Poster for the movie Men in Black 3 from Columbia Pictures. The movie is scheduled for release Friday, May 25, 2012. These guys are always saving the world from aliens who want to conquer, eat or destroy us.

Astronomer Jill Tarter – who stepped down earlier this week as director of the SETI Institute – said today (May 24, 2012) that she disagrees with those who depict extraterrestrials as angry warriors ready to enslave us, or eat us. In a press release from the SETI Institute, announcing their June 2012 SETIcon, Tarter said:

While Sir Stephen Hawking warned that alien life might try to conquer or colonize Earth, I respectfully disagree. If aliens were able to visit Earth that would mean they would have technological capabilities sophisticated enough not to need slaves, food, or other planets. If aliens were to come here it would be simply to explore.

Considering the age of the universe, we probably wouldn’t be their first extraterrestrial encounter, either.

She pointed to the bumper crop of summer 2012 alien movies, including Men in Black III, Prometheus and Battleship, as:

… great entertainment and metaphors for our own fears, but we should not consider them harbingers of alien visitation.

Jill Tarter, who stepped down as SETI Institute director this week, says any aliens who come here will be aiming to explore, not conquer. Photo credit: SETI

1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. This movie depicts wise aliens who tell earthlings they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets.

She said those who favor the idea of angry aliens will have a chance to defend their vision at SETIcon, a public event sponsored by the SETI Institute. The Institute is known for its science-based search for radio signals that would betray the existence of intelligent beings on distant worlds. SETIcon will take place June 22 through 24 in Silicon Valley, California. Tickets are available now. Click here for more.

Bottom line: Former director of the SETI Institute, Jill Tarter, says she does not believe extraterrestrials who come to Earth will be looking to do us harm. Instead, she says, they’ll be here to explore. Tarter says those who stand behind the concept of angry aliens will have a chance to debate with friendly alien folk at SETIcon this summer. SETIcon will take place June 22 through 24, 2012 at the Santa Clara Hyatt Hotel, and will feature a celebrity banquet honoring Jill Tarter.

Jill Tarter to step down as SETI director

The Hinode satellite, which is in low-Earth orbit, captured these beautiful images of Sunday’s annular or ring eclipse of the sun on Sunday, May 20, 2012.

Miss Sunday’s eclipse? Awesome eclipse photo gallery here.

Two minutes after the start of the partial eclipse of the Sun. (JAXA/Hinode)

Click here to expand image above

Hinode is in a low-Earth (about 400 miles, or 600 kilometers above Earth) sun-synchronous polar orbit that permits nearly continuous observations of the sun. Its orbit gave it essentially the same perspective as skywatchers on Earth, according to NASA.

Maximum eclipse. (JAXA/Hinode)

Click here to expand image above

The annular or ring eclipse of Sunday, May 20 was the last solar eclipse in the continental U.S. until 2017. There will be a lunar eclipse in just a couple of weeks, though, visible throughout the Americas. More: Lunar eclipse on the morning of June 4, 2012.

Hinode is jointly managed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, NASA and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council in the U.K.

Bottom line: The Hinode satellite captured beautiful images of Sunday’s annular or ring eclipse of the sun.

When is the next solar eclipse in the U.S.?

After 35 years of searching the skies for signs of intelligence beyond Earth, astronomer Jill Tarter is stepping down as the director of the Center for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research, the organization’s officials announced today (May 22, 2012).

EarthSky interview: Jill Tarter contemplates SETI’s 50-year search for extraterrestrial life

But Tarter, the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character Ellie Arroway in the movie “Contact,” will continue to devote herself to the search for E.T. She’s shifting into a full-time fundraising role for the SETI Institute, which was forced to shut down a set of alien-hunting radio telescopes for more than seven months in 2011 due to budget shortfalls.

SETI telescopes resume search for alien life targeting new planets

Tarter, 68, signed on to the NASA SETI program in the 1970s when a small group of NASA researchers were developing novel equipment and strategies to make systematic radio SETI observations. Since the demise of that program by Congressional fiat in 1993, she has led the efforts at the non-profit SETI Institute to continue the work. Tarter spearheaded a decade-long program, dubbed Project Phoenix, that used large antennas in Australia, Puerto Rico and West Virginia to examine approximately one thousand nearby star systems over an unprecedented wide range of radio frequencies.

SETI Institute Physicist Gerry Harp will succeed Tarter as Director of Center for SETI Research.

Bottom line: Astronomer Jill Tarter is stepping down as the director of the Center for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research, the organization announced on May 22, 2012.

The Falcon-9 rocket owned by SpaceX – a privately-owned company – launched successfully at 3:44 a.m. EDT (7:44 UTC) today (May 22, 2012). SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft has separated from the rocket successfully, and its solar arrays have deployed. The SpaceX craft is now on its historic mission to deliver a supply capsule to the International Space Station.

This morning's successful launch of SpaceX's Falcon-9 rocket. Image Credit: NASA TV via Space.com

Space X’s Falcon-9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida as the controller uttered these historic words:

T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, zero. And, launch of the Space X Falcon 9 rocket as NASA turns to the private sector to resupply the ISS.

Space X mission controllers were seen cheering and exchanging hugs when it was confirmed the capsule and rocket had successfully reached orbit.

The rocket aborted its launch on Saturday, May 19 at the last half-second. Space X says computers detected slightly high pressure inside the central engine of its Falcon-9 rocket. Engineers traced the problem to a faulty valve, which has now been replaced.

Bottom line: SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket launched successfully at 3:44 a.m. EDT (7:44 UTC) today (May 22, 2012). SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft has separated from the rocket successfully, and its solar arrays have deployed. The SpaceX craft is now on its historic mission to deliver a supply capsule to the International Space Station.

Asteroid Vesta has revealed itself as colorful, diverse – and even older than our Earth — in the first-ever orbit of an object in the asteroid belt by a space probe. NASA’s Dawn mission orbits the massive asteroid Vesta through August of 2012. Carol Raymond is the Deputy Principal Investigator of the Dawn space mission. She announced early Dawn findings at a May 2012 press conference from NASA headquarters. She told EarthSky:

Asteroid Vesta. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Dawn’s data have allowed the history of Vesta to be defined. It formed within two million years after the first solids formed in the solar system — before Ceres formed, before the terrestrial planets formed.

Video: Glide over Vesta in 3D

Scientists consider asteroid Vesta to be a protoplanet, one of roughly a hundred space seeds that clumped together from dust and other space rocks to eventually grow and form the planets. Raymond said:

We now know that Vesta is the only intact, layered planetary building block surviving the very earliest days of the solar system.

Here’s more about the landscape of Vesta: Dawn spacecraft reveals landscape of Vesta

This early data show asteroid Vesta to be like a three-layer cake, with a concentrated iron core, a silicate mantle, and a thin crust of basalt. In this way, she said, it’s like the Earth, the moon, Mercury, and Mars. What’s more, about one in twenty meteorites are now confirmed to be pieces of Vesta. These meteorites result from a gigantic collision that left a crater on Vesta the size of the main island of Hawaii. Raymond told EarthSky:

Vesta is special because it survived the intense collisional environment of the main asteroid belt for billion of years, allowing us to interrogate a key witness to the events at the very beginning of the solar system.

Listen to the 90-second EarthSky interview with Carol Raymond on asteroid Vesta, at the top of the page.

So many people posted wonderful images of the May 20-21, 2012 partial and annular (ring) eclipse of May 20-21 on the EarthSky Facebook page. We are in awe of your talent and wish we could post them all. Thank you.

Join the EarthSky community on Facebook

From Okinawa, Japan by Beverly Fish. The eclipse began in Asia, where it was early morning, and calendars read May 21.

From Taipei City, Taiwan by Liao Wei San, who said: I used both graduated ND filter as well as solar viewing film to partially expose the upper part of the picture, so I can obtain good exposure both for the sun and for foreground, resulting in this somewhat surreal image.

The path of the eclipse then crossed the Pacific Ocean to the continental United States. Along a narrow track across the continental U.S., some saw the complete annular or ring eclipse. This image is from Daniel Sims in Cedar City, Utah.

Composite eclipse image from Cattleya Flores Viray at Sycamore Canyon County Park in Poway, California

From Liz Gold in Chimayo, New Mexico.

Check out the detail on the moon in this image from Kevin Saunders.

From Kathleen Kendall Tourigny in Cameron Park, California. She used her binoculars to project the eclipsed sun's image on a wall, then took of picture of her own shadow using her iPhone.

From Ann White Matthews in Austin, Texas

From Colin Chatfield

From Kevin Sanders in Utah.

Many saw dancing illuminated crescents like these, created when the leaves of trees and bushes acted as pinhole cameras and projected the eclipsed sun's image onto cars and buildings. This photo from Chris Walker in Dayton, Nevada.

More crescent suns, from Shelly Wade Carver in Tucson, Arizona

Another great one from Liz Gold in Chimayo, New Mexico. A sun crescent shining on adobe.

From Dan Gauss in southern New Mexico

A projected image of the eclipsed sun from Meggan Wood in Maricopa, Arizona

From Chad Fink in Wichita, Kansas

See more wonderful eclipse and sky and Earth photos from our friends on Facebook

Thank you to everyone in EarthSky’s Facebook community for sharing these amazing eclipse photos from May 20-21, 2012!

You must find a way to protect your eyes if you plan to watch either the annular solar eclipse on May 20-21, 2012 or the transit of Venus on June 5-6, 2012 – or both events. You have options.

• Solar eclipse glasses from commercial manufacturers.
• Welder’s glass, #14 or darker.
• A home-rigged indirect viewing method.
• A local astronomy club that is hosting a viewing.

Whatever you do, never look at the sun directly without a safe filter in place to protect your eyes. That is, unless the sun is totally eclipsed by the moon – which is not happening in May or June 2012. Here are some more things you should not use. Do NOT use sunglasses, polaroid filters, smoked glass, exposed color film, x-ray film, or photographic neutral density filters.

Watching a solar eclipse through special filters. You could use these to watch the May 20-21 annular or ring eclipse, and the June 5-6 transit of Venus.

Find eclipse times for your location on the globe: Annular eclipse of sun – China to Texas – on May 20-21

Solar eclipse glasses. It’s too late to order these online now for the May 20-21 solar eclipse. But you might find them at a local nature center, or museum.  And you can definitely get them in time for the June 5-6 transit of Venus. Solar eclipse glasses are super easy to use, and they’re sort of cool-looking.  Order some now for the Venus transit or next eclipse.  Search on the words “solar eclipse glasses [your country].” I ordered some from Rainbow Symphony.  Or try a great organization, Astronomers Without Borders (whose motto is “One people, one sky”), in which case the proceeds will go to benefit astronomy programs worldwide. I found that they had a minimum order of 100, which is why I went elsewhere. To order from Astronomy Without Borders, look here: Astronomy Without Borders solar eclipse glasses.

Welder’s glass. Be sure it is #14 or darker. The great thing about welder’s glass is that it allows you to view the eclipse directly. Plus welder’s glass is a bit more durable than commercial eclipse glasses. If you’re like me, you’ll forget where you put the commercial eclipse glasses by the next eclipse. With the welder’s glass, you can always add it to your rock collection.  Search for a local “welding supply” company.

To determine if you can see the transit of Venus, look here: Last transit of Venus in 21st century on June 5-6, 2012

Indirect viewing. Creating a pinhole camera is probably your best last-minute option, because it lets families and friends view together. We recommend this article by masters of do-it-yourself science at Exploratorium in San Francisco. Their article on how to view solar eclipses safely teaches you to make an easy pinhole projector. With it, you can shine the sun’s image onto a flat surface and impress your friends and neighbors while giving everyone (including yourself) an unforgettable experience.

Astronomy club local viewing. Find astronomy clubs or events in your location

Bottom line: You basically have several options for safely viewing a solar eclipse: commercial eclipse glasses, #14 or darker welder’s glass, indirect viewing through a pinhole camera, or finding a local viewing event. Never look at the sun directly without some protection in place for your eyes!

Hear from an expert: Eye safety during solar eclipses

More about eclipse filters

By Fred Espenak

Every solar eclipse tends to repeat itself in an 18-year-10-day cycle (or 18-year-11-day depending on the number of intervening leap years) called the Saros. I say “tends to repeat” because the cycle isn’t perfect and only lasts 12 or 13 centuries. Although two eclipses separated by one Saros cycle (18 years and 10 or 11 days) are very similar to each other, they are not exact.

Annular eclipse of the sun – China to Texas – on May 20 or May 21

Image copyright Fred Espenak. Used with permission.

Nevertheless, if we look 18 years into the past, we find that there was an annular solar eclipse on May 10, 1994. This eclipse passed centrally through the USA, and I photographed it near Toledo, Ohio. Those photos will give you a preview of what the May 20-21, 2012 eclipse will look like because the moon and sun are nearly at the same positions and distances as they were during the 1994 eclipse.

Find links to eclipse times for you

Fred Espenak

See more images of the 1994 annular eclipse on my gallery page of solar eclipses

For more information the eclipses and the Saros cycle, visit my web page on the NASA Eclipse web site

Fred Espenak on how to photograph a solar eclipse

Fred Espenak is Scientist Emeritus for Goddard Space Flight Center, and a retired NASA astrophysicist. He is known throughout the world for his work on eclipse predictions. His website lists dates and times for future solar eclipses through the year 2020.

Monster sunspot 1476 sent a parting blast our way, as the sun’s rotation was carrying it from view. The beautiful movie below shows a coronal mass ejection, or CME, hurtling into space from the sun on May 17, 2012. Its effects might deliver a glancing blow to Earth tomorrow (May 19).

May 17, 2012 coronal mass ejection (CME)

NOAA forecasters at first said Earth was not in the path of the CME’s effects, but later said a shock wave from the blast could sweep closer to Earth’s magnetic field on May 19. The NOAA Today’s Space Weather page says:

Geophysical Activity Forecast: The geomagnetic field is expected to be at quiet to unsettled levels with isolated active periods on day 1 (19 May) due to a possible shock arrival from the 17 May CME. Quiet to unsettled conditions are expected on day 2 (20 May). Mostly quiet conditions are expected on day 3 (21 May).

No major effects are expected, but the incoming CME could affect telecommunications and satellites in orbit. Plus it could create auroras, or northern lights! Be on the lookout if you live at a high latitude.

This same sunspot region sent another CME toward Earth and gave us a glancing blow around May 14, 2012.

Sunspot 1476 from EarthSky Facebook friend Zlatan Merakov in Smolyan, Bulgaria. The inset shows the size of the sunspot region compared to Earth.

Read more about sunspot 1476 and see more photos

Plus photographers around the world got some amazing images of the sunspot region, which was many times larger than Earth. You can read more about the sunspot region’s activity in recent days – and see some great photos – at this post.

It was an M5-class solar flare that created the May 17 CME, by the way.

Bottom line: Sunspot 1476 is about to disappear around the limb of the sun as the sun’s rotation carries it from view. But an M5-class flare on May 17, 2012 sent out one last CME, which might deliver a glancing blow to Earth on May 19.

We’ve been looking at a lot of annular eclipse photos recently, as we’ve prepared information for you in advance of the May 20-21, 2012 China to Texas annular or ring eclipse. Here’s more about that upcoming eclipse, including how to find eclipse times for your location. This is the most amazing annular eclipse photo we found, by Mikael Svalgaard. It shows the annular eclipse or January 15, 2010.

Be sure to click to expand!

Photo of January 15, 2010 annular or ring eclipse. Mottling, or granulation, caused by heat convection in the sun's atmosphere can be seen around the dark lunar disk. Credit & Copyright: Mikael Svalgaard: Mikael Svalgaard. Used with permission.

Click here to expand image above

In an annular or ring eclipse, the moon is too far away in its orbit around Earth to cover the sun completely. So, at mid-eclipse, the outer surface of the sun’s disk appears in an annulus or ring around the moon. Mikael Svalgaard took this photo through a telescope just before mid-eclipse on January 15, 2010. He used a filter that blocked most of the sun’s visible light, but still transmitted light from hydrogen atoms. As a result, detailed mottling, or granulation, caused by heat convection in the sun’s atmosphere can be seen around the dark lunar disk. Looking at this photo, can’t you must imagine the roiling surface of the sun?

By the way, the annular or ring eclipse of January 15, 2010 – depicted in Mikael’s photo – was the longest annular solar eclipse for the next 1,000 years. The annular phase lasted up to 11 minutes and 8 seconds.

This photo was the Astronomy Picture of the Day on January 22, 2010.

Watching a solar eclipse through special filters. You must have filters like these to watch the May 20-21 annular or ring eclipse, or risk damaging your eyes. Buy them here. Image via Dionne Bunsha.

Mikael Svalgaard told EarthSky:

The image was taken from Kanyakumari, India with a small (70mm, f/6) refractor. You can see my setup here.

Yes, there’s a lot of gaffa tape on the scope to hold the solar filter in place!

Some more information and pictures from Mikael from this memorable event are available here. Our thanks to you, Mikael, for sharing this great photo.

Annular eclipse of the sun – China to Texas – on May 20 or 21, 2012

Watch May 2012 solar eclipse at a National Park