches New phase.

To date, no convincing Vulcanoid candidates have been found. Mr. Noll also notes that the European Space

Agency/NASA‘s joint Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft has, for all intents and purposes,

eliminated the possibility of Vulcanoids brighter than +8th

magnitude near the Sun. Modern searches during

eclipses conducted in this fashion scan the sky between wavelengths of 780 to 1100 nanometres down to

magnitude +13.5. Mr. Noll told Universe Today that ―Our improved orbital models show that objects as small

as 50m in diameter could reside in a zone 0.08 A.U. to 0.18 AU (1.2 to 2.7 million kilometers) from the Sun.‖

He also stated that, ―there is plenty of ‗room‘ for (Vulcanoids) in the 50 metre to 20 kilometre range.‖

Mr. Noll plans to resume his hunt during the August 21st, 2017 total solar eclipse spanning the continental

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United States. Totality for this eclipse will have a maximum duration of 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

Circumstances during the next solar eclipse (a hybrid annular-total crossing central Africa on November 3rd

,

2013) will be much more difficult, with a max totality located out to sea of only 1 minute and 40 seconds.

Still, we think it‘s amazing that the quest for Vulcan (or at least Vulcanoids) is alive and well and being

spearheaded by adventurous and innovative amateur astronomers. In the words of Vulcan‘s native fictional son,

may it ―Live Long & Prosper!‖

Source: Universe Today Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Saturn, Titan, Rings, and Haze Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Explanation: This is not a solar eclipse. Pictured above is a busy vista of moons and rings taken at Saturn. The

large circular object in the center of the image is Titan, the largest moon of Saturn and one of the most

intriguing objects in the entire Solar System. The dark spot in the center is the main solid part of the moon. The

bright surrounding ring is atmospheric haze above Titan, gas that is scattering sunlight to a camera operating

onboard the robotic Cassini spacecraft. Cutting horizontally across the image are the rings of Saturn, seen nearly

edge on. At the lower right of Titan is Enceladus, a small moon of Saturn. Since the image was taken pointing

nearly at the Sun, the surfaces of Titan and Enceladus appear in silhouette, and the rings of Saturn appear

similar to a photographic negative. Now if you look really reallyclosely at Enceladus, you can see a hint of icy

jets shooting out toward the bottom of the image. It is these jets that inspired future proposals to land on

Enceladus, burrow into the ice, and search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

Source: APOD Return to Contents