Rosetta's final images (2 min video)!

In early 2014, it was time to wake up Rosetta. The European Space Agency space probe had been slumbering since some time after the launch back in 2004 and had now been closing in on its main target, the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The spacecraft also had a companion, Philae and later that year these two fellows went into orbit around the comet and started to investigate it, for scientific reasons and to find a proper landing spot for the lander module, on the "duck shaped" celestial body, and to become the first spacecraft ever to land on a comet.

November 12 it was finally time for Philae to land, but unfortunately it failed to do it properly (it bounced a couple of times, due to failing anchoring harpoons), but managed to stop. A few days later it got to its final rest, after first sending lots of interesting data back to Earth.

Even Rosetta got to land (crash) on the comet's surface later, but before that it had also gather and transmitted lots of useful and interesting data and imagery (including photos of Philea on its final parking spot) back to the ESA headquarters, both from orbit and during its descent.

In the video below are some of the images that was send back to Earth, all taken from the ESA’s archives: "All high-resolution images and the underpinning data from Rosetta’s pioneering mission at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko are now available in ESA’s archives, with the last release including the iconic images of finding lander Philae, and Rosetta’s final descent to the comet’s surface..."

Click or tap on the video to get full screen.

Lake Dellen - an astrobleme

An impact structure, or astrobleme (meaning "star wound") is a generally circular or craterlike geologic structure of deformed bedrock or sediment produced by impact on a planetary surface, whatever the stage of erosion of the structure. 

The vaguely circular Lake Dellen water system, in Sweden, was formed by an impact crater 89 million years ago (some will even say 100+ M ya), placing the impact in the Late Cretaceous, when the area was hit by a meteorite. 

The initial resulting impact crater measured about 19 kilometers in diameter. Nowadays it's only half that size. The impact resulted in the area containing the rock Dellenite (a rock intermediate in composition between Rhyolite and Dacite), which has become the provincial rock.

In contrast to an impact structure, an impact crater is the surface expression of an impact structure. In many cases, on Earth, the impact crater has been destroyed by erosion, leaving only the deformed rock or sediment of the impact structure behind. This is the fate of almost all old impact craters on Earth, unlike the ancient pristine craters preserved on the Moon and other geologically inactive rocky bodies with old surfaces in the Solar System. 

Asteroid 7704 Dellen was named after it.

An installation of the Sweden Solar System representing Pluto and Charon lies near the southern lake; the pillars holding the model objects are made of dellenite.

Check out the links for more info.

Sources: Magasin Hälsingland (summer issue 2022) and Wikipedia.

Why interested in astronomy

This is an article (or a note, to be more precise) called "Note to self (and others): Why I'm interested in astronomy." that I wrote on Facebook, back in November 2010.

Read, contemplate and enjoy!

/Christofer Döss

Some 80 years ago we started to broadcast TV signals. Every TV signal, every program, every TV show and every film that has been broadcasted through air since then has been transmitted not only to our TV devices but straight out into space as well - as one can hear in the "Contact" movie clip, at http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=466063228672.

The speed of light is almost 300,000 km/second and the distance light makes on a single year is called a light-year.

As electric signals, as well as TV signals, are transfered on wire, in air and in space at a speed close to the speed of light, TV signals has been wooshing thru space for 80 light-years. Follow?

Now we come to the interesting part! 

Our nearest star is of course our own sun. The next nearest star is the "well known" star called Alpha Centauri. That star is only 4 light-years away...! Not even the 50th(!) closest star is close to our first broadcasted TV signals! That star, called DEN 0255-4700, is only 16 light-years away! 

That put one's thoughts in some perspective huh! 

And people are wondering why I'm interested in astronomy...! 

Addendum 1:

The estimated age of the universe is 13.75 ± 0.17 billion years, since the time of the Big Bang. That is: The light from that early Big Bang has been traveling for 13.75 billion years...

In other words: Universe is 13.75 billion light years across!

https://spaceflashnews.blogspot.com/2010/05/stor-skillnad-for-liten-bit.html 

 

Addendum 2:

Another aspect of distances is this:

- The light from our moon takes 1 second to reach us on earth

- The sunlight needs 8 minutes to enlight our lives

- The radio signals from the NASA space probe New Horizon, on its way to the dwarf planet Pluto and beyond (estimated flyby of the Pluto system on 14 July 2015), needs 4 hours to reach earth. 

- The Voyager spacecrafts 2 and 1 (launched by NASA in 1977) needs some 15 and 18 hours "of light travel time" to reach earth.  The signals from the Voyager spacecrafts that is.

https://twitter.com/spaceflashnews/status/769047199477014528

 

Addendum 3 (2023-01-23):

Here's yet another aspect of this "dilemma":

The vast distances in space is the reason behind why we won't actually take us anywhere. We're stuck here for good - even if we could travel with the speed of light!

Watch this interesting video, to see why: https://twitter.com/astro_alexandra/status/1617639614390611968

Earth from Moon and vice versa

These two photos shows Earth as seen from orbit of our Moon - and Moon as seen from orbit of Earth.

My three (now 5) solar eclipses

In the shadow of the upcoming Great American Solar Eclipse, I here recall my three encounters with the moon, blocking our sun.

1.)  My first solar eclipse was back back in the summer of 1990, June 22 to be more exact, in my early 20's, when I travelled with my father from Sweden almost to the Russian border in Joenssuu, Finland, to watch a total. 

We traveled nonstop for 14 hours, both by boat and by car, and got there just in time to experience the deep twilight during the totality, at 04:52 in the morning and midnight sun. We manage to catch a glimpse of it just as the sun took a peak through the clouds. The birds stopped singing and the crowd that had gathered at a football field stopped talking. Even the wind stopped! It was dead calm and no one said a word until the real totality began and a loud "Wow!" could be heard among us sun gazers. Neither of us two had any solar eclipse glasses or shades with us so we couldn't watch directly at the sun, but the mere experience itself was really worth the long journey!

The shadow, white band on the enclosed map, was 240 km wide as it crossed Finland's south-eastern parts.

2.) My second eclipse was a partial, some fifteen years ago or so, when I was at work. Unfortunately I didn't have proper eclipse glasses with me so I didn't see much. On the other side  it wasn't much to see either as not much of the sun was blocked from our part of the world. So if you didn't know what was going on you couldn't tell what was happening, as it didn't get any darker at all.

3.) My third and most recent eclipse was also a partial (but this time a much greater part), just a few years ago here in Sweden, when I was fortunate to be able to watch it from work too, now with proper solar eclipse shades this time.

As this occurred during work hours I didn't have time to prepare any photo equipments so I couldn't take any pictures of it. Luckily this was a sunny day too and the sun had just started to shine through one of the work windows and I could see the moon cover a large bit of the sun, at maximum. The sun looked just like a crescent moon, but much much brighter. That was a pretty cool experience too!

Read more about the August 21, 2017, Great American Eclipse here: 

- https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com

- https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov 

If you have twitter you can follow my space news account @spaceflashnews there.

Happy solar eclipse viewing!
/Christofer Döss, Sweden

E D I T (P S  1)
4.) Today's Partial Solar Eclipse, 2018-08-11, over Sweden (up to the North Pole), is my 4th Solar Eclipse - and my 1st that I have managed to get shots of!

As with my second one this Eclipse was also just covered by only a small part of the moon, from our part of Sweden, so you couldn't tell what was happening if you didn't know what was actually going on.

E D I T (P S  2)

A Twitter comment I made about this, illustrated with one of these photos, rendered in a post in an August 12 Space.com article (<--- click="" link="" p="" there="">

"...A little farther north in Sweden, photographer Christofer Döss of Spaceflash News tweeted one of his photos of the eclipse at Petricca. 'The moon took a little bit bigger bite out of the sun up here in Sweden' Spaceflash News tweeted. In northern Sweden, where he captured the photo, the moon was covering about 15 percent of the sun's disk." 

https://twitter.com/spaceflashnews/status/1028406843796873216?s=19




E D I T (P S  3)

5.) My fifths solar eclipse and the second Partial Solar Eclipse of 2022 was visible today, October 25th, from most of Europe, northern Africa, the Middle East, and western parts of Asia... 

For example, in Stockholm, Sweden, the partial solar eclipse began at 11:08, reached maximum (46% covered by the moon) at 12:10-12:16 and ended at 13:23.

However, the weather forecast didn't look that good, at least not for the horizon of Sweden.

At maximum there were indeed heavy clouds here in Sweden, during the Partial Solar Eclipse. However one could actually tell it turned darker outside, when the Sun was 46% covered by the moon.

 

With the maximum over and 20 minutes to the end of the #PartialSolarEclipse, the heavy clouds turned much brighter again, than under max. 

So, even if I couldn't get to see the actual eclipse through the clouds, I could see the darker-brighter effects of it. That makes it my fifths (5!) solar eclipse I have watched during my 52 year old life  - which is not very rare, but it's not that usual either! 

The next upcoming Solar Eclipses, visible from Sweden (and the rest of Europe) will be in...

- 2025-03-29: Partial, seen from much of Europe, North of Asia, North/West Africa, much of North America, Atlantic and Arctic.

- 2026-08-12: Total, seen from Europe, North/East Asia, North/West Africa, much of North America, Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic.

- 2027-08-02: Total, seen from South/West Europe, South/West Asia, much of Africa, East and North America, Atlantic and Indian Ocean.