pluto, the previous planet: a song

a couple years ago i was walking to the bus stop with the song "rudolph the red nosed reindeer" stuck in my head, much to my frustration! in order to maintain my sanity, i started singing alternative lyrics based on the phrase that popped into my head: pluto the previous planet! i've been wanting to record this song and post it for the public ever since, but had never really been inspired.

so yesterday during the hack day portion of dotAstronomy meeting, i gathered a few fellow conference participants: astronomers, a great pianist, and an enthusiastic director.... and off we went!

so without futher ado... pluto, the previous planet!!

Pluto, the previous planet from carolune on Vimeo.

as much as i like the song as it is, the last verse might lead one to believe that i would like to reinstate pluto as a planet. i want to state for the record that this is NOT the case! i'm pleased that astronomers have decided on a definition of a planet that is based on some actual physics! the song is just fun and i hope people enjoy it.

with all this in mind, we also developed an accompanying website with a special message from pluto:

"First of all, thank you everyone for your concern, but really, I’m happy in my new role as the original dwarf planet! And there’s no need to worry, nothing physically happened to me to cause my reclassification. In fact, Charon’s been jealous for years that I was considered a planet, while we’ve been dancing around each other in our joint orbit around the sun. And don’t forget about our other two small satellites: Nix and Hydra! They may be small, but they’re important to me. And your Earth only has one Moon, so I feel special..."

here's the website: http://youpiter.org/pluto/

hope you enjoy!

if jupiter orbited the earth...

Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.

the gift of art

soon after i arrived in ohio last week, my older sister told me she was excited about giving me a surprise that was brewing. i was intrigued, but didn't dwell on figuring out the mystery, because i like the anticipation before such an event! but seriously, i had NO idea what was coming!

my first night in town, we went to see a band and at the show she excitedly introduced me to her friend, pierre, saying "he reads your blog!" for the next week, i ran into pierre and his tiny dog all over town, which seemed strange because i had never met him over the many many many stays i've had in yellow springs.

on my final day in town, she seemed eager for us to walk to the coffee shop, which made me happy because i was very much in the mood for a tasty coffee treat. while i watched my niece and nephew run around like crazy people, in walked pierre carrying a painting. he handed it directly to me with a grin on his face and i was stunned.

my sister had commissioned this well-known local artist, pierre nagley, to paint something for me and this is what he created!


she talked over some ideas with him, but gave him creative freedom in the end. even though he and i had never met, he created this beautiful piece of art - and i couldn't be more pleased!!

the colors are fantastic and the details of the storm bands in jupiter's atmosphere are incredible. there are a few galilean moons floating around and in front of jupiter, including a close up view of callisto. when he saw that i enjoy seeing comets in the night sky, he included the dark features near the bottom of jupiter, which represent the temporary features created by the impact of comet shoemaker-levy 9 in 1994.

if you want to hear more, i actually described a lot of these features in the sixty symbols videos on jupiter and mysterious new spots on jupiter and venus.

here is pierre and my fabulous sister :)


so a big huge THANK YOU to lara and pierre!!

jupiter of holst

here is a musical piece in honor of jupiter remaining so bright in our night sky for a while.

between 1914 and 1916, the british composer gustav holst wrote a seven-movement orchestral suite called The Planets Op.32. here is jupiter:

jupiter's opposition, the equinox, and the full moon

tomorrow is the equinox, which means that the hours of daylight and darkness are very nearly equal. welcome to a new season (and hopefully lots of colorful leaves in the trees in ohio when i visit next week!).

the next few evenings will also be lovely for looking towards the sky. maybe you've noticed an incredibly bright object shining in eastern skies over the last couple months? that's the planet jupiter. wednesday, the harvest moon will be full, and the brightly shining, nearby jupiter will be hanging in the sky just below it.


last night jupiter was at opposition (when the earth passes between the sun and jupiter), constituting jupiter's closest physical approach to us on earth! every earth year, jupiter goes thru an opposition position, but its physically a little closer or farther each time. this time, it happens to be closer than it has been since 1963 and closer than it will be again until the year 2022, and as such, it looks especially bright in our sky! the jovian giant is about 368 million miles away.

you can see below how the planets of our solar system are currently aligned (the map is not to scale).


earth is just to the right of the sun, and you can see jupiter in a straight line farther out to the right. even farther out is the planet uranus. in fact, if you look to the upper left of jupiter in the (northern hemisphere's) sky with the aid of binoculars or a small telescope, you should easily be able to spot uranus, and maybe even the 4 galilean moons of jupiter! from the southern hemisphere, you'll find uranus to the lower left of jupiter.

be sure to go out, take a look, take a picture, and enjoy the changing of the seasons.

on the beach at night

On the Beach at Night
by Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars
only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night,
the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden
shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons
shall shine again shine.

Then dearest child mournest thou only for jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

this way to jupiter

are we there yet?


photo from jim wolffman at flickr.

saturn's aurora

the spacecraft cassini continues to explore saturn's environment and captured this lovely timelapse of saturn's aurora between october 5th and 8th, 2009.


auroras (aurori? aurorae?) occur because energetic particles coming from the sun react with a planet's magnetic field. magnetic fields naturally have directional field lines which act as "traffic lanes" that guide the electrically charged solar wind particles to the north and south magnetic poles.

once concentrated at the poles, the particles begin to react with the gas in the planet's upper atmosphere. the atoms and molecules of the atmospheric gas absorb some of the energy of the foreign particles and become "excited." when they get exhausted from being excited, they return to their relaxed state by sending off a photon of light which we see collectively as the glow of an aurora.

the type of gas in the atmosphere that reacts with the solar particles determines the color of the aurora we see. on earth, the gas is mostly atomic oxygen (which produces a red glow), molecular nitrogen (blue), and molecular oxygen (green).

the animated image of saturn's aurora is almost as mesmerizing as voyager's approaching view of jupiter in the late 1970s.

thats a lot of planets!

using a 3.6-metre telescope in the chilean mountains, a team has discovered 32 new exoplanets! thats a lot of new planets orbiting around other stars to declare at one time, and it brings the total number of planets known to 403!

i imagine more and more planets will be announced in the relatively near future as the kelper telescope sends data back to scientists on earth to analyze!

meanwhile back at home.... you might notice that big bright "star" glaring in evening sky? thats the planet jupiter for us to enjoy, as this sketch by ryo tomo reminds us.

mysterious spots on venus and jupiter

you may have heard of the two exciting mysteries that were discovered over the last few weeks by amateur astronomers around the world: a bright spot on venus and a dark 'bruise' on jupiter.

here is our sixty symbols take on the solar system excitement!

approaching jupiter

this excellent animation was created by adding images taken by one of the voyager space crafts, as it approached the planet jupiter in 1979!


notice how the gas from different horizontal layers moves in *different* directions creating amazing vortices in the atmosphere!! the 66 images used to create this animation were some of the first close-up shots humans collected of jupiter!

the voyager space crafts continue to travel away from the earth and beyond our solar system! as of may 2009, voyager 1 had traveled 16.4 billion kilometers (110 astronomical units) from the sun. 1 astronomical unit is the distance between the earth and the sun, so this little chunk of synthetic machinery is 110 times farther from the sun than we are, and it is escaping the solar system at a speed of about 3.6 astronomical units per year!

voyager 1 remains the most distant human-made object in space!

jupiter and the speed of light

in this sixty symbols video about jupiter, professor mike merrifield and i talk about how the first measurement of the speed of light were taken using jupiter's moons, how to remember the names of the galilean moons, the crashing of comet shoemaker-levy 9 into jupiter, and more!

the moon, mercury, jupiter, and mars over australia

mike salway gorgeously captured the early morning planetary line up of the moon, mercury, jupiter, and mars over australia!


unfortunately, he was also clouded over last night, so didnt image comet lulin or saturn :(

ganymede plays peek-a-boo with jupiter

this image of jupiter and its largest moon, ganymede, was taken by the wide field planetary camera 2 (WFPC2 = "wif-pic-two") on the hubble space telescope. three images, taken april 9, 2007 in red (673 nm), green (502 nm), and blue (410 nm) filters, were combined to produce this sharp color capture!


hubble took a series of 540 pictures over a two hour period as ganymede appeared to approach the giant gas planet and disappear behind it! you can watch these images together as a great video at the hubble site.

here's an interesting image showing the scale and orientation of the observation. the white line at the bottom represents 25,000 miles (40,000 km)! consider that earth's diameter at the equator is only about 8,000 miles (12,800 km)!

venus, jupiter, and the moon over los angeles

today's APOD shows a beautiful view of venus, jupiter, and the moon over los angeles, california.


i find this image beautiful and slightly disturbing! i've never been to LA or seen this view with my own eyes, but that is sooo.... much... city!! wow!

stupid clouds...

... blocked my view of venus, jupiter, and the moon last night. typical. oh well, i was able to see the planets approaching each other in the sky over the last week.

here's and nice image i found by mairead at pbase:

jupiter and venus race to december's horizon

if you have been able to see the early evening skies for the last several months, you have almost certainly noticed two very bright "stars" sinking towards the horizon: venus and jupiter.


venus sets first in the southwest and appears 2 magnitudes brighter than jupiter, which hangs higher in the sky (about 7° apart nov 23rd). watch these bright planets over the next week, as they move together in night sky. jupiter is moving more quickly along the ecliptic, and therefore appears to catch up to venus in the southwestern night sky, as if it wants to win the race to set earlier! by november 30th, the planets are only 2° apart, when the party is invigorated by a wee crescent moon, that passes near the planetary conjunction as it moves the opposite direction in the sky by 12° each night.


jupiter then continues its descent and slowly falls a bit westerly each night. the bright planet sets earlier and earlier so that it eventually catches up with the sun's position in our night sky! jupiter physically passes behind the sun next january 24th as it says goodnight to our night sky. when the planet moves around the far side of the sun, it begins to lead the sun along the ecliptic, and starts to greet us in our morning sky, as it rises just before the sun rises to bring the day.


UPDATE: a comment from chuck convinced me i needed to clear up issues about objects moving around in the night sky!

every night, all objects rise in the east and set in the west, just like the sun, due to earth's daily rotation. over time (many nights or weeks or months), the planets move more quickly with respect to the rest of the stars because they are closer to us in space (this was how we originally identified planets).

while each night venus and jupiter rise in our eastern skies and set in the west, over time they continue along their own orbits around the sun which causes them to move along the ecliptic defined in our sky. currently, jupiter is moving westward along the ecliptic causing it to set a bit earlier each night, while venus is moving, much more slowly, in the other direction, along the ecliptic. so venus isnt actually racing jupiter to set earlier, its very slowly setting later and later. sorry for the confusion, and thanks chuck!

our moon passes jupiter

did you see the bright object near the moon last night in the sky? that was jupiter. look to the south after sunset to see their close alignment again tonight!

jupiter in august 2008

in addition to the august 2008 sky views i mentioned earlier this month, here's another "what's up" video from JPL to help guide your eye towards the skies! watch to hear all about jupiter, currently the brightest object in the night sky (other than the lit up moon).



jupiter is high in the south-east skies these days, and has been shining brightly next to the moon for the past couple nights.



anyone see the perseids last night? i was clouded out... and i'm not even in england yet! hmph!

night sky august 2008

this month provides many nice planetary alignments and the perseids meteor shower: usually the best of the year!

five planets will be visible with the naked eye this month: mercury, venus, mars, jupiter, and saturn!! starting on august 11th, we'll be able to see mercury, venus, and saturn approaching each other low on the western horizon. they'll be challenging to see since they are settling early with the sun, but all the planets are bright so they should be spottable... venus will be the brightest at magnitude -3.9, the mercury at -0.6 and saturn will be the faintest of the three at 0.8. mars hangs above the trio and jupiter shines brightly in the southern sky (see full night sky maps here).

august 13th provides a closeness between venus and saturn of less than a degree in the sky. if you hold out your arm at full length, your pointing index finger (one degree across) will easily block both planets! also on this night, the bright planet jupiter in the south will be 3 degrees north of the moon!

on august 16th, there will be a partial lunar eclipse visible from much of the world, best in africa and europe. since we just saw such a brilliant total solar eclipse due to the tight alignment of the sun, the moon, and the earth as the moon passed between the larger orbs, it's not surprising that the three are still aligned so tightly as the moon swings around the opposite side of the earth and passes thru our shadow!


after mid-august, saturn sinks in the sky each night, while mercury and venus rise higher. venus will shine brightly after sunset for the rest of the year, returning to its status as the "evening star." on august 20th, mercury and venus will be less than a degree apart, and both very bright!

the perseids meteor shower occurs between august 11-13th this year, peaking before dawn on august 12th for north american viewers. look below the sideways "W" of cassiopeia in the northeast to find the direction from which all the meteors will be shooting across the sky: the radiant. in reality, if you stand outside under the dark sky for a little while, you'll most likely see one bright streak or more overhead per minute after the gibbous moon sets at 1:30 am EDT.


enjoy!!