Not all oppositions are created equal. This week’s sky target offers a good case in point, as asteroid 3 Juno reaches its most favorable viewing position for the decade. Continue reading “Catching Asteroid 3 Juno at Its Best”
Have you seen the outer ice giant planets for yourself?
This week is a good time to check the most difficult of the major planets off of your life list, as Neptune reaches opposition for 2018 on Friday, September 7th at at ~18:00 Universal Time (UT)/2:00 PM EDT. And while it may not look like much more than a gray-blue dot at the eyepiece, the outermost ice giant world has a fascinating tale to tell. Continue reading “Exploring the Ice Giants: Neptune and Uranus at Opposition for 2018”
A partial solar eclipse as seen from New York City on November 3rd, 2013. Image credit and copyright: Valentin Lyakhovich
Eclipse season in nigh… though most of us won’t notice the start this week. The second eclipse season for 2018 commences with the arrival of New Moon and Brown Lunation number 1182 at 3:01 Universal Time on (triskaidekaphobics take note) Friday July 13th, 2018. This eclipse is a shallow partial, just skimming the southern hemisphere of the Earth between the Australian and Antarctic continents.
The Eclipse
We doubt many eclipse chasers will make the pilgrimage to Tasmania to see such a slim partial, though we know of at least one, veteran eclipse chaser Jay Pasachoff who has expressed intent on the Yahoo! Solar Eclipse Message List (SEML) message board to head southward this week.
Tasmania gets the best view, with a maximum 9.5% obscuration of Sol as seen from the capital Hobart around 3:25 UT. The upper limit of the eclipse path just skims the southern coast of Australia across the Great Australian Bight and the southern Indian Ocean, and nicks the very southern tip of the south island of New Zealand and Steward Island at 3:48 UT with a barely discernible 1% eclipse before the lunar penumbra departs the Earth. If skies are clear, the very best view just might come along the coast of Antarctica, as the 33% eclipsed Sun rolls along the northern horizon.
Looking northward along the Antarctic coast on July 13th. Credit: Stellarium
Perhaps a few lone penguins will notice, if they bother to look at the Sun filtered through the murk of the atmosphere along the horizon. France does have one permanently occupied research station in Antarctica named Dumont D’urville along the coast that will see a 30% eclipsed Sun on the horizon right around 3:00-3:15 UT.
We say that this heralds the start of eclipse season, as the ascending node where the Moon’s orbit intersects the ecliptic plane is very near the current position of the Sun. In fact, node crossing occurs at 18:50 UT on July 13th, just 24 hours after New Moon. Eclipses always occur in at least pairs, and the Full Moon two weeks later is close enough to the descending node for a nearly central total lunar eclipse on July 27th (more on that in a bit). This season, however, is special, with a third eclipse ending the cycle on August 11th, 2018, this time gracing the Arctic pole of the Earth along with Scandinavia and Russia.
We’re already seeing some hype surrounding this event as a “Supermoon eclipse,” as the Moon reaches perigee 5 hours 27 minutes past maximum eclipse. Note that this also sets us up for a Minimoon total lunar eclipse two weeks later, as the Moon is near apogee on July 27th.
The Moon’s orbit is tilted 5.145 degrees relative to the plane of the ecliptic, and the nodes make one full revolution around the Earth relative to the equinoctial points once every 18.6 years in what’s known as the precession of the line of apsides.
Viewing a Partial
A partial solar eclipse means that all safety precautions must be taken throughout all phases of the eclipse. This means using approved solar filters that fit snugly over the aperture of a telescope, and solar glasses with the approved ISO 12312-2 rating for solar viewing. We built a safe binocular filter out of a set of spare eclipse safety glasses for the August 21st, 2017 total solar eclipse last year.
Practicing eclipse safety at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute in North Carolina during the August 21st, 2017 Great American Eclipse. Image credit: Myscha Theriault
Unfortunately as of writing this, the disk of Sol is blank in terms of Earthward facing sunspots, and may be so on eclipse day. We’re currently headed towards a profound solar minimum and the Sun has already been spotless for more than half of 2018 thus far.
Don’t own a solar filter, safety glasses or a telescope? You can always use our tried and true method of projecting the eclipse using a spaghetti strainer.
It’s all in the gamma. This eclipse is partial only, because the dark inner shadow or umbra misses the Earth by 35.4% of the radius of the planet or about 1,400 miles. The gamma for an eclipse states how many Earth radii an eclipse deviates from central (where the Moon’s umbra is aimed straight at the center of the Earth) and Friday’s eclipse has a gamma value of 1.3541.
Tales of the Saros
Friday’s eclipse is part of an older saros series, member 69 of 71 eclipses for saros series 117. This saros started waaaaaay back on June 24th, 792 AD, and produced its last total solar eclipse on May 9th, 1910. This was also the last total solar eclipse for Tasmania until June 25th, 2131. This series only has two more eclipses to go, with its last event occurring briefly over the Antarctic on August 3rd, 2054. Perhaps, Friday’s event will be the very last one witnessed by human eyes for saros 117.
Mr. E. Carns Driffield’s drawing of Total Solar Eclipse of the Sun on 9 May 1910. Image credit: Joy Olney.
This also sets us up for the best of the three eclipses this season, the total lunar eclipse at the end of the month on July 27th. This eclipse will be widely visible across Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia—only the Americas miss out.
A Possible Views… “From Spaaaaaaace…”
The International Space Station also threads its way through the outer shadow of the Moon towards the end of the event Friday at ~3:50 UT. ESA’s solar observing Proba-2 spacecraft might just get a very brief view as well from its vantage point in low Earth orbit, around 3:09 UT.
Proba-2’s brief view of the eclipse on July 13th at 3:08 UT. Credit: Starry Night.
And although most of us miss out on Friday’s eclipse, you can still try and spot the slender crescent Moon on the evening of Friday, July 13th. The U.S. East Coast is particularly well placed to try and spy the slim Moon low to the west, only 22 hours after New. After that, the Moon tours all of the naked eye planets, passing Mercury and Venus this weekend and passing Jupiter, Saturn and Mars en route to the July 27th total lunar eclipse.
Will anyone webcast the eclipse live? So far, no webcasts (not even from the venerable Slooh site) have surfaced… if anyone else is planning on featuring the July 13th partial solar eclipse, let us know!
It’s the biggest question when it comes to solar eclipses. When’s the next total? Well, just under a year from now, the next total solar eclipse crosses Chile and Argentina on July 2nd, 2019. Note that this event crosses over several major astronomical observatories at La Silla. How many newly minted eclipse chasers fresh off last year’s Great American Eclipse experience can’t wait until totality next visits the United States on April 8th , 2024 and plan to head to South America next summer?
Partial eclipse rising over the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center on the morning of November 3rd, 2013. Image credit: Dave Dickinson.
A partial eclipse may not inspire many eclipse chasers to hop on a plane, but we can still marvel at the celestial ticks of a clockwork Universe carry on, right on schedule.
-Got the eclipse chasing bug? Read all about eclipse chasing, observing and photography in our new book, the Universe Today Guide to Viewing the Cosmos: Everything You Need to know to Become and Amateur Astronomer out on October 23rd.
Venus returns – The changing phases of Venus, from the 2013 apparition. Credit and copyright: Shahrin Ahmad (@Shahgazer)
Where have all the planets gone? The end of February 2018 sees the three naked eye outer planets – Mars, Jupiter and Saturn — hiding in the dawn. It takes an extra effort to brave the chill of a February morning, for sure. The good news is, the two inner planets – Mercury and Venus – begin favorable dusk apparitions this week, putting on a fine sunset showing in March.
Venus in 2018: Venus begins the month of March as a -3.9 magnitude, 10” disk emerging from behind the Sun. Venus is already over 12 degrees east of the Sun this week, as it begins its long chase to catch up to the Earth. Venus always emerges from behind the Sun in the dusk, lapping the Earth about eight months later as it passes through inferior conjunction between the Sun and the Earth as it ventures into the dusk sky.
Follow that planet, as Venus reaches greatest elongation at 45.9 degrees east of the Sun on August 17th. Venus occupies the apex of a right triangle on this date, with the Earth at the end of one vertice, and the Sun at the end of the other.
Not all elongations of Mercury or Venus are equal, but depend on the seasonal angle of the ecliptic, and whether they occur near aphelion or perihelion. Credit: Dave Dickinson
Mercury joins the fray in early March, as the fleeting innermost world races up to meet Venus in the dusk. March 4th is a great date to check Mercury off of your life list, as the -1.2 magnitude planet passes just 66′ – just over a degree, or twice the span of a Full Moon – from Venus. Mercury reaches greatest elongation 18.4 degrees east of the Sun on March 15th.
And the Moon makes three on the evening of March 18th, as Mercury, Venus and the slim waxing crescent Moon form a line nine degrees long.
The Moon, Venus and Mercury – looking west at dusk on March 18th. Credit: Stellarium
It’s a bit of a cosmic irony: Venus, the closest planet to the Earth, is also eternally shrouded in clouds and appears featureless at the eyepiece. The most notable feature Venus exhibits are its phases, similar to the Moon’s. Things get interesting as Venus reaches half phase near greatest elongation. After that, the disk of Venus swells in size but thins down to a slender crescent. Venus’s orbit is tilted 3.4 degrees relative to the ecliptic, and on some years, you can follow it right through inferior conjunction from the dusk to the dawn sky. Unfortunately, this also means that Venus usually misses transiting the disk of the Sun, as it last did on June 5-6th, 2012, and won’t do again until just under a century from now on December 10-11th, 2117.
Small consolation prize: Mercury, a much more frequent solar transiter, will do so again next year on November 11-12th, 2019.
Amateur astronomers have, however, managed to tease out detail from the Venusian cloudtops using ultraviolet filters. And check out this amazing recent image of Venus courtesy of the Japanese Space Agency’s Akatsuki spacecraft:
Venus in the ultraviolet courtesy of JAXA’s Akatsuki spacecraft. Credit: JAXA/Akatsuki/ISAS/DARTS/Damia Bouic
It’s one of our favorite astro-challenges. Can you see Venus in the daytime? Once you’ve seen it, it’s surprisingly easily to spy… the main difficulty is to get your eyes to focus in on it without any other references against a blank sky. The crescent Moon makes a great visual aid in this quest; although the Moon’s reflectivity or albedo is actually much lower than Venus’s, it’s larger apparent size in the sky makes it stand out. Key upcoming dates to see Venus near the Moon around greatest elongation are April 17th, May 17th, June 16th, July 15th, and Aug 14th.
Apparitions of Venus also follow a predictable eight year cycle. This occurs because 13 orbits of Venus very nearly equals eight orbits of the Earth. For example, Venus will resume visiting the Pleiades star cluster during the dusk 2020 apparition, just like it did back before 2012.
Phenomena of Venus
When does Venus appear half illuminated to you? This stage is known as dichotomy, and its actual observed point can often be several days off from its theoretical arrival. Also keep an eye out for the Ashen Light of Venus, a faint illumination of the planet’s night side during crescent phase, similar to the familiar sight seen on the crescent Moon. Unlike the Moon, however, Venus has no nearby body to illuminate its nighttime side… What’s going on here? Is this just the psychological effect of the brain filling in what the eye sees when it looks at the dazzling curve of the crescent Venus, or is it something real? Long reported by observers, a 2014 study suggests that a nascent air-glow or aurora may persist on the broiling night side of Venus.
All thoughts to ponder, as you follow Venus emerging into the dusk sky this March.
Totality! Not a “Super Blue Blood Moon Total Lunar Eclipse,” but the “Winter Solstice Total Lunar Eclipse” of December, 2010. Dave Dickinson
Can you feel the tremor in the Force? Early next Wednesday morning internet astro-memes collide, in one of the big ticket sky events of the year, with a total lunar eclipse dubbed as — get ready — a Super Blue Blood Moon total lunar eclipse.
Specifics on the eclipse: That’s a mouthful, for sure. This is the first eclipse of 2018, and only one of two featuring totality, lunar or solar. Wednesday morning’s eclipse favors the region centered on the Pacific Rim, with regions of Asia and Australia seeing the evening eclipse at moonrise, while most of North America will see totality early Wednesday morning at moonset. Only the regions of the Canadian Maritimes and the United States east of the Mississippi misses out on the spectacle’s climax, catching a partially eclipsed Moon setting in the west at sunrise.
The path of the Moon through the Earth’s shadow and the circumstances for the January 31st, super blue blood Moon total lunar eclipse. NASA
2018 features four eclipses overall, two lunar and two solar. Paired with this eclipse is a partial solar eclipse on February 15th favoring the very southern tip of South America, followed by another total lunar eclipse this summer on July 27th. The final eclipse for 2018 is a partial solar eclipse on August 11th, favoring northern Europe and northeastern Asia.
What’s all the fuss about? Let’s dissect the eclipse, meme by meme:
Why it’s Super: Totality for this eclipse lasts 1 hour, 16 minutes and 4 seconds, the longest since April 15th, 2014. Full Moon (and maximum duration for this eclipse) occurs at 13:30 Universal Time (UT), just 27 hours after the Moon reaches perigee the day prior on January 30th at 9:55 UT . Note that this isn’t quite the closest perigee of the year in space and time: the January 1st Full Moon perigee beat it out for that title by 2,429 km (1509 miles) and 23 hours.
Worldwide circumstances for Wednesday’s super blue blood moon total lunar eclipse. NASA
Why it’s Blue: This is the second Full Moon of the month, making this month’s Moon “Blue” in the modern sense of the term. This definition comes down to us thanks to a misinterpretation in the July 1943 issue of Sky & Telescope. The Maine Farmer’s Almanac once used an even more convoluted definition of a Blue Moon as “the third Full Moon in an astronomical season with four,” and legend has it, used blue ink in the almanac printing to denote that extra spurious Moon… anyone have any old Maine Farmer’s Almanacs in the attic to verify the tale?
Note that Blue Moons aren’t all that rare… the month of March 2018 also hosts two Full Moons, while truncated February 2018 contains none, sometimes referred to as a “Black Moon”.
Why All the Blood: The cone of the Earth’s umbra or dark inner shadow isn’t completely devoid of light. Instead, you’re seeing sunlight from all the Earth’s sunrises and sunsets around its limb, filtered into the shadow of the the planet onto the nearside of the Moon. Standing on the Earthward facing side of the Moon, you would witness a solar eclipse as the Earth passed between the Moon and the Sun. Unlike the neat near fit for solar eclipses on the Earth, however, solar eclipses on the Moon can last over an hour, as the Earth appears about three times larger than the disk of the Sun. And although astronauts have witnessed eclipses from space, no human has yet stood on the Moon and witnessed the ring of fire surrounding the Earth during a solar eclipse.
Tales of the Saros: For saros buffs, this eclipse is member 49 of 74 lunar eclipses for lunar saros cycle 124, stretching all the way back to August 17th, 1152. If you caught the total lunar eclipse on January 21st, 2000, you saw the last eclipse in this cycle. Stick around until April 18th, 2144 AD and you can watch the final total lunar eclipse for saros 124.
Unlike total solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are leisurely affairs. The entire penumbral phase of the eclipse lasts for over 5 hours, though you probably won’t notice the subtle shading on the limb of the Moon until its about halfway immersed in the Earth’s penumbral shadow.
Not all total lunar eclipses are the same. Depending on how deep the Moon passes through the Earth’s shadow and the murkiness of the Earth’s atmosphere, the Moon can appear anywhere from a sickly orange, to a deep brick red during totality… for example, the Moon almost disappeared entirely during a total lunar eclipse shortly after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the early 1990s!
The color of the Moon during totality is known as its Danjon Number, with 4 being bright with a bluish cast on the outer limb of the Moon, and 0 appearing dark and deep red.
This is also one of the only times you can see that the Earth is indeed round with your own eyes as the curve of the shadow cast by our homeworld falls back across the Moon. This curve is the same, regardless of the angle, and whether the Moon is high above near the zenith, or close to the horizon.
Don’t miss the first eclipse of 2018 and the (deep breath) super blue blood Moon total lunar eclipse!
Comet C/2017 T1 Heinze passes near the galaxy NGC 2706 on November 25th. Image credit and copyright: Charles Bell.
Yeah, we’re still all waiting for that next great “Comet of the Century” to make its presence known. In the meantime, we’ve had a steady stream of good binocular comets over the past year both expected and new, including Comet C/2017 O1 ASASSN1, 45/P Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková and Comet 41P Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák (links). Now, another newcomer is set to bring 2017 in over the finish line.
The Discovery: Astronomer Aren Heinze discovered Comet C/2017 T1 Heinze as a tiny +18th magnitude fuzzball on the night of October 2nd, 2017. The comet will juuust breech our “is interesting, take a look” +10th magnitude cutoff in the final weeks of December leading into January, perhaps topping out around +8th magnitude.
Heinze discovered his first comet as part of the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) search program looking for hazardous objects using the eight 50 cm Wright-Schmidt telescope array atop Haleakala and Mauna Loa in the Hawaiian Islands.
The passage of Comet Heinze through the inner solar system. Credit: NASA/JPL
The orbit for Comet Heinze is an intriguing one, and as is often the case with comets, tempts us with what could have been. Heinze will vault over the ecliptic headed northward on Christmas Day, and reaches perihelion 87 million km (0.58 AU) from the Sun on February 21st, 2018. Closest passage from Earth for Comet Heinze is 33 million km (0.22 AU) on January 4th, 2018, when the comet will appear to move an amazing seven degrees a day through the constellation Camelopardalis.
But it’s the southward passage of Heinze though the ecliptic on April 1st that gives us pause, only 0.0144 AU exterior of Earth’s orbit… had this occurred on July 4th, we might’ve been in for a show, with the comet only 2.1 million kilometers away! Heinze seems like a tiny body as comets go, and there’s discussion that the comet is dynamically new and may end up shredding its nucleus all together. (link)
On a steep 97 degree inclined retrograde orbit, Comet Heinze also has a knife edge hyperbolic eccentricity of nearly 1.0. As with many long period comet, it’s tough to tell if Comet Heinze is a true denizen of our solar system, or just visiting. 2017 also saw the first asteroid whose extra-solar source was clear, as I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua, which passed through the inner solar system this past October.
The December path of Comet Heinze. Starry Night.
The Prospects: Currently, Comet Heinze is located highest to the south around 5AM local for northern hemisphere observers. Expect this situation to change to around 2 AM towards months end, as the comet is higher placed in the constellation Lynx come January 1st, 2018 as it nears opposition.
Comet observer Charles Bell noted on November 27th that Comet Heinze currently displays a short fan-shaped tail, about 88 days before perihelion.
Here’s the blow-by-blow for Comet Heinze for the next few months (passages mentioned here are to within a degree unless otherwise noted).
December
7- Crosses the celestial equator northward.
16- Passes near +3 magnitude star Zeta Hydrae.
18- Crosses into the constellation Cancer.
21- Passes near the open cluster M67.
25- Photo op: passes near the Beehive Cluster M44 and crosses the ecliptic northward.
29- Skirts the corner of the constellation Gemini and crosses into the Lynx.
The January 2018 passage of Comet Heinze through the inner solar system. Starry Night
January
1- May break +10th magnitude?
1- Passes near the +4.5 magnitude star 21 Lyncis.
2- Reaches opposition.
3- Passes near the +4.5 magnitude star 2 Lyncis and into the constellation Camelopardalis.
5- Passes near the +4 magnitude star Alpha Camelopardalis.
6- Passes 31 degrees from the north celestial pole.
7- Crosses into the constellation Cassiopeia.
10-Crosses the galactic equator southward.
13- Crosses into the constellation Andromeda.
14-Crosses into the constellation Lacerta.
17- Passes near the +4.5 magnitude star 6 Lacertae.
21- Passes near the +4 magnitude star 1 Lacertae.
23- Crosses into the constellation Pegasus.
February
26- Passes near the globular cluster M15.
March
1- May drop back down below +10th magnitude?
The projected light curve for Comet Heinze. Credit: Seiichi Yoshida’s Weekly Info on Bright Comets.
And though Comet Heinze won’t join their ranks, here’s a list of the great comets of the past century:
Saturn on June 1st, nearing opposition. Image credit and copyright: Peter on the Universe Today Flickr forum
Summertime astronomy leaves observers with the perennial question: when to observe? Here in Florida, for example, true astronomical darkness does not occur until 10 PM; folks further north face an even more dire situation. In Alaska, the game in late July became “on what date can you first spot a bright planet/star? around midnight.
And evening summer thunder showers don’t help. Our solution is to get up early (4 AM or so) when the roiling atmosphere has settled down a bit.
But there’s one reason to stay up late, as the planet Saturn reaches opposition next week on June 15th and crosses into the evening sky.
Southern hemisphere observers have it best this year, as the ringed planet loiters in southern declinations for the next few years. In fact, Saturn won’t pop up over the celestial equator again until April, 2026. You’ll still be able to see Saturn from mid-northern latitudes, looking low to the south.
First, a brief rundown of the planets this summer. Mars is currently on the far side of the Sun and headed towards solar conjunction of July 26th. Meanwhile, Mercury is headed towards greatest eastern (dusk) elongation on June 21st. Early AM viewers, can follow Venus, which has just passed greatest elongation west of the Sun on June 3rd, just last week. Finally, Jupiter joins Saturn in the dusk sky, high to the south at sunset and headed towards quadrature 90 degrees east of the Sun on July 6th.
Looking eastward on the evening of June 9th. Credit: Stellarium.
There’s another astronomical curiosity afoot this coming weekend: the MiniMoon for 2017. This is the Full Moon nearest to lunar apogee, a sort of antithesis of the over-hyped “SuperMoon.” Lunar apogee occurs on Thursday, June 8th and the Full Moon occurs just 14 hours after.
2017 sees Saturn traveling from the dreaded “13th constellation” of zodiac Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer into Sagittarius. This also means that Saturn is headed towards bottoming out near 23 degrees southern declination next year in late 2018. Saturn truly lives up to its “father time” namesake, marking up its slow 29 year passage once around the zodiac. This struck home to us a few years back when Saturn passed Spica in the constellation Virgo, right back where I first started observing the planet as a teenager three decades before.
The path of Saturn through the last half of 2017. Credit: Starry Night Education Software.
The rings are also at their widest tilt in 2017, making for an extra photogenic view. 27 degrees wide as seen from our Earthly vantage point is as wide as Saturn’s ring system ever gets. Saturn isn’t really “tipping” back and forth as much as it’s orbiting the Sun and dipping one hemisphere towards us, and then another. In 2017, it’s the planet’s northern hemisphere time to shine.
Saturn: the changing view. Image credit and copyright: Andrew Symes (@failedprotostar)
Here’s the last/next cycle rundown:
-Rings wide open: (southern pole of Saturn tipped earthward): 2003
–Rings wide open: (northern pole of Saturn tipped earthward): 2017
-Rings edge on: 2025
-Rings wide open: (southern pole of Saturn tipped earthward): 2032
Even a small 60 mm refractor and a low power eyepiece will reveal the most glorious facet of Saturn: its glorious rings. Galileo first saw this confounding view in 1610, and sketched Saturn as a curious double-handled world. In 1655 Christaan Huygens first correctly deduced that Saturn’s rings are a flat plane, fully disconnected from the planet itself.
Crank up the magnification a bit, and the large Cassini Gap in the rings and the shadow play of the rings and the planet becomes apparent. This gives the view an amazing 3-D effect unparalleled in observational astronomy. The shadow cast by the bulk of the planet disappears behind it during opposition, then slowly starts to reemerge to one side after. Other things to watch for include the retro-reflector Seeliger Effect ( also known as opposition surge) as the planet brightens near opposition. And can you spy the bulk of the planet through the Cassini gap?
The moons of Saturn. Image credit and copyright: John Chumack
Hunting for Saturn’s moons is also a fun challenge. Saturn has more moons visible to a backyard telescope than any other planet. Titan is easiest, as the +8 magnitude moon orbits Saturn once every 16 days. In a small to medium-sized (8-inch) telescope, six moons are readily visible: Enceladus, Mimas, Rhea, Dione, Iapetus and Tethys. Large light bucket scopes 10” and larger might just also tease out the two faint +15th magnitude moons Hyperion and Phoebe.
Cassini looks back across Saturn’s rings. NASA/Cassini/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
There’s also something else special about Saturn in 2017 in the world of space flight: the venerable Cassini mission comes to an end this September. Hard to believe, this mission soon won’t be with us. Launched in 1997, Cassini arrived at Saturn in in July 2004, and has since provided us with an amazing decade plus of science. The internet and science writing online has grown up with Cassini, and it’ll be a sad moment to see it go.
All thoughts to ponder, as you check out Saturn at the eyepiece this summer.
Promotional poster for Alien: Covenant. Credit: 20th Century Fox
Warning: mild plot spoilers ahead for the upcoming summer film Alien: Covenant, though we plan to focus more on the overall Alien sci-fi franchise and some of the science depicted in the movie.
So, are you excited for the 2017 movie season? U.S. Memorial Day weekend is almost upon us, and that means big ticket, explosion-laden sci-fi flicks and reboots/sequels. Lots of sequels. We recently got a chance to check out Alien: Covenant opening Thursday, May 18th as the second prequel and the seventh film (if you count 2004’s Alien vs. Predator offshoot) in the Alien franchise.
We’ll say right up front that we were both excited and skeptical to see the film… excited, because the early Alien films still stand as some of the best horror sci-fi ever made. But we were skeptical, as 2012’s Prometheus was lackluster at best. Plus, Prometheus hits you with an astronomical doozy in the form of the “alien star chart” right off the bat, not a great first step. Probably the best scene is Noomi Rapace’s terrifying self-surgery to remove the alien parasite. Mark Watney had to do something similar to remove the antenna impaled in his side in The Martian. Apparently, Ridley Scott likes to use this sort of scene to really gross audiences out. The second Aliens film probably stands as the benchmark for the series, and the third film lost fans almost immediately with the death of Newt at the very beginning, the girl Sigourney Weaver and crew fought so hard to save in Aliens.
How well does Alien: Covenant hold up? Well, while it was a better attempt at a prequel than Prometheus, it approaches though doesn’t surpass the iconic first two. Alien: Covenant is very similar to Aliens, right down to the same action beats.
The story opens as the crew of the first Earth interstellar colony ship Covenant heads towards a promised paradise planet Origae-6. En route, the crew receives a distress signal from the world where the ill-fated Prometheus disappeared, and detours to investigate. If you’ve never seen an Alien film before, we can tell you that investigating a mysterious transmission is always a very bad idea, as blood and gore via face-hugging parasites is bound to ensue. As with every Alien film, the crew of the Covenant is an entirely new cast, with Katherine Waterston as the new chief protagonist similar to Sigourney Weaver in the original films. And like any sci-fi horror film, expect few survivors.
Alien: Covenant is a worthy addition to the Alien franchise for fans who know what to expect, hearkening back to the original films. As a summer blockbuster, it has a bit of an uphill battle, with a slower opening before the real drama begins.
So how does the science of Alien: Covenant hold up?
The Good: Well, as with the earlier films, we always liked how the aliens in the franchise were truly, well, alien, not just human actors with cosmetic flourishes such as antennae or pointed ears. Humans are the result of evolutionary fortuity, assuring that an alien life form will trend more towards the heptapods in Arrival than Star Trek’s Mr. Spock. Still more is revealed about the parasitic aliens in Alien: Covenant, though the whole idea of a inter-genetic human alien hybrid advanced in the later films seems like a tall order… what if their DNA helix curled the wrong way? Or was triple or single, instead of double stranded?
Spaceships spin for gravity in the Alien universe, and I always liked Scott’s industrial-looking, gray steel and rough edges world in the Alien films, very 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Now, for a very few pedantic nit picks. You knew they were coming, right? In the opening scenes, the Covenant gets hit with a “neutrino burst” dramatically disabling the deployed solar array and killing a portion of the hibernating crew. Through neutrinos are real, they, for the most part, pass right through solid matter, with nary a hit. Millions are passing through you and me, right now. The burst is later described as due to a “stellar ignition event” (a flare? Maybe a nova?) Though the crew states there’s no way to predict these beforehand… but even today there is, as missions such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory and SOHO monitor Sol around the clock. And we do know which nearby stars such as Betelgeuse and Spica are likely to go supernova, and that red dwarfs are tempestuous flare stars. An interstellar colonization mission would (or at least should) know to monitor nearby stars (if any) for activity. True, a similar sort of maguffin in the form of the overblown Mars sandstorm was used in The Martian to get things rolling plot-wise, but we think maybe something like equally unpredictable bursts high-energy cosmic rays would be a bigger threat to an interstellar mission.
The crew also decides to detour while moving at presumably relativistic speeds to investigate the strange signal. This actually happens lots in sci-fi, as it seems as easy as running errands around town to simply hop from one world to the next. In reality, mass and change of momentum are costly affairs in terms of energy. In space, you want to get there quickly, but any interstellar mission would involve long stretches of slow acceleration followed by deceleration to enter orbit at your destination… changing this flight plan would be out of the question, even for the futuristic crew of the Covenant.
Expect a high body count: the crew of the Covenant. Credit: 20th Century Fox
Another tiny quibble: the Covenant’s computer pinpoints the source of the mysterious signal, and gives its coordinates in right ascension and declination. OK, this is good: RA and declination are part of a real coordinate system astronomers use to find things in the sky… here on Earth. It’s an equatorial system, though, hardly handy when you get out into space. Maybe a reference system using the plane of the Milky Way galaxy would be more useful.
But of course, had the crew of the Covenant uneventfully made it to Origae-6 and lived happily ever after stomach-exploding parasite free, there would be no film. Alien: Covenant is a worthy addition to the franchise and a better prequel attempt than Prometheus… though it doesn’t quite live up to the thrill ride of the first two, a tough act to follow in the realm of horror sci-fi.
