Discussion

Some news about the Jupiter flash which was detected on September 10. I reported the absence of detection in the visible light from data collected by amateur astronomers. Glenn Orton, a  colleague from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,  sent me yesterday two observations of Jupiter taking with the IRTF telescope and the SpeX Guiding camera in the near-infrared. No scar, or debris field, can be seen at the location of the flash. The meteoroid did not enter in the inner part of the planet atmosphere. This observation confirms that it was most likely a meteor. [caption id="attachment_1417" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="2.3 um observations... read more ❯

An amateur astronomer reported the visual detection of a fireball on Jupiter at 11:35 UT (September 10 2012) last night. It was confirmed on a video recorded from Texas. This is the 6th impact of Jupiter detected so far. Astronomer Dan Petersen saw today September 10 2012 at  11:35 UT a bright flash on Jupiter which lasted 1 or 2 seconds. It estimated its... read more ❯

Yesterday, my SETI Institute colleagues and I had a discussion about the importance of NASA in the minds of people in the USA, and around the world. The achievements of NASA are definitely universal and the latest interest of people for Curiosity, the car-sized rover which landed recently on Mars, is a vivid example. It is inspirational for the scientists to see that our friends and family follow with interest, the development of the mission, its challenging landing, the first step of the rover, and more recently its first self-portrait. The NASA planetary exploration program is a superb scientific and exploration endeavor,... read more ❯

If you read this blog, I am certain that you are aware of the Venus Transit which occurred  from  22:09 UTC on 5 June 2012 to 04:49 UTC on 6 June (3:09pm to 8:49pm PDT). Because this astronomical event was visible from North America, Europe, and part of Africa & Asia, and it was streamed around the world from several observatories, it has been most likely one of the most observed and advertised astronomical phenomena, so I had to write a short personal post about it. A planetary transit occurred when a planetary target (here Venus) is passing in front of another one (here the Sun). An observer located on... read more ❯

Today I am feeling inspired and motivated. It could easily have not been the case since the day started with a massive crash of my email inbox, a difficult review of a recently submitted paper, and some issues with my simulation that I am planning to present at the ACM conference next week – not to mention a lack of sleep. Still, all of this became irrelevant when I watched NASA’s new promotional video attached below. Sometimes it is good to be reminded how lucky we are to be part of this adventure. Never in the history of mankind have we had access to... read more ❯

The study of exoplanets is without any doubt the most active and disrupting field in today astronomy. I had often blogged about it since it is my little obsession. Unfortunately, I have a hard time to keep up with the amount of discoveries and announcements being made every week over the past 3 years. This post is a snapshot of the recent study of exoplanets: what we know, what have been recently discovered and what is coming soon. Source: en.wikipedia.org via Franck on Pinterest Today (May 2 2012) the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia lists the characteristics of 763 exoplanets.  Exoplanet App contains 760 discovered exoplanets. The NASA Planet... read more ❯

An update about the Sutter's Mill Meteorite that I mentioned yesterday. A few hours ago, I saw the pieces that Peter Jenniskens brought at the SETI Institute. I am not a meteorite expert but they indeed look like a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite. The fragments are black, with tiny white flecks scattered through the interior. On the surface, one can see black coating due to the heating during the passage through the Earth atmosphere. While watching them, I had this unreal... read more ❯

Some of you may have noticed that the Cosmic Diary Blog was unavailable over the past 2 weeks due to the migration of the Blog to the SETI Institute server. I am happy to announce that thanks to the great effort of our IT team (Special thanks to J. Brewster!), the blog is now back and will soon expand with new bloggers. We have been planning for a while to make this major change but we had to postpone it due to lack of time and clear knowledge on the Wordpress server. But it is now done, and it is very... read more ❯

"Seeing is believing" or better "dreaming is believing"... The Four Dimensional Digital Universe Project (4D2U Project) & National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) released one year ago a superb video about Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). This gigantic and ambitious telescope located on the top of the Mauna Kea in Hawaii, is shown in the context of already existing telescopes, including the today Giants, such as the twin W.M. Keck telescopes and the Gemini North and Subaru Telescopes. This is not... read more ❯

There will be an oral session on Evolution and Exploration of Asteroids tomorrow from 8am to 10am, followed by a poster session from 1:40pm to 6pm, at the AGU Fall Conference, San Francisco, CA. Ben Weiss, Linda Elkins-Tanton (both from MIT) and myself are conveners of this session. It will be chaired by A. Mainzer (JPL) and myself. I am attaching the schedule of the session below. We will discuss the recent and future space missions dedicated to the Exploration of asteroids in the main-belt, the contribution of space-based and ground-based telescopes, and new ideas on the evolution of asteroids and... read more ❯