Published on
September 10, 2006 in
NASA.
Atlantis lifted off from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center beautifully. Experienced Aug. 27 and 29 and Sept. 3 and 8 weather and technical problems, Atlantis finally flies into the space. Docking to the International Space Station is slated to take place at 6:46 p.m. Monday.
Just in case you have forgotten, they are going to install the P3/P4 integrated truss and a second set of solar arrays on the space station, doubling the station’s current ability to generate power from sunlight. However, this adds 17.5 tons to its mass.
This is one of the most challenging space mission ever since the mission of component adding to the ISS 4 years ago.
Yeah~ CFHT captured a photo that the lunar dust was ejected by the impact of the SMART-1 on the Moon. Could you see the expansion of the dust cloud? It’s followed by the image of the impact of SMART-1.
As the force of impact was so great that the reflecting force was as great as it, the acceleration was fast too according to the formula F=ma. Thus, the cloud expanded at such a high speed.
Cool, this is really cool! I didn’t wake up on time. At 3:31, the greatest partial lunar eclipse has already gone. I am 40 minutes late. The image below wais taken at 3:35. I have not cropped the photo yet. I am going to tweak these photos in brightness and contrast this evening.
My plan is to connect the photos from the penumbral to umbral into an animation. Luckily, my friend March05 has the earlier photos. If everything goes well, I will have the animation posted tonight.
What does this mean? Usually, after a rain, the sky will be clear. If it’s going to happen, we will have a clear sky for lunar eclipse. Stay tune!
Edited on 22:24: Looks like the raindrops are not totally fell onto the ground. The sky is not clear but the Moon is visible.
I haven’t experienced a lunar eclipse before. Tomorrow will be my first observation of a partial lunar eclipse. I will start my observation from 02:15:00 to 03:15:00. Of course, I will take a photo every 5 minutes and then combined them to an animation.
The exact information is as follow,
Penumbral Contact: 16:42:23 UT
Umbral Contact: 18:05:03 UT
Greatest Eclipse: 18:51:21.1 UT
Umbral Exit: 19:37:41 UT
End of Eclipse: 21:00:21 UT
For your information, the lunar eclipse starts from 00:42:23 to 5:00:21 on 8 September. We are going to have the best partial eclipse at 02:51:21. Don’t miss this!
By the way, the full Moon, the biggest Moon in 2006, has just past since 02:42:00 on 7 September.
Oh yeah! I just received my copy of Sky & Telescope magazine directly shipped from US this morning! This is my first magazine subscribed from US as well as my first Astronomy magazine. Not to mention that the contents are really good; however, the advertisements are just too many that I can see them most of the time. Nevertheless, they are quite informative as I know more about the astronomical instruments after reading them. Credits to all the editors!
Don’t you feel that this photo is nice? I used my home garden as the background in this photo. I like it so much!
This articles is supposed to be posted yesterday night but when I online today, I just found that this is still in the drafts. There must be something happened to my internet connection. Anyway, it’s here now.
Atlantis lifted off from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center beautifully. Experienced Aug. 27 and 29 and Sept. 3 and 8 weather and technical problems, Atlantis finally flies into the space. Docking to the International Space Station is slated to take place at 6:46 p.m. Monday.
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