World Cup

Well, it is that time again, when I pay attention to soccer (or football where the NFL isn't the dominant league), and I wonder why the vast majority of my countrymen couldn't careless.  But no matter, I will be watching in glorious high-definition anyway.  And I will be watching today's game between Good and Evil, I mean the US and England.

Here's wishing the US National Team, godspeed and beat those limey !@$!s.

While this post is off-topic, please note that I did pose in front of a map of Io (you can see it just to the right of me in the background...)

From El Malpais and Carnival of Space #109

While at the Sandstone overlook in El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico, I took a series of photos using my Canon PowerShot A510 (not the best camera, I know) to be used in making several panoramas. I've cleaned up one of them for you all to check out. The foreground rocks are from the sandstone bluff with basaltic rocks from the McCartys Flow filling the middle ground. The more vegetated areas are covered in smoother, pahohoe-style rocks, while the bare, dark areas (like in the patches on the right in the cropped version above) are covered in a'a flows. The McCartys flow is around 3,000 years old. In the background you can see some of the great mountains of northwestern New Mexico, such as Gallo Peak in the middle of the crop above.

You can download the full 360-degree panorama here.

In other news, the latest edition of the Carnival of Space, #109, is now online at the blog Twisted Physics.

Carnival of Space #108 and Back in Tucson

The 108th Edition of the Carnival of Space is now online over at the blog, Starts with a Bang. So check that out to get yourself up to speed on the Space and astronomy blogosphere.

In other news, I am now back in Tucson from my vacation, though we were not able to go to the Very Large Array due to a failed alternator. The alternator was switched out after a few hours of work, but we were finished too late in the day for us to make a stop at VLA. We plan on making another go of it in October during a planned trip to the Trinity site. A nice full compliment of pictures taken during my trip are available to all on my Facebook page.

Christopher Go has a great animation he created from images he acquired yesterday showing a transit of Io across Jupiter. In his images, you can clearly make out the difference in albedo between Io's polar and equatorial regions.

Link: Carnival of Space #108: Solstice Edition! [scienceblogs.com]

More From Albuquerque

Today, we went up to Los Alamos and Santa Fe. The ride up allowed us to see quite a bit of rain, make the drive up a little boring, not being able to see as much out the window. Once we got up to Los Alamos, we visited the Bradbury Science Museum which had quite a bit of information on the Manhattan Project and the Nuclear Lab in Los Alamos plus other science projects being conducted in the town. We weren't completely prepared for 50 degree weather so we stopped at a nice diner in Los Alamos where I got some chili.

We then went down to Santa Fe to see the State Capitol. The streets in Santa Fe, were laid out by someone who was clearly either drunk or high, or maybe both. They don't believe in the grid pattern in Santa Fe. We eventually did find the state capitol, where we spent 30 minutes or so touring the Senate and House galleries. Lots of art in the hallways.

The drive back to Albuquerque was a lot better than the drive up to Santa Fe and Los Alamos. First, the skies had cleared a bit so we could actually see distant landmarks. Second, we passed by a very strong thunderstorm west of I-25 with some very strong downdrafts and heavy rainfall. Luckily, we did not get caught up in the rain, though we considered chasing the storm before we found out that there were no paved roads in the area west of I-25 between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

We are back in Albuquerque now, probably going to go to Waffle House for dinner. Tomorrow, we are going to start to head back to Tucson, but we will make a stop at the Very Large Array, a radio telescope array made famous in the movie Contact.

Images I took today and other parts of my trip can be seen on my Facebook page.

I will give another report tomorrow. In the mean time, check out the videos of the two Callisto eclipses that occurred earlier today in the southern trailing hemisphere of Io (just simulations, no actual telescope images).

More from the Road: Albuquerque edition

We pulled into Albuquerque a couple of hours ago after driving along I-40 from Holbrook, Arizona, where we stayed last night. The drive was supposed to be a straight drive with a few stops for gas, lunch, and snacks. However, we ended up stopping at the El Malpais National Monument, in Northwestern New Mexico, along I-40 west of Albuquerque. El Malpais is part of the Zuni-Bandera Flow field, an area of basaltic a'a and pahoehoe flows that erupted during the holocene and pleistocene, as recently as 3000 years before present. Very neat vistas, and don't worry, I got enough images to make a great panorama when I get home.

I posted more images from this trip on my Facebook page which you all can check out. The image at left is me at a scenic overlook at El Malpais a few miles past the ranger station. I will post more there each day of the trip as well as when I get home.

Road Trip up to Meteor Crater

Today, my friends Roni, Audrey, and I drove up to Meteor Crater from Tucson. This was actually my first visit to this tiny impact crater, but certainly worth taking photos of. Tomorrow, we are going to head over to Albuquerque and later Los Alamos. We ended up holing up in Holbrook, Arizona for the night. Holbrook is a pretty small town, but the Italian Mesa Restaurant had some great food. I will post most of my pictures when I get back to Tucson Monday, but at right is a great shot of Meteor Crater that I took today. I also took quite a few images that can be used to make a huge panorama of the crater that I will put together when I get back home.

Hope you are all having a great week!

New Version of Google Earth with Support for additional Planets

Yesterday, Google released the fifth version of its popular freeware program, Google Earth. Once of the added features that has caught a lot of attention is the inclusion of Mars and Earth's ocean floor. The Mars addition is particularly fascinating, pulling data from multiple missions (MRO, MGS, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Express) to create a realistic Mars simulator. One of the best features of Google Earth is the flight simulator, which combined with the new "Google Mars", would allows users to fly down Valles Marineris. Though, if they are like me, they crash the simulated plane into the canyon walls.

The new button that allows you to switch between Earth and Mars also seems to imply that other planets, perhaps moons, might be supported in the future. I would certainly love to see "Google Io". However, at this point, stereo data is pretty limited. But it would still be neat.

The image I used from Google Earth above shows the summit crater of Mauna Loa.

Link: Google Earth [earth.google.com]

Funny Super Bowl Ad

In a Super Bowl filled with mostly lame commercials, there was one stand-out I liked:



Nice space theme, and except for the fact that you couldn't see Saturn's rings like that from one of its moons (or at least none of the ones near enough for Saturn to be that big in the sky) it does look remarkably extraterrestrial. Very nice terrain. Funny commercial. Great ending!

Now if only the Super Bowl had a great ending... unfortunately, this Super Bowl will forever be tainted by that blown call at the end. That, ladies and gentlemen, was a PASS, not a fumble...

Surface Changes on Titan

Okay, true, Titan is off-topic here but still I can't pass up an opportunity to mention a paper that was published today in Geophysical Research Letters (in which I am second author of) reporting the discovery of active playa in the south polar region of Saturn's moon Titan. We also released a press release on this. While counting and measuring dark features in the south polar region last year in preparation for a Titan paper, I found that some of these features were in one observation from June 2005 but not in the other from July 2004. If these were small features, I could discount them as being due to resolution effects and the effects of the atmosphere that blurs out details, but these changes were much too large. You can see what I am talking about on the Planetary Photojournal.

It didn't take us long to figure out what we were looking at, a real surface change on the surface. We surmise that this change resulted from a rainstorm that dumped enough rain over this spot on Titan to flood the valley floors with a shallow layer of liquid methane. The most likely storm (that we are aware of, keep in mind that we don't have continuous coverage) to have caused this was a massive storm system seen from Earth and by Cassini ISS in early October 2004. The brightest part of the storm (and plausibly the most intense part of the storm with the greatest cloud heights) was located over this surface change in the ISS observation of the storm on October 8, 2004.

Anyways, even though it was off-topic, I thought I would quickly share this here.

Link: Cassini Finds Hydrocarbon Rains May Fill Titan Lakes [ciclops.org]

Quick News

Here are a few quick notes:

• The Volcanism on Io Wikipedia is now featured on the main page of the popular encylopedic website, giving millions of people a chance to learn more about this fascinating word. Thanks to all who helped in bring that article to this point!
• Phoenix has finally kicked the bucket. A sad day, but not unexpected given the changing seasons in the Martian arctic. Congratulations go out to the Phoenix lander team for producing such a successful mission.
• I have added the Follower applet on the sidebar at right. So feel free to show your support for my blog.
  

Saddened

I am deeply saddened right now. Our country has gone in a very wrong direction tonight and I just don't know what to say. Shocked. Saddened. Horrified. I recognize the choice of the majority in this country, but still... wow. I hope my worst fears are not realized. I hope in four years we will be better off. I am proud to some extent of the historic choice the country has made, but I feel that this particular candidate was not the right one for this time in our history.

I believe this country can be a great one. However, I think that can only be done by not looking to the solutions of the past, which I felt Obama represented, but by look for the solutions of the future. I believe that the presidency is not a popularity contest. I believe the presidency requires the culmination of a lifetime of political and lifetime experience.

A few things I will be doing is reading up on the 1917 Russian Revolution so I will know what to do. Probably go back to burying myself in work I guess.

I guess what that means is no more politics here. Sorry, I just needed to get a few things off my chest. This is just such a tragic day.

Just a Warning

To all those who know me: if current national polls hold up, I will be in an incredibly foul mood come next Wednesday. Please don't take it personally. I will get over it eventually. I will try not to bring it here on this blog but be warned that I may post something about "gullible people" or some such next week. Hmm, from that last sentence, I may already be in a foul mood...

Just giving you all a heads up.

Significant Day in Astronomy

Yesterday was a significant day in astronomy. Yesterday evening, Tucson time, an asteroid 5 meters across streaked across the sky of Chad, Egypt, and Sudan. This kind of event happens routinely, an object 5 meters across encounters our planet about once every few months. What made this rock, 2008 TC3, significant was that for the first time, ever, an asteroid was discovered on a collision course with Earth. We observed it as it approached our planet, and according to some early reports on Spaceweather.com, observed it streak across our sky. No longer is the term "meteoroid" just the name we give to what a meteorite WAS before it hit our planet, we have actually studied a meteoroid in space, before impact.

On the Bad Astronomy blog, a commenter asked, "What is the distinction between a meteoroid and an asteroid?" The answer is that there is none. An asteroid is just a small, rocky body that orbits the sun. A meteoroid is just the term for a meteorite's state before it impacts earth, there is no size distinction. In other words, for the first time, we have observed a meteoroid.

Very cool stuff. Wished it streaked through our sky here in Tucson, but I made do with watching it on simulated on Celestia. Hopefully, some folks in southern Egypt caught it on tape :)

Mercury mosaics from MESSENGER

I have finished up my mosaics of Mercury and posted them on Unmannedspaceflight.com. These include a medium resolution global mosaic and a high resolution mosaic covering the northern hemisphere.

• 87-frame Global Mosaic - This global mosaic of Mercury consists of 87 MDIS Narrow-angle Camera images acquired during the MESSENGER spacecraft's January 14, 2008 flyby of Mercury. These images were acquired when MESSENGER was between 17,484 and 20,790 km from Mercury or between 53 and 63 minutes after closest approach. This mosaic has a resolution of 550 m/pixel. This mosaic uses calibrated MDIS images and the brightness was adjusted to improve the visibility of surface features. The features seen in this mosaic cover a significant portion of the terrain not seen by Mariner 10 during its three flybys in the 1970s. [JPG PNG]
• Northern Hemisphere Mosaic - This regional mosaic showcasing Mercury's northern hemisphere consists of 96 MDIS Narrow-angle Camera images acquired during the MESSENGER spacecraft's January 14, 2008 flyby of Mercury. These images were acquired when MESSENGER was between 8,148 and 11,516 km from Mercury or between 27.5 and 37 minutes after closest approach. This mosaic has a resolution of 309 m/pixel. This mosaic uses calibrated MDIS images and the brightness was adjusted to improve the visibility of surface features. The features seen in this mosaic cover a significant portion of the terrain not seen by Mariner 10 during its three flybys in the 1970s including a number of features that have been recently named. The Caloris impact, the largest and most recent large impact basin on Mercury, is visible as a circular brightish region along the eastern portion of the mosaic. Another large (and relatively young) impact basin, Raditladi, can be seen to the west of Caloris basin. Both basin are unique because they are host to Mercury's only known extensional tectonic features, represented by concentric and radial grabens (troughs). One such extensional feature, Pantheon Fossae, is a prominent feature in the central part of Caloris basin and consists of a radial pattern of cracks. [JPG PNG]
• High-Resolution Equatorial Mosaic - This regional mosaic showcasing Mercury's equatorial region consists of 68 MDIS Narrow-angle Camera images acquired during the MESSENGER spacecraft's January 14, 2008 flyby of Mercury. These images were acquired when MESSENGER was between 4,110 and 6,322 km from Mercury or between 16 and 22.5 minutes after closest approach. This mosaic has a resolution of 125 m/pixel. This mosaic uses uncalibrated MDIS images and the brightness was adjusted to improve the visibility of surface features. This is MESSENGER's highest resolution mosaic acquired during the January 2008 flyby. This mosaic is centered on 4.5 South Latitude, 128 East Longitude. [JPG]
• Inbound Crescent Mosaic - This global mosaic of Mercury's crescent consists of 29 MDIS Narrow-angle Camera images acquired during the MESSENGER spacecraft's January 14, 2008 flyby of Mercury. These images were acquired when MESSENGER was between 19,189 and 17,853 km from Mercury or between 58 and 54 minutes before closest approach. This mosaic has a resolution of 513 m/pixel. This mosaic uses uncalibrated MDIS images and the brightness was adjusted to improve the visibility of surface features. This is MESSENGER's highest resolution mosaic acquired during the January 2008 flyby. The features seen in this mosaic were observed by Mariner 10 in the 1970s, but the high-phase angle allows scientists better study the topographic structures in this region. [PNG]

Link: Mercury mosaics from January 2008 Flyby [unnmannedspaceflight.com]

More MESSENGER at Mercury mosaics

Still working on mosaics of images from the MESSENGER mission's January flyby of Mercury. Here are a few more I've worked on. WARNING: these mosaics are quite large, so it may be best to right-click, save to hard drive, then view it on a your favorite image viewer.

• Mosaic covering the double ring crater Raditladi and the ejecta surrounding the crater (PNG, 3006x3341, 5.36 MB)
• Central part of Caloris Basin including Apollodorus, Cunningham, and Atget craters (PNG, 3912x2744, 4.86 MB)
• 3x5 mosaic covering Eminescu and Xiao Zhao craters (PNG, 4872x2936, 7.36 MB)

I am currently trying to generate a 8000x8000 pixel full-disk mosaic of Mercury. Not sure how well it will go. Photoshop hates these REALLY large mosaics... That's why I cut up the northern hemisphere mosaics into several, smaller chunks. Here is what I have so far showing the southern polar region.

MESSENGER at Mercury

Not Io related, but still interesting. There is a new special issue in Science on results from the MESSENGER flyby of Mercury this past January. One of the most interesting results were from FIPS instrument which suggested the presence of water ions in Mercury's rarefied atmosphere.

In the last day, I've been playing around the with the images of Mercury taken by MESSENGER last January. Here are a selection:

• Inbound crescent mosaic (PNG, 4122x7563, 9.22 MB)
• Outbound global mosaic (PNG, 4586x5606, 11.5 MB)
• High-resolution mosaic of Mercury's equator (JPG, 15402x3664, 7.26 MB)
  

Good Luck to Phoenix

Just wanted to wish the Phoenix mission good luck and I hope their landing on the Martian northern plains goes off without a hitch.

Update: Phoenix landed! WOOT!

Grand Theft Auto: Io

As you can see, I still haven't gotten around to working on the post for the Io footprint paper. I had planned to get to it Monday, but unexpected work got in the way (new and interesting Titan images). The reason I had to get to it Monday was because starting Tuesday, I would have very little free time between working, eating, sleeping, and playing Grand Theft Auto IV, which hit stores the other day.

Grand Theft Auto IV is a video game for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles. The game follows a Eastern European immigrant, Nico Bellic, in a fictionalized version of New York City as he tries to escape his past and build a new future with the help of his cousin, Roman. The game, like its predecessors, has garnered attention for its graphic depiction of violence, however, it has garnered praise from nearly every reviewer for its epic plot (leading some to call it the "Godfather" of video games) and great gameplay.

I bought the game during my local Gamestop's Midnight Madness Sale. Basically, the game was released on Tuesday, and to capitalize on the craving people have for playing this game, they open to store at midnight so people can be among the first to own a copy. The closest Gamestop to my apartment is only three blocks away in the best shopping center in Tucson (along with a Gamestop, it has a Best Buy, a Wal-Mart, a good shoe store, and a camping store).

So I walked down to the store at a little before 10pm on Monday night, expecting to find maybe five people waiting in line to buy the game. Instead, I found 20 people already there. Waiting in line for two hours wasn't too bad. The employees knew how to treat their queue, giving out free chips, candy, soda, and water, setting up a TV outside to play some episodes of The Simpsons, and holding a raffle for random GTA IV-related merchandise, like posters, lanyards, and, wait for it, an empty box. I didn't win anything in the raffle, but I was pretty satisfied sitting in line with my chips, water, and iPod. By the time midnight rolled around, there had to have been at least 100 people in line, if not more, since I couldn't see the end because it stretched around the corner of the complex. I should note, to my surprise, that I did spot one woman in line for this game who WASN'T there with her boyfriend/husband/girlfriend. Not sure what that says about the audience for the game or the kinds of people who are stupid enough to wait in line to buy a video game at midnight on a weeknight.

Finally, at 12:07am on Tuesday, I had my hands on the game I coveted for a few days now (okay, I preordered it several months ago...). I've played quite a lot of it over the last couple of days (almost 11 hours worth, so now you see why I have had no time to skim through a paper on aurorae). It is a very good game. Is it worth the perfect scores given to it by nearly every reviewer, I'm not sure about that. But it is definitely the best game I own and nearly the best I have ever played, but that's not to say that there aren't a few things that bother me about the game, or bugs in the game that I've noticed.

I will try to post on any news item I see on Io or post about some new astrophotography, but I would not expect any major posts (beyond this one) from me this week.