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Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
January 30, 2014

What's in the sky tonight?
January 30, 2014

-On Thursday, Jan. 30th, the Moon will eclipse the sun for almost 2.5 hours. You have to be in space to see it. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory s set to record the "lunar transit," which begins at 1331 UTC or 8:31 EST. A simulation shows that approximately 90% of the sun will covered. SDO is solar powered, so mission controllers have charged-up the spacecraft's batteries to endure the blackout. Stay tuned for images during the eclipse!

Astro Picture of the Day:
January 30, 2014

Source:
Fixed to a tripod and looking east across the Kennedy Space Center's Turn Basin, a camera captured these star trails as a series of short exposures over a three hour period on the evening of January 23rd. Positioned just a few miles from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, it also captured a spectacular night launch of an Atlas V rocket carrying NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite TDRS-L. Creating the trails, the apparent motion of the stars through the sky is just a reflection of the daily rotation of planet Earth on its axis. But that rotation is also the reason the rocket streak follows a path arcing east across the Atlantic. Launching toward the east, in the direction of Earth's rotation, adds the rotation velocity to the rocket and reduces the fuel needed to reach orbit. A little ironically, TDRS-L is destined for a geostationary orbit. From there, 36,000 kilometers or so above the equator, it's orbital period will match Earth's rotation and the satellite will hang motionless in planet Earth's sky.