Author Archives: Mike Prokosch

This year we will return to the moon.  I’m not talking about a new NASA mission or something coming out of Russia’s Roscosmos or the European Space Agency.  I’m talking about private enterprise.  I’m talking about a competition first launched 10 years ago, and we are in the final stretch.  I’m talking about the Google Lunar X Prize.

First, the rules.  You must launch a rocket toward the moon and travel the 380,000 kilometer distance.  One false calculation and you could miss the moon entirely.  Once you arrive close to the moon, you must slow down, which is harder than it sounds.  Don’t do that right, and you could end up with what is called a “hard landing”, otherwise known as a crash.  Then you have to find a place to land, probably someplace that’s smooth and flat.  If you land successfully, you must then somehow move your craft 500 meters.  This is can be done by rover, another rocket, or some other design.  Finally you have to send pictures and a message back to Earth from the lunar surface.  Do that, and you win the Google Lunar X Prize and the $20 million dollar prize money!  But, there is one final catch.  A minimum of 90% of your budget must come from private donors; no governments allowed.  The idea there is to keep costs down and be as innovative as possible.

When the contest first began, there were over 30 competitive teams.  Overtime the field has dwindled as various checkpoints past.  Now only 5 teams remain.  Each team has a different story and come from all over the world.  From the U.S. there is Moon Express.  Japan has Team Hakuto.  From Israel there is Team SpaceIL and from India, Team Indus.  Rounding out the field is an international group with members from over 15 nations called Synergy Moon.  Each team has secured a separate launch date and launch vehicle/rocket, except for Team Indus and Team Hakuto.  They will share the same rocket ride aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket.  A true space race!  

A few weeks ago we lost the life of American astronaut Eugene Cernan.  Gene was the last man to walk on the moon, over 40 years ago.  That’s a long time, so long that to many people the Apollo missions seem to be a mere story, something strange from a bygone era.  Others think it never even happened.  I was born a few months after the Apollo 17 mission, so I just missed the best part of the space race of the 1960’s.  Fortunately, there is a new race, and a new generation to get the ball rolling again.  I can’t wait to get back to the moon!

Astronomy Word of the Day:  Cyanogen.  Cyanogen is a chemical compound (CN)2 very commonly found in comets.  Toxic to humans, it is one of the reasons comets tend to appear green as they approach the sun.  Cyanogen was first noticed in comets around 1910 when scientists analyzed the composition of Halley’s Comet.  That particular apparition of Halley’s Comet was very close, with the Earth passing through its tail.  Many feared that the poisons in the tail would kill us, but the tail of a comet is so diffuse that there was nothing to fear.

I thought I would share some other live webcams of some of the places I visited in Chile.  The first is of CTIO, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, particularly the Blanco Telescope.

http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/ctio-external-webcam

And this is outside the SOAR telescope that shares the same mountain peak as Gemini South and the future LSST.  Cerro Pachon.

http://www.ctio.noao.edu/soar/content/cerro-pachon-soar-outside-webcam

Enjoy!

ALMA

“Life begins on the edge of your comfort zone” -Neale Donald Walsch

The OSF (Operations Support Facility) for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array sits at about 3,000 meters above sea level.  The humble sized but very active town of San Pedro thrives only 50 kilometers away.  The facility itself has a fully operational cafeteria, plenty of housing, and offices that could just as easily be in Silicon Valley.  If you have properly acclimated yourself to the altitude it is easy to forget the warnings that this environment can rapidly become very hostile.  Your first indication that things may not be as safe as they appear is this:

Image taken by Brian Koberlein

The sun here can be brutal.  It is cold.  But being so high you are above much of the protective layer of the atmosphere, so burning is easy.  Most days, by the time the sun reaches maximum altitude, that little light is in the purple.  Danger setting of 11 on a scale of 1-10.  Use of sunblock often, wear a hat, and UV protected sunglasses is a must.

Assuming you have been granted permission to ascend to the high site, you must first pass a basic physical exam.  Your blood pressure and oxygen saturation level is checked.  Blood pressure naturally elevates with increased altitude since there is less pressure on your body pushing inward.  And since there is less oxygen, your blood must be as efficient as possible.  Altitude sickness is a funny thing.  A seemingly healthy person who eats properly, regularly works out and normally displays no health problems can have trouble or even be denied access while others who you would think would be a guaranteed “no” exhibit little or no problems at all.  Initially, my heart rate was too high, something I attribute to merely being overly excited.  A few deep breaths and a moment of concentrated relaxation and my blood pressure machine finally took my reading.  147/96.  I was good to go.  Not all of us were so lucky.

Once the health checks were over, we loaded up into two large trucks and headed up to the plateau…5000 meters above sea level.  That altitude is only 400 feet below the altitude of the north base camp for Mt. Everest.  The air is so thin and dry there is only .5 mm of water above your head.  Any ice on the plateau doesn’t melt when the temperatures are warm enough.  It sublimates, turning straight into a gas like dry ice.  Visitors are only allowed to stay about 2 hours.  Regular employees are limited to 6 hours before being to required to come down to the OSF.  As you drive up, the vegetation changes.  Half way there, a strange, different type of cactus becomes the dominant plant, resembling the towering socorro cactus found in Arizona.  Then, they stop.  All vegetation stops.  Here you have reached a point where most life forms found are mere visitors, only able to stay for short periods before succumbing to the effects of the altitude.

We arrive at the high site.  Just like that it feels like you are on another planet.  Strange, alien.  The 66 antennae off in the distance, each one weighing 100 tons, mark time, slowly and steadily turning in one direction, then another.  We step out of our vehicles with excitement but are advised not to overexert ourselves.  Even the act of touching your toes and standing back up can cause dizziness.  Our blood pressure and oxygen levels are checked again inside the control room 3 times.  One of us is given an oxygen tank and breathing tubes, a couple more have to sit for a bit and catch their breath.  After a tour of the servers and control rooms, we head out to the dishes.  We practice our breathing techniques, exhaling with our lips pursed together as if we are about to whistle to apply pressure to our lungs and exhale fully.  Symptoms of high altitude include dizziness, nausea, headaches, confusion, irritability, blurred vision, and irregular heart rates, all of which can lead to swelling of the brain or fluid buildup in the lungs.  This is as close to the edge as I have ever been.  But the sight of those antennae clicking away doing science, the thought of all the manpower and cooperation between the various countries involved in this edge of the world venture keep us going.  We hardly notice the ambulance dutifully following close behind us just in case.  When it comes time for us to leave, those of us who have enough breath left let out a collective sigh of disappointment.

I am no adrenaline junky.  But if anyone ever asks me, what is the edge of my comfort zone, I can tell them it lies on the 5,000 meter Chajnantor Plateau.  It lies at ALMA.  I can’t wait to go back.

Visited Gemini South and SOAR…behind the scenes.  I will add many more pictures at a later time.  For now, here is a taste.  The pictures that look circular were shot with a macro fisheye lens with the intent of showing on a planetarium dome.  The final picture is looking back at Gemini South from outside the SOAR telescope.  The wonderful young woman in the picture is fellow ACEAP ambassador Vivian White.

Haven’t been able to blog for a while.  Here is a brief update on things in Chile.  Visited a wonderful place called Observatorio Astronomica Andino.  Amateur astronomers take note!  This is a first class observatory.  First class gear!  First class accommodations!  First Class Food!  And First Class hosts!  (Any astronomy TA’s for SHSU, we need to talk)  Regrettably it was cloudy this night, so no observing.  I’ll tell you this much…for being only 30 minutes from a city of 7 million people, the light pollution was virtually non-existent.  And quiet.  Every telescope had either a Nagler lens ready to go or something similar.  Easy on the eyes lighting, lots of it, but it doesn’t really effect your night vision at all.  It was chilly, so the outside stoves were lit.  Ponchos were offered to those who needed.  Empenadas.  Wine.  (good wine too…nothing from CVS or Walmart here!)  The two young ladies who hosted, Francisca and Jacqueline, were wonderful.  Francisca did most of the tour and talk.  She is an upcoming astronomer.  Jacqueline is a software engineer.

From here, I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

http://www.oaa.cl/en

So, took this image on my phone after sunset from Chile.  Moon, Jupiter, and Venus.  (Venus is the brightest of the two dots.)  Notice anything different from your skies (U. S. people)?  The angle they make points to the left rather than the right…Venus is left of Jupiter for me, right of Jupiter for you.  Also, the crescent moon is different…also leaning toward the left rather than right.  This is due to locations on the Earth.  The sky is reversed for the southern hemisphere.

I thought I would share with you a little about one of my personal goals I expect to meet while in Chile, and that is observing some or all of the variable stars noted in the 10 Plus One Variable Star Training Program for the Southern Hemisphere.  I may even be able to observe that nova in Sagittarius that went off back in March.  To start with, some of the stars on this list are also visible in the Northern Hemisphere.  In fact two of them are on the Northern Hemisphere version of the list.  I’m going to exclude those two stars, Eta Aquilae and Betelgeuse in Orion, for now…I already observe those regularly, but not the others.  Lets begin with two variable stars in Sagittarius.  X Sagittarii and W Sagittarii are both cepheid variables, ranging in magnitude from 4.2 to 5.0 roughly.  The first one, X Sag, is 1 degree north of the center of the Milky Way, the other is a member of a triple star system, only one of which is the variable.  Each has a period of about 7 to 7.5 days, so I hope to be able to observe a complete cycle of these while down south.

The remaining stars will be in constellations completely new to me.  Kappa Pavonis lies in the constellation Pavo, the latin word for peacock.  This star is also a cepheid variable, but of a slightly different population of stars, less massive and less luminous than class cepheids.  With a period of about 9 days, this should just be within reach to catch an entire cycle if travel time allows for it.

Zeta Phoenicis lies in the constellation Phoenix.  It is an eclipsing binary star, much like our more familiar Algol in Perseus.  The change is not so dramatic, only ranging about .5 magnitude, but it has a much shorter period, 1.6 days.  Several cycles should be possible with some dedication.

The next two stars may not be observable.  Lying in the constellation Dorado the fish, they are said to be “in season” between October and May, but perhaps with a couple “all nighters” we may be able to catch them.  Beta Doradus is another cepheid variable while R Doradus is semiregular and has more in common with Betelgeuse.  It is one of the largest stars we can see, relatively that is.  The only one with a larger apparent size is the Sun.

Finally, there are two stars in the constellation Carina, I Carinae and R Carinae.  The first one, another Cepheid variable, ranges almost a full magnitude but takes 35 days to complete a cycle.  The last one is more interesting.  To observe a complete cycle of R Carinae requires naked eye, then binoculars, then a telescope, then back again.  It takes 307 days to complete a full cycle and ranges from 3.9 magnitude to 10.7.  It is a Mira class variable, a large star that is pulsating and rapidly losing mass.

Interested in observing variable stars yourself?  It is a relatively easy thing to do with a little practice.  The basic thing to do is to have a star map containing the star or stars you want to observe.  A good map will have the magnitudes listed for the non variable stars.  These will be the stars you use to compare your variable too.  A good practice is to pick a comparison star that is brighter and one that is fainter than your variable.  Now you estimate.  At first you will likely be doing good to get within .2 or .3 magnitudes of the actual brightness.  That is ok.  With some practice you may be able to get with .05 magnitudes using just your eyes.  I’ll admit, I am no where near that level…but I blame the recent weather…particularly Tropical Storm Bill.  You can’t better if you can’t see the stars.

Chart from AAVSO 10 Star Tutorial South.