Daniel Pope

The early mornings are where it is happening! Look for four of our five naked eye planets before sunrise in the east. By Friday the 9th our Moon will have joined the group. Mars is high in the east and getting brighter as we catch up with it. Mars is about the width of your three middle fingers to the right of Pollux and Castor is about the same distance to the upper left of Pollux. Pollux and Castor are the bright stars in Gemini, the Twins. Mars is slightly brighter than Pollux and Castor. Well below Mars is Venus, shining like an airplane landing light. Mercury is as high and bright as it is going to get for a while. It is a little more than the width of your three middle fingers below Venus.  Saturn, the dimmest of all the planets at the moment has been rising just below Mercury. Saturn will be just to the left of Mercury on the mornings of the 7th and 8th.  After that Saturn will continue to rise toward Venus while Mercury slips back toward the horizon and our Sun. On the 13th Saturn will be just to the left of Venus and a crescent Moon will be descending toward them from above. On the 15th Saturn will be slightly above Venus and a very slender crescent Moon will be to their upper right.  On the 16th Venus will be slightly below Saturn and farther above Mercury and the slenderest crescent Moon will be to the right of Venus. Hope for clear skies and good views of the eastern horizon. 

All of these mornings are wonderful but mark Friday Oct. 9 on your calendar as special. On that morning all of the telescopes on Earth and in space that can see our Moon at that time will be aimed at the South Pole of our Moon.  The second week of June my column was about NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) and LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite) mission to our Moon. The LCROSS consists of two parts – a spent rocket and a shepherding satellite.  At 4:30 a.m. PDT on Oct. 9 the spent rocket (5,216 pounds) will crash into a crater in permanent shadow at the South Pole of our Moon. Four minutes later the shepherding satellite (1,290 pounds) will slam into our Moon. As soon as the details of the mission were announced the question was asked – will we be able to see the plume from the crash? I have read that it is estimated that one would need a 10- to 12-inch telescope at a minimum to have a chance of seeing anything of the result. I am hoping that some TV stations will carry live coverage through some large research telescope. 

In 2005 NASA announced plans to return to our Moon and to establish a human outpost there before 2020. 

To the greatest extent possible our astronauts will ‘live off the land’ on our Moon.  With that in mind, the most critical or most fundamental needed resource is water.  The LRO and the LCROSS have multiple sensors and multiple experiments for the purpose of determining if there are significant amounts water or water ice in the permanently shadowed craters at the North and/or the South Poles of our Moon. Our Earth’s atmosphere blocks the cosmic radiation that is harmful to our bodies but our Moon does not have such an atmosphere.  The LRO will collect and analyze the cosmic radiation to determine the extent of the hazard it poses to our astronauts. The LRO will map our Moon in great detail and identify safe landing zones. It will locate whatever natural resources are there that our astronauts could use as part of their living off the land. 

The LRO entered a low orbit about our Moon that will last one year while the LCROSS guided itself and the spent upper stage of the launch rocket into an elongated orbit about Earth. On Oct. 9 the LCROSS will separate from the spent launch rocket and send it crashing into our Moon. That will cause a few tons of dust, gas, and vapor to rise a few miles above the lunar surface.  The LCROSS has many instruments on board to collect and analyze the data as it flies through the plume of debris caused by the first crash. The data will reveal a great deal of information about the makeup of our Moon.  The LRO is orbiting just 30 miles above the surface of our Moon and it takes about 2 hours to complete each orbit.  The LRO’s year long mission with all of its instruments will collect and analyze a great deal of data and that will prepare the way for a later human voyage back to our Moon.  This time to stay!

Next week we will locate the near Andromeda constellation and look for that Galaxy (Andromeda) far far away. 

Clear skies.