Eyes Full Of Stars

Look, up in the air! Its a bird! Its a plane! No, its the Air Force’s X-37B robotic spacecraft. Currently on its maiden voyage, the five and a half ton X-37B was carried to orbit on April 22^nd by an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The project has been something of an open secret since its early design stages 11 years ago when it was under development by NASA. However, since launch, the Air Force has remained quiet about the X-37B’s whereabouts. But, it took less than a month for a worldwide cadre of amateur sky watchers to sleuth out the details of its orbit.

At the end of April, the European Southern Observatory culminated a multi-year site selection process for construction of the world’s largest telescope. Known as the E-ELT for the European Extremely Large Telescope, it will have a primary mirror spanning 138 feet. That size is more than four times larger than the biggest single-aperture telescope operating today. On the short list of candidate sites were four locations in Chile and one in the Canary Islands, Spain.

This week we go on a quest to find the celestial dragon, Draco. Winding through a patch of the northern sky between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, Draco is neighbor to the strongman, Hercules. Star lore from ancient Greece connects Draco to Hercules and his twelve labors. The dragon is also mentioned as taking part in the battle waged between the Gods and the Titans for supremacy and control of Mount Olympus.

Here is a link to my weekly column in the Santa Fe New Mexican. This week’s topic is about Earth Day, of course.

Night Sky column

Voyager 1 image of Earth

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