This Week in the Sky

• Mars will be at its closest to Earth until 2013.  The red planet will be in the constellation "Cancer".  Look for the bright red object well behind (to the East) the constellation of "Orion".
• Keep an eye out for the International Space Station as it makes early evening flybys this week over North America.
• Start saying goodbye to Jupiter.  The largets planet in our Solar System has been dominating the evening sky for almost half a year.  Jupiter will soon be gone from our evening sky, so get outside and check it out.

First Faculty Talk of the Semester

This Thursday and Friday at 7:30pm we are proud to present "Giant Jupiter" by Dr. Fran Bagenal of the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

A 2010 Preview of Space Science Headlines

• Now that the Hubble Space Telescope got repaired and upgraded this past year, look for Hubble to not only continue it’s stunning photography of the cosmos but to also make new observations of the early stages of the Universe.  One of the three new instruments aboard Hubble will allow astronomers to begin seeing composition and distribution of matter throughout the Universe.  This instrument called “COS” (Cosmic Origins Spectrograph) and was built by a team astronomers here at CU, lead by Dr. James Green and Dr. Mike Shull.

• The beginning of this decade marks the planned retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet.  NASA is looking to retire the aging shuttles and develop new launch vehicles that can get to the International Space station and beyond.  If you have not seen a shuttle launch in person, be sure to make that a priority of your New Years resolutions.

• NASA's new direction is called, "Flexable Path".  The hope is that by opening the doors for private companies to build launch vehicles, NASA can focus on larger scale missions.  The Flexable Path includes robotic missions and possibly humans to the Moon, Lagrangian Points or Near Earth asteroids.  Three of NASA’s seven teams selected to set the stage for our return to the moon are based here in Boulder.  One team studies formation and bombardment history of the moon, lead by Dr. Bill Bottke of Southwest Research Institute.  The second team looks at lunar dust and the tenuous atmosphere of the moon, lead by Dr. Mihaly Horanyi of CU Boulder.  The third team plans to use the moon as a cosmic shield and study the so called “Dark Ages” of the Universe, lead by Dr. Jack Burns of CU Boulder.

• Astronomers may find an Earth like planet in a distant solar system.  The Kepler Space Telescope was launched early last year with the mission of finding Earth sized planets around other stars.  To date using other telescopes we have discovered over 400 extra-solar planets.  Most of these planets are the size of Jupiter or bigger.  Currently the smallest extra-solar planet found is roughly 4-5 times the size of Earth.  Kepler will focus on looking for more of these Earth sized planets using what is know as the “Transit Method”.  LASP (the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics), located at CU Boulder's east campus provides mission operations for the Kepler Space Telescope.

 

Parking Changes due to Construction

If you are planning to visit Fiske with a large group and need Bus and/or Van parking, please call our main office (303) 492-5002 to check on the current parking situation.