AstrotalkUK

Not for profit website/blog on astronomy, space and my writing

International Astronautical Congress 2024 – Milan, Italy

By Leave a Comment

The IAC2024 kicked off this morning with the “Responsible Space for Sustainability” theme. There was a bit more pomp and ceremony because the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, turned up. A couple of ceremonial soldiers accompanied him in colourful attire, very shiny swords and grandiose headgear.

The morning kicked off with IAF president Clay Mowry’s lively speech, in which he welcomed almost 7,000 attendees from over 100 countries. After thanking all the partners and sponsors, mentioning many individually, he made a startling announcement. A bit of space was here at the IAC.

He said that extraterrestrial material from space was making an appearance here in Milan. Samples of asteroid Benu from the US mission OSIRIS-REx, which returned last year, are on display at the NASA booth in the exhibition. In June, China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe returned samples of moon rock from the lunar farside. The CNSA booth has a sample from that mission on display.

There are around 30 astronauts here at the IAC and two of them Samantha Cristoforetti and Luca Parmitano made it on to the stage.

Some awards were given during the ceremony. These included the IAF World Space Award for the success of Chandrayaan-3’s soft landing near the lunar south pole in 2023. ISRO Chairman accepted the award by standing in front of a picture of a large team of ISRO scientists and engineers.

Michael Gold, Executive Vice President for Civil Space and External Affairs received the “Redwire chief growth officer” award. He squeezed in lots of Star Trek references in his acceptance speech.

There was an odd “Time Capsule cam”. A camera on the stage was going to be capturing all the events, and then the footage would be sent up to space and sent to the ISS. Apparently, as a symbol that this commitment to space sustainability is not just for us here on Earth. The ISS has had full access to the internet for a very long time. If they wanted, the ISS crew could have streamed this ceremony on youtube like many others. I think I missed something!

This is the fifth time an IAC has been held in Italy and the first in Milan. 562 years ago, Leonardo De Vinci lived for two decades in Milan and made his initial designs for a flying machine there. If he is up there looking down, I can’t help but think he is looking at our progress and saying – what took you so long!

Mount Tiede – Tenerife August 2024

By Leave a Comment

The Teide National Park is a protected area and a Unesco World Heritage Area, centred on Mount Tiede with a summit at 3.7km. on the Island of Tenerife. It has such good astronomical seeing that since 1964, it has been used by professional astronomers as a site for an astronomical observatory at 2.3km and operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias .

Today there are multiple optical, solar and radio telescopes operated (mostly remotely) my a many institutions from multiple countries.

I visited the site on 12th August on 12th August 2024. Whilst the Perseids was not the spectacular display I hoped for, but the night sky was. The horizon-to-horizon canvas of stars, the bright naked-eye arc of the Milky Way, was something I had not seen for many years.

Here are some pictures and (below) a timelapse video of sunrise over the observatory.

Time lapse of Sunrise over the observatory – 13 August 2024

Episode 118 : Galactic Magnetic Fields

By Leave a Comment

D Vasuhandra Shaw

Dr Vasuhandra Shaw is a postdoctoral research Associate at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. Her subject of interest is a huge one, and I mean ginormous. It concerns the magnetic field of a Galaxy. 

I knew that the Earth and many other objects in the solar system have magnetic fields, but I had no idea about the galaxy as a whole. Our Milky Way galaxy is huge; how do you even begin to understand the magnetic field of something like that? She will explain. 

We also spoke about her interesting journey from Lucknow in northern India, where she completed her undergraduate studies, to Pondicheri in southern India, where many people still speak French, where she completed her first Master’s degree; Paris, where she completed her second, and Berlin, Germany, where she completed her PhD. 

We also discuss the precarious uncertainty in the careers that researchers and academics must endure before acquiring a full-time post. Not all of them make it that far.

Cliff Richard and astronomer from Yorkshire Fred Hoyle, who was the Professor Brian Cox of the 1960s, also popped up in our conversation.

Smart Telescopes

By Leave a Comment

In 1608, Galileo Galilei turned his telescope to the night sky. His observations of the Moon and planets laid the foundations for the solar system, our galaxy and the modern understanding of the universe. During the last 400 years, telescopes have incrementally got bigger and better. Innovations include digital drives for precision tracking, sensitive sensors to detect fainter objects, in-line filters to remove unwanted light and hyper-sensitive sensors for detecting faint objects from the distant part of or cosmos.

Seestar S50. Credit ZWO

Now, those technologies are available in consumer-grade telescopes known as Smart Telescopes. This is only possible because of the smartphone, another mass-consumer product we already have. A smart telescope operated from an app or a phone (or tablet). The App use the existing open-source tools for integrating multiple short-exposure faint images (a process known as stacking) into one corrected, brighter and enhanced one.

Smart Telescope don’t usually have an eyepiece. All interactions are via a screen and an App. Using a GPS, the telescope can figure out where it is, and by selecting one object from a list observable from the user’s location (and time), it can move to the object and start imaging. It is possible to have a high-quality stacked image of a distant galaxy, five minutes after switching on the telescope.

There are many “Smart Telescopes” on the market. One of the popular, costing around £500, is the Seestar S50 from the China-based company called Zwo. The pictures below are the first images I acquired over two nights in September 2024. They are as the came from the Seestar S50 – no post-processing.

A 50mm primary lens has a focal length of 250mm. There is no eyepiece! At f5, it is not really suitable for planets but ideal for the Moon, Sun and deep-sky objects. It has built-in filters for light pollution, the sun, H alpha and Oxygen 3. There is also a built-in dew heater to mitigate against condensation. Including a 6000mAh, 64 GB of memory, everything is integrated into a tiny 2.5kg Telescope. It comes contained in a small carry-case with a small but sturdy tripod with a total weight of 2.5kmg.

Will all future telescopes be like this? Probably not, but the benefits it comes with will attract many younger observers and those new to astronomy. For me, the primary benefit is that whilst the telescope has to be outside in the cold, the user does not.

The Seestar S50 stacks multiple 10-second exposures. The higher the number of these exposures, the more detailed and richer the final image. But it can also take video. This is the sun for 30 seconds.