Perched on top of an Atlas V rocket, on February 11 the Solar Dynamics Observatory launched into space. About a minute after leaving the Earth, the rocket did two things: it passed the speed of sound, and screamed past a sundog, a rainbow-colored optical effect in the sky caused by ice crystals.

And when it did, well, it was incredible. What’s below is just about the coolest video I have ever seen. And I mean that seriously. Click the "720" button and pay close attention at the 1:50 mark. You won’t miss it, the crowd in the audio will alert you…

Wow! I’m quite sure the footage shown here is legit and not a hoax. Several people I know said they saw the same thing, and there are photos of it as well. Those ripples were caused by the shockwave of the rocket going through the cloud, which quickly dispersed. Since the cloud had ice crystals in it, the sundog got literally blown away.

I love the digital revolution. There are so many video cameras out there that stuff no one would’ve believed before are becoming more and more common. Bright meteor fireballs, rocket launches like this, clear footage of flying saucers… oh, wait.

Anyway, awesome. If you ever get a chance to watch a rocket launch, take it. You never know what you might see!

Tip o’ the nosecone to jhumbug on Twitter.

In a bid to go green, British Airways has announced that come 2014, part of its fleet would be powered by biofuel derived from household trash. The airlines announced Monday that it has inked a deal with U.S. company Solena Group to set up Europe’s “first sustainable jet-fuel plant.”

The plant will be located in east London, and it will take food and plant waste from the city’s homes and businesses and convert it to bio-fuel. The airline said in a statement that the plant “will convert 500,000 tonnes of waste per year into 16 million gallons of green jet fuel through a process that offers lifecycle greenhouse gas savings of up to 95 percent compared to fossil-fuel derived jet kerosene.” The aviation fuel will be produced from gasification of the waste into a so-called syngas which is then converted by the Fischer Tropsch process into liquid fuel [Reuters]. The biofuel would power part of the British Airways fleet flying out of London. The airline also says that diverting waste from landfills will curb the production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is generated when garbage decomposes.

The move is part of a larger push by British Airways to get biofuels into the fuel tanks of its planes. BA plans to have biofuels make up 10 per cent of its total fuel usage by 2050, but not all will be derived from the Solena plant. Willie Walsh, BA chief executive, said the Solena partnership would pave the way for BA to cut net carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 [Financial Times].

But aviation authorities haven’t yet signed off on British Airways’ bid to use biofuel for its fleet. Officials want further tests to make sure aircraft safety and performance are not compromised by engines running on biojet fuel, rather than conventional 100% crude oil-based kerosene [The Guardian] Some experts think that using pure biofuel won’t work for planes, as planes require high operational performance at all times and because of the extremely cold temperatures in which airline engines must operate [The Guardian]. In the United States there is just one plant producing biofuel similar to the type Solena will produce in London, and U.S. safety authorities allow planes to only mix in 50 percent of the green fuel with the conventional kerosene jet fuel.

Activists also note that biofuel is expected to power only 2 percent of British Airlines’ total flights, barely impacting the fleet’s greenhouse emissions. They say that if the aviation industry in Britain is serious about reducing its carbon footprint, it must reconsider plans of building a third runway at Heathrow International Airport.

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Image: British Airways

Mimas "The Death Star". Click for a really closer look (see text). Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

On February 13, 2010 the Cassini spacecraft made a close pass at the Saturn moon Mimas.  The image above was taken from about 70,600 km (~ 43,680 miles).

The main feature that just sticks out is the huge impact crater called Hershel, so named for William Herschel the discoverer of Mimas (on September 17, 1789).  Mimas is not a very big moon and the crater Hershel is some 130 km (nearly 81 miles!) across.   It’s easy to see where the “Death Star” analogy comes from.

The Cassini site had a raw image of a portion of Hershel from just 18,017 km (11,195 mi), I did some processing on it and you can see it by clicking the image above.

Tonight, the 530 km (320 mile) wide asteroid Vesta is at opposition. That means that it’s opposite the Sun in the sky, so it rises when the Sun sets. That makes it easier to observe since you have literally all night to go out.

But it also means it’s at the point in its orbit when it’s closest to Earth. Since it orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt, about twice the distance of the Earth to the Sun, it’s at perigee (closest to Earth) when the Sun, Earth, and Vesta are all in a line. The diagram above I made using my awesome Photoshop skillz should help.

Objects that are closer are brighter (and at opposition we’re looking straight down the beams of sunlight shining on Vesta’s surface, so it’s like a full moon effect too), so tonight is just about picture perfect to look for the asteroid.

Even better, it’s the brightest asteroid in the sky! It’ll be shining at about magnitude 6.1 tonight, which is just barely visible to the human eye without aid, though binoculars will help. It’s in Leo, not far from the bright star Regulus. Go to Sky and Telescope for a map.

And if you happen to spot the tiny world, take a moment and think about this: the NASA mission Dawn will settle into orbit around Vesta next year, in 2011. The image I posted above is from Hubble, and is pretty much the best one we have from here on Earth. In late 2011 we’ll have images of it that will be sharp and clear, and, I’m quite sure, jaw-dropping. But until then, go out and take a look for yourself! If not tonight, then sometime in the next week or two.

Astronomy is really cool, but what makes it so fantastic, to me, is that you can go out and do it yourself. Go.

Image credit: Ben Zellner (Georgia Southern University), Peter Thomas (Cornell University) and NASA

Four decades later, the Murchison meteorite is still full of surprises. When this extraterrestrial hunk fell to Earth near its namesake town in Australia in 1969, people managed to salvage more than 200 pounds of it. And now a new analysis of the meteorite, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that it could hold millions of carbon-containing compounds. Researchers say the findings provide insight into the complex chemistry present when the chunk of space-rock formed, back when our solar system was young.

Back in 1969, researchers found amino acids and many other molecules in the carbon-rich rock. Many researchers have analyzed the chondritic meteorite for amino acids and other possible precursors to life, because some theories hold that life on Earth began with the delivery of prebiotic organic compounds from space via asteroids or comets [Scientific American]. But scanning techniques have advanced since then, so the new team used tools like ultra-high-resolution mass spectrometry to take a fresh look at the meteorite.

In the tiny sample they crushed to study, the team turned up at least 14,000 unique organic (carbon-containing) compounds. They say that is actually conservative guess; the somewhat limited scope of their tool could have missed some, and the true number could be as high as 50,000. And because each collection of atoms can be arranged in numerous ways, the authors estimate that there may be millions of distinct organic compounds in the meteorite [Scientific American].

Not only is Murchison rich in organic compounds, it’s old. Scientists believe the Murchison meteorite could have originated before the Sun was formed, 4.65 billion years ago. The researchers say it probably passed through primordial clouds in the early Solar System, picking up organic chemicals [BBC News]. As a result, the researchers say the meteorite could have something to say about the origin of life and our solar system as it continues to let go of its secrets. It was only two years ago, after all, that scientists confirmed that the presence of subunits of DNA and RNA on Murchison were genuine, and not the result of soil contamination.

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Image: Wikimedia Commons