The Lunokhod 2 was a Russian Rover that landed on the moon in 1973, and to this day holds the record for the longest distance of surface travel on the moon. It was intended to survey sites for later manned landings and lunar bases; in June of 1973, the mission was declared completed. Many speculated that this was due to mechanical failure and the Lunokhod was never recovered from the moon.

Fast forward to 1993. Richard Garriott (a.k.a. Lord British) purchases “ownership” of the Lunokhod landers for $68,500 from the Lavochkin Association, a Russian aerospace company. Even though the landers were still on the moon.

Now this is where it gets cool. Fast forward to this past Wednesday. 2010 – 37 years after the Lunokhod mission, Cambridge author and astronomer Phil Stooke found it neatly tucked in a crater. From CTV/Canada a.m. : “By comparing the newly released images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter with pictures from his own recently published reference book on moon geography, The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration, he was able to find the tracks the old Soviet rover left in the moon dust.”

Check out the interview here on CTV… On the moon, “there are no waves or wind on the moon to wash or blow them away, like footprints on a beach. They could be there for millions of years.”

Kudos to Wired for my favorite caption thus far: “Game developer’s lost Russian rover is found.”

And to the Vancouver Sun for nicknaming Stooke a “lunar sleuth.” Intrepid, exotic, outstanding. I may have to find a new career…

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Via CTV.ca News Staff

A Canadian astronomer has found a long-lost piece of the former Soviet space program, still sitting on the surface of the moon where it was left nearly four decades ago.

Phil Stooke, a professor of geography and astronomy at the University of Western Ontario, has succeeded in pinpointing the exact location of the remotely controlled rover Lunokhod 2, which landed on the moon in January 1973.

Stooke spent hours poring over photos of the lunar surface and NASA data files to locate the now-lifeless rover in the small crater where it finally came to rest.

By comparing the newly released images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter with pictures from his own recently published reference book on moon geography, The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration, he was able to find the tracks the old Soviet rover left in the moon dust.

“The tracks were visible at once,” Stooke told CTV’s Canada AM. “The real secret to this was having these new images. The new images are fantastic: they’re the most detailed pictures we’ve ever had of the moon.”

The general location of the Lunokhod was already known, but no telescopes on Earth were powerful enough to see exactly where it finally shut down.

But Stooke said the new NASA photos were so detailed that he was able to see even the relatively tiny rover.

“We can also see where it drove into a small crater and accidentally covered its heat radiator with soil as it struggled to get out again. That ultimately caused it to overheat and stop working,” he said. “And the rover itself shows up as a dark spot right where it stopped.”

The Soviet Union landed Lunokhod 2 on the moon one month after the last American moonwalk. It was the second of two solar-powered robotic rovers the Soviets sent to the moon.

The Lunokhod rovers were the first remote-controlled vehicles to travel on an extraterrestrial body and still hold the record for longest rover trip at 35 kilometres.

“It drove a little over 35 kilometres (and) that’s the record for any remotely controlled rover anywhere in the Solar System.”

Lunokhod 2’s mission was to collect images from the moon, observe X-rays from the sun, study the moon’s soil and measure its magnetic fields.

Although Stooke spent years searching for the lost rover, he is unlikely to get salvage rights to the expensive piece of hardware. The Russians sold Lunokhod 2 – delivery not included – to an American millionaire in the 1990s.

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Keep reading and watch Professor Stooke’s interview > > >

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about holiday gifts for potential stargazers. I argued against buying a telescope as a first step, and instead encouraged people to begin with the naked eye or binoculars. Now I’d like to describe some of the objects in the nighttime sky that you can see right now and in the coming months, to help anyone who might take me up on that advice.

Amateur astronomers divide the sky into two distinct regions: the Solar System and the ‘deep sky’. Objects in the Solar System – the sun, the moon, the planets, comets, asteroids, and lots of smaller things – are much closer to us than the targets of the deep sky: stars, star clusters, nebulae (clouds of interstellar gas and/or dust), and galaxies. Because of this, Solar System objects, as they orbit the sun, move across the fields of constellations. The constellations (and all the objects contained within them) also change as the earth itself goes around the sun, but the same constellations are in the sky at the same time every year. If I were writing only about the deep sky, I could have called this post ‘The Sky Every Winter’, but there are some bright planets in the sky right now, and they won’t be in the same positions a year from now.

Right now, in mid-December, if you go outside between just after sunset until around 9:00 pm, and look south of where the sun actually went down, you’ll see a very bright ‘star’ that is actually the planet Jupiter. It will be getting lower and lower in the sky each night as the earth’s orbit makes Jupiter appear closer to the sun in our sky. By mid-February, it will set so soon after the sun that we won’t be able to see it anymore (several weeks later, it will be visible again in the early morning, as it begins to rise before the sun.)

Jupiter is huge. Even through a pair of modest binoculars, it shows as a tiny disc, although it is 500 million miles away. Through those same binoculars, its four largest moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) show as tiny specks in a line near the planet. The photo shows just three of the moons, because one was behind Jupiter at the time. Binoculars won’t show the detail seen here on Jupiter itself, mostly because it will be too bright, but it will also look much smaller.

On December 20^th and 21^st of this year, Jupiter will look especially striking, since it will be accompanied by the crescent moon. The sun, moon, and planets all seem to travel along or near a line around our sky (since we are all contained in the flat disc of the Solar System, this makes sense) called the ecliptic. Since the moon completes a circle around this line once a month, it often comes near any planets that happen to be visible. If conditions are right, it sometimes even passes in front of them. December 21^st is the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. If skies are clear, take a look to the south just after sunset, when there’s still some blue in the sky. It will look something like this photo I took of the crescent moon near the planet Venus last spring.

Mars is rising earlier each night this month. Right now it comes up in the east around 8:30 pm, but by mid-January, it will rise just after sunset, and will be the bright, yellowish-orange ‘star’ that dominates the eastern sky. Mars is a small planet, and details on its surface are hard to see, even through a powerful telescope. On January second, 2010, a nearly-full moon will rise around the same time as Mars, and they’ll cross the sky together. On January 29^th, the same thing will happen, after the moon completes another orbit of the earth; and this time, the star cluster M44, (the ‘beehive’) will be in the background. But it won’t be easy to see, since the moon will be so bright. If you go out in the evening a few nights later, the moon will not have risen yet, and Mars will look great next to M44 through a pair of binoculars!

If you stay up later right now (mid-December), you can see Saturn rise at about 1:00 am. By mid-January, it will rise two hours earlier, and by mid-February, it will be fairly high in the southeast by 11:00 pm, and will continue rising earlier each night. Saturn is nearly twice as far away as Jupiter, and not as large, but it still appears as a bright, yellow ‘star’ in our sky. Binoculars cannot show its famous rings, but they are visible through even a small telescope at about 45x magnification. (I’m including a telescope view of it here, even though it may be cheating to do so in this article, because it’s one of the best things to see through a small scope.)

No description of the winter sky would be complete with out the inclusion of the constellation Orion, the Hunter. It’s the brightest constellation in the entire sky, and it rises completely by about 7:00 pm by mid-December. By mid-January, it is high in the sky, due south, by 10:00 pm. It’s a beautiful sight with the naked eye, and the Great Orion Nebula, seen in the Hunter’s ‘sword’, shows wispy, gray detail through binoculars. The nebula is a region of gas and dust where bright, new stars are forming.

Orion and its famous nebula

This is just a sampling of what you might see if you go outside this winter and look up at the night. To find more, try using the Interactive Sky Chart at the Sky and Telescope website. You’ll need to register, and enter your location, but once you do, you’ll be able to return whenever you like. You can find out what will be in your sky at any given minute, hour, day, month, or even year. And, if you’re anything like me, the more you go out and look at the actual nighttime sky, the more you’ll want to!

Paul Kinzer is author of Stargazing Basics.

Watch the embedded video below — insightful and hilarious.

This is the traditional time of year when people (particularly parents) consider the purchase of a telescope as a holiday gift. A loved one — often a child, but not always — shows an interest in astronomy, or maybe just science in general, and the gift-giver assumes that a telescope is the proper introduction to the hobby of observational astronomy. I’m going to make the argument that this may not be the best choice. Don’t get me wrong; I love telescopes. I currently own eight (I think; I lose track), and I even built a couple of them myself. But I’ve come to the conclusion that a telescope is not necessarily the best first step in getting started in astronomy; that they are a wonderful thing to have, but that they should come later. After I explain my thinking on this, I’ll make some inexpensive, alternative suggestions for budding amateurs.

Why not start with a telescope?

Well, first, high-quality telescopes, telescopes you’d want to keep and use for a lifetime, are fairly to very expensive (starting at around $250, and going to as high as you care to imagine). Oh, there are acceptable scopes that don’t cost as much, and that are specifically designed for absolute beginners; and the variety of such scopes is growing. But, if the recipient of such a scope ends up getting excited about astronomy, despite the shortcomings that allow these scopes to be made inexpensively, then it might not be long before the telescope seems inadequate. On the other hand, the limited views through such scopes — caused by small, cheaply-made mirrors or lenses — may actually be a crushing disappointment.

Another argument I’d make against buying a telescope as a first step, even a more expensive one, is that there are too many choices for the uninitiated to pick from; and that, among these choices, there is a huge selection of absolute junk! Some scopes look to be well-made, but are not. Like buying any item with lots of available options — a car, a camera, a bicycle — choosing a decent telescope takes some background knowledge. And, it isn’t always safe to trust the knowledge of salespeople; they often know very little about what they sell, especially in stores that only sell scopes as one item among many.

Finally, nearly all telescopes take some time to set up, and practice to use. Aiming, focusing, ‘tracking’ (following the object in the sky through the eyepiece as the earth turns on its axis); all of these involve a learning curve, even with small scopes. This is fine, and even fun, for someone who is committed, but maybe not so much for someone who is not yet sure about the hobby.

So you want to jump in, but are curious about telescope alternatives? Read on, for there are many!

Getting started in astronomy doesn’t need to cost anything at all. All you need to do is go outside at night and look up. If you live in a large city, what you see will be limited by the bright, artificial lighting all around you. But even there, you can see the moon and several planets; and, except in the center of the very largest cities, at least some of the brighter stars. A great gift to give someone (and yourself) is a trip to a place with dark skies. Though a high, isolated mountaintop would be best, it isn’t necessary, especially if you’ve spent your life in a big city. I live in a small town (population, about 2,000) in western Wisconsin, and I can see the Milky Way (our own galaxy) from my back yard. I can also clearly see thousands of stars, including all the main stars in the constellations visible from this part of the world.

Make your trip on a night when the moon is either new or a thin crescent (thin crescents either set shortly after the sun in the evening, or rise shortly before it in the morning.) The moon is very interesting, but not the best naked eye object in the night sky; and its light blocks out the light of everything else in the night sky. Here’s a link to a website where you can look up the phases of the moon. And here’s another that will help you find a dark site within much of North America.

To enjoy the view of a dark night sky, even with the naked eye, it helps to know what you are looking at. A very easy way to get started is with a device called a planisphere. The photo shows two of slightly different size. A planisphere consists of one disc placed on top of another, and the two are held together in the middle with a grommet that allows them to spin freely. On the edge of one disc are the 24 hours of the day, and on the other are the dates of the year. When you match an hour to a date, you will see an oval image of what will be in the sky at that time. The oval is only several inches across, so the detail of what it shows is limited, but a planisphere is one of the best ways to learn how the night sky changes from hour to hour and month to month as the earth both spins and orbits around the sun. It is also the only thing you need to begin learning your way around the constellations. Good, waterproof, planispheres can usually be found in any decent bookstore, or ordered online, for between $10 and $20. You can also download a free PDF file here and print your own on card stock. It is best to get a planisphere that is made for use at your latitude on the earth, but it need not be exact.

Learning the constellations is more fun when it’s done with someone else, and it’s a great activity for families. But it isn’t easy for two or more people to know just which star another is looking at or pointing to. A green laser pointer is the perfect solution. The human eye is particularly sensitive to green light, and these pointers shine a thin, visible beam high into the sky (the more common red laser pointers show no beam). Until a year or so ago, these were quite expensive, but they can now be found online for under $20. But heed this warning: these are not toys! Laser light can damage the eye, and the beam these throw can be very hazardous to airline pilots and others, even at a distance of miles. Only lasers of class IIIa, with an output power of 5mW or less, can be used as pointers. Some retailers sell much more powerful lasers, but they are not legal for use outside. The Class IIIa pointers are perfectly legal, and very useful, but should be used only with responsible supervision.

The next step, after the naked eye, might be a pair of binoculars. Kids often find them easier to use than telescopes, since you just put them up to both eyes and aim. Binoculars will show craters on the moon, and the moons of Jupiter. They can take you from seeing a few thousand stars to more than 100,000. Star clusters, galaxies, and other ‘deep-sky’ objects become visible.

Any pair of binoculars will show you more than your eyes can see, but some are not really suited to astronomy. The photo shows two pairs that work well. On the right is an inexpensive (less than $40) pair with the designation ‘7×35’. This means that they magnify images by 7 times, and that the objective lenses (the larger lenses you point at the object to be viewed) are 35mm across. The pair on the left cost much more (about $150), but are of much higher quality, as well as being better for astronomy. They are ‘10×50s’, giving 10x magnification through 50mm objectives. The larger lenses, more than the higher power, are most important for astronomy, since they bring more light to your eyes, allowing you to see dimmer objects. And many interesting things in the night sky are invisible to our eyes, not because they are small, but because they are dim.

Avoid binoculars with these features: ‘ruby’ coatings, zoom magnification, fixed focus, magnification higher than 10x, and objective lenses smaller than 30mm. Also avoid inexpensive pairs with straight tubes (rather than the angled type shown in the photo). These use a different type of prism to bend the light path, and it’s difficult to make this type of prism work well in an inexpensive pair of binoculars. Finally, it’s best to get binoculars that you can actually look through before buying. The lenses have to be lined up perfectly, and I’ve gotten some through mail-order that were not even close.

If you buy binoculars, also try to make sure they have the ability to be mounted on a tripod (most decent ones have this feature. Tripod-mounting is helpful because it allows anyone to get much steadier views, and it also allows more experienced users to share the view with youngsters and others by aiming at an object and then letting others look. If you already own binoculars and a camera tripod, a tripod adapter would make a very nice astronomy gift, and is not very expensive. I just did a web search for ‘binocular tripod adapter’ and found several for under $20.

Whether you buy binoculars or not, you can spend a lot of time learning about the night sky. A planisphere is a great way to get started, but there also many great books to help people who are just starting out. The photo shows some that I have found especially useful. My own, Stargazing Basics, was written to help absolute novices with both equipment buying and the rudiments of what’s up in the sky. The rest of these are all excellent books to help people — even beginners — observe objects in the night sky.

Each of these suggestions is much less expensive than a telescope, and much easier to choose and to use. Yet each can also lead to enjoyment and exploration of the night sky. Once someone is ‘hooked’ on astronomy, then I believe that the effort involved in buying and learning to use a telescope will be much more satisfying.

Paul Kinzer is author of Stargazing Basics.

Astronomers, take a look: astronomers have assembled a 3-D image of the recent ultra field Hubble images. Aimed at a black patch of sky, the telescope revealed thousands of individual galaxies. Here, with an excellent visual description of the science involved, a “fly through” of the image.

Thanks to Fark.com, that great font of good science links.

I have only recently started playing around with taking astrophotos through my Digital SLR (single lens reflex) camera, but, even with my limited experience, I’m very pleased with the results. If you have a DSLR, and own or have access to a telescope with a 1.25” focuser and a motorized equatorial mount, you are almost ready to start imaging yourself. A suitable telescope and mount can be purchased for under $300 (see the photo below).

What makes digital imaging easier than astrophotography with film is that, rather than leaving the shutter open for several minutes or longer, many shorter images can be ‘stacked’ together to get similar results. This makes things easier because, as the image is being exposed, the Earth is turning. In order to get nice, round images of stars, you need to match your telescope’s motion to that of the spinning Earth. With film, you needed to actively guide the telescope during the long exposure, but with a digital camera, exposures as short as 30 seconds can be added together to produce images like this one of M13, the bright Globular Cluster in the constellation Hercules.

This image is a combination of 39 thirty-second exposures, taken through a Nikon D50 DSLR, which was inserted into the focuser of my 10 inch (254mm) f/4.7 reflector (focal length: 1200mm). There was no eyepiece in the scope, and no lens on the camera. This is called ‘prime focus’ astrophotography. An adapter is needed to put the camera and focuser together, but they are not very expensive, and just about any astronomy dealer will sell them for just about any camera.

Here, the DSLR is piggy-backed on the scope

Because I used a scope with a fairly large mirror, and a fairly short focal length (for a telescope), the image is quite bright. A smaller scope would not produce the same result. But if you mount your camera in a different way, you can use a ‘fast’ camera lens to take wider angle shots of constellations and other larger swaths of sky, even on a small scope — or with no scope at all! [see right] You attach the camera, with lens, to the top of the telescope (or directly to the equatorial mount), and use what is called, appropriately enough, the ‘piggy back’ technique. A single thirty-second image will show a fair amount of detail, and several images can also be stacked, to show dimmer stars and other objects.

One aspect of digital astrophotography that is not required of film is the taking of ‘dark frames’. Digital camera sensors produce ‘noise’, and this noise can be removed. After you take several images of an object, you then put the lens cap on the camera lens (for piggy-backing), or cover the end of your scope (for prime focus imaging), and take several more images, at the same settings as the ‘light frames’. You then use processing software, which will align and stack the light frames, and remove the noise by removing the information shown in the dark frames.

The photo below is another prime focus image, using the same set-up I described above. This is M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs), just below the Big Dipper. This time, because the galaxy is quite dim, I had to ‘guide’ the telescope, using a small telescope piggy-backing on the larger one. I kept a star centered, in a special eyepiece with illuminated crosshairs, in the smaller scope, by using the hand controller of my motorized mount. This was the way to take nearly all photos on film. But even this is simpler now with DSLRs: instead of a single 30-minute exposure, this is a combination of six five-minute exposures. Also, one of the best things about digital imaging is that you can see the results right away. I actually took 8 shots, but my guiding was off too much on two of them, so I threw them away. On a single film image, I would not have known that my shot was ruined until I got the film developed.

The M51 Galaxy - Six 5-minute shots digitally stacked