Europlanet Blog

Antarctica

2012-01-28T12:21:00.004Z

Today starts the trip to the cold of Antarctica. Members of Europlanet community are travelling to the Spanish Base in Deception Isle.

Felipe Gomez, from Astrobiology Center in Madrid and coordinator of activities TNA 1 and JRA 2 of Europlanet RI project will be blogging directly from Antarctica. We are waiting right now for the ship that will transport us to the isle from Punta Arenas in Chile.

It will be a trip of four days. During two days we will be travelling along the Hoces Sea, one of the most stormy area in the world. We expect a "funny" travers to Antarcica. We will tell you in some days after all. After those four days we expect to have internet access to continue with our blogging activity in the Europlanet webWe will be posting the progress of the trip, pictures and the work we will be implementing along the following month in Antarctica.

Just we arrived to Gabriel de Castilla Spanish base. This base is managed by Spanish military personnel fro Defence Ministry. It is a pleasure for us to be here with these nice people supporting us for any necessity we could have in our work.

The team we are here is composed by Graciela de Diego, Mercedes Moreno, Olga Prieto and myself, Felipe Gomez.

We pretend to study the microbial diversity along the traverse between a thermal environment in the top of “Cerro Caliente” (hot mountain) and the permafrost in the down part of the valley.

Gabriel de Castilla Base is located at Deception Island in Antarctica, which is the tip of an active volcano with hydrothermal sources around. This is the part in we are interested on, in contact with the cold environment of the permafrost.

The first work day was yesterday with a very bad weather, snow and hard wind in the top of Cerro Caliente.

We arrived to the Spanish Base a couple of days ago after the traverse of Hoces Sea. We traversed this area in Las Palmas ship, a military vessel. Hoces or Drake Sea is one of the stormiest areas around the world, and normally, the traverse is very hard with strong movement of the vessel.

More news from Antarctica:

The methology to apply for sampling is drilling with an electrical engine for taking samples at 1 m. We will do three different drills at three different locations: at the top of the hill where a heat source is located, a nearby location where not so high temperature is located and, finally, just in the valley, where permafrost is located.

Today we started to drill in the top of Cerro Caliente. The place has a wonderful view to the entrance (Neptune docs) to the internal sea of the cone of the volcano. But, as usually, the weather was hard to deal with. But, finally, there is good news; after a hard drilling day we got samples at 80 cm deep. The temperature of the samples was 167 ºC. The temperature gradient just promises good scientific conclusions. To be continued…

Europlanet and the Future

2012-01-28T12:10:00.000Z

We are gathered together at the beautiful Austrian Academy of Sciences to discuss the future of Europlanet. We are nearing the end of the current project, which has been funded by the European Commission's Framework 7 programme for the 2009-2012 time period. In this phase, Europlanet has covered a wide range of activities: it has brought together Europe's planetary scientists at the annual European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) and science workshops, enabled personnel exchanges, developed of modelling tools and catalogues, and even organised field trips to places on Earth that resemble Mars and Europa.

But what does the European planetary community want for the future and how can they go about achieving their goals? It's an interesting topic leading to lively discussion.

In the shorter term, the announcement went out yesterday for EPSC 2012, which will be held in Madrid. The meeting will cover the scope of planetary science with typically 50 sessions of different types. For details, see http://www.epsc2012.eu/

Europlanet's National Outreach Nodes meet up in Meudon

2011-05-30T18:00:00.001+01:00

Europlanet Outreach Nodes (left to right): Magda (Romania),
Martina (Austria), Zdenek (Czech Republic/Slovakia),
Livia (Italy), Eleni (Greece/Europlanet Core Team),
Thierry (France/Europlanet Coordinator), Olivier (webmaster),
Emil (Germany), Jean-Pierre (Europlanet Outreach Advisor),
Anita (UK/Europlanet Core Team) & Hanna (Switzerland)

Thanks to all the Europlanet national nodes who attended the biannual node meeting at the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon on the 23-24th May.

The meeting was an opportunity to share experiences and update each other on activities, as well as to learn some new skills.

Olivier Marco, Europlanet’s outreach webmaster, gave a morning workshop on using new features on the website, plus an overview of Social Media tools available, including Twitter, Facebook. This led to some very interesting discussion on differences between social media use in different countries and how much social media requires a personal face and how to manage the personal/professional divide in forums like Facebook.

During the meeting, two case studies of outreach projects were presented by Livia Giacomini, the Italian Node, and Emil Khasili, the German Node:

Livia presented a practical case study of how INAF have used social media to promote and develop a community for the Italian team entering the International Astronomy Olympics. Before setting up the project Livia and her colleague, Stefano Sandrelli, spent some time finding out from the audiences they were targeting (teenagers and professional astronomers) which social media tools they used. This highlighted how much variation there is in social media use by different age-groups e.g. the Olimpiadi Italiane Di Astronomia Facebook page has been hugely successful for building a community of Italian teenagers. However, Livia’s survey showed that the same audience would not use Twitter at all. Download Livia’s presentation.

Emil presented a very honest and interesting review of a Saturn-themed schools event that he organised in Heilbronn, Germany, in April 2011. The presentation generated a very useful discussion on how to build networks with educators and existing outreach providers, how to plan events that fit in with the constraints of a school’s curriculum and timetable and how to evaluate the success of an event. Download Emil’s presentation

Success on Saturn

2011-04-17T15:43:00.004+01:00

Tonight the observing gods are on our side - clear skies, low to zero humidity, and no problems with the telescope or its instruments. So Tom Stallard and I managed to get ~2 hours observing Saturn, whilst the Cassini spacecraft took a series of infrared images. Our infrared spectra of H-three-plus are designed to complement Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS).

Our spectra on the Keck II telescope have nearly 100 times the ability to find the emission lines of individual molecules. But VIMS gets a much broader sweep of the whole spectrum of Saturn. Our spectra scan the planet from north-to-south, but only at one longitude - the noonday meridian, where the local time on Saturn is 12 noon. Cassini VIMS, however, gets a full picture of the northern hemisphere facing the spacecraft.

Tonight our Keck observations are also being backed up by Henrik Melin and James Donaghue working on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. They are getting images of the northern and southern aurora, at a wavelength sensitive to the H-three-plus emissions.

That means that, between the ground-based observations and the spacecraft, we should build up a really good picture of what's happening to Saturn's atmosphere on a semi-global scale. And that's important, because it enables us to understand all the pressures pushing and pulling the ringed planet.

Europe's planetary scientists have not been so good at carrying out this ground-based support for their space missions as their American colleagues. That's one of the reasons for Europlanet's NA1 "Ground-based support for space missions" activity.

Yet more frustration

2011-04-15T13:32:00.002+01:00

Following on from Henrik Melin's and Tom Stallard's blogs, it's a shame to have to report that the weather on Maunakea is still playing with us unfairly. Tom and I are currently using the Keck II telescope. This is one of the William Keck Observatory's two 10-meter telescopes on the summit. Our target is Saturn; our purpose to support observations being made by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting the Ringed Planet.

Except ... just when the sky is clear, the air immediately around the telescope has decided to get rather too moist for observing. The danger is that drops of water, or even ice crystals, will start to form either on the primary, light-gathering, mirror, or on the secondary mirrors, that focusses the light back down into the instruments. So, after a few short observations to show that we really could get the spectra of Saturn that we wanted, the weather has decided that we can't! And it looks as if by the time we can open the telescope again, Saturn will have dropped below our horizon.

It's at times like this when you realise that astronomy really is real-time. Saturn will never be quite the same again, and if it had been doing something really, really interesting, well - we missed it. Never mind, we have another shot at it in two days time - weather permitting.

So our plan had been to try to measure the spectrum coming from Saturn's upper atmosphere at a very high spectral and spatial resolution. The upper atmospheres of giant planets are composed mainly of molecular and atomic hydrogen, into which a bit of helium has been mixed. Sunlight and the impact of high-energy electrons, hurled at the planet from its magnetosphere and the solar wind, create a third form of hydrogen called H3+ (H-three-plus) that consists of three hydrogen atoms joined together and then ionised by the loss of a negative electron to form a positively charged, molecular ion.

H3+ is a signature molecule; it shows up where energy is being deposited into Saturn and energetic processes are occurring. Tracing where it is to be found, how much, and how hot, helps us to understand just how the saturnian magnetosphere - that region of space controlled by Saturn's magnetic field - couples into the planet itself. And we are hoping that will then help us to understand some other key questions - like why is the upper atmosphere of Saturn (and Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune) much hotter than it should be, based on the amount of sunlight the planet receives.

Tonight, Tom and I are not actually on the summit of Mauna Kea (4,200 meters above sea level) but at the much more comfortable 800-ish meter altitude level of Waimea. For the Keck observatory, working astronomers are kept pretty well oxygenated at the main HQ itself, communicating by video conference with the telescope operator, who is at the summit controlling things. It works pretty well, although I still prefer the hands-on feel of being at the summit and sitting next to the telescope operator.

PS we just got open again and onto Saturn - for one minute. Hey-ho!

Begin again

2011-04-15T05:10:00.003+01:00

Sometimes the weather just doesn't treat you right, especially at 4km up a mountain. It is essential that, as an observer, you don't let it effect you. Getting mad at the weather isn't going to help, so you just accept your fate and wait it out. We finally came down the mountain, knowing that we had, at least, gotten three half nights of decent data. We brushed ourselves off, and slowly the weather cleared.

Now, it is round two. We have a second set of observations, this time, perhaps, even more important. Not only is Cassini observing Saturn's aurora, not only is Hubble, but now we have observations on both IRTF and Keck. Two of the best infrared telescopes in the world, both observing at the same time. Needless to say, it feels as if the weight of the long, slow run without result has lifted. Our IRTF observations begin tomorrow, but tonight is all about Keck.

The twin telescopes of Keck. In our observations, we will be using NIRSPEC on Keck 2, the dome on the right in this picture.

Keck consists of two separate telescopes, each of which have a ten meter dish, still considered close to the largest telescopes on Earth. Tonight, for a span of only two or three hours, we will focus in on the aurora of Saturn, hopefully producing the richest auroral infrared spectra ever seen from the planet. You can even look in on us between 11am-5pm on Friday 15th (BST).

Thunder and lightening, very very boring

2011-04-07T01:15:00.005+01:00

The thing we fear most arrived with a certain inevitability. A massive storm front crashed into the Hawaiian island from the North. I awoke yesterday to rain and hail so loud, I thought I'd left my heating fan on overnight. Today, as a change, I awoke to thunder. Astronomers fear high cirrus clouds because they block the view of the night sky, and they fear summit cloud, because the rain and snow can cause black ice, a real danger. We have both in great supply. And so the mountain turns from being a hard working environment, to an incredibly dull, unsatisfying one.

The all-sky camera at UH2.2 - during the day this typically shows clear skies and telescopes on the horizon, at night the milky way in all its glory. This is the picture today, rain on the lens and fog obscuring the telescopes

Instead of preparing for observations, observing at the summit and reducing the data the next day, we are caught at 3000m trying to do other work, work that doesn't interest us, all at the high altitudes that make concentrating so difficult. It is a lonely time at 3am, the entire building dark, when you're the only one awake. And now it is almost as quiet, 3pm, up before everyone because sleeping at the mountain is always a gamble. I usually sleep better than most, but in these conditions, the daily rhythm broken, I sit in a quiet office, trying to plow through admin work from back home as the mountain storm gently rumbles to me in the background.

Mauna Kea is regarded as one of the premier observing sites in the world, due to its dry clear air.

A storm's a brewin'

2011-04-04T12:48:00.004+01:00

It is our third night here at the summit of Mauna Kea and already the nights are starting to drag by. No matter how important the observations you are making, or how amazing the night time sky or day time views, the slow drag of nightly repetition makes it hard to maintain concentration. This evening, though, our alertness has been raised by the weather. Not, you understand the weather at the summit, and certainly not the rain clouds that always lap against the eastern shores of the Big Island; these weather systems are far below us, looking more like an ocean of cloud from the summit. We are more concerned with the high clouds above us - cirrus.

An image taken from the GOES satellite - taken from the Mauna Kea Weather Center - showing the location of cirrus around the Hawaiian islands.

Cirrus clouds are the bane of an observer's existence, because these high ice clouds can cover over the sky, even when you observe from the top of a mountain as high as Mauna Kea. There's nothing you can do about them, but try and wait them out. Tonight, as you can see in the satellite image, we are riding the edge of a giant mass of cirrus to the south of us. Right now the sky is clear, but we saw our data getting scattered by thin wisps an hour ago. It could easily come back soon. To make matters worse, the even thicker set of cirrus to the north is slowly, day by day, forcing its way towards us and there are rumours of a storm coming. Storms are bad, because they cause hot air to rise much higher than is normal, dragging the water laden clouds with them. If they reach us, then the telescope has to close, in case water starts to condense on the telescope mirror.

So we sit, gripped by satellite imagery, high intensity all-sky cameras and even looking out at the night sky with night-vision goggles, hoping to understand what the weather holds for us.

Observing Saturn at the NASA IRTF

2011-04-03T12:26:00.007+01:00

Tom Stallard and I, both from the University of Leicester, arrived here at Mauna Kea in Hawaii a couple of days ago and have already spent a full night observing the aurora of Saturn. On our first night we observed for a whole 12 hours which is great since we can observe a complete rotation of Saturn (10 hours), but it can also be somewhat intense, especially with the effects that 14,000 feet of altitude has on mental aptitude. Luckily, we did get some great observations of Saturn and Tom tested out the live streaming of our observations to the web - more on that later.

We are using an instrument on the NASA IRTF called CSHELL, a high resolution spectrograph that allows us to look emission from a molecular ion called H₃⁺, emitting in the auroral region on the planet. These observations will enable us both to determine how the wind is blowing at these high latitudes and what the shape of the aurora is, which in turn will tell us more about the processes responsible for the emission.

All in all, we are going to observe here at the IRTF for 14 nights, scattered throughout the month of April. At the same time we are observing Saturn here from the IRTF, the Cassini spacecraft, which is in orbit about Saturn, will also observe the aurora, both in the infrared (as we are) and the ultraviolet. During this period the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) will also turn its eye towards the aurora Saturn, and as if all this wasn't enough, Tom will head down to Waimea to operate the Keck II telescope for a copule of nights - the world's largest infrared telescope. All in all, this mounts up to a very exciting and unprecedented series of observations - helping us to better understand how the aurora of Saturn is formed and how it evolves over time.

If you would like to look in on us while we observe, then head to: http://connect.le.ac.uk/maunakea - we are observing for the next week between midnight and 6am, Hawaii time. That's 11am and 5pm BST, or noon and 6pm CET.

Tom monitoring the incoming observations of Saturn's aurora. Note the image of Saturn as seen through the guide camera on the right.

Bill keeping an eye on the 1s and the 2s. Each monitor contains information about the status, health and movement of the 3.0 meter telescope.

The 3m NASA IRTF telescope and the shiny inside of the dome. The prime mirror cannot be seen from this angle, but is located in the base of the orange structure - at the top of which is the secondary mirror that reflects the light back down through a hole in the primary mirror to the CSHELL instrument. The height of the orange telescope truss is about 6 metres.

Observing Saturn

2011-04-02T18:09:00.001+01:00

Tom Stallard and Henrik Melin, planetary scientists from Leicester University in the UK, have arrived at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, for an observing run of Saturn. They are going to be using the Keck and NASA Infra Red Telescope Facilities to support observations from the Cassini spacecraft's VIMS instrument (to find out all about VIMS, see: http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/ . On 12th April, they will be joined by Europlanet's Steve Miller. Tom, Henrik and Steve will be blogging about their time up the mountain, here on the Europlanet Blog. We are also going to be setting up some live chats, so you can ask them questions and get live feeds of some of the things that they will be looking at.

Europlanet at the European Parliament

2011-02-03T17:44:00.003Z

Britta Thomsen MEP welcoming
guests to the Dinner Debate

The Europlanet team had a fascinating evening last night at the European Parliament with a dinner debate on “Europe’s challenge: to lead the New Age of Space Exploration”. The event was co-hosted by Europlanet and the MEPs Britta Thomsen and Teresa Riera Madurell MEP. We are indebted to Ms Thomsen and to her assistant, Thomas Larsen for the enthusiasm and assistance that they have given us in organising the debate.

Michel Blanc and Reinhard
Schulte-Braucks

Europlanet's aim in organising the event was to raise the profile of planetary science within the framework of the European Space Policy. We were delighted with the turn-out for the debate. Seven MEPs attended for at least part of the evening, with some others represented by their assistants. Although it is not clear at this stage how space exploration will fit into Framework 8, there seems to be some good support within the Parliment for ensuring that Europe maintains the leading role it has carved out for itself in planetary science in recent years.

David Southwood

We had six speakers during the dinner. Ms Thomsen welcomed the guests and set the scene, then Michel Blanc, Europlanet's coordinator talked about the need for a strong network of space agencies, research institutes and industry involved in planetary research. David Southwood, the Director of Science and Robotic Exploration at ESA gave us the long view and highlighted some of Europe's recent successful missions, then Anja Andersen gave a truly inspirational talk on how space exploration affects European Citizens in answering some of the most fundemental questions. Joel Poncy reviewed of the role of planetary exploration in industry and job creation in Europe. Finally Reinhard Schulte-Braucks of DG Enterprise, European Commission gave an overview of space exploration projects funded under the Commissions current Framework Seven Programme and outlined the steps the Commission is taking to prepare for Framework Eight.

Anja Andersen

There were various recurring themes through the speeches - firstly how the interdisciplinary nature of planetary science provides fertile ground for innovation, leading to new research areas and new technologies. Secondly, collaboration is a vital part of planetary exploration - whether between scientists and engineers, academics and industry, or between nations and continents - individuals can't do it alone. The added value that space exploration brings was highlighted in every talk. Thirdly, Europe has really come of age in the last decade and is a major player now in the field of planetary exploration. There are many exciting opportunities to partner with other space agencies in the years ahead. Finally, the inspirational value of exploration - all of us involved have a responsibility to ensure that European citizens can engage and participate in the adventure of exploring our Solar System.

2011 - A Busy New Year for Europlanet!

2011-01-13T14:07:00.000Z

Europlanet has a busy time coming up in early 2011. Starting on Monday 17th January, Europlanet will be holding a workshop at the Lorentz Centre in Leiden on landing sites for exploration missions. Sixty scientists from around the world will be attending. The process by which landing sites are selected for such missions typically involves collaboration between people with diverse expertise and backgrounds, both in science and engineering. Delegates to the workshop will run simplified simulated landing site selection procedures to explore and test a variety of relevant tools. The workshop will be followed by a short conference at ESTEC on Thursday afternoon and Friday, where the workshop results will be presented and there will be further key-note lectures, discussions and debates.

On 2nd February, Europlanet will be co-hosting a dinner debate at the European Parliament where MEPs, members of the European Commission and representatives from the planetary science community and industry can discuss opportunities for Europe to play a leading role in planetary exploration in decades to come.

In March, Europlanet will be announcing the winner of the 2011 Prize for Public Engagement with planetary science. In April there will be a spectacular field trip to test a prototype spacesuit at the Mars analogue site at Rio Tinto in Southern Spain...

We will be providing regular updates here from the Europlanet outreach team, planetary scientists and our network of outreach nodes.

View from the Press Room - EPSC Day 1

2010-09-21T22:54:00.002+01:00

The Angelicum Centre, the venue for EPSC 2010

We've had a busy couple of days at EPSC. Yesterday (Monday) began with two opening ceremonies. The first was an opportunity to showcase Europlanet activities. A lot has happened in the past year, with a particular highlight being the field trips organised to planetary analogue sites - places on Earth that resemble other places in the Solar System. You can find out more about the visits on the Europlanet outreach website: http://www.europlanet-eu.org/outreach/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=261&Itemid=2

During Opening Ceremony No.1, Jean-Pierre Lebreton (the man behind the Huygens probe, the mission that holds the record for touching down on the most distant planetary body to date - Saturn's moon Titan) presented the inaugural Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement with Planetary Science was awarded to Jean Lilensten.

Lilensten is a real inspiration in the outreach community. He has spent over 10 years developing an aurora simulator called the 'planeterrella'. The idea came from experiments at the turn of the last century by a Norwegian physicist called Kristian Birkeland. Not only has Lilensten developed a robust portable version of Birkeland's kit, but he has adapted it to show the different kinds of aurora that are generated at large gas giants, as well as smaller planets like Earth.

The Planeterrella. Credit: Cyril Simon

Lilensten has brought the planeterrella to Rome and will be sharing the magic of auroras on Thursday with the public and students at the Faculty of Engineering at the San Pietro in Vincoli of the Sapienza Università degli Studi di Roma. On Friday, he will be on site with the planeterrella at EPSC, hopefully inspiring a few more of the planetary community to think about sharing their enthusiam for their subject with the rest of the world. One of the things that made Lilensten the outstanding candidate for the 2010 Prize was his generosity in sharing the plans for the planeterrella with anyone who wants to make a copy. Hence, planeterrella will soon be finding their way into science centres and museums across Europe (a copy will soon be on display at the Palais de la Découverte in Paris and others are under development in the UK, Italy and Switzerland).

Opening Ceremony No. 2 was a celebration of EPSC's arrival in Rome. Europlanet's head, Michel Blanc, as well as Jean-Pierre Lebreton and Manuel Grande (EPSC's co-ordinator) all pointed out that Europlanet owes it's existance to the Cassini-Huygens mission, many parts of which were led by Italians. Our host institution in Rome, the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), has done an amazing job in organising the conference and making everyone feel welcome. Maria Teresa Capria, chair of the Local Organising Committee (and co-ordinator of Europlanet's Virtual Observatory activity, IDIS) is owed an enormous debt of gratitude (and from the Press Room, we should also thank Livia Giacomini, who has done an amazing amount to help us make sure that the fascinating science discussed at the conference reaches a much wider audience in the public and the media).

The Herschel Space Telescope. Credit: ESA

And then, the science started flowing. Unfortunately the press officers don't get to go to many of the talks, however, we have read through each and every one of the 918 abstracts submitted for the meeting! Our main stories for Monday were:
- A new golden age of sailing in space, where solar sail-powered 'data clippers' would carry vast quantities of high-resolution data back from heavy-weight missions exploring our Solar System.
- The first Mars observations by ESA's Herschel Space Telescope. These give some intriguing insights into the martian atmosphere.
- Evidence is mounting up that the martian moon, Phobos, formed in orbit around Mars out of debris from a catastrophic impact with the surface of the Red Planet.

It was a long and tough day. However, there appears to be lots of interest in the meeting from the outside world, so it is all worth while.

View from the EPSC Press Room

2010-09-19T16:15:00.002+01:00

Another European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) is about to begin - this time in the beautiful location of the Angelicum Centre in Rome (although just for today we are down the road in the Cavour conference centre). The organising team are expecting up to 700 people to attend the conference, making it by far the biggest EPSC to date - it should be a great meeting and a showcase for planetary science in Europe.

In the press room, we are busy getting all the press releases together for the week. We have a good range of stories over the week, which will be coming out day by day. We'll be posting updates on each day's news here.

It's now time for 5pm the "ice-breaker" reception, where there is a chance for old friends and new to meet and catch up socially before the main conference begins. Time too for us to talk to the authors presenting the main news stories this week...

Night Four of our Jupiter observations, Mauna Kea Observatory

2010-08-30T13:51:00.005+01:00

This is our last night observing, so we had a last look at a Mauna Kea sunset, coming up just after dinner at Hale Pohaku. We also brought my wife, Vanessa, my daughter, Lisa, and her partner, Mark, up to see the telescope. It was Lisa and Mark's first time on the mountain. Mark is a professional artist (http://www.markpaulperry.com/), specialising in abstract painting. He was absolutely stunned by everything he saw - the light, the colours of the mountain and of the sky, the silhouettes of the mountains and the telescopes as the sun went down - and now has enough photos to inspire his art for years ahead.

On the way up to the summit we stopped by the roadside to look at the Hawaiian Silversword. This is an endangered species in Hawaii, and - according to the Institute of Astronomy's website on Mauna Kea Plants (http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/vis/icicles.html) is a member of the "Silversword Alliance". Sounds very dramatic!

During the last Ice Age, Mauna Kea was covered by glaciers. It must have been absolutely spectacular, since the volcano was active then, spewing out red hot lava by the millions of tonnes. On the ride up to the summit, you go through the middle of the Ice Age Reserve. You can really see the effects - large, smooth valleys carved by the ice, and huge mounds of boulders, called moraines, that were carried by the glaciers and then left there when the ice started to melt again.

Back on the observing front, sometimes things don't quite work right, and you just don't seem to be able to fix it. Tonight is one of those nights. The sky is beautifully clear, the spectrometer is working perfectly, but we have had some trouble with the guide camera, which has decided to save our images rather differently from normal. Nothing we cannot live with, but unexplainably odd. And it means we are having to do manually what used to happen automatically - keeps us focussed.

As soon as we finish tonight, with another haul of amazing images and spectra, we will be heading back to Hale Pohaku for breakfast and then down the mountain to Hilo. It's always sad to leave the Observatory behind, but the extra oxygen at sea level is very welcome. Indeed, it can often inspire you to take on tasks you would normally try to put off. This time I have promised Henrik he won't have to cut down any trees in the jungle that backs onto my wife's back yard!

Our thanks go to all those at the Observatory and at Hale Pohaku who have help to make our observing run such a success.

Night Three of our Jupiter observations, Mauna Kea Observatory

2010-08-29T13:30:00.004+01:00

Our second night's images are now available as a rough movie on YouTube, thanks to Tom Stallard, who is working back in Leicester on our data: if you search on "Jupiter through an Earthly veil" or "Jupiter IRTF", you will find it easily. The movie shows many of the familiar features of the planet, even though it is a set of infrared images, not pictures taken in normal, visible, light. Here's the movie:

The banded structure of Jupiter is clear, with the various belts and zones. About half-way through, the Great Red Spot (showing white in our movie) rises over the edge of the planet, and travels towards the noon meridian. Before that happens you can see the closest of Jupiter's big moons, Io, moving into eclipse on the western side of the planet (on the right of our movie); it comes out of eclipse towards the end of our image set.

Io is the most volcanic body in the Solar System, with plumes of sulphur that can sometimes be seen reaching far out into space. So it glows very brightly in our movie - it's the brightest thing we see.

The aurorae can also be seen clearly around the poles. In the north, the aurora starts as an oval that then turns into a bright line as it moves onto the edge of Jupiter. In the south, the southern aurora is only seen as a bright line at the pole.

In previous blogs I have mentioned that we sleep at the 3,000-metre level, at Hale Pohaku, whilst the telescopes are at 4,200 metres. That means a 12-kilometre drive up each night to observe and then back down again in the morning. And that means a drive of 6 kilometres at the start over a dirt road before you reach the paved road at the summit.

The dirt road has the tendency to develop the texture of an old-fashioned wash-board, with deep ridges. This can be dangerous, particularly on the way down, as vehicles only have grip when the tyre is in contact with the top of the ridge. People who have not taken this into account have had problems; tragically, sometimes the results have been fatal. So the drive to and from the telescopes is not without its challenges.

Tonight is another gloriously clear sky. We left Hale Pohaku with Scorpio setting and Taurus rising, two beautiful constellations. With Taurus come the Pleiades, that lovely cluster of small stars. At the summit, you can often see Nine, instead of the usual, Seven Sisters. The Pleiades are testimony to the global nature of astronomy - in Hawaii, they are the Makali'i, the Japanese have named their telescope - Subaru - for them. Wikipedia gives a total of 20 names for this group of stars. They have clearly inspired cultures around the world.

It's the turn of the southern aurora to strut its stuff tonight, after the northern lights last night. The reason we see the aurorae differently each night is because - like Earth - Jupiter's magnetic pole is offset from its rotational pole. Since they are centred on the magnetic poles, that makes the aurorae appear to wobble back and forth as the planet rotates.

One of our key objectives is to see if we can observe waves travelling down from the aurorae towards the jovian equator. This would be a sign that energy from the polar regions, where we have the strong winds and electric currents, can make it down to lower latitudes. That, in turn, would help us to understand a problem that has plagued planetary scientists since the arrival of the Voyager spacecraft in 1979 - why is Jupiter, and the other giant planets, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, so hot?

For Voyager measured the temperature of the upper atmosphere around the equator of Jupiter to be around 900 degrees, several hundred degrees hotter than can be explained by the input of sunlight alone. In a previous blog, I mentioned that the energy generated by the winds and currents associated with the auroral/polar regions was 100 times that due to the absorption of sunlight. So an obvious solution would be to transfer some of that energy down from the poles to the equator.

But not so fast: Jupiter is spinning nearly two-and-a-half times faster on its rotational axis than is the Earth - a Jupiter day is just 9 hours 55 minutes. Jupiter's diameter is more than ten times that of Earth. The result is that very large forces, known as Coriolis forces, are generated. And that means that any energy-bearing wind that starts out going from the pole towards the equator tends to get turned westwards, and never reaches its original destination.

So planetary scientists still cannot account for Jupiter's high upper atmosphere temperatures. Our goal from these observations is to see if we cannot add a little bit more to our understanding of that puzzle - hence the search for waves.

When we are working at the summit, it is nice to have a bit of comfort food to keep us going. For Henrik, that means several cans of fizzy drink (sodas, US English) per night; for me, it's peanut butter sandwiches and cocoa - the perfect diet.

Afternoon Three of our Jupiter observations, Mauna Kea Observatory

2010-08-29T01:53:00.009+01:00

I'm now sitting in the IRTF office at Hale Pohaku (HP), the 3,000-metre level dormitory complex where we sleep after observing. There is more oxygen down here, so it makes for (somewhat) clearer thinking. Last night's images have already been put into movie form, fairly crudely, so there is a lot of image processing to do.

The spectra take longer to analyse. But spectroscopy, which tells you about temperatures and densities of the molecules you are looking at, contains the real physics. I'm one of these people who don't believe the pretty pictures until I can see the spectra.

Being actually present at the telescope when you are observing gives you so much more insight into what a complex operation modern astronomy is. If you pick up a scientific paper in Astrophysical Journal, Monthly Notices, Nature or Science, you never get the real picture of just how much goes into getting the data upon which all science is supposed to be based. Too many theoreticians think it drops like manna from heaven.

Because I'm currently working on the NASA IRTF, I'll use that as an example. Starting at the "top" - in terms of altitude, not necessarily seniority - you have the telescope operators. They are the guys who actually run the telescope: if you thought NASA would allow some ham-fisted amateur like me to play with their telescope and maybe run it into the dome or commit some other mortal sin with it, you have to be joking.

Seated alongside us for this run, we have Dave Griep and Bill Golisch. They are some of the most experienced TOs on the mountain. They have literally worked on Mauna Kea for decades, from the days in the late '70s and early '80s when the Mauna Kea Observatory was establishing itself as the world's premier site for astronomy, particularly in the infrared wavelengths. Dave has enabled us to observe when the winds were literally shaking the dome; Bill's inventiveness for work-arounds when what we want to do is not quite standard is legendary. I have also worked many times with the the two TOs, Paul Sears and Eric Volquardsen, both top-rate TOs whose love of the telescope makes for effective and efficient observing.

Coming up to help out, too, are the various support astronomers. Last night we were lucky that Bobby Bus from the Hilo branch for the Institute for Astronomy was at the telescope when we arrived just before midnight. He stayed on for a couple of hours beyond his shift to help us with guiding the telescope on Jupiter, and came up with a novel technique of using Jupiter - which spans an impressive 49 seconds of arc across the sky at the moment - as if it were a mere pinpoint of light. Even he was impressed by how well it worked.

While the astronomers and TOs are sleeping through the day, the telescope is in the hands of the day crew. They fix and upgrade and generally ensure that these multi-million dollar science factories perform to ever more demanding standards. At IRTF the Observatory Superintendent George Keonig leads a team who work at 4,200 metres in (almost) all weathers to see to it that astronomers get their data. George is backed up by his foreman Lars Bergknut, whose favourite phrase seems to be "are you sure you want to that?" before he gets the engineering and software team to work out a way to enable awkward astronomers to do things with the telescope that would make you blush. "Can do" gets things done!

Telescopes are no good unless they have instruments. In the rush to build ever-bigger light buckets, this is often forgotten. One of the saddest outcomes of the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council's drive to save money is that its flagship infrared telescope, the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) - itself one of the original 1970s "big three" on Mauna Kea - is now restricted to imaging survey work. A unique set of instruments, including one that enables astronomers to take spectra in polarised light, are now gathering dust. Britain should be ashamed, very ashamed.

IRTF has its teams of instrument builders. John Rayner, an ex-pat Brit who fell in love with Honolulu (and who wouldn't?) a quarter of a century ago, is currently putting together a new spectrometer for the telescope that will more than double the spectral resolution - the ability of the telescope to discriminate between individual wavelengths - of IRTF, and keep it competitive even in the age of telescopes up to ten times larger than its 3-metre mirror.

This high-resolution spectroscopy is important because, as well as measuring gas temperatures and densities, we can work out how fast the gas is going. On Jupiter, we regularly measure winds in the polar regions, where the aurorae are formed, of between 1 and 2 kilometres per second. These generate huge amounts of energy: the winds themselves and electric currents that go with them heat Jupiter's upper atmosphere more than 100 times more effectively than sunlight alone. John's new instrument should be available for IRTF to work alongside a space mission to Jupiter called JUNO, which, unfortunately, does not have a high-resolution infrared spectrometer on board (despite my arguing for one).

No run-down of IRTF is complete (and this one leaves out many, many of the telescope's key players) without a mention of its current director Alan Tokunaga. Based in Honolulu, but regularly visiting his beloved telescope, Alan himself knows all the dififculties of building top-quality instruments. His CSHELL spectrometer, now nearly 20 years old, still delivers great science, a testimony to his design skills and ability to see complex projects through. It costs about $10,000 a night to run IRTF, and it's Alan's job to ensure that NASA supports the IRTF financially so that it can support NASA's much-more-costly space missions.

And on a personal note, I cannot leave this blog entry without a mention of Alan's predecessor as IRTF director. Bob Joseph took over as director in 1989. I had met him for the first time earlier that year, where I talked about the discovery (as it then was) of the H3+ molecular ion on Jupiter. Bob was a "merging galaxy" person, looking at what happens when galaxies crash into one another, releasing huge amounts of energy and triggering massive star formation events. But IRTF was (and still is) 50% dedicated to planetary science.

So Bob asked me if I wanted to work with him on a project to exploit this new discovery of H3+. Of course, I agreed. His idea was that he would make the observations using his "director's time" in Hawaii while I did the calculations back at University College London. Fat chance!

The opportunity to come to Hawaii was not to be missed, the privilege to work at Mauna Kea Observatory an irresistible temptation. Bob taught me infrared astronomical observing in March 1990, and introduced me to Ken's House of Pancakes in Hilo. The rest, as they say, is history.

Night Two of our Jupiter observations, Mauna Kea Observatory

2010-08-28T15:20:00.004+01:00

We are coming up to the half-way stage of our four-night run here at the IRTF. The second night has been productive, if a little more challenging than the first.

Firstly, the weather started off a little less friendly. Even though Mauna Kea's summit is 4,200 metres above sea level, and above most of the heavier cloud decks, we can still be affected by high-altitude cirrus clouds. Tonight we had the wispy variety, not enough to stop us observing but enough give us some trouble at the start of our shift.

Then we had to use a different system to guide the telescope on our target Jupiter. Again, nothing to stop us observing, but it meant learning a new routine on the fly. And at altitude, your brain does not function quite as crisply as normal. But we had help in the shape of Bobby Bus, one of the full-time staff astronomers at the Institute for Astronomy in Hilo.

One of the reasons I like to be at the telescope when I am observing, rather than working remotely over the internet, is that you can get help much easier from people on the spot. The other is that you meet up with people and some chance collaborations emerge.

This trip, we have Amanda Gulbis, from the South African Large Telescope, working on the IRTF for the six-hour shift up till midnight. She is testing out a new camera that works alongside SpeX. So tonight, Amanda stayed beyond her normal midnight down-time, taking her own images of Jupiter, testing the camera and providing us with a view in visible wavelengths to complement our infrared pictures. So a genuine "two for the price of one" situation, profiting us both.

During the course of yesterday, Tom Stallard, who is at the University of Leicester along with Henrik and our long-time collaborator, put together a neat programme to turn our images of Night One into a movie. There is still quite a bit of image processing to do, but the raw movie looks impressive, as the jovian aurorae come in and out of view as the planet rotates.

Sleeping during the day has been a problem for both Henrik and myself, so we will be pretty tired by the time our shift ends in an hour or so. But tonight's work seems to be every bit as good as last night's and that makes up for the lack of sleep.

Night One of our Jupiter observations, Mauna Kea Observatory

2010-08-27T14:42:00.004+01:00

It's 4am Hawaii Standard Time, and we are 2/3 of the way through our six-hour shift. And what a great shift it has been. The sky is perfectly clear, there is almost no wind and the "seeing conditions" - the blurring of our images due to the Earth's atmosphere (a useful thing for breathing, but it gets in the way for astronomy) - is very slight.

We are simultaneously measuring Jupiter's spectrum along its noon meridian and taking images of the whole planet, using an instrument on NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility called SpeX. That means we can properly locate the spectra we are taking on the disk of the planet. We take the images at a shorter exposure than the spectra. So, by the end of the night, we will have taken a total of 250 images and 150 spectra. That's a PhD's worth of data in one night, and we have three more to go.

As I'm writing this, the Northern Aurora of Jupiter is coming into full view on the disk of the planet. The Southern Aurora has pretty much set, and all that we can see looks like the smile on the Cheshire Cat. These aurorae are the most powerful in the Solar System - 100 times brighter than anything we see on Earth. They are testimony to the dynamic coupling between the planet's atmosphere and its enormous magnetosphere, the region of space controlled by Jupiter's magnetic field.

To give some idea of the scale: Earth's magnetosphere stretches about 60,000 km in the direction of the Sun, and about 600,000 km in the direction away from the Sun, its tail dragged out by the stream of particles thrown out by the Sun called the Solar Wind. Jupiter's magnetosphere extends 2 million km in the sunward direction, and some 750 million km downstream. In fact, it reaches all the way to the orbit of Saturn.

Lit up, if it could be, Jupiter's magnetosphere would appear in the sky to be more twice as large as the Moon. It is this giant structure that heats the top of Jupiter's atmosphere, by throwing energetic particles at it and generating enormous currents and electric winds. We are probing this by looking at the spectrum of the H3+ molecular ion I talked about in my last blog.

We have analysed one of the spectra which us a temperature in region of 950 K. This is much higher than sunlight alone can produce. It clearly shows how much Jupiter's magnetosphere is responsible for the conditions that occur in the upper atmosphere.

But it is not all one way traffic. As Jupiter rotates (once every 9 hours 55 minutes), so does its magnetic field. And that field drags the charged gas that fills the magnetosphere, known as plasma, along with it. Indeed, this mutual interaction spins up the magnetosphere, heats up the atmosphere and - since there s not such thing as a free lunch - actually slows down the planet as it spins on its axis. No need to worry, though. At the present rate, Jupiter will carry on spinning for at least ten times the lifetime of the Solar System.

Observing Jupiter from Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii

2010-08-26T02:37:00.002+01:00

Mount Hualalai viewed from the
MKO dormitories. Credit: Steve Miller.

I have been visiting Hawaii to use the telescopes of the Mauna Kea Observatory for 20 years. But I still get a thrill every time I come up here. The Big Island of Hawaii is like nowhere else on Earth.

The Hawaiian chain is made up of some of the most isolated places in the world, set in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Once you get to the West Coast of the United States - and that involves an 11-hour flight from London where I live most of the time - it is still another 5 to 6 hours of flying over the ocean. Hilo, on the eastern shore of Hawaii, is at longitude 155 West and latitude 20 North, with an 11-hour time lag to London in the summer.

Mauna Kea viewed from across
Hilo Bay. Credit: Steve Miller.

Hilo is my favourite place in Hawaii: it is where my wife grew up and still has her family home; a place to take a few days rest after the long flight over and before heading up the mountain.

The prevailing westward-blowing Trade Winds (usually) bring rain to the eastern side of Hawaii. (This year, there has only been 50cm of rain so far, very dry by Hilo standards.) That makes for tropical rain forest. But the 50 kilometre drive up to the observatory dormitories takes you up 3,000 metres in altitude, and the vegetation changes from lush "jungle", through Ohia forest, to scrub, to not very much at all except a few bushes and plants that the Brits have christened "triffids" for their odd, slightly menacing look.

A pukiawe bush on the slopes of Mauna
Kea, an example of the mountain's
unique plant life. Credit: Steve Miller

Looking westwards from the dormitories over the lava fields and cinder cones down towards the Kona side of the island, you are looking out over what becomes desert. The two giant mountains - Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa - that dominate the centre of the Big Island ensure that almost all of the rainfall happens on the eastern side of the island: Kona is pretty much in a total rain shadow.

Henrik and Steve outside the
NASA IRTF. Credit: Steve Miller

Tonight is our acclimatisation night. Although we will go up to the summit to watch the sunset, and get a bit of 4,200-metre altitude exposure, Henrik Melin (my co-observer) and I will spend most of the night at the 3,000-metre level where the dormitories are. We will use the time preparing, logged on to the interface of the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), setting up for our four six-hour shifts observing Jupiter.

The mountain top of Haleakala on the
neighbouring island of Maui viewed
above the cloud tops. Credit: S Miller.

Our goal is to map the emission from a molecule (strictly speaking a molecular ion) called H3+, the third form of Hydrogen, after the H atom and the H2 molecule. This ion is formed high up in Jupiter's atmosphere, where the pressure is less than one millionth of a bar, and temperatures soar to well over 1,000 K. It traces high levels of energy inputs: around the poles of Jupiter, it shows where high energy particles smash into the top of the atmosphere causing bright aurorae, like our Northern and Southern Lights on Earth; at lower latitudes, it is formed ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.

There's a free drink on Steve at the Rome
EPSC for the first person to email him
with the correct identification of this!

We will use spectroscopy, breaking up the (infrared) light from Jupiter into individual fingerprint lines from H3+, clearly identifying the molecule as if we were forensic scientists. But better - spectroscopy not only tells us who left the tell-tale fingerprints, but we can also say how hot their "hand" was at the time.

The domes of the twin Keck 10-metre
telescopes viewed against the
setting Sun. Credit: Steve Miller

IRTF is definitely not the biggest telescope in the suite available on Mauna Kea: with a mirror that comes in at just under 3 metres in diameter, it is dwarfed by the twin 10-metre Keck telescopes, and Gemini and Subaru, both at 8 metres in diameter. But it is one of the older generation. It opened in 1979 alongside the United Kingdom's Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CHFT).

And in many ways it is my favourite. It was the first telescope I used here in 1990. It devotes 50% of its time to solar system science. And it still welcomes observers at the summit to do time-critical hands-on observations.

Europlanet's been blogging from Mars (or as close as you can get on Earth)!

2010-08-22T12:58:00.000+01:00

Europlanet has a Transnational Access activity that allows scientists to access state-of-the-art planetary research facilities in other European countries. As part of this programme, Europlanet funds field trips to planetary analogue sites - places on Earth that resemble landscapes found elsewhere in the Solar System.

We have set up dedicated blogs for some of these trips:

In May, Felipe Gómez Gómez and crew visited Chott El Jerid, a dry salt lake in Tunisia, which closely resembles areas near the Martian poles. You can read his blog at:
http://www.europlanet-eu.org/demo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=238&Itemid=2

Liane Benning and colleagues on a
sampling trip. Credit: D Tobler

In August, Liane Benning and Dominique Tobler went to the island Svalbard to look at how life has evolved in the snow and ice of arctic tundra and glaciers and to help them understand how life could exist on other planets in our Solar System. You can read Liane's blog at:
http://www.europlanet-eu.org/demo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=259&Itemid=2

Welcome to the Europlanet Blog

2010-08-21T16:32:00.000+01:00

Europlanet field trip to Chott el Jerid,
Tunisia, a Mars-like place on Earth.
Credit: Felipe Gomez

The Europlanet Blog gives an insight into the work and lives of Europe's planetary scientists. Members of the Europlanet community will be blogging here about their activities, including observational campaigns using ground-based telescopes, involvement in space missions, field campaigns to sites on Earth that resemble places elsewhere in the Solar System, as well as meetings and conferences.

The exploration of our Solar System is one of the most exciting and fastest growing areas of scientific research. Through postings on this blog, we hope to share that adventure.