Seeking Ceres: Following the Brave New World Through 2015

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Seeking Ceres: Following the Brave New World Through 2015

Seeking Ceres: Following the Brave New World Through 2015:

A misshapen crescent Ceres as seen from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/UCLA/DLR/IDA

A little world is making big headlines in 2015. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around 1 Ceres on March 6^th, 2015, gaving us the first stunning images of the ~900 kilometre diameter world. But whether you refer to Ceres as a dwarf planet, minor planet, or the king of the asteroid belt, this corner of the solar system’s terra incognita is finally open for exploration. It has been a long time coming, as Ceres has appeared as little more than a wandering, star-like dot in the telescopes of astronomers for over two centuries since discovery.

The orbit of 1 Ceres. Credit: NASA/JPL

And the good news is, you can observe Ceres from your backyard if you know exactly where to look for it with binoculars or a small telescope. We’ll admit, we had an ulterior motive on pulling the trigger on this post three months prior to opposition on July 24th, as Dawn will soon be exiting its ‘shadow phase’ and start unveiling the world to us up close. The first science observations for Dawn begin in mid-April.

The path of Ceres through the remainder of 2015. Credit: Starry Night Software.

Ceres spends all of 2015 looping through the constellations of Capricornus, Microscopium and Sagittarius. This places it low to the south for northern hemisphere observers on April 1^st in the early morning sky. Ceres will pass into the evening sky by mid-summer. Ceres orbits the Sun once every 4.6 years in a 10.6 degree inclination path relative to the ecliptic that takes it 2.6 AU to 3 AU from the Sun. The synodic period of Ceres is, on average, 467 days from one opposition to the next.

Ceres, Vesta and Mars group together in 2014. Image credit and copyright: Mary Spicer

Shining at magnitude +8, April 1^st finds Ceres near the Capricornus/Sagittarius border. Ceres can reach magnitude +6.7 during a favorable opposition. Note that Ceres is currently only 20 degrees east of the position of Nova Sagittarii 2015 No. 2, currently still shining at 4th magnitude. June 29th and November 25th are also great times to hunt for Ceres in 2015 as it loops less than one degree past the 4^th magnitude star Omega Capricorni.

Ceres meets up with Omega Capricorni on June 29th. Credit: Stellarium.

You can nab Ceres by carefully noting its position against the starry background from night to night, either by sketching the suspect field, or photographing the region. Fans of dwarf planets will recall that 1 Ceres and 4 Vesta fit in the same telescopic field of view last summer, and now sit 30 degrees apart. Ceres is now far below the ecliptic plane, but will resume getting occulted by the passing Moon on February 3^rd, 2017.

The Palermo transit instrument used to discover Ceres. From Della Specola Astronomica (1792)

Ceres was discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi on the first day of the 19^th century on January 1^st, 1801. Ceres was located on the Aries/Cetus border just seven degrees from Mars during discovery. Piazzi wasn’t even on the hunt for new worlds at the time, but was instead making careful positional measurements of stars with the 7.5 centimetre Palermo Circle transit telescope.

A 1802 publication by Piazzi describing his discovery of Ceres. Credit: Image in the Public Domain.

At the time, the discovery of Ceres was thought to provide predictive proof of the Titus-Bode law: here was a new planet, just where this arcane numerical spacing of the planets said it should be. Ceres, however, was soon joined by the likes of Juno, Pallas, Vesta and many more new worldlets, as astronomers soon came to realize that the solar system was not the neat and tidy place that it was imagined to be in the pre-telescopic era.

To date, the Titus-Bode law remains a mathematical curiosity, which fails to hold up to the discovery of brave new exoplanetary systems that we see beyond our own.

Piazzi’s 1801 log describing the motion of Ceres against the starry background. Credit: Monatliche Correspondenz

The view from Ceres itself would be a fascinating one, as an observer on the Cererian surface would be treated to recurrent solar transits of interior solar system worlds. Mercury would be the most frequent, followed by Venus, which transits the Sun as seen from Ceres 3 times in the 21^st century: August 1^st, 2042, November 19^th, 2058 and February 13^th 2068. Mars actually transits the Sun as seen from Ceres even earlier on June 9^th, 2033. Curiously, we found no transits of the Earth as seen from Ceres during the current millennium from 2000 to 3000 AD!

From Ceres, Jupiter would also appear 1.5’ in diameter near opposition, as opposed to paltry maximum of 50” in size as seen from the Earth. This would be just large enough for Jupiter to exhibit a tiny disk as seen from Ceres with the unaided eye. The four major Galilean moons would be visible as well.

The 2033 solar transit of Mars as seen from Ceres. Credit: Starry Night Education Software.

The mysteries of Ceres beckon. Does the world harbor cryovolcanism? Just what are those two high albedo white dots? Are there any undiscovered moons orbiting the tiny world? If a fair amount of surface ice is uncovered, Ceres may soon become a more attractive target for human exploration than Mars.

All great thoughts to ponder, as this stellar speck in the eyepiece of your backyard telescope becomes a brand new world full of exciting possibilities.

About David Dickinson

David Dickinson is an Earth science teacher, freelance science writer, retired USAF veteran & backyard astronomer. He currently writes and ponders the universe from Tampa Bay, Florida.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

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UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

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Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Sunday, April 5, 2015