Solar Eclipse Photography Is About Trial and Error, Says This Astro-Pro

Solar Eclipse Photography Is About Trial and Error, Says This Astro-Pro:

The progression of the 2015 total solar eclipse, imaged from Svalbard, Norway, by astrophotographer Kevin Morefield.

Credit: Kevin Morefield

When Kevin Morefield was young, he wanted to be a sports or nature photographer.

"I wanted to work for Sports Illustrated or National Geographic," he told Space.com. "But only like, 20 people in the world have those jobs, so I got into finance instead."

That day job allowed him to pursue astrophotography as a hobby. Now retired, his photographs have appeared in magazines like Sky and Telescope and the Atlantic, and have won him multiple "Image of the Day" awards from various online outlets. His Instagram feed shows some of his work on deep-sky objects (nebulae, galaxies and the like), planets and eclipse shots. [Total Solar Eclipse 2017: When, Where and How to See It (Safely)]

Morefield said learning to get good shots of an eclipse involves a certain amount of trial and error. During one eclipse, he taped solar filters to his camera lens for the partial eclipse and then pulled them off at the start of totality (when the moon fully covers the disk of the sun).

Kevin Morefield learned how to photograph astronomical objects in his spare time, through lots of trial and error. Morefield pictures here with an automated telescope, which he can operate with his phone or PC, that he uses to capture night-sky images

Credit: Kevin Morefield


"When it came time to take the filters off, I pulled [the camera] out of focus," he said. Morefield had set up an automated system to snap photos during totality, so he didn’t look through the lens and didn't realize his mistake until it was too late. The images were lost, but Morefield said he also had a video camera running. [Best Gear for Taking Photos of the Solar Eclipse]

"I thought I had it on video and I ran back the tape — in 2010, HD digital video still shot on tape — and I saw I had it," he said. "Then the mayor wants to come up and talk and I took video of that and I [later] found I'd taped over it."

One tip Morefield offers for people photographing eclipses: Make sure the camera is in focus during the partial phases. Shoot through a solar filter — otherwise the sunlight will just wash out the picture (and potentially damage your equipment and eyes) — and focus on the edges of the sun. He added that making sure the exposure time is set appropriately is also key, because catching the relatively dim corona (the sun's outer atmosphere) during totality will require different settings than a filtered shot of the partial phase. Lastly, a tracking mount — one that follows the sun across the sky — is essential for close-in shots of the sun.

A two panel mosaic of the Orion Nebula (M42) on the right and the Running Man Nebula (sh2-279) on the left, taken by astrophotographer Kevin Morefield. The image required a total of 18 hours of exposures.

Credit: Kevin Morefield


Automation is also helpful, Morefield said. He currently uses a Canon 6D and generally shoots pictures at an ISO, or "film speed," of 400. The camera also allows for pre-programming sequences of shots with varying exposure times and apertures (not every model of digital SLR has that feature).  [How to Film or Photograph the 2017 Solar Eclipse Like a Pro]

When watching an eclipse — especially a total solar eclipse — most experts recommend focusing on what's happening in the sky rather than fiddling with a camera. On his earlier eclipse shoots, Morefield used a remote shutter release and a tracking mount for that reason.

"[Photography] is not distracting, but I automate a lot," he said. There are even programs that one can download specifically for eclipse photography, such as Eclipse Orchestrator. (For his part, Morefield will be running a program that takes hundreds of images.)

At the same time, Morefield said it's important to think through what you want to accomplish with an eclipse photograph. While it's possible to take close-ups of the sun to capture the corona or other eclipse-related phenomena, it's also not a bad idea to use a wide-angle lens to capture what's happening around you. [The Best 2017 Solar Eclipse Live Video Streams ]

"You might try to get what's going on with people and the sky and the ground," Morefield said. "Like, the diffraction pattern you see on the ground that lasts 3 or 4 seconds. With a superwide angle, you're more likely to see the shadow bands. Or, one could look for projected images of the eclipse made by ordinary objects. A straw hat or leafy tree, for instance, produces dozens of tiny, projected images that can create interesting shots."

When photographing cosmic events, should sometimes it's good to focus on the ground as well as the sky, said astrophotographer Kevin Morefield. Shown here, a shot by Morefield of the northern lights over Svalbard, Norway, in 2015, and a crowd of skywatchers viewing the light show.

Credit: Kevin Morefield


Morefield outlined how he will be taking his pictures during the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse. His program, he said, starts about a minute before first contact (when the moon begins to overlap the sun). About half of the pictures will be taken during totality, which will last for just over 2.5 minutes in his viewing location. The exposure times will range from 1/1600 of a second to 2 seconds.

Before he takes off the solar filter, he will check the camera's focus. Before totality, Morefield says he typically uses a 1/1600 speed and f/8 aperture setting. He pulls off his solar filter when the "Baily's beads" and "diamond ring" effects appear: these are the last spots of light visible on the edge of the moon before the sun's disk is fully hidden.

During the diamond ring phase, Morefield said the corona begins to become visible. He said he uses "bracketed exposure" while imaging the diamond ring, which means taking several pictures at different shutter speeds.

"I'll use a combination of three or so exposures in the diamond ring phase, with exposures also at 1/25 to 1/800," he said. For "Baily's beads, he uses1/4000 to 1/8000" exposure times.

His first exposures of totality will be short, and they will get longer with each shot.

A "diamond ring," which occurs seconds before or after totality during a total solar eclipse, captured by Kevin Morefield.

Credit: Kevin Morefield


Morefield's adventures with eclipse photography started in 2002, but his interest was piqued before that. He grew up looking at the sky through his home telescope and saw a partial solar eclipse over his home in the 1970s. Amazed by pictures of total solar eclipses, seeing one in person became like a "holy grail." He finally planned a trip with his father to see the total solar eclipse over Australia in 2002.

"We had to fly 24 hours to get to Adelaide to drive on the wrong side of the road," Morefield said of the trip. "When we got there, it was with a group of like 1,500 other people … from all over the world."

Seeing a total solar eclipse with such an international group was "a little bit like the Olympics, where people put aside all their differences," Morefield said. "Totality was 27 seconds long and the minute it was over, everybody's like, 'It was worth it.' It's really an emotional experience."

Follow Jesse Emspak on Twitter @Mad_Science_Guy. Follow us @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+. Original story on Space.com. 

Eclipses Were Regarded As Omens in the Ancient World

Eclipses Were Regarded As Omens in the Ancient World:

A solar eclipse observed over Grand Canyon National Park in May 2012.

Credit: Grand Canyon National Park

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

On Monday, Aug. 21, people living in the continental United States will be able to see a total solar eclipse.

Humans have been alternatively amused, puzzled, bewildered and sometimes even terrified at the sight of this celestial phenomenon. A range of social and cultural reactions accompanies the observation of an eclipse. In ancient Mesopotamia (roughly modern Iraq), eclipses were in fact regarded as omens, as signs of things to come.

Solar and lunar eclipses

For an eclipse to take place, three celestial bodies must find themselves in a straight line within their elliptic orbits. This is called a syzygy, from the Greek word "súzugos," meaning yoked or paired.

Solar lunar eclipse diagram.

Credit: Tomruen (Own work)/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA


From our viewpoint on Earth, there are two kinds of eclipses: solar and lunar. In a solar eclipse, the moon passes in between the sun and Earth, which results in blocking our view of the sun. In a lunar eclipse, it is the moon that crosses through the shadow of the Earth. A solar eclipse can completely block our view of the sun, but it is usually a brief event and can be observed only in certain areas of the Earth's surface; what can be viewed as a total eclipse in one's hometown may just be a partial eclipse a few hundred miles away.

By contrast, a lunar eclipse can be viewed throughout an entire hemisphere of the Earth: the half of the surface of the planet that happens to be on the night side at the time.

Eclipses as omens

More than two thousand years ago, the Babylonians were able to calculate that there were 38 possible eclipses or syzygys within a period of 223 months: that is, about 18 years. This period of 223 months is called a Saros cycle by modern astronomers, and a sequence of eclipses separated by a Saros cycle constitutes a Saros series.

Although scientists now know that the number of lunar and solar eclipses is not exactly the same in every Saros series, one cannot underplay the achievement of Babylonian scholars in understanding this astronomical phenomenon. Their realization of this cycle eventually allowed them to predict the occurrence of an eclipse.

The level of astronomical knowledge achieved in ancient Babylonia (southern Mesopotamia) cannot be separated from the astrological tradition that regarded eclipses as omens: Astronomy and astrology were then two sides of the same coin.

Rituals to preempt royal fate

According to Babylonian scholars, eclipses could foretell the death of the king. The conditions for an omen to be considered as such were not simple. For instance, according to a famous astronomical work known by its initial words, "Enūma Anu Enlil" – "When (the gods) Anu and Enlil" – if Jupiter was visible during the eclipse, the king was safe. Lunar eclipses seem to have been of particular concern for the well-being and survival of the king.

In order to preempt the monarch's fate, a mechanism was devised: the "substitute king ritual," or "šar pūhi." There are over 30 mentions of this ritual in various letters from Assyria (northern Mesopotamia), dating to the first millennium B.C. Earlier references to a similar late chronicle, a king of the city of Isin (modern Išān Bahrīyāt, about 125 miles to the southeast of Baghdad), Erra-imitti, was replaced by a gardener called Enlil-bani as part of a substitute king ritual. Luckily for this gardener, the real king died while eating hot soup, so the gardener remained on the throne and became king for good.

The fact is that these two kings, Erra-imitti and Enlil-bani, did exist and reigned successively in Isin during the 19th century B.C. The story, however, as told in the late "Chronicle of Early Kings," bears all the trademarks of a legend. The story was probably devised to explain a dynastic switch, in which the royal office passed from one family or lineage to another, instead of following the usual father-son line of succession.

Looking for meaning in the skies

A lunar eclipse.

Credit: Neil Saunders, CC BY-NC-ND


Mesopotamia was not unique in this regard. For instance, a chronicle of early China known as the "Bamboo Annals" (竹書紀年 Zhúshū Jìnián) refers to a total lunar eclipse that took place in 1059 B.C., during the reign of the last king of the Shang dynasty. This eclipse was regarded as a sign by a vassal king, Wen of the Zhou dynasty, to challenge his Shang overlord.

In the later account contained in the "Bamboo Annals," an eclipse would have triggered the political and military events that marked the transition from the Shang to the Zhou dynasty in ancient China. As in the case of the Babylonian "Chronicle of Early Kings," the "Bamboo Annals" are a history of earlier periods compiled at a later time. The "Bamboo Annals" were allegedly found in a tomb about A.D. 280, but they purport to date to the reign of the King Xiang of Wei, who died in 296 B.C.

The complexity of human events is rarely constrained and determined by one single factor. Nevertheless, whether in ancient Mesopotamia or in early China, eclipses and other omens provided contemporary justifications, or after-the-fact explanations, for an entangled set of variables that decided a specific course of history.

Even if they mix astronomy and astrology, or history with legend, humans have been preoccupied with the inescapable anomaly embodied by an eclipse for as long as they have looked at the sky.

Gonzalo Rubio, Associate Professor of Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies, History, and Asian Studies, Pennsylvania State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. 

Solar Eclipse 2017: What You Can (and Can't) See in New York City

Solar Eclipse 2017: What You Can (and Can't) See in New York City:

A partial solar eclipse is seen just after sunrise over the Queens borough of New York across the East River on Nov. 3, 2013.

Credit: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty

NEW YORK — New York City isn't in the "path of totality," but millions of New Yorkers will be able to see a partial solar eclipse on Aug. 21 — and it's totally worth checking out, local astrophysicist and science celebrity Neil deGrasse Tyson said yesterday (Aug. 14) in a briefing at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).

Skywatchers along a narrow path from Oregon to South Carolina will see skies darken during the total solar eclipse. But the rest of the U.S. will still have a pretty cool view of this astronomical event using solar eclipse glasses or some type of pinhole projector.

In New York City, the partial eclipse will begin at 1:23 p.m. local time, when the moon first appears to touch the sun in the sky. "It starts to look like the Death Star is moving in front of the sun," Jackie Faherty, senior scientist and education manager at AMNH, said during the briefing. The museum will host an eclipse-watching event. [Amazing Solar Eclipse Pictures from Around the World]

By 2:44 p.m., the moon will block about 72 percent of the sun's surface as the partial eclipse reaches its maximum. Then, the cusps of the crescent-shaped sun will appear to be pointing downward, Joe Rao, FiOS1 meteorologist and Space.com columnist, said during the briefing. After the maximum eclipse, the moon will slowly begin to slide off the sun's face, and the eclipse will end at 4 p.m.

Although the skies won't darken beneath a partial eclipse in the same way that total solar eclipses briefly turn day into night, those who are paying attention may still notice some environmental changes during the partial eclipse, Rao said. He quoted American astronomer Leslie Peltier, who described his experience while watching a 75 percent partial eclipse in Delphos, Ohio, in 1918:

"At mid-eclipse, I turned away and looked about. Everything I saw — the nearby fields, the distant vistas — all seemed wrapped in some strange, unearthly early twilight. The sky seemed darker, shadows sharp and distinct. A cool wind — almost chilly — had sprung up from the West."

The partial eclipse over New York on Aug. 21 will have about the same magnitude as Peltier's partial eclipse and should bring a similar experience, Rao said. "If we're lucky enough to have clear weather here in New York at 2:44 next Monday afternoon, I have a feeling that's pretty much what we're going to see in the New York metropolitan area."

Rao equated a partial solar eclipse to a flashlight with low batteries. While the light still shines, it's not as bright as a flashlight with full batteries, and the light looks "almost yellowish" in color. "That's kind of like what it will be like next week at the midpoint of the eclipse," he said. "There's going to be a certain amount of yellowness in the air along with that dimming or diminishing twilight for a few minutes around the peak."

So, if you're in the city around the peak of the partial eclipse, don't forget to step outside and check it out. Solar eclipse glasses are the best way to see the partial eclipse, and you can still find them in stores around the city. AMNH will provide safe viewing glasses to visitors at the Hayden Planetarium's special event. But if you can't get the glasses in time and can't make it to the museum, Tyson has a great alternative that most New Yorkers can find in their own homes.

"Go into your kitchen and get a spaghetti strainer or a colander," Tyson said. "Not with mesh, the kind with holes in it. Go outside and hold that up over the ground. Each one of those holes will act as a pinhole camera and you'll see hundreds of images of the crescent sun on the ground and you can watch the eclipse unfold safely…that's the urban version of watching the pinhole camera images through the modeled light of sunlight passing through the leaves of a tree. It'll just be fun." So if you happen to be near any tree during the partial eclipse, check out their shadows and look for the tiny eclipse projections on the ground.

There's really no excuse for missing out on this celestial event, whether you're lucky enough to be in the path of totality, or if only a partial solar eclipse is heading your way. "It won't happen that often in your lifetime that you can walk outside of your own house and watch even a partial happen," Faherty said. The next time any type of solar eclipse will be visible over New York will be during a partial annular eclipse in 2021.

Editor's note: Find out how the solar eclipse will look from your location — Space.com has teamed up with Simulation Curriculum to offer this awesome Eclipse Safari app to help you enjoy your eclipse experience. The free app is available for Apple and Android, and you can view it on the web. If you take an amazing photo of the Aug. 21 solar eclipse, let us know! Send photos and comments to spacephotos@space.com.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Opportunity: Longest-Running Mars Rover

Opportunity: Longest-Running Mars Rover:

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used its panoramic camera (Pancam) during the mission's sols 1282 and 1284 (Sept. 2 and Sept. 4, 2007) to take the images combined into this mosaic view of the rover. The downward-looking view omits the mast on which the camera is mounted. Image released Feb. 17, 2012.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

Opportunity is a rover that has been working on Mars since January 2004. Originally intended to last 90 days, the machine is still trekking after 13 years on the Red Planet. In 2015, it passed a driving milestone, reaching more than a marathon's worth of distance (26.2 miles, or 42.1 kilometers) – and the rover keeps racking up driving time.

Lately, however, it has been showing its age. In 2014 and early 2015, NASA made several attempts to restore Opportunity's flash memory capabilities after the rover experienced problems. Flash memory allows the rover to store information even when it is powered off. In 2015, NASA decided to continue most operations with random-access memory instead, which keeps data only when the power in the rover is on. At the time, NASA said the only change to operations will be requiring Opportunity to send high-priority data right away, as it cannot be stored if the rover is turned off.

That said, the mission has been extremely productive on the Red Planet. Opportunity has explored two large craters — Victoria and Endeavour — among many other locations. Along the way, the rover has found multiple signs of water — while surviving a sand trap and bad dust storm.

Making an orphan's dream come true

Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, received their names from 9-year-old Sofi Collis. She was the winner of a naming contest NASA held (with assistance from the Planetary Society and sponsorship from Lego) to find monikers for the Mars Exploration Rovers. Siberian-born Collis was adopted at age 2 and came to live with her new family in Scottsdale, Arizona.

"I used to live in an orphanage," Collis wrote in her winning essay. "It was dark and cold and lonely. At night, I looked up at the sparkly sky and felt better. I dreamed I could fly there. In America, I can make all my dreams come true. Thank you for the 'Spirit' and the 'Opportunity.'"

The Mars Exploration Rovers launched in 2003 on a 283-million-mile (455.4 million kilometers) journey to hunt for water on Mars. The $800-million cost for the two of them covered a suite of science instruments. Site survey tools included a panoramic camera, as well as a mini-thermal emission spectrometer that was supposed to search for signs of heat. Each rover also had a small arm with tools such as spectrometers and a microscopic imager.

Cruise to Mars

Opportunity left Earth July 7, 2003, aboard a Delta II rocket en route to a landing site at the Martian equator called Meridiani Planum. NASA was intrigued by a layer of hematite that the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spotted from above. As hematite (an iron oxide) often forms in a spot that had liquid water, NASA was curious about how the water got there in the first place and where the water went.

The 384-pound rover made its final approach to Mars on Jan. 25, 2004. It plowed through the Martian atmosphere, popped out a parachute and then vaulted to the surface in a cocoon of airbags.

Opportunity rolled to a stop inside a shallow crater just 66 feet (20 meters) across, delighting scientists as the first pictures beamed back from the Red Planet. "We have scored a 300-million mile interplanetary hole-in-one," quipped Cornell University's Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the rover's science instruments, in a press release in the days after the landing.

Early sols of science

Opportunity and Spirit (which had landed successfully three weeks earlier, on Jan. 3, 2004) had a primary goal to "follow the water" during their time on Mars. They would hunt for any environments that showed evidence of water activity, particularly looking for minerals that may have been left behind after water came through.

Both rovers met that goal quickly. In early March, just six weeks after landing, Opportunity identified a rock outcrop that showed evidence of a liquid past. The rocks at "Guadalupe" had sulfates as well as crystals inside of niches, which are both signs of water. Spirit found water evidence of its own that same week.

Two weeks later, Opportunity found hematite inside some small spheres that NASA dubbed "blueberries" because of their size and shape. Using a spectrometer, Opportunity found evidence of iron inside a group of berries when comparing it to the bare, underlying rock.

The month wasn't yet over when Opportunity discovered more evidence of water, this time from images of a rock outcrop that probably formed from a deposit of saltwater in the ancient past. Chlorine and bromine found in the rocks helped solidify the theory.

It was a positive start to Opportunity's mission — and it hadn't even left the crater where it had landed yet. Before Opportunity's 90-day prime mission was over, the golf-cart size rover clambered out of Eagle Crater and ventured to its next science target about half a mile away: Endurance Crater. It spotted more water signs there in October.

Stuck in the sand

One of Opportunity's most dangerous moments came in 2005, when the rover was mired in the sand for five weeks. NASA had put the rover into a "blind drive" on April 26, 2005, meaning the rover was not checking for obstacles as it went. Opportunity then plowed into a 12-inch-high (30 cm) sand dune, where the six-wheeled rover initially had trouble getting out.

To save the stranded rover, NASA ran tests on a model of the rover in a simulated Martian "sandbox" at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Based on what they learned in the sandbox, the rover drivers then sent a series of commands to Opportunity. It took the rover about 629 feet (191 meters) of wheel rotations before it was able to move forward three feet, but it cut itself free in early June 2005.

NASA chose to move the rover forward in more careful increments, which was especially important because Opportunity lost the full use of its right-front wheel (because of a seized steering motor) just days before it got stuck in the sand. The rover could still move around just fine with its other three steerable wheels, NASA said.

Opportunity's experience in the sand came in handy in October 2005, when NASA detected unusual traction problems on Sol 603. Just 16 feet into a planned 148-foot drive, a slip check system on board automatically stopped the rover when it went past a programmed limit. Two Martian days later, Opportunity backed itself out of the problem and kept on going.

Victoria Crater

In late September 2006, Opportunity wheeled up to Victoria Crater after 21 months on the road. It circled the rim for a few months snapping pictures and getting a close look at some layered rocks surrounding the crater. NASA then made a gutsy decision in June 2007 to take Opportunity inside the crater. It was a risk to the rover as it might not have been able to climb up again, but NASA said the science was worth it.

"The scientific allure is the chance to examine and investigate the compositions and textures of exposed materials in the crater's depths for clues about ancient, wet environments," NASA stated in a press release. "As the rover travels farther down the slope, it will be able to examine increasingly older rocks in the exposed walls of the crater."

The trek down was interrupted by a severe dust storm in July 2007. Opportunity's power-generating capabilities dropped by 80 percent in only one week as its solar panels became covered in dust. Late in the month, Opportunity's power dipped to critical levels. NASA worried the rover would stop working, but Opportunity pulled through.

It wasn't until late August that the skies cleared enough for Opportunity to resume work and head into the crater. Opportunity spent about a year wandering through Victoria Crater, getting an up-close look at the layers on the bottom and figuring that these were likely shaped by water.

Opportunity climbed out successfully in August 2008 and began a gradual journey to Endeavour, an incredible 13 miles (21 km) away. It took about three years to get there, as the rover was stopping to look at interesting science targets on the way. But Opportunity successfully arrived in August 2011.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity completed a drive on July 17 that took the vehicle's total driving distance on Mars past 20 miles.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Exploring Endeavour, and memory resets

Opportunity's water history examinations continued at Endeavour, with one example being a 2013 probe of a rock called “Esperance.” The rock not only has clay minerals produced by water, but there was enough of the liquid to "flush out ions set loose by those reactions," stated Opportunity long-term planned Scott McLennan of the State University of New York, at the time.

By mid-year 2014, however, Opportunity was experiencing problems with its aging memory. The rover used Flash memory to store information when it went into hibernation during the Martian nights, which take place about as frequently as they do on Earth.

Controllers did a remote memory wipe from Earth, but memory issues and resets continued to plague the rover through the end of the year. Eventually, officials elected to stop using Flash memory, move storage over to random access memory (RAM) instead, and find a way to address the problem more thoroughly. In 2015, NASA decided to use RAM in most situations, which requires Opportunity to send high-priority data right away as the information cannot be stored if the rover is off.

Despite these issues, Opportunity continues rolling on the Red Planet. It set an off-world driving record in July 2014 when it successfully passed 25.01 miles (40.2 kilometers), exceeding the distance from the Soviet Union's remote-controlled lunar Lunokhod 2 rover in 1973. In March 2015, it passed another huge milestone: completing a marathon on Mars.

The rover successfully imaged Comet Siding Spring when the celestial body sped fairly close to Mars in October 2014. In January 2015, Opportunity took pictures from a "high point" on the rim of Endeavour, about 440 feet (134 feet) above the surrounding crater floor. In March 2015, NASA announced that the rover – while overlooking an area nicknamed "Marathon Valley" – had seen some rocks with a composition unlike others studied by Spirit or Opportunity; one of the features was high concentrations of aluminum and silicon.

After working through a Martian winter, in March 2016, Opportunity tackled its steepest slope ever — reaching a tilt of 32 degrees — while trying to reach a target on "Knudsen Ridge" inside Marathon Valley. As engineers watched the rover's wheels slip in the sand, they decided (with some reluctance) to skip the target and move to the next thing.

NASA announced it was wrapping up operations in Marathon Valley in June 2016, and added that Opportunity recently got a close-up look of "red-toned, crumbly material" on the southern slope of the valley. Opportunity scuffed some of this material with a wheel, revealing material with some of the highest sulfur content seen on Mars. NASA said the scuff had strong evidence of magnesium sulfate, a substance expected to precipitate from water.

As of August 2017, Opportunity was in a location called "Perseverance Valley" on the rim of Endeavour Crater, and the rover had traveled 27.95 miles (44.97 kilometers).

Additional resources

OS SUMÉRIOS, OS TITÃS E OS DEUSES ANUNNAKIS DO PLANETA NEBIRU

Alienígenas que viveram no passado

The Amazing Mechanics of How and When Solar Eclipses Occur

The Amazing Mechanics of How and When Solar Eclipses Occur:

A solar eclipse makes a striking impression on the sky for those in its path — but how and when does it happen?

Credit: Robin Cordiner

As we are now less than a week away from "The Great American Eclipse" on Aug. 21, there will be countless articles appearing in newspapers, magazines and online talking about what causes a solar eclipse. I can remember as a young boy, not quite 7 years of age, having my grandfather explain the mechanics of what causes an eclipse using a salt shaker (for the moon), a pepper shaker (for Earth) and his fist for the sun.

By lining them up and placing the salt shaker between the pepper shaker and his fist, my grandfather explained that when such a lineup occurs in space, the moon will "get in the sun's way" and block out some or all of it, producing an eclipse of the sun.

Of course, there is a lot more to it than this. Just when, for example, do these alignments take place? [Total Solar Eclipse 2017: When, Where and How to See It (Safely)]

Eclipse seasons

If the moon orbited Earth in the same orbital plane in which Earth orbits the sun, an eclipse of the sun and an eclipse of the moon would each happen every month. But the moon's orbit is tilted slightly relative to that of Earth: by 5.15 degrees. As a result, at new moon phase, from our earthly vantage point, the moon usually appears to pass either above or below the sun in our sky and the moon's shadow misses Earth.

If the new moon crosses directly in front of the sun, then we have an eclipse (or as my grandfather would have said, "the moon will get in the sun's way"). In fact, when we see its silhouette in front of the sun, it's the only new moon that we can actually "see."

The accompanying table lists the eclipses for 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Three Years of Eclipses

Notice that the dates are not distributed randomly throughout the year, but are grouped at approximately half-year intervals. We cannot, for example, have an eclipse in September and another in December. For 2017, these "eclipse seasons" are in February and August.

Celestial crossing point

In our sky, there is an imaginary line that we call the ecliptic. That is the line that marks Earth's orbital path around the sun. The sun always remains on that ecliptic line, while the moon wanders above and below the ecliptic as a result of its orbital inclination. When the moon crosses the ecliptic — that is, when it reaches that point in its orbit where it passes through Earth's orbital plane — we call that point a "node." An eclipse can only occur when a new or full moon is near a node. On Aug. 21, the moon is new only about 8 hours after arriving at its ascending node, and the alignment of the moon and sun is good enough for a total eclipse. When we speak of an "ascending" node, that is the point where the moon crosses the ecliptic going from south to north. On Monday, that particular point will be in the constellation Leo, while the descending node is in Capricornus.

Now, go back and look at the table again. Note that the eclipse seasons occur a few weeks earlier each year. This is because the nodes are not stationary points at all. They move slowly westward, or "regress," along the ecliptic while the moon's inclination remains almost unchanged. This regression of the moon's nodes takes 18.6 years for one complete circuit; a complete nodal cycle. If, on the other hand, the orientation of the moon's orbit were fixed, then the eclipse seasons would come at the same time every year. [Science-Savvy Grandparents Explain Solar Eclipse in New Children's Book]

Earth versus sun: Moon caught in the middle

We can thank the gravitational tug-of-war between Earth and the sun for the changes wrought on the moon's orbital motion. Earth, of course, has greater influence on the moon because it is much closer to it than the sun. However, the sun still manages to perturb the lunar orbit in many other ways.

Along with the continual turning of the moon's orbital plane, even when the moon passes squarely across the face of the sun, the eclipse in question might not necessarily be total but annular; because the moon travels around the Earth in an elliptical orbit, it sometimes can be too far away from Earth for its dark umbral shadow to touch down on Earth's surface. The result? An annulus, or ring of sunlight that remains in view around the moon's silhouette. The major axis of the ellipse (the technical term is the line of the apsides) is also perturbed by the sun, and rotates eastward in the orbit plane in 8.85 years. Each month the dates of apogee (the moon's farthest point from Earth) and perigee (its closest point) occur a few days earlier relative to the dates of the moon's phases.

And just as the moon orbits Earth in an elliptical orbit, so does Earth similarly orbit the sun. We get as close as 91.4 million miles in early January and pull as far away as 94.5 million miles in early July. The difference amounts to less than 3.5 percent, but the sun's gravitational attraction varies inversely as the square of the distance, in this case about 7 percent. This annual oscillation in the sun's gravitation pull causes a perturbation in the moon's orbit known as the annual equation, and causes the moon to be slightly ahead of schedule from July to January and slightly behind at other times.

The sun not only alters the orientation of the moon's orbit, however, but also its shape; a perturbation called the evection. Also, because the moon is about a half million miles closer to the sun at new moon compared to full moon, the moon runs slightly ahead between new and first-quarter phases, and again between full and last quarter, an irregularity known as the variation. [Astronauts on the Space Station Will See the Solar Eclipse 3 Times]

Calculation complexities

You might think that these ever-so-slight differences in the motion of the moon have only been recently discovered, but, believe it or not, both the annual equation and the variation were known to the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe around the year 1600. The invention of the telescope was still a decade or so into the future, so Tycho used naked-eye instruments. Tycho was an assiduous observer of the sky, and was able to detect minute variations in the movements of the moon and the planets. And knowledge of the evection was known some 2,000 years ago to ancient Greek astronomers such as Ptolemy and Hipparchus.

Countless other minor perturbations come from factors such as the shape of Earth and the gravitational pulls from the other planets that can cause slight changes in the motion of the moon. Is it any wonder, then, that British mathematician and astronomer Ernest W. Brown, who devoted his life to studying the motion of the moon and putting together lunar tables, once commented that the time spent taking into account all of these planetary effects was liked "playing three-dimensional chess blindfolded."

So, as you watch the moon slowly cross in front of the sun on Monday, think back to this article and consider all the things that went into the calculation of this amazing celestial event.

Editor's note: Space.com has teamed up with Simulation Curriculum to offer this awesome Eclipse Safari app to help you enjoy your eclipse experience. The free app is available for Apple and Android, and you can view it on the web.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers' Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for Fios1 News in Rye Brook, New York. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

From Exoplanets to Galaxies: NASA Chooses 6 Missions for Further Study

From Exoplanets to Galaxies: NASA Chooses 6 Missions for Further Study:

NASA has selected six astrophysics proposals for concept studies under the agency's Explorers Program.

Credit: NASA

Six astrophysics programs selected for further study by NASA have science goals across the universe, ranging from exoplanets to galaxies.

This round of choices for NASA's Explorers Program, announced Aug. 9, includes three Explorer missions ($250 million each) and three missions of opportunity ($70 million each).

Each team has the chance to do a concept study. Scientific evaluations will be performed on each study, then NASA will select one Explorer mission and one mission of opportunity to fund in 2019. The expected launch dates would fall in 2022. [The Biggest Space Missions to Watch in 2017]

The three mission proposals (each receiving $2 million for the concept study), according to a NASA statement, are:

• Arcus. The mission would look at stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters with X-ray spectroscopy. The goal is to learn more about the gas around these objects, as well as how the gas and the objects interact. The principal investigator is Randall Smith, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Massachusetts.
• Fast INfrared Exoplanet Spectroscopy Survey Explorer (FINESSE). This mission would study how planets are formed, their climate, and the origins and evolution of their atmospheres. Its goal is to get information about at least 500 exoplanets, ranging from super-Earths to gas giants. The principal investigator is Mark Swain, an exoplanet scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
• Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx). This mission would image the sky in near-infrared wavelengths. This will reveal information about the beginnings of the universe, how galaxies formed and evolved, and would help reveal if other planets have life. The principal investigator is James Bock, an experimental cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology.

The three missions of opportunity (each receiving $500,000 for the concept study) are:

• Compton Spectrometer and Imager Explorer (COSI-X). This is a telescope that would be mounted in a balloon. The telescope would look at the sky in gamma-ray wavelengths. Its goal is to examine antimatter around the Milky Way's center and radioactive elements from supernovas (star explosions). The principal investigator is Steven Boggs, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley.
• Transient Astrophysics Observer on the International Space Station (ISS-TAO). This is an X-ray detector for the International Space Station whose primary goal is to look for X-rays that form when neutron stars merge with black holes or other neutron stars. It would also search for supernova shocks, neutron star bursts and gamma-ray bursts. The principal investigator is Jordan Camp, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
• Contribution to ARIEL Spectroscopy of Exoplanets (CASE). This would provide fine-guidance detectors for the proposed Atmospheric Remote Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-Survey (ARIEL) mission, which is led by the European Space Agency. ARIEL's main goal is to look at the wavelengths of light emitted by exoplanets, ranging from super-Earths to gas giants. CASE can proceed only if NASA selects it and if ESA decides to go ahead with ARIEL. The principal investigator is Swain.

Explorers is NASA's longest-running program. Its first mission was Explorer 1 in 1958, which also was the first U.S. satellite. Explorer 1 discovered the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth. More than 90 missions have run under the program, including the Uhuru and Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) missions that led to Nobel Prizes for their investigators.

"The Explorers Program brings out some of the most creative ideas for missions to help unravel the mysteries of the universe," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate, said in the statement. "The program has resulted in great missions that have returned transformational science, and these selections promise to continue that tradition."

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. 

Deadline for Google Lunar X Prize Moon Race Extended Through March 2018

Deadline for Google Lunar X Prize Moon Race Extended Through March 2018:

Artist’s illustration showing Moon Express’ MX-1E spacecraft descending toward the lunar surface carrying a suite of science and exploration instruments. Florida-based Moon Express is one of five teams left in the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize.

Credit: Moon Express

The five teams left in a $30 million race to the moon now have a bit more time to accomplish their missions — and the chance to win some additional money along the way.

The Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP) is offering $20 million to the first privately funded team that soft-lands a spacecraft on the moon, moves it at least 1,640 feet (500 meters), and transmits high-definition photos and video back to Earth. The second team to complete those tasks gets $5 million, and another $5 million is available for a variety of other accomplishments, bringing the total purse to $30 million.

GLXP guidelines had stated that teams must launch by Dec. 31 of this year to be eligible for the grand or second-place prize. But that has changed: Teams now must complete their missions by March 31, 2018, and the launch date is not a factor anymore, GLXP representatives said today (Aug. 16). [Google Lunar X Prize: The Private Moon Race Teams (Images)]

Contest organizers are dangling an additional $4.75 million in new "milestone prizes" as well: $1.75 million for arriving at the moon (descending directly to the surface or completing at least one lunar orbit) and $3 million for proof of a soft lunar landing.

This money will be split evenly among all the teams that pull off the feats, GLXP representatives said. (Milestone prizes count toward, and do not boost, the total purse of a team that wins the grand or second prize. For example, if one team alone claims the $4.75 million for arrival and proof of landing, and it also later wins the grand prize, its purse will still be $20 million, not $24.75 million.)  

"X Prize and Google are thrilled to offer these additional in-space milestone prizes as a further incentive for finalist teams and to recognize the full gravity of these bold technological feats taking place in the race to the moon," GLXP Senior Director Chanda Gonzales-Mowrer said in a statement.

The five teams left in the competition — out of more than two dozen that have vied for the prize at some point over the last decade — are Florida-based Moon Express, Israel's SpaceIL, Hakuto from Japan, India-based TeamIndus and the international collaboration Synergy Moon.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Total View: A Brief History of Solar Eclipses Seen From Space

Total View: A Brief History of Solar Eclipses Seen From Space:

NASA astronaut Don Pettit photographed his second total solar eclipse from space as an Expedition 31 flight engineer on the International Space Station on May 20, 2012. The space station's solar array wings can be seen in the foreground.

Credit: NASA

Don Pettit has never looked up to see a total solar eclipse. Twice, though, he has looked down.

As a past crew member on the International Space Station, Pettit is among the few astronauts and cosmonauts to have witnessed an eclipse from space. On Monday (Aug. 21), he will witness his first total solar eclipse from the ground.

"This is going to be a real pleasure, because I have seen two total solar eclipses from space and I haven't seen any from the Earth," Pettit said in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "This will be my first total solar eclipse seen from Earth.” [Gallery: Astronauts and Cosmonauts Solar Eclipse Photos From Space]

Not many people in history can say that. In fact, less than 20 individuals out of the more than 550 who have launched to space since 1961 have been off the planet and in the right position to see the moon pass in front of the sun. And whereas that sight usually inspires people to look up toward the sky, for Pettit and his fellow astronaut eclipse viewers, the real opportunity was to be able to look down.

"I like to focus on what is the unique aspect of being in orbit for a solar eclipse and it is not looking up at the sun, it is looking down at the Earth and seeing this wide-field view of Earth impossible to see from any other viewpoint," Pettit explained. "Even those on board airplanes cannot see it all. From orbit, you can see structure on Earth for the length scale of half a continent and there is no other way you can get that perspective."

"You can read about all the shadow effects that the astronomers worked out over 200 years ago, the umbra and penumbra and all of this stuff," he continued. "And these guys never got to see it projected on Earth, but they were good enough with their math to be able to mathematically describe what the shadows were going to be like and then you could measure the progression of the shadow from a point on Earth. But nobody had ever seen it before in its entirety."

"The astronomers were never able to observe the moon's shadow from an orbital viewpoint, but they got it exactly right. It looks exactly like what they said it should look like," said Pettit.

The first total solar eclipse seen from space, as photographed by Gemini 12 crewmates Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin on Nov. 12, 1966. The boom seen in the foreground is the antenna on an Agena target vehicle docked to the Gemini spacecraft.

Credit: NASA

Between the Earth, moon and Sun

The first astronauts to pass between Earth and the moon and sun were NASA's Gemini 12 crew. On Nov. 12, 1966, as the path of totality fell over South America, Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin maneuvered their spacecraft so as to be able to catch the spectacle.

"Well, we hit the eclipse right on the money," reported Lovell to Mission Control, after photographing the view looking up at the sun, "[but] we were unsuccessful at picking up — picking up a shadow [on the Earth], Houston. We couldn't pick it up by the time we got around to the eclipse."

It was not until 33 years later that humans first set sight on the moon's umbra on the planet below. The second to last crew of Russia's former space station Mir — cosmonauts Viktor Afanasyev and Sergei Avdeyev and French astronaut Jean-Pierre Haigneré — saw the shadow cast by the last total solar eclipse of the 20th century as it traced over Plymouth, England and headed toward northern France on Aug. 11, 1999.

According to Haigneré, who captured photos of the eclipse set against the clouds over the area, the shadow measured about 93 miles (150 kilometers) across.

The next total solar eclipse to be seen from orbit was on Dec. 4, 2002 and marked Pettit's first of two. Joined by his Expedition 6 crewmates Kenneth Bowersox and Nikolai Budarin on board the International Space Station, Pettit initially expected to be well positioned to see the Earth darken below.

"Using the state vector prediction software we have on the space station, we were going to fly really close to the shadow projected on Earth," Pettit recalled. "But two days before the eclipse, we did a re-boost and shifted the orbit of station enough so that the shadow was way on the edge of our horizon. We were lucky we were even going to be able to see the shadow."

"That kind of thing can happen, where other operational constraints of running the station might change your position in orbit, so that seeing that shadow might not be in the best of locations," he added.

Expedition 12 commander Bill McArthur and flight engineer Valery Tokarev were 230 miles (370 km) above the Earth, passing over the coast of Turkey above the Mediterranean Sea, when they caught sight of the total solar eclipse on March 29, 2006. Their view was much better than was seen by the Expedition 6 crew, flying almost directly over the moon's shadow.

Pettit's second chance at seeing a solar eclipse came on his second long duration stay on the station. On May 20, 2012, the Expedition 31 crew of Pettit, Joe Acaba, Oleg Kononenko, Gennady Padalka, Sergei Revin and André Kuipers witnessed an annular solar eclipse.

"It is amazing to see an eclipse from orbit," Pettit wrote in a letter to Earth at the time.

Expedition 43 flight engineer Samantha Cristoforetti took a series of photographs of the March 20, 2015 solar eclipse from the International Space Station. Cristoforetti wrote on Twitter, "Orbital sunrise and the #SolarEclipse... could it go any better?"

Credit: ESA/NASA

Spotting and blocking the sun

The most recent space crew to see a solar eclipse from orbit did so on March 20, 2015. In addition to photographing the shadow cast over the Earth, Expedition 43 flight engineer Samantha Cristoforetti captured the moon partially blocking out the light from the sun.

"Orbital sunrise and the solar eclipse... could it go any better?" Cristoforetti wrote on Twitter, sharing the sight that she, Terry Virts and Anton Shkaplerov enjoyed on board the space station.

On Monday (Aug. 21), NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitson, Roscosmos cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazansky and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Paolo Nespoli will be the next to see a solar eclipse as it passes across the United States.

"It would be really neat to see it from the ground, but I think I will also cherish the memory of being able to see it here from orbit," said Bresnik in a NASA interview.

In addition to total solar eclipses, space travelers have also seen lunar eclipses — where the Earth casts a shadow on the moon — and even artificial eclipses. The Russian and American crews on the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) used the U.S. Apollo spacecraft to block the sun so the cosmonauts on the Soyuz could photograph the solar corona.

The Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins was also able to photograph the solar corona as the moon blocked out the sun during their trans-lunar coast and prior to lunar orbit insertion on July 19, 1969.

The Apollo 15 mission coincided with a lunar eclipse in 1971 (though the crew was unsuccessful in capturing clear photos of the rare occurrence). And the Apollo 12 crew of Pete Conrad, Alan Bean and Dick Gordon witnessed a solar eclipse of a different type, when the Earth blocked out the sun as relative to their spacecraft as they returned from the moon on Nov. 24, 1969.

"The thing that I remember the most was when it was fully eclipsed, the rays that came out from behind the Earth were in all the spectrum colors," Bean said in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "And then we saw this bright spot moving across the Earth and we didn't know what it was, but we could see that it was moving rapidly across the planet."

"Later on, we learned it was the full moon behind us. We were seeing it reflected on the Earth," said Bean. "That was fun to experience.”

See astronaut and cosmonaut photographs of solar eclipses from space at collectSPACE.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2017 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

Perseid Meteor Shower Wows Stargazer with 'One-in-a-Million' Fireball

Perseid Meteor Shower Wows Stargazer with 'One-in-a-Million' Fireball:

Photographer Maxim Senin captured this "one-in-a-million" fireball during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower on Aug. 12, 2017, while observing with his family from Templin Highway near Castaic, California.

Credit: Maxim Senin

When the Perseid meteor shower peaked over the weekend, no one was expecting an amazing show. After all, the August moon had just passed its full phase and threatened to outshine all but the brightest Perseid fireballs.

Yet one dedicated stargazer, Maxim Senin of Redondo Beach, California, ventured out in search of dark skies anyway to see what the 2017 Perseids would bring. The result, he said, was a one-in-a-million meteor photo.

Senin drove his wife and 3-year-old son to an observing spot along the Templin Highway near Castaic, California, known for its dark skies, in order to spot a meteor. Senin's patience was rewarded when a brilliant fireball lit up the night sky and he caught it on camera. [See More Amazing Perseid Meteor Shower Photos by Stargazers]

"Although everyone predicted that the moon will whitewash all the meteors, when this one exploded I could hear 'oohs' and 'aaahs' across the valley," Senin, a veteran night-sky photographer, told Space.com in an email. "It was a bright as the moon itself, and left behind a smoke trail that was visible for 10-15 seconds after the meteor extinguished."

The brightness of the moon, which was three-quarters full, ultimately was an unexpected asset.

"In fact, thanks to the moon, the smoke trail was highlighted so well," Senin said. "One in a million!"

Senin said he and his family spent about 4 hours observing the Perseid meteor shower. They averaged about one meteor every 3 minutes, and every third meteor was a bright one, he added.

"Sometimes there was a 10-minute pause, and sometimes you could see 3-4 meteors shoot in a minute," Senin said.

A Perseid meteor streaks over National Park Galicica Ohrid, Macedonia, on Aug. 12, 2017, in this view by astrophotographer Stojan Stojanovski with the Ohrid Astronomy Association.

Credit: Stojan Stojanovski


Senin wasn't the only one to snap a stunning view of the 2017 Perseids.

In Ohrid, Macedonia, Stojan Stojanovski and his fellow members of the Ohrid Astronomy Association photographed the Perseids from a spot in the country's National Park Galicica.

In an email, Stojanovski told Space.com he captured one stunning photo of a Perseid meteor, but the bright moonlight limited what he could see.

The Perseid meteor shower is an annual celestial display that occurs when the Earth passes through a stream of dust and debris left from Comet Swift-Tuttle. This dust and debris burn up in the atmosphere to create bright meteors. The meteor shower typically offers between 80 and 100 meteors an hour to observers with dark-sky conditions far away from city lights.

The 2017 Perseids peaked on Aug. 12, with the bright moonlight limiting meteor visibility to about 40 of 50 meteors an hour, according to a forecast from NASA meteor scientist Bill Cooke.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

TRAPPIST-1 Planets May Be Twice As Old As Earth

TRAPPIST-1 Planets May Be Twice As Old As Earth:

This illustration shows what the TRAPPIST-1 system might look like from a vantage point near planet TRAPPIST-1f (at right).

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Life has had a long time to potentially get a foothold on the rocky planets circling the tiny, dim star TRAPPIST-1, a new study suggests.

TRAPPIST-1 and its seven roughly Earth-size planets are between 5.4 billion and 9.8 billion years old, according to the new study. For comparison, Earth's solar system is a shade under 4.6 billion years old.

"Our results really help constrain the evolution of the TRAPPIST-1 system, because the system has to have persisted for billions of years," lead author Adam Burgasser, an astronomer at the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement. "This means the planets had to evolve together; otherwise, the system would have fallen apart long ago." [Meet the 7 Earth-Size Planets of TRAPPIST-1]

Aging TRAPPIST-1

TRAPPIST-1, a star just 8 percent as massive as the sun, lies about 40 light-years away from Earth. Earlier this year, astronomers announced that TRAPPIST-1 hosts seven rocky planets, three of which appear to lie in the "habitable zone" — the range of distances from a star where liquid water could theoretically exist on a world's surface.

But the age of the TRAPPIST-1 system had remained elusive. In the new study, which has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, Burgasser and his colleagues arrived at an estimate after considering a number of factors — for example, the star's chemical composition, how often its blasts out flares and the speed at which TRAPPIST-1 moves through the Milky Way. (Older stars tend to move faster, study team members said.)

A maximum age of 9.8 billion years may sound ancient, but TRAPPIST-1 is really just getting started: It and other dwarf stars can keep shining for trillions of years.

"Stars much more massive than the sun consume their fuel quickly, brightening over millions of years and exploding as supernovae," study co-author Eric Mamajek, deputy program scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in the same statement. "But TRAPPIST-1 is like a slow-burning candle that will shine for about 900 times longer than the current age of the universe."

In case you were wondering, the sun won't burn through its hydrogen fuel for another 5 billion years or so. At that point, Earth's star will expand into an enormous red giant before ultimately collapsing into an ultra-dense stellar corpse known as a white dwarf.

TRAPPIST-1 is an ultra-cool dwarf star in the constellation Aquarius, and its seven planets orbit very close to it.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Habitable planets?

Though three TRAPPIST-1 planets are in the habitable zone, it's unclear if any of them can actually support life as we know it, scientists stress.

For example, these alien worlds all orbit so close to their host star that they're tidally locked, always showing the same face to TRAPPIST-1. These planets therefore all have "day sides" and "night sides," which may be blistering-hot and freezing-cold, respectively.

Thick atmospheres would distribute heat around the TRAPPIST-1 planets, potentially making them more livable. But astronomers don't know if these worlds have any air left all; their atmospheres may have been stripped by radiation from their nearby host star long ago.

The new study contributes to the ongoing assessment of TRAPPIST-1 and its potential habitability, but it doesn't tip the scales one way or the other, scientists said.

"These new results provide useful context for future observations of the TRAPPIST-1 planets, which could give us great insight into how planetary atmospheres form and evolve, and persist or not," JPL exoplanet scientist Tiffany Kataria, who was not involved in the study, said in the same statement.

Such future observations may include measurements by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the agency's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, researchers said. This work could help astronomers determine if the TRAPPPIST-1 planets have atmospheres (and characterize these atmospheres, if they exist).

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

For the Great American Solar Eclipse, Leave Your Camera at Home

For the Great American Solar Eclipse, Leave Your Camera at Home:

Plenty of experienced photographers will capture the magic of the total solar eclipse, so you should just enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime experience, say astronomers.

Credit: THANAKRIT SANTIKUNAPORN/Shutterstock

Solar astronomer J. McKim Malville has some advice for people planning to see the Great American Solar Eclipse on Aug. 21: Don’t photograph it.

This may seem counterintuitive. After all, a total solar eclipse hasn't crossed the entire continental United States since June 8, 1918. This upcoming eclipse is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But unless you're an experienced photographer with good equipment, including the specific filters and lenses, and specialized knowledge to capture the moment, don't do it.

"I just encourage people not to take their camera," Malville told Live Science.

Take it from Malville. He's observed five solar eclipses, and for the first one, he spent the scant minutes of totality, when the moon had completely covered the sun, trying to get his camera focused and the exposure right. [NASA's Total Solar Eclipse Maps (Photos)]

"I really didn't spend very much time looking at the corona," he said, referring to the sun's outer atmosphere, the glow that fringes the blotted-out disk of the sun.

This spiky halo of the sun's atmosphere is one of the best parts of an eclipse, he said. It's always there, but under everyday conditions, you can't see it because the brightness of the sun overpowers that halo.

But if you're in the path of totality, and you're certain that the moon has completely covered the sun, you can remove your protective eyewear and see the corona for those moments of totality. The ability to gaze at this feature is why people become "eclipse chasers," Malville said.

"We have people who are going to every single solar eclipse around the world and have seen 15 or 20 eclipses. They're going there, not because the sky gets dark, but because of the beauty of the ever-changing shape from eclipse to eclipse of the solar corona," he said.

The time that you can view the corona, and for how long, depends on where you are along the path of totality. You can check this interactive map for precise times based on your location. (If you're not confident about whether you can remove your eyewear, be on the safe side and keep the glasses on. And never look directly at the sun without protective eyewear, when it is only partially eclipsed, or not eclipsed at all.)

Malville said there are other phenomena to behold, as well.

Just before totality, when a tiny amount of sunlight is peeking out from behind the moon, the world around you becomes something like a pinhole camera. Look down and take off your protective eyewear. [How to Make a Solar Eclipse Viewer (If You Can't Get Eclipse Glasses)]

"If you stand under a tree with leaves, each gap between the leaves acts like a projection device and you see on the ground hundreds of shimmering images of the crescent sun appearing beneath you," Malville said. "It's really quite an extraordinary experience."

Just before totality, you may also glimpse "shadow bands" in the sky. Those are patterns of light and dark that result from the various densities of air in the upper atmosphere, he said.

"It's similar to being at the bottom of the swimming pool, as shadows of light and dark pass over you," he said.

Experiencing these phenomena as they occur is more magical than trying to capture them in pixels.

"There are things to be appreciated, if you pay attention to everything that is happening around you and not just fiddling with the camera," Malville said.

Alan Dyer, an astronomy author and photographer, also recommends that people not photograph the eclipse. But he offers an alternative for capturing the moment.

"Put [your] phone camera on video, prop it up, let it run and if nothing else, it will capture the sound," Dyer said. "Everyone else will have photos but only you will have the sounds of you and your family getting excited and screaming! You won't believe you made those sounds. Makes the best souvenir."

Dyer, who is about to experience his 16th total solar eclipse, offers extensive advice about viewing the night sky on his blog, AmazingSky.com.

The morning after the eclipse, go online. There will be hundreds, and likely thousands of images to view, much better than you could ever hope to take with your own equipment.

Original article on Live Science.

Sky-High Solar Eclipse? Here's What You Might See from an Airplane

Sky-High Solar Eclipse? Here's What You Might See from an Airplane:

A midair perspective is captured in this image of the solar eclipse on Nov. 23, 2003.

Credit: J. C. Casado/StarryEarth/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

No matter where you are in the contiguous United States on Aug. 21, if skies are clear, you'll see something that hasn't been glimpsed since 1918 — a solar eclipse visible across the country from coast to coast.

But what if you're not on the ground? What if you happen to be in midair on an airplane during the total solar eclipse?

Unfortunately, the outlook for seeing the disk of the sun directly isn't good if you're traveling on a commercial flight, experts told Live Science. However, with a little calculation, you can figure out whether the effects of the eclipse will be visible on the clouds around you or on the ground below. And some lucky flyers may find that they're crossing the eclipse's path at just the right moment to experience the dark shadow of totality (when the moon's shadow completely covers the sun), experts said. [NASA's Total Solar Eclipse Maps (Photos)]

Only those in the path of totality — where approximately 12 million people live, though many will be traveling there to view the celestial event — will experience the dramatic daytime darkness of a total eclipse. In other parts of the country, daylight could fade to a near-twilight dimness, depending on how much of the sun is blocked by the moon.

A special Alaska Airlines charter flight is scheduled to "chase" the eclipse, Alaska Airlines representatives announced June 26 in a statement. The flight, which is not available for commercial booking, is scheduled to take off at 7:30 a.m. local time and will carry astronomers and eclipse enthusiasts off the coast of Oregon and over the Pacific Ocean, to catch sight of the eclipse before it begins its journey across the mainland of the U.S., Space.com reported.

"Flying high above the Pacific Ocean will not only provide one of the first views [of the eclipse], but also one of the best," Sangita Woerner, Alaska Airlines' vice president of marketing, said in the statement. (Apparently, the sun will be rising just at the time the solar eclipse "touches down" at 9:48 a.m. PT, or 16:48:33 UTC, meaning the sun will rise while it is completely eclipsed, according to Eclipse2017.org.)

Many people who have commercial airline flights scheduled for Aug. 21 may also find themselves in the air while the eclipse is underway. If you're one of those people, what might you see if you're flying over a part of the country experiencing a partial eclipse? And what could it look like if you're crossing the path of totality while the eclipse is at its peak?

It's all about the angle

Being able to see an eclipse from the air depends on the angle of the moving sun relative to the airplane, and by the time the Aug. 21 eclipse begins, the sun will be too far overhead to be visible from an airplane window, meteorologist and Space.com skywatching columnist Joe Rao told Live Science.  

In 2016, a total solar eclipse — seen here from Alaska Airlines Flight 870 — began at 23:19 UTC on March 8 and reached its maximum point at 01:59 UTC on March 9, with totality lasting 4 minutes and 9 seconds.

Credit: Alaska Airlines


In 2016, Rao was a passenger on Alaska Airlines Flight 870 during a total solar eclipse, which reached its maximum when the sun was about 10 degrees above the horizon. This year, when the show begins for people on the western coast of the U.S., the sun will be significantly higher in the sky — about 40 degrees above the horizon, Rao said.

At a typical flight altitude of around 35,000 feet (11 kilometers), airplane passengers seated on the plane's "sun side" might be able to glimpse the sun only if its height above the horizon is no more than 30 degrees, Rao told Live Science.

Unfortunately, this means that the angle of the sun's position during the Aug. 21 eclipse will make it impossible to see through a window of a commercial aircraft, "even if you are contorted to have your nose pressed up against the bottom of the window from a 'sun-side' window seat," Glenn Schneider, an astronomer with the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona, told Live Science in an email.

For the Alaska Airlines eclipse flightscheduled for Aug. 21, Rao has advised airline officials to fly the plane 1,000 miles (1,609 km) off the Oregon coast, in order to catch the eclipse over the Pacific Ocean when the sun will be around 25 degrees above the horizon, he told Live Science.

Schneider, who also worked with Alaska Airlines to determine the best course for their eclipse charter flight, explained that the custom flight path "was defined to fly across, not along, the moon's shadow, to put the sun at the right azimuth [angle] to be visible out the aircraft's right-side windows," he said. [The 8 Most Famous Solar Eclipses in History]

Light and shadow

But even if you can't see the sun directly from an airplane, depending on where you are in the sky during the eclipse, you might still be able to see a change in the light around you if the sun is partially blocked by the moon, an effect that Rao described as "counterfeit twilight."

"It's not the kind of twilight that you see when the sun goes down," Rao said. "It's just strange — in the sense that the quality of light is different from what you're usually accustomed to seeing. It's kind of like putting on a pair of polarized glasses; there's a metallic-like color to the sky," he said.

The more that the sun is covered, the more dramatic that view will be, Rao told Live Science. And those on certain flights may find that their path aligns enough with the movement of the moon's shadow, enabling them to experience the drama of totality.

"You'll definitely notice once we get past 80 to 90 percent, the inside of the cabin is going to be getting darker," Rao said.

"It's going to be like curtain time at a Broadway play in the 30 seconds before totality —that light's going to dim down very quickly," Rao said.

However, finding yourself on a flight crossing the eclipse path at the precise time of totality is "a real long shot," Schneider told Live Science in an email.

Calculating your path

If you're scheduled to be on a commercial flight while the eclipse is underway, how could you find out where your flight path and the eclipse's path might intersect? Your best course would be to consult the flight-tracking website Flight Aware — which provides moment-by-moment flight data — and look at past flights along that route to estimate your plane's latitude and longitude positions while in the air, Rao told Live Science.

Passengers on commercial airline flights scheduled to fly across the U.S. during the eclipse may see the effects of the eclipse on the clouds or on the ground.

Credit: Flight Aware


"I would look at the history over the last 10 days of that flight I'm going to be on," Rao suggested. "I would try to draw some kind of a mean or average of where the plane usually is — or where it has been over the last 10 days — and then try to match it up against the totality path," he said.

By comparing the timing as well as the longitude and latitude positions of the airplane's flight path to similar coordinates along the eclipse path — available through an interactive map produced by NASA — fliers can estimate how much of the sun might be covered at a given point during their travels, Rao explained.

"If it's more than 70 percent, you'll notice it if you're looking out the window of the plane," he said. "The clouds will appear yellow or amber in color instead of bright white, because the light that comes from around the edges of the sun has a different quality than the light when the sun is not eclipsed."

Those who find they are flying close to the path of totality — though not directly in it — may see the moon's shadow projected on the clouds nearby or even on the ground below the airplane, a sight that is "quite remarkable," Schneider said. From a typical commercial flight altitude of about 35,000 feet, the horizon is about 200 miles (320 km) away, "so you can see quite a distance, and you could get lucky in that regard," Schneider said.

"Hopefully, there'll be enough of the sun covered that you'll be able to notice something out of the ordinary, something different from what you would normally see during a flight," Rao added.

REMEMBER to never look directly at the sun during a partial eclipse. Make sure to wear protective eclipse-viewing glasses (sunglasses won't cut it).

On Aug. 21, Live Science reporter Mindy Weisberger will be sending eclipse updates while on a commercial airplane flying from Los Angeles to New York City, departing at 8:25 a.m. local time. Will there be visible evidence of the eclipse from midair? Follow Live Science on Facebook and Twitter to find out!

Original article on Live Science.