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After a successful late-night launch on November 15th, the Artemis 1 mission is doing well. On November 28, the Orion spacecraft reached a distance of 268,563 miles from Earth, making it the farthest distance traveled by any spacecraft capable of carrying people.
Orion has been sending back beautiful images of Earth reminiscent of the images we got from manned spacecraft 50 years ago with the Apollo 17 mission. fifty years!
At its furthest point, Orion is about 40,000 miles from the moon, so the image we see shows a small moon, only slightly larger than a small Earth. Because the Earth reflects so much sunlight, the camera’s exposure setting has to be lowered considerably, so dimmer stars are invisible. Our small blue marble home world was set against a vast, inky black space.
The Orion capsule will return to Earth on December 11, landing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. The Orion spacecraft performed so flawlessly that the mission team added extra tests to the schedule, and most of the team got a few days off for Thanksgiving.
The Artemis 2 mission will have a crew of four on board who will keep the Orion spacecraft at its pace for 10.5 days sometime in the spring of 2024. They will get very close to the moon, but they will leave the landing to the Artemis 2025 crew of 3.
A more definitive time frame and actual crew for Artemis 2 and 3 will be determined after Orion’s splashdown next week.
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Togglein the night sky
The exoplanets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have risen above the horizon at sunset. Orange-red Mars is now brighter than any actual star in the night sky. It is next to one of the horns of Taurus.
About halfway between Mars and the waxing gibbous moon is the Pleiades star cluster on the shoulder of Taurus. Tonight, the Moon will be just overhead in the constellation Cetus.
On Wednesday, the full moon will occult Mars (pass in front of Mars, so it will occult the planets) from 6:32 to 7:32 pm. That night was also when Mars was at opposition, facing the Sun. Due to Mars’ elliptical orbit, Mars will actually come closer to us on the night of November 30, at a distance of just 50.6 million miles. As we get closer to Mars, it appears to be moving backwards among the stars for the next few weeks. It will start moving forward again in mid-January.
Jupiter shines among the dim constellations of Pisces below the Great Square of Pegasus. The Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter continues to return us spectacular pictures and fascinating data about the planet’s interior.
Earlier this fall, Juno made a close approach to Jupiter’s moon Europa. Slightly smaller than our Moon, Europa is the target of NASA’s next mission to the outer solar system because it has a deep ocean of liquid saline beneath a thin icy surface. That ocean might be an excellent environment for life to exist, so Europa might be the best place to look for current life beyond Earth (Mars may have had life a long time ago).
The Europa Clipper mission will launch in October 2024 and begin orbiting Jupiter in April 2030, on a path that will circle Jupiter 45 to 50 times during its four-year primary mission. Hopefully Europa Clipper will be as tough as Juno and other planetary missions, so it gets several mission extensions.
The accompanying star map is an 8 pm view showing the positions of Mars and Jupiter. Out of the frame on the far right to the southwest, Saturn is in the tail of Capricornus.Now at 8pm Orion is easily seen rising in the east its entourage Canis Major and very bright Sirius and Canis Minor and bright Procyon will be visible around 9:30pm
The Geminids peak on the nights of December 13-2014, and the number of meteors per hour is always very high compared to other major meteor showers of the year. On an ideal night with very dark skies, the Geminids can produce as many as 100 meteors per hour! It won’t be ideal this year, but it’s still good.
The waning gibbous Moon will rise around 10pm, so the evening hours before that are the best times to spot meteors. The next night, the moon rose late, and the meteor shower was still strong.
last fall’s planetarium show
Bakersfield College is now in final exam week. This Thursday will be the last show of the fall season at the William M. Thomas Planetarium: the popular holiday show “Season of Light.”
Doors open at 7pm, show starts at 7:30pm, no late admission.
The Planetarium is located on campus at 1801 Panorama Drive. Parking is available in Student Parking Lot P6 east of Memorial Stadium off Mount Vernon Boulevard.
Tickets are $8, $6 for seniors and children ages 5-12, with advance purchase (plus $2 surcharge) vallitix.com. Tickets are not sold at the gate.
I hope to see some of you on Season of Light!
Contributing columnist Nick Strobel is director of the William M. Thomas Planetarium at Bakersfield College and author of the award-winning website Astronomy Notes Network.
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