ISS Watching

If you are up for sky watching this coming Sunday (or maybe Monday) you may want to catch a view of the International Space Station (ISS) with unaided eye as it will pass visible to Manila skies about around 6:42PM from the north direction.

The International Space Station is occasionally bright enough in the night sky to be seen by the naked eye. It looks like a moving star to the unaided eye or sometimes a passing plane(not blinking). It is in one of the lowest orbits possible, about 242 miles overhead. The ideal viewing time is immediately before dawn or after sunset, when the observer is in the dark and the ISS is in sunlight. Circling the globe in slightly different orbits 15 times a day, the ISS passes over most of the Earth in a 24-hour period.

So how can you see it when it flies over your head? First, you need to know where the ISS is and when you can expect it. If you use Google, a number of Web sites will tell you when the ISS will pass over a certain location - www.heavens-above.com is one and is very easy to use.

Here are details I have for this Saturday up to Monday.

Here is a video of ISS passing by:




Aside from the ISS you may possibly see a dozen more artifial satelites orbiting us during the dark hour’s right after sunset or before sunrise. Hubble Space telescope(HST) is one and thousands of other space junks floating around.

Girl's Biggest Best Friend

Diamonds are a girl's best friend' sang Marilyn Monroe once. As hardest natural material known to exist they not only make good engagement rings but durable for hundreds of different other applications. They are very expensive because they are very rare. Well at least here on Earth - there might be places in the universe where it is common as a rock to us.  

Golden Jubilee Diamond

The burned out corpse of a a variable white dwarf star named BPM 37093 (nicknamed "Lucy" after the controversial Beatle song) is a big chunk of crystallized carbon that weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds located 50 lightyears away from Earth in the region of Centaurus. Estimated to be 4,000 km diameter that would be about the size 2/3rds of our earths size. In a crystallized carbon from that is estimated to weigh at 5 million trillion trillion pounds. That would equal a diamond of 10 billion trillion trillion carats. By comparison, the largest such stone on Earth is the 545-carat Golden Jubilee Diamond.

BPM 37093

The size of BPM 37093 is very tiny compared to regular star sizes but the mass is no less compared to our Sun. In about 5 billion years from now our Sun will also deplete its nuclear fuel and become a white dwarf like other stars of the same size. Then, for about another 2 billion years of cooling and crystalization it may become like BPM 37093.

Lake Vostok: Alien life on Earth

I first learned about Lake Vostok when I watched from a BBC Horizon documentary last month without knowledge that Russians are near on reaching the surface of the lake. Last February 05, Russian scientists claimed to have completed 3,768 meters ice drill(the longest ever recorded) to reach the surface of a lake under a glacier in Antartica.

The theory of a lake under the ice of Antartica was first proposed in the end of the 19th century but it was only during 1973 that Lake Vostok was only discovered, when British scientists performed airborne ice-penetrating radar surveys in Antarctica. They detected unusual radar readings at the site which suggested the presence of freshwater lake below the ice. It wasnt untill 1993 that data were published from satelite surveys to confirm the findings from the 1973 British surveys. This confirmed that this subglacial body of fresh water is one of the largest lakes in the world. But unlike any other lake in the world, this is sealed off by 3.7 kilometers thick of ice for the last 15 million years

The lake is under complete darkness, under 350 atmospheres (5143 psi) of pressure and expected to be rich in oxygen. Since the confirmation of its existence scientists have speculated that lifeforms, alien to our usual understanding, are possible to exist in this isolated region. But for now Russian scientist are only starting to examince water samples from their drilling. US and British scientists close heels now with Moscow to race for the discovery of life.

A confirmation of life in Lake Vostok could strengthen the prospect for the presence of life on icy moons of Europa and Enceladus. These icy moons have long been theorized to harbor liquid water beneath the ice. Evidence from pictures points to the possibilty of liquid ocean beneath thier icy surface.

Icy Surface of Europa

Enceladus geysers on its icy surface

From Space with Love

I imagine everyone will be posting valentine blogs today. And though hard as it may to relate our astronomy to valentines day, we will.

The heart is a symbol of life here on Earth. And since we have not yet found any sign of life elsewhere, then space should be as unromantic as it is. Right? Well not necessarily.

There are lots of astrophotos to prove that the universe is a loving place.

These are pictures of craters of Mars taken by Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera  

A part of a complex of gas and dust called IC 1805 from WISE Telescope

Image is of a region called W5 from Spitzer Space Telescope