Juno Spacecraft Flyby

Juno is a NASA New Frontiers mission to the planet Jupiter. Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on August 5, 2011. The spacecraft is to be placed on July 2016 in a polar orbit to study the Jupiter's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere.

On October 9 2013, the interplanetary probe Juno flew past the Earth on its way to Jupiter to receive a "gravity assist" and be put on a trajectory to reach Jupiter in 2016. Time of closest approach with Earth (in shadow) was 19:21UT of October 09, at an altitude of only 559 km over the southern tip of Africa. Then it left the eclipse at 19:39 UT and was visible from Europe and Asia (see graphs below).

Credit: Heavens-Above

Credit: Heavens-Above

We performed follow-up measurements of Juno on October 09.9, 2013. The spacecraft was then of at ~125,000 km from our planet, magnitude ~14 and moving at ~80"/min.

Below you can see our image of Juno, single 120-sec unfiltered exposure, obtained remotely from MPC code I89 (iTelescope Observatory, Nerpio, Spain) through a 0.43-m f/6.8 reflector + CCD. The spacecraft is trailed in the image due to its fast speed. Click on it for a bigger version.

A Pseudo-Mpec, using our follow-up observations and that of other observers, has been made by Bill Gray using his software Findorb. (the nominal orbit now impacts Jupiter... but with a large enough sigma that this seems rather unlikely. Especially assuming there will be a terminal correction maneuver or two, giving it an orbit that just barely skims over the north or south pole).

UPDATE - October 11, 2013

NASA’s Juno Spacecraft returns 1st Flyby images of Earth, taken at 19:06UT of October 09, 2013 while it was flying over South America and the southern Atlantic Ocean. Click on the image for a bigger version.

by Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes and Martino Nicolini

Observations of the Herschel Space Observatory

The Herschel Space Observatory was a European Space Agency-built and -operated space observatory, active from 2009 to 2013. It was studying the Universe by the light of the far-infrared and submillimeter portions of the spectrum revealing new information about the earliest, most distant stars and galaxies, as well as those closer to home in space and time. It has also taken a unique look at our own solar system. Herschel Space Observatory was the largest infrared telescope ever launched, carrying a single 3.5-metre mirror.

In the afternoon of April 29, 2013 Herschel ran out of liquid helium. To declare end-of-helium (EoHe) a number of key temperature sensor upper limits had been defined, and with two of them attained, EoHe had formally been reached. Herschel has made over 35000 scientific observations, amassing more than 25000 hours of science data from about 600 observing programmes. Finally on June 17, 2013, engineers for the Herschel space telescope sent final commands to put the decommissioned observatory from its orbit around the L2 point 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth into its “graveyard” heliocentric parking orbit.

Last week we decide to follow-up the "Herschel Space Observatory" in his new orbit using the Faulkes Telescopes (2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD - operated by Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network).  In fact, determining an accurate orbit now is important, because its increasing distance will make it fainter and much harder to keep track of in the intervening years.

"The observation was a particular challenge as the final manoeuvres made by the ESA flight control team resulted in the observatory being at a slightly different position on the sky compared to that predicted by existing orbital data".

We successfully imaged the Herschel on 26 & 27 June 2013 with Faulkes Telescope North and again on 01 July 2013 with the Faulkes Telescope South at magnitude ~20. (follow-up observations have been obtained by T. Vorobjov on June 28, 2013 at Kitt Peak - MPC code 695).  It was already a couple of arcminutes off prediction. See our image below, stacking of 7x120 seconds exposures (click on it for a bigger version).

Below you can see a short animation showing the movement of the Herschel Space Observatory during our first observing session of June 26, 2013. Click on the thumbnail for a bigger version.

Using our data, Bill Gray calculated for Herschel a return to opposition on 2027 Oct 24 +/- 4 at about 0.055 AU, reaching mag 22.  Below you can see the new orbit (click on the image for a bigger version).

Credit: Bill Gray

by Ernesto Guido & Nick Howes

Observations of astronomy satellite Spektr R

On Saturday October 15, 2011 a bright (magnitude 13.5) and fast object (observed by 703 Catalina Sky Survey) was published on the Neocp list with the designation ST37690.

We performed some follow-up measurements of this object while it was still on the neocp on October 15.5 remotely from the GRAS Observatory (near  Mayhill, NM) through a 0.25-m, f/3.4 reflector + CCD. Soon after ST37690 object was removed from Neocp list because it was not a minor planet.

As it turned out, ST37690 was actually the artificial satellite SPEKTR-R (official designation 2011-037A). Spektr R is a Russian orbital radio telescope, and currently the largest space telescope in orbit.

According to Nasa website:

"Spektr R, a Russian radio astronomy satellite, was launched from Baikonur on 18 July 2011 at 02:31 UT by a Zenit 3F rocket. Spektr R is one element of an international network of observatories in a project called RadioAstron. Funded by the Russian Astro Space Center, Spektr R features a 10-m diameter antenna reflector designed to help astronomers see deeper into supermassive black holes, obtain views of collapsed stars, and better measure the influence of dark energy on the cosmos. When linked together, RadioAstron's telescopes have a resolution of 7 microarcseconds"

More info about it on "Sky & Telescope" website.

Below you can see the animation showing the fast movement of Spektr R in the sky (10 frames of 20-seconds exposure each):

by Ernesto Guido, Giovanni Sostero & Nick Howes