“Where is the Earth-shattering kaboom?”

The Moon has a brand new crater.

Meteoroids hit the Moon all the time, but on May 2, 2006, two NASA engineers managed to get this best-ever-video of an impact in progress:

Note the flash in the upper right of the image

The explosion released 17 billion joules of kinetic energy. To put that into perspective, when you hit a nail with a hammer, the impact releases about 150 joules. The impact shown above released one hundred million times more energy than that! That’s almost enough energy to run the electricity in your house for two years.

Which sounds impressive enough, until I tell you that the object was only 10 inches across… moving at 85,000 mph.

Image credit & copyright McNamara and Moser, MSFC.

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After years of debate and controversy, the International Astronomical Union is finally going to “officially” define what a “planet” is.

It sounds odd that the astronomical community has never got around to doing this… but until recently, the need for an official description was not needed. Was it large enough to see in telescopes, forced spherical under its own weight, and was it orbiting the Sun in a non-cometary fashion? Then it was called a planet.

However, many objects found in the past few years have been the same size as Pluto, perhaps even larger, but these have not been designated “planets.” So the debate raged on… if you call these new objects “planets,” then the Sun certainly has tens of thousands of such objects orbiting it. If you refuse to bless these objects with the “planet” moniker, then Pluto must be demoted from its lofty position, and cast down to mingle with the lowly comets and asteroids hurtling through the inky blackness.

What will the definition be? We’ll find out later this summer. Stay tuned…

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Shortly after 2am on Wednesday, a hillside in northern Norway was struck by what appears to have been a very large meteorite.

It appears that the energy released was comparable to that from a small atomic bomb.

The news is just now starting to trickle in (it is rural Norway, for crying out loud). The only eyewitness of the event (so far) is a farmer who - I kid you not - was only out because his mare Virika was about to foal for the first time.

No decent link yet… only a few online Norwegian news sites that I won’t bother linking to. If any major newswire picks it up, I’ll post an update here.

Image credit & copyright: Peter Bruvold (the Norwegian mare/foal/farmer dude)

UPDATE: Here’s a pic of the impact site.

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I have discovered the secret of the universe. As I suspected all along, the answer can be found using donut theory.

Vhat? De Donut tery? Fascinating. Proceed.

It came to me suddenly, while watching someone eat a double-chocolate glazed pastry at Tim Horton’s. I noticed something… she didn’t eat the donut’s hole. She simply ate around the hole, and left the hole on the table, right beside her crumpled-up napkin.

Ah… yes. A vaste, no? But I sink you are on to somesing.

Now, it has been determined that the holes in the donuts do not decay. Most people only eat the ‘accretion disk’ pastry around the hole - just like she did - leaving the hole to float away afterwards. Hawking predicts that the energy of these floating holes must be conserved somehow, and is usually returned to spacetime via quantum forces.

…yes… yes…

Of course, this results in a standard ‘vacuum energy’ effect, which produces a negative acceleration in response to a gravitational field. Hence, the rate of expansion of spacetime increases with each donut consumed.

Eureka! Quite ze elegant tery. Unt delicious, as vell. Aha! Mein krapfen! Do you realize vaht this implies?

What?

Zat ze rate of expansion of spacetime is directly proportional to ze expansion of one’s vaistline!

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More Photoshop imagery. I painted a large, dry, double-planet, orbiting an unseen star. In the distance, a typical binary star system shines. I used the LunarCell engine to render the planet’s surface, and my own processes for the other objects.

If you want the image for desktop wallpaper, choose your size and download:

• 1280 x 1024 resolution (360 KB)
• 1024 x 768 resolution (260 KB)
• 800 x 600 resolution (190 KB)

Note: to find out which version to use, right-click on your desktop and select Properties. Click the Settings tab, and note the setting in the Screen Resolution box.

If you are using Internet Explorer, once the image appears, you must mouse off of the image. When you mouse back over the image, an Expand box will appear in the lower-right corner of the screen. Click it. After the image returns to 100%, right-click the image, and select Set as Background.

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For the past decade or so, I’ve been writing a monthly astronomy column for a large organization of amateur astronomers. The column was called, “What’s UP?” and it covered the stargazing highlights for a given month.

Recently, I’ve retired as the regular columnist to pursue other interests. However, since I’m used to penning a column every month, I see no reason why I can’t continue the same tradition here at monkeyPi. So, if you’re even a teeny bit interested in the night sky, make a note to stop by around the first of every month. I try to target audiences of all interest and skill levels.

The first part of the article is always called “What’s New,” and it usually covers sky events that anyone can enjoy. Typically, the highlights contained within this section can be seen with the naked eye or a decent pair of binoculars. You’ll read about the planets, the Moon, meteor showers, eclipses, etc.

The second recurring section is called “What’s Old,” where I discuss more advanced topics. Every month I will list the available Messier objects within a short distance of the meridan at local midnight, along with other notable observing opportunities. Most of these events require at least a good pair of binoculars to enjoy; many times you will need a telescope to see them.

So… with that introduction, here is the June 2006 “monkeyPi” edition of “What’s UP?”

(more…)

This is comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann3, which is “buzzing” the Earth this week at a distance of only 10 million km (about 25 times as far away as our Moon). It took about 30 seconds for the light to travel from the comet to the Earth.

The nebula in the image is M57 (the “Ring”). It took over 2,000 years for that object’s light to reach the Earth.

The tiny, faint galaxy just to the upper-right of center (almost halfway between 73P and M57) is IC1296. The collective light from the stars in that galaxy left over 200 million years ago.

Try to appreciate the “depth” of this image; don’t look at it as two-dimensional.

Imagine looking out the window of a moving car… the comet is a smudge on the glass in front of your face; the nebula is a passing street sign; while the galaxy is a faraway mountain peak on the horizon…

Image credit & copyright: Stefan Seip. Click it to embiggenate (610 KB file). You should also check out Vic Stover’s wide-field animation of the comet’s passage.

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