Äîêóìåíò âçÿò èç êýøà ïîèñêîâîé ìàøèíû. Àäðåñ îðèãèíàëüíîãî äîêóìåíòà : http://www.armaghplanet.com/pdf/Astronotes/Astronotes2006/Astronotes_Sept_2006.pdf Äàòà èçìåíåíèÿ: Tue Sep 20 18:48:30 2011 Äàòà èíäåêñèðîâàíèÿ: Tue Oct 2 01:30:48 2012 Êîäèðîâêà: Ïîèñêîâûå ñëîâà: space shuttle discovery

September 2006

ASTRONOTES
Incorporating FRIENDS' NEWSLETTER Record-breaking Relaunch Antarctica's Stardust Memories Martian Muddle Sizing up Space Puzzling Planemos

ARMAGHPLANETARIUM


2 Astronotes September 2006

Record-Breaking Relaunch
By Julie Thompson, Digital Theatre Manager Our relaunch has been a terrific success. Every day since we opened to the public on 31 July, our shows have been filled to capacity. We are open seven days a week and visitors just keep coming to us. After our long period of closure, I think it is fantastic to have so grabbed the public's attention. By our third week since reopening, the busiest so far, we had to schedule extra evening shows to cope with the demand (by the way, our front desk staff are Armagh's unsung heroes as they deal so efficiently with this avalanche of visitors). If this volume of visitors continues, we are on track to see almost 1% of Northern Ireland's population through our doors in our first month. This is a phenomenal relaunch after being closed for six years. I could not have dreamed of a better opening. What about audience reaction? Sometimes they gasp "Cool!" sometimes they go "Wow!" and sometimes it's just an awe-struck "Ahh!" These are some of the responses from members of the audience we have been getting during our shows in the Digital Theatre. I think they prove that we're doing something right! I am delighted to say that so far we have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from visitors to our Digital Theatre. Just as we hoped, audiences appreciate the new seating and lighting system, but it's our exciting shows presented with our world-class sound and projection equipment that really grab their attention. Our investment in the Digistar 3 projection system has proved a huge success and I am really happy with the system's reliability and ease of use. Digistar's flexibility has made it straight forward to create up-to-date `mini-shows' to inform visitors about contemporary astronomical events such as the Perseid meteors. Apart from that the colour full-dome sequences we can now deliver clearly excite the audience. How have the shows themselves been received? As expected, `Big' and `Wonders of the Universe' are steady crowd-pleasers. `Sunshine' has gone down a storm with its intended audience of under-fives (and a few mums and dads too I suspect!) `Pole Position: Summer Skies', our first live astronomy show in fifteen or so years is proving a great success. After six years of closely interacting with the public in Armagh's StarDome inflatable planetarium, I know what works with non-specialist and young audiences. This guided me when writing the script and designing the visuals for this show and I'm thrilled by how it is being received. As well as the main feature, before most shows we present a little piece called `Armagh Story', a six minute history of the Planetarium I created for this year's British Association of Planetaria meeting. I am personally very touched by the response to this, at the end audiences often break into spontaneous applause! Wow! Impressed visitors admire a spectacular view of Eta Carinae and the Homunculus Nebula in our Digital Theatre. Apart from the visuals in the shows and our facilities and equipment, we have another major asset to thank for our success, and that is our

Image Credit: Armagh Planetarium


September 2006 Astronotes 3 presentation team. Having world-class technology on hand is a great advantage for us, but it takes a team of talented people to really make anything of it, and I'm pleased to say that is exactly what we have here. Our presenters are doing a fantastic job as they run the shows. Their presentations of Pole Position are especially effective as each delivers the narration in their own words and distinctive style, adding an extra layer of human warmth, which really appeals to our audiences. What is next for our Digital Theatre? I am currently preparing `Pole Position: Autumn Skies' for presentation from October onwards, meanwhile we will continue to deliver our existing programme of shows. Armagh Planetarium's Digital Theatre is open for business and it's great to be back!

Moon Phases, Sept 2006
Thurs 7 Sept Thurs 14 Sept Fri 22 Sept Sat 30 Sept FULL MOON Last Quarter New Moon First Quarter

Antarctica's Stardust Memories
Throughout the year material from outer space falls on our planet. Effectively, thanks to this downfall of space-stuff, the Earth's mass is increasing as time goes by. Meteoroids zip through the mesosphere vaporizing as meteors, while larger intruders reach the surface as meteorites. An estimated 100 000 tonnes of material of meteoroid origin arrives on the Earth every year. Less dramatically, as it orbits the Sun, Earth is subjected to a fine drizzle of cosmic dust. This is made of particles varying from a few molecules in size to 0.1 mm across. These actually reach the surface largely intact as their minute size means they do not experience atmospheric heating. The quantity of this fine material reaching the surface has remained mysterious until recently. An estimated value of how much cosmic dust rains from the skies has just been made. Researchers from Columbia University in New York and the Alfred-Wegener-Institut in Bremerhaven, Germany have calculated that 40 000 tonnes of this extraterrestrial matter hits the Earth every year. That is about 110 tonnes a day, or the equivalent weight of a person every minute. The scientists believe this rate has been steady for at least the last 30 000 years. As part of the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA), the team studied ice cores returned from drilling in the Antarctic region called Dronning Maud Land. The dust found in the cores comes from terrestrial sources as well as outer space. Extraterrestrial dust can be recognized by the presence of a rare isotope of Helium, 3He, which is 5000 times as common in extraterrestrial matter as in Earthly dust. The 3He
Image Credit: Johannes Freitag & Hubertus Fischer, Alfred Wegener Institute

Cosmic dust from Antarctica An extraterrestrial dust particle a few microns across is shown at top left, beneath it is the EPICA facility


4 Astronotes September 2006 is contributed to the dust over the aeons by the solar wind. Interestingly, the researchers found that terrestrial dust is not deposited at as uniform a rate as the extraterrestrial material. Rather, how it is laid down varies as our planet experiences ice ages, as ice sheets cover the surface and glaciers grind up rock. They intend to study this phenomenon further to see what it can tell us about how our planet's climate has changed through the millennia.

Martian Muddle
By Colin Johnston, Science Communicator Here is news of an astonishing planetary event. Did you know that at the end of August Mars and Earth were going to experience `the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history'? No? Then what about this? Mars `will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky' and `The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!' If you did not know about this amazing spectacle, you may be regretting you missed it, especially as `NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN' (capitals in original). However you can rest assured it didn't happen like that at all. These assertions are made in an e-mail which was widely circulated in August this year. Perhaps you received it yourself from a well-meaning friend. Sadly, the e-mail's contents are both

Mars from Hubble From Earth, the Red Planet will never look as big as this to the naked eye! in about 57 000 years. It was a brilliant sight in the skies and was seen by millions, but the Red Planet was nearly 56 million kilometres (0.38 AU) away. The e-mail was broadly correct but somewhat exaggerated. Worse still, it included the attention-grabbing phrase `Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye'. Actually this was part of a clumsily-worded and punctuated sentence about viewing the planet through a telescope, but many people saw this and expected to look up to see a sight reminiscent of the classic 1951 film `When Worlds Collide!' That was in 2003. Since then this hugely misleading document has drifted through the murkiest depths of cyberspace only, like a periodic comet, to make occasional reappearances. It was circulated again last year and arrived in our inboxes once more this Summer, spreading confusion as it went. At present Mars is on the other side of the Sun from us right now, so it is nearly 400 million kilometres (2.7 AU) from Earth, about as far away from us as possible. It is all but invisible at the moment, lost in the Sun's glare. If the planet Mars ever does appear as big as the full Moon in the sky, that will be the least of our worries as something would have to be seriously wrong with gravity! Even if you missed it this year, be prepared, as no doubt this silly message will be returning to an inbox near you again in Summer 2007!

"Mars was a brilliant sight"
out of date and downright wrong. This e-mail was created by an anonymous, probably sincere but excitable author more than three years ago in spring 2003. At the time the e-mail was predicting a genuine event. On 27 August 2003, Mars made its closest approach to Earth

Image Credit: NASA / ESA


September 2006 Astronotes 5

Sizing up Space
Down here on Earth we measure large distances in kilometres (or occasionally miles). As the Earth is about 12 756 km across the equator, these units are handy enough. Going out to the Moon, it is still easy to say it's about 400 000 km away. However, when we start talking about distances between the Sun and planets we are measuring in hundreds of millions of kilometres and eventually billions of kiliometres. To make thing simpler for themselves, astronomers invented the Astronomical Unit (AU). An AU is approximately equal to the average distance between Earth and Sun. The currently accepted value of the AU is 149 597 870 691 metres (nearly 150 million km or 93 million miles). We might say that Neptune is 4 536 874 325 km from the Sun and that sounds a lot, but turning the distance into Astronomical Units, we get about 30 AU, which doesn't seem quite so far (and is much easier to remember!)
Image Credit: D. Wang et al., CXC, NASA

Looking towards the Galactic Centre An X-ray view of the Milky Way spans 150 light years (46 parsecs) across at the galaxy's centre which is about 30 000 light years (9200 parsecs) from us. years (kly) being used, where 1kly is a thousand light years, then there is the mega-light year (Mly) for a million light years and even the giga-light year (Gly) for billions of light years. Now I'll let you into a secret: most professional astronomers don't use light years at all. In fact they regard light years as slightly vulgar units, good enough for the public and amateurs, but not for real astronomers. The cosmic distance measurement unit of choice is the parsec (although Han Solo in Star Wars Episode 4 seemed to think parsecs were units of time!) A parsec is equivalent about 3.26 light years, so Proxima Centauri is about 1.3 parsecs from the Sun. The parsec is based on the principle of parallax, one of the basic techniques for determining stellar distance. I won't go into how this is done here, I'll leave it for a future issue of Astronotes, but it's enough to say that using parsecs does make a lot of sense, but they are not just as easy to intuitively grasp as light years. Summing up, we have a range of units to measure distances in space. Inside the Solar System, we use kilometres or AUs. Beyond our Solar System, as the stars are much further apart, we use light years or parsecs.

"most astronomers regard light years as slightly vulgar units"
When we start measuring the distances between stars the numbers get bigger still. As far as we know the closest star to our Sun is the red dwarf Proxima Centauri and it is 40 trillion km away (a trillion is 1 followed by twelve zeros). That's 270 000 AU, which is big, so we change units again. Light, to the best of our knowledge, is the fastest thing there is. It goes at roughly 300 000 km per second (or if you want to be clever 0.002 AU per second). Then there is about 31 million seconds in a year, so multiplying speed by distance, it works out light goes about 9.3 trillion km per year. This is a nice big unit, and of course we have all heard of it, it's the Light Year (ly). In these units, Proxima Centauri is a mere 4.22 light years away and the centre of our galaxy is about 30 000 light years away. For really far away objects, you sometimes see kilo-light


6 Astronotes September 2006

Exhibition delight!
On the opening day of 31st July, I waited with anticipation to witness how the general public would react to the new `Earth to the Heavens' exhibition area and the `Armagh Celestial Cathedral.' All of the preparation, the painting, wiring, drilling, hammering had been completed and it would be only now that we would find out if the tremendous work carried out by all had been worth it. Many questions were going through my head. Would the visuals be exciting for young and old alike? Had I gauged the level of scientific knowledge correctly for the public? Did they even like it? My fears were instantly put aside when I first heard the first `ooh's' and `aah's' as people came in through the door. There were little fingers everywhere pressing buttons and the adults were absorbing the visuals and text relating to the exhibits. In the virtual reality room, children on the floor tried to catch a helicopter as it flew out of the screen in front of them and parents ducked as the Ariane 5 rocket blasted past them. In the corner of the Copernicus room, our first gyroscope volunteers took their seats in the `Viper' and were spun up, down and around much to their delight! It was a joy to see that moment when the children had looked at all of the wonderful imagery
Image Credit: Robert Hill, Business Development Manager

By Robert Hill, Business Development Manager

Robert explains Our Communication Team are always ready to answer queries from our visitors. Space Shuttle model shouting out `3-2-1' and then all of them emanating a `whoosh' sound as their young imaginations were catapulted from terra-firma to celestial voyages. And then there was the biggest surprise from the toddlers. The Ordnance Survey glass floor proved to be a magnet for the very young as they crawled around on top of the lit up spectacle. Who knows what is going through their minds? However, the little smiles were enough for me. Of course, all of this is just a canvas and I must congratulate our new education team on providing the masterpiece through their brilliant workshops and presentations. A little boy summed it up for me as I saw him leaving the planetarium with his Astronaut patch proudly stuck on his left arm. He waved at the historic dome and just kept saying `Bye, bye wonderful place.' Fantastic!

"The Ordnance Survey glass floor proved to be a magnet for the very young"
placed before them and they started taking on the mantle of an astronaut or a mission controller ready for blast off. I caught several young children playing out their own drama underneath our


September 2006 Astronotes 7

Puzzling Planemos
One of the many new terms astronomers are having to learn these days is `planemo'. Planemos are `planetary mass objects'. Basically if we see something in space which is too round and not fuzzy enough to be a nebula, doesn't have any nuclear reactions going on inside it (so it isn't a star), but is too big to be an asteroid or comet we can call it a planemo. You may be thinking by now that there is a perfectly good word for such bodies already and that is `planet' and you may be correct. The term planemo, was invented by Gibor Basri, Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkley. Basri has also suggested adopting the word `fusor' to replace `star', he has carefully argued reasons for this but he does somehow come across as a man who might call a spade
Image Credit: ESO

Oph1622 consists of a fourteen-Jupiter-mass planemo with a smallercompanion
a `manual terrain excavation device'. However, planemo is a useful addition to the English language when we use it to describe planet-sized objects in interstellar space which are not orbiting a star. The term `Rogue Planet' has been used, but that sounds a little too pulp sci-fi, so planemo is preferable. Two of the latest planemos to be discovered appear to circle each other. Oph 162225240515 (or Oph1622 for short ) consists of a fourteen-Jupiter-mass planemo with a companion which is only half as big. Both objects have masses similar to those of extra-solar giant planets, usually found in orbit around a star. Neither is big enough to experience fusion so they are not stars - they are hundreds of times smaller than our Sun. They are not classed as

Artist's impression of Oph 1622 The two objects are very young and are probably surrounded by a disc of material. For clarity, the image is not to scale, as the size of the discs and the separation between the two objects would make them very tiny. `brown dwarf' stars as they are too small. Brown dwarfs are `failed stars' less than 75 times as massive as Jupiter. The objects are about 350 AU apart, and are located in the Ophiuchus star-forming region approximately 400 light years away. Until this discovery brown dwarfs and planemos were thought to be formed in multiple protostar systems from where they are later ejected. However, the two planemos in Oph1622 are far apart, and therefore only weakly bound together by gravity, so it is difficult to imagine how they could have gone through so drastic an event, yet remained as a pair. Whether or not similar multiple planemo systems exist is not known. The system was discovered in an optical image taken with the European Southern Observatory's 3.5-metre New Technology Telescope on La Silla, Chile by a team from the University of Toronto, Canada and ESO. Optical spectra and infrared images obtained with ESO's 8.2-metre Very Large Telescope on Paranal, also in Chile, were used in the study of the objects.


8 Astronotes September 2006

Van Goghs of Tomorrow
By Wendy McCorry, Science Communicator We have now had three full weeks of being open to the public. What a difference! The place is absolutely buzzing. It was strange, at first, to see people standing at the exhibits reading the information and using the computers. However, it was even stranger to see almost a hundred people queuing upstairs to get into our Digital Theatre. As expected, the amount of rubbish, wear and tear and noise has increased greatly, but seeing excited faces and hearing their gasps of amazement makes it all worthwhile. Despite the ¸3 million re-vamp, state-of-the-art exhibition areas and sterioscopic screens,

Galactic Federation? Armagh Planetarium's daily SETI project regularly makes contact with all manner of bizarre alien lifeforms including the entities pictured here (actually this is a tiny sample of the art visitors make here every day) home seems to go largely unnoticed. The children ooh and aah over the idea of being able to draw their "very own design" onto a sticky label, and they are over the moon when told that yes, they can take their painted paper plate home with them. The variety of designs and ideas the young artists come up with has to be seen to be believed ­ this is one place in which the only limit is the child's own imagination. Rather surprisingly, this room has also proved to be a very popular haven for busy Mums and Dads, who enjoy nothing more than sitting peacefully working on our giant collage, whilst their little angels create hideous monster alien masks at the other side of the room. It is mainly due to the help of these weary parents, that we now have enough giant collages to cover the entire outside of the building - twice! Our next task is to come up with some fresh, new ideas for this hub of creativity ­ perhaps a look through the `Blue Peter' archives is required...

the most popular activity amongst the kids still seems to be the rocket making ­ an empty coke bottle and a couple of bits of card and voila, space education at its best! Also proving very popular is the craft room upstairs, where visitors who are a little too young to sit through a show in the darkness of the theatre,

"a coke bottle and bits of card and voila, space education at its best!"
can instead put their artistic ability to great use making alien masks, mission patches and postcards from space. The fact that all the materials used for these activities are available in any large supermarket and could quite easily be used at

Image Credit: Armagh Planetarium


September 2006 Astronotes 9

In Search of the Men who Fell to Earth
Moon Dust by Andrew Smith reviewed by Sharon Carroll, Science Communicator This is an extremely thought provoking book. Imagine you've done the impossible, you've been to the moon, what is there left in life now to accomplish? There are now nine out of twelve men remaining who can answer this question and Andrew Smith tracks them down. Smith seeks to determine the real stories, the astronauts' own personal experiences and learns how the decades have treated them. In addition to the question `What next?' many have had to endure the massive attention from millions since this event was the first truly global event. Each has had their own method of coping with this unique challenge and finding their own way to put their feet back firmly on Earth's soil. Smith also uncovers the realities of the relationship between the astronauts and NASA. He explains that the astronauts were sent up to space on an inadequately-tested rocket full of explosives, guided by a computer with a memory size

The men the 20th has been coverage

behind "The last optimistic act of Century" Andrew Smith's `Moondust' a popular success in the UK thanks to on the Richard and Judy TV show

"Apollo Astronauts were paid a measly $8 a day"
less than a mobile phone, but were paid only a measly $8 a day. According to Smith, NASA created these heroes, paid them a pittance and then dumped them. No wonder many of them struggled with their fame and the realisation of their achievements. Clearly not all of them were equipped to cope with this fall back down to earth.

Andrew Smith tried to meet all the surviving moonwalkers while researching this book. Some refused with varying degrees of courtesy, while those he met were a mixed bag, some were likeable, others awkward and less than friendly. They remain a unique band of (by now elderly) men. Editor's Note: Several of us in Armagh have read and enjoyed this fascinating book and agree with Sharon's assessment. It is a very good read, joining Wolfe's `The Right Stuff', Chaikin's `A Man on the Moon' and Burrough's `Dragonfly' as one of the classics of space exploration. Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth by Andrew Smith, Bloomsbury Publishing 2006,ISBN 9780747563693, 320 pages

Image Credit: Amazon.co.uk


10 Astronotes September 2006

Bluffing your way in Astronomy: Satellites
By now, as you've followed this series, you will have impressed friends and family with your supposedly deep knowledge of astronomy. You can take people outside and show them carefully selected night sky wonders. You are already thought of as an expert in astronomy, but what if the unexpected happens? You might be in your garden on a clear night, shortly after sunset or before sunrise, explaining to an awe-struck audience about why we only see one side of the Moon, when someone says "What do you call that little star, the one there that's moving?" Suddenly all eyes are on you, waiting for the Astronomer to answer. Have you been caught out? You need to think fast so buy
Image Credit: ESA / NASA

"a surprising number of people do not realise that satellites can be seen with the naked eye"
some time by chuckling and saying "A moving star? Show me." Look at the moving star and check if there is a little blinking red star on one side of it, and a green one on the other. If there is, they are navigation lights and the `star' is actually a plane, so you can make an amusing off-hand remark about the "constellation of Boeing the Jumbo" or something like that. If there are no lights, then here is a golden opportunity to show off. "That's no star- it's a satellite!" Expect some scepticism, as a surprising number of people do not realise that satellites can be seen with the naked eye. Earth-orbiting artificial satellites are visible to us on the ground due to the reflection of the Sun's light off their surfaces (which tend to be covered in metallic foil and therefore rather

The International Space Station moves away from Space Shuttle Discovery This picture was taken on July 15, 2006 as Discovery's crew prepared to return home to Earth. Even from your back garden the ISS can be a magnificent sight as it drifts across the night sky. shiny) toward the observer. As a matter of fact, hundreds of satellites are visible to the unaided eye; thousands are visible using binoculars and telescopes. There are over 1500 working satellites going round the Earth at the moment and many, many more pieces of space junk. Artificial satellites circle the Earth in paths called orbits and will keep moving with no fuel burned-apart from during the initial launch. If anyone asks how just say it's "all thanks to Isaac Newton". Continue watching the satellite as it sails silently through the sky. It may get brighter or dimmer. That is because it has moved so that more light is reflected down to us (many satellites are rotating so perhaps an especially shiny bit is now in just the right position). Of course some satellites are bigger than others and have much better reflective surfaces so some are considerably more spectacular than others. As you watch it may fade and disappear as it moves into the Earth's


September 2006 Astronotes 11 shadow. To the satellite everything has just gone dark, there is no more sunlight to reflect off it and illuminate it to us on the ground. Most satellites orbit west to east as it's much easier to launch them in the direction the Earth rotates in, rather than against it. A few satellites, mainly used for observing the Earth, orbit north to south. Their movements are as regular as clockwork so if you can do the calculations it is straightforward to predict when any particular satellite is going to go over. Someone may ask how far away it is. Most satellites are over 320 km above the Earth as below that altitude there are still enough traces of atmosphere to cause drag which would cause the satellite to eventually fall. Most satellites visible from the ground are less than 1200 km above the Earth's surface. It is rather amazing to think that you can see something maybe only the size of a car at such distances. How fast is it going? That's hard to say, the higher the orbit, the slower the orbital velocity, for example at 320 km the speed would be 7.7km/s (27 720 km/h) and the satellite will take 91 minutes to go around the Earth. So that's the minimum you need to know about satellites to convince people that you're some kind of expert. Another idea you could try to look even smarter is to check out one of the excellent websites that predict passes overhead by visible satellites for your own location. An especially useful one is www.heavens-above. com. Then you could point out and identify particular satellites (being very big, the International Space Station is especially spectacular) to your awe-struck audience- then you'll really look like a space expert!

The `real' job description
·You must be able to remove thoughts from your brain of soft slippers and pyjamas, mugs of tea and warm buttery toast in an instant. ·You will be entitled to half an hour for your lunch but you will never take it. You must be able to eat very quickly and down your tea in one gulp. ·You must be able to invent simple and accessible methods to explain scientific phenomena that even scientists have difficulty understanding. ·You must be good at art and able to come up with interesting ideas for kids of all ages. ·You must be prepared to get glue and paint all over your good clothes. ·You must be good at singing, especially tunes like Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. ·You mustn't be afraid of making yourself look silly (the little ones love it!) ·You must be prepared to tell / explain / demonstrate the same thing 100 times a day in an interesting and thought provoking fashion. ·You must have a gift in being able to do things in the dark. ·You must be good at remembering to press at least 10 buttons in a row and in the correct order!
Image Credit: Armagh Planetarium

Teacher's Pets The Science Communicator team are always on hand for our visitors. Sharon (centre) admires the latest artworks. by Sharon Carroll, Science Communicator ·You will have no life outside that of Armagh Planetarium. ·You must invest in a diary to book your partner, your pet dog, your parents and your granny in for appointments to see you.


12 Astronotes September 2006

Image of the Month
Image Credit: Imke de Pater, Michael Wong (UC Berkeley); Al Conrad (Keck), and Chris Go (Cebu, Philippines)

Astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii took this high-resolution near-infrared image of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and its younger rival Red Spot Jr in July. The Spots appear white thanks to the wavelengths used to image them. Both Spots are long-lived high-pressure storms like enormous hurricanes. The Great Red Spot has been whirling through the giant planet's murky atmosphere for 342 or more years and is twice as wide as the Earth. Red Spot Jr, which is `only' as wide as the Earth, formed when three white spots merged between 1998 and 2000, then in December 2005 it changed colour to red.

An amateur astronomer, Christopher Go, was first to observe this change. He was subsequently invited to join the team who created this image. No one knows the source of the red colour. The Spots' 640 km/h winds are dredging up material from deeper in the planet's atmosphere. When exposed to ultraviolet sunlight at higher altitude this mystery substance turns red. It could be phosphine gas, which is known to exist on Jupiter, or a sulphur-based compound.The image was made with the Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea using adaptive optics to sharpen the image.

www.armaghplanet.com
Astronotes, Incorporating Friends' Newsletter is published monthly by Armagh Planetarium, College Hill, Armagh, Co. Armagh BT61 9DB Tel: 02837 523689 Email: cj@armaghplanet.com Editor: Colin Johnston ©2006 Armagh Planetarium All rights reserved