martedì 25 dicembre 2012
mercoledì 25 luglio 2012
SUGGESTED MUSIC
27 October 2018
Effect of dust storm on Mars
Click HERE to submit your pictures
01 February 2015
The huge sunspot 2192
By Raffaello Lena( http://glrgroup2.blogspot.it/ )
Huge sunspot in October 2014. Images of the mosaic taken with a TMB 13 cm refractor rom Rome Italy.
18 April 2015
Lunar volcanos at the terminator
By Raffaello Lena( http://glrgroup2.blogspot.it/ )
Lunar volcanoes at the terminator near Hortensius and Milichius. The image displays also
Copernicus and Stadius - February 28 2015 from Rome Italy and a Mak Cassegrain 18 cm
18 May 2015
Sun eclipse March 20 2015
By Raffaello Lena
Here my first at maximum contact from Rome 09:32 UT.
it is a mosaic of 6 shots taken with a TMB 13 cm refractor.
Note the irregular lunar limb against the solar surface
31 July 2015
Mosaic with images taken with TMB 13 cm refractor and Mak Cassegrain 18 cm from Rome.
Many of the oddities are concentrated in Oceanus
Procellarum, including Rümker, the Aristarchus Plateau, Schröter's Valley, and
the Marius Hills. Across the Moon most familar small
volcanic cones are standard domes like those near Kies, Hortensius and Cauchy. These were constructed by eruptions of lava
flows from a central vent. Because the lavas were fluid they didn't build steep
hills - normal 27 October 2018
Effect of dust storm on Mars
By Raffaello Lena
The effect of the dust storm on Mars, between July and September 2018.
The images are RGB and the effect of the dust storm is more evident if compared
with images made with an IR-pass filter.
Thus these images display less albedo patches, being similar to visual observation.
I used a Mak Cassegrain 18 cm and a Toucam webcam for color images.
The effect of the dust storm on Mars, between July and September 2018.
The images are RGB and the effect of the dust storm is more evident if compared
with images made with an IR-pass filter.
Thus these images display less albedo patches, being similar to visual observation.
I used a Mak Cassegrain 18 cm and a Toucam webcam for color images.
Click HERE to submit your pictures
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, March 10 – 18
This Week's Planet Roundup
Raffaello Lena in Rome has been imaging Venus as it wanes in phase and enlarges in size, using a 7-inch Maksutov-Cassegrain scope. He plans to continue right up to Venus's conjunction 8° north of the Sun.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF VENUS, CONTINUED: On March 25th, Venus will pass almost directly between Earth and the sun--an event astronomers call "inferior solar conjunction." As Venus approaches the sun, the planet is turning its night side toward Earth, reducing its luminous glow to a thin sliver. Astrophotographer Raffaello Lena of Rome, Italy, has been monitoring the transformation:
"I've just added an image from March 10th to this composite," says Lena. "It clearly shows the transformation of Venus to a skinny crescent."
You don't need such a large telescope to see the shape of Venus. Even ordinary binoculars will show the crescent. Amateur astronomers are encouraged to monitor Venus in the lead-up to inferior conjunction. In the nights ahead, the crescent of Venus will become increasingly thin and circular. The horns of the crescent might actually touch when the Venus-sun angle is least on March 25th.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF VENUS: On March 25th, Venus will pass almost directly between Earth and the sun--an event astronomers call "inferior solar conjunction." As Venus approaches the sun, the planet is turning its night side toward Earth, reducing its luminous glow to a thin sliver. Astrophotographer Raffaello Lena of Rome, Italy, has been monitoring the transformation:
"The progression of the crescent as Venus approaches inferior conjunction is clear," says Lena. "I took these pictures using an 18 cm (7 inch) Mak Cassegrain telescope."
You don't need such a large telescope, however, to see the shape of Venus. Even ordinary binoculars will show the crescent. Amateur astronomers are encouraged to monitor Venus in the lead-up to inferior conjunction. In the nights ahead, the crescent of Venus will become increasingly thin and circular.
TWINKLE, TWINKLE, CRESCENT VENUS: Like the Moon, Venus has phases, and right now it is a beautifully slender crescent. On March 17th, Italian astronomer Raffaello Lena used a small telescope to track Venus down to the horizon as it set in the evening sky of Rome. He recorded a beautiful example of atmospheric turbulence distorting the curved lines of the second planet
This kind of scintillation is normally reserved for pinpoint objects like distant stars. Venus is so thin, it's doing it too.
01 February 2015
The huge sunspot 2192
By Raffaello Lena( http://glrgroup2.blogspot.it/ )
Huge sunspot in October 2014. Images of the mosaic taken with a TMB 13 cm refractor rom Rome Italy.
18 April 2015
Lunar volcanos at the terminator
By Raffaello Lena( http://glrgroup2.blogspot.it/ )
Lunar volcanoes at the terminator near Hortensius and Milichius. The image displays also
Copernicus and Stadius - February 28 2015 from Rome Italy and a Mak Cassegrain 18 cm
18 May 2015
Sun eclipse March 20 2015
By Raffaello Lena
Here my first at maximum contact from Rome 09:32 UT.
it is a mosaic of 6 shots taken with a TMB 13 cm refractor.
Note the irregular lunar limb against the solar surface
Saturn oppositions
By Raffaello Lena
My last image of Saturn taken on June 5 2015 is assembled with my previous saturn images in the cicle of the life FROM 2006 to 2015.Mosaic with images taken with TMB 13 cm refractor and Mak Cassegrain 18 cm from Rome.
Raffaello Lena, of the GLR Group in Rome, has documented the simultaneous observation of the exceedingly transitory flash of an impact on the Moon by three observers, using four telescopes equipped with CCD cameras, from three separate locations.
"On August 1, 2013 at 02:21:55.7 UT, we observed a small meteoroid impact on the Moon's surface. The kinetic energy transformed into heat caused a brief and intense flash detected simultaniously in telescopes operated by R. Lena, A. Manna and S. Sposetti.
"The simultaneity of the flash observations, at the same position on the lunar surface strongly indicate the flash is unlikely to be mistaken for anything other than an impact."
The event was recorded by Raffaello Lena in Rome Italy, Andrea Manna in Cugnasco, Switzerland, and by Stefano Sposetti in Gnosca, Switzerland. The two observatories in Switzerland were separated by 10 km while Lena in Rome was 558 km from Gnosca.
The meteoroidal lunar impact detected on August, 1, 2013 at 02:21:55.7 UT was simultaneously recorded by four independent video recordings. The duration of the flash corresponds with 0.08 seconds peaked in a brightness of 8.3 ± 0.7 magnitude. Synchronicity of the documenting images and related files was verified using GPS time inserters (KIWI-OSD) and an Atomic Clock Synchronization protocol.
The coordinates of the flash were determined to 73° (± 4°) East, 27° (± 3°) North, near the crater Seneca C.
"The flash probably corresponds to an α-Capricornids meteor stream, exhibiting favorable geometry at time of impact."
A report of the coordinated observing session is published in Selenology Today, HERE, and an Adobe pdf file with the particular of the event and observing session can be also downloaded HERE.
In addition, Lena reports, "some animations and data, are also presented on my website:http://lunarimpact2.blogspot.it/ .
Related Posts:
Earth's Nightlight (June 26, 2013)
March of Time Paces Changes on the Lunar Surface (May 21, 2013)
LROC team identifies a new lunar crater (July 28, 2010)
The Lunar Geminids (December 10, 2009)
Impact Gap in the Moon's Southern Highlands? (May 22, 2008)
 CAUGHT ONE!
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BUMPS IN THE NIGHT
image by Raf
Lena, Rome, Italy
The Moon has of thousands of observable craters, hundreds of rilles, domes and mare ridges, and a handful of unique features.
The Moon has of thousands of observable craters, hundreds of rilles, domes and mare ridges, and a handful of unique features.
domes have slopes of only a few degrees. But something makes the steeper-sided cones in the Marius Hills. If you look closely at Raf's image you may notice that the cones are quite irregular in shape. For some, the bottom has a gentle slope and the top is steeper.
Others have an associated hilly flow. These observations suggest that the Marius Hills had different origins than the generic dome. There is spectroscopic evidence for ash at many of the cones so it is likely that explosive eruptions may have built lunar equivalents to terrestrial cinder cones. The hilly material surrounding some of the cones is probably viscous lava flows. The gentle slopes at the base of other hills may be due to normal dome lavas that are more fluid. So there are two unique features of the Marius Hills - there is a great concentration of volcanoes, and they have more pyroclastics than volcanoes elsewhere on the Moon. Asking why to both of these questions is reasonable, answering is hard.
Chuck Wood
Technical Details
Nov. 25, 2012, 23:28 UT. Mak-Cass 18 cm + Lumenera LU 075M.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
An unexpected transit
 |
| Rafaello Lena, of the GLR Group in Rome passes along this serendipitous interruption of his efforts to record Earth atmosphere-grazing Perseid meteors and perhaps another lunar impact, captured at 1945 UT, Monday, August 12 . An aircraft, and easily "identified flying object," transits the evening Moon. Still 40 hours shy of its Quarter phase, the Moon was 377,200 km away as the terminator swung over central Mare Serenitatis and the Southern Highlands, sunrise over the 1972 landing site of Apollo 16. |
April 11, 2012
REBIRTH
image by Raf Lena, Rome, Italy
Kipuka is a lovely word that hardly anyone has heard of unless they've been to Hawaii. A kipuka is a high standing remnant of an earlier terrain now surrounded by lava flows. Raf has documented a classic example of a lunar kipuka, this slight rise (rising about 500 m over a radius of roughly 25 km) cut by the Opelt Rille at the boundary of maria Cognitum and Nubium. With lower resolution there isn't much difference between the rise and the surrounding, so it could be a large dome. But it is clear in Raf's image and the LRO excerpt at left that the rise is more fractured and more pitted with small craters. It isn't the same material - its older. The fact that the rise is cut by fractures suggests that its elevation may have resulted from it being domed upward when it was young. Its a kipuka now, but maybe it was a dome (or swell) before.
Chuck Wood
Related Links
Rükl plate 42
Later Addition
After posting this I came across an image released by NASA's Earth Observatory of young lava flows in Ethiopia. Part of it looked very similar to the kipuka described in today's LPOD.
See the EO posting for details.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Raffaello Lena - GLRP & Selenology Today #13
From
left to right, South to North. A very highly scaled section of a much
larger 12.6 cm comparative polarity image of the Near Side portion of
the Lunar South Pole, just above the rim of abyssal 19 kilometer wide
Shackleton (lower left), future notional site of Armstrong Station, the
American portion of the semi-permanently manned lunar outpost presently
in the federal budget. Malapert Mountain, on the Right, has been the
notional site of every possible multi-purpose lunar outpost imaginable,
and for good reason. As on Earth, so it is on the Moon. Real Estate is
"location, location, location."
Wow! It's not every day a person in the lunar community receives high praise from two highly respected forums, each of whom are Websites of Record. Nevertheless, there you have it.
That was enough for Lunar Pioneer Research Group to wave our hand and "give it up" for Raffaello Lena of the Geologic Lunar Research (GLR) group, truly dedicated publishers of Selenology Today.
Issue #13 was released on the web today, and this Number is dedicated to LCROSS.
First the LCROSS Observation Group, a primary contact point for amateur Plus Ultra observers preparing to record that impactor in action later this year, express high praise and gratitude to Raffaello Lena for featuring some really fine articles, written by senior members of the group explaining the importance of earth-bound "amateur" observers of the final stage of the LCROSS mission, in this latest issue of Selenology Today #13.
Now, if that were not enough, Raffaello Lena also received some very high praise tonight/this morning from, guess who... Chuck Wood, who put his Moon-powered LPOD spotlight on Mr. Lena, to illustrate "the P in LPOD doesn't just stand for Photograph, it also stands for "People."
That was enough for Lunar Pioneer Research Group to wave our hand and "give it up" for Raffaello Lena of the Geologic Lunar Research (GLR) group, truly dedicated publishers of Selenology Today.
Issue #13 was released on the web today, and this Number is dedicated to LCROSS.
First the LCROSS Observation Group, a primary contact point for amateur Plus Ultra observers preparing to record that impactor in action later this year, express high praise and gratitude to Raffaello Lena for featuring some really fine articles, written by senior members of the group explaining the importance of earth-bound "amateur" observers of the final stage of the LCROSS mission, in this latest issue of Selenology Today #13.
Now, if that were not enough, Raffaello Lena also received some very high praise tonight/this morning from, guess who... Chuck Wood, who put his Moon-powered LPOD spotlight on Mr. Lena, to illustrate "the P in LPOD doesn't just stand for Photograph, it also stands for "People."
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image by Raf Lena
I am starting a campaign to encourage observers to image the small lunar pyroclastic deposit (LPD) located on the summit of the dome Yangel 1. The LPD was identified by Barry Fitz-Gerald and me and was published recently. The LPD is detectable based on Clementine and Selene imagery as shown in the mentioned article. The Yangel LPD is detectable in a Clementine albedo map and is characterized by high R415/R750 ratio. The Selene-1 (Kaguya) color ratio image and Clementine UVVIS multispectral data indicate a higher titanium concentration for the dome and LPD, which show up bluer than the surrounding red mare. To our knowledge this small deposit (4-5 km wide) has not been imaged from Earth. Hence, all imagers and enthusiastic lunar observers are asked to verify if this deposit is detectable using medium/large amateur telescopes. The goal of this project is to image the deposit under high solar illumination near full Moon. Of course, considering its small dimension, high magnification is necessary. Color images (including the supersaturation method) are also welcomed. Combined efforts including all eventual data received will be included in a future report ragarding the visibility (from Earth) of the deposit. Negative results from CCD imagery would suggest that deposit has little obscuring effect on the underlying topography. I will be happy to receive the images for further analysis.
Raf Lena
Related Links
21st Century Atlas chart 11.