16 Psyche was the first asteroid to be given a number upon its discovery. Until then asteroids were given symbols like the planets. Psyche is thought to be 253km in diameter and is of iron-nickel composition. It may be the remnant core of a larger body that was at some point blasted apart during the early days of the Solar System.

Psyche is obviously moving through the sky but when I saw it (and at the time of writing) it resided in Capricorn, ideally placed for my location in the late evening. At around magnitude 9.5 it isn’t visible to the naked eye.

The trick the finding asteroids is to look in the same place more than once. Finding the starfield where you expect the asteroid to be, you take a photo or sketch what you see. Then you go back a fews hours later, or the next night and look again at the same spot. If you’re in the right place, you’ll see that one of the stars has moved – that is most-likely your asteroid.

I observed Psyche two nights in a row and indeed could see, even without referring to my sketch of the area around it, that it had moved in the field of view. I thought this was pretty cool but was frustrated by my lack of photography facilities – I have no CCD or other telescope imaging device. Ah! I thought, I know what to do – I’ll go online and use SLOOH, the pay-as-you-go robotic telescope network.

The result is two images from the next two nights showing two more successive motions of Psyche. These are the images seen here.

I’m very pleased with my first asteroid find. I also then went on to spot asteroids 88 Thisbe and 7 Iris, although no pictures I’m afraid. I didn’t manage to find the Comet 22P/Kopff, which was a shame. The weather, and limited nights in the garden, got the better of me in the end.

2) Realise this isn’t the summary. Repeat step 1.

3) Nearly there, try again. It’s at the back.

4) Find the session you’re interested in. For the time of that session, find the list of concurrently running Joint Discussions, Special Sessions, Symposia and random titles with roman numerals next to them. (Note: the sessions indicated by roman numerals have no descriptions in the book at all so you just have to guess that they are about).

5) If you are interested in a Joint Discussion, Symposium or Special Session then you now have to go backward through the book and find where it is listed. This may take some time as the pages have no header text to help you.

6) When you locate the Joint Discussion, Symposium or Special Session that you’re interested in you will finally feel that you have found something sensible: a list of the talks with dates and times. Speakers are listed by surname, no indication of institution is given.

7) If you want to know more about a talk – you only have the often cryptic title so far – then pick up the telephone directory abstract book: the tree they sacrificed and gave to you upon registration; and look up the Joint Discussion, Symposia or Special Session you are interested in. Locate the abstract for this talk.

8 ) Hope that it does look interesting or you have to do this all again.

9) Give up and just go to the session with the coolest talk title discarding the massive abstract tome so you don’t hv to carry it around. Realise that if you ever speak at the IAU General Assembly yourself then your title should be “Observations and simulations of dark matter, in supernova, exoplanets and AGN taken in Antartica with the E-ELT using primary school children from developing countries. Free money”.

10) When in disappointing talk, be glad you have an iPhone and that, for once, the WiFi is working.

The talks at this event really are fascinating and I have learned a lot about many topics, but specifically the life of Sun-like stars and the activities of the IYA2009.

I have finally met several fellow astronomy bloggers and twitterers, including my .Astronomy pals Sarah Kendrew and Carolina Ödman; 365 Days of Astronomy colleague and general shining light Pamela Gay; and self-confessed Pluto killer Mike Brown.

Conferences are all about networking. You make acquantainces, forge friendships and generally drink with collaborators and colleagues. In this regard I see why Rio was a good choice.

I will more formally review all this another time. Right now bed beckons and a decent sleep/shower. Also I finally have decent WiFi so it’s time to catch up on some emails.

They are showing images of dwarf planets on the central screen.

The lights are dimming. I wonder if I can liveblog from the iPhone?

1416: Yes it seems I can.

1422: Whenever you’re ready guys, no hurry. The lights have undimmed! “The governor did not arrive yet but now he is arriving” we are told. I hope it’s really Arnie.

1435: President arrives to much fuss and bother.

1447: “All men and women are born astronomers” – Catherine Cesarsky, IAU President

1449: “IYA has already surpassed all expectations” – Catherine Cesarsky, IAU President

1450: “Never before have so many professionals, amateurs, journalists and educators come together in such a way” – Catherine Cesarsky, IAU President

1453: Portuguese for Pluto is Plutão, Portuguese for Makemake is Makemake

Brazil is a country that wants to be invited to major economic summits, that wants to be on the UN security council. Rio is hoping to host the 2016 Olympics and is clearly taking the IAU General Assembly very seriously with various astronomy events going all over the city. However I have to admit that I was shocked driving through Rio last night.

The airport is located North of the city and to get to your hotel you must drive past the Favelas – shanty towns. Whole communities built from wood and breeze blocks without proper sanitation or other amenities. These are the places all tourists are told to avoid, but it is hard to miss them as you fly past on the main road, watching block after block of dark, teetering edifices go by.

Rio has a crime problem and statistically several of the nearly 3,000 astronomers will be mugged this week – apparently some have been already. The trick is not to be one of them. I have no laptop, will carry only my money for the day, and won’t travel alone.

Today we will take the metro to the conference centre and spend the morning in talks. This afternoon is the grand opening ceremony. Rumour has it that the President of Brazil will be speaking. I’m looking forward to getting into the talks now and chatting to all the other astronomers at coffee etc.

As for Rio itself, I plan on taking a better look at the weekend. There is a lot to see and if one has to do it all in daylight then it will mainly have to wait for Saturday and Sunday. Until then: on with the astronomy!

If you’re blogging or tweeting the event why not add your name in the comments and we’ll create a list.

Obviously I will be there as will my Twitter account http://twitter.com/orbitingfrog

Also if you are tweeting it, follow me for news of the tweetup when it happens. There is also a Flickr group at http://flickr.com/groups/iau2009/ join it to add your photos!

The Southern Cross is a circumpolar constellation that is used to mark the position of the South Celestial pole. It is only visible from the Southern Hemisphere.

I have been below the equator before but didn’t get much star gazing in, die to cloud cover. So the IAU General Assembly may be my best chance to see a whole raft of stars that I’ve never seen before.

[Flickr user joka2000]

Neilsen describes the current situation, in which scientists must publish refereed papers in selective journals in order to progress science. In fact publishing has become a part of the scientific process, and has been for almost 300 years. The history of this situation is explored in the article, so I will not go into it here.

The Internet represents an opportunity to change this system, one which has created a 300-year-old, collective long-term memory, into something new and more efficient, perhaps adding in a current, collective short-term working memory at the same time. With new online tools, scientists could begin to share techniques, data and ideas online to the benefit of all parties, and the public at large.

Online tools for commenting, sharing and distributing information are now established but many scientists remain reticent to put their ideas – their hard work – into this free-for-all. Fear of wasted time, intellectual property theft and reprisals from the community have made scientists stay behind their desk, filling up their hard drives and filing cabinets, rather than share en-masse.

I probably don’t need to explain to someone reading a blog that online tools are changing many other aspects of society. During my astrolunch talk I presented a slide showing some of the online tools I have used in the past year to benefit my own work. (I realised when writing the talk that there were too many to fit on one slide!)

In the end, Neilsen’s article concludes that for scientists to engage and share ideas online, and thus become more efficient in their work, they would need to do so in a very different online infrastructure to that which we usually see in so-called Web 2.0. Scientists would need a way to track any one person’s activity within this infrastructure so that proper credit and attribution could be given to the origin of ideas. This, along with some metric of contribution would be vital for scientists to consider putting time and effort into any online activity regarding their work.

At present only your refereed publications count toward anything in your future as a scientist. Without publication, you likely won’t won’t progress in research and likely won’t advance in your career. If you spend time online; writing, sharing and contributing, then it will not help you in your academic life. This is a situation that has to change, and that almost inevitably will change in the coming years.

Neilsen thinks that the system will be transformed in the next couple of decades, far more than it has been in 300 years! This will involve a huge shift in the culture of scientists. However with the proper tools and the right amount of ‘evangelizing’ by techy science types, it could all happen more easily.

The talk generated a lot of discussion, and in fact still is via email. People seemed to think I was advocating the abolishment of the current system or suggesting everyone put every idea they’ve ever had onto Facebook. I am not. What I do know is that there are a huge number of small tips, tools, scripts, techniques, spreadsheets, templates and other bits and bobs lying on every academic’s hard drive in every university in the world! If those little pieces of knowledge were searchable, filterable and accessible to everyone else in the field then it might be easier for people to progress in their work and find the right people to collaborate with on the right jobs.

Michael Neilsen is an invited speaker for the .Astronomy 2009 conference in Leiden this winter. For more information on that conference visit the new website www.dotastronomy.com. You can also find Neilsen’s blog at michaelnielsen.org/blog/.

[Link to original article] [PDF of my Slides] [Header image taken from original article, Credit: Photolibrary]

The primary research goal of PAMeLA (Payload for Anti-Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) is to study the antimatter component of cosmic ray radiation. Antiparticles account for a small fraction of cosmic rays. Where the bulk of them originated is not known. It could be that they are produced in interactions between cosmic rays and atoms in the interstellar medium, (this is called a secondary source). They could also be produced in some sort of astrophysical phenomena like in pulsars, microquasars or through dark matter annihilation, which would all be primary sources.

This report outlines a measurement of the positron fraction in the energy range 1.5–100 GeV. In this range they find numbers of positrons that are inconsistent with secondary sources. So could it be that positrons are really being created in an astrophysical object (.e.g  a pulsar or microquasar) or by dark matter annihilation?

Download the PDF of this talk. Read original article on Nature.

The crash, which happened over 400 miles above Siberia, destroyed the derelict Russian satellite and one of the 66 objects that make up the Iridium mesh, or constellation. The constellation provides voice and data connections for satellite phones as well as other services. It has around 300,000 clients across the globe, including the US Department of Defense and scientists at the South Pole. Iridium services have now been restored and company was in fact prepared for this scenario, even if they were not expecting it.

You can see from these screenshots, taken this morning, that the two sets of debris (Iridium in white, Russian in red) are still more-or-less following their original orbits. Celestrak is providing data for the radar-trackable particles, and smaller fragments do not show up here. The pieces of debris have begun to drift apart and will eventually begin to spread out and move more eccentrically as the weeks go by.

I had been meaning to organise my ‘Satellites on Google Earth‘ code, and have been prompted by these events to create a summary page which you can find linked at the top of the page or by clicking here.

I have created scripts for tracking satellites in Google Earth. Although I have blogged about these many times over a couple of years now, this page is designed to act a central repository for downloading these files and getting some general information about them.

What Can I Download?

These various files are for use with Google Earth (download link). They will show you the current location of different satellites that orbit the Earth. These range from the very well known Hubble Space Telescope or International Space Station to the less well known – but often visible – Iridium Fleet of satellites. KML is the geographical coding language used by Google Earth and Google Maps. A list of the available satellite tracking KML files is shown below:

• International Space Station (ISS)
• Hubble Space Telescope
• Iridium Fleet
• Space Science Collection (includes COBE, CoRoT, IRAS, Envisat, Rosat and others)
• Debris from the 2007 Chinese missile test
• Debris from the 2008 US Missile Test – There is no more debris to track.
• Debris from the 2009 Iridium/Cosmos collision
• 100 Brightest Objects in Orbit
• Advanced Satellite Tracker

Using the Advanced Satellite Tracker

This is a special script that allows you to input your own TLE data, satellite ID and other parameters. To do this download the file linked above. When it opens in Google Earth it will display the Hubble Space Telescope by default. To alter the tracker you need to enter the ‘Get Info’ properties box in Google Earth (usually right- or ctrl-click on the item in the places list). In the ‘Link’ text box you should see

http://orbitingfrog.com/cgi-bin/anyloc.pl?id=20580

This is the script that generates the KML used to display the satellite(s). You can change or add various arguments to this URL to customise the display.

• id is the satellite’s identifier in the TLE data (default is the ISS, 25544 ,this can also be set to ‘ALL’ to show all the objects in a TLE file)
• url is the source of the TLE data (default is 100 brightest objects from Celestrak)
• hor is a switch specifying whether or not to display the satellite’s horizon (default is Y)
• path is the number of hours flight path to show for the object (default is 2)
• extrude is a switch specifying whether or not to show the tether connecting the object to the ground (default is Y)

As an example, if you wanted to track the new satellites involved in the new European Galileo navigation system, you could use the link:

…anyloc.pl?id=ALL&url=http://www.celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/galileo.txt&path=24&hor=N&extrude=Y

This will show two satellites at very high altitude. A 24 hour flight path is drawn, without a horizon. The line connecting each object to the Earth is shown and the source URL is Celestrak. This is actually a very fun one to do because the Galileo satellites are very far way from the Earth and so they draw most unusual flight paths.

This script limits the number of trackable objects to 100. This is to prevent abuse of this tool as early on we had at least one person using it to track 1000s objects, which was killing my server. If you are interested in using this commercially for for very large datasets, feel free to contact me.

How Does This Work?

All objects in orbit around the Earth obey the physical laws of gravity, and thus we can predict their location over time. For every trackable object orbiting above our heads, there is a set of parameters called a two line element (TLE) set. These TLE sets are publicly available from services such as Celestrak. The models for predicting the orbit of objects is not perfect though, and so many of these objects are also tracked by radar and this new information is used to update the TLE sets every few days.

My scripts use these TLE sets to model the orbits of satellites and predict where they will be at the present time. Thanks to the up-to-date data from Celestrak and the accuracy of the mathematical models, the predicted locations are correct to within a few metres. the same models can be used to predict visible sightings of the ISS and other objects. you can read more about this on my Over Twitter page.

Feedback and Related Blog Posts

If you have comments or suggestions regarding these scripts then feel free to email me or message me on Twitter @orbitingfrog. I am always open to feedback and will get back to you when I get the chance.

Blog entries on this topic include ‘Satellites on Google Earth‘, ‘Chinese Satellite Debris in Google Earth‘ and ‘Space Telescopes on Google Earth‘. If you’re interested in satellites and, I also have a PDF of a talk about Space Junk that you might find interesting.

Here’s the lowdown on which feeds are available, how to request a new one and what they say.

What will these Twitter feeds tell me?

These feeds determine when the International Space Station (ISS), Hubble, Envisat and other interesting objects will be visible in the relevant location. They will also alert you to bright Iridium flares; elusive, momentary flashes of reflected light from the Iridium constellation of satellites. These can be often be seen in daylight! When the time approaches, an alert appears on the Twitter feed. You will get 30-45 minutes warning on the sighting opportunity.

What cities are covered so far?

So far there are Twitter feeds for Aix, Amsterdam, Anchorage, Athens, Atlanta, Auckland, Baltimore, Barcelona, Belfast, Bergen, Berlin, Birmingham, Bordeaux, Boston, Buenos Aires, Calgary, Canberra, Cardiff, Charlottesville, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Dublin, Edinburgh, Eureka, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hannover, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Joburg, Kaunas, Kobenhavn, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Manchester, Mauna Kea, Miami, Milton Keynes, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Moscow, Mumbai, Munchen, New York, Ottawa, Paris, Perth, Phoenix, Portland, Prague, Providence, Quebec, Raleigh, Riga, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Santiago, Seattle, Seoul, Singapore, Springfield, St Louis, Stockholm, Sydney, Tallinn, Tehran, Tel Aviv, Thurso, Tokyo, Toronto, Vancouver, Warsaw, Wien and Winnipeg.

If you live within 20 miles of one of these cities, the data in the feed will still be correct for your location. Within 50 miles of one of these cities then the data will still be only a minute out in most cases.

Tweet alerts only appear when the weather in your location is good enough to allow the transit to be seen. The weather data comes from Yahoo! Weather.

Each tweet gives the same information, for example below is a tweet from the @oversydney feed.

The ISS will pass over Sydney at mag -1.7 at 4:32am on January 25th. Moves from 46deg elevation SW to 10deg elevation SE over 3 min.

The mag number refers to the brightness of the object on the magnitude scale, the lower the better. After that comes a pair of coordinares on the sky – the beginning and end of the track the object will make. ’46deg elevation’ means it will be 46 degrees above the horizon (where 90 degrees is directly overhead). SW and SE are Southwest and Southeast compass directions around the horizon. The duration of visibility is given as ’3 min’.

How do I get a feed for my location?

If you would really like a feed for a city near you, then feel free to email me or contact me via Twitter (@orbitingfrog). The next time I get around to adding more locations, I shall try to include your request.

RSS Feeds

Alternatively, you can subscribe to an XML (RSS 2.0) feed for visible transits in any location! Use the map below to find your location and/or drag the red marker to the right place. Click ‘Get RSS’ and the RSS feed will be loaded in a new browser window.

Or if you know your latitude and longitude, you can simply point your RSS feed reader to http:/orbitingfrog.com/overtwitter/rss.php?lat=LATITUDE&lng=LONGITUDE&place=NAME.

Walking home, I noticed the sky was clear and so waited until a break in the buildings allowed me to see the Moon and Jupiter. I couldn’t see Venus at all, which meant it was behind the Moon. ‘Rather, cool’, I thought and took some snaps with my iPhone. Cameraphones never work on the Moon, yet I never seem to learn my lesson.

It takes me half an hour to walk home, and when I got there I could just see Venus emerging from the edge of the Moon. It was quite lovely. I grabbed our Digital SLR and set off around the streets near my house. I was running out of time and forgot to take the telescopic zoom so what I ended up with was lots of fairly widefield image sof the triple conjunction.

As you can see, I am no astrophotographer (in fact we’ve been through this before on Orbiting Frog). My tiny tripod required using the roof of whatever cars were nearby to see the triple conjunction but I am pretty pleased with the results.

I also took this bizarre but cool picture of the streetlights around my house. I was playing with the exposure time and accidentally took this 30 second exposure, which is now my desktop wallpaper.

Dave Mosher, over at Discovery Space wants people to send in their images of the event to form part of a Discovery Space Gallery.

Just wanted to point out this wonderful xkcd comic. I like that it ends (or starts, if you like) with ‘folks’. This is why I love xkcd.

xkcd – A Webcomic – Height

The skies here are big and clear and even these early Perseids look amazing. Getting the telescope out later for some real sightseeing.

Starmap costs $11.99 or £6.99.

I love that this happened just down the road from where I live. Police called out to a 999 call about an unexplained object in the night sky solved the mystery straight away for their when they realised it was actually the Moon. Well worth listening to.

BBC NEWS | Wales | Police say UFO was just the Moon

Carnival of Space 61

President Nicolas Sarkozy’s well-known admiration for all things American now extends to space exploration. Speaking to the BBC, a senior official involved in French space policy said that it was time to shake up the European Space Agency and make it more like NASA by giving it a new, politically-led direction. The French take over the rotating presidency of the European Union on 1 July and are planning to make space policy a key area for reform.

Sarkozy is looking for UK support to bolster his ideas. He wants to lead Europe into space in a way that doesn’t leave it trailing the likes of Indian, China and Japan.

Personally, i think he could do it. This guy is crazy enough and arrogant enough to get it done.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | France plans revolution in space

“Almost one in four secondary schools in England no longer has any specialist physics teachers, a survey suggests.”

BBC NEWS | Education | Physics teacher shortage warning

Slacker Astronomy » Carnival of Space No. 60

With thanks to Jason, here is an awesome page about atmospheric effects on Mars, including this great dust devils animation. Mars has a rich atmosphere and this is the first planet for which we are really starting to understand the climate.

I can see why everyone loves Mars these days. Planets are just cool. Poor old Pluto…

Martian Skies – The Big Picture – Boston.com

Here is a short science experiment at home. They guy seems to be showing us how to create a plasma inside our microwaves (please be very careful if you actually want to try it). The video is hilarious though for the reaction of the guys wife/girlfriend at the very end.

YouTube – Home Made Plasma

This week’s Carnival is up so get over there and get reading!

Also found this image via the Carnival which I rather liked.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Jodrell Bank future looks better

From Wired, a nice, little, true story about some twelfth century monks and the crater they may have seen being formed.

June 18, 1178: English Monks Observe ‘Lunar’ Explosion

Astronomy and agriculture – yet more ways astronomy has advanced mankind without much notice. How humble astronomy can be! Also, Stuart has made a connection between IYP2008 and IYA2009.

Astronomy Blog

The startling reaction between Diet Coke and Mentos sweets, made famous in thousands of YouTube videos, finally has a scientific explanation.

If you drop a pack of Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, you get this huge fountain of spray and Diet Coke foam coming out,” says Tonya Coffey, a physicist at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. “This was a good project for my students to study because there was still some mystery to it.”

Experiments in a 2006 edition of the Discovery Channel programme Mythbusters suggested the chemicals responsible for the reaction are gum arabic and gelatine in the sweets, and caffeine, potassium benzoate and aspartame in the Coke. But there have been no rigorous scientific studies of the reaction until now…

ABC News: Mentos-Diet Coke Explosions Explained