[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4gKURcByxk[/embed]
Check out this fantastic auroral landscape movie made by the astronauts aboard the space station during a geomagnetic storm on Sept. 17 . They were flying over the southern hemisphere at the time. Notice that Orion rises upside-down from the horizon ahead. As of 6 a.m. CDT today re-entry of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is expected sometime late tomorrow afternoon Central time. The satellite will not be passing over North America during that time period. While the exact location may change, it now appears that UARS will be coming down over the South Pacific north of New Guinea. Let's hope someone will have a camera or cellphone handy to photograph the fireball, which scientists predict will be bright enough to see in daylight. Latest update HERE .
[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SshcJt0QycU[/embed]
An 2-minute flyover video taken by the Dawn spacecraft in orbit about the 330-mile diameter main belt asteroid Vesta. Part of Vesta is in shadow because it's winter in the asteroid's northern hemisphere and the north polar region is tipped away from the sun. This past week the Dawn probe returned new images and a flyover video of the asteroid Vesta. They reveal a wonderland of craters of all sizes, cliffs, grooves and mountains, including the 9-mile-high peak near the south pole, one of the highest elevations in the solar system. Of special interest are the parallel grooves that show so clearly in the movie. They could be faults or fractures related to the giant impact that excavated the large basin in the asteroid's south polar region. Similar troughs are seen on Mars' moon Phobos and the asteroid 951 Gaspra . Once-upon-a-time it was a wild, woolly world out there when impacts between asteroid-sized objects were much more common.
You can still see Vesta in binoculars these early fall nights in the southern sky in the constellation Capricornus the Sea Goat . Go out at nightfall and look high in the south for the three bright stars - Deneb, Vega and Altair - that form the Summer Triangle. A line shot from Vega through Altair and extended toward the horizon will take you to the western side of a fainter triangle of stars that comprise Capricornus.
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At the bottom of the sloppy Capricornus triangle, are two rather faint stars - Omega Capricorni and Psi (pronounced 'sye') Capricorni. From Duluth, Minnesota's latitude, they're about 15 degrees or a "fist and a half" high in the south.
Point your binoculars at these two and use the more detailed map to hop to Vesta. The asteroid is currently 7th magnitude and very easy to see in most binoculars. Half the fun is watching Vesta track eastward in Capricornus over the coming weeks. Even though it looks no different from a star, its movement betrays itself as otherwise.
