What's Up? UFOs = Alien Spacecraft and Abductions?

Welcome back to What's Up?

When looking up at night, one of the first questions that may come to mind is "Are we alone?" Since the ancient Greeks, people have asked that very same question. Although most astronomers today would say there is life on other worlds, there is no definite evidence pointing toward a simple yes or no.

A typical image of an Unidentified Flying Object claimed to be an alien spacecraft.

The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) involves searching through radio telescope observations for signals from distant aliens. While sometimes associated with pseudoscience, SETI doesn't jump to conclusions without solid proof of a signal.

There is a wide-spread belief that intelligent life has been visiting the Earth on a regular basis. This belief is almost non-existent among professional astronomers for many reasons. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," as Carl Sagan, who pioneered the field of astrobiology, once said while discussing the possibility of alien visitation.

UFO, which stands for Unidentified Flying Object, has become synonymous with alien spacecraft in recent decades. The vast majority of UFO sightings can be explained fairly easily.

For example, Venus low in a turbulent evening sky can appear to flash and change colour very rapidly and is a very common explanation for a lot of UFO phenomena.

The Moon has been mistaken for a UFO many times. When low on the horizon it appears as a very deep red and if clouds block out certain parts, it can appear to be some very strange shapes. When a crescent Moon is setting it can look like a burning sailboat sailing away from you.

An image I took of the Moon low
on the horizon.

During the day, clouds and reflections of the Sun off of clouds can look very odd. Sun dogs, which are bright spots in the sky can appear orb-like or as large arcs, near and around the Sun.

There are many other natural explanations for weird phenomena in the sky, but what about the flying saucers?

As it turns out, lenticular clouds, can be quite disk-like, although they usually only form near mountains. Other sources of flying saucers in photographs (especially the blurry ones) are dirt or water drops on the camera lens, a fast moving object being blurred in the frame, or are photoshopped.

Sightings by spacecraft of objects entering the atmosphere and shooting back off into space have been reported. Something that can do that must be aliens, right?

Well, not quite. As it turns out, if a meteor comes in at a shallow angle it can bounce off the atmosphere just like a when you skip stones at the beach.

Shortly after the release of the X-Files, UFO sightings spiked. Whether or not that is because of imagination or more people looking up at the sky can't really be said.

Speaking of the X-Files, there are also "alien abductions." At first glance it can seem very unlikely that so many different people could have such experiences if abductions weren't really happening. But, upon closer inspection, these abductions can be explained by how the human brain works.

The human brain is not a perfect machine for interpreting reality and abduction stories can be explained by hallucinations, near-sleep states, temporary schizophrenia, epileptic seizures, and even false memories. What people experience largely depends on the culture they are brought up in.

Are the rows of equal thickness?
An example of one of the many
ways our mind can trick us.

Have aliens visited Earth recently? They most likely have not. The majority of presented evidence is anomaly hunting, which is looking for anything odd and then jumping to the conclusion that it must be aliens. It can't be said for certain that there isn't alien visitation, but until solid proof is available, we won't have to rename our laws concerning illegal aliens.

While we're still thinking about what may be lurking above, let's see what's up in this month's skies.

The new Moon will be on Oct. 7 while the full Moon will be on Oct. 23.

Jupiter will shine brightly throughout the month in the southwest shortly after sunset.

The Athena Community Astronomy Club will have its monthly meeting on Sunday, October 24. The meeting runs from 7pm to 9pm at the Wilmot Community Centre. Guests are always welcome.

Until next month, just look up!

Hey Kids...

Did you know that Mercury, that toasty planet closest to the Sun, has a tail? It's not much of a tail, but it's definitely there. Most of the tail is from sodium, what you may know as salt, getting blown off Mercury by the solar wind. It turns out that there is a little mystery as to what else it is made of. This just proves that you can discover something hiding in plain sight. All you have to do is ask lots of questions and be on the lookout for anything new and exciting.

What's Up? A Slew of Exoplanet Discoveries

Welcome back to What's Up?

As NASA's Kepler spacecraft continues to look for tell-tale clues of planets circling distant stars, reports of confirmed planet discoveries are slowly trickling in. Just in the last month, NASA announced that Kepler had discovered its first multiple planet system.

Kepler finds planets by detecting a dip in brightness as the planet passes in front of its star.

In this first multiple planet system, there are two planets orbiting the same star with a third unconfirmed planet called a “super-Earth.” This super-Earth is not likely to be very Earth-like, being a few times the mass of the Earth and orbits around its star in barely more than 38 hours!

Kepler is NASA's main instrument for discovering planets around other stars. It will stare at the same star field in the constellation Cygnus, the swan, for at least three and a half years. Out of the millions of stars in its field of view, Kepler will continuously monitor 100,000 of them.

Where Kepler will watch for
exoplanets. Click to enlarge.

The spacecraft is named after Johannes Kepler, who is best known for figuring out that the planets in our solar system have ellipse shaped (egg shaped) orbits around the Sun.

Scientists working with Kepler are very cautious about announcing new discoveries and always double or triple check everything. Right now there are over 700 possible planets from just a few months of data collection. Even if half of these are planets, it will nearly double the number of currently known extrasolar planets.

Among these candidates are many smaller planets and possible Earth sized planets. Although there may be many small Earth-sized worlds, the data needs to be checked by other telescopes for false alarms.

A completely separate team of astronomers working with the European Southern Observatory have discovered the richest exoplanet system known. Circling around the creatively named star, HD 10180, are at least five Neptune sized worlds.

This busy planetary system was discovered by carefully watching the starlight for blue shifting or red shifting, caused by the star being tugged towards and away from us by an unseen planet orbiting the star.

The astronomers also reported that there are two “fuzzier” signals present. The lead researcher, Dr. Christophe Lovis says he is “99%” certain that these two other planets are indeed there.

One of these uncertain exoplanets appears to be only 1.4 Earth masses. If confirmed, it will be the least massive exoplanet yet discovered.

Technology for detecting planets around other stars is still in its infancy, and yet there are over 400 currently known exoplanets and now there is a single star with as many as seven planets orbiting it!

An artists depiction of a planet around another star.

Future missions, like the James Webb Space Telescope, will have the ability to directly image some of these planets. By looking the colours reflected by the planet, astronomers will be able to figure out the composition of these planets' atmospheres.

Until then, let's see what's up in this month's sky.

The new Moon will be on Sept. 8 this month and will swell to become a full Moon on Sept. 23.

Jupiter will be at opposition (closest point to Earth) on Sept. 21. This is the best time to view the king of the planets. It will be the brightest star-like object rising in the east just after sunset.

Venus will be low near the western horizon and is the brightest object in the night sky (other than the Moon), while Mars will appear as a reddish star off to the side.

Autumnal Equinox, also known as the first day of Autumn, is on Sept. 23.

The monthly meeting of the Athena Community Astronomy Club will be on Sept. 26, the last Sunday of the month. The meeting starts at 7pm and ends at 9pm. Guests are always welcome.

Until next month, just look up!

Hey Kids...
Did you know that you can help choose the space shuttle's wake-up music? If you go on the internet and go to "songcontest.nasa.gov", you can vote on which song you would like the astronauts to wake up to on the next Space Shuttle mission. If you feel really creative, you could even write your own song, and possibly have the astronauts on the last Space Shuttle mission listen to it. Imagine being a music star almost literally among the stars.

What's Up? The Einstein Revolution

Welcome back to What's Up?

When we look up at night we see the stars and planets above, rotating hour by hour and night by night, just like clockwork. It's easy to appreciate the night sky's beauty, but sometimes we forget those who have helped figure out how the universe ticks.

The most well known of those great thinkers is most likely Albert Einstein. Although best known for his equation, e = mc², which led to the development of the atomic bomb, his work has greatly helped in the understanding of the mysterious and quirky universe we live in.

Albert Einstein showing off a few equations.

Before Einstein, Mercury's odd shifting orbit could not be explained. Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity explained Mercury's orbit and got rid of the need for "fudge factors" in the equations or a hidden planet near the sun.

Einstein applied his equations to the entire universe and found that any mass in the universe would have enough gravity to eventually cause the universe to collapse in on its self. Since most astronomers at the time thought the universe was unchanging, he added a "cosmological constant" that would push back against gravity to prevent the universe from collapsing.

Just over a decade after adding the cosmological constant, it was discovered that the universe was expanding and there was no need for a cosmological constant to keep it from collapsing. Einstein called this the biggest blunder of his career.

Ironically, in 1996, researchers discovered that the rate at which the universe is expanding is getting faster and faster, it is accelerating! There is now a need for something similar to a cosmological constant to account for the accelerating expansion. The force driving the acceleration is referred to as dark energy, and is one of the biggest areas of research in astronomy today.

Einstein also realized that light is composed of individual particles and that light can be affected by gravity.

Photons being bent around the Sun.

Four years after Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in 1915, astronomers observed stars near the Sun during a solar eclipse. With the Moon blocking the Sun, it was easy to see where nearby stars were. Some of these stars appeared to out of place.

The light from the stars had been bent by the gravity of the Sun! This observation confirmed General Relativity and made Einstein an instant scientific celebrity.

From the same theory he also predicted that if something travels near the speed of light, the object will shrink in length, become more massive, and time will slow down for that object. Being in a gravitational field can also cause time to slow down. These observations may seem extremely crazy, but they have been proven to be true.

Communications satellites need to have Einstein's equations programmed into them. They orbit hundreds of kilometers above us and they don't feel as much gravity as we do, down here on the surface of the Earth. Since we experience more gravity, our clocks run a bit slower than the satellites' clocks. 

Without Einstein's equations, the difference between our clocks and the satellites' clocks would add up. A simple GPS system would start to drift within minutes without his equations. 

The next time you pick up your cell phone or turn on your GPS system in your car, remember that Einstein's equations are running inside the device.

Although quite comprehensive, Einstein's theories of Special and General Relativity can't explain the beginning of the universe, how gravity works on small scales, or what it is like inside a black hole.

Until those mysteries are solved, let's see what's up in this month's sky.

The new Moon will be on August 10, which allows for a perfect sky on August 12, the best night for watching the Perseid meteor shower. Rates can get up to around 100 per hour but the usual rate is around 60 per hour, or one every minute. 

To watch the meteor shower, find something to lie on, dress very warm, and look up sometime after sunset. The shower should get better as the night progresses.

The full Moon will be on August 24, and will be the smallest full Moon of the year.

The Athena Community Astronomy Club will have its monthly meeting at the Wilmot Community Centre from 7pm to 9pm on Sunday, August 29. Guests are always welcome.

The club will be continue its weekly boardwalk viewing sessions every clear Wednesday this month along the Summerside baywalk, by the Shipyard Market building, shortly after sunset.

Until next month, just look up!

Hey Kids...

If you have ever asked anyone whether airplanes can fly in space, you likely were told that they can't because there is no air in space. They are only partly right. There is a new plane called VSS Enterprise which is actually two planes joined together with a rocket underneath them. It's not going to be cheap at first but maybe someday you'll take a ride in this futuristic space plane.

VSS Enterprise in flight.

Other Worlds Right Here on Earth

Welcome back to What's Up?

Although it may often seem that the Earth is completely unique in the Solar System, this is often not the case. There are many locations on Earth where the conditions are almost identical to other worlds in the Solar System. These locations are called Earth-based analogs.

One of these locations can even be found in Canada.

The Haughton-Mars base on Devon Island, Canada.

Devin Island, the world's largest uninhabited island, is in the chilly Canadian arctic and has temperatures which can drop as low as -50°C. Haughton crater, on Devin Island, is considered one of the best Mars analog sites.

It is so similar to Mars because it is very isolated, has similar temperature ranges, receives very little precipitation, and for the most part, lacks any life larger than a microbe.

Since 1997, Haughton crater has been the location of the Haughton Mars Project. The project has featured many experiments on the types of life that can live there, what the geology is like, and remotely controlled greenhouses have been built as a test for future Mars missions.

The location is even being used for testing prototype Mars and Moon rovers for future missions.

Speaking of Moon missions, the Apollo astronauts trained for the first Moon missions using an Earth-based analog.

Mauna Kea has a very similar
landscape to that of the Moon.

In the 1960's, just before the historic moon landings, the astronauts trained in the volcanic ash deposits on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The dusty terrain was perfect for testing out the lunar rovers and other gear needed for a lunar landing.

Moving on from the Moon-like landscapes, we can find very dry Mars-like conditions on Earth.

In the middle of the Atacama desert are the driest conditions known on Earth. It has barely rained at all for the last 10 million years and in the driest areas there are no signs of life, not even a microbe.

On Mars, the majority of the surface is as dry or drier than the Atacama, but some areas experience small snowfalls and frost which could provide water for the toughest microbes that may be living in the soil or rocks.

Deep under the surface of the Atacama's parched terrain lies groundwater where life can easily flourish. It is hoped that groundwater exists on Mars underneath the vast expanses of desert.

While we're thinking water, let's dive to the deepest areas of the ocean. The water pressure is immense and the water is very dark and cold. What kind of worlds would have this much water?

Europa has more liquid water than
any other world in the solar system.

Two of the most promising places to find deep oceans are Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. These are both ice covered moons with hidden oceans comparable to the Earth's.

It is quite possible that hydrothermal vents, also known as black smokers, might spew minerals and hot water that could support many diverse forms of life just like they do here on Earth.

Europa has large cracks in its smooth, icy surface, that are coloured suggesting the presence of bacteria making a living on or in the ice where it meets with the ocean beneath.

Before we slip into the deep ocean waters of the solar system's icy moons, let's see what's up this month.

The new Moon will be on July 11th while the full Moon will be on July 26th. Observers in South America and Easter Island will be treated to a full solar eclipse on July 11th.

Venus will be shining brightly, low in the west after sunset, with Mars and Saturn nearby. Mars will be a much dimmer red and Saturn will be yellow.

Jupiter will make its appearance a few hours later, rising in the East.

The Athena Community Astronomy Club will have its monthly meeting on July 25th, the last Sunday of the month. The meeting goes from 7pm to 9pm at the Athena Community Centre. Guests are always welcome.

The club will continue its weekly Summerside baywalk viewing sessions, next to the Fisherman's Market building every clear Wednesday around sunset.

Until next month, just look up!


Hey Kids...If you look up at the stars every clear night, they seem to stay still relative to each other, but they actually are constantly moving. Since the stars are so far away, they appear to move extremely slowly, just like when you're in a car and the distant surroundings move by very slowly. The fastest moving star in the sky is Barnard's star. This star is moving 140 kilometres every second relative to the sun! It's amazing what you can discover when you look at everyday things just a little bit closer.

Defending the Earth

Welcome back to What's Up?

In the news this past month, David Attenborough, a British biologist, claimed that the Earth is undergoing one of the fastest rates of extinction in our planet's entire history. Species around the world are dying off due to climate change, pollution, and habitat loss.

These problems are largely human created problems, but they can be solved. 

If there are so many urgent problems on Earth, why spend money on space exploration?

There is a long list of good reasons to explore space and protecting Earth is one of them. After all, the Earth is part of the universe and is very vulnerable.

Lurking in the solar system are rocky objects called asteroids and icy/rocky objects called comets. There are a lot of these objects and some have very strange orbits that can can put them on a collision course with Earth.

A brilliantmeteor as it "burns" up in
the upper atmosphere.

Some of these asteroids are only specks of dust or the size of pebbles, while others are the size of cities. Every day 10,000 tonnes of asteroids, most smaller than a golf ball, fall to Earth. When they enter the atmosphere they are now called meteors or "shooting stars" as they burn up on their way down.

When Earth passes through a large stream of these dust or pebble sized objects, a meteor shower occurs. Instead of grabbing an umbrella during one of these showers, grab a warm sweater, something dry to lay on, look up, and enjoy the show.

When really large asteroids come in they may make it to the ground. Others heat up and explode in the sky.

Site of the explosion in Siberia
shortly after (above) and one
hundred years later (above).

In 1954, Ann Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama became the first person known to have been hit by a meteorite. While taking a nap, a 4 kilogram (9 pound) meteorite smashed through her roof, bounced off her radio, and landed on her hip. 

In 1908 a relatively small asteroid or comet, about 50 meters (150 feet) in diameter, exploded in the sky above Siberia. The explosion was 1000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Around 2,000 square kilometers of trees were levelled in all directions, an area larger than Washington, D.C.

While objects like the one that exploded over Siberia only happen every few hundred years, they are extremely dangerous. In the past even larger objects have impacted Earth.

What the dino killer may
have looked like.

One day, 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid the size of Mount Everest. This kind of event is so rare that it has only happened a few times since life arose on our planet.

While it may seem impossible to prevent these impacts, scientists and groups like the Planetary Society, are working on ways to steer such asteroids away from Earth's path.

Some ideas include using a nuclear bomb to push an asteroid slightly off-course, attaching a rocket and slowly pushing the asteroid, or even using the gravity from a satellite to slowly tug on an asteroid over many years. While all require advance warning, they can keep these dangerous objects away.

The only way to get advance warning is to keep an eye on the skies.

While we're watching the skies let's see what's up this month.

There will be a new moon on June 12 and a full moon on June 26.

The longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice, otherwise known as the first day of Summer, will be on June 21 this year.

Venus, Mars, and Saturn will be visible low in the west or southwest throughout the month. Venus will be the brightest, very low in the sky. Mars will be slightly higher and will appear as a red-orange "star." Saturn will be a little higher still and to the west a bit. It will be a dim yellow.

The Athena Community Astronomy Club will have its monthly meeting on the last Sunday of the month, June 27. The meeting is at the Wilmot Community Centre and runs from 7pm to 9pm. Guests are always welcome.

The club will also be having viewing sessions, every clear Wednesday evening, along the baywalk by the Shipyard Market building at dusk.

Until next month, just look up!

Hey Kids...

The United States launched a super-secret mini space shuttle last month. Nobody knows how long it will stay in space or even what it is doing up there. But now, a few backyard star gazers have found it and are tracking it. So much for being super-secret. With regular backyard telescopes, some people are even taking pictures of it. It is sometimes bright enough to be seen drifting across the sky as a faint dot in the night sky. You never know what you may see if you just look up!

SpaceX Successfully Launches Falcon 9 Into Orbit

SpaceX has just launched their first Falcon 9 rocket into orbit after having to scrub the first launch attempt, earlier in the day. The 55 meter (180 feet) tall Falcon 9 rocket reached orbit 10 minutes after lifting off at 2:45pm local time on June 4, 2010, in Cape Canaveral, Florida.


In December 2008, NASA announced that it has selected SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon Spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) when the Space Shuttle retires in 2010. The $1.6 billion contract will have a minimum of 12 flights, with the option to order additional missions for a total contract value of up to $3.1 billion. It will be less than half the cost of other competing systems of similar capabilities.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket sitting on the launch pad.

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, has been quoted as saying:

"100 percent success would be reaching orbit. Given that this is a test flight, whatever percentage of getting to orbit we achieve would still be considered a good day. If just the first stage functions correctly, it's a good day. It's a great day if both stages function."

It appears to be a perfect day, as SpaceX starts sifting through the flight data to help decide on any needed improvements. The Falcon 9 will fly three demonstration missions before it will be used to resupply the International Space Station.

Looking into the future, the company hopes to start sending people into space aboard their rockets and is currently developing a heavy lift launch vehicle capable lifting more mass into orbit than the Space Shuttle. Elon Musk even optimistically hopes to be involved in human missions to Mars by the early 2020's.

Beyond the Planets

Welcome back to What's Up?

Over the last two months we have explored the eight planets and even ventured through the asteroid belt. Moving beyond the planets, we come across dwarf-planet Pluto.

Pluto and its three moons; Charon,
Nix, and Hydra.

Pluto used to seem like a very peculiar object because it is tiny and so far from the sun, beyond chilly Neptune's orbit. When discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh it was supposed be Planet X.

Planet X had been made up to explain Uranus' strange orbit. Pluto just happened to be near where the hypothetical planet was supposed to be. It turns out the math was wrong and there wasn't a need for Planet X!

Pluto itself is remarkably small, even smaller than our moon, and is more like a giant comet in composition. This world hardly spans the width of the United States!

Pluto has three moons, one of which is almost half the diameter of the dwarf-planet! It is so big compared to Pluto, that the two orbit around each other, almost as if they were dancing. 

It even turns out that this "unique" object is actually one of hundreds or possibly thousands! Dwarf-planet Eris, another icy world, is even bigger than Pluto and there are many of these objects left to be discovered.

This region from Neptune's orbit and outwards is now known as the Kuiper belt. The Kuiper belt is similar to the asteroid belt, but almost all of the objects are icy worlds.

In 2015 we will get our first up-close look at Pluto and hopefully other icy worlds as NASA's New Horizon's space probe will zoom past Pluto and fly through the Kuiper belt.

Getting to Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects is nothing short of remarkable. Pluto lies fifty times further from the Sun than the Earth! This distance is greater than 7 billion kilometers (4.5 billion miles).

This may seem like a ridiculous distance but there are even more distant objects that orbit the Sun. Welcome to the Oort cloud. The Oort cloud is a spherical cloud of city-sized icy comets that orbit the Sun at a distance of up to one thousand times farther away than the Kuiper belt.

This distance so immense that it takes light a full year to travel from the Sun to the outermost comets. Astronomers call this distance the "light-year," which is roughly 10 trillion kilometers (6 trillion miles).

There are potentially billions of comets at this distance and the scary part is if another star comes close enough, the gravitational nudge from the star can knock some of the comets out of their orbits and send them flying towards the inner solar system. Thankfully, the nearest star is four light years away and has little effect on the Oort cloud.

Although most of the comets don't come very close to the Sun, some do. Many, like Halley's Comet, are quite spectacular with very beautiful tails of gas and dust streaming off of them as they are heated up and partly vaporized by the Sun.

These beautiful and graceful objects also have a dark side. The effects from a large rogue comet slamming into the Earth would be the same as an asteroid hitting us.

Let's just hope that funding for Earth-based observatories hunting for these dangerous objects isn't cut. A little advance warning could allow us to intercept the comet and push it off-course so it wouldn't hit us.

The last really big impact was 65 million years ago. Comets and asteroids don't hit very often so there isn't too much to worry about.

There won't be any close-ups with a comet next month, so let's see what else is up in next month's sky.

The new moon will be on May 14 and will become full by May 27.

Brilliant Venus will be visible low in the western sky shortly after sunset throughout the month. It will be the brightest star-like object in the sky.

At the same time, Mars will be a dull orange-red colour, spending the month in the south-western area of the sky in the constellation Leo, the lion.

Saturn will be a dim yellow this month in the constellation Virgo the virgin (southern sky after sunset) just off to the left of Leo.

The monthly meeting of the Athena Community Astronomy Club will be on the last Sunday of the month, May 30. The meeting goes from 7pm to 9pm at the Wilmot Community Centre. Guests are always welcome.

Until next month, just look up!

Hey Kids...

Did you know that orbits of the planets and moons don't stay the same? Our moon is drifting away from the Earth by a little over an inch per year. There are even two of Saturn's moons that like to change things up. Every four years the inner moon catches up to the outer moon and they swap orbits! These moons, Janus and Epithemius, are very similar to a large asteroid or comet. Who knows what else is out there? The sky is the limit.