Gravity (movie)

It seems like the entire space and astronomy community is talking about Gravity. It is indeed a great film you should watch it in 3D. The new film, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, presents Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as two astronauts who got stuck outside their spaceship. During a routine service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, the Russians sent a missile to destroy an old satellite (something the Chinese has actually done in the past). The debris' cloud spreads quickly and destroys Bullock and Clooney's space shuttle. The ISS team abandon it, and so does the Chinese in their Tiangong station. Our heroes are left alone to find their long way home.

The film is minimalistic. Bullock and Clooney are the only actors. There are some voices like Ed Harris as the capcom (Harris played flight director Gene Kranz in Apollo 13) but the most astonishing thing is the view of Space. I was very happy to see that one of the first places seen clearly on Earth is my country, Israel, together with the Sinai desert and Egypt.

Is the film realistic? The danger of debris is real. Of course there are errors in the film and you can search and find a whole list of them on the net. The debris cloud speed is too high and in this speed it will not orbit the Earth but continue to outer space. Hubble ,the ISS and Tiangogng, are in entirely different orbits and it is hard to go from one to another and so on. There is no point to search for errors, the point is to enjoy the film and the feeling of actually being there in space hovering above Earth. In the film we go through most of the existing spaceships. A space shuttle (now retired), the ISS, a Soyuz spaceship and the Chinese Tiangong which is much bigger that the real thing. Astronauts said the the spacecrafts look very real with all the handles and the buttons in the correct places, and it certainly looks real to the audience.

There is a lot of physics in the film. Children from grades 4 to 12 can learn a lot from it. Newton's second law of motion is demonstrated throughout the entire film and all the following terms: mass, velocity, acceleration, force, moment, vector, drag, pressure, energy, friction, lift, elastic and so on, are in the film. A guided view of the film can help to teach all these terms with the entire laws of mechanics.

However if you do looking for errors you will find quite a few. Here are some:

• The Hubble Space Telescope ,Tiangong and the ISS are in totally different orbits. They are not in the same height and not in the same place moving in tandem. It is impossible to move  from one to another like the astronauts do in the film.
• The debris cloud is moving too fast. In that speed it will not orbit Earth but proceed deeper into space.
• When Bullock removes her spacesuit, she has only regular clothes underneath. In reality, there are many more layers on an astronauts body.
• The Tiangong (Chinese space station) is like it might be in ten more years, but maybe the film is in the future (The STS number is 157 and the last one was 135, of course space shuttle are retired now)

For a very long list of errors (With spoilers) look in the comment I received in Reddit.

Gravity. All the rights are reserve to Warner Bros.

During the film Bullock is trying to have a radio converstaion with someone named Anningaaq. This is a corss-refernce to a short movie (7 minutes only) of the director's son: Jonas Cuaron. Watch the short film here. This cross refrence reminded me the masterpiece book by Chinghiz Aitmatov: "The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years".


After saying all the above, I will repeat my recommendation to see this film. Not because of the reality and not due to screenplay. The real star is space itself. 3D or IMAX are a must. Gravity is joining the hall of fame of space movies and we will probably hear a lot the sentence: "And the Oscar goes to Gravity". 

Watch the official trailer.

Additional links

How to see the ISS

The space shuttle

Partial Solar Eclipse

Today, 3-Nov-2013 there was a total solar eclipse visible from central Africa. From Israel about 20% of the sun was covered by the moon at most, but still it was a great experience to observe and photographed. Please notice a band of sunspots in three regions at the lower part of the sun.
Needless to say, I used special filters for my eyes, camera and binoculars for the observation.
Here are some photos of the event.

Beginning of the eclispe

Getting better

The eclipse progress

The moon bites the sun

A pac-man like sun

Greatest partial eclipse

What a view

Some minutes before the end of the eclipse

The sun is almost whole again

Notice the sun color shift

And another atmospheric view

The whole sun after the eclipse

sunset

Spica Occultation

Spica is the brightest start in Virgo constellation. Its distance from Earth is about 236 light years and its magnitude is around +1. Spica is near the ecliptic and the moon occults Spica quite often. Today (8-Sep-2013) was such an occultation visible from Israel starting 15:11 (UTC). In Israel, the occultation started during the day, but that was no reason not to observe it since stars as bright as Spica are visible through a telescope! The disappearance of a star is something like that, first you see it and a second later it is gone! The reappearance was far better. The sun already set and the moon looked very well through the telescope with all its craters and mountains. Suddenly a white bright dot appeared and got further away from the moon in each second

Here is a short video of it. The video is photographed through a telescope but without tracking (It is hard to perform proper tracking without seeing the north star -Polaris). Also the air is very hot making lots of turbulence but lets just enjoy what we have

to make it even better Venus is nearby. There will be a Venus occultation this day as well visible from south America. In the USA there will be a very close conjunction between the moon and Venus.

Here is a photo of all three celestial bodies: Venus, the moon and Spica. 

Venus  (top) The moon and Spica

Related links:

See Venus in daylight!

Venus occultation

Cassini's images

The Cassini spaceship is orbiting Saturn for many year now and always manage to amaze. On the 19th of July Cassini will take a photograph of planet earth while Saturn blocks the sun. This will be a reproduction of the iconic photo from 2006 and a good chance to compare and see any difference. You can watch the 2006 photo in the following article together with many more photos of earth from space.
To celebrate the event I've collected some of the best photos of Cassini from 2012-2013. There many more and it is hard to choose from. Enjoy! Credit to all photographs is to NASA.

Saturn and Titan

Enceladus looks like a popped balloon.

Enceladus

A huge storm on Saturn

A huge storm on Saturn

A closeup of Enceladus. Jets of gases are vaporizing into outer space

A closeup of Enceladus

Two tiny moons: Prometheus and Pandora

Prometheus and Pandora

The surface of the moon Rhea. Rhea is one of the moons that can be seen with even a small telescope from earth.

Rhea

Is this river Nile? Might be an old river on the surface of Titan

Saturn in the dark. Saturn covers the Sun, but the rings are lighted and reflect light back on Saturn which gives an extraordinary result.

Saturn in the dark

Saturn

Saturn

Saturn shading its rings. Notice some tiny dot and the upper left area - a tiny moon.

Saturn shading its rings

This photo is the first photo of meteors not from Earth. Read more about these meteors.

Meteors striking Saturn

This is not Saturn. This is Titan with little moon Dione with the rings as a background.

Titan with little moon Dione

A vortex on Titan

A vortex on Titan

And from another angle

A vortex on Titan

And a closeup

A vortex on Titan

Saturn is blocking the sun. At the upper left a small dot. This is not Earth but Venus.

Venus from Saturn

Strange things happens on Saturn's north pole

Saturn's north pole

You probably remember the incredible transit of Venus (well the whole site started from it). Anyway this is a Venus transit from Saturn. Read more here.

Venus transit from Saturn

For further reading:
Saturn
More images from Cassini

Israel first satellite

Shavit 2 was the first satellite that Israel launched to space. The rocket launched on July 5th 1961 and Israel joined the distinguished "space club" a very short list of countries who are able to develop, build and launch a satellite by their own means ( in 1961 there were only 6 countries in the "club" : US, USSR, UK, Japan, Italy, France). The rocket itself was a very simple rocket with some instruments for meteorological research. the rocket was very small, but to make it look much bigger it was put on a high stand and photographed from a very low angel to look like one of the big American rockets. In fact its length was just about 4 meter.

Many of Israel VIP attended the historical launch. The prime minister and secretary of defnse, David Ben Gurion, his deputy Shimon Peres (Current presiodent of Israel) , Zvi Zur, Brigadir General and more.

History is funny as the only country to congratulate Israel for its achievement was Turkey. Nor the white house, neither the Kremlin (And the times were the hot days of the cold war) gave any official response.

Replica of Shavit 2 actual size: Photographed by: Tal Inbar

Israel ministry of Defense recently relieved the following video. Notice how big the rocket looks in the film (remember that the lower part is just a stand, not a real phase). The video is without sound so the usual roar of the launch is not heard. David Ben Gurion, hearing explanations and you might recognize Peres and Rabin in the film as well. 

The launch was a very important achievement for the new state of Israel only 13 years old.

Jupiter Venus and Mercury

An interesting stellar conjunction is about to happen, starting from 20th of may until the 27th of May 2013. Jupiter, Venus and Mercury will be close to each other in the west, immediately after sunset.
Conjunction between two planets are very common and even between three planets are not rare. Conjunction are always a nice sight to watch and no equipment is needed. Look here for photos of a previous conjunction between Jupiter and Venus and try to think of a great photographs opportunists near your house.


This is what you will see on May 21st. Mercury is only 5 degrees above the horizon and Jupiter is 13. Jupiter is going down and down and Venus and Mercury up. Watch for several nights to see how the planets move.

Jupiter Venus and Mercury May 21st 2013

And here is a real photo from 22-May-2013. Jupiter is in the top, Venus and Mercury in the bottom.

Jupiter Venus and Mercury 22-May-2013

This is the planets position on May 26yh. Mercury is now the highest of the planets.

Jupiter Venus and Mercury May 21st 2013

And a real photo taken by my dear wife Rosalind Eidelheit. As you can see, Rosalind was very lucky to find some seconds with all three planets visible with these many clouds!

Jupiter Venus and Mercury May 26th 2013

And just one day after. Much less clouds!

Jupiter Venus and Mercury May 27th 2013

And another one from the 28th. I like the power lines which look like a musical score - a celestial symphony

Jupiter Venus and Mercury May 28th 2013

Jupiter will continue to go down until it will disappear from the evening sky and become a morning start, while Venus is about to dominate them for the coming months.

Carnival of space #301

Welcome to another edition of Carnival of Space! And in this issue we have the following articles

From The Chandra telescope - There are just too many things over our heads so actions are required in order to avoid collisions in space

From Here,There and Everywhere we learn that not all lightnings are equal. Ever heard of "dark lightnings"?

From the Meridian journal we learn about new discussion of a manned Mars mission by 2030.

From Nextbigfuture - Ohio State University has performed some computational studies of molten salt reactors for NASA space applications.They looked at 4 MW thermal and 60 MW thermal reactors and flow dynamics and basic design. Molten salt reactors are an appealing technology for space because of their high temperature and low pressure operation, controllability, and high fuel burn up, among other features.

Also from Nextbigfuture - Northop Grumman completed a lunar lander study for Golden Spike.

And the last piece from Nextbigfuture- Spacex Grasshopper moved to New Mexico so it can fly higher and farther

Everyday Spacer - What Would You Do With a Million Dollars? Please give this some serious thought because it could happen to you! If it does, you will either be prepared to tell someone what you will do with the money or you will not. If it happens, who do you think will get that reward?

And another one from Everyday spacer: Around Town, End of May 2013 Around Town posts feature ‘quickie’ notes about activities that you can do locally or online. We want to let you know about as many different things out there that you can do – often, right where you are – and sometimes just for taking the time to go look. Remember… It’s all about action!

It is impossible to end this carnival of week with the expensive cover versions ever recorded. Chris Hadfield recorded a cover for the famous David Bowie hit: "Space Oddity". Words somewhat changes and there are not two voices, but that is a great tribute to summarize Chris's 5 months in the ISS. Read more about the recording on Universe Today (who neglected to send an article, but I add anyway and hope they don't mind).

My personal opinion is that the ISS is a highly costs project with limited benefits and that its part in NASA budget is too large. As much as I like the cool movies from there I do wonder, is there a purpose for that huge giant structure in space? It started over 20 years ago, and it seems that now we are facing the question: "What to do with it?". IMHO, funding more planetary missions will give more value of NASA budget". What do you think?

Partial Lunar eclipse 25-Apr-2013

Truth is, I had no expectations from yesterday partial lunar eclipse. It was as partial as partial can be and only 1.5% of the moon surface was in the earth full shade (Umbra). The rest was in the Penumbra and 1.5% was not even in any shade... Anyway, an eclipse is an eclipse and I was curious to see how such a partial eclipse will look like. It turned out to look very good even to the naked eye, the shaded moon was obvious even in the penumbral phase. After the eclipse I observed Saturn which was near the moon.
First a photo of my tools of the trade:

Astronomy - tools of the trade

Here are some photos from the eclipse

Partial lunar eclipse - Penumbarl phase

Partial lunar eclipse - Beginning

Partial lunar eclipse - getting better

Partial lunar eclipse - noticeable

Partial lunar eclipse - Greatest

Partial lunar eclipse - fading

Partial lunar eclipse - little bit less

Partial lunar eclipse - the end

And here is tiny photo of Saturn from the same evening