Check out this cool charting tool that let’s you set latitude and date and shows you the length of the day in hours.

http://astro.unl.ed....../daylighthoursexplorer.html

The ripple is taller than the Earth and that moves across the surface of the sun at 560,000 Miles Per Hour.  [Science @ NASA]

Cool Stuff

Check out this interactive map of nearby stars:

Luna

Chandrayaan-1 has begun remote sensing of the moon, and has also landed a remote probe, although apparently the probe had a "hard landing" that "terminated it's functioning."  But, let's focus on the success, they DID land the probe on the moon!

NASA has also tested some more lunar rover designs, and more importantly two separate ISRU methods to extract oxygen from lunar material.  This is a really big deal, not only can lunar oxygen be used to breath, it also makes up the bulk of most rocket propellants.  Future missions to the moon might use lunar oxygen as propellant for a return trip.

Mars

Spirit has been caught in a dust storm which has drastically reduced the amount of solar power generated by its solar panels.  NASA has commanded the rover to take some severe power saving measures, including shutting down the heater to the thermal imager.  The thermal imager is susceptible to cold, so shutting down the heater may cause permanent damage to the imager.  As of last Friday, Spirit was low on power but still communicating with NASA.

Deep Space

ESA's Ulysses spacecraft is about to end it's 14 year mission to study the sun.  Its RTG power generator is beginning to wane, and soon it will lose the ability to operate.  Launched in 1990, Ulysses first traveled to Jupiter and used a gravitational assist to launch into an orbit which took it over the poles of the sun.  It has orbited the sun 3 times since then, it was originally designed for a 5 year mission.

Beyond

Amazing images of 2 extrasolar planetary systems were published last week.  A Jupiter size planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light years away,

and an amazing 3 planet system around HR8799, some 140 light years away.

Mercury

After it's successful encounter with Mercury a couple of weeks ago, Messenger has increased it's velocity relative to the sun to 63 km/s.  This is the second fastest NASA spacecraft in history, the fastest being Helios 2 back in the 70s.

Earth

The IBEX spacecraft was launched on a Pegasus rocket last week.  Pegasus is an aircraft launched rocket.  IBEX's mission is to observe the boundary of our sun's magnetosphere.  IBEX will use it's own solid rocket boosters to achieve a 100,000 mile earth orbit before beginning the science phase of it's mission.

Also, 9 teams (including Armadillo Aerospace, see RRL article last week) will compete in Northrup Grumman $2 million Lunar Lander Challenge this week.  Here is a video from last year:

Mars

New observations by ESA's Mars Express spacecraft have been used to more accurately measure the mass and density of Phobos.  With a revised density of 1.85 g/cc, which is significantly lower than the density or Martian rock at 2.7-3.3 g/cc, the conclusion is Phobos is most likely a rubble pile.  It is also likely that the mass of Phobos contains significant quantities of water ice, which of course has a density of 1 g/cc.  Of course, it would be nice to obtain a sample of Phobos, and a Russian mission planned to launch next year may do exactly that.  However, with Russia's less than spectacular success record with missions to Mars, I would not bet on seeing those samples return to earth any time soon.

Opportunity is continuing on it's journey to Endeavour Crater, taking one last lap around Victoria first.  Also, a couple of weeks ago, on sol 1671, Oppy acquired this panorama (assembled by Hortonheardawho)

Saturn

After the spectacular encounter with Enceladus last week, Cassini has still not posted any details or results from the encounter.  They did post some raw images from 5000km+, but I was hoping for some extreme closeups.  So far the hihgest res images are these images from August, at 545 km:

Now that is darn good, you can practically see the polar bears and leopard seals lounging on the ice,  but if they got better images in the most recent encounter I'd love to see them.

Deep Space

A new comet was discovered last week, w00t!

Deep Space Report 1.3

The sun is on the Orion spur. Just one of Billions...

For a quick news blurb level of info go here: Solar wind weakest since beginning of space age - Breitbart.com

For an in depth look at the issue go here: Solar System's Protective Shield is Weakening; Solar Wind Velocity at Record Low - Universe Today

The Ulysses space probe has been busy.  The latest reports show the level of solar wind to be at its lowest level since accurate reports began half a century ago.

Ulysses' orbit 2002-2008

There are some far ranging repercussions to this, some potentially good, some potentially bad.  Most not fully understood.

• The solar wind creates the Heliosphere.  If the solar wind is weaker then the Helioshpere will be smaller and weaker which would allow more cosmic rays into the solar system.  All things being equal we want less cosmic rays coming in, but the overall impact is unknown.
• The lessening of the solar wind will cause less drag on satellites and therefore allow them to stay in orbit longer.  Weird but true.  This reduces cost, potentially by a lot.  How much does one more day in orbit save an agency or company with a satellite there?  One more hour?  Multiplied by how many satellites?
• Rich's plan to create a solar wind powered spaceship has reached a snag.
• ?Global warming? - no idea.  My opinion with ZERO data to back it up is that, again everything else being equal, a reduction in solar wind will cause a cooling of some sort on the earth. 

Heliosphere - courtesy wikicommons.

Very odd and strangely beautiful.

http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/root/Brilliant_Noise/BNoise.htm

Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files, made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some of the sun's finest unseen moments. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise.

cool.