Take a tour of dwarf planet Ceres

Enigmatic bright spots within a crater on Ceres. Photo by NASA JPL on 6 June 2015 at 4400 kilometres altitude,
Resolution 410 metres per pixel.

NASA's Dawn robot entered orbit around dwarf planet Ceres on 6 March 2015.

It's the first spacecraft to visit two distinct interplanetary bodies, after first spending 14 months studying the smaller dwarf planet Vesta in 2011 and 2012.

The Dawn mission team are currently performing mapping orbits at around 13,600 kilometres out and navigational imaging about 5100 kilometres out. Once complete, Dawn will start edging into closer orbits.

NASA has combined images from these orbits to date into this wonderful flyover video released on 8 June:


At 15 seconds in, you'll see the mysterious bright spots (see photo above) in the base of a medium-sized crater that have so intrigued people the world over since they were first imaged months ago as Dawn approached Ceres. Nasa scientists are wondering if it could be a volcano, a geyser or cryo-volcano, shiny rock (as in glassy like molten from an impact), ice or salt.

Transit of the Sun by the International Space Station caught on camera

That might not look like much, but I've wanted to try to catch the International Space Station in flight for a looong time.

This was my very first attempt, with the added complexity of it being a transit across the face of the Sun.

The alert said the viewing opportunity was centred 130 kms away from my location. I recorded for several minutes but thought I'd missed it. Until I looked at the recording the next day!

Public stargazing on Mount Stromlo this Friday night

There are only three more public viewing nights scheduled for this year on Mount Stromlo. Daylight savings makes dates over summer too late for the kids.

So far the weather forecast is looking good, which will make a nice change. But it always pays to check the all-sky camera on the MSO website to make sure before you rug up and set off.

And please do remember to rug up, same for your kids. It's a mountain top, and often a lot breezier and colder than down at your home. Your kids may be climbing a cold metal step ladder to a big scope, so make sure they have gloves. A snow jacket is my standard kit for a night on Mt Stromlo...

Despite a half moon that will be fairly bright, viewing of Saturn should be good, and there'll be a lot of other cool sights for first timers like binary stars, globular clusters, and perhaps a look at the brand new nova that was just discovered today.

The event starts at 7pm, until about 9. See you there!

More details:
http://rsaa.anu.edu.au/news-events/events/star-gazing-evenings

Public stargazing this Friday night—Mount Stromlo. I'll be there. Will you?

The members of the Canberra Astronomical Society will be back up on Mount Stromlo this Friday night for the second of this year's joint ANU/CAS public stargazing nights.

After the full-cloud washout from last month, if the skies are clear this week, we expect a huge turnout. 500 people is normal, and on one pretty busy night last year, I was sure every one of 500 people checked out Saturn through our telescope...

It will be the first public outing for my new telescope and the big wide-field eyepieces I bought especially for these public viewings. I've been setting it up to control the new equatorial mount via bluetooth straight from Stellarium on a notebook PC, and using a wireless gamepad for steering. This process uses programs called ASCOM EQMOD and Stellarium Scope.

It would be nice if I could get some clear sky to actually test it first…There's one crucial component that I haven't tested yet—the sky alignment program Alignmaster. :-/

Please make sure you check the Mt Stromlo All-sky Camera before you set off, to see whether anything is visible:

Here are the details posted by ANU. Note the 'warm clothes' advice—it does get cool and windy up there! Ski jacket is my standard gear…

The Mt Stromlo Observatory in conjunction with the Canberra Astronomical Society invite the Canberra community to attend our public observing night.
Come and see the rings of Saturn, the craters of the moon as well as beautiful star clusters and nebulae. On the night attendees will be taken on a ‘tour of the universe’ with talks by astronomy experts and observations on several telescopes.
This event is free and open to the public. No bookings are required.
Warm clothing is recommended. In the event of cloudy weather, star gazing will be cancelled. You can check out the weather at Mt Stromlo using our all sky camera.

Oh wow—fell down a rabbit hole and wound up on Mars

It was only days ago we had Mars Curiosity sending us the one selfie to rule them all.
And now we have this total 360 panorama of her first drill site.

Watch a star going nova—photos over 58 years witness huge explosion

In astronomy, you don't often get to see things (outside our own solar system) moving. But as the years tick over since  technology allowed astroimaging, the building body of archival photos is allowing us to combine pictures of the same objects collected over increasingly greater spans of time.

In 1901, a star called GK Persei exploded—went nova—about 1300 light years from us. Space.com has combined several photos taken between 1958 and now into a short timelapse that really gives you an idea what is happening.

Related articles

• A meteorite has exploded over Russian cities, with damage to buildings. Amazing footage
• Here's an interesting size comparison of the terrestrial planets in our Solar System
• Like to take your astronomy interest to another level? How about some free online university courses through Coursera.org?
• Siding Springs Observatory damaged by bushfire (FINAL UPDATE)
• Now and then, along comes a solar eruption that just leaves you in awe...