As we wrote in April, ESA is looking for new European candidates to their astronaut training program. ESA asked all member countries to send applications for the upcoming training program. From Finland they will receive over 300 applications. This is the first time Finns have a change to become an astronaut and fly to the space.

ESA received 8.400 applications in total, and out of those thousands of applications only few will be picked up and given astronaut training. Most of the applications ESA received from Germany and France. I am really looking for to see someone from my home country entering the space. I did not apply

My dream might come true. ESA has announced that after their initial selection few Finns are still in the game. The process continues with a series of psychological tests, and those who pass the tests will continue with medical tests. Finally only four people out of 8.400 applicants will become ESA astronauts.

This is the first ESA candidate search since 1992. Those four new astronauts will fly to the International Space Station (ISS), but might also go to Moon one day.

Heh.. now my four years old son wants to become an astronaut..

This picture is from Aram Chaos crater in Mars. It was taken last month by HiRISE camera of MRO-probe. The crater was named Aram Chaos because of the broken formations of the surface.

Scientists believe the crater was formed when the material under the surface dissappeared. Lowest parts of the crater contain dark sand which is coloured blue in the picture. On can also see the dunes formed by the sand right next to steep walls.

“Sulfates have been detected in the cliff walls in some areas within Aram Chaos, as well as hematite. It has been suggested that these materials were deposited within a lake setting“, was said in HiRISE project website.

See a high-resolution image here.

Check out the press release of ESA (European Space Agency). They are looking for European students to join their new programme called “Fly Your Thesis! – An Astronaut Experience”. If you are a European student (like me), this is your change to experience a zero gravity flight. My old colleague from Ericsson was lucky and joined this kind of zero gravity flight some years ago. I saw his pictures and I must say I was a bit jealous..

ESA’s airplane flies a parable route and during 20 second periods students can feel almost zero gravity. Yes, they really hover in the air and bounce from walls. Well, may be there is not that much bouncing, but they really feel the zero gravity, just like astronauts in the International Space Station (ISS). This is currently best way to experience how astronomers feel in space.

Unfortunately one cannot join the programme just like that. The idea is that students perform a scientific experiment during the flight. It must be related to master’s of doctoral thesis of the student or it can be part of some other science project.

ESA will pick 20 European student groups who must present their thesis plans. Out of those 20 ESA will then select 3-4 groups who will join the 2009 flight. Groups of 2-4 students must be 18-28 years old, come from ESA member country and must be either MSc or PhD students. Damn! I’m already too old.. Deadline for the applications is the end of August 2008.

Here you can see the pictures and videos of Finnish students joining the flight in 2000. These are from Mikko Suominen, one of the writers of the great Avaruus.Fi astronomy blog.

Source [Avaruus.Fi via ESA]

So, what my vacation in Crete has to do with astronomy? Last Friday night I was having a dinner with my family in the village of Platanias in Crete. I noticed that the Moon was almost 100% covered by the shadow of itself (not like during a full lunar eclipse when it’s covered by the shadow of the Earth). I told my five-year old son and he was amazed with the beauty of the waxing crescent Moon. On our way back home I recognized that there is actually something more interesting next to the Moon. Castor and Pollux were lined with the Moon.

The Moon happened to be located next to constellation Gemini, and Gemini’s bright stars Pollux (beta Gemini) and Castor (alpha Gemini) were set in line with the Moon. The straight line of those three celestial elements did really look wonderful in the eyes of an amateur astronomer. Next night I noticed that the Moon was much higher in the sky in relation to constellation Gemini. I was lucky to see this phenomenon.

Unfortunately I had no camera on that night, so I decided to run a simulation back home and add screen captures to this article. I ran the simulation on Stellarium software which is absolutely the best simulation program I have ever used. Check out the three pictures included in this article. The sky above Crete on last Friday did look exactly like in those pictures. The second picture is a close-up of the Moon, Pollux and Castor. Third picture is a close-up of the Moon. I wanted you to see how pretty the waxing crescent Moon did look.

As you can see I haven’t written much lately in this blog. The reason is that the sun doesn’t set anymore here in Finland and therefore I haven’t been stargazing lately. Nights in Crete are dark and I found myself lying on beach on night time and watching the awesome and beautiful universe above me. Aren’t we small? Isn’t this universe amazing? Man, I must say it really keeps on amazing me.

Notice that also in EarthSky’s article the waxing crescent Moon, Pollux and Castor are almost lined up.

There has been a really unusual problem in the International Space Station (ISS). The one and only toilet of ISS has been broken. Imagine how difficult the situation can be when astronomers cannot go to toilet and Nasa is not able to send a service man up there..

Ok, it is not that tragic anymore. The toilet is ISS got broken last week and the crew was first forced to use the toilet facilities of Soyuz but can now use the main toilet as it has been repaired by replacing a micro-processor valve. Although the toilet can be used now, it is still broken. There are several backup solutions available, so no worry guys.

Discovery will fly to ISS next week and currently it seems that Discovery will carry some extra toilet parts. Meanwhile ground specialists will continue troubleshooting the problem and station crew continue preparing for the arrival of STS-124. Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman have been practicing photography techniques they will use when filming the Rendezvouz Pitch Manouver of STS-124. If you wonder what the “Rendezvouz Pitch Manouver” means, it is a “back-flip” performed before docking with the station. The reason for photographing Discovery is to analyze if heat shields have broken during lift-off.

Oh boy, next week we will be able to watch directly the lift-off of STS-124. I guess I will have some troubles to do my work because every now and then I need to watch Nasa TV. I have watched several lift-offs directly after Nasa launched their TV in the Internet. Nasa TV is one of those great things Internet can offer. 10 years ago I could have not imagined that in few years I will be able to watch STS flights directly on my computer. Man, these things develop so fast..

If you are one of my daily readers, you probably have noticed that I have not been blogging actively lately. I have been too busy with my job and family. There have been so many things ongoing that my blogging has suffered very much. Another reason for my blogging hiatus is that here on northern hemisphere we suffer from the lack of dark nights. For example in Finland the Sun does not set at all on midsummer. Because of this amateur astronomers of northern countries don’t go stargazing that much on summer time. This applies with me as well. I hope I will be able to stick to my blogging pace in the future and avoid these breaks.

WWT is a powerful education tool of science enabling the observations of the sky for anyone, says Bill Gates. WWT seems to very very easy to use and it contains terabytes of pictures of the celestial objects. It looks like WWT will play major role in schools when teaching astronomy, and that is just great! I wish we had such a software when I was in school.

The mission of the WWT is twofold:

- To aggregate scientific data from major telescopes, observatories and institutions and make temporal and multi-spectral studies available through a single cohesive Internet–based portal.

- To re-awaken the interest for science in the younger generations through astronomy and new technologies through the virtual observatory of the WWT. This also provides a wonderful base for teaching astronomy, scientific discovery, and computational science.

WWT searches NASA’s real pictures for its background. One can browse the targets of a certain area of the sky or pick them up from a certain real telescope database. WWT reminds Google’s Sky, but it is much easier and straightforward to use. WWT also contains features to help you explore the Earth, satellites, such as the Moon, and 360 degree panoramas of Yosemite’s Half Dome and other locations.

Computer requirements are pretty high for using WWT. 2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 128 MB video card and XP- or Vista operating system are required.

In April 2008 we asked our readers the question “Do Yuo Believe in..”

- God

- Evolutionary Theory

- Both

- Neither

It is time to see the results. Oh yes, I should have done it already two weeks ago, but life is life. It has been so busy lately that my blogging has suffered very much. I hope I will get my work done and by that release more time for blogging. Just stay tuned, I will write more how-to articles on amateur astronomy.

So, the results of our April poll? The results are pretty much what I expected. 38% of the people who answered this question believe in God, while 17% believe in evolutionary theory. 37% of those who answered believe in both, God and evolutionary theory. Only 8% believe neither of these.

Thank you for giving your opinion in this poll! Check out also our March poll results. In March 2008 we asked if people are afraid of comet strikes.

As you most probably know, yesterday was the international mother’s day. As I am an amateur photographer, I shot lots of pictures of my wife and our kids during the day. It was a very nice and warm day here in Finland, so we spent a lot of time outside. Although the light was almost too bright, it is great to shoot pictures on a sunny day.

Later in the evening I was looking for information on New York sightseeing. We have been thinking of a holiday trip to NYC, so I wanted to know what to do in the Big Apple. While reading various websites I discovered PhotoAcute Studio review which is a promotional website for leading edge tool for improving digital photographing. As I am interested in astrography as well, I decided to post few lines about this website. You might find it useful as well.

So, PhotoAcute Studio processes sets of photographs taken in continuous mode to produce high-resolution, low-noise pictures. It increases image resolution, removes noise without losing image details, corrects image geometry and chromatic aberrations and expands the dynamic range. Shortly said, it makes your average pictures superb.

PhotoAcute Studio review website claims that they can provide an amazing image quality without changing my gear. Sounds good, because I use an old Canon EOS 5 and I’ve been thinking of purchasing a new camera. What’s best, it works even with mobile phone cameras!

Check out the examples on PhotoAcute website. At least in those pictures is seems to work well. PhotoAcute is available on Windows, Linux and Mac OS platforms. What really makes me happy is the low price of this useful piece of software. For example for mobile phones it costs only $19. PhotoAcute Studio is available for free in trial mode. I just downloaded and will give it a try.

Photo source.

The first picture was taken one day before the disaster. In the picture one can see flora with green color, land with brown color and clouds with white and light-blue color. In the second picture one can see the increased amounts of water with blue and black colors. For example Rangoon city (four million inhabitants) is almost totally surrounded by water.

NASA’s satellite images show how several cities of 100.000-500.000 inhabitants are covered by water. According to United Nations, the worst area is Irrawaddy’s peninsula where 5000 square meters of land is covered by water.

You can read more about NASA’s satellite images in NASA’s website.

Text and image sources [Avaruus.Fi via NASA]

Alpha Centauri is the nearest star from our Sun and it is located in constellation Centaurus. In fact Alpha Centauri is not one big star, but a formation of three stars located close to each other. The brightest one of those three stars is Rigil Centaurus, many times called just Rigil Cent. Alpha Centauri can only be seen in southern hemisphere and it is the third brightest star in the sky.

If you happen to live in southern hemisphere and would like to observe Alpha Centauri, use the following tips and the pictures above for finding Alpha Centauri. The pictures above are from a simulation in which observer is located in Sydney, Australia.

- wait until it is midnight because at that time it is dark enough and Alpha Centauri is positioned high in the sky

- look at the first picture and stand your face towards South. With the help of the picture, locate the two well-known constellations, namely Triangulum Australe and Crux.

- next locate constellation Centaurus which is located in between and above those two mentioned constellations.

- look at the second picture and imagine a line crossing Triangulum Australe and a diagonal from the cross of Crux. By using those two lines you should easily be able to locate the very bright star Alpha Centauri

You found it? Great! Isn’t it bright? Alpha Centauri is a nice star to observe. Unfortunately I cannot see it here in northern hemisphere, but if I ever fly to Sydney or other cities in southern hemisphere, I’ll shoot some pictures of Alpha Centauri.

Please tell us if this tip was helpful or not by leaving a comment. Do you have a better method to locate Alpha Centauri? You are free to write it to comments. I would be glad to hear other methods to find Alpha Centauri.