Rise and Shine to see Planets

It’s almost summer and you might already be out of school for the year. Maybe you are home-schooled and have a different schedule. No matter what you’re doing these days, here’s a great reason NOT to sleep in during the month of May. All through May, in the wee hours of the morning it is possible to see 4 planets in the eastern sky.

Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter are visible close together in the sky in a series of conjunctions. Each day’s view is a little bit different and scientists have said for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it might be a bit harder to see the planets. This is because of the angle of orientation at the eastern horizon.


Scientists say the moon and planets should rise into view during late twilight and will stay low to the east-northeast horizon by the time the sun comes up. If you want to see them, make sure you have clear visibility of the sky from a high vantage point, without trees or buildings in the way.

Venus and Jupiter are the planets most likely to be seen with the unaided eye. Mercury and Mars might require binoculars if you have them. Keep your fingers crossed for cloudless skies, as clouds will only make it more difficult to see these planets. Let us know if you set your alarm clock for early and check it out. We’re going to!

{image via NASA Jet Propulsion Lab}

Planets need friends?

Friends are one of the best things in the world and sometimes, when we haven’t seen our friends in awhile, we can get pretty lonely. Did you know that a bunch of planets are considered lonely too? A team of astronomers recently discovered that space is filled with hundreds of billions of these lonely planets, celestial bodies that were kicked out of their original planetary systems.


This came as a surprise to the scientists who had previously believed only about 10 or 20% of stars had planets of this type. In fact, there are 2 Jupiter-sized planets floating around for each of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. This knowledge helps scientists understand more about how such planets form.

In the last 20 years, 500 planets have been identified that are currently circling other stars and this year, scientists announced there are 1,235 more! This information was found using NASA’s Kepler satellite. The lonely planets were found with a method called gravitational microlensing. It uses gravitational fields of massive objects to bend light and act as a magnifying lens.

The light is then monitored for little spots of brightness which are caused by a planet and its host star passing by. Because of the mass of these planets being so close to that of Jupiter, scientists don’t feel there is much chance for life on them. All of this helps scientists understand more about our own solar system and will probably lead to several new theories about planetary formation.

(original image via flickr, with permission to remix)

Planets Big & Little

Have you ever wondered how big the planets really are in comparison to each other? Brad Goodspeed, a blogger and space enthusiast, was thinking about just that when he created the following animation. Imagine that each planet you see is the same size it would appear to be in the sky if it shared an orbit with the moon. Brad made each planet to scale and it sure gives us a neat look at things from this perspective.

Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.

By the way, it seems that everybody who watched Brad's video is not too happy that he left Saturn out of the project. He explained that he was going for dramatic effect and thought that Saturn wouldn't show it as much as that giant Jupiter! Which planet is your favorite?

A Valentine's Day Date...in Space?

{an artist's depiction of the encounter...with one silly addition!}

It doesn’t take more than a visit to your local supermarket to know that love is in the air. Where tinsel & garland once filled the aisles, huge pink and red hearts now reside. Images of cupid and his love arrows are all over the place, in addition to the amount of flowers, candy and Valentine cards. All this mushy love stuff might be too much for you here on Earth, but did you know that it even reaches out into space?

NASA’s Stardust-NExT spacecraft is going on a Valentine’s date. Well, sort of. On February 14^th, the spacecraft will meet up with comet Tempel 1, but it won’t be for dinner and a movie. The Stardust-NExT will take some photos of the comet and try to get some information for scientists to see what changes have developed since an orbit around the sun took place. The info will help scientists learn more about Jupiter-family comets and how they form and change.

Don’t think you will be able to spy on this couple of lovebirds while they are meeting up. At the time of the encounter, Stardust-NExT will be almost on the exact opposite side of the solar system…about 209 million miles away from Earth! Thanks to the 72 photos which will be taken of the event and stored in an onboard computer, the rest of us here on Earth can still see what it was like. Scientists are excited because this will help them learn more about how comets work and “how they were put together four-and-a-half billion years ago.”

For more information about the Stardust-NExt mission, visit: http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/

Jupiter Now has a Big Red Spot and a Little Red Spot

Dear Friends of Janet's Planet:

Not only is there a GREAT BIG RED SPOT on Jupiter, but apparently scientists have discovered Jupiter's Little Red Spot, and it appears to be growing in intensity and size!

Jupiter's Little Red Spot
Planetary Scientists Detect Strong Winds In Anticyclone On Jupiter

from Science NEWS

November 1, 2008 — Planetary scientists detected that an anticyclone on Jupiter called the Little Red Spot produces winds up to 384 miles per hour, far exceeding the 156 mph mark that would make it a category five storm on Earth. Scientists measured wind speeds and directions by tracking the motion of cloud features from two image mosaics from a telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), taken 30 minutes apart. They combined the LORRI maps with visible-color images from Hubble, and mid-infrared images from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescopeý allowing scientists to "see" thermal structure and dynamics beneath the visible cloud layers.

Jupiter's Great Spot isn't as great as it used to be. It's actually been steadily shrinking for decades. Now, its younger, smaller sibling, the Little Red Spot, may be taking over the spotlight.

The planet Jupiter looms out in space. Its famous feature, the Great Red Spot -- a massive, swirling storm -- can be seen from your backyard.

"If [you look] at Jupiter through a telescope, it is the red spot you can see," said Andrew Cheng, Ph.D., a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

Now, a newer, younger storm called the Little Red Spot is growing despite its name and proving to be fierce competition for the top spot on Jupiter.

"Jupiter's red spot is a not-so-little, giant storm," Dr. Cheng said. "It's like a hurricane except that its winds blow in the opposite direction."

The counter-clockwise winds make the storm an anticyclone, and for the first time, planetary scientists have recorded wind speeds of up to 385 mph -- the highest ever detected on a planet. That's 185 mph faster than any category 5 hurricane on earth.

"It's much bigger than any hurricanes that are found on earth," Dr. Cheng said. "It's bigger than earth itself." The Little Red Spot started out white and recently turned red. Researchers believe increased wind speeds stirred up material that was exposed to ultraviolet radiation, causing a chemical change to make it look red.

"Many features in Jupiter's atmosphere change color from time to time," Dr. Cheng said. "Now, it looks very much like the Great Red Spot. It's just a smaller version of it."

By keeping an eye on all of Jupiter's spots, scientists hope to get a better understanding of weather on other planet, too.

ABOUT THE LITTLE RED SPOT: The Little Red Spot on Jupiter is an anti-cyclonic storm formed by the merger of three separate storms observed since the 1930s. In 1998 two of the storms came together and were joined in 2000 by a third to form a storm roughly the size of the planet Earth. Using data from recent telescope and spacecraft observations, scientists determined that the storm has some of the highest wind speeds ever detected on any planet. In 2005 it started turning red for unknown reasons, and now it looks similar to its larger, more famous neighbor, the Great Red Spot. The peak wind speed for the Little Red Spot is in excess of 384 miles per hour.

WHAT IS AN ANTI-CYCLONE? Unlike hurricanes, which rotate around a center of low pressure, anti-cyclones rotate around centers of high pressure. On earth that means that air at lower elevations is forced away from the center, creating an opening that pulls cold air down from above. That leads to low humidity and few clouds. On Earth, anticyclones are often predictors of fair weather, though special conditions can create anti-cyclonic tornadoes. There are examples of anti-cyclonic storms on other planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.

Whether you are rotating at low or high pressure today...remember that the universe is always expanding and so should your mind!

Peace,

Janet from Janet's Planet