Image credit: © Solarseven
Welcome to the 537th Carnival of Space! The Carnival is a community of space science and astronomy writers and bloggers, who submit their best work each week for your benefit. So now, on to this week’s stories!
First up, the Urban Astronomer podcast this week features Lee Annamalai in his capacity at the CSIR (Center for Scientific and Industrial Research), where he manages their Earth Observation ICT systems group. He spoke about plans to use nano-satellites to detect wildfires from orbit, and send alerts to the people who need to be informed. Listen to the episode here.
Next, Ken Kremer over at Universe Today presents a wonderful gallery of photos from the spectacular launch of the Orbital ATK Antares rocket earlier this week on Sunday Nov. 12 from Virginia’s eastern shore that propelled the Cygnus cargo freighter to an on time arrival two days later on Tuesday Nov. 14. Check out the story and photos here.
Then Matt Williams at Universe Today reviews a new study that shows that the super-Earth exoplanet 55 Cancri e likely has an atmosphere thicker than Earth’s but with ingredients that could be similar to those of Earth’s atmosphere. Read more about this study here.
Matt Williams also reviews the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) recent announcement that it has selected thirteen science “early release” programs, which the James Webb Space Telescope will spend its first five months in service studying. Read more about those targets here.
Finally, Matt updates us on that the first interstellar asteroid, named 1I/2017 U1 (aka. `Oumuamua) and detected on October 19th, 2017, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) telescope in Hawaii. After originally being mistaken for a comet, observations performed by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other astronomers indicated that it was actually an asteroid that measures about 400 meters (1312 ft) long. Check out more about this strange-looking asteroid here.
Thank you for all of your stories – we’ll see you next week!
And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address.
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Would you like to have the astronomical viewing notes which I compile monthly posted on this forum, and if so, how do I go about same?
Go to the web page of the Astronomical Society of Victoria to view previous editions of The Australian Night Sky (the web page versions are archived; an enhanced pdf version – also available on request in MS Word format – of the current edition is available each month),