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Clues to ancient giant asteroid found in western Australia
By Australian National University in Canberra | Tuesday, May 17, 2016
"The impact would have triggered earthquakes orders of magnitude
greater than terrestrial earthquakes, it would have caused huge
tsunamis, and would have made cliffs crumble."
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/05/Marble_Bar_sediments.jpg?mw=600
Sediments at Marble Bar, western Australia
Scientists have found evidence of a huge asteroid that struck Earth early in its life with an impact larger than anything humans have experienced.
Tiny glass beads called spherules, found in northwestern Australia, were formed from vaporized material from the asteroid impact, said Andrew Glikson from The Australian National University (ANU).
“The impact would have triggered earthquakes orders of magnitude greater than terrestrial earthquakes, it would have caused huge tsunamis, and would have made cliffs crumble,” said Glikson. “Material from the impact would have spread worldwide. These spherules were found in sea floor sediments that date from 3.46 billion years ago.”
The asteroid is the second oldest known to have hit Earth and one of the largest.
Glikson said the asteroid would have been 20 to 30 kilometers across and would have created a crater hundreds of kilometers wide.
About 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago, the Moon was struck by numerous asteroids, which formed the craters, called maria, that are still visible from Earth
“Exactly where this asteroid struck the Earth remains a mystery,” Glikson said. “Any craters from this time on Earth’s surface have been obliterated by volcanic activity and tectonic movements.”
Glikson and Arthur Hickman from Geological Survey of Western Australia found the glass beads in a drill core from Marble Bar, in northwestern Australia, in some of the oldest known sediments on Earth.
The sediment layer, which was originally on the ocean floor, was preserved between two volcanic layers, which enabled precise dating of its origin.
Glikson has been searching for evidence of ancient impacts for more than 20 years and immediately suspected the glass beads originated from an asteroid strike.
Subsequent testing found the levels of elements such as platinum, nickel, and chromium matched those in asteroids.
There may have been many more similar impacts, for which the evidence has not been found, said Glikson. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve only found evidence for 17 impacts older than 2.5 billion years, but there could have been hundreds. Asteroid strikes this big result in major tectonic shifts and extensive magma flows. They could have significantly affected the way the Earth evolved.”
Marley
05-18-2016, 03:12 PM
The 12 most compelling scientific findings that suggest aliens are real
http://www.businessinsider.com/evidence-for-life-on-other-planets-2015-9
Nice article. It sure would be nice to get some firm evidence in the not too distant future.
This weekend: Blue Moon to coincide with Mars opposition
AccuWeather Meteorologist Brian Lada | May 18, 2016; 2:15 PM ET
Astronomers and stargazers are in for a treat this upcoming weekend with two big celestial events taking place: a ‘Blue Moon' and the opposition of Mars.
Blue Moon
May's Full Moon goes by several names, including the Full Flower Moon, the Full Corn Planting Moon and the Milk Moon. But this year, it will also go by the title of a Blue Moon.
A Blue Moon typically occurs once every few years (hence the term ‘once in a Blue Moon') and is commonly the name of the second full moon in a calendar month. However, this weekend's Blue Moon gained its name a different way.
Normally, there are only three full moons in each season, but occasionally there is a season with four full moons. When this happens, like how it is this spring, the third of the four full moons earns the name of a Blue Moon.
Here is what the weather looks like for Saturday night's Blue Moon:
http://vortex.accuweather.com/adc2004/pub/includes/columns/miscellaneous/2016/650x366_05181750_page-1.jpg
Despite their name, blue moons are not actually the color blue and will appear their typical color.
The next ‘traditional' Blue Moon does not occur until Jan. 31, 2018.
http://vortex.accuweather.com/adc2004/pub/includes/columns/miscellaneous/2016/650x366_05172124_moonfrom-2013.jpg
A blue moon shines above Stockton Springs, Maine, in 2013.
(Photo/AccuWeather Astronomy Facebook Fan Barbara)
Mars Opposition
One day after the full moon, Mars will reach opposition, meaning that that Earth will be passing directly between Mars and the sun.
When this happens, Mars will to be extremely bright, making it a great time for astronomers to observe the planet.
http://vortex.accuweather.com/adc2004/pub/includes/columns/miscellaneous/2016/640x360_05172117_marsopp.jpg
(Photo/EarthSky/Mikhail Chubarets)
Mars will be one of the brightest objects in the sky on Sunday night after the Moon and will be visible from dusk to dawn.
According to EarthSky, by the time Mars reaches opposition, it will have quadrupled in brightness since the beginning of April. Additionally, it will shine nearly 80 times brighter than it does when the planet is at its faintest.
Even if clouds block your view of Mars on Sunday night, it should remain bright for several weeks before it slowly and steadily becomes faint.
http://vortex.accuweather.com/adc2004/pub/includes/columns/miscellaneous/2016/650x366_05181821_page.jpg
About a week after opposition, Mars will make its closest approach to Earth in over 10 years.
At a distance of 46.8 million miles (75.3 million km), this will be the closest the Red Planet has been to our planet since 2003!
Although this is the closest the planets have been in years, it does not mean that Mars will be significantly larger in the night sky as some social media hoaxes might suggest. While it is true that Mars does give off a red glow in the night sky, you will not be able to see the planet like you would the Moon.
Capt.Kangaroo
05-19-2016, 06:36 PM
Thanks ilan, great post...:)
wickedjoker
05-19-2016, 06:40 PM
Looks like I may be able to see it thanks I have to set a reminder on my phone now so I can get the telescope out!
Welcome, Cap...
Weather looks iffy in my neck of the woods for the blue moon. Hopefully, there'll be a break.
Watch Mars in Opposition LIVE With Slooh Observatory
By John Wentz | Published: Thursday, May 19, 2016
Ilan: In case weather gets in the way or you want an alternative (maybe better)
view of Mars in opposition, here is a way to do it.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/05/hstmars.png?mw=600 (http://www.astronomy.com/sitefiles/resources/image.aspx?item=%7B6E35042D-9B7A-43EA-BA32-4B8939BDE0A4%7D)
The most recent Hubble image of Mars, taken on May 12, 2016.
Sunday night, Mars will make its closest approach to Earth, known as opposition. Slooh Observatory will be livecasting the event, which you can see in the below media player.
Opposition occurs when a planet anterior to Earth sits directly "behind" it, as if in a straight line going from the center of the sun through the Earth to the planet. In this way, it's said to be directly opposite the sun in the sky, hence the name. An opposition event occurs every 26 months. At this opposition, Mars will be 0.51 AU from Earth, or 47,416,757 miles.
The next "perihelic opposition" is not set to take place until the next opposition in 2018, when Mars will be just 0.39 AU or 35,880,942 miles from Earth. That places it as close to Earth as it will get until 2035. The most distant opposition in recent years took place in 1995, when Mars was 0.68 AU from earth, or 62,809,309 miles. For a little bit more about oppositions past and present, check out this piece by our own Michael Bakich.
Slooh's coverage begins at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday night, after the sun goes down. Given its close approach, it will appear very bright in the sky, the second brightest object next to Jupiter (third if the moon is up.) To learn a little bit more about how to observe it, check out Michael's helpful tutorial.
Live View of Mars in Opposition:
https://youtu.be/ZzOcKtBaFek
Michael's piece about oppositions past/present mentioned above:
http://www.astronomy.com/observing/sky-events/2016/05/oppositions-past-and-future
Michael's helpful tutorial mentioned above:
http://www.astronomy.com/observing/sky-events/2016/05/observe-mars-at-its-best
European astronomers may have found a new way to find alien planets
By CORDIS | Published: Friday, May 20, 2016
New methods could pave the way to finding a true other Earth.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/05/Gliese_667_Cc_sunset.jpg?mw=1000&mh=500
ESO/L. Calçada
EU researchers have pioneered new calibration strategies for detecting "habitable" planets outside our solar system – with impressive results already. The existence of extra-terrestrial life presupposes the existence of habitable planets – like Earth – outside our solar system. What makes our own planet so special is the fact that it has a solid outer crust and is situated at a distance from the sun where liquid water can exist. Only a few other planets have ever been discovered which satisfy these 'habitability' criteria.
Through pioneering new calibration strategies for detecting the tiniest variations in light waves from stars, the EU WAVELENGTH STANDARDS project aims to help astronomers find new 'habitable' planets, and perhaps one day help us answer the question of whether we are truly alone in the universe.
Star performance
The five year project, due for completion at the end of 2016, has already recorded several achievements. 'We have participated in several international, long-term projects with the instruments we have helped to develop and build,' explains project coordinator Professor Ansgar Reiners from the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany.
'These projects have involved the search for extrasolar planets and life elsewhere in the universe. Some discoveries have proved important for our understanding of planet formation, such as the planet we found orbiting Kapteyn's star.'
WAVELENGTH STANDARDS has also made a significant contribution to the CARMENES project, which built two spectrographs (instruments to measure wavelengths) with sensitivity extending into the infrared in order to search for Earth-like planets around low-mass stars. Reiners' team was responsible for calibration, data reduction and analysis.
'Another success has been our responsibility for calibration in the CRIRES+ project at ESO (European Southern Observatory)'s Very Large Telescope. Our group is also going to be in charge of the calibration unit for the design of the planned high resolution spectrograph for ESO's flagship project, the 39m E-ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope).'
Funding from the EU's European Research Council (ERC) also enabled Reiners to carry out high precision experiments with local telescopes and couple them with state-of-the art frequency calibration methods (called laser frequency combs). 'We were able to install all necessary equipment required for highest precision measurements in-house,' adds Reiners.
On the right wavelength
In order to detect 'habitable' planets outside our solar system, extremely sensitive equipment is required. Minute, periodic changes in starlight must be identified, which indicate that the star is being orbited by a planet.
Such investigations require ultra-precise light sources that can be used as reference points to allow the measurement of light wavelengths. For "cold" stars however – the type of stars that are closest to us – the calibrations required have until now simply not been available.
'A small, Earth-like planet is detectable as a change in wavelength observed from a star; in other words, the star very slightly changes colour,' explains Reiners. 'This is why we need new wavelength standards that tell us at what particular wavelengths we are receiving from the starlight at any given time, and this is where our project promises to make a difference. Our group is now one of the few worldwide that can provide calibration strategies and facilities for the next generation of radial velocity spectrometers.'
Capt.Kangaroo
06-01-2016, 04:18 AM
https://youtu.be/jOmb-STnOg4
Tycho's Supernova Remnant Expands
What star created this huge expanding puffball? Featured here is the first expansion movie ever created for Tycho's supernova remnant, the result of a stellar explosion first recorded over 400 years ago by the famous astronomer Tycho Brahe. The 2-second video is a time-lapse composite of X-ray images taken by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory between the years 2000 and 2015, added to a stock optical frame. The expanding gas cloud is extremely hot, while slightly different expansion speeds have given the cloud a puffy appearance. Although the star that created SN 1572, is likely completely gone, a star dubbed Tycho G, too dim to be discerned here, is thought to be a companion. Finding progenitor remnants of Tycho's supernova is particularly important because the supernova is of Type Ia, an important rung in the distance ladder that calibrates the scale of the visible universe. The peak brightness of Type Ia supernovas is thought to be well understood, making them quite valuable in exploring the relationship between faintness and farness in the distant universe.
Video Credit: NASA, CXC, GSFC, B. Williams et al.
NASA’s Hubble finds universe is expanding faster than expected
This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious
parts of the universe that make up 95 percent of everything and don’t emit light,
such as dark energy, dark matter, and dark radiation.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland | Published: Friday, June 03, 2016
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/06/Hubbleconstant.jpg?mw=600
This illustration shows the three steps astronomers used to measure the universe's
expansion rate to an unprecedented accuracy, reducing the total uncertainty to 2.4 percent.
NASA/ESA/A. Feild (STScI)/A. Riess (STScI/JHU)
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the universe is expanding five to nine percent faster than expected.
“This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious parts of the universe that make up 95 percent of everything and don’t emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter, and dark radiation,” said Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University, both in Baltimore, Maryland.
Riess’ team made the discovery by refining the universe’s current expansion rate to unprecedented accuracy, reducing the uncertainty to only 2.4 percent. The team made the refinements by developing innovative techniques that improved the precision of distance measurements to faraway galaxies.
The team looked for galaxies containing both Cepheid stars and type Ia supernovae. Cepheid stars pulsate at rates that correspond to their true brightness, which can be compared with their apparent brightness as seen from Earth to accurately determine their distance. Type Ia supernovae, another commonly used cosmic yardstick, are exploding stars that flare with the same brightness and are brilliant enough to be seen from relatively longer distances.
By measuring about 2,400 Cepheid stars in 19 galaxies and comparing the observed brightness of both types of stars, they accurately measured their true brightness and calculated distances to roughly 300 type Ia supernovae in far-flung galaxies.
The team compared those distances with the expansion of space as measured by the stretching of light from receding galaxies. The team used these two values to calculate how fast the universe expands with time, or the Hubble constant.
The improved Hubble constant value is 73.2 kilometers per second per megaparsec. (A megaparsec equals 3.26 million light-years.) The new value means the distance between cosmic objects will double in another 9.8 billion years.
This refined calibration presents a puzzle, however, because it does not quite match the expansion rate predicted for the universe from its trajectory seen shortly after the Big Bang. Measurements of the afterglow from the big bang by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite mission yield predictions for the Hubble constant that are five and nine percent smaller, respectively.
“If we know the initial amounts of stuff in the universe, such as dark energy and dark matter, and we have the physics correct, then you can go from a measurement at the time shortly after the Big Bang and use that understanding to predict how fast the universe should be expanding today,” said Riess. “However, if this discrepancy holds up, it appears we may not have the right understanding, and it changes how big the Hubble constant should be today.”
Comparing the universe’s expansion rate with WMAP, Planck, and Hubble is like building a bridge, Riess explained. On the distant shore are the cosmic microwave background observations of the early universe. On the nearby shore are the measurements made by Riess’ team using Hubble.
“You start at two ends, and you expect to meet in the middle if all of your drawings are right and your measurements are right,” Riess said. “But now the ends are not quite meeting in the middle and we want to know why.”
There are a few possible explanations for the universe’s excessive speed. One possibility is that dark energy, already known to be accelerating the universe, may be shoving galaxies away from each other with even greater — or growing — strength.
Another idea is that the cosmos contained a new subatomic particle in its early history that traveled close to the speed of light. Such speedy particles are collectively referred to as “dark radiation” and include previously known particles like neutrinos. More energy from additional dark radiation could be throwing off the best efforts to predict today’s expansion rate from its post-Big Bang trajectory.
The boost in acceleration could also mean that dark matter possesses some weird unexpected characteristics. Dark matter is the backbone of the universe upon which galaxies built themselves up into the large-scale structures seen today.
And finally, the speedier universe may be telling astronomers that Einstein’s theory of gravity is incomplete.
“We know so little about the dark parts of the universe, it’s important to measure how they push and pull on space over cosmic history,” said Lucas Macri of Texas A&M University in College Station.
The Hubble observations were made with Hubble’s sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and were conducted by the Supernova H0 for the Equation of State (SH0ES) team, which works to refine the accuracy of the Hubble constant to a precision that allows for a better understanding of the universe’s behavior.
The SH0ES team is still using Hubble to reduce the uncertainty in the Hubble constant even more, with a goal to reach an accuracy of one percent. Current telescopes such as the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite, and future telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an infrared observatory, and the Wide Field Infrared Space Telescope (WFIRST), also could help astronomers make better measurements of the expansion rate.
Before Hubble was launched in 1990, the estimates of the Hubble constant varied by a factor of two. In the late 1990s the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale refined the value of the Hubble constant to within an error of only 10 percent, accomplishing one of the telescope’s key goals. The SH0ES team has reduced the uncertainty in the Hubble constant value by 76 percent since beginning its quest in 2005.
Capt.Kangaroo
06-05-2016, 05:29 AM
Thanks ilan...:)
Expansion of the Universe is faster than previously thought
The Hubble constant, named after its discoverer American astronomer Edwin Hubble, is the rate at which objects in the universe expand over time. The new value is 66.53 (plus or minus 0.62) kilometers per second per megaparsec (3.26 million light-years). That means in 9.8 billion years the distance between cosmic objects will double.
That figure is 5 per cent more than data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), and 9 per cent more than the readings from the now-defunct European Space Agency's Planck satellite mission.
So – science being science – the quest is now on to find out why. The boffins have narrowed it down to three possibilities.
Firstly, our calculation on the effects of dark energy could be wrong. Dark energy, which can't be detected on current instruments, is already causing the expansion of the universe and may have additional properties that theorists haven't accounted for.
The second option is that in the early period after the Big Bang, a new kind of subatomic particle burst out travelling at just under the speed of light. This would have sped up the expansion of the early universe and would explain the discrepancies in current theory.
"We know so little about the dark parts of the universe, it's important to measure how they push and pull on space over cosmic history," said Lucas Macri of Texas A&M University in College Station, a key collaborator on the study, published in The Astrophysical Journal.
The third option is that Einstein's theories of gravitation are wrong, or at least in serious need of revision. That opens up a whole new can of worms. ®
New radio map of Jupiter reveals what's beneath colorful clouds
University of California - Berkeley | 2 June 2016
Using the upgraded Very Large Array, astronomers have produced a detailed radio map of the upper 100 kilometers of Jupiter's atmosphere, revealing the complex movement of ammonia gas that shapes the colorful clouds observed in the optical. The map will help understand how global circulation and cloud formation are driven by Jupiter's powerful internal heat source, and shed light on similar processes on giant planets in our solar system and around distant stars.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/06/160602151727_1_900x600.jpg
The VLA radio map of the region around the Great Red Spot in Jupiter's atmosphere shows complex upwellings
and downwellings of ammonia gas (upper map), that shape the colorful cloud layers seen in the approximately
true-color Hubble map (lower map). Two radio wavelengths are shown in blue (2 cm) and gold (3 cm),
probing depths of 30-90 kilometers below the clouds.
Credit: Radio: Michael H. Wong, Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley), Robert J. Sault (Univ. Melbourne).
Optical: NASA, ESA, A.A. Simon (GSFC), M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley), and G.S. Orton (JPL-Caltech)
Astronomers using the upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico have produced the most detailed radio map yet of the atmosphere of Jupiter, revealing the massive movement of ammonia gas that underlies the colorful bands, spots and whirling clouds visible to the naked eye.
The University of California, Berkeley researchers measured radio emissions from Jupiter's atmosphere in wavelength bands where clouds are transparent. The observers were able to see as deep as 100 kilometers (60 miles) below the cloud tops, a largely unexplored region where clouds form.
The planet's thermal radio emissions are partially absorbed by ammonia gas. Based on the amount of absorption, the researchers could determine how much ammonia is present and at what depth.
By studying these regions of the planet's atmosphere, astronomers hope to learn how global circulation and cloud formation are driven by Jupiter's powerful internal heat source. These studies also will shed light on similar processes occuring on other giant planets in our solar system and on newly discovered giant exoplanets around distant stars.
"We in essence created a three-dimensional picture of ammonia gas in Jupiter's atmosphere, which reveals upward and downward motions within the turbulent atmosphere," said principal author Imke de Pater, a UC Berkeley professor of astronomy.
The map bears a striking resemblance to visible-light images taken by amateur astronomers and the Hubble Space Telescope, she said.
The radio map shows ammonia-rich gases rising into and forming the upper cloud layers: an ammonium hydrosulfide cloud at a temperature near 200 Kelvin (minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit) and an ammonia-ice cloud in the approximately 160 Kelvin cold air (minus 170 degrees Fahrenheit). These clouds are easily seen from Earth by optical telescopes.
Conversely, the radio maps show ammonia-poor air sinking into the planet, similar to how dry air descends from above the cloud layers on Earth.
The map also shows that hotspots -- so-called because they appear bright in radio and thermal infrared images -- are ammonia-poor regions that encircle the planet like a belt just north of the equator. Between these hotspots are ammonia-rich upwellings that bring ammonia from deeper in the planet.
"With radio, we can peer through the clouds and see that those hotspots are interleaved with plumes of ammonia rising from deep in the planet, tracing the vertical undulations of an equatorial wave system," said UC Berkeley research astronomer Michael Wong.
The final maps have the best spatial resolution ever achieved in a radio map: 1,300 kilometers.
"We now see high ammonia levels like those detected by Galileo from over 100 kilometers deep, where the pressure is about eight times Earth's atmospheric pressure, all the way up to the cloud condensation levels," de Pater said.
De Pater, Wong and their colleaugues will report their findings and highly detailed maps in the June 3, 2016 issue of the journal Science.
Prelude to Juno's arrival
The observations are being reported just one month before the July 4, 2016 arrival at Jupiter of NASA's Juno spacecraft, which plans, in part, to measure the amount of water in the deep atmosphere where the Very Large Array looked for ammonia.
"Maps like ours can help put their data into the bigger picture of what's happening in Jupiter's atmosphere," de Pater said, noting that her team will observe Jupiter with the VLA at the same time as Juno's microwave instruments are probing for water.
Key to the new observations was an upgrade to the VLA that improved sensitivity by a factor of 10, said Bryan Butler, a co-author and staff astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico, which operates the VLA. "These Jupiter maps really show the power of the upgrades to the VLA."
The team observed over the entire frequency range between 4 and 18 gigahertz (1.7 -- 7 centimeter wavelength), which enabled them to carefully model the atmosphere, said David DeBoer, a research astronomer with UC Berkeley's Radio Astronomy Laboratory.
"We now see fine structure in the 12 to 18 gigahertz band, much like we see in the visible, especially near the Great Red Spot, where we see a lot of little curly features," Wong said. "Those trace really complex upwelling and downwelling motions there."
The observations also resolve a puzzling discrepancy between the ammonia concentration detected by the Galileo probe when it plunged through the atmosphere in 1995 -- 4.5 times the abundance observed in the sun -- and VLA measurements from before 2004, which showed much less ammonia gas than measured by the probe.
"Jupiter's rotation once every 10 hours usually blurs radio maps, because these maps take many hours to observe," said co-author Robert Sault, of the University of Melbourne in Australia. "But we have developed a technique to prevent this and so avoid confusing together the upwelling and downwelling ammonia flows, which had led to the earlier underestimate."
This research was supported by Planetary Astronomy and Outer Planets Research Program awards from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NRAO is a National Science Foundation facility operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
Capt.Kangaroo
06-09-2016, 12:15 AM
Good stuff ilan...:D
Mystery Object Outshines Entire Milky Way Galaxy by 50 Times --
"We Don't Know What the Power Source Could Be"
The Daily Galaxy via Ohio State University | 9 June 2016
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef01b8d1f50f27970c-800wi
Astronomers were not entirely sure what it is. If, as they suspect, the gas ball is the result of a supernova, then it's the most powerful supernova ever seen. In June of 2015, astronomers viewed a ball of hot gas billions of light years away that is radiating the energy of hundreds of billions of suns.
Even in a discipline that regularly uses gigantic numbers to express size or distance, the case of this small but powerful mystery object in the center of the gas ball is extreme. At its heart is an object a little larger than 10 miles across. ASAS-SN-15lh, as the object is known, was twice as luminous as any previously seen, far brighter than any normal supernova, and outshone our entire Milky Way galaxy by 50 times.
The artist’s impression below shows what it would look like from an exoplanet 10,000 light-years away in its home galaxy.
The team reported that the object at the center could be a very rare type of star called a magnetar--but one so powerful that it pushes the energy limits allowed by physics. An international team of professional and amateur astronomers spotted the possible supernova, now called ASASSN-15lh, when it first flared to life in June 2015.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef01b8d1f50f6f970c-800wi
The gas ball surrounding the object can't be seen with the naked eye, because it's 3.8 billion light years away. But it was spotted by the All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN, pronounced "assassin") collaboration. Led by Ohio State, the project uses a cadre of small telescopes around the world to detect bright objects in our local universe.
Though ASAS-SN has discovered some 250 supernovae since the collaboration began in 2014, the explosion that powered ASASSN-15lh stands out for its sheer magnitude. It is 200 times more powerful than the average supernova, 570 billion times brighter than our sun, and 20 times brighter than all the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy combined.
"We have to ask, how is that even possible?" said Krzysztof Stanek, professor of astronomy at Ohio State. "It takes a lot of energy to shine that bright, and that energy has to come from somewhere."
"The honest answer is at this point that we do not know what could be the power source for ASASSN-15lh," said Subo Dong, lead author of the Science paper and a Youth Qianren Research Professor of astronomy at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University. He added that the discovery "may lead to new thinking and new observations of the whole class of superluminous supernova."
Todd Thompson, professor of astronomy at Ohio State, offered one possible explanation. The supernova could have spawned an extremely rare type of star called a millisecond magnetar, a rapidly spinning and very dense star with a very strong magnetic field.
To shine so bright, this particular magnetar would also have to spin at least 1,000 times a second, and convert all that rotational energy to light with nearly 100 percent efficiency, Thompson explained. It would be the most extreme example of a magnetar that scientists believe to be physically possible. "Given those constraints," he said, "will we ever see anything more luminous than this? If it truly is a magnetar, then the answer is basically no."
The Hubble Space Telescope will help settle the question later this year, in part because it will allow astronomers to see the host galaxy surrounding the object. If the team finds that the object lies in the very center of a large galaxy, then perhaps it's not a magnetar at all, and the gas around it is not evidence of a supernova, but instead some unusual nuclear activity around a supermassive black hole.
If so, then its bright light could herald a completely new kind of event, said study co-author Christopher Kochanek, professor of astronomy at Ohio State and the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Observational Cosmology. It would be something never before seen in the center of a galaxy.
Image Credit: NASA and Beijing Planetarium / Jin Ma
One-third of the world cannot see the Milky Way -- why that matters
By Jareen Imam, CNN | Updated 3:34 PM ET, Sat June 11, 2016
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160611141107-01-light-pollution-atlas-exlarge-169.jpg
If you look up at the evening sky, there's a good chance you will not be able to see what your grandmother saw when she was a little girl.
That's because we're enshrouded in an artificial haze of light that is blocking the night sky, a phenomenon scientists call light pollution.
Scientists believe one-third of humanity cannot view the Milky Way — this includes 80% of Americans and 60% of Europeans because city lights are creating fogs of light pollution, according to a new study that published Friday in the journal of Science Advances.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150918115148-milky-way-grand-canyon-irpt-2-exlarge-169.jpg
The Milky Way sparkles over the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
An international team of scientists created a world atlas of artificial sky luminance that details how light pollution is permeating our planet. This light is obscuring our vision of the stars, celestial events and the Milky Way — the galaxy that contains our solar system.
Although there are a few patches of pristine dark sky still left in the world, 83% of the world's population and more than 99% of the U.S. and European populations live under the bright glow of light pollution.
"This is a huge cultural loss with unforeseeable consequences in the future generations," scientist Fabio Falchi, one of the authors of the study, says. "Pristine night skies are a precious merchandise."
The most light-polluted country in the world is Singapore, the study finds.
"The entire population lives under skies so bright that the eye cannot fully dark-adapt to night vision," according to the study. This means people living in the country never have the chance to experience true darkness.
Here are other countries where more than half of their inhabitants are living under extremely bright skies, according to researchers. (The numbers denote the percentage of the population affected by light pollution.)
Kuwait (98%)
Qatar (97%)
United Arab Emirates (93%)
Saudi Arabia (83%)
South Korea (66%)
Israel (61%)
Argentina (58%)
Libya (53%)
Trinidad and Tobago (50%)
The countries with populations least affected by light pollution include Chad, Central African Republic, and Madagascar. More than three-quarters of people in these countries are living under pristine night sky conditions.
The dangers of too much light
The findings shows that light pollution is a global issue, and many countries are affected by a fog of artificial light. But light pollution doesn't just obscure our view of space.
This over-saturation can impact our culture, cause global ecological problems, pose public health issues and create wasteful energy spending, the researchers warn.
For instance, artificial light has a direct effect on human physiology and behavior. For instance, it can alter our circadian rhythm and affect production of some of our hormones, a 2007 medical study found. It can also disrupt our sleep cycle by suppressing melatonin creation and increasing cortisol levels — a hormone that is linked to stress.
Researchers found that people living in urban environments were the most affected by light pollution, but what is troubling is that the glow of city lights is creeping into unpopulated areas too.
This is important because artificial lights can negatively affect wildlife. For example, streetlights near shorelines can cause baby turtles who have just hatched to become disoriented and wander inland instead of into the ocean, causing them to die because of dehydration or exposure to predators, according to research by the Sea Turtle Conservancy.
So why has our world been overtaken by light pollution?
"Light pollution is also a consequence of the belief that artificial light increases safety on roads and prevents crimes, but this belief is not based on scientific evidence," the study states.
Saving the darkest skies
"It is always surprising to find out how in few decades of lighting growth we enveloped most of us in a light curtain that hide the view of the greatest wonder of nature, the universe itself," Falchi says.
In less than a 100 years, artificial lights have transformed the sky. Millions of children will never experience the Milky Way, according to the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), an organization combating light pollution.
Light pollution "robs us of the opportunity to experience the wonder of a natural night sky," according to the organization's site.
In order to persevere the world's limited patches of pristine night sky, IDA launched the International Dark Sky Places conservation program in 2001, which encourages communities to protect dark sites.
Some of these International Dark Sky Sanctuaries, which are the most remote and darkest places in the world, include the Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy Observatory, which operates in the Elqui Valley of northern Chile and the Cosmic Campground, a site located in the Gila National Forest of western New Mexico.
The hazards of light pollution are slowly starting to be taken seriously by scientists, the study says.
There are ways to combat the haze of artificial light from overtaking our night skies. Researchers suggest communities experiment with new technology that limits the spread of light pollution, use minimum light for tasks, encourage the practice of shutting lights off when areas are not being used and limit the use of "blue" lights which can affect circadian rhythms and even vision.
The beauty of a pristine night sky can also influence people, Falchi says.
"I was pushed to study physics, ultimately, by the fact that I had the possibility 30 years ago to see a fairly good sky where I lived. Now, in the same place, the Milky Way is totally lost," he says.
Capt.Kangaroo
06-15-2016, 05:38 AM
thanks ilan...:)
Capt.Kangaroo
06-15-2016, 05:40 AM
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/pia20485-1041.jpg
A bright disruption in Saturn's narrow F ring suggests it may have been disturbed recently. This feature was mostly likely not caused by Pandora (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) which lurks nearby, at lower right. More likely, it was created by the interaction of a small object embedded in the ring itself and material in the core of the ring. Scientists sometimes refer to these features as "jets."
Because these bodies are small and embedded in the F ring itself, they are difficult to spot at the resolution available to NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Instead, their handiwork reveals their presence, and scientists use the Cassini spacecraft to study these stealthy sculptors of the F ring.
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 15 above the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 8, 2016.
The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.2 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 105 degrees. Image scale is 8 miles (13 kilometers) per pixel.
The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Last Updated: June 13, 2016
Editor: Tony Greicius
Incredible view... Thanks, Cap!
How a global telescope could reveal black holes for the first time
By Anna Nowogrodzki | Published: Thursday, June 9, 2016
A new algorithm could finally reveal the splendors of a black hole. The MIT grad student who wrote it just needs a dozen radio telescopes worldwide to do it.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/06/nasablackhole.png?mw=800&mh=800
An illustration via NASA of what a black hole may look like. The stream of ejecta is the hot gas being swallowed by the event horizon.
M. Helfenbein, Yale University / OPAC.
Black holes are ready for their close-up, thanks to a new algorithm which could give astronomers a way to take the first image of a black hole by next spring.
Katie Bouman, an MIT graduate student in computer science, developed the algorithm, which essentially uses Earth as a giant radio wave dish. Bouman will present the research at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in June.
The problem with capturing a picture of a black hole is that even the closest one, the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, is very, very far away. Any images taken before show the effects of the black hole, rather than the event horizon itself.
Radio waves are ideal signals for some reasons—they pass through solids, so they can reach Earth across such a vast distance—but they also have very long wavelengths. This means astronomers need a truly huge radio wave dish to capture enough waves to produce an image. To image something the size of the Milky Way black hole, Bouman explains, “You’d need a telescope the size of the Earth.”
That’s just what the Event Horizon Telescope project is trying to create, by collecting data from radio telescopes all over the world. The project currently includes six radio telescopes, but there are not enough radio telescopes in the world that can observe at the desired frequency (1.3mm), or even enough suitable sites in the world on which to build such telescopes. (They need to be on top of mountains and at sites that limit the interference of water vapor.) Bouman’s algorithm is designed to make up the difference.
To do this, her algorithm, called CHIRP (Continuous High-resolution Image Reconstruction using Patch priors), first combines the signals from three different telescopes. By using three, instead of two (which most others do), the delays to the radio waves caused by Earth’s atmosphere cancel each other out.
But even after that, “there’s an infinite number of images that will perfectly describe the data,” Bouman says. So the next step is to use the data to reconstruct an image that looks like an image. That may seem self-evident, but when images are broken up into tiny patches, Bouman explains, “oftentimes there’s a lot of repeating structure: flat patches, an edge.” She built a machine-learning algorithm that identified those repeating patches, called patch models, and used them to reconstruct images.
Amazingly, the algorithm worked when it was trained on any kind of image, astronomical or terrestrial.
“We can take images on your phone, we can take black hole simulation images, we can take images of cats,” says Bouman. “No matter if we trained on black hole images, celestial images, terrestrial images—the patch models that we learn are all similar enough that we ended up getting the same image back in the end.”
Multiple observatories will be used in the project, including the Sub Millimeter Array and James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii; the Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope in Arizona; the Large Millimeter Telescope in Mexico; the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique in Spain; the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array and Atacama Pathfinder Experiment in Chile; the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica; and the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array in France.
Bouman’s algorithm was better than previous ones at reconstructing an image from the measurements it would yield at different telescopes, and it was better at handling noise in the data. The real test will come in the spring of 2017, when telescopes will begin collecting the data that could stitch together into our first image of a black hole.
Capt.Kangaroo
06-18-2016, 06:50 AM
THIS IS WHERE THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION WILL GO TO DIE
IN ONE OF THE MOST ISOLATED PLACES ON THE GLOBE, THE 'SPACECRAFT CEMETERY' PROVIDES A WATERY GRAVE
http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/styles/large_1x_/public/oceanic_pole_of_inaccessibility.png?itok=vHwo4AYp&fc=50,50
The cold void of the ocean floor is the closest thing Earthlings can come to the conditions of space. Nothing really lives there, and nothing ever visits. It’s freezing, dark and empty. However, off the coast of New Zealand, the Pacific Ocean is home to what may be the most exclusive scientific burial ground in the world: the so-called Spacecraft Cemetery has become the final resting place for hundreds of manmade space objects.
There are thousands of satellites and pieces of debris orbiting the Earth at any given moment, but what happens when they run out of fuel or complete their missions? Essentially, they need to get out of the sky and out of the way of other spacecraft.
The risk of leaving a large metal object the size of a car orbiting the Earth is, well, physics. The Earth’s mass creates a gravitational pull on anything in orbit around it, gradually dragging them closer and closer to Earth. Eventually, without proper disposal, all of the orbiting spacecraft (including the gigantic International Space Station) would threaten to come hurtling down on our heads.
The Spacecraft Cemetery has become the final resting place for hundreds of manmade space objects
Luckily, there are scientists who know how to prevent an Armageddon scene like this from happening. Space agencies around the world carefully plan out the re-entry of these large bodies, and they’ve even chosen a place on Earth where these spacecraft can go to safely rest, far from the likes of any humans.
Roughly 3000 miles off the Eastern coast of New Zealand, 2000 miles north of Antarctica, and 2.5 miles deep, the Spacecraft Cemetery is truly in the middle of nowhere. This isolated spot in the ocean is technically called the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility--the point on Earth farthest from any land mass. This spot was chosen for obvious reasons, as it greatly reduces the risk of human casualties from scorching hot space debris. (According to NASA’s Orbital Debris Office, any objects re-entering Earth’s atmosphere cannot exceed a 0.0001 chance of impact with humans, meaning that if the entry were to occur 10,000 times, there would only be one human casualty expected.)
To date, over 263 spacecraft have been crashed here since 1971, and the number is continually growing. The Spacecraft Cemetery's most famous resident is MIR, the 142-ton Russian space station. MIR was de-commissioned in 2001 and subsequently sent into what is called orbital decay, or spacecraft death. Other spacecraft in the graveyard range from rockets' secondary payloads to spy satellites, small Russian space stations, fuel tanks, and hundreds of cargo ships that carried supplies to astronauts in orbit.
Russian objects far outnumber every other space agency when it comes to the Pacific Ocean; there are more than 190 Russian objects alone. The US is next with 52 objects, then Europe with 8, Japan with 6, and finally SpaceX dropped its second stage here in September of 2014.
There is a roster of objects lined up to break up over this area, but the next big ticket item likely won’t make it there for another 12 years. The International Space Station will eventually crash into the Pacific Ocean upon its decommissioning, expected sometime around 2028.
http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/styles/xl_1x_/public/graveyardtimeline_v2.jpg?itok=lhpov8fb&fc=50,50
Each line is an individual satellite or space debris and the dates in which they fell to Earth. Russia (shown in blue) has dropped the majority of objects into the Spacecraft Graveyard, but in recent years, the U.S. (red) has been catching up.
MIR was a massive object to bring back to Earth, requiring intensive calculations to make it back safely. By comparison, the ISS is four times larger, weighs almost 500 tons, and is the size of a football field. The scientists who have to plan the re-entry of the ISS acknowledge that the entry angle for this maneuver will have to be extremely precise but should result in all surviving debris ending up in the Pacific Ocean.
It will be a sad day when the ISS meets its demise in the cold waters of the Pacific. However, this incredibly complicated task is sure to create quite the spectacle. The re-entry of any spacecraft through the Earth’s atmosphere doesn't tend to leave anything in one pristine piece at the bottom of the ocean. It’s a pretty violent scene as the friction of the atmosphere heats metal up to thousands of degrees, forcing a once meticulously engineered craft to explode into pieces.
As the world's space agencies and private spaceflight companies continue to grow and launch things up, eventually those things must also come back down, and the Spacecraft Cemetery will be there to welcome them upon their fiery return.
The Spacecraft Cemetery is literally littered with a rich space history from NASA to Russia, Europe to SpaceX--it’s just too bad no one will ever get to visit.
By Shannon Stirone Posted June 13, 2016
popsci.com
Capt.Kangaroo
06-19-2016, 05:48 AM
https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/s526x395/13346632_838561406298690_3428247175682321109_n.jpg ?oh=e6bf66c367843e09a9b94f47829e0888&oe=57E68648
Capt.Kangaroo
06-21-2016, 05:50 AM
https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/s526x395/13346632_838561406298690_3428247175682321109_n.jpg ?oh=e6bf66c367843e09a9b94f47829e0888&oe=57E68648
Looked nice tonight
Marley
06-21-2016, 03:05 PM
i seen it when moon was coming up after that changed back
anon2599
06-21-2016, 05:35 PM
Excellent! information ...as always Guy`s.
Thank you all.
Regards
Capt.Kangaroo
06-23-2016, 07:56 AM
Excellent! information ...as always Guy`s.
Thank you all.
Regards
Thanks......:)
Dual Supernovae Light Up June Nights: Part 1
By: Bob King | June 8, 2016
Supernovae are popping up everywhere! Two stars flamed out millions of years ago and at least one is an easy catch right now in amateur telescopes.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/SN-NGC4125-Will-Wiethoff.jpg
Type Ia Supernova 2016coj in NGC 4125 is now bright enough to see in amateur telescopes.
You'll find it 11.7″ NE of the galaxy's nucleus. NGC 4125 lies about 72 million light-years from Earth.
William Wiethoff
Recent years have seen a blizzard of new supernovae discoveries from dedicated robotic searches by both amateurs and professionals. If you have any doubt, David Bishop's excellent Bright Supernova site lists 3,471 reported in 2015. Already this year, we're up to 2,910!
Sorting through them to find visual candidates takes more time that it used to, but I'm not complaining. Among the ubiquitous 18th- and 19th-magnitude candidates there are always a few bright enough to spot in an 8-inch or larger telescope. On May 28th, two new exploding stars were discovered, SN 2016coj in NGC 4125 (a 10th-magnitude elliptical galaxy in Draco) and SN 2016cok in the bright spiral M66 in Leo, by the automated Lick Observatory Supernova Search (LOSS).
SN 2016coj's initial brightness of ~15.5 magnitude didn't immediately shout "Hey, look at me!" But in recent days, the Type Ia supernova brightened steadily to its present magnitude of 13.6, making it fair game for 10-inch and even 8-inch telescopes.
Several nights back, I took a look at the host galaxy in my 15-inch (37-cm) reflector. Its location near a 6th-magnitude star a short distance north of the Big Dipper's bucket made the finding easy. When I used 142×, the supernova presented itself almost immediately as a "second nucleus" about 11.7″ northeast of the true nucleus, a tiny kernel of light buried in the galaxy's core. When the seeing steadied, the supernova stood out crisply, a sharp point compared to the slightly fuzzy galactic nucleus. Here before me eyes was the end of a life, a white dwarf blown to bits in a tremendously powerful explosion brought on by ... weight gain.
Out With a Bang
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/Supernova-Type-Ia_NASA_CXC_M.Weiss_ST.jpg
This illustration shows the stages of a Type Ia supernova explosion like that in SN 2016coj.
From left: a white dwarf accretes matter from a close companion until it reaches a super-critical
state when it exceeds 1.4 solar masses; a thermonuclear explosion ensues, wiping out the star;
and an expanding cloud of debris is all that's left.
NASA / CXC / M. Weiss
After feasting on its close companion star's atmospheric gases, the Earth-sized star accumulated enough material on its surface to exceed the Chandrasekhar Limit of 1.4 solar masses and undergo rapid gravitational collapse. Dire consequences followed as a runaway fusion reaction from the crushing heat and pressure raced through the star, destroying it in one titanic blast.
Since then, SN 2016coj has continued to brighten and should be an even easier target by the time you read this. Meanwhile, SN 2016cok in the familiar galaxy M66 in Leo has taken another path.
Another Dwarf Bites the Dust
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/SN-M66-Gianluca-Masi_ST.jpg
Supernova 2016cok (beween the tick marks) was discovered in the bright, nearby galaxy M66
in Leo on May 28th, the same day as SN 2016coj was discovered. Unlike the latter, SN 2016cok's
brightness has remained nearly constant at about magnitude +16.5. The new object is located 61″
east and 34″ south of the galaxy's nucleus in an outer spiral arm. East is up and north at right.
Gianluca Masi
Dual Supernovae Light Up June Nights: Part 2
By: Bob King | June 8, 2016
Ordinarily, the words "supernova" and "M66" heard in the same sentence would make a deep-sky hunter's blood pressure spike. It was here in February 1989 SN 1989B peaked at 12th magnitude, within range of even a 4-inch. Given the galaxy's relative proximity to Earth of 36 million light-years, any supernovae there have the potential to become bright, but this one has so far remained faint.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/Supernova-Type-II-NASA_CXC_M.Weiss_ST.jpg
In a Type II supernova, an aging supergiant star runs out of nuclear fuel in its core,
leading to a sudden collapse followed by a rebounding shock wave that rips the star
apart. Some Type II events leave a neutron star or black hole remnant.
NASA / CXC / M. Weiss
Discovered by Ohio State's All-Sky Survey Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) at magnitude +16.6, SN 2016cok hasn't gotten any brighter than +16.4 as of June 4th.
It may still be on the rise, though. According to a recent notification from The Astronomer's Telegram, the supernova's spectrum indicates it was caught a few days before maximum.
While a perfect target for astrophotographers, the star presents a tough visual challenge at the moment. Maybe a 24-incher can pry this one loose, but until it cracks magnitude +15.5, I'll be sitting on the sidelines watching with interest.
SN 2016cok is a Type IIp supernova involving the collapse and explosion of an evolved supergiant star. But instead of fading at the regular rate, the IIp variety slows or “plateaus” (hence the p) for many days before resuming its normal decline in brightness. Has the supernova already plateaued or does a "brighter future" lie ahead?
M66 Wide and Detailed
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/SN-M66-wide-finder_ST-627x360.jpg
This dual map will help you find the 9th-magnitude spiral galaxy M66 and SN 2016cok
located midway between the naked-eye stars Theta (θ) and Iota (ι) Leonis. The left
half shows a wide view, the right half is zoomed in. Stars at right shown to magnitude +7.5.
Bob King, Source: Stellarium
You can keep track of the progress of both supernovae at the Bright Supernova site. Click and search for "M66" or "NGC 4125" or go out the next clear night and have a look for yourself. When it comes to stellar explosions, M66 is a real champ with five recorded supernovae to its name since 1973.
Explosion Over the Bowl
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/SN-NGC-4125-finder_ST-768x626.jpg
Use the bowl of the Big Dipper to navigate to NGC 4125 and its bright supernova. Stars shown to magnitude +7.5.
Bob King, Source: Stellarium
I wish you much success in your supernovae hunt. As you slowly twist the focusing knob to bring SN 2016coj into sharp focus, consider that this pinprick of light shines some five billion times brighter than the Sun while material within the expanding debris cloud rushes outward at 9,500 miles per second (15,300 km/s). How fortunate that you and I just happened to be around to see it 72 million years later.
An ocean for Pluto and a thinner ice shell on Enceladus
Plenty of good news for our ocean worlds!
By John Wenz | Published: Wednesday, June 22, 2016
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/nhaplutomountainsplains91715_0.jpg?mw=650&mh=800
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Once, we thought earth was the only planet with oceans. But now, we're seemingly finding them everywhere in our solar system, including possibly the last place on anybody's mind: Pluto.
New evidence published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the icy dwarf planet may still have a liquid ocean lurking underneath its frozen exterior. Tectonic activity on the surface of Pluto, revealed by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, shows an absence of contraction in the surface. Contraction is the kind of thing that would be expected if the ocean had, at the depths it's believed to be at, frozen completely into a dense form of ice called Ice II. That seems to indicate it's liquid or at least slushy down there.
Radioactive elements in the core (along with some motion from the tug-o-war between Pluto and Charon) would keep the ocean warm. There's still some chance, though, that the ice crust of Pluto is thinner than anticipated, which would lead to formation of less dense forms of ice. But flows of nitrogen ices seem to come from much deeper below, placing the ice shell as much as 300 km (186 mi) from the surface. At those depths, if there was water, it would almost certainly form Ice II. That is, unless something made it not freeze.
Of course, we already know that Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, is an ocean world, with warm water under the ice shell spewing into space thanks to the gravitational tug of Saturn. Pluto joins that pantheon now, along with worlds like Ganymede, Europa, and Titan. But unlike Pluto, new evidence seems to indicate that Enceladus may have a much thinner ice shell than once believed.
The research, also published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that the crust at the south pole of Enceladus may be as little as 3 km (1.86 mi) deep. That would also make drilling under the ice shell a more distinct possibility for a future space probe, or to have an orbiter penetrate the ice shell with radar to find out more of what's going on down below. Previous measurements of the ice shell, which placed it as much, much thicker, didn't line up with gravitational data collected by the Cassini probe.
It's a lot of excitement for two small places in our solar system. Many astrobiologists already think Enceladus may be a high probability place to find life. But now that Pluto is on the radar, we're seeing that liquid water is even more abundant than we thought. On Earth, where there's water there's life. And now we have to recognize that there might be a chance for life on Pluto.
A New Minimoon for Earth
By: David Dickinson | June 24, 2016
A recently discovered minimoon, the asteroid known as 2016 HO3, follows Earth in its orbit around the Sun.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/asteroid/20160615/asteroid20160615-16.jpg
The strange orbit of Apollo asteroid 2016 HO3.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Our fair planet has a tiny companion, a minimoon that shares our annual journey around the Sun in a complex dance.
Astronomers recently announced the discovery of 2016 HO3, an asteroid between 40 and 100 meters in size that behaves as Earth's quasi-satellite. Discovered on April 27, 2016, by the Pan-STARRS 1 survey based on Haleakala, Hawai'i, 2016 HO3 glows dimly at 24th magnitude. 2016 HO3 is in one of the most stable orbits known for a TCOs (Temporarily Captured Object) in orbit around Earth. Calculations suggest that, though it evaded detection until this year, 2016 HO3 has hung out in Earth's vicinity for a century or so, and will remain in a cosmic dance with our world for centuries to come.
“Since 2016 HO3 loops around our planet, but never ventures very far away as we go around the Sun, we refer to it as a quasi-satellite of Earth,” says Paul Chodas (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory). “In effect, this small asteroid is caught in a little dance with Earth.”
The Weird Orbit of a Minimoon
2016 HO3's orbit takes it alternately sunward and ahead of Earth for six months at a time, before our planet's gravity grabs it and drags it back, forcing it to play catch up. This strange motion is slightly tilted relative to the ecliptic plane, resulting in a corkscrew twist in the orbit over several decades. Too distant to be considered a true second moon, 2016 HO3's journey takes it as close as 38 times the Earth-Moon distance (9.1 million miles or 0.1 astronomical units) from our planet, and as far as 100 times the Earth-Moon distance (24 million miles or 0.25 astronomical units).
As an Apollo asteroid, 2016 HO3 joins the small but growing list of objects tracked in a solar orbit near Earth. Asteroid 2003 YN107 was discovered by the LINEAR sky survey about a decade ago, when it followed a similar track, but the rock has since departed our neighborhood. Asteroid 2006 RH120 made several distant looping passes of the Earth from April 2006 to September 2007 before ejection. Turns out our Moon does a pretty good job at celestial goal tending, assuring such secondary hopefuls never hang around for long.
Simulations carried out by Mikael Granvik (University of Helsinki, Finland) in 2012 suggest that most TCOs only complete three orbits of the Earth-Moon system before ejection, and only 1% ever impact Earth. (Read Sky & Telescope's September 2015 issue for more info.)
Ideas for a tiny second moon around Earth, dubbed "Lilith," go all the way back to alleged sightings in the 19th century. "Petit's Moon" created a temporary sensation in 1846, until it too proved to be spurious. In modern times, spent boosters from the Chinese Chang'e-2 and Apollo 12 lunar missions were tenoriarilidentified as "asteroids" 2010 QW1 and J002E3. Other objects, such as 3753 Cruithne occupy strange horseshoe-shaped orbits around Earth. Venus also has its own suite of TCOs, such as 2002 VE68.
Hunting Temporary Minimoons
A new generation of all sky surveys could swell the ranks of known TCOs. The enormously successful PanSTARRS project, which currently operates with just one of four proposed telescopes, may one day get its full complement for such a dedicated search. A 2014 study suggests that the Subaru telescope could stand a 90% chance of nabbing a potential TCO after only 5 nights of dedicated scanning of the sky. Then there's the Large Synoptic Sky Survey, (LSST) set to see first light in 2022 — they're working on the primary mirrors now.
The discovery of 2016 HO3 spawns far more questions than it answers: Where did it come from? Did the rock spall off the Moon during an impact, or is it merely an asteroid that wandered too close to Earth? Could 2016 HO3 make the candidate list of possible targets for a future crewed mission to an asteroid? Future discoveries will help put 2016 HO3 into context and help reveal its origin.
What is the difference between an asteroid and a comet?
This is a natural question that arises from the last post...
The main difference between asteroids and comets is their composition, as in, what they are made of. Asteroids are made up of metals and rocky material, while comets are made up of ice, dust and rocky material. Both asteroids and comets were formed early in the history of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago. Asteroids formed much closer to the Sun, where it was too warm for ices to remain solid. Comets formed farther from the Sun where ices would not melt. Comets which approach the Sun lose material with each orbit because some of their ice melts and vaporizes to form a tail.
Source:
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/181-What-is-the-difference-between-an-asteroid-and-a-comet-
Jupiter and its satellites seen by ‘people’s camera’ on Juno probe
Stephen Clark, Astronomy Now | 26 June 2016
http://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/PIA20701_fig1.jpg
The JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno spacecraft took this picture of Jupiter and its four largest moons 21 June.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The visible camera on NASA’s Juno spacecraft is capturing a time-lapse movie of Jupiter and its four largest moons as the orbiter dives toward the giant planet for a 4 July rendezvous, and officials have released a first taste of the views armchair scientists and space enthusiasts can anticipate over the coming weeks and months.
The JunoCam instrument aboard Juno captured the colour view of Jupiter and its moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto on 21 June at a distance of 10.9 million kilometres (6.8 million miles) from Jupiter. NASA released the picture Friday.
The golden hues of Jupiter’s atmospheric bands are just coming into view, and JunoCam will resolve more detail in the coming days.
Derived from a descent imager carried by NASA’s Curiosity rover to Mars, JunoCam will gather hundreds of pictures during Juno’s 20-month mission at Jupiter.
A few of the images, such as views collected during Juno’s approach to Jupiter this month, are part of Juno’s main science campaign and pre-selected by researchers on the mission team. Officials will string together a sequence of images taken by JunoCam this month into a time-lapse movie showing the celestial dance of Jupiter and its moons as Juno dives toward the giant planet’s north pole.
No such view has ever been seen before.
“We’ve had a number of spacecraft that have flown past Jupiter and taken pictures and taken movies, but they have always been in the equatorial plane,” says Candice Hansen from the Planetary Science Institute, a member of Juno’s science team responsible for planning the mission’s camera operations. “This mission is the first one where we really get up over the polar regions.”
http://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/PIA14447-16.jpg
This trio of Junocam views of Earth was taken during Juno’s close flyby on 9 October 2013.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Like Juno’s other scientific sensors, JunoCam will be turned off 29 June, five days before the spacecraft’s arrival for a make-or-break engine burn to enter orbit around the planet.
JunoCam’s primary purpose is as a public outreach tool, and Juno managers plan to solicit suggestions from the public for the camera’s imaging targets.
The camera will be tasked to take pictures of cloud patterns and storms identified by amateur astronomers, who can upload their views of Jupiter to a section of the Juno mission website. Then members of the public can collaborate and vote on which regions of Jupiter should be imaged by JunoCam, and enthusiasts can process the raw image data on their own computers at home.
JunoCam works by taking pictures in a series of lines, with its detector scanning Jupiter’s cloud tops in steps as the Juno spacecraft rotates once every 30 seconds. JunoCam is designed to collect components of the final image at the correct rate to avoid smear as the Juno spacecraft zooms about 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) over Jupiter’s cloud tops.
Juno will fly in a long, looping orbit around Jupiter, taking it as far as about 3 million kilometres (2 million miles) from the planet on each circuit. At such distances, JunoCam will not be able to resolve much detail on Jupiter’s surface, so scientists have asked the amateur astronomy community to supply contextual imagery to help plan the camera’s targets when the spacecraft is closer to the planet.
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Artist’s concept of the Juno spacecraft above Jupiter’s clouds. Credit: NASA
NASA says each close approach to Jupiter — called a perijove — will produce about a dozen JunoCam images, along with a wealth of other data gathered by the mission’s other instruments, which are focused on sounding of the planet’s atmospheric layers, measurements of its gravitational and magnetic fields, and surveying its radiation environment.
At least 37 orbits are in Juno’s flight plan. That includes a few laps around Jupiter just arrival its arrival in July set aside for engineering tests and manoeuvres, plus a spare orbit at the end of the mission to fill in any missing data gaps.
“The whole theme is to do science in a fishbowl,” says Hansen. “Let’s do what we would do, but let’s do it in a public forum so that the public can participate.”
Scientists tested JunoCam when the spacecraft re-visited Earth in October 2013 for a gravity assist to head out toward Jupiter. Amateur image analysts processed the camera’s raw data to produce images of cloud-covered Patagonia, proving the performance of the camera and the public outreach operations concept.
Readers interested in participating in JunoCam’s campaign of exploration should visit the Juno mission website:
https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/
UFO inquiry event described as 'cosmic Watergate' by organizers
By Chris Seto, CBC News Posted: Jun 25, 2016 6:00 AM ET Last Updated: Jun 25, 2016 4:55 PM ET
Event will host panel of UFO experts including Paul Hellyer, a former federal defence minister
http://i.cbc.ca/1.3623708.1465446618!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_620/irrelevant-show-ufo.jpg
"We want the government to understand that we know what's going on," says Victor Viggiani,
who organized a panel at Alien Cosmic Expo. (Shutterstock)
For years, governments and world leaders have hid the truth about the existence of UFOs or flying saucers, says Victor Viggiani.
'This is a hearing, an inquiry into the evidence.'
- Victor Viggiani, UFO panel organizer
The former elementary school principal hopes this truth will be exposed this weekend at an event in Brantford called the Alien Cosmic Expo – what he calls a "cosmic Watergate."
Held at the Best Western Hotel, the gathering is described as a national inquiry into the existence of flying saucers.
Viggiani, 68, said his role was to put together a panel of UFO experts that could answer any questions that might come up about extraterrestrials and possible cover-ups.
Throughout Saturday, a panel of seven experts will each take 10 minutes to acknowledge the existence of UFOs and an alleged worldwide government cover-up. The panel includes Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian defence minister.
"This is a hearing, an inquiry into the evidence," Viggiani said in a phone interview Friday.
Over the years, he said, there have been many conferences touching on the existence of beings from another world. But never before has there been a national inquiry about it.
An open discussion about UFOs
To contrast the panel of experts, Viggiani has invited several journalists from local media outlets – skeptics willing to keep an open mind – to conduct the hearing. They will present their evidence, and the media will ask their questions, he said. The exchange will be similar to what one might see in courtroom.
'We want the government to understand that we know what's going on.'
- Victor Viggiani
"We want to have an open discussion on this," he said, adding this is why it was important for the media attending to be skeptical and ask real questions.
"At conferences, you're just speaking to the choir," he said. At this event, experts will be asked real questions and demand real answers.
"These guys will be able to answer any question (the media) may have."
So far, around 230 people are registered to attend, he said. There are still seats available for Saturday. A ticket costs $99.
Besides Hellyer, the UFO experts making up the panel include the follows:
- Richard Dolan, UFO author and researcher.
- Steve Bassett of Paradigm Research Group.
- Nick Pope, UFO author and investigator.
- Grant Cameron, UFO researcher.
- Stanton Friedman, retired nuclear physicist.
- Travis Walton, alleged abductee.
This inquiry is "a cosmic Watergate," Viggiani said. "We want the government to understand that we know what's going on."
More information on Viggiani's research is available on his blog:
http://zlandcommunications.blogspot.ca/2016/03/calling-on-all-journalists-and-academics.html
Why ultra-powerful radio bursts are the most perplexing mystery in astronomy - Part 1
Elizabeth Gibney, Nature | 28 June 2016
Strange signals are bombarding Earth. But where are they coming from?
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.37419.1467108425!/image/CSIRO-Parkes-Telescope_Wayne-England-BG.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/CSIRO-Parkes-Telescope_Wayne-England-BG.jpg
The Parkes telescope in Australia detected the first fast radio burst in 2001.
No astronomer had ever seen anything like it. No theorist had predicted it. Yet there it was — a 5-millisecond radio burst that had arrived on 24 August 2001 from an unknown source seemingly billions of light years away.
“It was so bright, we couldn't just dismiss it,” says Duncan Lorimer, who co-discovered the signal1 in 2007 while working on archived data from the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia. “But we didn't really know what to do with it.”
Such fleeting radio bursts usually came from pulsars — furiously rotating neutron stars whose radiation sweeps by Earth with the regularity of a lighthouse beam. But Lorimer, an astrophysicist at West Virginia University in Morgantown, saw this object erupt only once, and with more power than any known pulsar.
He began to realize the significance of the discovery1 only after carefully going over the data with his former adviser, Matthew Bailes, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. If the source was really as far away as it seemed, it had released the energy of 500 million Suns in just a few milliseconds. “We became convinced it was something quite remarkable,” he says.
But when no more bursts appeared, initial excitement turned to doubt. Radio astronomers have learnt to be sceptical of mysterious spikes in their detectors: the events can all too easily result from mobile-phone signals, stray radar probes, strange weather phenomena and instrumental glitches. Wider acceptance of what is now known as the Lorimer burst came only in the past few years, after observers working at Parkes and other telescopes spotted similar signals. Today, the 2001 event is recognized as the first in a new and exceedingly peculiar class of sources known as fast radio bursts (FRBs) — one of the most perplexing mysteries in astronomy.
Whatever these objects are, recent observations suggest that they are common, with one flashing in the sky as often as every 10 seconds2. Yet they still defy explanation. Theorists have proposed sources such as evaporating black holes, colliding neutron stars and enormous magnetic eruptions. But even the best model fails to account for all the observations, says Edo Berger, an astronomer at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who describes the situation as “a lot of swirling confusion”.
Clarity may come soon, however. Telescopes around the world are being adapted to look for the mysterious bursts. One of them, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) near Penticton in British Columbia, should see as many as a dozen FRBs per day when it comes online by the end of 2017.
“This area is set to explode,” says Bailes.
Curiouser and curiouser
Astronomers might have had more confidence in the Lorimer burst initially had it not been for a discovery in 2010 by Sarah Burke-Spolaor, who was then finishing her astrophysics PhD at Swinburne. Burke-Spolaor, now an astronomer at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico, was trawling through old Parkes data in search of more bursts when she turned up 16 signals that shook everyone's confidence in the original3.
In most ways, these signals looked remarkably similar to the Lorimer event. They, too, showed 'dispersion', meaning that high-frequency waves appeared in the detectors a few hundred milliseconds before the low-frequency ones. This dispersion effect was the most important piece of evidence convincing Lorimer and Bailes that the original burst came from well beyond our Galaxy. Interstellar electrons in clouds of ionized gas are known to interact more with low-frequency waves than with high-frequency ones, which delays the low-frequency waves' arrival at Earth ever so slightly, and stretches the signal (see 'Flight delays'). The delay in the Lorimer burst was so extensive that the wave had to have travelled through a lot of matter — much more than is in our Galaxy.
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.37420.1467040876!/image/FRB-graphic-ONLINE.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/FRB-graphic-ONLINE.jpg
Nik Spencer/Nature; Source: Fig. 1 In Keane, E. F. et al. Nature 530, 453–456 (2016).
Unfortunately for Lorimer and Bailes' peace of mind, Burke-Spolaor's signals also showed a crucial difference from the original: they seemed to pour in from everywhere, not just from where the telescope was pointing. Dubbed perytons, after a mythical winged creature that casts a human shadow, these bursts could have been caused by lightning, or some human-made source. But they were not extraterrestrial.
Lorimer decided to postpone his research into FRBs for a while. “I didn't yet have tenure,” he says, “so I had to go back and do more mainstream projects, just to keep my research moving.” Bailes and his team kept going, and upgraded the Parkes detector's time and frequency resolution. In 2013, they turned up four new FRB candidates that resembled the Lorimer burst4. But some outsiders remained sceptical that the signals were really coming from space — not least because all the FRBs thus far had been seen by one team using one telescope. “I was desperate for someone else to find them somewhere else,” says Bailes.
In 2014, his wish was finally granted. A team led by astronomer Laura Spitler at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, published their observations of a burst at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico5. “I was ridiculously overjoyed,” says Bailes.
The Arecibo discovery convinced most people that FRBs were the real deal, says Emily Petroff, who is now an astrophysicist at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy in Dwingeloo. Yet, as long as the Burke-Spolaor signals went unexplained, they cast a shadow of doubt. “At any talks I would give,” says Petroff, “someone would say, 'But what about perytons?'” So in 2015, while still a graduate student at Swinburne, she led a hunt to track down the source of perytons once and for all.
First, Petroff and her team used the upgraded Parkes detector to pinpoint when the bursts were happening: at lunchtime. “Immediately I thought, 'This isn't weather',” says Petroff. Then came another peryton at a suspiciously familiar radio frequency, which led the team to run experiments in the staff kitchen. Perytons, they discovered, were the result of scientists opening the microwave oven mid-flow. But the Lorimer event was in the clear: records showed that at the time of the burst, the telescope had been pointed in a direction that would have blocked any microwave signal from the kitchen6.
“So then I worried, maybe they've just got a different brand of microwave at Arecibo,” says Bailes, whose team at Parkes had, by then, racked up 14 separate bursts. He did not relax completely until later in 2015, when a burst was spotted at a third facility — the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. That burst had another quality that supported an extraterrestrial origin: its waves were rotated in a spiral pattern — which results from passing through a magnetic field — and were scattered as if they had emerged from a dense medium. “There's no way that's a microwave oven,” Bailes told himself.
Why ultra-powerful radio bursts are the most perplexing mystery in astronomy - Part 2
Elizabeth Gibney, Nature | 28 June 2016
Strange signals are bombarding Earth. But where are they coming from?
Bursts of inspiration
But that still leaves the question of what the FRBs actually are. The extreme brevity of the signal, just 5 milliseconds, implied that the source must be a compact object no more than a few hundred kilometres across — a stellar-mass black hole, perhaps, or a neutron star, the compact core left over by a supernova. And the fact that Earth-based telescopes can detect the FRBs at all means that this compact source somehow puts out an immense amount of energy. But that still leaves a long list of candidates, from merging black holes to flares on magnetars: rare neutron stars with fields hundreds of millions of billions of times stronger than the Sun's.
“There's no way that's a microwave oven.”
An important clue arrived earlier this year when Spitler's team reported that at least one FRB source repeats: data from Arecibo revealed a flurry of bursts over two months, some spaced just minutes apart7. That behaviour has been confirmed by the Green Bank telescope, which detects signals in a different frequency band8. Until then, each of the observed FRBs had been a one-off event, which hinted at cataclysmic explosions, or collisions in which the sources were destroyed. But a repeating FRB implies the existence of a source that survives the pulse event, says Petroff. And for that reason, she says, “I would assume it would be something to do with a neutron star” — one of the few known objects that can emit a pulse without self-destructing.
Spitler agrees. As an example, she points to the Crab nebula: the result of a supernova explosion that was observed from Earth in 1054 and left behind a rapidly spinning pulsar surrounded by glowing gas. The Crab pulsar occasionally releases extremely bright and narrow radio flares, Spitler says. And if this nebula were in a distant galaxy and hugely boosted in energy, its emissions would look like FRBs.
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.14719.1389113007!/image/WEB_HIGH-RES_R6700190-Red_giant_and_neutron_star-SPL.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/WEB_HIGH-RES_R6700190-Red_giant_and_neutron_star-SPL.jpg
Bizarre star could host a neutron star in its core
If one source repeats, Spitler says, the simplest interpretation is that they all do, but that other telescopes haven't been sensitive enough — or lucky enough — to see the additional signals. Yet others think that perhaps only some are repeating. “I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with two or three populations,” says Petroff.
A long way home
Another crucial question is how far away the FRBs are. The 20 bursts seen so far seem to be scattered randomly around the sky rather than being concentrated in the plane of the Galaxy, which suggests that their sources lie beyond the borders of the Milky Way.
And yet to Avi Loeb, a physicist at Harvard University, such vast distances imply an implausibly large energy output. “If you want the burst to repeat, you won't be able to destroy the source — therefore, it cannot release too much energy,” he says. “That puts a limit on how far away you can put it.” Perhaps, he says, the FRB sources are neutron stars in our own Galaxy, and the dispersion is mostly the result of still unknown electron clouds that blanket them.
But others suggest that such a dense cloud in the Galaxy should be visible in other wavelengths. At the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, astrophysicist Shri Kulkarni has scoured data from several telescopes for a galactic source and turned up nothing9. Kulkarni, who directs Caltech's optical observatories, initially argued for galactic FRBs, and even made a US$1,000 bet on it with astronomer Paul Groot of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Now, he finds the evidence for extragalactic FRBs to be overwhelming, and has agreed to settle the bet — grudgingly. “I think I will pay him in $1 bills,” he says.
Still, Kulkarni hasn't ruled out the possibility that the FRB sources lie in galaxies that are perhaps a billion light years away, rather than many billions. Such a distance would still require at least some of the signal dispersion to come from electron clouds in the host galaxy, he says. But closer FRBs would not have to be so energetic. “It takes them from being amazingly exotic, to just exotic,” he says.
The answer could mean a great deal to observers. If the FRB signals have travelled through local plasma clouds, they could give weather reports from neighbouring galaxies. But if they are truly cosmological — coming from halfway across the visible Universe — they could solve a long-standing cosmic mystery.
For decades, astronomers have known from observations of the early Universe that the cosmos should contain more everyday matter — the kind made up of electrons, protons and neutrons — than exists in the visible stars and galaxies. They suspect that it lies in the cold intergalactic medium, where it is effectively invisible. But now, for the first time, the dispersion of the FRB signals could enable them to measure the medium's density in any given direction. “Then, we have essentially a surgical device to do intergalactic tomography,” says Kulkarni.
Rapid-fire detection
First, however, astronomers have to find a lot more FRBs and pin down their locations. “Until then, we are stumbling in the dark,” says Berger.
One way to accomplish that is to extract the FRBs from radio-telescope data in real time, so that scientists at other observatories can observe the bursts in multiple wavelengths. Since last year, the Parkes team has been doing this by boosting the observatory's in-house computing power, and scientists at Arecibo hope to follow suit this year. In February, the strategy seemed to be paying off when an independent team followed up within two hours of an FRB's detection at Parkes. The team tentatively pinpointed the burst to a specific galaxy almost 6 billion light years away. Further observations cast doubt on that interpretation. But even so, says Lorimer, the method is sound and may pay off in the future.
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.34386.1456318533!/image/low%20ACherney_ATCA_Pano_print-1024x512.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/low%20ACherney_ATCA_Pano_print-1024x512.jpg
The Australia Telescope Compact Array, in New South Wales, which helped to identify the location of a fast radio burst.
Others observers are putting their hopes in new telescopes. In 2014, astrophysicist Victoria Kaspi at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, submitted a proposal to adapt CHIME, which was originally designed to map the expansion of the Universe in its early years. “It became clear very quickly that it would be a fantastic FRB instrument,” says Kaspi. Although dish telescopes such as Arecibo can be highly sensitive, they observe only a single, tiny patch of sky at a time. CHIME, by contrast, consists of four 100-metre-long half-pipes dotted with antennas that can monitor much bigger stretches of sky in long lines. After undergoing testing and debugging, CHIME should see its first FRBs sometime next year, says Kaspi, ultimately finding more than a dozen per day.
In Hoskinstown, Australia, meanwhile, Bailes and his colleagues are refurbishing the 1960s-vintage Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope, turning it into an FRB observatory with a single half-pipe 16 times longer than CHIME's, although one-quarter as wide. The team has already found three as-yet-unpublished FRBs with the facility working at only about 20% of its final sensitivity, says Bailes.
Another strategy for locating the FRB sources is to work with existing facilities such as the Very Large Array: an 'interferometer' that uses the time difference between signals from 27 radio telescopes spaced across 36 kilometres of grassland near Socorro, New Mexico, to create a single, high-resolution image. Sometime in the next year or so, says Lorimer, the array could detect an FRB and locate its home galaxy. “Ultimately, that could settle a lot of arguments and bets,” he says.
Kulkarni, meanwhile, is leading two projects. The first uses ten 5-metre-wide dishes in an array that can see and locate only super-bright FRBs, but that makes up for its low sensitivity by peering at a huge swathe of sky. The second takes the principle to the extreme, using 2 antennas spaced at observatories 450 kilometres apart that will see only the very brightest FRBs, but that are able to examine half the sky at once. That would enable it to catch the rare FRBs that presumably exist within our own Galaxy, but whose extreme brightness existing telescopes are not designed to see. “Most facilities would just discount it as interference,” says Kulkarni.
If FRBs do turn out to come from cosmological distances, says Loeb, their identification would be a major breakthrough, potentially unravelling a new class of source that could be used to probe the Universe's missing matter. But then, he says, FRBs could also be something that no one has thought of yet: “Nature is much more imaginative than we are.”
Tour July’s Sky: Planets on Parade
By: Kelly Beatty, Sky & Telescope | June 30, 2016
Sky & Telescope's astronomy podcast takes you on a guided tour of the night sky. In early evening look for Jupiter in the southwest, with Mars and Saturn embedded in Scorpius toward south.
For us northerners, July is a time of long, hot days. Yet on July 4th Earth reaches aphelion, the point in its orbit most distant from the Sun. On that date we’re 1.7% farther away than on average.
Throughout July you can find three easy-to-spot planets adorning the evening sky. Soon after the Sun sets, look for Jupiter shining brightly well up in the southwest. This is a special time for the King of Planets, as a NASA spacecraft called Juno has finally reached Jupiter and is going into orbit around it.
Let your eyes drift to the left of Jupiter, and you'll come to the icy-white star Spica. Keep going left, and you’ll soon encounter Mars. The Red Planet is very obvious, yet it’s only half as bright now as it was in late May, when it edged closer to Earth than it’s been in the past decade.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/Mars-Saturn-Antares-July-2016.jpg
Look toward south well after sunset, and you'll find Saturn and Mars mingling with the distinctive stars of Scorpius
Sky & Telescope diagram
To the left of Mars are two obvious stars. The brighter one, on top, is Saturn, and the one below really is a star, called Antares, which is considered the heart of the constellation Scorpius. Look halfway between Mars and the Saturn-Antares combo for a vertical row of three medium bright stars that mark the Scoprion’s head.
This is just a sample of the great sky sights that await you after sunset. To get a personally guided tour of these night-sky sights and others overhead during July, download our 7½-minute-long astronomy podcast below.
http://media.blubrry.com/skytourpodcasts/p/www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/SkyTour-July-2016.mp3
Giant spacecraft nears Jupiter
Amanda Barnett, CNN | Updated 12:57 AM ET, Mon July 4, 2016
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Artist’s concept of the Juno spacecraft’s Leros 1b main engine firing. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
(CNN) It's been speeding toward Jupiter for nearly five years. Now -- can it slow down?
On Monday, NASA's Juno spacecraft -- a spinning, robotic probe as wide as a basketball court -- will perform what the space agency calls a 35-minute long "suspenseful" maneuver that will allow it to be pulled into orbit around Jupiter.
Basically, mission managers will hit the brakes, and they'll hit them hard.
They plan to fire Juno's main engine for 35 minutes starting at 8:18 p.m. PT (11:19 p.m. ET). That should slow the spacecraft by about 1,212 miles per hour (542 meters per second) and allow it to be pulled into orbit around Jupiter.
"We are ready," said Scott Bolton, the mission's principal investigator. "The science team is incredibly excited to be arriving at Jupiter," he said in a NASA press release.
Juno will circle Jupiter 37 times over 20 months, diving down to about 2,600 miles (4,100 kilometers) above the planet's dense clouds.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/07/575585main_Juno201107274full_full1024x935.jpg?mw=6 00
An artist’s rendering of Juno as it approaches Jupiter. NASA
"Some of the challenges are we are going into the most treacherous place in the entire solar system, radiation fields that are really intense," Juno Project Manager Rick Nybakken told CNN's Paul Vercammen.
Juno has seven science instruments designed to help scientists figure out how Jupiter formed and evolved. The planet is the most massive in our solar system -- a huge ball of gas 11 times wider than Earth. Researchers think it was the first planet to form and that it holds clues to how the solar system evolved.
"One of the primary goals of Juno is to learn the recipe for solar systems," Bolton said at a news conference. "How do you make the solar system? How do you make the planets in our solar system?"
Spacecraft have been to Jupiter before, but scientists still are puzzled by the gas giant.
What's going on under Jupiter's dense clouds? Does it have a solid core? How much water is in its atmosphere? And how deep are those colorful bands and that mysterious giant red spot?
"Jupiter looks a lot like the sun," Bolton said. But it has much more than the sun, and that's really important.
"The stuff that Jupiter has more of is what we're all made out of," he said. "It's what the Earth is made out of. It's what life comes from."
Juno will help solve the mysteries of Jupiter by looking at its interior. The spacecraft will orbit the poles and try to dodge the planet's most hazardous radiation belts. To protect the spacecraft from the radiation, Juno has a shielded electronics vault.
Juno also has a color camera and a three LEGO crew members (yes, LEGOs).
The camera is called JunoCam and NASA says it will take "spectacular close-up, color images" of Jupiter. NASA is asking the public to help decide where to point the camera.
Now, about those LEGO crew members. Three 1.5-inch figurines are on board Juno. One is a likeness of Galileo Galilei -- the scientist who discovered Jupiter's four largest moons. The other two represent the Roman god Jupiter and his wife Juno. They were included to inspire children to study science and math.
Juno's spacecraft body measures 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) tall and 11.5 feet in diameter. But with its three solar panels open, it spans about 66 feet (20 meters). For comparison, an NBA basketball court is 50 feet wide and 94 feet long.
Jupiter was 445 million miles (716 million kilometers) from Earth when Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral on August 5, 2011. But the probe has traveled a total distance of 1,740 million miles (2,800 million kilometers) to reach the gaseous planet, making a flyby of Earth to help pick up speed.
You can see Jupiter from Earth without any special binoculars or telescopes. It's the bright star in the evening sky from January through August. If you do have a telescope, you can see its largest moons.
The Juno mission ends on February 20, 2018, when Juno is expected to crash into Jupiter.
Ride with Juno into Jupiter orbit (Article Excerpt)
By Deborah Byrd and Eleanor Imster in Human World, EarthSky | Space | July 4, 2016
On Monday – July 4, 2016 – NASA’s Juno spacecraft will fire its main engine for 35 minutes, slowing the craft and moving it from its beeline through space into orbit around Jupiter. Launched from Cape Canaveral in 2011, after traveling through space for five years, the solar-powered Juno craft will begin the maneuver – called Jupiter Orbit Insertion – as Independence Day fireworks are streaming through U.S. skies on July 4 at 8:18 p.m. PDT (July 5 at 0318 UTC; translate to your time zone). Juno will become the first craft to enter Jupiter orbit since Galileo, which arrived in 1995 and spent eight years moving around the giant planet.
To follow along as Juno makes its journey into Jupiter orbit, watch NASA TV live coverage beginning July 4 at 7:30 p.m. PDT:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#public
http://news.ucsc.edu/2015/03/images/jupiter-400.jpg
Full Article:
http://earthsky.org/space/juno-makes-closest-yet-jupiter-flyby-of-july-4-2016
Capt.Kangaroo
07-05-2016, 04:09 AM
'Welcome to Jupiter!' NASA's Juno space probe arrives at giant planet
Jet Propulsion Lab (CNN)NASA says it has received tones confirming its Juno spacecraft has successfully started orbiting Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.
"Welcome to Jupiter!" flashed on screens at mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. The Juno team cheered and hugged.
"This is phenomenal," said Geoff Yoder, acting administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
The probe fired its main engine for 35 minutes to slow it enough to be pulled into orbit.
Juno was launched nearly five years ago on a mission to study Jupiter's composition and evolution. It's the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter since Galileo. Galileo was deliberately crashed into Jupiter on September 21, 2003, to protect one of its discoveries -- a possible ocean beneath Jupiter's moon Europa.
cnn.com
It is an amazing mission and apparently flawless at this point. I watched the telecast last night. I nodded off just before Jumo was to re-orient itself toward the sun to get back on solar energy and cut battery reliance.
Kudos, Team Juno!
Juno/Jupiter Facts and Figures
The Telegraph | 5 July 2016
In Numbers: Juno's Jupiter Mission
1.8 billion miles
That's the total distance travelled from launch to arrival. Juno's journey wasn't a straight shot. Because the rocket that carried Juno wasn't powerful enough to boost it directly to Jupiter, it took a longer route. It looped around the inner solar system and then swung by Earth, using our planet as a gravity slingshot to hurtle toward the outer solar system.
3,100 miles
That's how close Juno will fly to Jupiter's cloud tops. It'll pass over the poles 37 times during the mission on a path that avoids the most intense radiation.
48 minutes, 19 seconds
That's the time it took for radio signals from Jupiter to reach Earth. During the encounter, Juno fired its main engine for about a half hour to slow down. By the time ground controllers receive word, the engine burn was completed, placing Juno in orbit.
20 months
That's how long the mission will last. Because Juno is in a harsh radiation environment, its delicate electronics are housed in a special titanium vault. Eventually, Juno will succumb to the intense radiation and will be commanded to plunge into Jupiter's atmosphere to avoid any collision with the planet's moons.
Nine
Juno carries a suite of nine instruments to explore Jupiter from its interior to its atmosphere. It will map Jupiter's gravity and magnetic fields and track how much water is in the atmosphere. Its colour camera dubbed JunoCam will snap close-ups of Jupiter's swirling clouds, polar regions and shimmering southern and northern lights.
Three
Three massive solar wings extend from Juno, making it the most distant solar-powered spacecraft. The panels can generate 500 watts of electricity, enough to power the instruments.
In Numbers: Jupiter
3 rings
Jupiter's faint outer rings are called the gossamer rings. The thick inner ring is called the halo
1 great red spot
This gigantic storm has raged for hundreds of years
67 moons
Jupiter has 50 confirmed moons and 17 more unconfirmed
272,945.9 miles
Circumference of the planet - almost 11 times Earth's
81.3 ft/s2 surface gravity
If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 253 pounds on Jupiter
-148°C
Effective temperature
Source: NASA
“It’s the biggest and baddest planet in the solar system and it’s got the biggest and baddest radiation and the biggest and baddest magnetic field."
- Steve Levin, project scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/07/05/juno-probe-nasa-celebrates-as-830m-spacecraft-successfully-enter/
Capt.Kangaroo
07-06-2016, 12:38 AM
Thanks ilan...:)
Capt.Kangaroo
07-06-2016, 02:46 AM
Amazing footage from Juno.
https://youtu.be/FcrBAuLBXag
Thanks for that, Cap... Hard to believe, but that is the first time the orbit of one space object around another has been captured on video.
http://time.com/4393292/jupiter-juno-moons-video/
The world's largest radio telescope has just been completed
By Jordan Rice, Astronomy Magazine | Published: Wednesday, July 6, 2016
China's 30-soccer-field-wide radio telescope will start the hunt for extraterrestrials.
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The world's largest radio telescope, FAST
E.T. may be easier to find now that China has just finished installation of the 4,450 triangular panels on the world's largest radio telescope, the Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). The telescope was finished nearly three months ahead of schedule, with the original ETA in September. With its enormous size of 30 soccer fields, FAST has taken nearly five years and $180 million to build.
So how big is it? One of the scientists that worked on building FAST told Xinhua that if the dish were to be completely filled with wine, there would be enough to give five bottles to all seven billion people on Earth.
The next largest radio telescope is the 305-meter-wide Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico, which was completed in 1963. The Arecibo Telescope has held the crown of largest radio telescope for 53 years. FAST is 64 percent larger.
FAST is tasked with many research projects involving studying strange objects such as quasars, pulsars, and gravitational waves, as well as searching for extraterrestrial life.
"The project has the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life," said Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to Xinhua.
Hubble showcases Crab Nebula's 'beating heart'
By Ashley Strickland, CNN | Updated 8:52 AM ET, Fri July 8, 2016
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the Crab Nebula and its "beating heart" which is a neutron star at the right of the two bright stars in the center of this image. The neutron star pulses 30 times a second. The rainbow colors are visible due to the movement of materials in the nebula occurring during the time-lapse of the image.
(CNN) - Nearly a thousand years ago, a "guest star" appeared in the sky, shining almost as brightly as the moon and six times more vibrant than Venus. Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and possibly Native American astronomers recorded the event in 1054, according to NASA. Although it was visible during the day for almost a month, the star faded soon after. Several years later, it was invisible.
What these astronomers witnessed was a supernova in the Taurus constellation, the final, violent act of a dying star and the largest explosion that takes place in space. It formed the Crab Nebula, one of the most famous supernova remnants studied.
We've seen images of the beautifully wispy filaments of the ever-expanding gas cloud that constitutes the star's remains. And now, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has peered into the center of this cosmic wonder 6,500 light-years away and witnessed its beating heart. The radiation signature was first detected in 1968.
The heart is actually a rapidly spinning neutron star or pulsar, otherwise known as the crushed core of an exploded star. What makes it strange and unique to scientists is the fact that a neutron star contains about the same mass as the sun but is tightly compressed into a solid ball only a few miles across. It spins 30 times a second, sending off radiation pulses with the precision of a striking clock. These rapid pulses make this core appear just like a heart within the nebula.
"The density of a neutron star can be approximated by stuffing a herd of 50 million elephants into a thimble," said Frank Summers, outreach astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
In the image captured by Hubble, the red streaks are glowing gas cavities and filaments of star debris, which continue to expand. The blue wisps are really electrons moving at the speed of light, forming an expanding ring. Scientists believe that high-speed wind tsunamis whip off the neutron star and turn into the charged particles forming this wispy magnetic field.
"The Crab Nebula is about 14 light-years across on its long axis," Summers said. "In comparison, the star Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is about 8 light-years away from the sun. Hence, the gas in the nebula has expanded from being part of a star to stretching across interstellar space over the last thousand years. The speed of that expansion is millions of miles per hour."
The overlapping rainbow colors are mainly due to the fact that this is a time-lapse image capturing the movement of materials within the nebula.
Pulsars are comparable to a lighthouse beam. In the magnetic field of the exploded star, the remaining gas is pushed out at high speeds that form jets of materials. When we can see these pulsing jets, that means the poles are pointed toward Earth.
The fact that the Crab Nebula is one of the closest to us has afforded scientists the opportunity to study it and its features.
"By studying and following the emission of the Crab, we get a ringside seat for understanding how young neutron stars and supernova remnants develop," Summers said.
"This supernova is only a thousand years old, so we are seeing an early stage on astrophysical time scales."
But what does this have to do with us? More than you might expect. "Very massive stars, greater than about 8 times the mass of our sun, end their lives as these titanic explosions," Summers said. "The heavy elements forged by nuclear fusion in these stars are then spewed forth and become part of the interstellar medium. When new stars form from this enriched material, the collapsing clouds have the heavy materials from which to make rocky planets like Earth. Our planet, and indeed our species, could not have formed were it not for such supernova explosions."
Astronomers capture supermassive black hole as it eats passing star
By James Griffiths, CNN | Updated 6:20 PM ET, Thu July 7, 2016
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160316163853-back-hole-skymap-0316-exlarge-169.jpg
A movie of fast red flashes from V404 Cygni observed by the ULTRACAM fast imager on the William Herschel Telescope in the early morning hours of June 26, 2015.
(CNN) - A star, caught in the grips of a supermassive black hole.
The immense gravity slowly strips the stellar material from its parent, forming a disc of gas around the black hole as it converts gravitational energy into electromagnetic radiation, producing a bright source of light visible on multiple wavelengths.
Then, even more dramatically, a narrow beam of particles shoots out of the black hole at almost the speed of light.
This galactic phenomenon -- known as relativistic jets -- was first discovered almost five years ago.
Further clues as to how a black hole feeding on a star produced such outbursts were revealed in March, and now researchers have used an Earth-sized radio telescope network to make record-sharp observations of the phenomenon.
Sharpest measurements ever made
An international team of astronomers, led by Jun Yang at Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology, used the European VLBI Network (EVN) to study the event known as Swift J1644+57.
First discovered in 2011, Swift J1644+57 is a supermassive black hole slowly swallowing a star. Or rather, was, the galaxy in which the incredible astronomical event is taking place is so far away its light takes 3.9 billion years to reach Earth.
As the ancient star was sucked into the black hole, Yang says it produced jets of light and particles equivalent to the size "of a 2 euro coin on the Moon as seen from Earth."
"These are some of the sharpest measurements ever made by radio telescopes," he said in a statement.
Such accuracy was made possible by new technology that uses a network of huge telescopes across our planet, knitting together their observations into an Earth-sized scope that is far more powerful than the sum of its parts.
Next generation telescopes
The team says its findings are likely only the beginning, giving us ever greater insights into one of space's least understood phenomena.
Earlier this year, gravitational waves created by the merging of two black holes were detected, proving a key part of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, just over 100 years after it was first published.
"Observations with the next generation of radio telescopes will tell us more about what actually happens when a star is eaten by a black hole -- and how powerful jets form and evolve right next to black holes," Stefanie Komossa, astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, said in a statement.
Yang agrees. "In the future, new, giant telescopes like FAST (Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) and SKA (Square Kilometer Array) will allow us to make even more detailed observations of these extreme and exciting events."
Study explains why galaxies stop creating stars
Science Daily (University of Ca) | 8 July 2016
Astronomers examined around 70,000 galaxies to address an important unsolved mystery in astrophysics
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ESO 137-001 is a perfect example of a spiral galaxy zipping through a crammed cluster of galaxies. Gas is being pulled from its disc in a process called ram pressure stripping. The galaxy appears to be losing gas as it plunges through the Norma galaxy cluster. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).
Galaxies come in three main shapes -- elliptical, spiral (such as the Milky Way) and irregular. They can be massive or small. To add to this mix, galaxies can also be blue or red. Blue galaxies are still actively forming stars. Red ones mostly are not currently forming stars, and are considered passive.
The processes that cause galaxies to "quench," that is, cease star formation, are not well understood, however, and constitute an outstanding problem in the study of the evolution of galaxies. Now, using a large sample of around 70,000 galaxies, a team of researchers led by University of California, Riverside astronomers Behnam Darvish and Bahram Mobasher may have an explanation for why galaxies stop creating stars.
The research team, which included scientists at the California Institute of Technology and Lancaster University, United Kingdom, combed through available data from the COSMOS UltraVISTA survey that give accurate distance estimates for galaxies over the past 11 billion years, and focused on the effects of external and internal processes that influence star formation activity in galaxies.
External mechanisms, the research team notes, include drag generated from an infalling galaxy within a cluster of galaxies, which pulls gas away; multiple gravitational encounters with other galaxies and the dense surrounding environment, resulting in material being stripped away from the galaxy; and the halting of the supply of cold gas to the galaxy, thus strangling the galaxy of the material needed to produce new stars over a prolonged period of time.
The researchers explain that internal mechanisms include the presence of a black hole (in which jets, winds, or intense radiation heat up hydrogen gas in the galaxy or blow it out completely, thus preventing the gas from cooling and contracting to form stars) and "stellar outflow" (for example, high-velocity winds produced by massive young stars and supernovae that push the gas out of the host galaxy).
"By using the observable properties of the galaxies and sophisticated statistical methods, we show that, on average, external processes are only relevant to quenching galaxies during the last eight billion years," said Darvish, a former graduate student in the UC Riverside Department of Physics and Astronomy and the first author of the research paper that appears today in The Astrophysical Journal. "On the other hand, internal processes are the dominant mechanism for shutting off star-formation before this time, and closer to the beginning of the universe."
The finding gives astronomers an important clue towards understanding which process dominates quenching at various cosmic times. As astronomers detect quenched non-star-forming galaxies at different distances (and therefore times after the Big Bang), they now can more easily pinpoint what quenching mechanism was at work.
In astronomy, much debate continues on whether it is only internal, external or a combination of both phenomena that makes a galaxy quench star formation. It is still not clear what processes are mostly responsible, and unclear, too, is the fractional role of different physical processes in shutting down the star-formation. It is also not fully understood when these processes come to play an important role in the evolutionary life of galaxies.
"The situation becomes more complex when we realize that all these mechanisms may depend on properties of galaxies being quenched, they may evolve with time, they act at different time-scales -- fast or slow -- and they may depend on the properties of the quenching factors as well," Darvish said.
Mobasher, a professor of physics and astronomy who supervised Darvish during the course of the research, said, "We found that on average the external processes act in a relatively short time-scale, around one billion years, and can more efficiently quench galaxies that are more massive. Internal effects are more efficient in dense clusters of galaxies. The time-scale is very important. A short time-scale suggests that we need to look for external physical processes that are fast in quenching. Another important result of the work is that internal and external processes do not act independently of each other in shutting-off the star formation."
Darvish and Mobasher were joined in the research by David Sobral at Lancaster University, the United Kingdom; and Alessandro Rettura, Nick Scoville, Andreas Faisst and Peter Capak at the California Institute of Technology. Darvish graduated from UCR with a Ph.D. in astronomy in 2015. The bulk of the research was done while he was working toward his doctoral degree. He is now a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech.
Next, the research team will work on extending this study to the environment of galaxies on much larger scales (in the cosmic web).
Hubble Reveals Stellar Fireworks in ‘Skyrocket’ Galaxy
NASA/Hubble | 28 June 2016
Star birth lights up a small galaxy
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_feature/public/thumbnails/image/hs-2016-23-a-print.jpg?itok=f18VJIeY
Image credit: NASA. ESA and D. Elmegreen (Vassar College)
Fireworks shows are not just confined to Earth’s skies. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a spectacular fireworks display in a small, nearby galaxy, which resembles a July 4th skyrocket.
A firestorm of star birth is lighting up one end of the diminutive galaxy Kiso 5639. The dwarf galaxy is shaped like a flattened pancake, but because it is tilted edge-on, it resembles a skyrocket, with a brilliant blazing head and a long, star-studded tail.
Kiso 5639 is a rare, nearby example of elongated galaxies that occur in abundance at larger distances, where we observe the universe during earlier epochs. Astronomers suggest that the frenzied star birth is sparked by intergalactic gas raining on one end of the galaxy as it drifts through space.
“I think Kiso 5639 is a beautiful, up-close example of what must have been common long ago,” said lead researcher Debra Elmegreen of Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York. “The current thinking is that galaxies in the early universe grow from accreting gas from the surrounding neighborhood. It’s a stage that galaxies, including our Milky Way, must go through as they are growing up.”
Observations of the early universe, such as Hubble’s Ultra-Deep Field, reveal that about 10 percent of all galaxies have these elongated shapes, and are collectively called “tadpoles.” But studies of the nearby universe have turned up only a few of these unusual galaxies, including Kiso 5639. The development of the nearby star-making tadpole galaxies, however, has lagged behind that of their peers, which have spent billions of years building themselves up into many of the spiral galaxies seen today.
Elmegreen used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to conduct a detailed imaging study of Kiso 5639. The images in different filters reveal information about an object by dissecting its light into its component colors. Hubble’s crisp resolution helped Elmegreen and her team analyze the giant star-forming clumps in Kiso 5639 and determine the masses and ages of the star clusters.
The international team of researchers selected Kiso 5639 from a spectroscopic survey of 10 nearby tadpole galaxies, observed with the Grand Canary Telescope in La Palma, Spain, by Jorge Sanchez Almeida and collaborators at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. The observations revealed that in most of those galaxies, including Kiso 5639, the gas composition is not uniform.
The bright gas in the galaxy’s head contains fewer heavier elements (collectively called “metals”), such as carbon and oxygen, than the rest of the galaxy. Stars consist mainly of hydrogen and helium, but cook up other “heavier” elements. When the stars die, they release their heavy elements and enrich the surrounding gas.
“The metallicity suggests that there has to be rather pure gas, composed mostly of hydrogen, coming into the star-forming part of the galaxy, because intergalactic space contains more pristine hydrogen-rich gas,” Elmegreen explained. “Otherwise, the starburst region should be as rich in heavy elements as the rest of the galaxy.”
Hubble offers a detailed view of the galaxy’s star-making frenzy. The telescope uncovered several dozen clusters of stars in the galaxy’s star-forming head, which spans 2,700 light-years across. These clusters have an average age of less than 1 million years and masses that are three to six times larger than those in the rest of the galaxy. Other star formation is taking place throughout the galaxy but on a much smaller scale. Star clusters in the rest of the galaxy are between several million to a few billion years old.
“There is much more star formation going on in the head than what you would expect in such a tiny galaxy,” said team member Bruce Elmegreen of IBM’s Thomas J. Watson’s Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, New York. “And we think the star formation is triggered by the ongoing accretion of metal-poor gas onto a part of an otherwise quiescent dwarf galaxy.”
Hubble also revealed giant holes peppered throughout the galaxy’s starburst head. These cavities give the galaxy’s head a Swiss-cheese appearance because numerous supernova detonations – like firework aerial bursts – have carved out holes of rarified superheated gas.
The galaxy, located 82 million light-years away, has taken billions of years to develop because it has been drifting through an isolated “desert” in the universe, devoid of much gas.
What triggered the starburst in such a backwater galaxy? Based on simulations by Daniel Ceverino of the Center for Astronomy at Heidelberg University in Germany, and other team members, the observations suggest that less than 1 million years ago, Kiso 5639’s leading edge encountered a filament of gas. The filament dropped a large clump of matter onto the galaxy, stoking the vigorous star birth.
Debra Elmegreen expects that in the future other parts of the galaxy will join in the star-making fireworks show. “Galaxies rotate, and as Kiso 5639 continues to spin, another part of the galaxy may receive an infusion of new gas from this filament, instigating another round of star birth,” she said.
The team’s results have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
Other team members include Casiana Munoz-Tunon and Mercedes Filho (Instituto de Astrof*sica de Canarias, Canary Islands), Jairo Mendez-Abreu (University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom), John Gallagher (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Marc Rafelski (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland).
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
Newly discovered dwarf planet takes 700 years to orbit the sun
By James Griffiths, CNN | Updated 2:00 AM ET, Tue July 12, 2016
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The orbit of newly discovered dwarf planet RR245.
(CNN) - A new dwarf planet has been discovered in the icy realms of space beyond Neptune, researchers said Monday.
An international team of astronomers spotted the tiny world using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope as part of the ongoing Outer Solar System Origins Survey.
"The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the Sun. They let us piece together the history of our Solar System," Michele Bannister of the University of Victoria in British Columbia said in a statement.
"But almost all of these icy worlds are painfully small and faint: it's really exciting to find one that's large and bright enough that we can study it in detail."
Icy dwarfs
Planet RR245 is around 435 miles wide, just over 5% the width of the Earth, and has one of the largest orbits of any dwarf planet, taking an estimated 700 years to travel around the sun.
There are believed to be as many as 200 dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt, the huge mass of comets, frozen rocks and other objects orbiting the sun beyond Neptune.
However, only five objects -- Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris -- had previously been observed well enough to be sure they fit the classification for dwarf planet (and weren't, say, mere planetoids, or moons of other trans-Neptunian objects).
"Worlds of this size are fascinating because they can potentially tell us about what makes an object go from being an unchanging lumpy mashed-together structure of ice and rock to having geological processes that separate and rearrange its material, as happens on Pluto," says Bannister.
"The size of RR245 is not yet exactly known, as its surface properties need further measurement. It's either small and shiny, or large and dull."
Astronomers find a freak Frankenstein galaxy made of parts of other galaxies
By NASA/JPL (Astronomy News) | Published: Monday, July 11, 2016
The unassuming galaxy turns out to have a lot of parts taken from galaxies that came before.
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About 250 million light-years away, there's a neighborhood of our universe that astronomers had considered quiet and unremarkable. But now, scientists have uncovered an enormous, bizarre galaxy possibly formed from the parts of other galaxies.
A new study to be published in the Astrophysical Journal reveals the secret of UGC 1382, a galaxy that had originally been thought to be old, small and typical. Instead, scientists using data from NASA telescopes and other observatories have discovered that the galaxy is 10 times bigger than previously thought and, unlike most galaxies, its insides are younger than its outsides, almost as if it had been built using spare parts.
"This rare, 'Frankenstein' galaxy formed and is able to survive because it lies in a quiet little suburban neighborhood of the universe, where none of the hubbub of the more crowded parts can bother it," said study co-author Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Pasadena, California. "It is so delicate that a slight nudge from a neighbor would cause it to disintegrate."
Seibert and Lea Hagen, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, came upon this galaxy by accident. They had been looking for stars forming in run-of-the-mill elliptical galaxies, which do not spin and are more three-dimensional and football-shaped than flat disks. Astronomers originally thought that UGC 1382 was one of those.
But while looking at images of galaxies in ultraviolet light through data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a behemoth began to emerge from the darkness.
"We saw spiral arms extending far outside this galaxy, which no one had noticed before, and which elliptical galaxies should not have," said Hagen, who led the study. "That put us on an expedition to find out what this galaxy is and how it formed."
Researchers then looked at data of the galaxy from other telescopes: the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array and Carnegie's du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory. After GALEX revealed previously unseen structures to the astronomers, optical and infrared light observations from the other telescopes allowed the researchers to build a new model of this mysterious galaxy.
As it turns out, UGC 1382, at about 718,000 light-years across, is more than seven times wider than the Milky Way. It is also one of the three largest isolated disk galaxies ever discovered, according to the study. This galaxy is a rotating disk of low-density gas. Stars don't form here very quickly because the gas is so spread out.
But the biggest surprise was how the relative ages of the galaxy's components appear backwards. In most galaxies, the innermost portion forms first and contains the oldest stars. As the galaxy grows, its outer, newer regions have the youngest stars. Not so with UGC 1382. By combining observations from many different telescopes, astronomers were able to piece together the historical record of when stars formed in this galaxy -- and the result was bizarre.
"The center of UGC 1382 is actually younger than the spiral disk surrounding it," Seibert said. "It's old on the outside and young on the inside. This is like finding a tree whose inner growth rings are younger than the outer rings."
The unique galactic structure may have resulted from separate entities coming together, rather than a single entity that grew outward. In other words, two parts of the galaxy seem to have evolved independently before merging -- each with its own history.
At first, there was likely a group of small galaxies dominated by gas and dark matter, which is an invisible substance that makes up about 27 percent of all matter and energy in the universe (our own matter is only 5 percent). Later, a lenticular galaxy, a rotating disk without spiral arms, would have formed nearby. At least 3 billion years ago, the smaller galaxies may have fallen into orbit around the lenticular galaxy, eventually settling into the wide disk seen today.
More galaxies like this may exist, but more research is needed to look for them.
"By understanding this galaxy, we can get clues to how galaxies form on a larger scale, and uncover more galactic neighborhood surprises," Hagen said.
The GALEX mission, which ended in 2013 after more than a decade of scanning the skies in ultraviolet light, was led by scientists at Caltech in Pasadena, California. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, managed the mission and built the science instrument. Data for the 2MASS and WISE missions are archived at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at Caltech. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.
NASA captures the Moon crossing the face of the Earth, for the second time
By Jordan Rice, Astronomy Magazine | Wednesday, July 13, 2016
For the second time in a year, a NASA camera has documented the moon traversing across the Earth.
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An image EPIC took of the transit of the Moon in front of the Earth (NASA)
The camera aboard NASA and NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured images of the moon as it passed in front of the sunlit side of the Earth for the second time.
"For the second time in the life of DSCOVR, the moon moved between the spacecraft and Earth,” said Adam Szabo, a DSCOVR project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in a press release. "The project recorded this event on July 5 with the same cadence and spatial resolution as the first ‘lunar photobomb’ of last year."
The Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard DSCOVR is a four-megapixel charge coupled device (CCD) camera and telescope that is orbiting at one million miles (1,609,344 kilometers) from Earth at L1 orbit. The mission of DSCOVR is to study the real-time solar wind for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as the satellite is strategically placed between the Earth and Sun. Meanwhile, EPIC is in constant view of the Earth by monitoring the ozone, cloud height, aerosols, and vegetation in the atmosphere.
The images shown were taken on July 4th at 11:50 p.m. EDT through July 5th at 3:18 a.m. EDT. The Moon moves over first the Pacific Ocean showing Australia, then into the Indian Ocean on its way past Asia with the North Pole at the top of the images. The last time EPIC took similar images was on July 16th, 2015 between 3:50 p.m. and 8:45 p.m EDT.
The satellite is orbiting around the Sun-Earth system at the first Lagrange point, which is where the gravitational pull from the Sun is equal and opposite to that of the Earth. The orbit changes from elliptical to circular and back again in an orbit called a Lissajous orbit. DSCOVR, in its orbit, intersects the Moon’s orbit approximately four times a year, but only appears between the Earth and the satellite only twice in a year.
The video of the moon’s transit across the Earth is available from the URL below:
https://youtu.be/_7pZAuHwz0E
Marley
07-15-2016, 05:18 AM
i like very nice pic
Sun Makes Nervous Face with Hole in Its Head (Video)
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | July 15, 2016 07:01am ET
http://www.space.com/images/i/000/056/814/i02/sun-nervous-face-sdo.jpg?1468532603?interpolation=lanczos-none&downsize=640
The sun seems to be making a nervous face in this image, which was captured on July 14, 2016 by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA
The sun has been making some anxious faces lately — but you'd be worried, too, if a huge hole had just opened up on your head.
The sun's apparent nervousness crops up in photos captured over the past few days by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO); you can see the gorgeous images compiled into a video here. (See below)
The sun's "eyes" are actually active regions, which serve as launch pads for solar flares and the eruptions of superheated solar plasma known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). And the anxious, crinkly mouth is a coronal hole, a relatively cool and dark region where the sun's magnetic field lies open to interplanetary space.
Material zooms away from coronal holes as part of the high-speed solar wind, which can cause geomagnetic storms here on Earth. Indeed, particles flowing from a coronal hole last autumn triggered powerful auroral displays, NASA officials said.
But the "mouth" is middling as far as coronal holes go; a much larger one is visible in the new SDO images as well, draped over the top of the solar sphere like a bad toupee.
The human brain searches hard for patterns and meaning in the data it analyzes, which explains why people may see a face in the sun or on Mars, a man in the moon, or Jesus Christ on a piece of toast. This phenomenon, seeing a recognizable shape in a random image, is known as pareidolia.
"The pareidolia is strong today #FaceOfTheSun," astrophysicist Karl Battams, of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., tweeted today (July 14), along with a photo of the "anxious" sun.
The $800 million SDO mission launched in February 2010. The spacecraft's high-definition photos are helping researchers better understand the sun's magnetic field and solar activity, including how and why that activity varies over time.
http://www.space.com/33418-anxious-face-on-sun-is-2-sunspots-and-a-coronal-hole-video.html
Why do we really need space travel?
06/10/2016 12:35 pm 12:35:42 | Updated Jun 10, 2016
Dr. Sten Odenwald Astronomer, NASA Heliophysics Education Consortium
To paraphrase Einstein ‘Passion without science is blind, and science without passion is lame’. The case for human expansion into the cosmos is often made with passion but involves little actual science. Here’s what I mean.
Manifest Destiny V2.0
First of all, whether humans reach the stars, or even destinations in the outer solar system, is not a matter of technology at all, although it is often couched in these terms. Proponents love to invoke the ‘If you build it they will come’ and Human Manifest Destiny arguments for space travel at these scales. All you have to do is invest in the creation of the infrastructure for travel (rockets etc) and that alone will open up the universe to humanity. But in actuality, whether we decide as a Society to make the journey or not is not an engineering question at all. Instead, it is the result of answering the three questions human explorers have had to answer. Where should we go? What will we do when we get there? and How will it benefit folks back home?
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Human migrations in a nurturing biosphere.
For millions of years, human exploration has been on foot, and we have moved from place to place within a very lovely and nurturing biosphere. We have not had to drag along our own oxygen supply and food as we went. We have not had to live in pressurized spacesuits or confining habitats as we traveled from Africa to Northern Europe and the Americas. All we needed to do is to follow our migrating food supply and wear a bit of clothing. This has led to what is essentially the genetically-inherited notion that humans should, and can, always expand into new niches of the world with a little bit of ingenuity and a hungry stomach. In essence our Manifest Destiny of travel and exploration is literally an idea carried in our genes. Even most non-human species have this same notion, though they do not verbalize it as well as we humans. There is absolutely no penalty for acting upon this exploration meme, and no matter in what niche you end up on the face of Earth, you can always create a suitable set of technological solutions to help you adapt to the climate and hunt for food. In most cases, it costs next to nothing to set up these habitats as any Alaskan survivalist will be more than happy to tell you. All you need is an ax and a stand of trees. But as anyone will tell you, these are not the conditions that prevail in space.
There is not a single destination in the solar system where humans can survive without a spacesuit and a confined, pressurized and sealed habitat. I am not making this up because I am a dour astronomer trying to crush your dreams of colonization. So already as humans accustomed to open spaces and the freedom of wearing light clothing most of the time, we are already out of our league when it comes to living on the easily accessible landscapes beyond Earth. What does Manifest Destiny look like under these conditions? Instead of it being supported by the inexpensive demands of walking around in our nurturing biosphere, it is now a socially—costly activity for those living on Earth with no prospects that more than a few hundred of the 7 billion humans will directly benefit from the journey. As any space economist will tell you, what is mined and created in space has to stay there. Again, it has nothing to do with the particular technology for getting there.
A bit of history.
Right now, it cost $150 billion to create the International Space Station in near-Earth orbit. This 6-person, cramped, rabbits-warren of tunnels is constantly re-supplied by cargo shuttles carrying oxygen, water and food to keep astronauts alive. The ISS is also close enough to Earth that, psychologically, the astronauts still feel connected to the lovely Blue Marble they see outside their windows. They can even Tweet and Skype! Physiologically, although we can stem the tide of muscular and skeletal degeneration, on long-term visits, the immune systems of astronauts get trashed. Keeping people in aseptic environments is the fastest way we know to weakening the immune system, but this is the assumed environment for space activities: No dirt allowed!
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What the inside of the space station looks like.
No other major human expedition on Earth was launched for purely scientific reasons. They were always based upon a geopolitical (national pride) or economic (‘There be gold in them thar hills!’) argument whether it was Marco Polo, Leif Ericsson, Sir Francis Drake, or the NASA space program, which took us to the moon. For anyone to argue that ‘striving to explore the unknown’ is the primary reason, neither does not understand actual human history nor understands how human exploration has been carried out and for what reasons. It has always been for economic returns, or a demonstration of political prowess, or security.
So what do we do?
Space beckons, but only a dispassionate assessment of our motivations will land us upon an actual working strategy that can be widely embraced and lead to traditional, and perhaps ancient and genetically-based, reasons for undertaking the effort. Self-preservation is the biggest of these, and it is also the easiest to comprehend. That is why a vigorous program of planetary defense needs to be reasserted as a major priority. If the 2015 Chelyabinsk Meteor had detonated over New York City, casualties from flying glass alone would have been in the thousands. That, by the way, is more than the anticipated Mars colony size for the next 100 years.
Some planets ripe for life may be doomed by billions of years of violent collisions
By Nola Taylor Redd, Astronomy Magazine | Published: Friday, July 15, 2016
Crashing planets mean bad news for evolving life.
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This artist's depiction of HD 131488 shows one known planetary pile-up, albeit around a more sunlike star. A new study suggests that some red dwarf stars may have planets that continue to smash into each other for years. Lynette Cook for Gemini Observatory/AURA
Early planetary systems are violent, but eventually they settle down, giving planets the chance to stabilize and, in some cases, life a chance to emerge. But new research shows that some established stars have more collisions than anticipated, suggesting ongoing violence that could mean bad news for the survival of life around other stars.
After a star forms, planets rise from the disk of dust and debris around it. When worlds collide, they produce excessive light in the infrared. Within about a few hundred million years, most of the debris is gone, consumed by growing planets or cast out of the system completely. Astronomers have detected signs of the worlds wrangling with one another during their violent youth.
“Since most collisions around other stars were found around 100 million years, the interpretation was that it was at the very end of planet formation, as planetary collisions,” said Christopher Theissen, a graduate student at Boston University. After that, the planets should settle into stable orbits until their stars change things up.
In some cases, however, things don’t settle down as the stars get older. Theissen studied cool red dwarf stars, the dim objects that make up more than 75 percent of the Milky Way galaxy, searching for extremely bright infrared light. Along with young stars lighting up their debris disk, he also found hundreds of stars with bright signals long after their disks were gone.
“We are seeing tons of energy in the infrared, even more than we expected to see from a disk,” he said.
The bright bursts suggest that planets continue colliding long after the disk is gone and the worlds should be stable. Theissen presented the research during a poster session at the American Astronomical Society summer meeting in San Diego, California.
The long lifetime of red dwarfs, along with the fact that they make up most of the stars in the galaxy, have led some scientists to propose that they could host potentially habitable exoplanets, despite the large flares that dose their worlds with radiation. Once the planets settle into stable orbits, they should last for ages. But if the planets continue to spar with one another, crashing and colliding past their violent youth, their potential habitability may be more questionable.
The collisions Theissen identified weren’t asteroids scraping a world, like the one that played a role in the extinction of the dinosaurs. He compared them instead to the crash that formed Earth’s moon. Early in Earth’s lifetime, it collided with a Mars-sized object, liquefying Earth’s crust and causing the two objects to trade their lighter ingredients. Collisions like these would wipe out life anywhere on the planet.
Spotting a single event like this around a random star would be “super lucky”, Theissen said.
He relied instead on an incredibly large sample size. To find mature stars with signs of planetary warfare, Theissen searched through a catalog of 9 million stars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. He pulled out approximately 185,000 objects with an intriguing infrared signal. Infrared light from most of the parent stars fell in the expected range, but 370 were brighter than anticipated, suggesting that their planets fought on long after they hit maturity. Less than a tenth of a percent of the stars showed signs of colliding planets during the observations, but they suggest other collisions may occur throughout the life of the dim young stars.
Theissen isn’t sure why planets around some red dwarfs seem to be fighting past their early years, but it isn’t a good sign for anyone hoping to spot life around the dim stars. His next step is to simulate collisions around red dwarfs to find out how often worlds assault one another, then compare that to his current findings. At the same time, upcoming instruments like NASA’s James Webb Telescope can definitively rule out the possibility that the brightness comes from background galaxies, a possible concern.
Capt.Kangaroo
07-17-2016, 08:11 PM
Nasa denies it cut live video feed of UFO from space station to hide existence of aliens (but they would say that, wouldn’t they!)
Nasa has denied cutting the live feed to the International Space Station as a strange unidentified object flew through the shot.UFO hunters spotted the flying object in video footage beamed back from the space station on July 9 before it abruptly cut out.
The incident led to renewed conspiracy theories that the US space agency was trying to cover up the existence of aliens.
1789
The latest incident occurred on July 9 and was first reported by prolific UFO hunter Streetcap1, who uploaded a video of the incident to YouTube. However, even he cautions the object could be easily explained. Other enthusiasts believe it could be the Chinese space cargo ship Tiangong-1.
But it has now insisted there is a mundane explanation for why the feed was interrupted.
A Nasa spokesman told CNET that the video feed comes from its High Definition Earth Viewing experiment on board the ISS.
This experiment has four high definition cameras mounted on the exterior of the space station that provide different angles of the Earth.
According to Nasa, the experiment is programmed to automatically cycle between the different cameras
Pointed at the Earth.
The spokesman told CNET: 'The station regularly passes out of range of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) used to send and receive video, voice and telemetry from the station.
'For video, whenever we lose signal (video comes down on our higher bandwidth, called KU) the cameras will show a blue screen (indicating no signal) or a preset video slate.'
Nasa has denied cutting the live feed to the International Space Station as a strange unidentified object flew through the shot.UFO hunters spotted the flying object in video footage beamed back from the space station on July 9 before it abruptly cut out.
The incident led to renewed conspiracy theories that the US space agency was trying to cover up the existence of aliens.
Videos and More here....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3691845/Nasa-denies-cut-live-video-feed-UFO-space-station-hide-existence-aliens-say-wouldn-t-they.html#v-5442452539943045362
Well, no matter, it is always fun to have something unexplained concerning extraterrestrials.
Capt.Kangaroo
07-18-2016, 06:24 AM
Well, no matter, it is always fun to have something unexplained concerning extraterrestrials.
True. I Always enjoy the unknowns of the universe, whatever it may be.:D
Super telescope finds hundreds of previously undetectable galaxies
By James Griffiths, CNN | Updated 3:25 AM ET, Sun July 17, 2016
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First image released by the MeerKAT radio telescope showing hundreds of previously undetected galaxies.
(CNN) - A South African radio telescope has revealed hundreds of galaxies in a tiny corner of the universe where only 70 had been seen before.
The images, taken by MeerKAT telescope, are an indication of the detail the southern hemisphere's most powerful radio telescope may be able to provide when it is fully operational later this year.
At present, 16 of MeerKAT's 64 dishes are scanning the skies. As well as its scientific goals, the project serves as a technological demonstration of South Africa's capability to host the Square Kilometer Array, a huge multiradio-telescope project to be built in Australia and South Africa comprising dozens of dishes.
"Based on the results being shown today, we are confident that after all 64 dishes are in place, MeerKAT will be the world's leading telescope of its kind until the advent of SKA," Professor Justin Jonas, SKA South Africa chief technologist, said in a statement.
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Dishes forming part of the giant MeerKAT radio telescope array.
Square Kilometer Array
The SKA, intended to be operational by the 2020s, will consist of around 3,000 dishes spread across a one square kilometer (0.4 square mile) area and will allow astronomers to peer deeper into space than ever before.
SKA says it will have a discovery potential 10,000 times that of the most advanced modern instruments and will explore black holes, supernovae, dark energy and look into the origins of the universe.
More than 20 countries are members of SKA, with Australia and South Africa being the main bases of operation. The project is headquartered in the UK.
'Exceptionally beautiful images'
MeerKAT's images, taken of a patch of sky covering less than 0.01% of the total, reveal more than 1,300 galaxies in the distant universe, where only around 70 had been previously detected.
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In this image taken by the MeerKAT radio telescope, we see a galaxy approximately
200 million light years away where hydrogen gas is being used up to form stars in large numbers.
They include a galaxy around 200 million light years away where new stars are being formed from hydrogen gas in large numbers, and a massive black hole spewing out jets of powerful electrons moving at close to the speed of light.
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A "Fanaroff-Riley Class 2" (FR2) object: a massive black hole in the distant universe (matter falling into it produces
the bright dot at the center) launching jets of powerful electrons moving at close to the speed of light.
"Today's exceptionally beautiful images ... demonstrate that MeerKAT has joined the big leagues of world radio astronomy," said Fernando Camilo, SKA South Africa chief scientist.
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It will be incredible when SKA comes online! Can you imagine, 10,000 times more "capable" than current instruments!! - Ilan
Huge UFO over NY baffles witnesses, what do you think it is? (VIDEO)
RT Question More | Published time: 18 Jul, 2016 18:40 Edited time: 19 Jul, 2016 08:16
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A video shot by confused motorists who spotted a massive UFO has been shared online.
The clip, captured on Sunday, shows a large black object hovering above the New York City skyline. It was visible to drivers making the Outerbridge Crossing to New Jersey.
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The footage was shared by “UFO investigators” Secure Team 10, who claim “to bring exposure to the alien phenomenon.” They said multiple eyewitnesses submitted clips and reported feeling strange “vibrations,” as well as hearing “unnatural” sounds in the area.
Secure Team’s Tyler Glockner claimed that this most recent sighting was just the latest of many, which some believe may indicate that “we are on the precipice of a visitation.”
The video has been viewed on YouTube more than 200,000 times since its upload on Saturday and has prompted the usual debate.
Some commenters questioned how a massive UFO could go undetected by the residents directly beneath it, or at least closer to the object.
“Isn’t it strange that EVERY single UFO video is of a UFO far away? rarely a video off someone who is underneath it or very close?,” wrote one commenter.
“Interesting video Tyler but one or two persons couldn’t have been the only ones who snapped this thing on video especially over a big city like New Jersey but still very strange indeed!” wrote Mike Carr.
https://youtu.be/oX6vWdHcGUM
Others dismissed the ominous object as a “whole lotta nothing” or simply “the government experimenting with a new drone.”
GOVERNMENT CHIEF'S DEATH BED CONFESSION: 'I was shown inside alien UFO at Area 51'
By Jon Austin, Express | PUBLISHED: 13:04, Sun, Jul 17, 2016 | UPDATED: 13:29, Sun, Jul 17, 2016
A FORMER government emergency expert made a detailed death bed confession of how he was shown inside an alien flying saucer at the top-secret Area 51 military base, it has been sensationally claimed.
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Paul Hellyer and the no-entry signs at Area 51.
Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian Minister of Defencem, said an unnamed former Canadian Chief of Emergency Measures revealed the astonishing story just before his death from a neurological illness.
Mr Hellyer, 92, revealed the claim to a panel of the world's top UFO and alien investigators and experts.
Speaking at the "Hearing on ET Disclosure” in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, Mr Hellyer explained that if he wanted to know about the workings of an alien space craft he would "ask the current chief of emergency measures".
Mr Hellyer, who became a UFO expert after claiming to have seen proof of alien visitations while in office, said: "The reason I know is I interviewed the previous one, who is now deceased, and he went Langley and the CIA asked if he would like to see one of these crafts.
"They flew him to Area 51 and let him go inside one and observe it and make notes and this sort of thing."
Conspiracy theorists have insisted for years Area 51 is where evidence of alien visitations of Earth are secretly held away from public view, including the remains of the alleged 1947 Roswell flying saucer crash.
The top-secret military base in the Nevada desert, America, has intrigued and mystified UFO and alien chasers for years, particularly as the US Government only and reluctantly confirmed its existence in 2013.
Mr Hellyer added: "I guess, presumably, it was to be in better to cops with it if one crashed here and he was involved in trying to do something positive about it.
"But before he was allowed to go had to go he had to sign an oath of secrecy and not tell anyone, and during his life he didn't tell anyone including his wife, and an Air Force buddy phoned me and he was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease and at that point he felt he should tell someone.
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Paul Hellyer said the dying official confirmed he was shown inside alien technology at Area 51.
"I phoned him and he gave me a full report of what he saw and the whole idea of the inside of the craft and this sort of thing, and the fact he had been in a brief and many things, but now he felt he could tell somebody and he thought that would be a good one to tell."
Mr Hellyer was Canadian Minister of Defence from 1963 to 1968 and was deputy prime minister in 1969, but outed himself as a UFO believer 11 years ago.
Last year he made headlines across the globe after claiming up to 80 different species of aliens were in communication with world leaders, but governments across the world were involved in a mass cover up.
He told a TV news interview that some of the aliens lived on one of Saturn's moons called Andromedia.
But sceptics claim he was deluded and to have debunked him because none of Saturn's 62 moons and satellites have this name.
Victor Viggiani, who chaired the hearing, said: "The more important and dramatic piece of evidence presented by Hellyer was a story he told about the day he was called to listen to some death bed confession.
"Paul did not provide dates for the events but he received a call from a man who said that the former head of emergency measures in Canada and that he has a story he wanted to get off his chest."
Marley
07-21-2016, 03:48 AM
the truth is out now where are they i can take the truth
Yep, it would be nice to know once and for all. If they do exist, it's hard to fathom why they'd hide that fact, at least for this many years. That, too, is a potential mystery.
X marks the spot at the centre of the Milky Way
University of Toronto Press Release via Astronomy Now | 20 July 2016
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WISE all-sky image of Milky Way Galaxy. The circle is centred on the Galaxy’s central region. The inset shows an enhanced version of the same region that shows a clearer view of the X-shaped structure. Illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech; D. Lang/Dunlap Institute.
Two astronomers — with the help of social media — have uncovered the strongest evidence yet that an enormous X-shaped structure made of stars lies within the central bulge of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Previous computer models, observations of other galaxies, and observations of our own galaxy have suggested that the X-shaped structure existed. But no one had observed it directly; and some astronomers argued that previous research that pointed indirectly to the existence of the X could be explained in other ways.
“There was controversy about whether the X-shaped structure existed,” says Dustin Lang, a Research Associate at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto, and co-author of the paper describing the discovery. “But our paper gives a good view of the core of our own galaxy. I think it has provided pretty good evidence for the existence of the X-shaped structure.”
http://astronomynow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/xbulge-fit-resid_1236x1267.jpgAn enhanced, close-up view centred on the Milky Way Galaxy’s bulge and the blue-tinted “X.” Image credit: D. Lang/Dunlap Institute.
The results appear in the July issue of the Astronomical Journal. The lead author is Melissa Ness, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg.
The Milky Way Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy: a disc-shaped collection of dust, gas and billions of stars, 100,000 light-years in diameter. It is far from a simple disc structure, being comprised of two spiral arms, a bar-shaped feature that runs through its centre, and a central bulge of stars. The central bulge, like other barred galaxy’s bulges, resembles a rectangular box or peanut when viewed — as we view it — from within the plane of the galaxy. The X-shaped structure is an integral component of the bulge.
Astronomers think the bulge could have formed in two different ways: it may have formed when the Milky Way Galaxy merged with other galaxies; or it may have formed without the help of external influences as an outgrowth of the bar, which itself forms from the evolving galactic disc. Lang and Ness’s finding supports the latter model which predicts the box- or peanut-shaped bulge and the galactic X.
This latest, clearest view of the bulge emerged when Lang re-analysed previously released data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a space telescope launched by NASA in 2009. Before ending its initial mission in 2011, WISE surveyed the entire sky in infrared — imaging three-quarters of a billion galaxies, stars and asteroids.
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The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft. Illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
“The bulge is a key signature of formation of the Milky Way Galaxy,” says Ness. “If we understand the bulge we will understand the key processes that have formed and shaped our galaxy.”
“The shape of the bulge tells us about how it has formed. We see the X-shape and boxy morphology so clearly in the WISE image and this demonstrates that internal formation processes have been the ones driving the bulge formation.”
It is also evidence that our galaxy did not experience major merging events since the bulge formed. If it had, interactions with other galaxies would have disrupted its shape.
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To reveal the X shape in the Milky Way’s central bulge, researchers took WISE observations and subtracted a model of how stars would be distributed in a symmetrical bulge. Illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/D. Lang.
Lang’s analysis was originally intended to aid in his research in mapping the web of galaxies beyond the Milky Way Galaxy. To help explore the maps he’d developed from the WISE data, he created an interactive map-browsing website and tweeted an image of the entire sky.
“Ness saw the tweet and immediately recognised the importance of the X-shaped structure,” says Lang. “We arranged to meet at an upcoming conference we were both attending. The paper was born from that meeting. That’s the power of large surveys and open science!”
What Would Happen If Comet Swift-Tuttle Hit the Earth?
By Greg Uyeno, Staff Writer Live Science | July 21, 2016 11:30am ET
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The Perseid meteor shower. Credit: SKY2015 | Shutterstock.com
Shooting stars may fill you with child-like wonder, but these celestial showstoppers are also reminders that Earth is hardly alone in space, and some of those cosmic objects can be downright dangerous.
The Perseid meteor shower, which appears every year in mid-August, occurs when Earth passes through a trail of debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle. In 1973, based on calculations about the object's orbit using limited observations, astronomer Brian Marsden at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics predicted that Comet Swift-Tuttle could collide with Earth in 2126. The catastrophic prediction was later retracted, but what would happen if Comet Swift-Tuttle smacked into our planet?
"We have to be clear that it's not going to happen," Donald Yeomans, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and author of "Near-Earth Objects: Finding Them Before They Find Us" (Princeton University Press, 2012), told Live Science. [Perseid Meteor Shower 2016: When, Where & How to See It]
When Swift-Tuttle was last seen in 1992, Yeomans was among those who produced revised models for the comet's motion, making the complicated calculations to account for the gravitational effects of the sun and planets on the space rock's orbit. The 1992 sighting, along with data from 1862 and 1737, provided astronomers with enough information to rule out the possibility of a collision in 2126.
Even still, Comet Swift-Tuttle isn't just another space rock.
Comet Swift-Tuttle is "certainly one of the largest" objects that crosses paths with the Earth, Yeomans said. The cosmic object measures about 16 miles (26 kilometers) across, and when it passes close to the Earth, roughly every 130 years, it's hurtling through space at about 36 miles per second (58 km/s), or more than 150 times the speed of sound.
If the comet were to strike the planet, the impact energy would be about 300 times that of the asteroid collision that was thought to have caused the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction that killed the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, according to Yeomans. "It would be a very bad day for Earth," he said.
But the size of a comet or asteroid isn't the only thing to consider with cosmic collisions, said Gerta Keller, a geoscientist at Princeton University.
A comet strike on land or in shallow seas would be "rather destructive" regionally, but the real damage would likely come from gases put into the stratosphere, the part of Earth's atmosphere where the ozone layer is located, Keller told Live Science. Sulfur dioxide would initially cause cooling, and then carbon dioxide would lead to long-term warming, she added. An event like this would likely cause the planet's climate to change drastically, leading to mass extinctions around the globe. [Crash! 10 Biggest Impact Craters on Earth]
But Keller also pointed out that most of Earth's surface is covered in ocean. An impact in the deep ocean could trigger earthquakes and tsunamis, but based on what scientists know about the effects of underwater volcanic eruptions, the atmospheric effects likely would be mitigated by the ocean, she said. In this case, Keller said it's unlikely that a comet colliding with Earth would cause mass extinctions.
Scientists calculate that Swift-Tuttle's next approach to Earth will be on Aug. 5, 2126, when it will come within about 14 million miles, or 23 million km, or about 60 times the distance from Earth to the moon, Yeomans said. Current models don't expect the comet to ever get any closer than about 80,000 miles (130,000 km) to Earth's orbit, but as time passes, those predictions become less and less certain. So although Yeomans is sure that Earth faces no threat in 2126, he said 10,000 years from now, "you can't rule out the possibility, but it would seem to be very unlikely."
Part of that slim uncertainty is due to small influences on the comet that change its orbit ever so slightly each time it swings around the sun. For example, as comets pass near the sun and heat up, expanding gases act like jet thrusters, slightly altering the trajectory. For Swift-Tuttle, that effect is very small, likely due to the comet's tremendous mass, Yeomans said. But over thousands of years, these minute, unpredictable effects make it more difficult to predict the orbit of cosmic objects.
And there are plenty of other objects out there to be aware of, Yeomans said. "We have a long, long list of asteroids for which we haven't completely ruled out a collision, but the impact probabilities are so small that it's not really worth worrying about," he said.
Seeing a Black Hole’s Gravitational Vortex
By: Monica Young, Sky & Telescope | July 19, 2016
New observations solve a 30-year-old puzzle of mysterious signals from around black holes.
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An artist's conception of a supermassive black hole. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Strange things happen around black holes, especially spinning ones. Their strong gravitational pull means they don’t just pull in gas to munch on — they drag the very fabric of spacetime around them as they spin.
Every rotating massive body does this — even puny Earth, as measured by the Gravity Probe B. But around black holes the so-called frame-dragging effect (also known as the Lense-Thirring effect) is particularly strong. Like flies stuck in honey, anything embedded in that spacetime will get dragged along, too. And now, with new observations from the XMM-Newton and NuSTAR space telescopes, astronomers have connected the effect to long-mysterious signals seen around stellar-mass black holes.
Black Hole Beats
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This artist's impression depicts an accretion disk surrounding a black hole. The black hole drags spacetime with it as it spins. So X-ray-emitting plasma near the black hole, stuck in spacetime like a fly stuck in honey, precesses. The X-rays strike matter in the surrounding disk, making it to glow like a fluorescent bulb. The glow appears to rotate around the accretion disc to the right (top), to the front (middle), and to the left (bottom).
ESA / ATG medialab
While we can’t see black holes directly, we can see those that are guzzling gas. Such meals are easy to come by for black holes in binary systems, as they pull mass from their unlucky companion stars. As the gas spirals inward, it heats up: the closer it comes to the black hole, the hotter the gas will be, and the higher the frequency of the photons it radiates. Very near the black hole, the plasma reaches a fevered pitch, puffing up and emitting energetic X-rays.
Back in the 1980s, astronomers started seeing signals amidst these flickering X-rays that looked suspiciously regular. Dubbed quasi-periodic oscillations, these QPOs seemed to come from something whizzing intriguingly close-in around the black hole. More than a decade later, an idea emerged: astronomers could be witnessing the frame dragging effect in action.
Here’s the general picture: hot puffed-up plasma very near the black hole radiates X-rays. Some of these X-rays hit the surrounding gas disk, knocking electrons off of iron atoms in the swirling gas. As those iron atoms snatch back their electrons, they fluoresce, emitting X-rays at a specific energy.
The whole system — the black hole, the hot inner plasma, and the surrounding disk — is spinning like a top. And if the disk is tilted relative to the black hole, then the top will wobble, or precess. We’ll see the hot plasma fluoresce off of part of the outer disk, and that fluorescence will appear to rotate around the black hole. When we’re seeing a part of the disk spinning around toward Earth, we’ll see its iron emission blueshifted; emission from a part of the disk spinning away again will shift redward.
Adam Ingram (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and colleagues set out to observe this effect directly. They pointed the XMM-Newton and NuSTAR space telescopes at the system known as H1743-322, where a black hole with a mass of about 10 Suns is drawing in gas from its companion star. Four of the five observations clearly show the iron line shifting back and forth in the spectrum over the course of 4 to 5 seconds, exactly in the way that the frame-dragging effect predicts.
“This is a very intriguing result,” says Laura Brenneman (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who was not involved with the study. “Certain types of QPOs in X-ray[-emitting black hole] binaries have long been suspected to arise from some form of precession, but this result is the closest thing I've seen to hard evidence for that.”
This result turns stellar-mass black holes into a proving ground for new physics. “If you can get to the bottom of the astrophysics, then you can really test general relativity,” Ingram said in NASA’s press release, welcome news to physicists who are searching for a deeper theory of gravity.
One of These Is Not Like the Others
Over 3 days’ worth of exposure, XMM-Newton collected five sets of data. While four of these matched beautifully, one, known as orbit 1b, didn’t conform at all to expectations. It could simply be that some gas obstructed the astronomers’ view, or it could be that the observation is telling astronomers something more fundamental.
“I am curious as to what is going on in XMM-Newton’s orbit 1b that is so anomalous compared to the others,” Brenneman adds, “but I don't think it diminishes the result at all, just adds an extra dimension and opens up more questions.”
Another intriguing aspect of QPOs is that they’ve (almost) never been seen in the supermassive variety of black holes. These active galactic nuclei (AGN) guzzle gas at the center of galaxies with the same setup as stellar-mass black holes: a black hole, a gas disk, and X-ray-emitting plasma. The only thing they’re missing is the binary companion star.
“There has only been one reputable claim of a QPO in an AGN back in 2008, and it hasn't been seen again since,” Brenneman says. “If there were QPOs-a-plenty in AGN, we would likely have detected them by now.” Why they aren’t there, no one knows.
With one mystery solved, it’s clear there are still more cases awaiting closure.
This short documentary shows how astronomers hope to find the next habitable planets
By Andrew Liptak, The Verge | July 24, 2016 04:22 pm
Trying to discover habitable planets isn't just for science fiction anymore
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Just a couple of decades ago, the very idea that there were other planets orbiting stars throughout the universe was something that belonged to science fiction. However, recent research has shown not only are there other planets out there, but they’re extremely common. The short documentary The Search for Earth Proxima outlines the breakthroughs that have led us to these discoveries, and how a group of astronomers plan to look for habitable planets in our neighborhood.
Equipment such as the Kepler spacecraft has helped us find planets that are not only orbiting stars, but that there are planets out there that are the right size and at the right distance away from their host star to potentially harbor Earth-like conditions.
It’s hard to detect these Earth-like planets: they’re extremely faint — one astronomer likened it to trying to spot a firefly in a spotlight from 10 miles away. Fortunately, nearby stars make this task a bit easier, and the astronomers want to take a closer look at Alpha Centauri A and B, our closest stellar neighbors.
https://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/174313049
The group is hoping that technological advances will help them move beyond Kepler and on to other programs that will help them directly study Alpha Centauri.
One idea that they float is Program Centaur, a small space telescope designed to locate any Earth-like planets discovered around the binary star system. The spacecraft is the size of a washing machine, and they pointed to the rise of commercial space providers such as SpaceX as a potential partner to get their equipment into orbit.
With the huge number of planets out there, it feels as though it's just a matter of time before an Earth-like (and potentially habitable) world is discovered. Maybe, that day isn't too far off.
50 Strange and Amazing Astronomy Facts
1- Saturn would float if you would put it in water.
2- If you would place a pinhead sized piece of the Sun on the Earth you would die from standing within 145 km (90 miles) from it.
3- Space is not a complete vacuum, there are about 3 atoms per cubic meter of space.
4- Only 5% of the universe is made up of normal matter, 25% is dark matter and 70% is dark energy.
5- Neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoon of them would be equal to the weight of the entire Earth’s population.
6- The Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon but is 400 times further away from Earth making them appear the same size.
7- The star Lucy in the constellation Centaurus is a huge cosmic diamond of 10 billion trillion trillion carats.
8- Seasons last 21 years on Uranus while each pole has 42 years of sunlight followed by 42 years of darkness.
9- Venus,on the other hand, does not have any seasons at all.
10 -1 year on Mercury consists of less than 2 days on Mercury.
11- There are as many oxygen atoms in a breath as breaths of air in the atmosphere.
12- Helium is the only substance in the universe that cannot be in solid form.It can’t be cold enough.
13- The coldest place in the universe is on Earth. In Wolfgang Ketterles lab in Massachusetts. 0.000000000001 degrees Kelvin.
14- The pistol star is the most luminous star known 10 million times the brightness of the Sun.
15- Saturn’s moon Titan has liquid oceans of natural gas.
16- All the planets are the same age: 4.544 billion years.
17- Earths moon was most likely formed after an early planet named Theia crashed into Earth.
18- 8000 stars are visible with naked eye from Earth. 4000 in each hemisphere, 2000 at daylight and 2000 at night.
19- 90-99% of all normal matter in the universe is hydrogen.
20- Only 55% of all Americans knows that the Sun is a star.
21- Because of the speed the Sun moves at, solar eclipses can last at most 7 minutes and 58 seconds.
22- Lunar eclipses, however, can last 1 hour and 40 minutes.
23- All the coal, oil, gas, wood and fuel on Earth would only keep the Sun burning for few days.
24- A full moon is nine times brighter than a half moon.
25- When the Moon is directly above your head or if you stand at the equator, you weight slightly less.
26- A single Quasar produce the same amount of energy as 1 trillion suns.
27- Just after the Big Bang, everything in the universe was in liquid form.
28- A planet nicknamed “The Genesis Planet” has been found to be 12.7 billion years old making it the oldest planet found.
29- The shape of the universe looks a lot like a brain cell.
30- Every year, the Moon is moving away from Earth by 3.8 centimeters.
31- The Moon spins around its axis in the same time it goes one lap around the Earth which makes us always see the same side of it.
32- Upsilon Andromeda B also only face one side to its star. One side is hot as lava while the other one is cold below freezing.
33- The average galaxy contains “only” 40 billion stars.
34- While in space astronomers can get taller, but at the same time their hearts can get smaller.
35- Mars surface is cowered with iron oxide (rust).
36- Only half a billionth of the energy released by the Sun reaches Earth.
37- Rogue planets are not bound by any star, brown dwarf or another planet which makes them free-float around the galaxy.
38- Sweeps 10 is the planet with the shortest orbital period found. It orbits its star in only 10 hours.
39- 85% of all stars in our galaxy are part of multiple-star systems.
40- Some brown dwarfs have liquid iron rain falling down on them.
41- The light emitting from the Sun is actually 30.000 years old.
42- Of the over 20 million meteors that are observable every day only one or two reach the surface of Earth.
43- The United States have approximately 3.500 astronomers, but over 15.000 astrologers.
44- The closest black hole to Earth is only 1.600 light-years away.
45- There are at least 10^24 stars in the universe.
46- Certain “star quakes” have been found to tear apart the surface of neutron stars.
47- Any free-moving liquid in outer space will form itself into a sphere due to surface tension.
48- The odds of being killed by falling space debris is 1 in 5 billion.
49- Neutron stars can rotate up to 500 times in 1 second.
50- The largest structure found in the universe is the Sloan Great Wall, a super cluster of galaxies 1.37 billion light-years wide.
https://astroceanomy.com/2011/03/04/50-amazing-and-strange-astronomy-facts/
Something below Jupiter's Great Red Spot whips up temperatures hotter than the rest of the planet
By Rebecca Boyle, Astronomy Magazine | Published: Wednesday, July 27, 2016
For decades, the mystery has kept researchers scratching their heads. Now, we may find an answer.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/07/p50142.jpg?mw=600
NASA / ESA / HST
Talk about extreme weather. The solar system’s biggest and baddest storm, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, is so loud and violent that it heats up the giant planet’s atmosphere. Above the storm, which has been raging for at least 300 years, the atmosphere is hundreds of degrees hotter than anywhere else on Jupiter. The warmth comes from within, according to a paper published in Nature today.
Orbiting hundreds of millions of miles from the sun, Jupiter is about three times toastier than it’s expected to be without some extra source of warmth. Sunlight at Jupiter is 25 times dimmer than it is at Earth, which means the sun can’t be enough to warm the planet’s atmosphere to the temperatures scientists have measured. Jupiter has powerful auroras at its poles, and they can create electrical storms that heat the atmosphere. But their warmth would mostly stay trapped at higher latitudes, thanks to the Coriolis effect on a fast-spinning world (Jupiter’s day is just shy of 10 hours long). So that can’t explain it, either.
“This warmth is a discrepancy that has haunted everyone for 50 years now,” says James O’Donoghue, a planetary scientist at Boston University.
To figure it out, he studied the Great Red Spot in great detail using the 3-meter NASA Infrared Telescope Facility at the Mauna Kea Observatory. A spectrometer split up the light Jupiter reflects, which allowed him to scrutinize Jupiter’s howling winds. He and colleagues think the atmosphere’s own turbulence may be heating things up.
While the Great Red Spot twists and rages, it causes turbulent flows of gas in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. The turbulence causes two types of waves to form: gravity waves and high-frequency acoustic waves. Gravity waves are akin to the vibrations of a guitar string when it’s plucked. Acoustic waves are compressions of the air, just like any other sound. About 500 miles above the spot, these waves collide and release energy, like ocean waves crashing on a shoreline.
“It’s not thunder heating, which I would have loved to be able to say,” O’Donoghue says. “It’s kind of the same as sound waves, but I don’t think thunder is a good analogy, because we don’t know about the lightning.”
No one has ever seen lightning at Jupiter's Great Red Spot, although it could just be deep within the planet and invisible to us, he adds.
O’Donoghue measured above and around the Great Red Spot, and didn’t find any extra sources of heat. That means it must be coming from underneath the storm, he says. As it turns out, the source is something Jupiter has in common with Earth, where atmospheric turbulence can also heat things up.
On Earth, tsunami, volcanoes, storms and earthquakes can all shake up the atmosphere and warm it, by generating high-frequency acoustic waves that get stronger as they move higher into the atmosphere. Even passive mountains can do this. Erratic wind gusts blowing over bumpy terrain can create hotspots, sometimes hundreds of degrees warmer than the air a few miles away. Jupiter doesn’t have mountains, but it has enough internal turbulence -- especially in the Great Red Spot -- to create the same types of waves.
How to see the Delta Aquariid meteor shower
By Richard Talcott, Astronomy Magazine | Published: Thursday, July 28, 2016
Head out under a clear, dark sky after midnight these next couple of nights and you’ll see a dramatic display of “shooting stars.”
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Mike Lewinski / Flickr
The early morning hours of late July provide one of nature’s annual treats: the Southern Delta Aquariid meteor shower. The shower peaks the night of July 29/30, but it typically produces just as many meteors a day or two on either side. Observers under a dark sky can expect to see between 15 and 20 “shooting stars” per hour during the prime viewing hours after midnight.
The streaks of light appear to radiate from a point near the 3rd-magnitude star Delta (d) Aquarii, which rises in late evening and climbs highest in the south around 3 a.m. local daylight time. But don’t stare directly at the radiant. Although the meteors appear to emanate from this spot, any you see there will appear as just a point of light. All other things being equal, the farther away from the radiant a meteor lies, the longer its trail will be.
For the best views, look about two-thirds of the way from the horizon to the zenith. But don’t get tunnel vision gazing at one location. Let your eyes wander so your peripheral vision can pick up meteors you otherwise might not see. Keep comfortable by reclining in a lawn chair or lying on an air mattress. And bring along a sweater or light jacket. Even if evening temperatures are comfortable, you won’t be active and can get chilled in a hurry.
You’ll also see more meteors if you observe under a dark sky. Leave your city or suburban backyard behind and head out to the country. If you can’t get away, at least find a large park with plenty of trees to block the lights. Fortunately, the Moon is a waning crescent at the shower’s peak and won’t pose add much natural light pollution.
Tour August’s Sky: Perseids & Planets Aplenty
By: The Editors of Sky Telescope | July 28, 2016
Download or play Sky & Telescope's astronomy podcast, and you'll get a guided tour of the night sky. In early evening look for Mars and Saturn embedded in Scorpius toward south, and key an eye out for Perseid meteors.
Ask a skywatcher what’s special about August, and the response will likely be the Perseid meteor shower. These “shooting stars” are caused when little bits of grit shed by a comet called Swift-Tuttle slam into our atmosphere. Every August, we plow right through this stream of dusty debris. The shower should reach its peak late on Thursday night, August 11th, and Wednesday morning, the 12th.
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During August, the positions of Mars and Saurn change with respect that of Antares and the stars of Scorpius.
Sky & Telescope diagram
While you’re waiting for the Perseids to show up, look toward south for a trio of stars in the shape of a triangle. Its very bright right corner is anchored by Mars. To its upper right is Saturn, and below that, the dimmest of the three, is the only true star: Antares, the heart of the constellation Scorpius. Mars moves eastward quite a bit this month, and by month’s end the triangle collapses to a line.
For more tips on what to see in the night sky during August, listen to (or download) our monthly astronomy podcast below.
http://media.blubrry.com/skytourpodcasts/p/www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/SkyTour-August-2016.mp3
Chorus of black holes radiates X-rays
California Institute of Technology | July 28, 2016
The NuSTAR mission is identifying which black holes erupt with the highest-energy X-rays, report scientists. The results will ultimately help astronomers understand how the growth patterns of supermassive black holes change over time, a key factor in the development of black holes and the galaxies that host them.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/07/160728143612_1_900x600.jpg
The blue dots in this field of galaxies, known as the COSMOS field, show galaxies that contain supermassive black holes emitting high-energy X-rays. They were detected by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Array, or NuSTAR, which spotted 32 such black holes in this field and has observed hundreds across the whole sky so far. The other colored dots are galaxies that host black holes emitting lower-energy X-rays, and were spotted by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Chandra data show X-rays with energies between 0.5 to 7 kiloelectron volts, while NuSTAR data show X-rays between 8 to 24 kiloelectron volts. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The blue dots in this field of galaxies, known as the COSMOS field, show galaxies that contain supermassive black holes emitting high-energy X-rays. They were detected by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Array, or NuSTAR, which spotted 32 such black holes in this field and has observed hundreds across the whole sky so far. The other colored dots are galaxies that host black holes emitting lower-energy X-rays, and were spotted by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Chandra data show X-rays with energies between 0.5 to 7 kiloelectron volts, while NuSTAR data show X-rays between 8 to 24 kiloelectron volts.
Supermassive black holes do not give off any of their own light, hence the word "black" in their name. However, many black holes pull in, or accrete, surrounding material, and emit powerful bursts of X-rays. Collectively, these active black holes throughout the sky can be thought of a cosmic choir, singing in the language of X-rays. Their "song" is what astronomers call the cosmic X-ray background.
To date, NASA's Chandra mission has managed to pinpoint many of the individual black holes contributing to the X-ray background, but the ones that let out high-energy X-rays--those with the highest-pitched "voices"--have remained elusive.
New data from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has, for the first time, begun to pinpoint large numbers of the black holes sending out the high-energy X-rays. More technically, NuSTAR has made significant progress in resolving the high-energy X-ray background.
"We've gone from resolving just 2 percent of the high-energy X-ray background to 35 percent," says Fiona Harrison, Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Caltech, the principal investigator of NuSTAR, and lead author of a new study describing the findings in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal. "We can see the most obscured black holes, hidden in thick gas and dust."
The results will ultimately help astronomers understand how the growth patterns of supermassive black holes change over time--a key factor in the development of black holes and the galaxies that host them. For instance, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is dormant now, but at some point in the past, it would have siphoned gas and bulked up in size.
As black holes grow, their intense gravity pulls matter toward them. The matter heats up to extremely high temperatures and particles get boosted to close to the speed of light. Together, these processes make the black hole surroundings glow with X-rays. A supermassive black hole with an ample supply of fuel, or gas, will give off more high-energy X-rays.
NuSTAR is the first telescope capable of focusing these high-energy X-rays into sharp pictures.
"Before NuSTAR, the X-ray background in high-energies was just one blur with no resolved sources," says Harrison. "To untangle what's going on, you have to pinpoint and count up the individual sources of the X-rays."
"We knew this cosmic choir had a strong high-pitched component, but we still don't know if it comes from a lot of smaller, quiet singers, or a few with loud voices," says coauthor Daniel Stern, the project scientist for NuSTAR at JPL. "Now, thanks to NuSTAR, we're gaining a better understanding of the black holes and starting to address these questions."
High-energy X-rays can reveal what lies around the most obscured supermassive black holes, which are otherwise hard to see. In the same way that medical X-rays can travel through your skin to reveal pictures of bones, NuSTAR can see through the gas and dust around black holes, to get a deeper view of what is going on inside.
With NuSTAR's more complete picture of supermassive black hole populations, astronomers can begin to puzzle together how these objects evolve and change over time. When did they start and stop growing? What is the distribution of the gas and dust that both feed and hide the black holes?
The team expects that over time, NuSTAR will be able to resolve more of the high-energy X-ray background--and better decipher the X-ray song of the universe's black holes.
Tonight, explore the Big Dipper
By Deborah Byrd in Tonight | August 1, 2016
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Tonight, notice the two outer stars in the bowl of the Big Dipper – Dubhe and Merak. They always point to Polaris, the North Star. To find the Dipper at this time of year, look toward the northwest in the evening. Once you’ve found it – after locating Polaris – look more carefully at the second star from the end of the Big Dipper’s handle. If your sky is dark enough, and your eyesight is good, you’ll see that this star, Mizar, has a nearby companion, called Alcor.
Arabian stargazers referred to Mizar and Alcor as the “horse and rider.” These stars are a good test of the night’s viewing conditions: if you can’t see Alcor, there might be thin clouds up there.
These two stars are what’s called “naked-eye double star,” appearing double from our earthly vantage point. But do they orbit each other? Astronomers aren’t sure. The distances to these stars (as to most stars) aren’t precisely known. If Mizar and Alcor make up a true binary star, it’s a very wide one. If they do lie at the same distance from Earth, their separation is 0.27 light-years … that’s in contrast to eight light-minutes for Earth’s distance from our sun … or several light-hours for the distance to our sun of the most distant worlds in our solar system. Still, it’s possible that Mizar and Alcor could be this far apart and still be orbiting one another, with a very long orbital period of three-quarters of a million years.
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2015/06/big-dipper-Martin-Michigan-6-24-2015-Hope-Carter-e1435223517497.jpg
Big Dipper before dawn in late June, 2015, by Hope Carter.
Bottom line: Use the Big Dipper to find Polaris, the North Star. Also, notice the two stars Mizar and Alcor in the Big Dipper’s handle.
Capt.Kangaroo
08-02-2016, 04:22 AM
A Rocket Booster Falls Back to Earth
https://youtu.be/9nPLmydWacE
What's that crossing the sky? Although it looked a bit like a large meteor, it was actually the booster of a Chinese rocket returning to Earth after its launch two days earlier. On the night of July 27, the rocket component heated up and broke up into glowing pieces as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere. The path of the falling booster took it over several US states, moving west to east, from California to Utah. Space debris can usually be distinguished from meteors by its slow speed and expansive break up. The featured video was taken in front of the Provo City Library in Utah, which was coincidently occupied by over 100 people -- many with smartphones already out of their pockets playing Pokémon GO.
Video Credit & Copyright: Matthew Holt
No, Asteroid Bennu Won't Destroy Earth
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | August 1, 2016 06:52pm ET
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/05/160525220537_1_900x600.jpg
The mapping of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu is one of the science goals of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, and an integral part of spacecraft operations. The spacecraft will spend a year surveying Bennu before collecting a sample that will be returned to Earth for analysis. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
The mapping of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu is one of the science goals of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, and an integral part of spacecraft operations. The spacecraft will spend a year surveying Bennu before collecting a sample that will be returned to Earth for analysis.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
NASA's new asteroid-sampling mission will do a lot of interesting things, but helping prepare humanity for Earth's imminent destruction is not among them.
There is indeed a chance that the 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) asteroid Bennu — the target of NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch next month — could hit Earth late in the 22nd century.
But, mission officials stressed, that chance is slim, and the space rock is not nearly big enough to pose an existential threat to the planet, despite what some media reports claimed over the weekend. [Potentially Dangerous Asteroids (Images)]
"We're not talking about an asteroid that could destroy the Earth," OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, told Space.com. "We're not anywhere near that kind of energy for an impact."
Sampling an asteroid
If all goes according to plan, the $800 million OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) mission will lift off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Sept. 8.
The spacecraft will spend two years chasing Bennu down, finally rendezvousing with the near-Earth asteroid in August 2018. OSIRIS-REx will then study the space rock from orbit for another two years before grabbing at least 2.1 ounces (60 grams) of surface material in July 2020.
In 2023, this relatively hefty sample should make it back to Earth, where researchers in laboratories around the globe will analyze the material in a number of ways.
The mission team is chiefly interested in learning the role that asteroids like Bennu — dark, primitive and apparently carbon-rich objects — may have played in helping life get a foothold on Earth, Lauretta said.
"Did these kinds of bodies deliver organic material and water, in the form of hydrated minerals like clays, to the surface of our planet that created the habitability and the environments that may have led to the origin of life?" Lauretta said.
"That's the prime mission," to investigate that question, he added.
There are secondary objectives as well, including learning more about the valuable resources that Bennu-like asteroids may harbor, Lauretta said. And then there's the planetary-defense angle, which has gotten a lot of attention in the last few days.
A potentially hazardous asteroid
Bennu is officially classified as a potentially dangerous asteroid. In fact, there's an 0.037 percent (or 1-in-2,700) chance that it will strike Earth in the last quarter of the 22nd century, NASA scientists have calculated.
Specifically, that's the probability that, during an Earthy flyby in 2135, Bennu will hit a special orbit-altering "keyhole" that will send it on a collision course with the planet later in the century.
OSIRIS-REx will help scientists refine those odds, by refining their understanding of Bennu's orbit. (That orbit, by the way, is already the best-known of any asteroid, Lauretta said; thanks to extensive observations since Bennu's 1999 discovery, astronomers have nailed the space rock's orbital radius down to within 20 feet, or 6 m.)
"Our uncertainties will shrink, so that will allow us to recalculate the impact probability," Lauretta said. "We don't know which direction it'll go. It could go down, because we just eliminated a bunch of possible keyholes that Bennu may hit. Or it may go up, because in the area that's left we have a higher concentration of keyholes compared to the overall area of the uncertainty plane."
OSIRIS-REx's work will also help researchers better understand the Yarkovsky effect, which describes how absorbed sunlight, when radiated away as heat, affects an object's trajectory. Such information will improve knowledge not only of where Bennu is headed, but where it came from, Lauretta said.
But to focus on where it's headed — what if Bennu does hit one of those keyholes in 2135, and the space rock squares Earth up for an impact in 2185 or thereabouts? What should humanity expect?
Such an impact would likely devastate the local area but fall short of wiping out civilization or causing a mass extinction, experts have said. Astronomers estimate that a space rock must be at least 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) wide to cause a global catastrophe. (For perspective: The asteroid thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs — or at least to have finished them off — was probably about 6 miles, or 10 km, across.)
But an impact would not be inevitable, even if Bennu had Earth in its sights. Given a decade or so worth of lead time, researchers say, an incoming asteroid could potentially be nudged off course using fly-along "gravity tractor" probes and/or "kinetic impactors." And if time is not on humanity's side, there's always the nuclear option.
See related video:
http://www.space.com/33616-asteroid-bennu-will-not-destroy-earth.html#ooid=A0cnk4MzE6JNiwIKj0Fjj8yhO_7FiO3B
Kimbo
08-02-2016, 05:08 PM
"That is the sound of inevitability" - Agent Smith
Well, at least none of us will be around in 2185 if it does happen!
Kimbo
08-02-2016, 05:37 PM
Well i was hoping they would freeze me and wake me up in a thousand years ...so much for that idea!!
Well, at least none of us will be around in 2185 if it does happen!
It'll be kind of like Idiocracy. (I really liked that movie...dumb but fun and the direction we're actually heading.)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
Kimbo
08-02-2016, 05:51 PM
You are the fifth person that has told me that, I will have to check the movie!!
Astronomers found a large void of young stars in the Milky Way
Jordan Rice, Astronomy Magazine | Tuesday, August 02, 2016
There lies an abundance of older stars and less younger stars at the center of the Milky Way, but a new study has found that there are even less juvenile stars than previously thought.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/08/url.jpg?mw=1000&mh=800
An artist's interpretation of the distribution of young stars shown by Cepheid Variable stars in blue. Besides a small clump in the center of the galaxy, for 8,000 light-years around the center, their exist virtually no Cepheids. University of Tokyo
A team of Japanese, South African, and Italian astronomers have found that there is a massive region around the center of the Milky Way that is devoid of young stars. The research was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
There exist billions of stars in the Milky Way, a spiral galaxy, with the Sun approximately 26,000 light-years from the center in one of its spiral arms. Measuring the distribution of stars within the galaxy is very important in understanding how our galaxy formed and evolved.
Young, pulsating stars called Cepheid Variable stars, or Cepheids for short, are the perfect candidate for this. They are between 10 and 300 million years old, younger than our Sun at 4.6 billion years old, and pulsate in their brightness in a repeating cycle. As this pulsation time is related to its luminosity, astronomers can monitor them to determine their actual brightness; after comparing this with the brightness as seen from Earth, a distance can be determined.
Finding these stars is difficult as the center of the galaxy is full of interstellar dust that obscures the light and hides many stars from view. Using near-infrared observations from the South African Large Telescope (SALT), the team was able to see past the dust; to their surprise they found hardly and Cepheids around a region about 1,000 light-years wide from the core of the galaxy.
“We already found some time ago that there are Cepheids in the central heart of our Milky Way (in a region about 150 light-years in radius),” says Noriyuki Matsunaga, lead author from the University of Tokyo, in a press release. “Now we find that outside this there is a huge Cepheid desert extending out to 8,000 light-years from the centre.”
These findings suggest that the extreme inner disk has virtually no young stars. “Our conclusions are contrary to other recent work, but in line with the work of radio astronomers who see no new stars being born in this desert,” says Michael Feast, a co-author of the study, in a press release.
The results suggest that no significant amount of star formation has occurred in this area for hundreds of millions of years says another co-author, Giuseppe Bono. The chemical makeup and movement of the Cepheid Variable stars are guiding the team in understanding the formation of the galaxy.
Mostly Cepheids have been used to measure distances of objects in far off in the universe, but this new study shows that the same technique can be used in revealing information a lot closer to home.
Keck Observatory measures oxygen in galaxy 12 billion years ago
W. M. Keck Observatory Press Release
Astronomy Now | 4 August 2016
https://astronomynow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Alice_Shapley_COSMOS-1908_image_800x799.jpg
Galaxy COSMOS-1908 is in the centre of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, indicated by the arrow. Nearly everything in the image is a galaxy. Image credit: Ryan Sanders and the CANDELS team.
UCLA astronomers have used the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii, to make the first accurate measurement of the abundance of oxygen in a distant galaxy. Oxygen, the third-most abundant chemical element in the universe, is created inside stars and released into interstellar gas when stars die. Quantifying the amount of oxygen is key to understanding how matter cycles in and out of galaxies. This research is published online in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“This is by far the most distant galaxy for which the oxygen abundance has actually been measured,” said Alice Shapley, a UCLA professor of astronomy, and co-author of the study. “We’re looking back in time at this galaxy as it appeared 12 billion years ago.”
Knowing the abundance of oxygen in the galaxy called COSMOS-1908 is an important stepping stone toward allowing astronomers to better understand the population of faint, distant galaxies observed when the universe was only a few billion years old, Shapley said.
COSMOS-1908 contains approximately one billion stars. In contrast, the Milky Way contains approximately 100 billion stars. Furthermore, COSMOS-1908 contains approximately only 20 percent the abundance of oxygen that is observed in the Sun.
Typically, astronomers rely on extremely indirect and imprecise techniques for estimating oxygen abundance for the vast majority of distant galaxies. But in this case, UCLA researchers used a direct measurement, said Ryan Sanders, astronomy graduate student and the study’s lead author.
“Close galaxies are much brighter, and we have a very good method of determining the amount of oxygen in nearby galaxies,” Sanders said.
In faint, distant galaxies, the task is dramatically more difficult, but COSMOS-1908 was one case for which Sanders was able to apply the “robust” method commonly applied to nearby galaxies. “We hope this will be the first of many,” he said.
Shapley said that prior to Sanders’ discovery, researchers didn’t know if they could measure how much oxygen there was in these distant galaxies.
“Ryan’s discovery shows we can measure the oxygen and compare these observations with models of how galaxies form and what their history of star formation is,” Shapley said.
Perseid meteor shower set for its best show in nearly 20 years
By Richard Talcott, Astronomy Magazine | Published: Friday, August 5, 2016
You can expect to see up to 150 'shooting stars' per hour when 2016’s best meteor shower peaks the night of August 11/12.
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If you ask most skygazers to name their favorite meteor shower, the odds are good that “Perseid” will be the first word out of their mouths. This annual shower seemingly has it all: It offers a consistently high rate of meteors year after year; it produces a higher percentage of bright ones than most other showers; it occurs in August when many people take summer vacation; and it happens at a time when nice weather and reasonable nighttime temperatures are common north of the equator. No other major shower boasts all four of these attributes.
In a typical year, observers under a clear dark sky can expect to see up to 100 meteors per hour. Astronomers think we may be in for an even better show this year, however. The Perseids begin as tiny specks of dust that hit Earth’s atmosphere at 37 miles per second, vaporizing from friction with the air and leaving behind the streaks of light we call meteors. These dust particles were born in a periodic comet known as 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which last returned to the inner solar system in 1992. But the giant planet Jupiter recently nudged Swift-Tuttle’s debris stream closer to Earth’s orbit. If predictions hold true, we could see up to 150 meteors per hour the night of August 11/12.
The best views will come in the predawn hours of Friday morning the 12th, after the waxing gibbous Moon sets around 1 a.m. local daylight time. The spectacle will continue to improve as dawn approaches because the shower’s radiant — the spot on the border between the constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia where the meteors appear to emanate from — climbs higher.
As always, you’ll see more meteors at a viewing site far from any artificial lights. Look about two-thirds of the way from the horizon to the zenith, but don’t get tunnel vision gazing at one location. Let your eyes wander so your peripheral vision can pick up meteors you otherwise might not see. Keep comfortable by reclining in a lawn chair or lying on an air mattress. And bring along a sweater or light jacket. Even if evening temperatures are comfortable, you won’t be active and can get chilled in a hurry.
Moon near star Spica on August 8
By Bruce McClure in Tonight, Earth & Sky | August 8, 2016
Tonight – August 8, 2016 – look low in the southwestern sky for the rather wide waxing crescent moon and the star Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo the Maiden. Don’t wait too late to look for them, for the two will follow the sun beneath the horizon by early-to-mid evening.
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Over the next several days days, at nightfall, watch for the moon to move away from Spica and toward the planets Mars and Saturn.
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As evening falls on August 10, 11 and 12, the waxing gibbous moon will be shining near planets Mars and Saturn, and the star Antares. The green line depicts the ecliptic – the sun’s yearly path and the moon’s monthly path in front of the constellations of the zodiac.
As evening falls on August 10, 11 and 12, the waxing gibbous moon will be shining near planets Mars and Saturn, and the star Antares. The green line depicts the ecliptic - the sun's yearly path and the moon's monthly path in front of the constellations of the zodiac.
Spica is around 250 light-years from Earth. For this star to shine at 1st-magnitude brightness at this distance must mean this star in intrinsically very luminous indeed. This blue-white gem of a star is thought to be some 1,900 times more luminous than our sun. Read more about the true brightnesses of stars.
Although Spica looks like a single point of light to the eye, it’s actually two stars in one. According to astronomer Jim Kaler, these two component stars are only 0.12 of an astronomical unit apart (0.12 the Earth-sun distance). The two stars in the Spica system revolve around each other in only four days.
Each day, the sun moves eastward along the ecliptic, getting closer and closer to Spica on the sky’s dome. Another way of looking at, Spica is sinking closer and closer to the glare of sunset daily. By mid-October, the sun will meet up with Spica in the constellation Virgo, at which time Spica will rise with the sun, cross the sky with the sun and set with the sun.
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2014/08/2014-aug-29-text-spica-meridian-night-sky-chart.jpgIf you could see the stars during the daytime, you’d see the noonday sun and Spica crossing the meridian together every year around mid-October.
Spica’s yearly disappearance at evening dusk is a sure sign of the change of seasons, of summer giving way to autumn in the Northern Hemisphere – or of winter giving way to spring in the Southern Hemisphere. The first day that a star is no longer visible in the evening sky is called the heliacal setting of a star. After its heliacal setting, a star remains lost in the sun’s glare until the sun travels far enough east of the star to allow it to reappear in the east at morning dawn. The star’s first appearance in the morning sky is called its heliacal rising.
Bottom line: As darkness falls on August 8, 2016, watch for the waxing crescent moon to pair up with Spica in the constellation Virgo.
Marley
08-09-2016, 01:32 AM
There Will Be A Gorgeous Meteor Shower This Week
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/there-will-be-a-gorgeous-meteor-shower-this-week/ar-BBvow5w
UFO Torments St. Louis Sparking Frenzied Debate Over Space Aliens (Video)
Sputnik International | 8 August 2016
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The video was shot from a camera at Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park in St. Louis where a similar UFO was spotted in broad daylight only three weeks ago.
A mysterious brightly lit object hovering over the famous St. Louis arch recorded at Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park and posted on Facebook has sparked a fierce debate on the internet about whether alien life has finally been observed or what else could explain the strange illuminated flying object.
The poster of the UFO footage, Malcolm W. Memorial Park, says "We guarantee you will be perplexed if you watch all 5 minutes of this surveillance footage!" The video has been viewed 787,000 times.
Explanations for the light on Facebook include a drone with a unidirectional light while others question whether a drone could produce such an enormous amount of light. Others speculate that the image may be a weather balloon although the speed of the growing object renders this theory unlikely. Perhaps, very simply, it was simply an insect flying by whose wings were illuminated and that appeared larger than normal in a security camera.
Yet, this is not the first time that a UFO has been spotted near the St. Louis arch. Video from the same camera at Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park also captured an unexplained object that appeared in broad daylight on July 14 2016.
Earlier this year, video of another mysterious object was observed near a military base in Dayton, Ohio setting the internet abuzz with run-of-the-mill assertions that it may be testing of a new top secret aerial vehicle to conspiracy theories that the US Air Force is in league with space aliens in a bid to overcome the aviation advances made Russia and China.
Last month, the world was also treated to a strange, apparently burning object spotted in the sky over parts of the Western US which was later determined to be a Chinese rocket burning upon reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere – a reasonable explanation that is nonetheless not much less disquieting than an invasion by little green men.
One thing is certain, Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park is having fun stoking the conspiracy theories about UFOs and it may just pay off for the city of St. Louis perhaps spawning a new herd of UFO sightseers wondering if there is something else off in the great unknown.
See the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehzVYFSdVMs&feature=youtu.be
What are Magnetars?
Fraser Cain, Universe Today | Article Updated: 9 Aug , 2016
In a previous article, we crushed that idea that the Universe is perfect for life. It’s not. Almost the entire Universe is a horrible and hostile place, apart from a fraction of a mostly harmless planet in a backwater corner of the Milky Way.
While living here on Earth takes about 80 years to kill you, there are other places in the Universe at the very other end of the spectrum. Places that would kill you in a fraction of a fraction of a second. And nothing is more lethal than supernovae and remnants they leave behind: neutron stars.
We’ve done a few articles about neutron stars and their different flavours, so there should be some familiar terrain here.
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Artist concept of a neutron star. Credit: NASA
As you know, neutron stars are formed when stars more massive than our Sun explode as supernovae. When these stars die, they no longer have the light pressure pushing outward to counteract the massive gravity pulling inward.
This enormous inward force is so strong that it overcomes the repulsive force that keeps atoms from collapsing. Protons and electrons are forced into the same space, becoming neutrons. The whole thing is just made of neutrons. Did the star have hydrogen, helium, carbon and iron before? That’s too bad, because now it’s all neutrons.
You get pulsars when neutron stars first form. When all that former star is compressed into a teeny tiny package. The conservation of angular motion spins the star up to tremendous velocities, sometimes hundreds of times a second.
But when neutron stars form, about one in ten does something really really strange, becoming one of the most mysterious and terrifying objects in the Universe. They become magnetars. You’ve probably heard the name, but what are they?
As I said, magnetars are neutron stars, formed from supernovae. But something unusual happens as they form, spinning up their magnetic field to an intense level. In fact, astronomers aren’t exactly sure what happens to make them so strong.
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This artist’s impression shows the magnetar in the very rich and young star cluster Westerlund 1
One idea is that if you get the spin, temperature and magnetic field of a neutron star into a perfect sweet spot, it sets off a dynamo mechanism that amplifies the magnetic field by a factor of a thousand.
But a more recent discovery gives a tantalizing clue for how they form. Astronomers discovered a rogue magnetar on an escape trajectory out of the Milky Way. We’ve seen stars like this, and they’re ejected when one star in a binary system detonates as a supernova. In other words, this magnetar used to be part of a binary pair.
And while they were partners, the two stars orbited one another closer than the Earth orbits the Sun. This close, they could transfer material back and forth. The larger star began to die first, puffing out and transferring material to the smaller star. This increased mass spun the smaller star up to the point that it grew larger and spewed material back at the first star.
The initially smaller star detonated as a supernova first, ejecting the other star into this escape trajectory, and then the second went off, but instead of forming a regular neutron star, all these binary interactions turned it into a magnetar. There you go, mystery maybe solved?
The strength of the magnetic field around a magnetar completely boggles the imagination. The magnetic field of the Earth’s core is about 25 gauss, and here on the surface, we experience less than half a gauss. A regular bar magnet is about 100 gauss. Just a regular neutron star has a magnetic field of a trillion gauss. Magnetars are 1,000 times more powerful than that, with a magnetic field of a quadrillion gauss.
What if you could get close to a magnetar? Well, within about 1,000 kilometers of a magnetar, the magnetic field is so strong it messes with the electrons in your atoms. You would literally be torn apart at an atomic level. Even the atoms themselves are deformed into rod-like shapes, no longer usable by your precious life’s chemistry.
But you wouldn’t notice because you’d already be dead from the intense radiation streaming from the magnetar, and all the lethal particles orbiting the star and trapped in its magnetic field.
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Artist’s conception of a starquake cracking the surface of a neutron star. Credit: Darlene McElroy of LANL
One of the most fascinating aspects of magnetars is how they can have starquakes. You know, earthquakes, but on stars… starquakes. When neutron stars form, they can have a delicious murder crust on the outside, surrounding the degenerate death matter inside. This crust of neutrons can crack, like the tectonic plates on Earth. As this happens, the magnetar releases a blast of radiation that we can see clear across the Milky Way.
In fact, the most powerful starquake ever recorded came from a magnetar called SGR 1806-20, located about 50,000 light years away. In a tenth of a second, one of these starquakes released more energy than the Sun gives off in 100,000 years. And this wasn’t even a supernova, it was merely a crack on the magnetar’s surface.
Magnetars are awesome, and provide the absolute opposite end of the spectrum for a safe and habitable Universe. Fortunately, they’re really far away and you won’t have to worry about them ever getting close.
Podcast:
http://archive.org/download/guidetospace/260WhatAreMagnetars.mp4
VLT Survey Telescope Observes Messier 18
News Staff, Science News | Aug, 10, 2016
ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope at Paranal Observatory, Chile, has captured a new image of the star cluster Messier 18, also known as NGC 6613 and M18.
http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge3/image_4093e-Messier-18.jpgMessier 18 (upper left) and its surroundings. This image was captured by the OmegaCAM, a camera installed on the VLT Survey Telescope. Image credit: ESO.
Messier 18 is an open star cluster located in the constellation Sagittarius.
It spans about 18 light-years across and is at a distance of 4,230 light-years from Earth.
It was discovered in 1764 by the French astronomer Charles Messier during his search for comet-like objects.
There are over 1,000 known open clusters within our Milky Way Galaxy, with a wide range of properties, such as size and age, that provide astronomers with clues to how stars form, evolve and die.
The main appeal of these clusters is that all of their stars are born together out of the same material.
In Messier 18 the blue and white colors of the stellar population indicate that the cluster’s stars are very young, probably around 30 million years old.
Being siblings means that any differences between the stars will only be due to their masses, and not their distance from Earth or the composition of the material they formed from. This makes clusters very useful in refining theories of star formation and evolution.
Scientists now know that most stars do form in groups, forged from the same cloud of gas that collapsed in on itself due to the attractive force of gravity.
The cloud of leftover gas and dust that envelops the new stars is often blown away by their strong stellar winds, weakening the gravitational shackles that bind them.
Over time, loosely bound stellar siblings like those pictured here will often go their separate ways as interactions with other neighboring stars or massive gas clouds nudge, or pull, the stars apart.
Our Sun was most likely once part of a cluster very much like Messier 18 until its companions were gradually distributed across the Milky Way.
The dark lanes that snake through this image are murky filaments of cosmic dust, blocking out the light from distant stars.
The contrasting faint reddish clouds that seem to weave between the stars are composed of ionized hydrogen gas.
The gas glows because young, extremely hot stars like these are emitting intense UV light which strips the surrounding gas of its electrons and causes it to emit the faint glow seen in this image.
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Globular clusters are different. The stars in globular clusters are held together by gravity and do not wander away as do stars in open clusters. - Ilan
Capt.Kangaroo
08-12-2016, 03:32 AM
Just a reminder....
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Perseids: Meteor Shower Expected to Peak Friday, NASA Says
The Perseid shower, which originates from the Swift-Tuttle comet, will continue until Aug. 24, NASA told Space.com. It can be best seen from a northeastern direction from the northern hemisphere.
How a 1967 Solar Storm Nearly Led to Nuclear War
Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | August 9, 2016 05:07pm ET
http://www.space.com/images/i/000/057/406/original/1967-solar-storm-flare-nso.jpg?interpolation=lanczos-none&fit=inside%7C660The sun as seen on May 23, 1967. A powerful flare erupted from the bright area in the top-center of the solar disk.
Credit: National Solar Observatory historical archive
A powerful solar storm nearly heated the Cold War up catastrophically a half century ago, a new study suggests.
The U.S. Air Force began preparing for war on May 23, 1967, thinking that the Soviet Union had jammed a set of American surveillance radars. But military space-weather forecasters intervened in time, telling top officials that a powerful sun eruption was to blame, according to the study.
"Had it not been for the fact that we had invested very early on in solar and geomagnetic storm observations and forecasting, the impact [of the storm] likely would have been much greater," Delores Knipp, a space physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the study's lead author, said in a statement. "This was a lesson learned in how important it is to be prepared."
The storm began brewing on May 18, 1967, when researchers noticed a big group of sunspots with strong magnetic fields clumped on one part of the solar disk.
Sunspots — dark, relatively cool areas on the sun's surface — serve as launching pads for powerful bursts of high-energy radiation known as solar flares, as well as eruptions of solar plasma called coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which almost always accompany strong flares.
Intense flares that hit Earth can disrupt radio transmissions and satellite communications, among other effects. Earth-directed CMEs can be even more damaging; big ones can spawn "geomagnetic storms" that blow out transformers in power grids, for example.
On May 23, 1967, the sun fired off a flare so powerful that it was visible to the naked eye, and began emitting radio waves at a level that had never been seen before, study team members said.
That same day, all three of the Air Force's Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radar sites in the far Northern Hemisphere — which were located in Alaska, Greenland and the United Kingdom — appeared to be jammed.
Air Force officials initially assumed that the Soviet Union was responsible. Such radar jamming is considered an act of war, so commanders quickly began preparing nuclear-weapon-equipped aircraft for launch. (These newly scrambled aircraft would have been "additional forces," according to the study authors; the U.S. kept nuke-bearing "alert" planes aloft pretty much continuously throughout the 1960s.)
"This is a grave situation," Knipp said. "But here's where the story turns: Things were going horribly wrong, and then something goes commendably right."
Those additional forces never launched. So what happened? Solar forecasters at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) — a joint U.S.-Canadian effort that looks out for incoming missiles and other possible threats — and elsewhere figured out that the flare, not the Soviets, had disrupted the radars. (The U.S. military had begun keeping tabs on solar activity, and its effects on Earth, in the 1950s; by 1967, NORAD was getting daily updates on the subject, study team members said.)
Knipp and her colleagues think this information made it in time to Air Force commanders and other high-ranking officials — including, perhaps, President Lyndon Johnson.
"Oftentimes, the way things work is, something catastrophic happens, and then we say, 'We should do something so it doesn't happen again,'" Morris Cohen, an electrical engineer and radio scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said in the same statement. "But in this case, there was just enough preparation done just in time to avert a disastrous result," added Cohen, who was not involved in the new study.
A solar superstorm
The flare on May 23, 1967, was accompanied by a CME, which hit Earth about 40 hours later. (CMEs travel through space at millions of miles per hour — fast, but not nearly as fast as solar-flare radiation, which, of course, moves at the speed of light.)
The CME triggered a powerful geomagnetic storm, which disrupted American radio communications for nearly a week, study team members said. This storm also ramped up the northern lights, making them visible as far south as New Mexico.
"As a magnetospheric disturbance, the 25-26 May event ranks near the top in the record books," Knipp and her colleagues wrote in the new study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Space Weather.
The top spot in the record books, incidentally, likely belongs to the famous Carrington Event of September 1859. That geomagnetic storm caused telegraph systems to fail all over North America and Europe, and the northern lights were visible as far south as the Caribbean.
A Carrington-like storm today would likely be devastating, given how much more dependent the world is on technological infrastructure such as power grids and satellite networks, experts have said.
Solar Flare Unleashes Violent Plasma 'Rain' (Video)
By Samantha Mathewson, Space.com | August 8, 2016 05:42pm ET
Bright loops of superheated plasma danced over the surface of the sun during a violent solar "rain" witnessed by NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS).
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The IRIS satellite caught a video of this spectacular solar activity on July 24, and NASA released the footage Friday (Aug. 5). The loops of plasma, or electrically charged gas, were generated by a medium-strength solar flare that unleashed a large amount of magnetic energy.
When this material erupts from the solar surface, it shoots into the sun's atmosphere before cascading down in the giant arcs seen in the video. NASA scientists call this flare-driven event post-flare loops or coronal rain.
Coronal rain is driven by similar processes that trigger weather patterns on Earth. Much like the water vapor that forms clouds in Earth's atmosphere, the superhot plasma loops in the sun's outer atmosphere — called the corona — cool, condense and fall back down to the sun's surface.
"The details of how this happens is a mystery that scientists continue to puzzle out," NASA officials said in a statement.
IRIS has been making close-up observations of the sun's surface since its launch in 2013. Keeping a close eye on solar flares helps researchers learn more about the movement of material and energy in the sun's lower atmosphere.
Watch the Video:
http://www.space.com/33667-sun-s-plasma-rain-captured-in-high-detail-by-nasa-probe-video.html
Was Venus once habitable?
Ashley Strickland, CNN | Updated 11:49 AM ET, Sat August 13, 2016
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Research suggests Venus may have had water oceans billions of years ago. A land-ocean pattern was used in a climate model to show how storm clouds could have shielded ancient Venus from strong sunlight and made the planet habitable.
(CNN) Imagine a mostly dead planet with a heavy, toxic atmosphere 90 times thicker than ours and surface temperatures that reach 864 degrees: hot enough to melt lead.
That would be Venus, often called Earth's twin because they're similar in size. You couldn't live there if you wanted to.
But 3 billion years ago, things might have been different, according to a new study.
Scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York took computer modeling that has predicted future climate change on Earth and applied it to Venus with the hopes of revealing what the young planet was like.
What they discovered made Venus seem a little friendlier and more like our own planet. They believe it had a shallow ocean and hospitable surface temperatures slightly cooler than Earth's for possibly 2 billion years of its early history. Big puffy clouds would have created overcast days that shielded the surface from heat and radiation.
Less is known about the ocean, which was first suggested by NASA's Pioneer mission in the 1980s. But given its placement as the second planet from the sun, Venus wasn't conducive to sustaining an ocean.
Venus receives more sunlight than Earth, which would evaporate liquid water, sending hydrogen into space and trapping a buildup of carbon dioxide. That would lead to a nonstop greenhouse effect that would create its current toxic atmosphere. Venus' topography was also completely altered by volcanic eruptions that most likely filled in lowland regions and potential ocean basins over the past billion years.
Because of this, past research to model the planet would simply place a duplicate of Earth and its topography in Venus' orbit. But a team of researchers, including lead study author Michael Way of NASA, wanted to create the first 3-D model of the planet using its current topography. Even if it isn't entirely accurate for the time period they were modeling, "it's the least wrong choice you can make," Way said.
Using past research, Way and his team knew that habitable factors for planets include rotation speed and topography. Venus rotates rather slowly, in the opposite direction of Earth and most planets, which researchers thought was due in part to its thick atmosphere. But recent research suggested that the same rotation rate would be possible with a thin atmosphere, as well.
"I knew that it probably would help the world maintain a quite temperate climate, as we found when we ran the model," Way said.
Was there life on Venus?
With this model, early Venus sounds rather cozy, so could it have supported life?
"Water does not equal life," Way stressed. "What we believe is that water is conducive to life. Venus is a much tougher place for life to get started. It was only warm and wet very early in its history. It's been a mostly dead planet for the last 4 billion years. But the modeling we did was to say that Venus might be a better place to look for the beginnings of life."
This can also be connected to evidence that suggests Earth and Venus have similar compositions, Way said. If Venus had a stable, warm, wet climate for longer than had been speculated, it could be due to the fact that the planet has a carbon cycle and structure similar to our own subduction plate tectonics. Both planets have a wealth of carbon dioxide: Earth through its lithosphere and rocks and Venus in its atmosphere.
Venus also has twice as much nitrogen in its atmosphere as Earth, and it's the most abundant gas in our atmosphere.
More missions in the future may be able to prove how much water Venus had, how it lost its water and over what time span, maybe even revealing what was on the surface in addition to water, Way said.
Modeling Earth and other planets
The larger goal from this study is to expand the capabilities of the model to look closer at what early Venus, Mars and even Saturn's moon Titan were like, using NASA's Planetary Science Astrobiology program and the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science. We can also look into our own past at early Earth, raising a wealth of questions scientists want to answer.
"There is this big puzzle called the faint young sun paradox, where the sun was 30% less luminous 3 billion years ago," Way said. "We know from the geologic record that Earth was not a snowball state 3 billion years ago, yet the sun was much fainter."
Way said that if we took Earth's atmosphere today and moved it back in time, it would freeze. Clearly, there was something different about Earth then that we still don't understand. Gathering more data from the geologic record might enable researchers to answer that question, put the solution into their model and see whether it works.
These models could also be applied to the study of exoplanets and help future missions, like the James Webb Space Telescope and its successors, in identifying Earth-like planets for closer observation.
"When the time comes in the future, when we can get more data on exoplanets and their atmospheres, we can help better target which planets we want to look at through these models," Way said. "If we think these planets can have liquid water, that's where we want to go."
Cornell Astronomy's Facts of the Day
Department of Astronomy | Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science
http://astro.cornell.edu/img/mids/planetwalk1.jpg
Sagan Planet Walk
#1 - Saturn's Rings
Saturn's rings are arguably the flattest structure known to man, being some 300,000 km end-to-end but with a vertical thickness of about 10 meters.
#2 - Density of Saturn
Saturn is the only planet in the solar system that would float on water.
#3 - Traveling Time
Traveling at the speed of light it would still take you over 4 years to reach the Sun’s nearest neighbour star.
#4 - Fuel for Thought
The Sun burns 600 million tons of Hydrogen every second.
#5 - Cosmic Popcorn Anyone?
The Cosmic Microwave Background that we detect today started traveling towards us over 13 billion years ago.
#6 - Billions and Billions.....
The Sun is just one of over 100 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the Milky Way is just one of over 100 billion galaxies in the universe.
#7 - Polaris' Retirement
Vega will become our new north star in 12000 years.
#8 - Cosmic Combat
Antares (think anti-Ares) is known as the rival of Mars because Mars passes by this bright red star, "challenging" the planet as it nears.
#9 - Another Horoscope
The constellation Ophiuchus passes through the ecliptic, making it the "13th sign" of the zodiac.
#10 - Not Your Everyday Black Hole
There is a black hole millions of times the mass of the Sun at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
#11 - Hot Enough to Fry an Egg
Venus, not Mercury, has the hottest surface temperature for a planet due to the Greenhouse Effect.
#12 - Don't Get Dizzy
Some pulsars rotate several hundred times per second.
#13 - The Biggest Loser
You would only weigh about 1/6th of your current weight if you stood on the Moon.
#14 - Drifting Away
Earth is the only planet that has plate tectonics!
Researchers validate ancient astronomical structures
Robyn Mills, Physics.org | August 17, 2016
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The great stone circle, Stenness on the Isle of Orkney, is situated in a “reverse” landscape. The project examined the alignments running from the centre of circle through the stones on the circle's perimeter and the stone holes where stones formally stood (as revealed by excavation). This told us that the stone furthest to the right is oriented upon the last glimmer of a southern Moon occurring only every 18.6 years; the second stone is aligned towards the winter solstice sunset and the stone furthest to our left is aligned to the Moon as it sets into its most northern position every 18.6 years. These are astronomical events that could be seen 5000 years ago. Credit: Douglas Scott
University of Adelaide research has for the first time statistically proven that the earliest standing stone monuments of Britain, the great circles, were constructed specifically in line with the movements of the Sun and Moon, 5000 years ago.
The research, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, details the use of innovative 2D and 3-D technology to construct quantitative tests of the patterns of alignment of the standing stones.
"Nobody before this has ever statistically determined that a single stone circle was constructed with astronomical phenomena in mind – it was all supposition," says project leader and University of Adelaide Visiting Research Fellow Dr Gail Higginbottom, who is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian National University.
Examining the oldest great stone circles built in Scotland (Callanish, on the Isle of Lewis, and Stenness, Isle of Orkney ─ both predating Stonehenge's standing stones by about 500 years), the researchers found a great concentration of alignments towards the Sun and Moon at different times of their cycles. And 2000 years later in Scotland, much simpler monuments were still being built that had at least one of the same astronomical alignments found at the great circles.
The stones, however, are not just connected with the Sun and the Moon. The researchers discovered a complex relationship between the alignment of the stones, the surrounding landscape and horizon, and the movements of the Sun and the Moon across that landscape.
"This research is finally proof that the ancient Britons connected the Earth to the sky with their earliest standing stones, and that this practice continued in the same way for 2000 years," says Dr Higginbottom.
Examining sites in detail, it was found that about half the sites were surrounded by one landscape pattern and the other half by the complete reverse.
"These chosen surroundings would have influenced the way the Sun and Moon were seen, particularly in the timing of their rising and setting at special times, like when the Moon appears at its most northerly position on the horizon, which only happens every 18.6 years," Dr Higginbottom says.
"For example, at 50% of the sites, the northern horizon is relatively higher and closer than the southern and the summer solstice Sun rises out of the highest peak in the north. At the other 50% of sites, the southern horizon is higher and closer than the northern, with the winter solstice Sun rising out of these highest horizons.
"These people chose to erect these great stones very precisely within the landscape and in relation to the astronomy they knew. They invested a tremendous amount of effort and work to do so. It tells us about their strong connection with their environment, and how important it must have been to them, for their culture and for their culture's survival."
The research is part of the Western Scotland Megalithic Landscape Project carried out by Dr Higginbottom and Professor Roger Clay, astrophysicist at the University of Adelaide.
Capt.Kangaroo
08-18-2016, 02:18 AM
Good info as usual.
Thanks ilan.:)
Watching a star explode after 'hibernating'
Ashley Strickland, CNN | Updated 1:52 PM ET, Wed August 17, 2016
(CNN) Amidst the billions of stars in the Milky Way, astronomers have witnessed the evolution of one as it exploded in what's known as a classical nova after hibernating for years, according to a new study. It is the first time the transition of a white dwarf star with a low and unstable mass-transfer rate to a classical nova eruption has been observed, study author Przemek Mróz said.
"Classical novae attract attention during eruptions, when they are bright and easy to observe," Mróz said. "Because of their unpredictable nature, very little is known about pre-eruption behavior of novae. This is the first case that the evolution of a classical nova can be investigated so precisely with long-term pre- and post-eruption observations."
The classical nova occurred in a binary star system in the Milky Way's Centaurus constellation, 6,300 light-years from Earth.
In a close binary star system where two stars orbit each other, a white dwarf star is paired with a red dwarf star. A classical nova occurs when a white dwarf star gains matter from its secondary star over a period of time, causing a thermonuclear reaction on the surface that eventually erupts in a single visible outburst. This creates a 10,000-fold increase in brightness.
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Snapshots of a nova life cycle. Below it is the Milky Way over Las Campanas Observatory.
Mróz said astronomers observe five to 10 classical novae in the Milky Way each year, but most of them are faint, because they are hidden behind interstellar gas and dust. He cited recent examples like Nova Sagittarii 2015 and Nova Delphini 2013.
But based on long-term observations, this white dwarf star experienced periodic brightening over six years leading up to the explosion. This implies that during that time, a low mass-transfer rate was occurring between the two stars, causing that fluctuation.
Six days before the eruption, there was another fluctuation in brightness. And after the explosion, the mass-transfer rate increased. Now, the system remains bright but is slowly fading, which will continue for a few decades as the process begins again.
What do aliens look like? The clue is in evolution
Matthew Wills, The Conversation | August 19, 2016
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The five-eyed fossil Opabinia could have given rise to five-eyed animals today. Credit: Nobu Tamura/wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Speculating about what aliens look like has kept children, film producers and scientists amused for decades. If they exist, will extra terrestrials turn out to look similar to us, or might they take a form beyond our wildest imaginings? The answer to this question really depends on how we think evolution works at the deepest level.
Hollywood has given us its fair share of humanoid aliens over the years. Initially this was through necessity, as special effects required someone to clamber into a rubber suit. Ironically, now that CGI makes anything possible, aliens sometimes look even more human in order to help the cinema goer make an emotional connection with them – such as in James Cameron's Avatar.
At present, the only life forms we can study are here on Earth. These had a single origin around 3.5 billion years ago, but this common ancestor gave rise to perhaps 20m living species of animals alone. These have bodies organised according to about 30 different body plans in major groups called phyla.
But when animals first diversified some 542m or more years ago in the Cambrian "explosion", there may have been an even greater diversity of fundamental body plans. Consider the five-eyed and trunked Opabina in the image above, or the stalked and almost flower-like Dinomischus alongside our own distant relative, the chordate Pikaia.
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Pikaia – an early chordate, the group to which humans belong. Credit: Nobu Tamura/wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Rerunning the tape of life
In a famous thought experiment, biologist Stephen Jay Gould asked what might happen if we were to rewind the "tape of life" and rerun it. Gould argued for the importance of chance in evolution: change one small thing early on, and the consequences magnify through time. In the version of history we know, Pikaia (imaged below) or something very like it survived and ultimately gave rise to fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and ultimately ourselves. But what if it had perished? Might some other group have given rise to intelligent beings, and might you now be reading this with five eyes rather than the customary two? If our own origins on Earth really turned on such fine hinges, why should aliens – evolving on different planets – even remotely resemble us?
The answer, according to evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris, lies in the phenomenon of evolutionary convergence: the process by which distantly related animals come to closely resemble each other. For example, the similar streamlined shape of dolphins, tuna fish and the extinct ichthyosaurs all evolved independently in response to the same selective pressures for moving efficiently through water at speed.
But what aspects of alien biology might we expect? Carbon-based biochemistry is likely given that carbon forms stable backbone chains, and makes stable but readily breakable bonds with other elements. Other elements, notably silicon and sulphur, make less stable bonds at Earth-like temperatures. Water or some other solvent also seems necessary. For evolution to occur there needs to be some mechanism for storing and replicating information with moderate fidelity, such as DNA, RNA or some analogue. Although the first cells appeared on Earth quite early, multicellular animals took nearly 3 billion more years to evolve. So it may well be that life on other planets could get stuck at the single-celled stage.
On an Earth-like planet it is also likely that radiation from the alien sun or suns would be used in biochemical pathways as a source of energy. For moderately large multicellular primary producers, harnessing light efficiently probably necessitates a light gathering system of leaves and branches. Similar shapes and habits have evolved convergently on Earth, so we might expect "plants" with broadly familiar forms on Earth-like planets.
With few exceptions, animals either eat the primary producers or each other, and there are only so many ways of doing this. Pursuing food often necessitates moving with the mouth first, so the animal has a head and tail end. Teeth and probably jaws evolve to hold and tackle food items. Moving against a hard surface requires specialised structures (such as cilia, a muscular foot or legs) at the interface, so that there is a back and front side. Typically, this also imparts bilateral (left/right) symmetry: indeed, most animals belong to a "super-group" called the Bilateria.
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The giant weta: one of the largest insects. Credit: New Zealand Department of Conservation, CC BY-SA
Why not giant intelligent "insects"?
But what about the large brained and intelligent creatures that might be capable of crossing interstellar distances? Insects are by far the most species rich group on Earth: why shouldn't aliens look more like them? Unfortunately, having your skeleton on the outside makes growth difficult, and entails periodic shedding and regrowth. On Earth-like planets, all but relatively small terrestrial animals with external skeletons would collapse under their own weight during moulting, and some critical size may be necessary for suitably complex brains.
Relatively large brains, some degree of tool use and problem-solving abilities appear to be correlated on Earth, and have evolved multiple times: in apes, whales, dolphins, dogs, parrots, crows and octopuses. However, the apes have developed tool use to a vastly greater degree. This is at least partly the result of walking on two legs, which frees up the front limbs, and because of the dexterity of our fingers (which may also be a key to the origins of written language).
Ultimately, the jury is out on the extent to which intelligent aliens – if they exist – would resemble us. It may or may not be significant that humans have just two eyes and ears (just enough for stereo vision and hearing), and just two legs (reduced from the initially more stable four). Many other organs also come in pairs as a consequence of our evolutionarily deep-seated – and perhaps inevitable – bilateral symmetry. Still other elements of our body plan are probably nothing more than chance. The fact that we have hands and feet with five digits is a consequence of the fixation on five in our early tetrapod ancestors – close relatives experimented with seven or eight.
Indeed, most species have been subject to an accidental "locking down" during development – making body plans become stereotyped and inflexible with evolutionary time. Untangling the functional from the accidental is one of the big outstanding challenges in evolutionary biology – and may help us better understand how alien lifeforms could differ from us.
The main way we now search for intelligent life in space is by listening for radio or gamma transmissions. These efforts are increasingly being concentrated on star systems with Earth-like planets, as these are believed to be the most likely to harbour life. After all, it is easier to search for "life as we know it" than life as we don't.
Weird Object: Red Rectangle Nebula
By Bob Berman, Astonomy Magazine | Published: Friday, December 04, 2015
No. 4: X Marks the Spot of Future Life
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TO ERE IS HUMAN. The Red Rectangle’s red-orange color — called Extended Red Emission, or ERE — had not been seen in the universe until 1975. Astronomers do not completely understand the nebula’s geometric design.
NASA/ESA/Hans Van Winckel (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium)/Martin Cohen (University of California, Berkeley)
The Red Rectangle Nebula doesn't merely look modern-art cubist bizarre. Its very light is strange, its composition is food for philosophy, and it remains a hot venue of current research.
Located in the constellation Monoceros the Unicorn, its central 9th-magnitude binary star was discovered in 1915 by the famous double-star hunter Robert Grant Aitken. Things changed in 1973 when a rocket-borne infrared sky survey discovered the ruddy nebula surrounding the binary, soon labeled HD 44179 after the star’s catalog designation. It took years, and better instrumentation, including studies performed by the Hubble Space Telescope, to fully reveal how odd and intriguing is this dusty gas cloud 2,300 light-years away.
The 10 Weirdest Objects in the Universe (Part 1 of 3)
By Sarah Scoles, Discover Magazine | Monday, June 01, 2015
In a place as big as the universe, there's bound to be some weird stuff.
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ESO/SOAR/NASA
The El Gordo Galaxy Cluster
In a place as big as the universe, there’s bound to be some weird stuff. Here we present the biggest, coldest, hottest, oldest, deadliest, loneliest, darkest, brightest, and more superlatives that the cosmos has to offer, ranging from right next door to the edge of the known universe.
First up, El Gordo. Spanish for “the fat one,” El Gordo is the most massive grouping of galaxies in the distant universe. It contains 3,000,000,000,000,000 (3 million billion, but who’s counting?) times as much mass as the sun.
El Gordo is located 9.7 billion light-years from us, which means it had already grown this large when the universe was just half its current age.
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The Black Widow Pulsar
Pulsar J1311-3430 is a dangerous partner to have.
It weighs as much as two suns but is only as wide as Washington, DC — and it's getting bigger by feeding off its mate, a normal star. The two pirouette around each other every 93 minutes in a deadly, close dance.
The pulsar’s beam strips layers away from the star, which the pulsar then slurps up. That extra material gives the pulsar more energy, making it spin even faster, but leaving its partner depleted. So depleted that someday, nothing will be left and the pulsar will dance with only itself.
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3753 Cruithne
A year on this asteroid (364 days) is almost exactly the same as a year on Earth, meaning they both orbit the sun at about the same distance. Nobody knew about our orbit-twin until 1986, when Duncan Waldron discovered it.
But don’t worry about a collision: Cruithne won’t come closer than 7.5 million miles from Earth. If you want to run a cosmic 5K, though, you can do it across this rock’s surface, which is 3.1 miles in diameter.
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Rogue Planet
Estranged from its parent star and sibling worlds, this rogue planet wanders the universe alone and dawnless, just 100 light-years from where you sit surrounded by your warm social group.
CFBDSIR2149 was likely kicked out of its home solar system during turbulent formative years, when other planets’ orbits established themselves and flung it out into space to fend for itself.
Astronomers estimate that billions of such castaway planets exist.
The 10 Weirdest Objects in the Universe (Part 2 of 3)
By Sarah Scoles, Discover Magazine | Monday, June 01, 2015
In a place as big as the universe, there's bound to be some weird stuff.
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Smith's Cloud
If your eyes could see radio waves, Smith’s Cloud would show up 20 times as wide as the full moon in the night sky.
This cloud of hydrogen gas has as much mass as one million stars, but that hydrogen spreads over an area 9,800 light-years long by 3,300 light-years wide.
It looks like a torpedo, and that’s a helpful way to think about it too: It’s headed for our galaxy and will crash into the Milky Way 27 million years from now. That infusion of high-velocity hydrogen could set off fireworks of star formation.
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Galaxy X
Three hundred thousand light-years beyond the Milky Way orbits a satellite galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter and gas — with hardly any stars at all.
Astronomers had suspected its existence for years, but it’s hard to find “dark galaxies” in the darkness of space. In 2009, astronomers detected evidence of "Galaxy X" in the form of ghostly ripples in our own galaxy’s disk. Then, this year, they managed to find four 100-million-year-old stars hiding in this distant clump of dark matter.
This image shows dark matter satellite galaxies around our Milky Way galaxy.
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HD 189733b
This planet’s blue hue might call to mind peaceful oceans and pleasant summer days. But don’t be fooled. It’s a huge gas giant orbiting close to its star, which would makes it a hellish place to live, for a few reasons:
a) No oceans exist ever, b) the temperature rockets as high as 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, and c) the apparent azure sky actually comes from a deadly weather pattern: rain made of molten glass.
The 10 Weirdest Objects in the Universe (Part 3 of 3)
By Sarah Scoles, Discover Magazine | Monday, June 01, 2015
In a place as big as the universe, there's bound to be some weird stuff.
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The Biggest Old Black Hole
When the universe was just 875 million years old (a mere babe), a black hole with the mass of 12 billion suns had already formed.
For reference, the one at the center of the Milky Way, shown here, is just 4 million times the sun’s mass.
Supermassive J0100+2802 sits at the center of an active galaxy, called a quasar, 12.8 billion light-years away. But how could something become so big at such a young age? Astronomers are still working that out.
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R136a1
This star is 256 times as massive as our sun and it shines 7.4 million times as brightly. In other words, it's a behemoth.
Scientists believe stars this colossal can only form when multiple smaller stars merge into each other, forming fiery chimera that live for only a few million years before they burn themselves out.
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The Boomerang Nebula
Pack a jacket before taking the 5,000 light-year trip to the Boomerang Nebula: This is the coldest thing in the universe.
Inside this cloud of gas and dust cast off from a dying sun-sized star, the mercury rises to just -458 degrees Fahrenheit. The cloud is expanding at around 367,000 miles per hour, or 10 times as fast as the fastest man-made object in the universe, the New Horizons spacecraft, is traveling.
That expansion chills the nebula's gas in the same way that ballooning tetrafluoroethane cools your refrigerator.
Found you! NASA re-establishes contact with missing spacecraft
By Sheena McKenzie, CNN | Updated 7:05 AM ET, Tue August 23, 2016
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An artist rendition of the STEREO spacecraft.
(CNN) Despite almost two years of silence, NASA never stopped searching for its long lost spacecraft STEREO-B.
This week that determination paid off.
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Spacecraft STEREO-A and STEREO-B are studying the sun.
Lost...
NASA announced Sunday that it had re-established contact with STEREO-B after communications were lost in October 2014.
Contact with the spacecraft -- which works in tandem with a second spacecraft STEREO-A to study the sun -- was lost during a test of one of its timers.
Scientists had been testing the timer when STEREO-B's line of sight and communication to Earth was blocked by the sun.
Meanwhile STEREO-A was unaffected by testing, and continued working normally over the past 22 months.
...and found
STEREO-B was recovered using NASA's Deep Space Network -- an array of giant radio antennas that tracks interplanetary missions.
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The positions of STEREO-A, shown in red, and STEREO-B, shown in blue.
Now contact has been reestablished, the STEREO team will continue monitoring the spacecraft to see what kind of state it's in.
What is the STEREO mission?
Launched in October 2006, the STEREO mission includes two spacecraft -- one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other behind -- tasked with monitoring the flow of energy and matter from the sun to Earth.
The spacecrafts have already successfully revealed the structure of coronal mass ejections, which are eruptions of matter from the sun so powerful they can disrupt satellites.
A new planet in our neighborhood -- how likely is life?
By Don Lincoln | Updated 3:57 PM ET, Wed August 24, 2016
Many are touting this as the astronomy find of the century. - Ilan
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This artist's impression shows the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system.
(CNN) Space. The final frontier.
These words inspired many young people to enter science (including me), but I'll bet that's especially true for the team who announced Wednesday that they had found evidence of an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, our closest star. This planet is tentatively called Proxima b.
Scientists working at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), using the La Silla telescope, claim to have discovered the closest exoplanet to Earth.
Exoplanet, of course, means planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. Over 3,000 exoplanets have been discovered by facilities like the ESO and the Kepler orbiting observatory. Most of them are huge planets orbiting very near their star -- Jupiter-like planets heated to temperatures guaranteed to sterilize them of life as we know it.
In recent years, instrumentation has improved to the point that not only can individual planets be found, but even complete solar systems, consisting of many planets. This has been a heady time for planet hunters.
The goal of those inspired by Star Trek's opening words has not been to find planets, but to find planets that are like Earth -- meaning at a temperature on which liquid water could be present and which could theoretically support some form of life. This is what astronomers call "the habitable zone." In addition, we'd like to find a planet that is nearby.
After all, space is huge and human spacecraft using current technology would take tens of thousands of years to get to even this, our closest celestial neighbor. To give a sense of scale, that's longer than human civilization has existed. There are plans under discussion that might reduce travel time to a more manageable duration, even less than a single human lifespan.
So what might this newly discovered planet look like? Well, even though its temperature is thought to be such that liquid water could exist, you shouldn't imagine a lush and verdant world, with lovely blue waters, sandy beaches, lush and green plants, with an excited alien fish occasionally breaching the waters. There are lots of reasons why these are unreasonable expectations.
Setting aside the possibility of life for a moment, Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, which is the most common type of star in the galaxy. Red dwarfs are much smaller than our Sun. For instance, Proxima Centauri is only about 1.5 times larger than Jupiter. Red dwarfs are very dim. For instance, in the visible spectrum that we use to see, Proxima Centauri gives off 0.0056% as much as light as the Sun.
Most of the light given off by Proxima Centauri is in the infrared region, but even if you compare all of the light emitted by Proxima Centauri in all wavelengths to the amount emitted by the Sun, Proxima Centauri still emits only 0.17% as much light as our own life-giving stellar companion. The star also emits as much x-rays as our own Sun, but Proxima b is much closer to its stellar parent, so the surface receives far more x-rays than Earth.
In addition to being a very dim star, Proxima Centauri is known to be a "flare star," which means the star periodically gives off far more light than usual. During these flares, the x-ray emission can go up tenfold.
Because of the star's small size, a planet in the habitable zone will have to be in a very small orbit, taking under two weeks to complete a single orbit. Any planet that close to a star will be "tidally locked," which means that one face of the planet will constantly face the star. This is just like the Earth and Moon, where we see only one side of the Moon throughout the course of the Month. Proxima Centauri's planetary companion will likely have one side in perpetual daylight, while the other is in perpetual night.
So what about life? Are there any chances that an alien lizard might bask in Proxima Centauri's light or try to find shade under an alien tree? Well, given the instability of the light emitted by the parent star, the answer is likely no, although the real answer to that question is obviously something for observations to answer.
Given the very dim light output of the star, it is likely that any hypothetical plants would have to be black, as black is the most light-absorbent color. "Sunlight" would be precious and evolution would drive alien plants to find ways to collect every bit of energy that falls on them.
Realistically, the prospect of life is improbable. This planet is unlikely to be a haven for people trying to escape the ecological issues of Earth, so we should not view this discovery as a way to ignore our own ecosystem.
Still, the question of extraterrestrial life is a fascinating one, so astronomers are devising techniques to look at the planet's atmosphere. Certain chemicals, like oxygen or methane, cannot exist long in a planet's atmosphere without being constantly replenished by living organisms. Observing them would be strong evidence for life.
So, what's the bottom line? First, the discovery, if confirmed is extremely exciting. The existence of a nearby planet in the habitable zone will perhaps increase the interest in efforts like Project Starshot, which aims to send microprobes to Proxima Centauri with a transit time of about twenty years. It may well be that this discovery will excite an entirely new generation of the prospect "to boldly go where no one has gone before."
Today in science: Great Moon Hoax
By Daniela Breitman in Human World | August 25, 2016
A series of 6 newspaper articles in 1835 about the discovery of life on the moon (including bat-men and unicorns), supposedly made by famous astronomer.
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The inhabitants of the moon (Vespertilio homo or bat-men). Credit: Wikimedia Commons
August 25, 1835. On this date, a New York newspaper, The Sun, published the first article in what’s come to be called The Great Moon Hoax. It was a series of six articles alleging the discovery of life on the moon (including bat-men and unicorns), supposedly made by famous astronomer Sir John Herschel while on a trip to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. Richard Adams Locke, a reporter for journal The Sun, is said to have written the article, although he never publicly admitted it.
According to the articles, a Dr. Andrew Grant, Herschel’s (fictitious) companion, was the author. The articles also referred to the Edinburgh Journal of Science, which had been out of commission for some years. Yet, for most readers, the author and the source made the articles seem credible.
The articles were reprinted in papers throughout Europe.
One of the articles said, for example:
It was one of the noble valleys at the foot of this mountain that we found the very superior species of the Vespertilio-homo (bat-men) … They were of infinitely greater personal beauty, and appeared in our eyes scarcely less lovely than the general representations of angels by the more imaginative schools of painters.
The first article described, among other things, a super-powerful telescope built by Herschel.
The weight of this ponderous lens was 14,826 pounds [Ed. Note: 6,700 kilograms] or nearly seven tons after being polished; and its estimated magnifying power 42,000 times. It was therefore presumed to be capable of representing objects in our lunar satellite of little more than eighteen inches in diameter, providing its focal image of them could be rendered distinct by the transfusion of article light.
The huge telescope supposedly allowed Herschel to make his fantastic discoveries.
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Women and bat-men (under tree) and bipedal beavers (right). Image via Lock Haven University.
From the very first article, vigilant readers might have guessed it was a hoax. Two scientists from Yale are said to have tried to find the Edinburgh Journal of Science in Yale’s library. An unsuccessful search led them to travel all the way to The Sun’s office in New York, where they were told that the original journal article was still at the printers.
The second article described many other fascinating lunar findings such as beautiful basaltic formations, cliffs, great oceans, and lunar forests. It also described many animals, one similar to a bison, and another that resembles a goat:
The next animal perceived would be classed on Earth as a monster. It was of a bluish lead color, about the size of a goat, with a head and beard like him, and a single horn, slightly inclined forward from the perpendicular. The female was destitute of horn and beard, but had a much longer tail. It was gregarious, and chiefly abounded on the acclivitous glades of the woods. In elegance of symmetry it rivalled the antelope, and like him it seemed an agile sprightly creature, running with great speed, and springing from the green turf with all the unaccountable antics of a young lamb or kitten. This beautiful creature afforded us the most exquisite amusement.
It was in the last of the series of six that the existence of Vespertilio-homo or bat-men was divulged.
Sir John Herschel at first accepted the story with a sense of humour, saying:
It is too bad my real discoveries here won’t be that exciting.
The author must have underestimated the gullibility of the people, since the news spread very quickly. Herschel began receiving lots of correspondence regarding his “discoveries” and eventually was not so jolly about it:
I have been pestered from all quarters with that ridiculous hoax about the moon – in English, French, Italian, and German!
The Sun, which had begun publishing just two years earlier, had a reason for publishing the Great Moon Hoax. It dramatically increased the paper’s popularity.
Also, the author appeared to have been seeking to satirize a scientist and science fiction author of the day, Thomas Dick, who mixed fact with fiction in his novels.
The Great Moon Hoax showed how gullible people can be and may still serve as a reminder that not everything we read is true, even if it seems credible.
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2016/08/1836_the-great-moon-hoax-new-inhabitants-of-the-moon-300x370.png
Vespertilio-homo. The bat-men of the moon. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, New York Public Library.
Bottom line: On August 25, 1835, the first of the six Great Moon Hoax articles was published. It described sensational discoveries of the famous astronomer John Herschel, who supposedly observed life on the moon.
Black hole breakthrough found on earth (Video)
Source: CNN
Haifa-based scientist Jeff Steinhauer has simulated a black hole in his laboratory, and it might be the breakthrough that helps celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking win the Nobel Prize. CNN's Ian lee reports.
See Video...
http://www.cnn.com/videos/tech/2016/08/26/black-hole-breakthrough-lee-pkg.cnn
Astronomers find a galaxy that's mostly dark matter
Ryan F. Mandelbaum, Astronomy Magazine | Thursday, August 25, 2016
Dragonfly 44 glows only faintly with starlight — but there's a lot more going on behind the scenes.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/08/Dragonfly44.jpg?mw=1000&mh=650
An image of Dragonfly 99, a faint galaxy dominated by dark matter.
Pieter van Dokkum, Roberto Abraham, Gemini Observatory/AURA
The hazy oval isn’t glare on your screen; it’s an entire galaxy. Dragonfly 44 weighs about the same as our Milky Way, except it’s 99.99% dark matter and has less than a hundredth the number of stars. Dark matter is stuff that can’t interact with the electromagnetic force (how we mostly experience the world) so we can’t see or touch it.
Scientists can observe its gravitational effects, though, which keep Dragonfly 44’s paltry collection of visible stars from flying apart. There’s around five times as much dark matter as regular matter in the universe, and even our own Milky Way is around 90% dark matter.
Astronomers found Dragonfly 44 with the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii and are publishing their results in The Astrophysical Journal. The team measured Dragonfly 44’s mass by observing its stars’ velocities as they zoomed around the galaxy.
In a press release, scientist Pieter van Dokkum from Yale University pointed out that a galaxy like this one would allow astronomers to better study a huge mass of dark matter with far fewer stars to block the view, or lack thereof.
=========
I left the image caption as I found it, although I'm fairly certain it is supposed to be Dragonfly 44 instead of Dragonfly 99. - Ilan
Russian SETI researchers are pursuing a promising signal
John Wenz, Astronomy.com | Published: Monday, August 29, 2016
It may not be aliens, but something weird was picked up by Russian radio astronomers, who are now digging for answers.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/08/RATAN_600.jpg?mw=1000&mh=800
This 2013 photo shows the RATAN-600 observatory, where a recent microwave transmission has SETI researchers excited.
Wikimedia Commons / ратан 600
It could be nothing. In the kinds of circles that search for transmissions from alien civilizations, it always is. But nonetheless, Russian researchers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have something intriguing they're pursuing.
Let's heavily caveat this. SETI efforts worldwide have had plenty of promising signals. None of them have been confirmed to come from extraterrestrial civilizations. Several have turned out to be from terrestrial sources, and early on, two high profile "What ifs?" lead to the discovery of pulsars and quasars rather than alien megastructures or technologically advanced societies.
Still, there's enough substance to this message that researchers working from the RATAN-600 observatory in Russia are investigating what might have caused it. They've pinpointed a likely star, HD 164595, which is located in the Hercules constellation. It's known to have one planet, a Neptune-sized world in a 40 day orbit. Given that HD 164595 is a Sun-type star, that planet would be too hot for life, but there may be other undiscovered planets in the solar system.
The signal was first detected in May 2015 at the 2.7 cm band, which is around 11 Ghz in the super-high frequency band. That places whatever the signal was in the microwave band. As Lee Berger at Ars Technica points out, there's no known astrophysical source at these wavelengths. There's some chatter that if (BIG if) this is of non-natural origin, it could be slightly to moderately more advanced than our own. "... if it came from an isotropic beacon, it would be of a power possible only for a Kardashev Type II civilization," Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams writes. "If it were a narrow beam signal focused on our Solar System, it would be of a power available to a Kardashev Type I civilization."
In the Kardashev scaled, Type I civilizations are those somewhat like our own, technology-wise, able to utilize radio signals to reach out and make contact. Type II are more technologically advanced civilizations, the type brought up when we talk about "alien megastructures" like some people have theorized may be around Tabby's Star.
There are other natural reasons that may have caused this. Gilster points to both potential "noise" contamination from other sources could have played a role, as well as a microlensing event which could have boosted the signal from something natural in the background. More telescope time is needed to figure it out and get to the bottom of it. Researchers could then see if it repeats (a much-needed element of SETI research, in order to gather as much data as possible), if there are other unexplored natural scenarios that could have created it, or any other scenario that might be possible.
After that, we can say for sure whether or not it's aliens. But for now let's go with just the words "promising," and hope for the best but prepare for it to be bupkis. Or at least bupkis in the "is it aliens?" department.
Breaking News: SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Explodes on Launch Pad in Florida
By Tariq Malik, Space.com Managing Editor | September 1, 2016 09:38am ET
http://www.space.com/images/i/000/057/965/original/spacex-rocket-explosion-nasa-webcam.jpg
Black plumes of smoke billow over SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launch site at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016 . This image was captured by a NASA Kennedy Space Center webcam.
Credit: NASA Kennedy Space Center
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket appears to have exploded on its Florida launch pad early Thursday (Sept. 1), just days ahead of a planned weekend liftoff of a commercial satellite.
NASA webcam images of the SpaceX rocket's launch site - Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station - showed a massive plume of black smoke over the pad Thursday morning. Other photos on Twitter by witnesses showed more smoke and flames, though exact details on what went wrong with the Falcon 9 were not immediately available from SpaceX.
The rocket incident occurs as SpaceX was preparing to launch the Amos 6 communications satellite for the Israeli company Spacecom on Saturday, Sept. 3.
Tour September’s Sky: Mars, Saturn & Venus
By: Kelly Beatty | August 31, 2016
Early evening features Mars and Saturn toward south, but keep an eye out for brilliant Venus climbing up from the west during twilight.
In this month's astronomy podcast, you'll learn about September's equinox, which marks the celestial end of summer and the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. This year it occurs on the 22nd at 10:21 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. At that moment the Sun shines directly overhead as seen from the equator.
Another celestial event is associated with this equinox: the Harvest Moon. Traditionally, it’s the name assigned to the full Moon that falls closest to the autumnal equinox, and in 2016 it falls on the night of September 16th. The Harvest Moon gets this name because around that date it never really gets dark between sunset and moonrise for several successive evenings, a boon to farmers working late to harvest their crops.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/Early-September-evening-sky_ss.jpg
As September begins, look for a thin crescent Moon in the west after sunset. To its lower right, hugging the horizon, are Venus and Jupiter.
Sky & Telescope diagram
As darkness falls, look for the planets Mars and Saturn in the southwest. Over in the west, use the Moon's thin, rounded crescent on the 3rd or 4th to point to its lower right, very close to the horizon, to spot bright Venus glowing in the twilight. More challenging is finding Jupiter, to the lower right of Venus.
Meanwhile, look nearly overhead to spot the three widely-separated stars of the Summer Triangle. Vega is the one farthest west, Deneb is toward northeast, and Altair is farthest south. Watch week by week as this trio gradually migrates toward the western horizon.
For more skywatching tips — including how to find Draco, the Dragon, and the lovely Corona Borealis (Northern Crown) of stars — listen to or download our monthly astronomy podcast below.
http://media.blubrry.com/skytourpodcasts/p/www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/SkyTour-September-2016.mp3
Capt.Kangaroo
09-02-2016, 05:17 PM
Thanks ilan....:)
The weird, isolated mountain on Ceres is a giant ice volcano
Mika McKinnon, Astronomy.com | Published: Friday, September 02, 2016
Ceres: a world that just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/08/pia20915.png?mw=1000&mh=800
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI
Ever since we laid robotic eyes on the lone, giant mountain on Ceres, scientist have been obsessed with a single question: How did Ahuna Mons form? New models suggest the mountain is an icy volcano, adding on to the growing body of evidence that even small worlds can be geologically active.
When NASA’s Dawn spacecraft arrived in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres in the main asteroid belt, it found a single lone mountain in its vast, cratered plains. Since then, scientists have puzzled over its origin. After running scenarios for every formation process they could dream up, they think they’ve found an answer.
With a single spacecraft in orbit and no rovers to poke and prod directly, researchers are dependent on remote sensing to collect data, then modeling scenarios to try to make that data into a coherent story. Scientists brainstormed every process we know about that can create mountains — volcanism, tectonic movement, even buoyant displacement — and tested models to see what fits our observations.
Cryovolcanoes are a unique feature to other planets in our solar system not found on Earth. These volcanoes erupt frozen slurry of salty ices instead of molten rock. They’re increasingly common in the outer solar system, famously caught erupting on Enceladus by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. Now it looks like they may also exist closer to the Sun.
When researchers modelled potential cryovolcanoes on Ceres, their hypothetical scenario looked similar to terrestrial volcanoes with high-viscosity magma. The peak of Ahuna Mons is riddled with fractures and tiny hills, consistent with thick, gooey material erupting, oozing in a messy spread until it cools and hardens. As it cools, the materials fractures and breaks into boulders, which tumble down the mountain to create a halo of debris. All aspects of this process common to terrestrial volcanoes with high-viscosity lava are also present on Ceres’ massive mountain, suggesting that that it formed the same way.
In order for the models to match observations, the mountain on Ceres must be quite young, and the product of a high-viscosity mix of ice and salt. But like everything else on Ceres, this is the start of a whole new round of questions. What does the interior structure of the dwarf planet look like, and how is heat involved in driving active surface processes? What salts are mixed into the ice, and how far from pure water is it? Can we find evidence of other cryovolcanic processes on Ceres, or is this mountain a unique outlier reflecting some yet-unknown localized oddity? And if we can find cryovolcanoes on dwarf planets in the main asteroid belt, where else are we going to find them?
Marley
09-05-2016, 02:12 AM
Nothing is weird when it comes to space I found out great info
Very true, asft... The image looks for all the world like an artist's rendition, but that is the real thing. It looks like what it is: an ice volcano. I guess maybe the ice slurry that erupts ends up coating the outside of the volcano.
This Twitter lets you know what Hubble is staring at RIGHT NOW
Ryan F. Mandelbaum, Astronomy Magazine | Friday, September 2, 2016
Want to know what Hubble is up to right now? There's a tweet for that.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/08/TheHorseheadNebulacropped.jpg?mw=1000&mh=800
NASA / ESA / HST
Space and science may capture the public imagination, but as laypeople we rarely get results before scientists decide to publish them. A new Twitter account lets you see the magic in action.
The account, @Hubble_Live, tweets where the Hubble Space telescope is looking… right now.
I am looking at the planet NEPTUNE for Dr. Mark R. Showalter using Wide Field Camera 3! [Address deleted - Ilan]
— Hubble Live (@Hubble_Live) September 2, 2016
Each tweet lists which scientist (or group of scientists) is using the Hubble with which specific instrument, and where the telescope is pointing and why, whether for observing or just calibrating. Some of the tweets even come with images, though the pictures aren’t actually Hubble images. Each tweet contains a link through to more information about the specific research.
The feed is run by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)’s outreach site, HubbleSite.org. STSci is the operations center for the telescope’s science program.
Amazing Astronomy Facts
From astronomyforbeginners.com
When you look at the Andromeda galaxy (which is 2.3 million light years away), the light you are seeing took 2.3 million years to reach you. Thus you are seeing the galaxy as it was 2.3 million years ago.
Light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach you, thus you see the sun as it was 8 minutes ago. It might have blown up 4 minutes ago and you wouldn't know about it!
The Earth is not a sphere! It actually is an oblate spheroid, it is squashed slightly at the poles and bulges out at the equator due to its rotation.
When Galileo viewed Saturn for the first time through a telescope, he described the planet as having "ears". It was not until 1655 that Christian Huygens suggested the crazy theory that they might be an enormous set of rings around the planet.
If you could put Saturn in an enormous bathtub, it would float. The planet is less dense than water.
A teaspoon-full of Neutron star would weigh about 112 million tons.
Jupiter is heavier than all the other planets put together.
Even on the clearest night, the human eye can only see about 3,000 stars. There are an estimated 100,000,000,000 in our galaxy alone!
The tallest mountain in the solar system is Olympus Mons, on Mars at a height of about 15 miles, three times the height of Mount Everest. It covers an area about half the size of Spain.
If the sun were the size of a dot on an ordinary-sized letter 'i', then the nearest star would be 10 miles away.
Half-a-billionth of the energy released by the sun reaches the Earth
Temperatures on Venus are hot enough to melt lead.
If you could travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) it would take 100,000 years to cross our galaxy!
Only one side of the moon ever faces Earth. The moons period of rotation is exactly the same as it's period of orbit.
Betelgeuse, the bright star on Orion's top-left shoulder, is so big that if it was placed where the sun is, it would swallow up Earth, Mars and Jupiter!
If you stand on the equator, you are spinning at about 1,000 mph in as the Earth turns, as well as charging along at 67,000 mph round the sun.
On the equator you are about 3% lighter than at the poles, due to the centrigual force of the Earth spinning.
The atmosphere on Earth is proportionately thinner than the skin on an apple.
On Mercury a day (the time it takes for it to spin round once) is 59 Earth-days. Its year (the time it takes to orbit the sun) is 88 days- that means there are fewer than 2 days in a year!
If a piece of the sun the size of a pinhead were to be placed on Earth, you could not safely stand within 90 miles of it!
Its estimated that the number of stars in the universe is greater than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches in the world! On a clear night, we can see the equivalent of a handful of sand.
Every year the sun evaporates 100,000 cubic miles of water from Earth (that weighs 400 trillion tonnes!)
Jupiter acts as a huge vacuum cleaner, attracting and absorbing comets and meteors. Some estimates say that without Jupiters gravitational influence the number of massive projectiles hitting Earth would be 10,000 times greater.
Astronomers believe that space is not a complete vacuum - there are three atoms per cubic meter.
Saturn is not the only planet with rings - Neptune has it's own ring system.
Capt.Kangaroo
09-07-2016, 08:15 PM
.......:D..........
Kimbo
09-07-2016, 09:42 PM
Nice Ilan, very nice!!
Still hard to fathom: A teaspoon-full of a neutron star would weigh about 112 million tons.
And they used to say I was dense! :)
Best Picture Yet Of Milky Way’s Formation 13.5 Billion Years Ago
Evan Gough, UniverseToday | Article Updated: 8 Sep , 2016
http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/M104_-_Sombrero-580x580.jpg
The Milky Way is like NGC 4594 (pictured), a disc shaped spiral galaxy with around 200 billion stars. The three main features are the central bulge, the disk, and the halo. Credit: ESO
Maybe we take our beloved Milky Way galaxy for granted. As far as humanity is concerned, it’s always been here. But how did it form? What is its history?
Our Milky Way galaxy has three recognized stellar components. They are the central bulge, the disk , and the halo. How these three were formed and how they evolved are prominent, fundamental questions in astronomy. Now, a team of researchers have used the unique property of a certain type of star to help answer these fundamental questions.
The type of star in question is called the blue horizontal-branch star (BHB star), and it produces different colors depending on its age. It’s the only type of star to do that. The researchers, from the University of Notre Dame, used this property of BHB’s to create a detailed chronographic (time) map of the Milky Way’s formation.
This map has confirmed what theories and models have predicted for some time: the Milky Way galaxy formed through mergers and accretions of small haloes of gas and dust. Furthermore, the oldest stars in our galaxy are at the center, and younger stars and galaxies joined the Milky Way over billions of years, drawn in by the galaxy’s growing gravitational pull.
The team who produced this study includes astrophysicist Daniela Carollo, research assistant professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, and Timothy Beers, Notre Dame Chair of Astrophysics. Research assistant professor Vinicius Placco, and other colleagues rounded out the team.
“We haven’t previously known much about the age of the most ancient component of the Milky Way, which is the Halo System,” Carollo said. “But now we have demonstrated conclusively for the first time that ancient stars are in the center of the galaxy and the younger stars are found at longer distances. This is another piece of information that we can use to understand the assembly process of the galaxy, and how galaxies in general formed.”
http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/spitzer_milkyway-e1436391756885-580x373.jpg
This dazzling infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows hundreds of thousands of stars crowded into the swirling core of our spiral Milky Way galaxy. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This dazzling infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows hundreds of thousands of stars crowded into the swirling core of our spiral Milky Way galaxy. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) played a key role in these findings. The team used data from the SDSS to identify over 130,000 BHB’s. Since these stars literally “show their age”, mapping them throughout the Milky Way produced a chronographic map which clearly shows the oldest stars near the center of the galaxy, and youngest stars further away.
“The colors, when the stars are at that stage of their evolution, are directly related to the amount of time that star has been alive, so we can estimate the age,” Beers said. “Once you have a map, then you can determine which stars came in first and the ages of those portions of the galaxy. We can now actually visualize how our galaxy was built up and inspect the stellar debris from some of the other small galaxies being destroyed by their interaction with ours during its assembly.”
Astronomers infer, from various data-driven approaches, that different structural parts of the galaxy have different ages. They’ve assigned ages to different parts of the galaxy, like the bulge. That makes sense, since everything can’t be the same age. Not in a galaxy that’s this old. But this map makes it even clearer.
As the authors say in their paper, “What has been missing, until only recently, is the ability to assign ages to individual stellar populations, so that the full chemo-dynamical history of the Milky Way can be assessed.”
This new map, with over 130,000 stars as data points, is a pretty important step in understanding the evolution of the Milky Way. It takes something that was based more on models and theory, however sound they were, and reinforces it with more constrained data.
Newly Discovered Asteroid Has a Close Encounter with Earth
Nancy Atkinson, UniverseToday.com | Article Updated: 7 Sep , 2016
Quite a bit closer than I had thought. - Ilan
As NASA prepares to send a spacecraft to a distant asteroid, another space rock made a surprise visit to Earth’s vicinity. The newly discovered small asteroid, named 2016 RB1, passed safely by Earth, coming within approximately 23,900 miles (38,463 km) of our planet, or just outside the orbit of many communications satellites.
The asteroid passed by Earth at 1:28 p.m. Eastern Time (1728 UT).
http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016rb1_anim_06sept2016.gif
Credit: Gianluca Masi/Virtual Telescope Project.
The asteroid was discovered on Monday, September 5 by the Mt. Lemmon Survey telescope in Tucson, Arizona. 2016 RB1 is estimated to be between 24 to 52 feet (7.3 – 16 meters) across, which is just a bit smaller than the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over northern Russian in February 2013, which was estimated to be around 56 ft (17 meters) wide.
On Thursday, September 8, NASA hopes to launch its OSIRIS ReX mission to study asteroid Bennu and conduct a sample return, with the sample coming back to Earth by 2023. With the mission, scientists hope to learn more about the formation and evolution of asteroids and of the Solar System as a whole.
Here’s a graphic comparing the small asteroid 2016 RB1 to other objects, compiled by Mikko Tuomela and Massimo Orgiazzi.
http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/CrvjgS9WYAADyBw.jpg-large-580x435.jpg
Objects on Earth and in space compared to the newly found asteroid
2016 RB1 (center of graphic). Compiled by Mikko Tuomela and
Massimo Orgiazzi. Used by permission.
A few observers were able to track the asteroid, including Gianluac Masi of the Virtual Telescope project, and Ernesto Guido of the Remanzacco Observatory.
(http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016_RB1_07_Sep_2016_Q62.jpg)
http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016_RB1_07_Sep_2016_Q62-467x580.jpg
An image of 2016 RB1 taken on September 7, 2016, remotely
from the Q62 iTelescope network (Siding Spring, Australia).
Credit: Ernesto Guido.
2016 RB1 is the third asteroid so far in September 2016 that traveled between the Earth and the Moon. Asteroid 2016 RR1 passed by at 0.32 lunar distances on September 2, and just a few hours later, asteroid 2016 RS1 passed by at 0.48 times the Earth-moon distance. But this latest asteroid pass is the closest, at 0.10 lunar distances.
From its orbit, astronomers have determined 2016 RB1 is likely an Aten asteroid, a group of Near-Earth Objects that cross the orbits of Earth, Venus and even Mercury.
Bkman2020
09-10-2016, 12:16 AM
Newly Discovered Asteroid Has a Close Encounter with Earth
Nancy Atkinson, UniverseToday.com | Article Updated: 7 Sep , 2016
Quite a bit closer than I had thought. - Ilan
As NASA prepares to send a spacecraft to a distant asteroid, another space rock made a surprise visit to Earth’s vicinity. The newly discovered small asteroid, named 2016 RB1, passed safely by Earth, coming within approximately 23,900 miles (38,463 km) of our planet, or just outside the orbit of many communications satellites.
The asteroid passed by Earth at 1:28 p.m. Eastern Time (1728 UT).
http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016rb1_anim_06sept2016.gif
Credit: Gianluca Masi/Virtual Telescope Project.
The asteroid was discovered on Monday, September 5 by the Mt. Lemmon Survey telescope in Tucson, Arizona. 2016 RB1 is estimated to be between 24 to 52 feet (7.3 – 16 meters) across, which is just a bit smaller than the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over northern Russian in February 2013, which was estimated to be around 56 ft (17 meters) wide.
On Thursday, September 8, NASA hopes to launch its OSIRIS ReX mission to study asteroid Bennu and conduct a sample return, with the sample coming back to Earth by 2023. With the mission, scientists hope to learn more about the formation and evolution of asteroids and of the Solar System as a whole.
Here’s a graphic comparing the small asteroid 2016 RB1 to other objects, compiled by Mikko Tuomela and Massimo Orgiazzi.
http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/CrvjgS9WYAADyBw.jpg-large-580x435.jpg
Objects on Earth and in space compared to the newly found asteroid
2016 RB1 (center of graphic). Compiled by Mikko Tuomela and
Massimo Orgiazzi. Used by permission.
A few observers were able to track the asteroid, including Gianluac Masi of the Virtual Telescope project, and Ernesto Guido of the Remanzacco Observatory.
(http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016_RB1_07_Sep_2016_Q62.jpg)
http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016_RB1_07_Sep_2016_Q62-467x580.jpg
An image of 2016 RB1 taken on September 7, 2016, remotely
from the Q62 iTelescope network (Siding Spring, Australia).
Credit: Ernesto Guido.
2016 RB1 is the third asteroid so far in September 2016 that traveled between the Earth and the Moon. Asteroid 2016 RR1 passed by at 0.32 lunar distances on September 2, and just a few hours later, asteroid 2016 RS1 passed by at 0.48 times the Earth-moon distance. But this latest asteroid pass is the closest, at 0.10 lunar distances.
From its orbit, astronomers have determined 2016 RB1 is likely an Aten asteroid, a group of Near-Earth Objects that cross the orbits of Earth, Venus and even Mercury.
We are not alone
NGC 6101: Star Cluster with Hundreds of Black Holes?
Sep 9, 2016 by SciNews Staff | Sep 9, 2016
Computer simulations of a globular cluster called NGC 6101 reveal that it contains several hundreds of stellar-mass black holes, until now thought impossible.
http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge3/image_4177e-NGC-6101.jpg
This Hubble image shows the globular cluster NGC 6101. Globular clusters are spherical collections of old stars (10-13 billion years old) which orbit around a galactic center. Image credit: NASA / ESA.
NGC 6101 is a globular star cluster in the constellation Apus. It is located at a distance of about 47,600 light-years from the Sun and about 36,500 light-years from the Galactic center.
Also known as Dun 68, GCL 40 and ESO 69-SC4, this grouping of stars was discovered on June 1, 1826 by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop.
Using advanced computer simulations, astronomers at the University of Surrey, UK, were able to see the un-seeable by mapping NGC 6101, from which the existence of black holes within the system was deduced.
These black holes are a few times larger than the Sun, and form in the gravitational collapse of massive stars at the end of their lives.
It was previously thought that these black holes would almost all be expelled from their parent cluster due to the effects of supernova explosion.
“Due to their nature, black holes are impossible to see with a telescope, because no photons can escape”, said Dr. Miklos Peuten, a researcher in the Department of Physics at the University of Surrey and the lead author on a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (arXiv.org preprint).
“In order to find them we look for their gravitational effect on their surroundings. Using observations and simulations we are able to spot the distinctive clues to their whereabouts and therefore effectively ‘see’ the un-seeable.”
In 2013, astronomers found individual black holes in globular clusters via rare phenomena in which a companion star donates material to the black hole.
The current study has shown that in NGC 6101 there could be several hundred black holes, overturning old theories as to how black holes form.
“Our work is intended to help answer fundamental questions related to dynamics of stars and black holes, and the recently observed gravitational waves,” said co-author Prof. Mark Gieles.
“These are emitted when two black holes merge, and if our interpretation is right, the cores of some globular clusters may be where black hole mergers take place.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fmWeYcAksQ&feature=youtu.be
The scientists chose to map NGC 6101 due to its recently found distinctive makeup, which suggested that it could be different to other clusters.
Compared to other globular clusters this one appears dynamically young in contrast to the ages of the individual stars.
Also NGC 6101 appears inflated, with the core being under-populated by observable stars.
Using computer simulation, the astronomers recreated every individual star and black hole in the cluster and their behavior.
Over the whole lifetime of 13 billion years the simulation demonstrated how NGC 6101 has evolved.
It was possible to see the effects of large numbers of black holes on the visible stars, and to reproduce what was observed for NGC6101.
From this, the team showed that the unexplainable dynamical apparent youth is an effect of the large black hole population.
Astronomers unveil most detailed map of the Milky Way to date
Hannah Devlin, The Guardian | 14 September 2016 9:54 EDT
The map, based on observations from the European Space Agency’s Gaia probe, will transform what we know about the galaxy, say scientists
http://i1152.photobucket.com/albums/p499/ilansovan528/ES_Milky_Way_zpsh8axrr3e.jpg
To see the video of the European Space Agency's release of a highly detailed map of the Milky Way
Please see URL in CODE at bottom
Astronomers have unveiled the most detailed map to date of the Milky Way, after charting the positions of more than 1bn stars with stunning precision.
The map, based on observations from the European Space Agency’s Gaia probe, still only represents about 1% of the Milky Way’s stars, but is already 20 times more complete than any previous observations of the night sky.
Speaking at a briefing in London on Wednesday, Gerry Gilmore, the mission’s UK principle investigator, said that the mission was already transforming what we know about our home galaxy. “We don’t actually know what the Milky Way looks like,” he said. “It’s astonishingly difficult, when you’re inside something, to find out what it looks like.”
The robotic Gaia spacecraft, which launched in 2013, is fitted with a 1bn pixel camera – the largest ever in space – complete with more than 100 electronic detectors. The precision of the measurements is equivalent to measuring the width of your fingernail – but if you were in London and your finger was in Australia.
The observations have already hinted at scientific discoveries that may lie ahead - including the possibility that the Milky Way may contain more stars than the current estimate of 100bn.
Scientists originally calculated that Gaia would see about 1bn stars by the end of 2017, but this number has now been revised upwards.
Floor van Leeuwen, of the University of Cambridge, who manages Gaia’s data processing, said: “It looks very much like we underestimated the number of stars. We think we will see 2-2.5bn stars.”
However, he added that it is not obvious how this relates to the number of stars in the entire galaxy.
The camera has now made observations of the precise position and brightness of more than 1.1bn stars. Astronomers are steadily converting the data into a 3D map of the galaxy - in effect, a cosmic version of Google maps.
“Every mission to come will use this map,” said Gilmore, adding that it would also help direct ground telescopes towards objects of interest in the cosmos.
By scanning each star about 70 times, astronomers have also calculated the sideways motion of 2m stars, showing how they drift and “wobble” in the night sky. This motion information will be crucial to building up a picture of the mass distribution in the galaxy – in particular the nature of the halo of dark matter that scientists believe surrounds the visible disk of the galaxy.
“We don’t know how massive the dark matter halo is and we will know that very much more accurately,” said Gilmore. “Knowing the velocities of objects far out in the galaxy will help determine that. That will be a complete revolution.”
Gaia astronomers will also be able to spot which stars have planets, by observing the characteristic wobble of the star caused by the gravitational pull of its neighbouring planet. Scientists estimate that Gaia could identify around 70,000 new exo-planets – planets outside of our solar system – by the end of the mission, which would be a dramatic increase on the 3,500 already known, most of which were identified by Nasa’s Kepler spacecraft.
“For the first time, we’ll be able to look at the distribution of planets based on the position of parent stars,” said Gilmore. “That will be a huge step forward in understanding planetary formation.”
Alvaro Giménez, ESA’s Director of Science, said: “Today’s release gives us a first impression of the extraordinary data that await us and that will revolutionise our understanding of how stars are distributed and move across our galaxy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2016/sep/14/european-space-agency-release-highly-detailed-map-of-milky-way-video-report
Marley
09-16-2016, 05:28 AM
20 Mind-Blowing Facts About Aliens
http://bestpictureblog.com/20-mind-blowing-facts-about-aliens/
http://bestpictureblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/1100-1024x771.jpg
Now, that's fun stuff, asft. I've got to get my insurance.
Alien Megastructure In Space Theory Reignited
Source: UFO-Blogger
Three months ago, news broke that a giant "alien megastructure" could exist around a bizarre-looking star 1,500 light-years away.
The first signs of this space oddity came from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, which continually watched the star’s region of the sky between 2009 and 2013. Most planet-hosting stars show small, regular dips in light when their planets pass in front of them. But Tabby’s star dipped erratically throughout the four years, sometimes losing as much as 20 per cent of its brightness.
In September 2015, a team led by Tabetha Boyajian of Yale University, who lends the star its informal name, tried to make sense of this unusual signal. Ultimately they determined that dust from a large cloud of comets was the best explanation.
A month later, the star made headlines across the globe thanks to a paper by Jason Wright of Pennsylvania State University and his colleagues, who suggested that “alien megastructures”, such as satellites designed to collect light from the star, could be responsible for the signal.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tQW2PwaWu4A/VpvYeixZGZI/AAAAAAAAIsw/ygjZe5q2JbI/s640/alien_megastructures_orbiting_star.jpg
While the prospect of aliens was first launched by Penn State astronomer Jason Wright, almost everyone in the astronomy community agreed that the chances that this was the case were "very low."
Now, the latest investigations into this strange star by Louisiana State University astronomer Bradley Schaefer have reignited the alien theory, New Scientist reported.
Now Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University has discovered that the mystery goes even further. When Boyajian’s team studied the star, they looked at data from a Harvard University archive of digitally scanned photographic plates of the sky from the past century or so to see if the star had behaved unusually in the past, but found nothing.
Schaefer decided this unusual star deserved a second look. He averaged the data in five-year bins to look for slow, long-term trends, and found that the star faded by about 20 per cent between 1890 and 1989. “The basic effect is small and not obvious,” he says.
To confirm the fade was real, Schaefer went to Harvard to look at the original photographic plates and inspected them by eye for changes, a skill few astronomers possess these days. “Since no one uses photographic plates any more, it’s basically a lost art,” says Wright. “Schaefer is an expert at this stuff.”
Schaefer saw the same century-long dimming in his manual readings, and calculated that it would require 648,000 comets, each 200 kilometres wide, to have passed by the star – completely implausible, he says.
===================
What makes this most interesting to me is the fact that researchers were willing to include an alien-based source in their speculations. - Ilan
Can the moon make an earthquake worse?
Nathaniel Scharping, Astronomy.com | September 14, 2016
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/09/shutterstock_68981734.jpg?mw=1000&mh=800
Danshutter/Shutterstock
When an earthquake occurs, it represents the release of years, sometimes decades or centuries, of pent-up stress. Somewhere along the fault line, a section of rock can take the strain no longer and gives way, allowing a tectonic plate to jerk into motion in a series of spasmodic shudders.
The factors that determine when, where and why earthquakes happen are numerous, and we’re still a long way from figuring out how to reliably predict them. But, it turns out that one of the many small stresses leading up to an earthquake may be extraterrestrial.
Moon Pushes and Pulls
In a study published Monday in Nature Geosciences, a team of Japanese researchers say that they have found a statistical correlation between periods of excessive tidal forces and large earthquakes.
The tides, of course, are a consequence of the moon’s gravitational tug. As it orbits the Earth, the moon pulls a small bulge of water with it, sloshing the oceans back and forth. And, just as the oceans move with the moon, so too does the land. The Earth’s crust actually moves by about a foot every day due to the motion of the moon, a so-called “land tide.”
The subtle flexing of the Earth’s crust could be another factor in determining when the critical points along fault lines give way. As the moon tugs on the rock, it could provide that final nudge that sets a cascading series of larger slips into motion, creating an earthquake.
The researchers say that several major earthquakes in recent history happened during full or new moons, when the sun, Earth and moon line up, and tidal stress is at its highest. In addition, the ratio of large earthquakes to smaller temblors appears to increase during that time.
Interestingly, however, there appears to be no correlation between tides and smaller earthquakes — the relationship only holds for the largest rumbles.
In all, nine of the 12 biggest quakes on record happened near new or full moons, a number that appears to exceed chance. This included the 2004 Indonesian earthquake and ensuing tidal wave, and the 2011 earthquake in Japan that caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Old Idea, New Analysis
The idea that the moon’s gravitational tug may kickstart earthquakes is not new. The researchers cite papers going back to the 19th century that examined the link between lunar cycles and earthquakes.
More recently, a paper from researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey found that a specific kind of deep earthquake at the San Andreas fault was more likely to occur when tidal forces were increased during the two-week fortnightly tide cycle. Scientists have never been able to find any conclusive evidence of a link, however.
Both papers stop far short of saying the Moon is causing earthquakes, though. Instead, it seems that the tidal forces the moon exerts may cause what could have been a small quake to grow much larger.
The mechanism by which this happens is still unclear, however. Tidal forces are just one of many, many factors all working together to push, pull and twist the Earth’s crust, all of which combine to occasionally produce a quake. Somewhere along that chain of events, the moon could provide the extra nudge needed to set the earth in motion.
Knowing that the movements of the moon affect how earthquakes happen gives us a better idea of when and where they’ll strike.
Is There Intelligent Life Out There?
Kim LaCapria, Snopes | Updated 19 Sep 2016
A conspiracy site republished a satirical claim that NASA admitted alien contact but failed
to disclose that information, presuming everyone already knew about it.
http://www.snopes.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NASA_Admits_It_Has_Known_About_Alien_Life_For_Year s__Just_Forgot_To_Mention_It_%E2%80%93_Waterford_W hispers_News.jpg (http://www.snopes.com/nasa-admits-contact-with-alien-species/#)
Claim: NASA admitted that they were in contact with aliens but failed to officially disclose that information, presuming everyone already knew about it.
http://www.snopes.com/images/red.gifFalse
Example: [Collected via e-mail, September 2016]
A few articles have claimed that a NASA spokesperson admitted that there have been aliens visiting the Earth for thousands of years, and NASA assumed that everybody already knew that aliens were real because of all of the science fiction about them.
Origin:On 19 September 2016, the conspiracy web site disclose . tv published an article reporting that NASA, the federal agency that oversees the U.S. civilian space program, had casually admitted they were in contact with aliens but had never formally announced that information because they believed everyone was already aware of it:
According to reports, Trish Chamberson, an official spokesperson from NASA has confirmed the existence of extra-terrestrial life and has claimed that aliens have been visiting planet Earth for thousands of years.
NASA SPOKESWOMAN CONFIRMS THE EXISTENCE OF ALIENS
During the two-hour briefing, Chamberson confirmed that a number of theories which had previously been dismissed as groundless speculation from fringe enthusiasts are actually grounded in reality. Chamberson made various sensational allegations in the course of the interview, claiming that the alien species known as the Greys have been visiting Earth for thousands of years and that they may have had a hand in the construction of megastructures such as the ancient pyramids of Giza and various other buildings dotted around the world.
There are so many films, documentaries and TV programs on aliens, that we thought everyone was aware of them by now[.]
Chamberson went on to confirm various theories about alien mining operations in the solar system. She claimed one of the mines was on the far side of the Moon and that various planets in the solar system were being assessed for minerals. Recently, she claimed aliens have begun to mine Jupiter, which is why observers have been able to see several apparently new rings appearing around the gas giant.
Sorry. We just kinda assumed everyone knew about it[.]
Disclose.tv didn't provide any sources for the attention-grabbing claim, but it was easily traced back to an article published by satirical web site Waterford Whispers a month earlier:
“We do apologise for this mix up, the whole thing just slipped our mind,” another scientist explained, “we were so busy back-engineering their technology, we simply forgot all about it. They even have a base on the far side of the moon, and are currently mining several planets in our solar system for minerals. They’ve only started on Jupiter recently, hence the new rings around it. It’s all good though, they’re a nice enough bunch. They don’t talk much though, but always complaining about our Nuclear weapons, claiming they affect parallel universes every time they’re triggered”.
The disclosure comes after 70 years of countless sightings and abductions, raising questions as to why it is they are here.
“The aliens are actually harmless and only interested in the planet’s natural resources,” the briefing concluded, “which shouldn’t cause us any problems whatsoever”.
In their disclaimer notice, Waterford Whispers, states that the site is a about "fabricated satirical newspaper":
Waterford Whispers News is a fabricated satirical newspaper and comedy website published by Waterford Whispers News.
Waterford Whispers News uses invented names in all its stories, except in cases when public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental.
Waterford Whispers is largely recognized as an Irish counterpart to The Onion among its primary reader base (in the UK and Ireland). However, previous items from the site have been confused for real news, including reports that the Pope commissioned J.K. Rowling to rewrite the Bible, the Muppet known as "Animal" had died, and that the Vatican decreed Jesus was not returning. Disclose.tv has passed on a decent share of fake news items, including claims a baby in the Philippines was born with Stigmata and Edward Snowden had been "reported dead by his girlfriend."
Hubble Watches as Comet 332P Breaks Apart
Kelly Beatty, Sky & Telescope | September 19, 2016
Back in January, a team of observers had a hunch that Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami was rapidly falling apart — and they were right!
http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2016-35-e-compass_large_web.jpg
When astronomers turned the Hubble Space Telescope on Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami in January 2016, they found two large fragments (dubbed C and A) and more than a score of smaller pieces. To get these images, astronomers used HST's Wide Field Camera 3 and a broadband red filter (the blue tint isn't real). Total exposure: 100 minutes. The box around fragment C corresponds to the portion shown in the animation below.
NASA / ESA / D. Jewitt
Pity the unfortunate fate of Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami. It quietly drifted in the Kuiper Belt for 4½ billion years, minding its own business. But about 10 million years ago something happened — perhaps a close brush with another object — and this icy little body found itself redirected on a path toward the inner solar system. Over time repeated tugs from Jupiter locked it into a tight, 5½-year-long orbit around the Sun, where it was spotted on November 3, 2010, by Japanese amateurs Kaoru Ikeya and Shigeki Murakami.
Comet 332P might have lived out its days peacefully. But it was suspiciously too bright (8th magnitude) when discovered, and astronomers soon realized it must have undergone some kind of disruptive outburst. Its coma quickly faded from view.
Then, on December 31, 2015, the PanSTARRS 1 telescope captured the comet on its next return to perihelion — except this time around the comet had split into two large fragments. A team led by David Jewitt (University of California, Los Angeles) quickly obtained observing time with the Hubble Space Telescope and found that Comet Ikeya-Murakami had completely disintegrated into at least 25 pieces.
http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/videos/hs-2016-35-a-animated_gif.gif
The Hubble Space Telescope tracked more than two dozen fragments of Comet 332/Ikeya-Murakami's disrupted nucleus over 3 days in January 2016. Fragment C is at far left; another bright piece, fragment A, is well off to the right of this close-up view.
NASA / ESA / D. Jewitt
Over three days in January (26–28) and two more in April (12–13), Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 captured the comet's demise. Although it's impossible to know for sure, Jewitt's team suspects that the individual pieces must have been roughly 20 to 60 meters (65 to 200 feet) across. How and why it broke apart isn't certain, but a likely cause is that amorphous water ice in the comet's nucleus spontaneously converted to its crystalline form — a runaway reaction that not only generates heat but also releases any trapped gas. (The same scenario might have led to the amazing outburst of Comet 17P/Holmes in November 2007.)
However, as the team details in Astrophysical Journal Letters for September 20th (a full preprint is available here), there's a problem with that interpretation. "No direct evidence for amorphous ice in comets exists," they write, "and it is not clear that gas drag forces could be sufficient to expel fragments 10s of meters in size, as observed, even against the low gravity of [small] parent nucleus."
One thing seems certain: we're unlikely to see much of Comet 332P — if anything of it remains — during its next perihelion in late 2021.
Daily Alert for Asteroid Flybys
Camille M. Carlisle, Sky & Telescope | September 22, 2016
A new e-digest from the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center gives the public a head’s up on passing asteroids.
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/sites/www.cfa.harvard.edu/files/styles/width720/public/images/pr//2016-24.jpg?itok=YdYrpBjK
The IAU's Minor Planet Center, in collaboration with volunteers from the Oracle Corporation, has put together a daily e-alert for passing near-Earth asteroids. This is the "classic" view of the website.
Daily Minor Planet
Asteroids buzz Earth all the time. Most you never hear about. But for those folks itching with curiosity — or who want a level-headed take on whatever object has blazed its way into the news — the Minor Planet Center’s new initiative is for you.
It’s called the Daily Minor Planet. (No, it’s not staffed by mini versions of Clark Kent.) The Daily Minor Planet is an alert service that sends an e-mail once a day to your inbox with information about any passing near-Earth objects. It includes the object’s name, time of closest approach (in Universal Time), speed, size, distance (compared with the Moon), and an orbit diagram. It also includes “asteroid fast facts” — stuff like how scientists calculate an asteroid’s orbit. A link takes you to the object’s entry in the Minor Planet Center’s database, where the data-enthused can find more details.
On days when there’s no interplanetary visitor whizzing past Earth, the report will feature a recently discovery asteroid and highlight an article in the popular press. (Pick mine, pick mine!)
The web version lets you view the Daily Minor Planet in two modes: minimalist web style (“modern”) and old-timey newspaper style (“classic”).
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/daily_minor_planet_22Sept2016_modern_arrow.jpg"Modern" view of the Daily Minor Planet.
The idea behind the project is to provide the public with no-nonsense info about passing asteroids, to counter hype in the media. However, currently there’s no public archive, so you’ll need to either check the website daily or save your e-mails to keep up. If you’re not looking too much in the past, you can use the table that’s tucked away on the right side of the Asteroid Hazards video page. It’s at the bottom of the column labeled Running Tallies. This table lists close approaches within the last week and those upcoming in the next couple of weeks, but it only includes the name, date/time, distance, and size.
The digest isn’t designed for observers; it doesn’t include things like apparent magnitude. For those looking to spot these objects, you’ll need an ephemeris generator. The Minor Planet Center has one, as does JPL and the European NEODys-2 site.
Read more about the new initiative in the press release from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics:
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2016-24
Cosmologists show that universe is expanding uniformly
Astronomy Now | 24 September 2016
https://astronomynow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/cosmic_voids_720x540.jpg
This simulation of the large-scale structure of the universe reveals the cosmic web of galaxies and the vast, empty regions known as voids. Image credit: Nico Hamaus, Universitäts-Sternwarte München, courtesy of The Ohio State University.
The universe is expanding uniformly according to research led by University College London (UCL) which reports that space isn’t stretching in a preferred direction or spinning.
The new research, just published in Physical Review Letters, studied the cosmic microwave background (CMB) which is the remnant radiation from the Big Bang. It shows the universe expands the same way in all directions, supporting the assumptions made in cosmologists’ standard model of the universe.
First author, Daniela Saadeh (UCL Physics & Astronomy), said: “The finding is the best evidence yet that the universe is the same in all directions. Our current understanding of the universe is built on the assumption that it doesn’t prefer one direction over another, but there are actually a huge number of ways that Einstein’s theory of relativity would allow for space to be imbalanced. Universes that spin and stretch are entirely possible, so it’s important that we’ve shown ours is fair to all its directions.”
Kimbo
09-25-2016, 01:35 PM
I have spend all morning reading the above articles, our planet is kust a micro organism of the universe how we know it, Aliens are real they just don't want to pick up the phone!!
Yes, apparently we're not on their speed dial. Maybe they know a little bit too much about us, and they've decided to take a pass! :)
Kimbo
09-25-2016, 05:33 PM
I'm completely with Stephen Hawking, it would be a potential disaster to communicate with Alien civilizations. The possibilities of back firing out weight those of benefiting humanity in my humble opinion!!
Unless, of course, they do a pinky promise that they're good guys. And on all 7 of their pinkies, that is...
Kimbo
09-25-2016, 07:38 PM
LOL...I guess better than a spit promise!!
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, September 23 – October 1
Alan MacRobert, Sky & Telescope | September 23, 2016
A bit late, but better than never. - Ilan
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/WEBvic16_Sep23ev.jpg
In the southwest at dusk, Saturn and Antares continue to pull farther away to the right of Mars. Summer ended yesterday, so this is a good time to declare that the triangle they make, the nightly celestial emblem of Summer 2016, is breaking up and losing its identity.
Friday, September 23
• The starry W of Cassiopeia stands high in the northeast after dark. The right-hand side of the W (the brightest side) is tilted up.
Look along the second segment of the W counting down from the top. Notice the dim naked-eye stars along that segment (not counting its two ends). The one on the right is Eta Cassiopeiae, magnitude 3.4, a Sun-like star just 19 light-years away with an orange-dwarf companion — a lovely binary in a telescope.
The "one" on the left, fainter, is a wide naked-eye pair: Upsilon1 and Upsilon2 Cassiopeiae, 0.3° apart. They're orange giants unrelated to each other, 200 and 400 light-years from us.
• Last-quarter Moon (exact at 5:56 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on this date). The Moon rises around midnight or 1 a.m. on the morning of Saturday the 24th. Once it's fairly well up you'll see that it's in Gemini, with Castor and Pollux to its left. Orion is much farther to its right.
• Algol is at its minimum light, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for about two hours centered on 11:19 p.m. EDT. Info and comparison-star chart.
Saturday, September 24
• This is the time of year when the rich Cygnus Milky Way crosses the zenith in the hour after nightfall is complete (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes). The Milky Way rises straight up from the southwest horizon, passed overhead, and runs straight down to the northeast.
Sunday, September 25
• About a half hour after your local sunset time, look for Venus very low in the west-southwest through the twilight. It's on its way to a grand apparition as the "Evening Star" high in the southwest this winter.
Monday, September 26
• Arcturus shines in the west these evenings as twilight fades out. Equally-bright Capella (they're both magnitude 0) is barely rising in the north-northeast, depending on your latitude; the farther north you are, the higher it will be. Late in the evening, Arcturus and Capella shine at the same height in their respective compass directions. When will this happen? It depends on both your latitude and longitude.
Moon, Regulus, and Mercury at dawn, Sept. 27-29, 2016
• Early Tuesday morning the 27th, the waning crescent Moon is about 6° upper right of Regulus (for North America), as shown at right. Look 17° below or lower right of Regulus for Mercury.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/WEBvic16_Sep29mo.jpg
As dawn brightens in the east, the crescent Moon wanes and steps lower past Regulus and Mercury on successive mornings.
Tuesday, September 27
• This is the time of year when, during the evening, the dim Little Dipper "dumps water" into the bowl of the Big Dipper way down below. The Big Dipper will dump it back in the evenings of spring.
• As dawn brightens Wednesday morning the 28th, spot the thin crescent Moon between Regulus above it and Mercury below it, as shown at right.
Wednesday, September 28
• As dawn brightens Thursday morning the 29th, look for a super-thin crescent Moon near Mercury very low in the east. Start looking about 45 minutes before your local sunrise time. Binoculars will help as dawn grows bright.
Thursday, September 29
• The Two Top Miras. Chi Cygni now overhead in the evening, and Mira (Omicron Ceti) visible late at night, are the two brightest Mira-type stars in the sky: long-period red variables. Chi Cyg should be at or just past its maximum brightness, 5th magnitude or so. Mira should be nearly at its minimum, 8th or 9th mag. Follow them through the coming months with the article and finder charts in the October Sky & Telescope, page 49. As one brightens and the other dims, when will they pass each other in brightness?
Friday, September 30
• This is the time of year when the Little Dipper extends left from Polaris after dark. The Little Dipper's only two bright stars are Polaris, the end of the Dipper's handle, and Kochab, the lip of its bowl. Both are 2nd magnitude. They're exactly level with each other about a half hour after dark now, depending on your latitude.
• New Moon (exact at 8:11 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time).
Saturday, October 1
• As Deneb takes over from Vega as the star at the zenith after dark (for mid-northern latitudes), dim Capricornus takes over from Sagittarius as the zodiacal constellation standing due south. It is ever thus.
Why time travel isn’t possible
Eleanor Imster in Human World | September 26, 2106
Bottom line: Video explores the possibility of time travel, and the nature of time and space.
http://guardianlv.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/calatoria-in-timp.jpg
A simple question from his wife – Does physics really allow people to travel back in time? – propelled Berkeley physicist Richard Muller on a quest to resolve a fundamental problem that had puzzled him throughout his 45-year career: Why does the arrow of time flow inexorably toward the future, constantly creating new “nows”?
In the video, you’ll hear Muller propose a way to test his theory using LIGO. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) consists of two widely separated installations within the United States – one in Hanford Washington and the other in Livingston, Louisiana – operated in unison as a single observatory. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration is a group of scientists seeking to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves created by merging black holes, and use them to explore the fundamental physics of gravity.
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYxUzm7gQkY&feature=youtu.be
Added image to article for spice. - Ilan
Elon Musk Unveils His Plan For Colonizing Mars (Video)
NPR | September 27, 201612:30 PM ET
http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/09/27/ap_16154367778477_custom-0ffb5d1f5727d833b95c02946e9b43d2505da280-s800-c85.jpg
Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, introduces the Dragon V2 spaceship at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., in May 2014. Musk predicted during an interview at the Code Conference in Southern California on June 1 that people would be on Mars in 2025. Jae C. Hong/AP
Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk says his space transport company, SpaceX, will build a rocket system capable of taking people to Mars and supporting a permanent city on the red planet.
"It's something we can do in our lifetimes," he said in a speech Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, that was streamed online and watched by more than 100,000 people. "You could go."
Musk described plans to send at least a million humans to Mars and establish a self-sustaining city there. He said he expects people to reach Mars within a decade, and described four requirements for a new rocket fleet, which would travel to Mars approximately every two years, when Mars and Earth come closest to each other.
The requirements for a feasible rocket system are full re-usability, the ability to refuel in orbit, the ability to produce fuel on Mars and identifying the ideal propellant. Because the atmosphere of Mars is largely made of carbon dioxide, and previous missions have found ice on the planet, Musk said he though it would be possible to produce a methane fuel there.
But the centerpiece of the speech was a video simulation of a the massive spacecraft and rocket to get Mars colonizers to their destination. (Within SpaceX, they have been nicknamed the "BFS" and "BFR," which are acronyms for phrases NPR is too polite to spell out.)
One thing Musk was less specific about was who would pay for it all, saying it would be "a huge public private partnership," and that he expected support to "snowball." He did say the cost per person would need to decrease significantly in order for colonization to work. Right now, Musk estimates a trip to Mars would cost $10 billion per person. Musk says he would like to bring that cost down to about $200,000.
Musk is very wealthy, and said in his speech that his "only motivation" for amassing personal wealth is to work on making life multi-planetary. He is simultaneously supporting SpaceX, Tesla Motors and SolarCity.
The speech also comes just weeks after a high-profile SpaceX failure: An unmanned rocket and its payload were destroyed in an explosion two days before the rocket was scheduled to launch.
It's not the first setback for SpaceX, which has seen rockets explode before — and, as the Two-Way reported, came after a series of successes for the company. But Musk called it the company's "most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years."
The Guardian notes that Musk's "fail-fast" approach to rocket-building is intentional, and tied to his ambition. But the explosion has led some to question whether SpaceX can reliably send cargo to the International Space Station, "let alone take people to Mars," the newspaper writes.
Video:
https://youtu.be/0qo78R_yYFA
How Two Astronomers Accidentally Discovered the Big Bang (Video)
The Big Story
https://nothingoutofnothing.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/bigbang.jpg
Nowadays, it's a universally accepted theory that the universe began 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang. But did you know that two radio astronomers unintentionally stumbled upon its discovery? In the 1960s, Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias were measuring the brightness of the sky with their radio telescope. No matter where they pointed it, they picked up an inexplicable droning sound. What initially sounded like a mistake ended up being the discovery of a lifetime.
Video:
https://youtu.be/cPalHdzsImc
Can you find the Big Dipper?
Deborah Byrd in Tonight (EarthSky) | October 1, 2016
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2011/10/09oct08_430.jpg
Tonight … can you find the Big Dipper at nightfall and early evening? As seen from the Northern Hemisphere, this most famous of star patterns – the Big Dipper – lurks low in the northwest after sunset and quickly sinks below the horizon for those at southerly latitudes. It’s tough (or impossible) to spot the Big Dipper over the horizon on autumn evenings from the southern half of the united States. But the pattern is visible all night from northerly latitudes, albeit low in the sky. And, before dawn around now, we’ll all find the Big Dipper ascending in the northeast.
To find the Big Dipper’s place in the sky, remember the phrase: spring up and fall down. That’s because the Big Dipper shines way high in the sky on spring evenings but close to the horizon in autumn.
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View larger. | Big Dipper on the horizon while getting set up at the Astronomical Society of New Haven‘s 25th annual Connecticut Star Party in Goshen, Connecticut, October 9-11, 2015. Photo by Kurt Zeppetello.
The distances of the stars in the Dipper reveal something interesting about them: five of these seven stars have a physical relationship in space. That’s not always true of patterns on our sky’s dome. Most star patterns are made up of unrelated stars at vastly different distances.
But Merak, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez and Phecda are part of a single star grouping. They probably were born together from a single cloud of gas and dust, and they’re still moving together as a family.
The other two stars in the Dipper – Dubhe and Alkaid – are unrelated to each other and to the other five. They are moving in an entirely different direction. Thus millions of years from now the Big Dipper will have lost its familiar dipper-like shape.
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The Big Dipper makes up a part of the Ursa Major or Big Bear constellation. Image criedit: Old Book Art Image Gallery
Hints of Geysers Erupting from Europa
Kelly Beatty, Sky&Telescope | October 1, 2016
Newly released Hubble images show what appear to be towering jets of water coming from Jupiter's moon Europa.
In 1979, images from Voyagers 1 and 2 showed Jupiter's moon Europa to have a cracked but billiard-ball-smooth surface. Planetary geophysicists concluded that this icy world must have a deeply buried ocean, which must episodically flood the surface.
That's when astrobiologists started talked earnestly about the possibility that Europa's ocean might conceivably host life. But the putative ocean's depth below the ice crust is unknown, though it must be at least several miles thick — a formidable barrier to exploring it with submersible, life-seeking probes.
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A Galileo orbiter image of Europa has been added to a just-released Hubble Space Telescope image of what might be towering geysers of water erupting from near the moon's south pole.
NASA / ESA / W. Sparks / USGS Astrogeology Science Center
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Yet sampling Europa's ocean might be easier than once thought. New results from the Hubble Space Telescope, announced this week, show what appear to be towering plumes of water jetting away from Europa's surface. Hints that Europa might have water-powered geysers first came to light in 2012, when a team led by Lorenz Roth (Southwest Research Institute) used HST to spectroscopically detect localized clouds of hydrogen and oxygen atoms in Europa's vicinity. It was tantalizing but not conclusive evidence.
The new results, though again not offering rock-solid proof, use an entirely different technique to suggest that Europa might be belching water into space. William Sparks (Space Telescope Science Institute) and others have used Hubble to record images of Europa as it crossed in front of Jupiter. They wanted to see if the moon had a thin atmosphere, which would show up as a dark aura around Europa when viewed in silhouette against Jupiter. (Other observers are trying to exploit this same transit technique to detect atmospheres around the planets of distant stars.)
Hubble probes the core of galaxy NGC 247
ESA/Hubble/NASA via Astronomy News | 3 October 2016
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NGC 247 is a spiral galaxy in the Sculptor Group some 11 million light-years from Earth. This Hubble image shows a zoomed-in view of NGC 247’s central region. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the central region of a spiral galaxy known as NGC 247. NGC 247 is a relatively small spiral galaxy in the southern constellation of Cetus (The Whale). Lying at a distance of around 11 million light-years from us, it forms part of the Sculptor Group, a loose collection of galaxies that also contains the more famous NGC 253 (otherwise known as the Sculptor Galaxy).
NGC 247’s nucleus is visible here as a bright, whitish patch, surrounded by a mixture of stars, gas and dust. The dust forms dark patches and filaments that are silhouetted against the background of stars, while the gas has formed into bright knots known as H II regions, mostly scattered throughout the galaxy’s arms and outer areas.
This galaxy displays one particularly unusual and mysterious feature — it is not visible in the image above, but can be seen clearly in wider views of the galaxy, such as the picture below from ESO’s MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope. The northern part of NGC 247’s disc (to the right in the following image) hosts an apparent void, a gap in the usual swarm of stars and H II regions that spans almost a third of the galaxy’s total length.
http://astronomynow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/NGC247_ESO_1280x796.jpgThis picture of the spiral galaxy NGC 247 was taken using the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. Image credit: ESO.
There are stars within this void, but they are quite different from those around it. They are significantly older, and as a result much fainter and redder. This indicates that the star formation taking place across most of the galaxy’s disc has somehow been arrested in the void region, and has not taken place for around one billion years. Although astronomers are still unsure how the void formed, recent studies suggest it might have been caused by gravitational interactions with part of another galaxy.
Astronomers find a treasure trove of strange brown dwarfs
Mika McKinnon, Astronomy Magazine | Published: Monday, October 3, 2016
The new find adds to the population of “failed stars” and makes them even weirder than we thought.
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NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
Stars that didn’t quite make it to full blazing glory are a lot more common than we thought. A new survey found not just more brown dwarfs, but an entire population of ultracool brown dwarfs that aren’t identified by standard sky surveys.
Brown dwarfs are often teased as being failed stars, too big and bright to be a planet but too small to sustain hydrogen fusion. They’re doomed to stay dim until they sputter out, never achieving the bright twinkle of the stars that spot our skies. But this makes them perfect for observation: unlike other stars, brown dwarfs are dim enough to not blind instruments. They’re often in isolation, allowing for even more clear observation of this astrophysical intermediary between planets and stars.
A new survey led by Jasmin Robert of Université de Montréal went hunting for even more brown dwarfs. The team surveyed 28% of the sky, and checked the properties of every star. Instead of using the standard techniques to filter out brown dwarfs strictly by set color ranges, the team pulled full spectrums of stars to find more unusual brown dwarfs. They found an additional 165 ultracool brown dwarfs not previously identified within the study region. For brown dwarfs, ultracool is below 3,500F, a sixth the temperature of our Sun and barely warm enough to melt carbon.
Of the stars Robert and her team found, fully a third were unusual even in this odd population. The unusual ultracool brown dwarfs are ones that have different colors than anticipated for their age. They either appeared older than they are, tinted red through a disproportionally dusty atmosphere or inflated size, or younger than they are by being tinted blue by a scarcity of dust or contracted size. The discovery that the team identified so many unusual brown dwarfs so quickly in such a small patch of sky indicates that the population of brown dwarfs is more varied than we thought.
All of this means that it’s just gotten a whole lot easier to go hunting for brown dwarfs in the neighborhood.
Why is this star dimming? Astronomers still don't know
Rob Verger (Fox News, Astronomy) | October 05, 2016
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This artist’s conception shows a star behind a shattered comet. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
A strange star in our galaxy has officially become even more enigmatic: According to data collected by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, the star mysteriously dimmed over a period of a few years.
The star is called KIC 8462852, and it was already on scientists’ radar for fluctuations in its brightness. So two astronomers decided to study it more carefully, using images from Kepler. They discovered that from 2009 to 2012, the star’s brightness declined by just under 1 percent. Then, over a time period of six months, its brightness plunged by 2 percent. While news of their discovery first surfaced in August, their work has now been accepted for publication in an astronomy journal, the Carnegie Institution for Science announced on Monday.
“The steady brightness change in KIC 8462852 is pretty astounding,” Ben Montet, an astronomer and fellow at the University of Chicago, said in a statement. “Our highly accurate measurements over four years demonstrate that the star really is getting fainter with time. It is unprecedented for this type of star to slowly fade for years, and we don’t see anything else like it in the Kepler data.”
Montet is coauthor on the new study about the star, forthcoming in the Astrophysical Journal.
“This star was already completely unique because of its sporadic dimming episodes,” Josh Simon, an astronomer at Carnegie Science, said in the statement. “But now we see that it has other features that are just as strange, both slowly dimming for almost three years and then suddenly getting fainter much more rapidly.”
One explanation for the star’s change in brightness is something like a planet or comet breaking up in front of it, although that idea doesn't fully account for the star's behavior, according to the study.
While the controversial concept that an “alien megastructure” could have caused the dimming has galvanized public interest in the star, David Kipping, an astronomer with Columbia University, said that it’s likely caused by an as-yet-to-be explained natural phenomenon.
“The confirmation that the star is dimming over time re-enforces how strange this star is,” Kipping told FoxNews.com in an email. “As yet, we do not have a natural explanation as to what is happening, but in my view this most likely represents a gap in our present knowledge rather than evidence for an alien megastructure.”
Hole in Galaxy 4.5 Billion Light-Years Away
Enrico de Lazaro, Sci-News | Oct 7, 2016
A rogue black hole has been found in the outer regions of the lenticular galaxy SDSS J141711.07+522540.8 (GJ1417+52 for short). Evidence suggests this black hole has a mass of approximately 100,000 solar masses, and was originally located in a dwarf satellite galaxy that collided and merged with a larger one.
http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge3/image_4257_1e-Wandering-Black-Hole.jpgThis Hubble image shows the lenticular galaxy GJ1417+52. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.
Astronomers know that black holes ranging from about 10 times to 100 times the Sun’s mass are the remnants of dying stars, and that supermassive black holes, with some 100,000 to 10 billion times the Sun’s mass, inhabit the centers of most galaxies.
But scattered across the Universe are a few apparent black holes of a more mysterious type. Ranging from 100 to 100,000 solar masses, these intermediate-mass black holes are much harder to find.
According to scientists, both supermassive and intermediate-mass black holes may be found away from the center of a galaxy following a collision and merger with another galaxy containing a massive black hole.
As the stars, gas and dust from the second galaxy move through the first one, its black hole would move with it.
Now, a team of astronomers led by University of New Hampshire scientist Dacheng Lin has used NASA’s Chandra and ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatories to discover a ‘wandering’ black hole in GJ1417+52, a lenticular galaxy located approximately 4.5 billion light-years away from us.
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Dacheng Lin et al discovered a ‘wandering’ black hole in the lenticular galaxy GJ1417+52. The main panel has a wide-field, optical light image from Hubble. The black hole and its host galaxy are located within the box in the upper left. The inset on the left contains Hubble’s close-up view of GJ1417+52. Within this inset the circle shows a point-like source on the northern outskirts of the galaxy that may be associated with XJ1417+52. The inset on the right is Chandra’s X-ray image of XJ1417+52 in purple, covering the same region as the Hubble close-up. Image credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / UNH / Dacheng Lin et al; optical – NASA / STScI.
This object, dubbed 3XMM J141711.1+522541 (XJ1417+52 for short), is located at a projected offset of 17,000 light-years from the nucleus of GJ1417+52.
It was discovered during long observations of a special region, the so-called Extended Groth Strip, with XMM-Newton and Chandra data obtained between 2000 and 2002.
Its extreme brightness makes it likely that it is a black hole with a mass estimated to be about 100,000 times that of the Sun, assuming that the radiation force on surrounding matter equals the gravitational force.
The Chandra data show XJ1417+52 gave off a tremendous amount of X-rays, which classifies it as a hyperluminous X-ray source (HLX). These are objects that are 10,000 to 100,000 times more luminous in X-rays than stellar black holes, and 10 to 100 times more powerful than ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs).
At its peak XJ1417+52 is about 10 times more luminous than the brightest X-ray source ever seen for a wandering black hole. It is also about 10 times more distant than the previous record holder for a wandering black hole.
The bright X-ray emission from this type of black hole comes from material falling toward it. The X-rays from XJ1417+52 reached peak brightness between 2000 and 2002.
Dr. Lin and co-authors theorize that this outburst occurred when a star passed too close to the black hole and was torn apart by tidal forces.
The Sky This Week for October 7 to October 16
Richard Talcott, Astronomy Magazine | Friday, October 07, 2016
The first quarter Moon, shooting stars, and other beautiful things to look for in the sky this week.
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Michael Seeley/ Flickr
Friday, October 7
The waxing crescent Moon continues to climb higher in the early evening sky. Tonight, you can find it nearly 10° to the upper right of Mars. The Red Planet remains a stunning sight all this week. It shines at magnitude 0.1 and appears about 20° high in the south-southwest as twilight fades to darkness. Target Mars through a telescope this evening and you’ll see an 8"-diameter disk with a few subtle dark markings. The eyepiece view also should reveal the 9th-magnitude globular star cluster NGC 6638. In a spectacularly close conjunction tonight, the planet skims just 4' south of the cluster.
Saturday, October 8
The First Quarter Moon appears high in the south as darkness falls and remains on view until nearly midnight local daylight time. Our satellite officially reaches its First Quarter phase at 12:33 a.m. EDT tomorrow morning (9:33 p.m. PDT today), but it looks half-lit all evening. The Moon lies among the background stars of northern Sagittarius, above that constellation’s Teapot asterism.
Sunday, October 9
Mars’ eastward motion against the backdrop of Sagittarius carries it 1.6° south of the 5th-magnitude globular cluster M22. The best views should come through binoculars and rich-field telescopes.
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Javier Vieras/ Flickr
Monday, October 10
Mercury’s finest morning apparition of 2016 is winding down. Although the planet reached greatest elongation from the Sun on September 28, it continues to brighten in early October and remains well-placed. The inner world shines at magnitude –1.1 this morning and lies 6° above the eastern horizon 30 minutes before sunrise. You should be able to see it with your naked eye, though binoculars can help you to find it initially in the twilight glow. Don’t confuse it with Jupiter, which is now returning to view before dawn. (The giant planet passed behind the Sun in late September.) This morning, magnitude –1.7 Jupiter appears 1.6° below Mercury.
Tuesday, October 11
The Moon’s absence from the morning sky these next few days provides observers with an excellent opportunity to view the zodiacal light. From the Northern Hemisphere, the time around the autumnal equinox (which occurred September 22) is the best for viewing the elusive glow before sunrise. It appears slightly fainter than the Milky Way, so you’ll need a clear moonless sky and an observing site located far from the city. Look for a cone-shaped glow that points nearly straight up from the eastern horizon shortly before morning twilight begins (around 5:30 a.m. local daylight time at mid-northern latitudes). The Moon remains out of the morning sky until October 15, when the waxing gibbous returns and overwhelms the much fainter zodiacal light.
Mercury and Jupiter appear side by side in this morning’s twilight sky. Jupiter, which shines slightly brighter, lies 0.8° to Mercury’s right.
Wednesday, October 12
Although the Orionid meteor shower doesn’t peak until next week (the morning of the 21st), you should see a few “shooting stars” associated with it before dawn these next few days. The Moon-free observing conditions in the morning sky now offer better viewing prospects than the waning gibbous Moon will at the shower’s peak. These meteors appear to radiate from the northern part of the constellation Orion the Hunter.
Thursday, October 13
The variable star Algol in Perseus reaches minimum brightness at 1:00 a.m. EDT tomorrow morning, when it shines at magnitude 3.4. If you start tracking it this evening, you can watch it more than triple in brightness (to magnitude 2.1) in the span of a few hours. This eclipsing binary star runs through a cycle from minimum to maximum and back every 2.87 days. Algol remains visible all night, passing nearly overhead around 3 a.m. local daylight time.
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WikiMedia Commons
Friday, October 14
Saturn remains a gorgeous sight in the evening sky all week. It stands about 15° high in the southwest an hour after sunset and doesn’t set until 9 p.m. local daylight time. The ringed world shines at magnitude 0.5 among the background stars of southwestern Ophiuchus. When viewed through a telescope, Saturn shows a 16"-diameter disk surrounded by a dramatic ring system that spans 35" and tilts 26° to our line of sight.
Saturday, October 15
Full Moon officially arrives at 12:23 a.m. EDT tomorrow morning (9:23 p.m. PDT this evening). You can find it rising in the east around sunset and peaking in the south around 1 a.m. local daylight time. It dips low in the west by the time morning twilight starts to paint the sky. The Moon lies in southern Pisces near that constellation’s border with Cetus. October’s Full Moon also goes by the name “Hunter’s Moon.” In early autumn, the Full Moon rises about half an hour later each night compared with a normal lag close to 50 minutes. The added early evening illumination supposedly helps hunters track down their prey.
Uranus reaches opposition and peak visibility today. Opposition officially arrives at 7 a.m. EDT, when the outer planet lies opposite the Sun in our sky. This means it rises at sunset, climbs highest in the south around 1 a.m. local daylight time, and sets at sunrise. The magnitude 5.7 planet lies in southern Pisces 2.6° northwest of magnitude 4.8 Mu (m) Piscium. Although Uranus normally shines brightly enough to glimpse with the naked eye under a dark sky, you won’t see it tonight because the Full Moon lies just 3° to its south. Use binoculars to locate the planet or, better yet, wait until the bright Moon isn’t so close. A telescope reveals Uranus’ blue-green disk, which spans 3.7".
Sunday, October 16
Brilliant Venus stands out low in the southwest during evening twilight. The inner planet lies about 10° above the horizon a half-hour after sunset and sets as twilight comes to a close. At magnitude –3.9, Venus is the brightest object in the evening sky after the Moon.
The Moon reaches perigee, the closest point in its orbit around Earth, at 7:34 p.m. EDT. It then lies 222,364 miles (357,861 kilometers) away from us.
Is NASA Changing Course On Mars Exploration?
Evan Gough, Universe Today | Article Updated: 9 Oct , 2016
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With an increasing number of companies and countries proposing missions to Mars, NASA may be changing how it conducts its missions there. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS
With rival companies SpaceX and United Launch Alliance making serious plans to get to Mars, NASA’s future role in the exploration of Mars may be about to change. As it stands now, NASA is the only organization to have a successful mission to Mars under its belt. But with private companies in the USA, and organizations from other countries setting their sights on Mars, NASA is beginning to re-think how it does things.
NASA’s Mars missions work like this: individual teams of scientists propose payloads designed to study a particular aspect of Mars. The instruments are then built into the overall design of the rover, or orbiter, then that same team of scientists manages that instrument and collects the data.
Obviously, this has worked well in the past. But the context of Martian exploration is changing. China and the European Space Agency both have plans to send rovers to Mars, and United Arab Emirates plans to send an orbiter. While NASA has been sending a steady stream of missions to Mars, there is only one more planned, the Mars 2020 Rover.
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NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover and its suite of instruments. Image: NASA
SpaceX plans to begin sending their Dragon landers to Mars starting in 2018, though the first one will not be manned. A short time ago the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, announced even more ambitious plans for travel to Mars. SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System is designed to allow a permanent human colony on Mars. The proposed timeline is ambitious, with the first cargo-only flight launching no sooner than 2022, and the first trip carrying humans launching during the next Earth-Mars window about 2 years later.
Not to be outdone, rival company United Launch Alliance, (a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin) recently announced that they think they can get to Mars even sooner. At The Atlantic’s “What’s Next” conference, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said “I’m convinced that the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding on a Boeing rocket.”
Those are bold words, for sure. Boastful, even. But Boeing has a track record of success when it comes to space flight, having developed or co-developed projects like the Saturn-V rocket that carried the Apollo astronauts to the Moon. (Incidentally, the Saturn-V rockets remains the most powerful rocket ever built. But not for much longer.) As for SpaceX, they have a growing track record of success themselves.
So where does this game of Martian one-upmanship leave NASA?
“The era that we all know and love and embrace is really coming to an end.”
The head of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program is Jim Watzin. On October 6th he told a meeting of the Mars advisory group that “The era that we all know and love and embrace is really coming to an end. It’s important to recognize that the future is not going to be the same as the past.”
The words sound a little foreboding, perhaps. But they don’t signal an end to NASA’s exploration of Mars so much as a change in the model of how that exploration is done. And the new model may closely resemble how telescope observing time is doled out on both terrestrial telescopes and space telescopes.
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Observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope is doled out by a committe that reviews requests from astronomers. Terrestrial telescopes are managed the same way. Image: NASA/STScI
With telescopes, astronomers submit detailed requests for observing time, outlining how much time they need and what they’d like to study. A committee looks over all the proposals and decides how the telescope time will be allocated. That model has been very successful.
Future NASA Mars exploration missions would work in a similar way. An orbiter would have a suite of instruments, and planetary scientists would submit proposals to use those instruments for periods of time to study certain things.
“I’m not trying to fix something that’s broken.”
“I’m not trying to fix something that’s broken,” Watzin said. “I’m trying to open the door to a larger level of collaboration and participation than we have today, looking to the fact that we’re going to have a larger pool of stakeholders involved in our missions.”
It’s important to note that there is no official change in NASA policy at this time. It’s just an idea. At the same meeting of the Mars advisory group, planetary scientist Jeffrey Johnson, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said “The idea right now needs to be fleshed out.” He added, “It’s a little early yet to figure out how the community is going to respond.”
“We’ve managed to do all the things [Watzin] described already without a new paradigm.”
But the community has already begun to respond, and not everyone is enthusiastic about this potential change. Alfred McEwen, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, told Nature.com that “We’ve managed to do all the things [Watzin] described already without a new paradigm.”
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This image of Meridiani Planum on Mars was captured by the HiRise Camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. HiRise has captured thousands of images of Mars based on requests from the public. Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
McEwen would know. He is the Principal Investigator the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRise Camera. “We have distributed operations, we have multiple customers, we have a foreign contributed instrument. So my immediate reaction to this idea was not very positive,” McEwen said.
The playing field on Mars is definitely changing, though, and what has more or less been a NASA monopoly on Mars is changing. With more countries heading to Mars, and with private companies leading the charge, change is most definitely coming to Martian exploration. Whether this specific “time-share “model of investigation is adopted, or some other model, don’t expect NASA to sit idly by and keep doing things the same way.
Telescope to Seek Earthlike Planet in Alpha Centauri System
Kenneth Changoct, New York Times | 11 October 2016
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/10/11/science/13TELESCOPE/13TELESCOPE-jumbo.jpgAn artist’s rendition of an exoplanet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B. Scientists guess there is an 85% probability that there is at least one planet in the habitable zones of the two Alpha Centauri stars. Credit L. Calçada and Nick Risinger/European Southern Observatory
A scientific research consortium on Tuesday announced plans to build and launch a privately financed telescope the size of a small washing machine in hopes of finding an Earthlike planet in the Alpha Centauri system, one of our closest cosmic neighbors.
Jon Morse, the chief executive of the BoldlyGo Institute, one of two nonprofits leading the consortium, called it “the holy grail of exoplanet research.” If there is a “pale blue dot” — a world covered in oceans — at Alpha Centauri, the telescope would permit scientists to study it in detail, looking for signs of life in the light reflected off the atmosphere.
To be built by the end of the decade, the telescope is the type of mission that NASA rarely undertakes, experts noted: tightly focused and cheap, leading to momentous discoveries — or possibly nothing at all.
The two stars of the Alpha Centauri system are both similar to the sun, the closest such stars at 4.37 light-years away. The proposed telescope, with a mirror only about 20 inches across, would be able to make out Earth-size planets orbiting in the stars’ so-called habitable zone, where temperatures are warm enough for liquid water to flow at the surface and, hypothetically, for life to thrive.
NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered a multitude of Earth-size planets in the galaxy, and in August astronomers using ground-based telescopes announced the discovery of a potentially habitable planet around Proxima Centauri, our closest neighbor at a distance of 4.22 light-years.
But Proxima Centauri is much smaller and dimmer than our sun, and the planet, even if similar in size to Earth, would not be particularly Earthlike. It orbits much closer to the star, likely with one side perpetually in daylight and the other eternally dark. Because the planet is so close to its star, the proposed telescope would not be able to study it.
So far, most exoplanets have been discovered indirectly, deduced by slight perturbations in the light traveling from a star — by a slight dimming when the exoplanet passes between its star and Earth, or by wobbles in the light’s wavelengths caused by the gravitational pull of an unseen exoplanet.
If astronomers could photograph a planet directly, they could start to look for specific wavelengths of light that serve as fingerprints of specific molecules. Detection of oxygen in the atmosphere would argue for photosynthesis and plants, for example.
Dr. Morse said the proposed telescope, called Project Blue, would most likely cost $25 million to $50 million, perhaps one-third the cost of a NASA mission with similar goals. That is still a lot of money, and not easily raised.
Crowdfunding through small individual donations might cover some of the early design work, he said, but “we do have to approach high-net-worth individuals and foundations.” Participating institutions, like the SETI Institute and the University of Massachusetts Lowell, could also offer in-kind contributions to the project rather than cash.
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A rendering of the compact exoplanet imaging telescope Project Blue plans to launch into orbit and aim at Alpha Centauri. Credit Project Blue
The idea of a telescope pointed at Alpha Centauri is not new. Ruslan Belikov, a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., has been working for years as principal investigator on the Alpha Centauri Exoplanet Satellite, or ACESat, developing the technology needed to pick out planets in a binary star system.
The ACESat project has not won NASA approval, however. Eduardo Bendek, ACESat’s deputy principal investigator, estimated that there was a 15 percent chance that there are no planets in the habitable zones of the two Alpha Centauri stars. “NASA is very averse to that risk,” he said.
To reduce the chances of discovering nothing, the ACESat team proposed a mission that would examine not just Alpha Centauri but also a few other nearby stars. But expanding the mission — plus other considerations to reduce risks — increased the price tag.
Dr. Belikov and Dr. Bendek declined to provided specific figures, but said the total budget fit under the required $175 million cost cap when they submitted the proposal to NASA’s Small Explorer astrophysics program in 2014.
Instead, NASA selected three other missions for further study. ACESat remains unbuilt, and the next opportunity to submit a proposal is most likely in 2019, Dr. Belikov and Dr. Bendek said.
“I can’t speak for NASA,” Dr. Beikov said, “but speaking personally, I’m excited about the possibility of doing space missions privately.”
So far, privately financed space missions have met with limited success. Competitors in the Google Lunar X Prize, to send the first private spacecraft to the moon, have had trouble finding backers. Planetary Resources, a Seattle company aiming to mine asteroids, withdrew a plan for a crowdfunded space telescope, sending back contributions collected on Kickstarter.
Another project, Lunar Mission One, intended to send a robotic lander to the moon’s south pole, successfully raised about $1 million via Kickstarter, but probably needs more than 600 times as much to pull it off.
BoldlyGo is also pursuing two more ambitious projects — a larger space telescope, and a spacecraft to collect samples from the Martian atmosphere and bring them back to Earth — that have not yet gotten off the ground.
Dr. Morse, who once ran NASA’s astrophysics division, agrees that Project Blue will not be easy, but says it is possible. For more than a century, he notes, astronomers have relied on the generosity of rich benefactors.
“All we’re doing is borrowing the model that ground-based astronomy has been using literally since the time of John Quincy Adams,” Dr. Morse said. “We think that quest is worthy, and we’re going to try to do it with private funding.”
The Universe is 10 times more vast than we thought
Nathaniel Scharping, Astronomy Magazine | Thursday, October 13, 2016
There are at least 10 times more galaxies than once thought.
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A composite of images from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field study.
NASA/ESA
The universe seems a little less lonely today.
Astronomers from the University of Nottingham conducted a new survey of the universe’s galaxy population and concluded that previous estimates lowballed the census by a factor of about 20. Using data from Hubble and telescopes around the world, as well as a new mathematical model, they estimate that there are ten times more galaxies in the observable universe than we thought; previous estimates put the number of galaxies in the universe at around 200 billion.
Looking Through Time and Space
To understand how the researchers accomplished their task, we first need to understand what they mean by the “observable universe.” Because the speed of light is fixed, we can never get a true picture of what the universe looks like right now. As we look farther and farther away, we must necessarily look further back in time as well.
So, in discovering how many galaxies exist in the observable universe, the Nottingham researchers haven’t discovered how many galaxies exist right now, they’ve found out how many galaxies we would be able to see if our instruments were good enough. This may seem like a big caveat, but it’s the only way can observe the far-flung universe. Being able to look back in time has its advantages, however.
To reach their conclusion, the researchers looked at the rate of galaxy mergers throughout the universe. Most galaxies likely started small, and grew through a series of mergers with other galaxies as time went on. Because the researchers could see clusters further and further back in time as they looked deeper, they could compare the concentration of galaxies long ago to more recent times — relatively speaking.
They found that galaxies appear to clump together as time goes by, forming larger structures while also reducing the total number of galaxies present. By running this rate backward, and extrapolating beyond what we can currently see, the researchers concluded that around 90 percent of the galaxies out there are too faint and too far away to view with current telescopes. This is what allowed them to drastically increase our estimation of the number of observable galaxies.
The researchers released their paper Tuesday on the preprint server arXiv, it is set to be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Why Can’t We See Them?
This new galaxy census gives us an answer to a decades-old question known as Olbers’ paradox. If there are so many stars and galaxies out there, why can’t we see them all? Given the nearly unimaginable number of stars and galaxies out there, the night sky should be awash in light.
The solution, say the researchers, lies in the huge distances that separate us from most galaxies. Because the universe is expanding, the light that reaches us is subject to a phenomenon called “redshift.” Similar to the Doppler effect that alters the pitch of a passing ambulance, as distant celestial objects move away from us, the wavelengths of light they emit appear to stretch out. Go far enough, and the light will redshift below the level discernible by the human eye, and eventually telescopes. In addition, galaxies and interstellar space between them is filled with tiny particles of dust that absorb and filter out light.
Some of this radiation shows up as background light, a faint diffuse glow of light that appears to have no source. The rest, however, disappears before it ever reaches us.
The James Webb Telescope, set to launch in 2018, may be able to pick out some of these elusive stars. Until then, we’ll just have to believe.
If Aliens Call, We Might Not Want To Answer, Says Stephen Hawking
Hilary Harrison, Huffington Post| 09/23/2016 08:55 pm ET
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Stephen Hawking has said it before and he’ll say it again: If extraterrestrials call, do not answer ― at least, not without careful consideration.
The renowned theoretical physicists hosts “Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places,” a new short film available on the streaming service Curiosity Stream. The film follows Hawking around the universe as he “travels” in a computer-generated imagery spacecraft, giving the audience a peek into simulations of a black hole and Gliese 832c, an earth-like planet outside our solar system that scientists believe may be able to support life.
And Gliese 832c isn’t even the closet possible second-Earth. In August, scientists announced that Proxima b, a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri — the nearest known star to our sun — has a temperature that could allow liquid water and is possibly habitable.
But if we ever get a signal from any of these places, Hawking warns that we shouldn’t be too eager to say hello.
“We should be wary of answering back,” he says in the film, according to USAToday. “Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus — that didn’t turn out so well.”
It’s an idea Hawking has expressed numerous times before — typically using human beings as an example of why we shouldn’t trust other intelligent life.
“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet,” he told The Times of London in 2010. “I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach.”
Well, we’re convinced. NASA, we really hope you’re listening.
Capt.Kangaroo
10-17-2016, 12:43 AM
The moon looks great tonight (last night too):D
Look Up — The Moon Is Going To Be Amazing This Weekend
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This weekend, you might want to take a moment to look up at what promises to be a spectacular supermoon.
Added bonus: It's also a hunter's moon. "That's because in other months, the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day, while the October moon rises just 30 minutes later," National Geographic explains. "That offers more light overall during a 24-hour day, which came in handy for traditional hunters."
Viewing will be at its best on Sunday, when the moon is both full and "at its closest point to our planet as it orbits Earth," according to NASA. National Geographic advises that the best time to see it is as it rises on Sunday evening.
NASA says the term supermoon simply means a "full moon that is closer to Earth than average."
NPR.ORG
I went for a very, very early morning walk, and the full moon was "giving off" a great deal of light. It looked like a mini-sun. Gorgeous little critter... :)
NASA's MAVEN mission gives unprecedented ultraviolet view of Mars
NASA | October 18, 2016
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MAVEN's Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph obtained images of rapid cloud formation on Mars on July 9-10, 2016. The ultraviolet colors of the planet have been rendered in false color, to show what we would see with ultraviolet-sensitive eyes. Mars' tallest volcano, Olympus Mons, appears as a prominent dark region near the top of the image, with a small white cloud at the summit that grows during the day. Three more volcanoes appear in a diagonal row, with their cloud cover (white areas near center) merging to span up to a thousand miles by the end of the day.
Credit: NASA/MAVEN/University of Colorado
New global images of Mars from the MAVEN mission show the ultraviolet glow from the Martian atmosphere in unprecedented detail, revealing dynamic, previously invisible behavior. They include the first images of "nightglow" that can be used to show how winds circulate at high altitudes. Additionally, dayside ultraviolet imagery from the spacecraft shows how ozone amounts change over the seasons and how afternoon clouds form over giant Martian volcanoes. The images were taken by the Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph (IUVS) on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission (MAVEN).
"MAVEN obtained hundreds of such images in recent months, giving some of the best high-resolution ultraviolet coverage of Mars ever obtained," said Nick Schneider of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Schneider is presenting these results Oct. 19 at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Pasadena, California, which is being held jointly with the European Planetary Science Congress.
Planet Nine may be responsible for tilting the Sun
Shannon Stirone, Astronomy.com | Wednesday, October 19, 2016
How our possible rogue planet may be messing with our solar system
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Artist's impression of Planet Nine as an ice giant eclipsing the central Milky Way
WikiMedia Commons
Earlier this year an announcement raised a tantalizing possibility: a ninth planet lurking in the outer reaches of our solar system. The announcement turned the astronomy and planetary science world upside down.
Caltech astronomer Michael Brown and theoretical astrophysicist Konstantin Batygin found evidence for a possible 10 Earth mass planet that may be tilting long-orbiting dwarf planets on their sides and shepherding them into clusters far past the orbit of Neptune in highly eccentric orbits. In the last several months, more and more papers have been published about the possible planet and how it might prove an explanation for other strange things happening in our solar system.
At a press conference held this afternoon, at the AAS Division of Planetary Sciences annual meeting in Pasadena Ca, another announcement was made about Planet Nine’s effects on the spin-axis tilt of our Sun. This time, the paper titled Solar Obliquity Induced by Planet Nine is lead by Caltech graduate student Elizabeth Bailey, with Brown and Batygin as co-authors.
We’ve known that the Sun is tilted for about 200 years, but scientists have never known why. Only the catch here is, the Sun isn’t actually tilted at all. We are. To explain this oddity and what’s happening to our solar system we spoke with co-author and theoretical astrophysicist, Konstantin Batygin.
Astronomy Magazine: What’s happening with the alignment in our solar system?
Konstantin Batygin: When planetary systems form, they form from very flat discs. The motion that everything in our entire planetary system forms in a very proto planetary flat disc is one of the basic principles of planetary formation theory. The planetary orbits themselves are fully consistent- If you look at how inclined the planets are with respect to each other they are only inclined by no more than one degree so the planets of the solar system are remarkably flat.
AM: What about the Sun?
KB: The Sun's rotation was measured for the first time in 1850 and something that was recognized right away as that its spin axis, its north pole, is tilted with respect to the rest of the planets by 6 degrees. So even though 6 degrees isn’t much, it is a big number compared to the mutual planet-planet misalignments. So the Sun is basically an outlier within the solar system. This is a long-standing issue and one that is recognized but people don’t really talk much about it. Everything in the solar system rotates roughly on the same plane except for the most massive object, the Sun which is kind of a big deal.
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Hypothetical Planet 9, and 9 related eTNOs
WikiMedia Commons
AM: Why is there this misalignment between the Sun and the orbits of the planets?
KB: We asked ourselves, “what obliquity, what misalignment would Planet Nine induce in the solar system?” because it must induce some. We know that Planet Nine’s orbit in inclined. As a result, when Planet Nine torques the rest of the solar system, the two sort of act as two precessing tops. Planet Nine being in its own plane induced a precession on the remainder of the solar system as if the plane of the solar system was a flat top on the surface of a table.
AM: So Planet Nine’s gravitational influence is forcing the solar system to wobble?
KB: If you imagine that the Sun and the planets were co-planar, meaning they were locked into the same plane 4 billion years ago, and allow the clock to run forward in the presence of Planet Nine, then 4 billion years later the Sun would have been apparently tilted by exactly it’s current obliquity, or 6 degrees. But what’s actually going on is that the Sun is staying put in its fixed reference frame and it’s the planetary orbits that are being tilted by Planet Nine. So Planet Nine has tilted the entire disk of the solar system by 6 degrees and because we live on that disc … to us it looks like the Sun is tilted, but it’s actually the other way around.
AM: How could Planet Nine have that much influence on our entire solar system when it’s so far out?
KB: Here’s why: Planet Nine is only 10 Earth masses as compared to Jupiter’s 300 Earth masses, but its orbit is huge. So it’s an argument that is basically like an asymmetrical see-saw or a dolly. Planet Nine has a really long orbit so it can assert quite a bit of torque on the inner planets without having to apply so much force. Planet Nine has as much angular momentum as the entire solar system combined, because it’s orbit is so big.
AM: Have there been other theories about how this tilt may have happened before your theory of Planet Nine?
KB: I actually had theorized this in 2012 and wrote about it and the theory was almost exactly the same, except for it wasn’t Planet Nine doing the torqueing but a companion star. I theorized that a young star was bound to the Sun, and tilting the entire proto-planetary disc from which planets form. It’s believed that most stars are born binary but most of them lose their companions by the time they come out of the birth cluster.
AM: Does this help us better understand planet formation or solar system formation?
KB: It does help us understand planet formation because planet formation theory dictates that all things must start out co-planar, in the same plane. The fact that the Sun is tilted with respect to the rest of the solar system is almost a violation of that very fundamental principle, so understanding what’s going on there is important. But there’s also a second component to why this calculation is interesting. We very quickly realized that Planet Nine must do something, it must tilt the solar system by some angle and we thought to ourselves what if this angle was really big? What if the Sun was tilted by 40 degrees in our calculations? That would actually be evidence against Planet Nine, instead we got this beautiful agreement of the theory.
AM: Has this new data helped with your search for Planet Nine?
KB: What we’ve found is that the direction into which the Sun is tilted by Planet Nine is intimately related to the orbit of Planet Nine itself. This is more or less a consistency check, it doesn’t help us or really provide too much new information but it gives us more confidence that we are actually barking up the right tree
Orionid meteor shower
By Jason Hanna, CNN
Updated 2:37 PM ET, Fri October 21, 2016
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(CNN) The sky will put on a heck of a show tonight.
The annual Orionid meteor shower peaks Friday night into Saturday morning. If you have an unclouded view of the night sky, preferably away from city lights, you'll see beautiful streaks of light zipping overhead.
What are the Orionids?
They're one of a few major yearly meteor showers. The Orionids -- so named because the meteors appear to radiate out from near the Orion constellation -- happen from October to November. This year, the showtime is October 4 through November 14.
NASA’s Kepler space telescope discovered ‘heartbeat’ stars
Nicole Kiefert, Astronomy Magazine | Monday, October 24, 2016
These interesting stars will be helpful for scientists studying gravitational effects of stars
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This artist's concept depicts "heartbeat stars," which have been detected by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and others.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
A study using NASA’s Kepler space telescope discovered a large number of heartbeat stars, or binary stars that would look like an electrocardiogram if brightness were mapped out over time.
Scientists are interested in the heartbeat stars because they are binary systems in elongated elliptical orbits, which make them useful for studying gravitational effects of stars on each other.
Kepler discovered several heartbeat stars in the last few years; a study in 2011 it discovered star KOI-54 that increases in brightness every 41.8 days and a study in 2012 characterized 17 similar objects.
The distance between the two stars in a heartbeat star system varies as they orbit each other and can get as close as a few stellar radii to each other and as far as 10 times that distance during one orbit.
When the stars are at their closest encounter, the joint gravitational pull causes them to become an elliptical shape, which is why their light is so variable.
The mutual gravitational pull is the same type of “tidal force” that causes ocean tides on Earth. Tidal force also causes the diameters of the stars to rapidly fluctuate as they orbit each other, which makes them vibrate or “ring.”
Avi Shporer, NASA Sagan postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California was lead author on a recent study of heartbeat stars that was published in the Astrophysical Journal. The study used the HighResolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES), an instrument that measures wavelengths of incoming light, to measure the orbits of 19 heartbeat star systems, the largest group ever characterized in a one study.
The study also suggests that some heartbeat star binary systems may have a third or even a fourth star in the system that hasn’t been detected yet.
Researchers are currently doing follow-up studies to search for third-star components in heartbeat star systems.
Scientists aim largest telescope possible at ‘alien megastructure’ star (Video)
Ben Guarino, Washington Post | October 27, 2016
See 3:00 minute video at the bottom of the page - Ilan
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UC Berkeley scientists are training the largest fully steerable radio telescope at Tabby's star, a star shrouded in mystery and speculation of extraterrestrial life. (Roxanne Makasdjian and Stephen McNally/UC Berkeley)
Early Thursday morning, a new and powerful effort was underway to explore a mystery 1,500 light-years away. West Virginia’s Green Bank Telescope was hard at work, sucking up information about a strange winking star.
The giant radio telescope is the biggest of its kind, with a 330-foot-wide parabolic dish, making the device the largest steerable telescope on Earth. The Green Bank Telescope is tucked away among the sleepy Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, where state and federal laws enforce an electromagnetic quiet zone to keep interference to a minimum.
For astronomers and space buffs, the star in question, KIC 8462852, has been anything but quiet. The new Green Bank Telescope effort, announced Tuesday, is the deepest probe of KIC 8462852 yet, part of University of California at Berkeley’s Breakthrough Listen program — the $100 million project backed by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner with support from Stephen Hawking.
“We can look at it with greater sensitivity and for a wider range of signal types than any other experiment in the world,” said Andrew Siemion, of Berkeley’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research Center, in a news release.
Last year, scientists led by Louisiana State University astronomer Tabetha S. Boyajian published a lightning rod of a study: Observations taken from the Kepler spacecraft revealed that KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star after Boyajian, did not behave like other stars.
Specifically, Tabby’s Star flickered.
The star’s flux — its brightness — dipped by as much as a fifth over the course of Kepler’s observations, The Washington Post reported last October. By way of comparison, should a planet as huge as Jupiter swoop in front of KIC 8462852, in a move known as a transit, such a gas-giant-size journey would dim the star only by 1 percent. (Tabby’s Star is also known as the WTF Star — for Where’s the Flux. Though, we suspect the abbreviation could stand for something else too.)
What’s more, the extreme dimming did not follow a constant pattern. The dips varied in duration, as though the star were blinking fast and slow. For a star of its size and age, this was unprecedented behavior.
If you are familiar with what happens when a space-science mystery meets an unprecedented observation, you might be able to guess where speculation went. Even some astronomers, meticulous by profession, were not afraid to float the a-word: Could the dimming, however unlikely, be signs of alien life?
“Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider,” Penn State University astronomer Jason Wright told the Atlantic magazine, “but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.”
One popularly cited idea was a Dyson structure, a hypothetical device that could collect energy from a sun using a network akin to orbiting solar panels. Tabby’s Star gained yet another nickname, the “alien megastructure” star.
When asked during a live chat Wednesday afternoon about the meaning of a non-natural source of flicker, Siemion said that “the implications could be as far-reaching and awe-inspiring as could possibly be imagined,” paraphrasing “Contact.”
To be clear, scientists remained incredibly skeptical that the dimming had a technological cause. “I don’t think it’s very likely – a one in a billion chance or something like that,” said Berkeley SETI’s chief scientist, Dan Werthimer, on Tuesday. That there was a star acting in an unprecedented way was itself not unprecedented, as the 1967 discovery of pulsars showed.
Since the fall of 2015, various scientists, astronomers and SETI researchers have pointed a host of devices at Tabby’s Star. In November, the SETI Institute revealed it had failed to detect narrow or broadband radio signals using the 42 antennas of the Allen Telescope Array, near San Francisco.
“So far,” as The Post’s Rachel Feltman wrote at the time, “we’ve got nothing.”
Later that month, Iowa State University scientists argued that a natural cause, a collection of comets, could explain the winks of Tabby’s Star. That explanation has been a source of debate, leading one astronomer to declare in January that all hypotheses published thus far had been unsatisfactory. Where’s the Flux, indeed.
“It’s been looked at with Hubble, it’s been looked at with Keck, it’s been looked at in the infrared and radio and high energy, and every possible thing you can imagine, including a whole range of SETI experiments,” Siemion said. “Nothing has been found.”
Enter the Green Bank Observatory. Pointed at Tabby’s Star, the telescope has embarked on a project to comb hundreds of millions of individual radio channels. The telescope’s observations Thursday were associated with human technologies, exploring a spectrum from 1 to 12 gigahertz, which would include some cellphone operating frequencies up to those of television satellites. At the end of the three eight-hour nights, spaced out over two months, the astronomers will have collected about a petabyte of data (a million gigabytes, or the data equivalent to what 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets can hold).
If there are two things for certain about KIC 8462852, it is that the star remains fascinating, and that scientists 1,500 light-years away are committed to taking the hardest look at Tabby’s Star they can.
See Video:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/54001a2e-9c1b-11e6-b552-b1f85e484086
2016’s longest lunar month starts today
Bruce McClure, Astronomy Essentials | October 30, 2016
The lengths of lunar months vary in part because the moon’s orbit around the sun isn’t a perfect circle.
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Simulated view of the moon’s phases.
What is a lunar month? It’s just the duration between successive new moons. Also called a lunation or synodic month, it has a mean period of 29.53059 days (29 days 12 hours and 44 minutes). That’s the mean, but the the actual length varies throughout the year. The lunar month beginning today – October 30, 2016 – is the longest lunar month of 2016. It lasts for 29 days 18 hours and 40 minutes, until November 30.
That’s 5 hours and 56 minutes longer than the mean.
And it’s 11 hours and 20 minutes longer than 2016’s shortest lunar month, which happened between the new moons of May 6 and June 5.
Astronomers Snap Picture of Giant Exoplanet 1,200 Light-Years Away
Sergio Prostak, Sci News | Oct 31, 2016
An international team of astronomers has discovered a giant extrasolar planet orbiting a young star called CVSO 30. Not only have the scientists detected the planet, but they’ve also taken a direct image of it.
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CVSO 30c is the small dot to the upper left of the frame. The large blob
is the star CVSO 30 itself. Image credit: ESO.
CVSO 30, also known as 2MASS J05250755+0134243 and PTFO 8-8695, is a young T Tauri star of spectral type M3.
It is located in the constellation Orion, approximately 1,200 light-years from us, and is a member of a cluster of almost 200 low-mass stars collectively known as the 25 Orionis association.
A highly variable, fast rotating star, CVSO 30 has a mass of 0.39 solar masses and a temperature of about 5,800 degrees Fahrenheit (3,200 degrees Celsius).
CVSO 30 is also very young, with an estimated age between 2 and 3 million years, making it one of the youngest objects within the 25 Orionis group.
In 2012, astronomers with the Palomar Transit Factory survey found that the star hosted a so-called ‘hot-Jupiter’ exoplanet, CVSO 30b.
Now, a research team led by Dr. Tobias Schmidt of the Universities of Hamburg and Jena has imaged what is likely to be a second planet.
To produce the image, the team exploited the astrometry provided by NACO and SINFONI instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope.
CVSO 30b is 6 times the mass of Jupiter, while the newly-discovered planet, named CVSO 30c, has a mass between 4 and 5 Jupiter masses.
CVSO 30b orbits very close to the parent star, whirling around it in 10.76 hours at an orbital distance of 0.008 AU.
CVSO 30c orbits significantly further out, at a distance of 660 AU, taking 27,000 years to complete a single orbit.
The astronomers are still exploring how such an exotic planetary system came to form in such a short timeframe, it is possible that the two exoplanets interacted at some point in the past, scattering off one another and settling in their current extreme orbits.
“CVSO 30 is the first system, in which both a close-in and a wide planet candidate are found to have a common host star,” Dr. Schmidt and co-authors said.
“The orbits of the two possible planets could not be more different, having orbital periods of 10.76 hours and about 27,000 years.”
“Both orbits may have formed during a mutual catastrophic event of planet-planet scattering.”
The discovery was reported in the Sept. 26, 2016 issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics (arXiv.org preprint).
Twenty Five Amazing Astronomical Facts
Amazing Space Facts
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1. Saturn's moon Titan has plenty of evidence of organic (life) chemicals in its atmosphere.
2. Life is known to exist only on Earth, but in 1986 NASA found what they thought might be fossils of microscopic living things in a rock from Mars.
3. Most scientists say life's basic chemicals formed on the Earth. The astronomer Fred Hoyle said they came from space.
4. Oxygen is circulated around the helmet in space suits in order to prevent the visor from misting.
5. The middle layers of space suits are blown up like a balloon to press against the astronaut's body. Without this pressure, the astronaut's body would boil!
6. The gloves included in the space suit have silicon rubber fingertips which allow the astronaut some sense of touch.
7. The full cost of a spacesuit is about $11 million although 70% of this is for the backpack and the control module.
8. Ever wondered how the pull of gravity is calculated between heavenly bodies? It's simple. Just multiply their masses together, and then divide the total by the square of the distance between them.
9. Glowing nebulae are named so because they give off a dim, red light, as the hydrogen gas in them is heated by radiation from the nearby stars.
10. The Drake Equation was proposed by astronomer Frank Drake to work out how many civilizations there could be in our galaxy - and the figure is in millions.
11. SETI is the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence - the program that analyzes radio signals from space for signs of intelligent life.
12. The Milky Way galaxy we live in: is one among the BILLIONS in space.
13. The Milky Way galaxy is whirling rapidly, spinning our sun and all its other stars at around 100 million km per hour.
14. The Sun travels around the galaxy once every 200 million years – a journey of 100,000 light years.
15. There may be a huge black hole in the very middle of the most of the galaxies.
16. The Universe is probably about 15 billion years old, but the estimations vary.
17. One problem with working out the age of the Universe is that there are stars in our galaxy which are thought to be 14 to 18 billion years old – older than the estimated age of the Universe. So, either the stars must be younger, or the Universe older.
18. The very furthest galaxies are spreading away from us at more than 90% of the speed of light.
19. The Universe was once thought to be everything that could ever exist, but recent theories about inflation (e.g. Big Bang) suggest our universe may be just one of countless bubbles of space time.
20. The Universe may have neither a centre nor an edge, because according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, gravity bends all of space time around into an endless curve.
21. If you fell into a black hole, you would stretch like spaghetti.
22. Matter spiraling into a black hole is torn apart and glows so brightly that it creates the brightest objects in the Universe – quasars.
23. The swirling gases around a black hole turn it into an electrical generator, making it spout jets of electricity billions of kilometers out into space.
24. The opposite of black holes are estimated to be white holes which spray out matter and light like fountains.
25. A day in Mercury lasts approximately as long as 59 days on earth.
Asteroid, discovered yesterday, swept past
Gianluca Masi, Space | November 2, 2016
Astronomers discovered asteroid 2016 VA on November 1, 2016, just hours before it passed within 0.2 times the moon’s distance of Earth. Images here.
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Near-Earth asteroid 2016 VA swept within only 0.2 times the moon's distance last night. Image via Virtual Telescope Project.
The near-Earth asteroid 2016 VA was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Sky Survey in Arizona (USA) on 1 Nov. 2016 and announced later the same day by the Minor Planet Center. The object was going to have a very close encounter with the Earth, at 0.2 times the moon’s distance – about 75,000 km [46,000 miles]. At Virtual Telescope Project we grabbed extremely spectacular images and a unique video showing the asteroid eclipsed by the Earth.
The image above is a 60-seconds exposure, remotely taken with “Elena” (PlaneWave 17?+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E robotic unit) available at Virtual Telescope. The robotic mount tracked the extremely fast (570″/minute) apparent motion of the asteroid, so stars are trailing. The asteroid is perfectly tracked: it is the sharp dot in the center, marked with two white segments. At the imaging time, asteroid 2016 VA was at about 200,000 km [124,000 miles] from us and approaching. Its diameter should be around 12 meters or so.
During its fly-by, asteroid 2016 VA was also eclipsed by the Earth’s shadow. We covered the spectacular event, clearly capturing also the penumbra effects.
The movie below is an amazing document showing the eclipse. Each frame comes from a 5-seconds integration.
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Asteroid 2016 VA eclipsed by Earth’s shadow. Image via Virtual Telescope Project.
The eclipse started around 23:23:56 UT and ended about at 23:34:46. To our knowledge, this is the first video ever of a complete eclipse of an asteroid. Some hot pixels are visible on the image. At the eclipse time, the asteroid was moving with an apparent motion of 1500″/minutes and it was at about 120,000 km [75,000 miles] from the Earth, on its approaching route. You can see here a simulation of the eclipse as if you were on the asteroid.
Bottom line: An asteroid called 2016 VA was discovered on November 1, 2016 and passed closest to Earth – within 0.2 times the moon’s distance – a few hours later. Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project caught images of the asteroid as it swept by.
Astronomers find a ‘nearly-naked’ supermassive black hole
Nicole Kiefert, Astronomy | November 02, 2016
A close galactic encounter gave these astronomers an interesting discovery
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Artist's conception of how the "nearly naked" supermassive black hole originated
Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF
Astronomers found a nearly-naked supermassive black hole emerge from the shredded remains of a galaxy and speed away at more than 2,000 miles per second.
This discovery, which was made using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VBLA), was part of a program to detect supermassive black holes that are not in the center of their galaxies.
While most supermassive black holes are at the center of the galaxies, an object called B3 1715+425 seems to be breaking that pattern. This object was in a cluster of galaxies called ZwCl 8193 and is a supermassive black hole that is in an unexpectedly small, faint galaxy. The object is leaving ionized gas behind as it speeds away from a much larger galaxy’s core.
“We were looking for orbiting pairs of supermassive black holes, with one offset from the center of a galaxy, as telltale evidence of a previous galaxy merger,” James Condon, of the National Radio Observatory, said in a press release. “Instead, we found this black hole fleeing from the larger galaxy and leaving a trail of debris behind it.”
The galaxies the astronomers were observing are more than 2 billion light-years away from Earth and were stripped of their stars and gasses after an encounter where the galaxy passed through a smaller galaxy passed through a larger one. The only remnants of the galaxy are its black hole and a small area about 3,000 light-years across.
According to Concon, the remnant will lose mass and stop forming stars as it continues speeding on until it becomes untraceable, as black holes are invisible to most instruments unless they are interacting with gases or other matter.
Hole-punch clouds are made by jets (Part 1)
Jorge Salazar and Deborah Byrd in Earth | Human World | November 4, 2016
Sometimes people report them as UFOs, but they’re called hole-punch clouds and they’re made by jets. The connection between hole-punch clouds, jets and snowfall.
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Patricia Evans spotted this hole-punch cloud about a year ago, on November 21, 2015, in a restaurant parking lot.
You’re probably familiar with contrails, the wispy strands of clouds made by jet exhaust high in the sky. But if you’ve ever seen a hole-punch cloud, sometimes called a fallstreak hole, you’ll be surprised by their strange appearance. They look like strange clearings in an altocumulus cloud layer, often-circular patches of clear sky, surrounded by clouds. Sometimes people report them as UFOs. Airplanes create hole-punch clouds – but just how do they do it?
According to weather.com, an altocumulus cloud layer is:
… composed of small water droplets that are below freezing called ‘supercooled water droplets.’ If ice crystals can form in the layer of supercooled droplets, they will grow rapidly and shrink or possibly evaporate the droplets completely.
Studies, including this one by Andrew Heymsfield and collaborators, have shown that aircraft passing through these cloud layers can trigger the formation of the heavier ice crystals, which fall to Earth and then leave the circular void in the blanket of clouds.
They concluded that aircraft propellers and wings cause the formation of those initial ice crystals. There are zones of locally low pressure along the wing and propeller tips which allow the air to expand and cool well below the original temperature of the cloud layer, forming ice crystals.
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Hole-punch clouds over Caledonia, Wisconsin. Photo via Lisa Anderson
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Image via Andrew Heymsfield. Used with permission.
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Houston, Minnesota. Photo via Jamie Vix.
Hole-punch clouds are made by jets (Part 2)
Jorge Salazar and Deborah Byrd in Earth | Human World | November 4, 2016
Andrew Heymsfield of the National Center for Atmospheric Research spoke with EarthSky some years ago, when his study first appeared. He told us:
This whole idea of jet aircraft making these features has to do with cooling of air over the wings that generates ice.
His team found that – at lower altitudes – jets can punch holes in clouds and make small amounts of rain and snow. As a plane flies through mid-level clouds, it forces air to expand rapidly and cool. Water droplets in the cloud freeze to ice and then turn to snow as they fall. The gap expands to create spectacular holes in the clouds. He said:
We found an exemplary case of hole-punch clouds over Texas. From satellite imagery you could see holes just pocketing the sky, holes and long channels where aircraft had been flying at that level of the cloud for a while.
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Hole-punch cloud. Image via NOAA[/IMG]
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Another hole-punch cloud via NOAA
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Hole-punch cloud via Editor B
Dr. Heymsfield used a weather forecast model developed at NCAR – and radar images of clouds from NASA’s CloudSat satellite – to explain the physics of how jet aircraft make hole-punch clouds.
Heymsfield’s team found that every measurable commercial jet aircraft, private jet aircraft and also military jets as well as turbo props were producing these holes. He said a hole-punch cloud expands for hours after being created. Major airports, where there’s a lot of aircraft traffic, would be a good place to study cloud holes. He said:
What we decided to do was look at major airports around the world, especially where there’s low cloud cover and cold clouds in the wintertime, and found that the frequency of occurrence suitable for this process to occur is actually reasonably high, on the order of three to five percent. In the winter months, it’s probably two to three times higher, 10 to 15 percent.
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Image via Andrew Heymsfield. Used with permission.
He said people who look out their airplane window in flight can see for themselves how the wing changes a cloud.
When an aircraft lands or takes off sometimes – especially in humid, tropical areas – you see a little veil of clouds over the wings of the aircraft. And basically, what’s happening over the wings of the aircraft, there’s cooling. And the cooling produces a cloud.
It’s basically a super-cooled cloud. It’s just like a fog you see at the ground except that its temperature is zero degrees centigrade. So in that process of expanding, the air expands over the wing and cools. And that cooling can be as much as 20 degrees centigrade.
The cooling of air over the wings generates ice, said Heymsfield.
About the Texas incident where satellite imagery showed many hole-punch openings and channels, Heymsfield said:
What we found was that there were about a hundred of these little features. We decided to, first of all, identify their location and see if we could link them to particular aircraft. Then the second thing we did was say, okay, why do these long channels last for the period of time it would take for a satellite to take a snapshot of them? We got high-time-resolution satellite imagery and were able then to track these features, these holes, and watch them develop with time, watch how they developed.
Bottom Line: Scientists have found that, at mid-altitudes, jet aircraft can punch holes in clouds and make small amounts of rain and snow. These are the strange hole-punch clouds that are sometimes reported as UFOs.
Capt.Kangaroo
11-04-2016, 09:51 PM
Or.... interdimensional worm holes.:D
Pretty wild looking. The vortices that some have draping below really add to the other dimension look.
Kimbo
11-05-2016, 01:48 PM
Awesome Pictures, people really need to look up to the sky more, nowadays they walk around like zombies with their smartphones!!
Near-Earth Asteroid Tally Reaches 15,000
Kelly Beatty, Sky&Telescope | November 4, 2016
Thanks to two aggressive search programs, the count of near-Earth asteroids has soared past the 15,000-object milestone.
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A plot of all known near-Earth asteroids (NEAs, shown in red) looks scary, but the risk of collision is actually quite low. Main-belt asteroids are shown in green. Minor Planet Center
On August 13, 1898, Carl Gustav Witt discovered a medium-size asteroid that circled the Sun much closer than its siblings did. In fact, what came to be called 433 Eros actually crosses the orbit of Mars during its 1.8-year solar circuit, and it can come as close to the Sun as 1.13 astronomical units (170 million kilometers)
From that modest beginning, the hunt for near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) — those that venture within 1.3 a.u. of the Sun — has evolved from sporadic, inadvertent pickups to dedicated searches that net hundreds of new objects every month.
A week ago, the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (just a few blocks from Sky & Telescope's offices) announced the discovery of asteroid 2016 TB57. With that find, the MPC's catalog of all known NEAs reached a new threshold: 15,000.
Much like the steady climb of the stock market with time, there's no particular significance to a count of 15,000 (it's already zoomed to 15,197 as I write this) or to 2016 TB57. Observers participating in the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey discovered it on October 13th as it neared Earth. Rather small, roughly 15 to 35 m across, it passed by at a very safe distance of 2,010,000 km (more than five times the Moon's distance) on October 31st.
Most NEAs are found, as their name implies, someplace near Earth. Generally they're too small to be spotted far away, and it's only within the week or so when they skim near our planet that they make their existence know. These days almost all NEAs are swept up by the Catalina survey or by Pan-STARRS 1, a wide-field telescope on Haleakala in Hawai'i. (That name is a contraction of Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System.)
Dynamicists break down NEAs into four types, each named for an archetype asteroid in that class. Amors (like Eros) cross the orbit of Mars but come no closer than 1.017 a.u. to the Sun (Earth's aphelion distance). Apollos have semimajor axes (their mean heliocentric distance) greater than 1.0 a.u. but still cross Earth's orbit at their closest. Atens have semimajor axes of less than 1 a.u. but likewise cross Earth's orbit (our planet's perihelion distance is 0.983 a.u.). At its most recent count, the MPC had tallied 6,537 Amors, 7,449 Apollos, and 1,120 Atens.
Apohele asteroids (sometimes called Atiras) are the newest and smallest group — only a dozen or so have been confirmed — and their entire orbits lie entirely inside of Earth's.
With all those space rocks flying around, you'd think that Earth might be in grave and imminent danger of a collision. But space is a big place, and neither NASA's Near-Earth Object Program nor its European Space Agency counterpart lists any object with a cumulative probability (that is, the risk over dozens of close approaches) higher than about 1 in 1,000. And that object is 2011 AM37, though no individual close pass at Earth has an impact risk greater than about 1 in 15,000.
Besides, it's only about 4 m (15 feet) across — almost certainly too small make it through our atmosphere to the ground.
Meanwhile, 433 Eros has hardly been relegated to the back shelf of asteroid discoveries. A highly elongated body about 34 km long, Eros played host to NASA's NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft, which orbited it for a year in 2000–01. Then, on February 12, 2001, the spacecraft made a dramatic — but mission-ending — landing on Eros' surface
Here's how to see the biggest supermoon since 1948
James Griffiths, CNN | Updated Wed November 2, 2016
November 14 supermoon will be biggest in almost 70 years
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(CNN) If you step outside on November 14, you might notice the moon is looking bigger and brighter than usual. Bigger in fact, than it has appeared at any point in the last 68 years, say scientists.
This month's supermoon, the penultimate of the year, will be the biggest so far of the 21st century.
We won't see its like again until 2034, so make sure you get a look.
Supermoon
A "supermoon" occurs when the moon becomes full on the same days as its perigee, which is the point in the moon's orbit when it is closest to Earth.
The term is borrowed from the pseudoscience of astrology but has been adopted by popular culture and astronomers.
Supermoons generally appear to be 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons.
While such moons occur around every 13 months, November's is a special one.
According to NASA, this month's supermoon "becomes full within about two hours of perigee—arguably making it an extra-super moon."
In America, the November full moon is known as a "Beaver Moon," because it arrives at the time of year when fur trappers would hunt the dam-building animals.
Interacting galaxies produce eye-shaped “tsunami” of stars
Astronomy Now | 5 November 2016
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Galaxies IC 2163 (left) and NGC 2207 (right) recently grazed past each other, triggering a tsunami of stars and gas in IC 2163 and producing the dazzling eyelid-like features there. ALMA image of carbon monoxide (orange), which revealed motion of the gas in these features, is shown on top of Hubble image (blue) of the galaxy pair. Image credit: M. Kaufman; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) have discovered a tsunami of stars and gas that is crashing midway through the disc of a spiral galaxy known as IC 2163. This colossal wave of material — which was triggered when IC 2163 recently sideswiped another spiral galaxy dubbed NGC 2207 — produced dazzling arcs of intense star formation that resemble a pair of eyelids.
“Although galaxy collisions of this type are not uncommon, only a few galaxies with eye-like, or ocular, structures are known to exist,” said Michele Kaufman, an astronomer formerly with The Ohio State University in Columbus and lead author on a paper just published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Kaufman and her colleagues note that the paucity of similar features in the observable universe is likely due to their ephemeral nature. “Galactic eyelids last only a few tens of millions of years, which is incredibly brief in the lifespan of a galaxy. Finding one in such a newly formed state gives us an exceptional opportunity to study what happens when one galaxy grazes another,” said Kaufman.
The interacting pair of galaxies resides approximately 114 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Canis Major. These galaxies brushed past each other — scraping the edges of their outer spiral arms — in what is likely the first encounter of an eventual merger.
Pillars of cosmic destruction: Colorful Carina Nebula blasted by brilliant nearby stars
Science Daily | 2 November 2016
Spectacular new observations of vast pillar-like structures within the Carina Nebula have been made using the MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope. The different pillars analysed by an international team seem to be pillars of destruction -- in contrast to the name of the iconic Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, which are of similar nature.
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These composite image shows several pillars within the Carina Nebula which were observed and studied with the MUSE instrument, mounted on ESO's Very Large Telescope. The massive stars within the star formation region slowly destroy the pillars of dust and gas from which they are born.
Credit: ESO/A.
Spectacular new observations of vast pillar-like structures within the Carina Nebula have been made using the MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope. The different pillars analysed by an international team seem to be pillars of destruction -- in contrast to the name of the iconic Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, which are of similar nature.The spires and pillars in the new images of the Carina Nebula are vast clouds of dust and gas within a hub of star formation about 7500 light-years away. The pillars in the nebula were observed by a team led by Anna McLeod, a PhD student at ESO, using the MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope.
The great power of MUSE is that it creates thousands of images of the nebula at the same time, each at a different wavelength of light. This allows astronomers to map out the chemical and physical properties of the material at different points in the nebula.
Images of similar structures, the famous Pillars of Creation* in the Eagle Nebula and formations in NGC 3603, were combined with the ones displayed here. In total ten pillars have been observed, and in so doing a clear link was observed between the radiation emitted by nearby massive stars and the features of the pillars themselves.
In an ironic twist, one of the first consequences of the formation of a massive star is that it starts to destroy the cloud from which it was born. The idea that massive stars will have a considerable effect on their surroundings is not new: such stars are known to blast out vast quantities of powerful, ionising radiation -- emission with enough energy to strip atoms of their orbiting electrons. However, it is very difficult to obtain observational evidence of the interplay between such stars and their surroundings.
The team analysed the effect of this energetic radiation on the pillars: a process known as photoevaporation, when gas is ionised and then disperses away. By observing the results of photoevaporation -- which included the loss of mass from the pillars -- they were able to deduce the culprits. There was a clear correlation between the amount of ionising radiation being emitted by nearby stars, and the dissipation of the pillars.
This might seem like a cosmic calamity, with massive stars turning on their own creators. However the complexities of the feedback mechanisms between the stars and the pillars are poorly understood. These pillars might look dense, but the clouds of dust and gas which make up nebulae are actually very diffuse. It is possible that the radiation and stellar winds from massive stars actually help create denser spots within the pillars, which can then form stars.
These breathtaking celestial structures have more to tell us, and MUSE is an ideal instrument to probe them with.
Note
* The Pillars of Creation are an iconic image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, making them the most famous of these structures. Also known as elephant trunks, they can be several light-years in length.
More information
This research was presented in a paper entitled "Connecting the dots: a correlation between ionising radiation and cloud mass-loss rate traced by optical integral field spectroscopy," by A. F. McLeod et al., published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The team is composed of A. F. McLeod (ESO, Garching, Germany), M. Gritschneder (Universitäts-Sternwarte, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany), J. E. Dale (Universitäts-Sternwarte, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany), A. Ginsburg (ESO, Garching, Germany), P. D.Klaassen (UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory Edinburgh, UK), J. C. Mottram (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany), T. Preibisch (Universitäts-Sternwarte, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany), S. Ramsay (ESO, Garching, Germany), M. Reiter (University of Michigan Department of Astronomy, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) and L. Testi (ESO, Garching, Germany).
Capt.Kangaroo
11-09-2016, 01:55 AM
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Today in science: Remembering Carl Sagan
Daniela Breitman in Human World | Space | November 9, 2016
For many, Carl Sagan’s name was synonymous with astronomy. Today would have been his 82nd birthday.
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It was Carl Sagan who said, “We’re made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
November 9, 1934. Today is the 82nd anniversary of the birth of astronomer and astronomy popularizer extraordinaire Carl Sagan. Most of us are familiar with this late American astronomer through his books and television series Cosmos. Sagan also contributed greatly to the field of planetary science and monumentally – perhaps immortally – to the American space program.
Carl Edward Sagan was born on November 9, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. He studied physics at the University of Chicago and earned his doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960.
In the 1960s, one of Sagan’s earliest works in professional astronomical research shed light on the atmospheres of our solar system’s planets. The atmospheres of Mars and Venus, for example, are known now to resemble that of Earth. But in Sagan’s day, scientists were still trying to understand how come Mars could be so cold while Venus is so hot. Sagan successfully confirmed that Venus could be a greenhouse furnace by using data from tables for steam boiler engineering.
Around this same time, Sagan became interested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and contributed much to it. He proved that the building blocks of life could be easily created by exposing simple chemicals to UV light. In 1966, he helped I. S. Shklovskii, a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist, revise and expand his classic book on extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Life in the Universe.
In 1971, Sagan was denied tenure at Harvard University; some speculated it was due to his controversial opinions on extraterrestrial intelligence. He went on to become a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he spent the rest of his professional career.
Sagan contributed mightily to the U.S. space program. Among other things, he briefed astronauts before their trip to the moon, and he was part of the Mariner, Viking, Galileo, and Voyager space missions. In the Viking missions, for example – two probes sent to explore Mars in the 1970s – he advised on the choice of ideal landing sites.
But – besides his books and the Cosmos television series – it’s Sagan’s actual messages to the cosmos – placed aboard the first spacecraft designed to leave our solar system, on the Pioneer and Voyager missions – for which he’s most remembered.
The original idea for the Pioneer plaques – a pair of gold-anodized aluminium plaques carrying messages from humankind, placed aboard the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft – originally came from journalist and consultant Eric Burgess. He approached Sagan about it, and NASA agreed to it and gave Sagan three weeks to prepare a message. Together with astronomer Frank Drake, who formulated the famous Drake Equation (a way of estimating the number of intelligent civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy), Sagan designed the plaque, with artwork prepared by his wife at the time, Linda Salzman Sagan.
The Pioneers and the plaques they carry are now billions of miles from Earth (but still within our sun’s influence). But eventually they’ll cross out of the sun’s influence, into the realm between the stars.
Later in that same decade, in the late 1970s, Sagan and his wife-to-be, Ann Druyan, contributed to the design of yet-other message from humankind to outer space. The Voyager probes were launched in 1977, and they both carry what is known as a Voyager Golden Record. Each Golden Record contains 116 images that depict historical scientific works and humans performing mundane activities, plus music from artists such as Bach, Mozart, and Chuck Berry, an hour-long record of Ann Druyan’s brainwaves, and greetings in 55 languages.
The Voyagers were launched later, but traveled faster than the Pioneers. Voyager 1 is now considered to be in interstellar space. It is the farthest object from Earth that is human-made. Voyager 2 is somewhat closer and is still in an outer region of our sun’s influence, known as the heliosheath.
During the 1980s, Sagan encouraged nuclear disarmament and was one of the five authors of the concept of nuclear winter, which describes the aftermath of a nuclear war. The work showed once and for all that, in a nuclear war, no one would win. It’s hard to estimate the importance of this work to the global consciousness of the time, but it’s perhaps no accident that the cold war ended not long afterwards.
Carl Sagan remained at Cornell until his death on December 20, 1996 at age 62 from pneumonia.
Over the course of his life, Carl Sagan wrote more than 600 professional astronomical research papers and 20 books. He was an inspiration to many. He inspired and continues to inspire many young scientists to thread the path of astronomy and astronomical communication. He encouraged scientific responsibility by promoting nuclear disarmament. His work in science outreach encouraged science literacy not only among Americans, but among the entire human race. He was very quotable and said, among many other wonderful things:
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
Do you remember him? Do you remember his words and the sound of his voice? Listen and remember, via the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PN5JJDh78I
Bottom line: Carl Sagan was born on November 9, 1934. He is most remembered for his efforts in popularizing science through his books, for his television series Cosmos and for his messages to the cosmos placed on the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft.
'Facts from Space!' Book Features Quirky Tidbits About the Universe
Hanneke Weitering, Space | November 12, 2016 07:00am ET
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Book cover for "Facts From Space!" by Dean Regas
Credit: Adams Media, 2016
Over the centuries, humans have gone from merely spotting cryptic celestial bodies to studying the details of deep-space objects and alien planets, and investigating mysterious dark matter and supermassive black holes. Learning everything there is to know about space is a daunting, and probably impossible, task. But a fun new book titled "Facts From Space!" makes learning about the universe easy and accessible.
Dean Regas, an astronomer and public outreach educator at the Cincinnati Observatory, wrote "Facts From Space!" to make astronomy and space science approachable and catchy, he said in an interview with Space.com. Every page features a handful of short facts and cartoonish illustrations that make learning about the universe a truly enjoyable — and occasionally, sidesplitting — experience.
The book is meant to be a nice and easy read for people of all ages regardless of their prior astronomy education or experience — though one blurb about whether astronauts have ever tried having sex in space might be deemed inappropriate for younger readers. Other than that one fact, the rest of the book seems entirely G-rated. It's filled with entertaining bits that any space lover can appreciate.
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Dean Regas, an astronomer at the Cincinnati Observatory in Ohio and author of the book
"Facts from Space!" holds a slide with a photo of the moon.
Credit: Leo Sack
Even the most seasoned space enthusiasts will find that this book contains information they never knew they needed to know. For instance, did you know that Saturn would float in a bathtub? Of course, you'd need a ridiculously huge tub to test this claim. "And, of course, it would probably leave a ring," Regas joked.
Plus, "Facts From Space!" contains several facts that kids usually don't learn in school. These "bloopers," as Regas calls them, include comical stories about astronauts in space. For example, early human missions to Earth's orbit used to eject human waste into space, leaving behind intricate formations of frozen astronaut pee floating around in space. And one Russian cosmonaut smuggled chocolates to the International Space Station. When he ripped open the box in zero gravity, pieces of chocolate flew everywhere. It took him 2 hours to collect (or eat) all of the pieces.
"Facts From Space!" is a book that you can pick up and flip to any page to learn fascinating, weird and even hilarious facts about space. It's divided into chapters that start out exploring things closer to Earth before taking the reader out into deep space. But there's really no need to read it in any particular order.
As Regas put it, "You can start anywhere and stop anywhere, and you get to these little bite-sized nuggets of information about the universe." Each fact in the book is no more than a few sentences long and can easily stand alone without the context of the rest of the chapter in which it resides. Hardly any attention span is required to enjoy the book. Anyone who otherwise struggles with focusing while reading books will find that reading "Facts From Space!" is an easy, breezy and enjoyable reading experience.
The unique and accessible format and tone of "Facts From Space!" sets it apart from other books that have attempted the all-encompassing approach at writing about the universe. "One of the goals of the book is to take you to these places and let you view the stars and view things like you're there," Regas said. "That's why I went beyond the normal facts, like 'This is how big Mars is' … and instead went with [facts about] what it would be like to actually be there."
"Facts From Space!" went on sale in October. It is available on Amazon...
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1440597014?tag=space041-20&ascsubtag=[site|space[cat|NA[art|34703[pid|1440597014|NA[bbc|manual
Meteorites reveal lasting drought on Mars
University of Stirling | November 11, 2016
The lack of liquid water on the surface of Mars today has been demonstrated by new evidence in the form of meteorites on the Red Planet examined by an international team of planetary scientists.
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Meteorite accumulation at Victoria Crater.
Credit: Image courtesy of University of Stirling
The lack of liquid water on the surface of Mars today has been demonstrated by new evidence in the form of meteorites on the Red Planet examined by an international team of planetary scientists.
In a study led by the University of Stirling, an international team of researchers has found the lack of rust on the meteorites indicates that Mars is incredibly dry, and has been that way for millions of years.
The discovery, published in Nature Communications, provides vital insight into the planet's current environment and shows how difficult it would be for life to exist on Mars today.
Mars is a primary target in the search for life outside Earth, and liquid water is the most important pre-requisite for life.
Dr Christian Schröder, Lecturer in Environmental Science and Planetary Exploration at the University of Stirling and Science Team Collaborator for the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity mission, said:
"Evidence shows that more than 3 billion years ago Mars was wet and habitable. However, this latest research reaffirms just how dry the environment is today. For life to exist in the areas we investigated, it would need to find pockets far beneath the surface, located away from the dryness and radiation present on the ground."
A study published last year, which used data from the Curiosity Rover investigating Gale crater on Mars, suggested that very salty liquid water might be able to condense in the top layers of Martian soil overnight.
"But, as our data show, this moisture is much less than the moisture present even in the driest places on Earth," explains Dr Schröder.
Using data from the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, the scientists examined a cluster of meteorites at Meridiani Planum -- a plain just south of the planet's equator and at a similar latitude to Gale crater.
Dr Schröder and his team have for the first time calculated a chemical weathering rate for Mars, in this case how long it takes for rust to form from the metallic iron present in meteorites.
This chemical weathering process depends on the presence of water. It takes at least 10 and possibly up to 10,000 times longer on Mars to reach the same levels of rust formation than in the driest deserts on Earth and points to the present-day extreme aridity that has persisted on Mars for millions of years.
Egads, what heavenly wonder is that? It's a moonbow!
Brandon Miller and Amanda Jackson, CNN | Updated 8:52 PM ET, Tue October 18, 2016
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Ben Gwynne, a professional photographer, set out to to take photos of the supermoon when he captured this moonbow.
(CNN) Patting yourself on the back for getting a killer photo of the supermoon? Well, Ben Gwynne can top that.
Like many of us, Gwynne was out last weekend to capture the moon in all its glory when he happened upon this amazing visual.
It's called a moonbow.
As the name suggests, a moonbow is the same thing as a rainbow. Like a rainbow, it's formed when light is refracted from water droplets suspended in the atmosphere.
The difference, of course, is that the moon doesn't produce its own light. So it's light from the sun reflecting off the moon's surface, and refracting off water droplets in the air.
Sunday night, it was foggy in North Yorkshire, England, where Gwynne captured this photo. Fog = more moisture = greater chance of a moonbow.
Moonbows are much fainter than rainbows, since moonlight much weaker than sunlight. The colors can be tough to see with the naked eye, but they come alive in long-exposure photos.
Want to take a crack at capturing your own moonbow? You can, when the next supermoon rises.
That's just a few weeks from now -- November 14. It's projected to be the biggest we've seen in the 21st century.
-------------------------------------------
The supermoon was cool looking last night, but, to be honest, it didn't look that much different than a full moon, at least in my neck of the woods. - Ilan
Are all stars created equal?
Astronomy Now | 14 November 2016
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Artist’s impression of an accretion burst in a high-mass young stellar object like S255IR NIRS 3 approximately 6,000 light-years away.
Image credit: Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI).
Astronomers using critical observations from the Gemini Observatory have found the strongest evidence yet that the formation of massive stars follows a path similar to their lower-mass brethren — but on steroids!
The new findings, that include data from Gemini, SOFIA, Calar Alto Observatory, and the European Southern Observatory, show that the episodic explosive outbursts within what are called accretion discs, known to occur during the formation of average mass stars like our Sun, also happen in the formation of much more massive stars.
“These outbursts, which are several orders of magnitude larger than their lower mass siblings, can release about as much energy as our Sun delivers in over 100,000 years,” said Dr. Alessio Caratti o Garatti of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (Ireland). “Surprisingly, fireworks are observed not just at the end of the lives of massive stars, as supernovae, but also at their birth!”
The international team of astronomers (led by Caratti o Garatti) published their work in the 14 November issue of the journal Nature Physics, presenting the first clear case that massive stars can form from clumpy discs of material — in much the same way as less massive stars. Previously it was thought that the accretion discs seen around lower mass stars would not survive around stars of higher mass due to their strong radiation pressure. Therefore, some other process would be necessary to account for the existence of more massive stars — which can exceed 50-100 times the mass of our Sun.
“How accretion discs can survive around these massive stars is still a mystery, but the Gemini spectroscopic observations show the same fingerprints we see in lower mass stars,” said Caratti o Garatti. “Probably the accretion bursts reduce the radiation pressure of the central source and allow the star to form, but we still have a lot of explaining to do in order to account for these observations.”
According to team member Dr. Bringfried Stecklum of the Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg (Germany), “Studying the formation of high-mass stars is challenging because they are relatively rare and deeply embedded in their natal cloud, thus not visible in optical, or visible, light. This is why we need infrared instruments like the Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph at Gemini North on Maunakea in Hawaii.” The outburst events are also very rapid, probably lasting only a few years or less — which, for a star, is the blink of an eye, adding to their rarity.
“The birth of truly massive stars has been a mystery that astronomers have been studying for decades. Only now, with large, infrared-optimised telescopes like Gemini, are we able to probe the details of this short-lived and, now it seems, rather explosive process,” notes Chris Davis, Program Director at the National Science Foundation which supports the operation of the Gemini Observatory and the development of its instruments. “These NIFS observations represent yet another coup for the Gemini Observatory.”
The developing star observed in this study, S255IR NIRS 3, is relatively distant, some 6,000 light-years away, with a mass estimated at about 20 times the mass of our Sun. The Gemini observations reveal that the source of the explosive outburst is a huge clump of gas, probably about twice the mass of Jupiter, accelerated to supersonic speeds and ingested by the forming star. The team estimates that the outburst began about 16 months ago and according to Caratti o Garatti it appears that the outburst is still active, but much weaker.
“While low-mass stars, and possible planetary systems, can form basically next door to our Sun, the formation of high-mass stars is a complex and relatively rapid process that tends to happen rather far away in our galaxy, thousands, or even tens of thousands of light-years away,” said Caratti o Garatti. He adds that the formation of these massive stars happens on timescales of 100,000 years, whereas it takes hundreds of times longer for lower-mass stars like our Sun to form. “When we study the formation of higher mass stars it’s like watching a time-lapse movie when compared to less massive stars, although the process for massive stars is fast and furious, it still takes tens of thousands of years!”
“While this research presents the strongest case yet for similar formation processes for low and high mass stars, there is still lots to understand,” concludes Stecklum. “Especially whether planets can form in the same way around stars at both ends of the mass spectrum.”
Star of the week: Almach
Bruce McClure, Brightest Stars | November 16, 2016
Almach looks like a single star to the eye and like a colorful double star through a telescope. But today we know Almach as four stars.
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2013/11/Almach-Scott-MacNeill1-e1479251992335.png
Through even a modest telescope, the star Almach (Gamma Andromedae) appears as one of the finest double stars in all the heavens. EarthSky friend Scott MacNeill captured this shot with the aid of a 12″ Newtonian telescope. Thank you, Scott!
The constellation Andromeda the Princess is renowned for the Andromeda galaxy, but anyone with even a modest telescope would be remiss to overlook Andromeda’s star Almach (Gamma Andromedae), which appears in a telescope as one of the finest double stars in all the heavens. One component of this telescopic double appears golden, and the other component appears indigo blue. What’s more, further research has shown that Almach is really four stars. Follow the links below to learn more about this beautiful star.
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Almach looks like a single star to the unaided eye. In skylore, Almach marks the Princess Andromeda’s left foot.
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2010/10/northeast_atumn_sky.jpg
Notice the star Almach in the upper right of this photo, almost directly above the Pleiades star cluster. Photo via aquinoktium on Flickr.
How to find the star Almach. In skylore, Almach marks the Princess Andromeda’s left foot. Star-hop to Almach from the Great Square of Pegasus, the signature star formation of Northern Hemisphere autumn.
Two streamers of stars fly outward from the Great Square, starting at the star Alpheratz. These streamers of stars are the constellation Andromeda.
Jump three stars over on the lower streamer to locate Almach. At second-magnitude brightness, Almach shines pretty much on a par with the stars of the Big Dipper.
This star – or we should say star system – is located an estimated 350 light-years away.
Almach looks single, but is really four stars. Look through the telescope to see Almach transform into two colorful suns. The larger sun appears golden, and the smaller one appears blue.
Practiced telescope users recommend a magnification of 75X or so for the most vivid view of this colorful double.
Some double star aficionados believe Almach’s vibrancy of color even surpasses that of the star Albireo in the constellation Cygnus, generally regarded as the sky’s finest double star. In autumn, both Almach and Albireo are there for the viewing, so check them out and decide for yourself.
The double nature of Almach has been known since 1778, when the astronomer Johann Tobias Mayer viewed them through one of the early telescopes.
Today, it’s known that the smaller blue star is also a triple star system, making Almach four stars in all.
Almach shines relatively close to the famous variable star Algol in the constellation Perseus. When Algol shines at maximum brilliance, it matches Almach in brilliance.
Bottom line: The star Almach (Gamma Andromedae) looks single to the eye. A telescope “splits” Almach into two stars. Astrononomical research has revealed that one component is a triple system, making Almach four stars in all.
Stephen Hawking says we've got about 1,000 years to find a new place to live
By Doug Criss, CNN | Updated 7:35 AM ET, Fri November 18, 2016
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(CNN) We're all doomed. Unless we can figure out how to get the heck off this planet.
Don't believe it? Then ask noted theoretical scientist and astronomer Stephen Hawking. He says humanity won't survive another 1,000 years on Earth because of, you know, the usual suspects -- climate change, nukes, robots.
Hawking, speaking earlier this week at Oxford University Union, says our best chance for survival as a species is to leave the only home we've ever known and establish colonies on other planets.
"Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next 1,000 or 10,000 years," Hawking said in the speech, according to the Christian Science Monitor. "By that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race."
And the pace of space exploration seems to be ramping up. NASA is busy searching for "goldilocks" -- exoplanets that might be able sustain human life. Meanwhile, Space X CEO Elon Musk has already laid out his plans to colonize Mars within the next century.
Despite all of his gloom and doom, Hawking did end with some positive notes, according to British newspaper The Independent.
"Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, wonder about what makes the universe exist," he said. "Be curious. However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up."
Mystery Sphere Spotted on the Surface of the Sun -- Is it a UFO?
Jessica F, Nature World News | Nov 21, 2016
And know for a little fun!
http://images.natureworldnews.com/data/thumbs/full/36706/720/0/0/0/last-transit-of-venus-across-the-sun-seen-from-southern-california.jpg
Alien hunters claim that a mysterious sphere spotted near the surface of the Sun is a UFO. The image analyzed was taken by NASA's SECCHI Stereo HI1 satellite.
(Photo : David McNew/Getty Images)
The sun, apparently, is not safe from speculations from conspiracy theorists. A report claims that a mysterious spot was seen on the surface of the Sun in a rare photograph and that the image is an unidentified flying object. How true can this be?
Conspiracy theorists and alien hunters were alarmed with what they saw on the Sun's recent photograph taken by NASA's satellites and observatories. Speculations grew saying that the sphere is another unidentified flying object (UFO) crossing extremely close to the Sun.
NASA's SECCHI Stereo Satellite HI1 took the image. Based on the data, Youtube user UFO mania uploaded a video claiming that NASA's image was able to capture a sphere that is an image of a UFO flying near the surface of the Sun.
"Our Sun is casting the Light that is coming in from the left side of the frame," the Youtube channel administrator said in the caption of the video. "This satellite's archives showed the Sun began reacting to this object on November 15th and there are several frames missing on the 15th and 16th," the administrator added.
Since it has been viewed more than 200,000 times, more and more people are spreading the rumors on the Internet. But scientists have a far more reasonable explanation as to what the sphere was.
NASA experts explain that, although it rarely happens, some images might appear 'corrupted' thus the appearance of marks and other noise on the images produced, according to RT. This can also be attributed to data overload and a series of exposures combined together.
This case can be compared to that of the alleged UFO sighting during an ISS live feed. Alien hunters say that the video was deliberately cut when a UFO appeared during the live feed. But NASA offered a more realistic explanation by saying that the interrupted live feed was due to signal loss in the agency's communication system and not an attempt to hide a UFO sighting to the world.
Most of the time, these claims have a scientific explanation, it will depend on the person which side he or she wants to believe. But for experts, so far, there is no hardcore evidence to prove that aliens do exists so the realistic and straight forward explanations are more accurate than mere speculations.
Video:
https://youtu.be/x1eTiCdd_cU
theone
11-21-2016, 02:12 PM
Looks like an ordinary sun spot to me.
Apparently, it was moving at a higher rate of speed than should a sunspot. Who knows! Always fun to watch folks get into a lather about something, though.
Marley
11-23-2016, 12:53 AM
lol its a bug
What happens if the sun disappears?
EarthSky Voices in Earth | Human World | Space | November 19, 2016
Some things that would happen here on Earth if our giant source of heat and light were to vanish from the sky, and how long it would take.
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Image via solarcentre
This infographic from the Solar Centre looks at what would happen if our giant source of heat and light were to suddenly vanish from the sky, along with a timescale of how long it would take for these things to happen.
Bottom line: Infographic showing what would happen if our sun suddenly disappeared.
theone
11-29-2016, 02:04 AM
Is anyone watching the Show MARS On National Geographic?
I haven't yet. You? If so, what do you think?
theone
11-29-2016, 01:06 PM
I haven't yet. You? If so, what do you think?
I watched last weeks episode but didn't get anything out of it so I decided to watch this weeks and still nothing. Don't think I will be watching it anymore lol. I missed Cosmos.
Cosmos was great! It was inspiring. Carl is sorely missed as the public face of astronomy.
How long to orbit Milky Way’s center?
EarthSky in Astronomy Essentials | Space | November 28, 2016
One journey of our sun and planets around the center of our Milky Way galaxy is sometimes called a cosmic year. That’s approximately 225-250 million Earth-years.
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2014/01/sun-milky-way-location-Caltech.jpg
Our sun is located about two-thirds of the way out from the center of the Milky Way. Illustration via Caltech.
The planets in our solar system orbit around the sun. One orbit of the Earth takes one year. Meanwhile, our entire solar system – our sun with its family of planets, moon, asteroid and comets – orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Our sun and solar system move at about about 500,000 miles an hour (800,000 km/hr) in this huge orbit. So in 90 seconds, for example, we all move some 12,500 miles (20,000 km) in orbit around the galaxy’s center.
Our Milky Way galaxy is a big place. Even at this blazing speed, it takes the sun approximately 225-250 million years to complete one journey around the galaxy’s center.
This amount of time – the time it takes us to orbit the center of the galaxy – is sometimes called a cosmic year.
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Artist’s concept of solar system with the Milky Way galaxy in the background.
By the way, in the past when we’ve talked about this subject, people have commented on the difference between the words rotate and revolve. The word revolve means to orbit around another body. Earth revolves (or orbits) around the sun. The sun revolves around the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
On the other hand, rotate means to spin on an axis. The Earth rotates every 24 hours. The sun rotates, but not at a single rate across its surface. The movements of the sunspots indicate that the sun rotates once every 27 days at its equator, but only once in 31 days at its poles.
What about the Milky Way galaxy? Yes, the whole galaxy could be said to rotate, but like our sun, the galaxy is spinning at different rates as you move outward from its center. At our sun’s distance from the center of the Milky Way, it’s rotating once about every 225-250 million years – defined by the length of time the sun takes to orbit the center of the galaxy.
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2014/01/milky-way-differential-rotation.jpg
Illustration of a rotating galaxy, with different parts of the galaxy revolving around the center at different rates. Scientists call this “differential rotation.” Stars near the center revolve around the center faster than those farther out. This diagram is from Nick Strobel’s Astronomy Notes. Go to his site at (www dot astronomynotes dot com) for updates and more info.
Bottom line: The planets in our solar system orbit (revolve) around the sun, and the sun orbits (revolves) around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. We take about 225-250 million years to revolve once around the galaxy’s center. This length of time is called a cosmic year.
Can we see stars outside our Milky Way?
EarthSky in Tonight | November 28, 2016
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Photo by Jeff Dai in Tibet.
One of you wrote:
Are there any stars outside our own galaxy that we can see with just the eye?
The answer is no – unless you count seeing the combined light of many billions of stars. From the Northern Hemisphere, the only galaxy outside our Milky Way that’s easily visible to the eye is the great galaxy in the constellation Andromeda, also known as M31.
From the Southern Hemisphere, it’s possible to see two dwarf galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
So what are we seeing when we look up? The image at the top of this post shows a hazy band in the sky. This is the edgewise view into our own Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light-years in a diameter, but it’s relatively flat, only about 10,000 light-years thick. So – if we’re looking in a dark sky – when we look toward the galactic disk, we see the starry band of the Milky Way.
And when we look up or down – away from the flat disk of the galaxy – we’re also seeing Milky Way stars. All of the stars we see with the eye alone belong to our Milky Way galaxy.
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2015/08/anthony-lynch-photography-perseid-meteor-andromeda-galaxy-2015.jpg
Anthony Lynch Photography provided this beauty of photo in August, 2015. It’s a colorful Perseid meteor and the Andromeda galaxy. Thank you Anthony!
It is possible to see the Andromeda galaxy with the eye alone, from Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. This galaxy appears as a hazy patch in our night sky, about as wide in diameter as a full moon. And, indeed, this haze represents the light of the Andromeda galaxy’s billions of stars. But we still can’t see individual stars within this galaxy – not with the eye alone. Even with amateur telescopes, the patch of light that we see as the Andromeda galaxy looks, at best, like haze.
A few years ago, astronomers released a new sharpest-ever view of the Andromeda galaxy.
And you can see the galaxy for yourself. At mid-northern latitudes in late November, the Andromeda galaxy is visible from nightfall till about 4 a.m. Here are a couple of ways to find the galaxy:
Use Great Square of Pegasus to find Andromeda galaxy
Or …
Use constellation Cassiopeia to find Andromeda galaxy
Be sure to look for it in a dark sky, far from city lights. Good luck!
Bottom line: On a dark night, there are so many stars. Are any of the stars we see with the eye alone located beyond our home galaxy? The answer is no. All the stars we see with the eye alone belong to our Milky Way. But there is one distant galaxy you can see from Earth.
Geminid meteors in moonlight
EarthSky in Tonight | December 11, 2016
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2015/12/Geminids-Graphic-for-RAS-e1449800136372.jpg
On the nights of December 11 and 13, 2016, you might see some meteors as the 2016 Geminid meteor shower picks up steam. The peak comes Tuesday night – the night of December 13 – but these nights might be a good time to watch, too. Just know that the best viewing hours are typically in the wee hours after midnight (around 2 a.m.), no matter where you are on Earth. In the Northern Hemisphere, this meteor shower often rates as one of the best – if not the best – shower of the year on a dark, moonless night. You can often see as many as 50 or more meteors per hour But this year, in 2016, the full moon occurs on the same date as the shower’s peak. The optimal viewing night on December 13-14 will be under the glaring night of a supermoon, which is sure to reduce the count this year.
A new light on stellar death
University of California, Santa Barbara
Astronomers illuminate the role rapidly spinning black holes play in tidal disruption events
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/12/161212133642_1_900x600.jpg
An artist's depiction of a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole surrounded the rotating leftovers of a star that was ripped apart by the tidal forces of the black hole.
Credit: ESO, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser
Back in 2015 when astronomers discovered an intense flare in a distant galaxy, they considered it the brightest supernova ever observed.
Now, UC Santa Barbara astrophysicists and a group of international colleagues offer an entirely different interpretation based on new astronomical observation data from the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO), a global robotic telescope network, and the Hubble Space Telescope.
The new information indicates that the event, called ASASSN-15lh, is actually a tidal disruption event (TDE) -- the destruction of a star by a supermassive black hole. The findings appear in the inaugural issue of the journal Nature Astronomy.
"Years ago we just wouldn't have been able to follow an event like this," said co-author Andy Howell, leader of the supernova group at the Goleta, California-based LCO and an adjunct professor in UCSB's Department of Physics. "This study shows that large-area surveys, a global robotic telescope network and a NASA satellite can come together to reveal dramatic new discoveries that wouldn't be possible without each piece of that puzzle."
Using images from the Hubble Space Telescope that were not available when ASASSN-15lh was discovered, the scientists found that the event occurred at the center of the galaxy where the supermassive black hole resides. The black hole inferred to lie in this galaxy is more than 100 million times the mass of the sun.
For a star to be tidally disrupted by such a massive black hole -- rather than swallowed whole -- the black hole must be spinning very rapidly. This discovery marks the first time that a TDE has been used to probe the spin of a black hole, a property that is very difficult to measure and is used to infer the existence of so-called Kerr black holes.
ASASSN-15lh occurred when the star strayed too close to the supermassive black hole and was torn apart by the tides generated by the extreme gravity. The stellar material orbited around the black hole, collided with itself at high velocity and started falling into the black hole. This released copious amounts of energy and generated the bright flare astronomers observed as ASASSN-15lh.
"We've only been studying the optical flares of tidal disruptions for the last few years," said co-author Iair Arcavi, principal investigator of the LCO program that's used to observe ASASSN-15lh and an Einstein postdoctoral fellow at UCSB. "ASASSN-15lh is similar in some ways to the other events we've been seeing but is different in ways we didn't expect. It turns out that these events -- and the black holes that make them -- are more diverse than we had previously imagined."
"This is like discovering a new kind of dinosaur," Howell said. "Now that we have the right tools and know what to look for, we're going to find more and get a better sense of the population. It's exciting to have new ways of learning about black holes and stellar death."
Soupy mix of minerals a ‘jackpot’ on Mars
Shannon Stirone, Astronomy Magazine | Wednesday, December 14, 2016
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/12/curiositymtsharp.jpg?mw=600
Mount Sharp stands in the distance for Curiosity. This image was captured shortly after the rover landed. It’s come a long way since.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Today, the Red Planet is a dry, dusty landscape devoid of hospitable environments, but the Mars of yesteryear, evidence suggests, was a far more forgiving place.
Recent findings from the Curiosity rover indicate that the clay and mineral deposits on the higher regions of Mount Sharp were ideal for hosting life. The rover regularly takes samples of the soil as it traverses the mountain and also uses its Chem-Cam laser to analyze the composition of rocks that are of particular interest.
Recently, Curiosity discovered something on the Red Planet that’s never been seen before: boron. This finding is of particular interest to scientists because boron is usually found in abundance of groundwater, and where we find water we tend to find life. NASA’s mission, after all, is to always “follow the water.”
A super flash from a star and a supermassive black hole
Weizmann Institute of Science | December 15, 2016
The brightest flash of light in the cosmos could be a rare event involving a star and a supermassive black hole
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/12/161215105857_1_900x600.jpg
In just the right conditions, the destruction of a star in a black hole's gravitational tide should produce an unusual flash of light.
Credit: Chandra/Harvard
When astronomers and astrophysicists observe flashes of light in the dark sky, they assume they have seen a supernova. Possibly a star has burnt up its supply of nuclear fuel and collapsed, throwing off its outer layers into space; or maybe a dense white dwarf siphoned off material from a companion star until it exploded from excess weight. But a flash of light observed on June 14, 2015 did not fit any of the usual models.
For one thing, the intensity of the light was double that of the brightest supernova recorded up to that point. So astrophysicists were already asking what process could have caused it. And there were other anomalies, as well: Rather than gradually cooling, which is what happens in the average supernova, the temperature of the material emitting radiation went down -- and then up again, remaining at the higher level for quite a while. And the site of the flash was a puzzle, as well: Supernovae tend to occur in young, "blue" galaxies, but this one took place in an old "red" galaxy, in which the stars were not really candidates for exploding.
Postdoctoral fellow Giorgos Leloudas and Prof. Avishay Gal-Yam of the Particle Physics and Astrophysics Department of the Weizmann Institute of Science investigated. Together with colleagues at the Institute, Drs. Paul Vreeswijk, Ofer Yaron and Steve Schulze, Joel Johannson, and Ira Bar, as well as researchers around the world, they closely observed, measured and recorded the event. This led them to the discovery that the spectrum of the light had changed several times, and the hypothesis they formed based on this finding was that they had observed an extremely rare event: the destruction of a star by the gravitational tides of a black hole at the center of its galaxy.
The flash had, in fact, come from the middle of that distant galaxy, and further analysis suggested that the observations fit what is known about stars being caught in a black hole's gravitational tide.
The reason such an event, producing such a bright flash, is so rare is that two conditions must be met for it to occur: The star must stray close enough to the black hole to cross its "event horizon" -- the point at which it cannot escape the pull of the giant mass -- but the light produced in its destruction must somehow escape the black hole's all-consuming gravity. And for these conditions to occur, the galaxy's central black hole, which is immense even by black-hole standards, must be rotating at a relativistic speed -- close to the speed of light.
Observing the light over several months, the team came to the conclusion that the best explanation for the unusual flash of light was, indeed, the destruction of a star caught in the gravitational tides of an exceptionally massive black hole rotating extremely rapidly.
Kimbo
12-17-2016, 10:27 PM
Awesome!!!Just Awesome!!!
Amazing stuff... The black hole got most of it!
Capt.Kangaroo
12-17-2016, 11:41 PM
With the new Snow backgrounds, it looks like shooting stars here on the space pics.
Cool.:)
crazed 9.6
12-17-2016, 11:51 PM
ahh yea, so cool Captain.
I did not see it at first till I waited for the snow to reach the first pic at top of page..
cool :)
The flakes got my tablet wet :)
Marley
12-19-2016, 12:46 AM
man i want same meds your all on
Hubble Images Tangled Web in Nearby Galaxy
Kimberly Burtnyk, Sky&Telescope | December 15, 2016
A Hubble image of a nearby, massive elliptical galaxy (NGC 4696) reveals tenuous filaments that appear to be connected to the growth of the galaxy's supermassive black hole.
The latest Hubble Space Telescope image of the huge and unusual elliptical galaxy, NGC 4696, has revealed in greater detail than ever before the intricate web of hot, glowing gas across a 30,000 light-year region near the galaxy’s core. The close-up look at these gossamer gas filaments is helping astronomers understand the dynamics that occur around the supermassive black holes chowing down on gas.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/NGC_4696.jpg
This picture, taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, shows NGC 4696, the largest, brightest, and centralmost galaxy in the Centaurus Cluster. The new images taken with Hubble show the dusty filaments surrounding the centre of this huge galaxy in greater detail than ever before.
NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Fabian
The Tangled Threads within NGC 4696
NGC 4696 is a bright and massive galaxy at the center of the Centaurus cluster, 150 million light-years from Earth. It’s also an active galaxy, its brightness powered by a supermassive black hole lurking in its heart.
The region shown above has been of interest to astronomers for decades. Elliptical galaxies are typically amorphous, featureless, and nearly spherical assemblages of stars, devoid of spiral arms and, often, recent star formation. Early on astronomers discovered that NGC 4696 possesses a massive dust lane arcing across its nucleus. Later images revealed the even more intricate nebulosity present in this central region. These curious features have made NGC4696 an object of great interest to astronomers.
NGC 4696 wide-field view
Hubble last imaged NGC4696 in 2010. Now, this new look zooms in on the central part of the galaxy. The image reveals, in finer detail than ever before, the 30,000-light-year-long dust lane crossing the galaxy’s face, as well as the more recently discovered threads of glowing nebulae woven throughout the region.
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A wide-field view of the bright and massive elliptical galaxy, NGC 4696.
Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey
Each filament of hot, glowing gas in this image is about 200 light-years across. Astronomers believe that the filaments themselves may consist of many even smaller threads.
Striking in their shape and extent, these delicate strands are 100 times longer than they are wide, and yet they live dangerously close (in cosmic terms) to the heart of an active galaxy.
Survival of the Filaments
The supermassive black hole at the center of NGC 4696 doesn’t just consume a lot of matter; it also belches out a lot of energy in the form of jets. These jets inflate bubbles filled with energetic particles that balloon out thousands of light years. The bubbles ought to have expanded through the volume that contains the filaments. Why doesn’t the expanding wake of energy shred them, dispelling their material throughout the galaxy?
It could be that the radio bubbles, despite their seemingly inhospitable environments, actually create filaments. The bubble’s magnetic fields appear to be channeling hot gas into narrow regions. Then as the bubbles expand away from the galaxy’s center, the channels of gas stretch out like taffy.
Andrew Fabian (Cambridge University, UK) and colleagues saw a similar situation in NGC 1275, a bright elliptical galaxy that also features radio bubbles and filaments within them. NGC 1275 sits at the center of the Perseus Cluster. The filament-creating process may be common to the bright, central members of galaxy clusters.
NGC 1275
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/NGC_1275.jpg
NGC is the brightest, most massive, and centralmost galaxy of the Perseus Cluster. It, too, is surrounded by thin filaments. Read more in this October 2013 Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Image: Hubble Legacy Archive / ESA / NASA, Processing: Al Kelly
Future Study
“What would be even more interesting would be to resolve the structure near the supermassive black hole," says Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo (University of Montreal, Canada), who also studies supermassive black hole feedback. "Is the swirl still present on smaller scales? How far down do filaments go? Down to the black hole?"
Luckily, NGC 4696 is particularly well-suited for such study. Because it’s much closer than other massive ellipticals, sharper images of filaments and other structures close to the heart of its central black hole will no doubt shed new light on the dynamics of radio bubbles and glowing gas filaments in massive elliptical galaxies.
Capt.Kangaroo
12-21-2016, 06:16 AM
https://www.facebook.com/spacecom/photos/a.435000291465.235599.17610706465/10154004831386466/?type=3
I suspect something was supposed to be here!
Festive nebulae light up Milky Way Galaxy satellite
ESA/Hubble Information Centre | 20 December 2016
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/12/161220140859_1_900x600.jpg
This glowing nebula, named NGC 248, is located within the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way and about 200 000 light-years from Earth. The nebula was observed with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in Sept. 2015, as part of a survey called the Small Magellanic cloud Investigation of Dust and Gas Evolution (SMIDGE).
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, K. Sandstrom (University of California, San Diego), and the SMIDGE team
The sheer observing power of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is rarely better illustrated than in an image such as this. This glowing pink nebula, named NGC 248, is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, just under 200,000 light-years away and yet can still be seen in great detail.
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of a collection of galaxies known as the Local Group. Along with the Andromeda Galaxy , the Milky Way is one of the Group's most massive members, around which many smaller satellite galaxies orbit. The Magellanic Clouds are famous examples, which can easily be seen with the naked eye from the southern hemisphere.
Within the smaller of these satellite galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured two festive-looking emission nebulae, conjoined so they appear as one. Intense radiation from the brilliant central stars is causing hydrogen in the nebulae to glow pink.
Together the nebulae are called NGC 248. They were discovered in 1834 by the astronomer Sir John Herschel. NGC 248 is about 60 light-years long and 20 light-years wide. It is among a number of glowing hydrogen nebulae in the Small Magellanic Cloud, which lies in the southern constellation of Tucana(The Toucan), about 200,000 light-years away.
The nebula was observed as part of a Hubble survey, the Small Magellanic cloud Investigation of Dust and Gas Evolution (SMIDGE). In this survey astronomers are using Hubble to probe the Small Magellanic Cloud to understand how its dust -- an important component of many galaxies and related to star formation -- is different from the dust in the Milky Way.
Thanks to its relative proximity, the Small Magellanic Cloud is a valuable target. It also turns out to have only between a fifth and a tenth of the amount of heavy elements that the Milky Way has, making the dust similar to what we expect to see in galaxies in the earlier Universe.
This allows astronomers to use it as a cosmic laboratory to study the history of the Universe in our cosmic backyard. These observations also help us to understand the history of our own galaxy as most of the star formation happened earlier in the Universe, at a time when the percentage of heavy elements in the Milky Way was much lower than it is now.
The data used in this image were taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in September 2015.
Marley
12-23-2016, 04:57 AM
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Sand dunes
Depicted is the Nili Patera region of Mars, one of the most active dune fields on the planet. The area is routinely monitored and photographed to better map and understand both seasonal and annual winds. Thankfully, the HiRISE camera transmits a new photo of this region nearly every six weeks, so there are always new photographs to pique your galactic wanderlust.
Marley
12-23-2016, 04:59 AM
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Supernova remnants
You're looking at one of the largest images ever produced by the Hubble telescope -- a rather astounding quantifier considering the telescope has taken more than one million "observations" in its lifetime. In this photo, the orbiting observatory gives humanity the most detailed image to date of the Crab Nebula
Marley
12-23-2016, 05:00 AM
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Charon up-close
This photo of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, was snapped by the New Horizons spacecraft. Charon is a very large natural satellite. In fact the moon is nearly half the size of Pluto. The combination is sometimes even referred to as a double dwarf planet system. The reddish portion at the top is a polar region known informally as Mordor Macula.
Marley
12-23-2016, 05:04 AM
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Saturnian hurricanes
The Cassini satellite completed its original four-year mission to explore the Saturn and its moons in 2008. And it's still snapping detailed photographs of the beautiful ringed planet today. This incredible image is a close-up of Saturn’s north-pole hurricane, the first close-up ever taken of the infamous storm; the clouds at the edge are traveling at roughly 335 miles per hour. The eye of the hurricane itself is roughly 1,200 miles wide. To put that in perspective, the United States is about 2,800 miles across. The vibrant colorations are added by spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light.
When astronauts 'saved' the worst year in American history (not 2016)
Eric Betz, Astronomy Magazine | Thursday, December 22, 2016
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/12/apollo8.jpg?mw=1000&mh=800The Apollo 8 crew, from left, Jim Lovell, Bill Anders and Frank Borman.
You know it’s been tough times when a Dumpster fire is the meme of the year. Indeed, 2016 has been rough: pop culture icons died, police and activists squared off in major cities, we survived a cutthroat presidential election, Syria burned, terrorists attacked around the globe.
And, like today, most people were eager to tack a new calendar on the wall by the time Bill Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell launched for the moon on December 21, 1968 — the unofficial worst year ever in the U.S.
That year, MLK had been shot dead, Bobby Kennedy, too. U.S. soldiers were dying every day. Hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians were killed in the Mai Lai massacre. Political unrest and violence gripped the country. Riots hit the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. And Richard Nixon was elected president.
“By Dec. 31, I was literally too pessimistic to say Happy New Year,” historian Susan Strasser told Slate in July. (The piece revisits the worst years ever).
But as Christmas neared, humanity found reason for hope. Astronauts — heroes in those days — were making their first trip from the Earth to the moon. For NASA, the mission was a Hail Mary. It was a last ditch effort to beat the Russians, who U.S. intelligence believed was readying to launch their own crewed spacecraft.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2016/12/apolloonearth1024x678.jpg?mw=1000&mh=800In the wee hours of the morning, on Dec. 29, 1968, thousands of people gathered at the Ellington Air Force Base to welcome the members of the Apollo 8 crew back home.
So, the American space agency scrapped its plans to orbit Earth and test the lunar lander. Instead, Apollo 8 would orbit the moon. Their ride — the titanic Saturn V rocket — had seen few tests. And three astronauts had just died the previous year. MIT engineers cooked up new navigation plans and the astronauts retrained for their new destination.
As they planned the flight changes, the astronauts realized that they’d be orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve. They wanted to do something special.
“So we thought, well how about changing the words to ‘The Night Before Christmas’?” Lovell told Astronomy magazine in a recent interview. “That didn’t sound too good. Or how about ‘Jingle Bells’? No, that was even worse. So we were at an impasse.”
A friend suggested farming it out to a newspaper reporter he knew, figuring he was pretty good with words.
As Lovell tells it:
He spent one night trying to figure out what these three people should say. It was going through quite a bit of the evening, and pretty soon, around midnight, his wife came down the stairs and said, “What are you doing?” And he told her the story that he was writing this thing for the Apollo 8 crew. He hadn’t really come up with anything yet. And she said, “Well, you know, that’s simple — why don’t they read from the Old Testament the first 10 verses of Genesis? I mean, it’s an emotional time, sort of a holy time, but Genesis, the first 10 verses, is the structure of most of the world’s religions — especially Christianity, but Judaism and also Islam.” All had their origins somehow from the Old Testament. So that’s what we did. Got it down and put it on fireproof paper, and it was put in the back of the flight manual.
The Dec. 21 launch went off without a hitch. Anders, Borman and Lovell soon became the first to leave Earth’s gravity behind. And on Christmas Eve, as the trio completed their fourth orbit around the moon, something totally unexpected happened: The spacecraft turned perfectly just as Earth broke over the lunar horizon.
“Oh, my God, look at that picture over there,” Anders told Lovell. “There’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!”
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The iconic Earthrise photo.
That Earthrise image became one of the most iconic in human history.
Five orbits later, just as evening settled across America, the astronauts appeared on television as scheduled. The eyes of the world — an audience estimated at half a billion people — turned to watch. The space farers showed Earth rising out the spacecraft window, and panned their cameras across the lunar surface. Then they took turns reading from the book of Genesis.
“For all the people on Earth,” Anders said, “the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you.”
After concluding, Lovell added: “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”
At the time, with their focus solely on the mission, the astronauts hadn’t realized how powerful the event was for humans back on Earth. Time magazine went so far as to name them people of the year.
“It really wasn’t until we came back that we suddenly realized what the flight had accomplished as to the attitude of the Americans,” Lovell said in 2014. “We got so many telegrams, and one I remember distinctly, all it said was ‘You saved 1968’.”
Apollo 8's Christams Eve 1968 Message
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToHhQUhdyBY
More Cool, Amazing Astronomy Facts
About Education
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Even though humans have studied the heavens for thousands of years, we still know very little about many objects and processes in the universe. As we continue to explore, we learn more about the stars, planets, and galaxies. Some of the things we find out are amazing, and others are confusing. Here is a collection of amazing, interesting, and strange astronomy facts, based on our current knowledge of the cosmos.
We can only detect about 5% of the matter in the universe. The rest is made up of invisible matter (called dark matter) and a mysterious form of energy known as dark energy.
Neutron stars are the leftovers of the deaths of massive stars in supernova explosions. These stars are so dense a soup can full of neutron star material would have more mass than the Moon. They are among the fast-spinning objects astronomers have studied, with spin rates up to 500 times per second!
The Sun's core releases the the equivalent of 100 billion nuclear bombs every second. All that energy works its way out through the various layers of the Sun, taking thousands of years to make the trip. The Sun's energy is emitted as heat and light and it powers the solar system.
Galileo Galilei is often incorrectly credited with the invention of the telescope. Historians now think the Dutch eyeglass maker Johannes Lippershey was its creator. Galileo was probably the first to use the device to study the heavens to make his discoveries.
Black holes are so dense, and produce such intense gravity, that nothing — not even light —can escape their gravitational clutches. However, there are some unusual situations where a form of radation — called Hawking radiation — can slip away.
When supermassive black holes collide, gravitational waves are released. These waves were known to exist, and were finally detected in 2015.
If you somehow got too close to a black hole and were sucked in by its gravitational pull, it would pull harder on your feet than on your head. You would get stretched out — or spaghettified — by the intense pull. You would NOT survive the experience!
Light from distant stars and galaxies takes so long to reach us that we are actually seeing these objects as they appeared in the past. As we look up at the sky, we are really looking back in time. For example, the Sun's light takes almost 8.5 minutes to travel to Earth, so we see the Sun as it looked 8.5 minutes ago. The nearest star to us, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away, so it appears as it was 4.2 years ago. The nearest galaxy is 2.5 million light-years away, and it looks as it did when our australopithecus hominid ancestors walked the planet.The farther away something is, the further back in time it appears.
The Crab Nebula was produced by a supernova explosion that appeared in our skies in the year 1054 A.D. The Chinese and Arab astronomers at the time noted that the explosion was so bright that it was visible during the day, and it lit up the night sky for months. It was likely also observed by the Anasazi people of the U.S. southwest.
Shooting stars really aren't stars. They are usually just tiny dust particles falling through our atmosphere and they vaporize due to the heat of friction with the atmospheric gases. Earth sometimes passes through cometary orbits. As comets travel around the Sun, they leave behind dust trails. When Earth encounters that dust, we see an increase in meteors as the particles travel through our atmosphere and are burned up.
Even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, temperatures there can reach -280 degrees F on its surface. How can this happen? Since Mercury has almost no atmosphere, there is nothing to trap heat near the surface. So, the dark side of Mercury (the side facing away from the Sun) gets very cold.
Venus is considerably hotter than Mercury, even though it is farther away from the Sun. The thickness of Venus’s atmosphere traps heat near the surface of the planet. Venus also spins very slowly on its axis.
A day on Venus is 243 Earth-days long, while Venus's year is only 224.7 days. Even weirder, Venus spins backwards on its axis compared to the other planets in the solar system.
Space isn't completely empty. We often hear about the vacuum of space, but it turns out that there are a few atoms of matter in each cubic meter of space. The space between galaxies, which was also once thought to be quite empty can often be filled with molecules of gas and dust.
The universe is filled with galaxies and the most distant ones are moving away from us at more than 90 percent of the speed of light.
2016—the year in space and astronomy (Videos Abound)
Alan Duffy And Rebecca Allen, The Conversation | December 28, 2016
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The discovery of the year was the first detection of gravitational waves. Credit: LIGO/T. Pyle
The achievements of astrophysicists this year were as groundbreaking as they were varied. From reuniting a lander with a mothership on a comet, to seeing the most extreme cosmic events with gravitational waves, 2016 was truly out of this world for science.
Here are some of the highlights of the year that was.
1. Gravitational Waves
The spectacular announcement that ripples in the very fabric of spacetime itself had been found (and from surprisingly massive black holes colliding) sent similarly massive ripples through the scientific community. The discovery was made using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and represents a fundamentally new sense with which to see the universe.
The gravitational waves cause one arm of the LIGO detector to stretch relative to the other by less than a thousandth of the width of a proton in the centre of the atom. Relatively speaking, that's like measuring a hair's-width change in the distance to the nearest star.
This discovery was the end of a century-long quest to prove Einstein's final prediction that these gravitational waves are real. It also allows us to directly "see" that famously and fundamentally invisible entity: the black hole (as well as definitively proving its existence). The fact that the two black holes collided 1.3 billion years ago and the waves swept through Earth just days after turning the detector on only add to the incredible story of this discovery.
Animation showing how colliding black holes cause a ripple in spacetime that moves outwards into the universe as a gravitational wave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLAmF0H-FTM
2. SpaceX lands (and crashes) a rocket
The year started so well for SpaceX with the incredible achievement of sending a satellite into orbit, which is no mean feat itself at such low cost, before then landing that launch rocket on a barge in the ocean. A seemingly unstoppable sequence of launches and landings made it appear that a new era of vastly cheaper access to space through rockets that could be refuelled and reused was at hand.
Unfortunately, with the explosion of a Falcon 9 on the launchpad, the company was grounded, but apparently hopes for a resumed launch in early January.
Add to that the visionary plans to settle Mars outlined by Elon Musk, albeit not without some audacious challenges, and it's been a year of highs and lows for SpaceX.
The ‘sound’ of the black holes colliding where the measured signal from LIGO is converted to audio, the rising chirp sound towards the end is the two black holes spiralling together ever more quickly. A surprisingly wimpy sound for the most extreme collision ever detected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyDcTbR-kEA
3. Closest star may harbour Earth-like world
Proxima Centauri is our Sun's nearest neighbour at just over four light years away, and it appears that its solar system may contain an Earth-like world. Until this year, astronomers weren't even sure that any planets orbited the star, let alone ones that might harbour the best extrasolar candidate for life that spacecraft could visit within our lifetime.
The planet, creatively named "Proxima b", was discovered by a team of astronomers at Queen Mary University in London. Using the light of Proxima Centuari, the astronomers were able to detect subtle shifts in the star's orbit (seen as a "wobble"), which is the telltale sign that another massive object is nearby.
While Proxima Centuari is barely 10% the size of our Sun, Proxima b's orbit is only 11 days long, meaning it is very close to the star and lies just within the so-called habitable zone. However, follow-up with either Hubble or the upcoming James Webb Space telescope is necessary to determine if the exoplanet is as well suited for life as Earth.
A Falcon 9 first-stage automatically returns to the barge/droneship ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyDcTbR-kEA
4. Breakthrough Listen listening and Starshot star-ted
With a potential Earth twin identified in Proxima b, now the challenge is to reach it within a human lifetime. With the breakthrough initiative starshot, which has been funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and endorsed by none other than Stephen Hawking, lightweight nanosails can be propelled by light beams to reach speeds up to millions of kilometres an hour.
Such speeds would allow a spacecraft to arrive at Proxima b in about 20 years, thus enabling humans to send information to another known planet for the first time.
However, there are many challenges ahead, such as the fact that the technology doesn't exist yet, and that high-speed collisions with gas and dust between stars may destroy it before it can reach its target.
SpaceX outlines a vision for travel to Mars with planned Interplanetary Transport System.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA
But humans have proven to be resourceful, and key technology is advancing at an exponential rate. Incredibly the idea of sailing to another world is no longer science fiction, but rather an outrageously ambitious science project.
Perhaps, aliens are already sending out their own information in the form of radio transmissions. In another breakthrough initiative called Listen, also championed by Hawking, astronomers will be searching the habitable zones around the million closest stars to try to detect incoming radio transmissions. Involving Australia's very own Parkes telescope (as well as the Green Bank Telescope and Lick Observatory at visible wavelengths of light), observations have been running through 2016 and the search for alien signals will continue for the next decade.
5. Philae reunited with Rosetta
In 2014 the Philae lander became the first space probe to land on a comet, and even though its crash landing dictated that its science transmission would be a one-off, its recent rediscovery by Rosetta has allowed it to continue to contribute to analysis of comet 67P.
What a trip to the Sun’s closet neighbour would look like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uBG_Xowyp4
Philae's crash location, as well as the orientation of the doomed probe, has allowed astronomers to accurately interpret data taken by Rosetta regarding the composition of the comet.
While Philae has literally been living under (crashed on) a rock for the past two years, Rosetta has been the busy bee, taking numerous images, spectroscopy and other data of the comet.
In fact, data taken from Rosetta's spectrometer has been analysed and revealed that the amino acid, glycine, is present in the comet's outgassing, which breaks away from the surface of the comet as it becomes unstable from solar heating. Glycine is one of the fundamental building blocks of life; necessary for proteins and DNA, and its confirmed extraterrestrial confirms that the ingredients for life are unique to Earth, and that we may have comets to thank for providing our microbial ancestors with those crucial ingredients.
One of the founders of the Breakthrough initiatives, Yuri Milner, discusses the technology needed for breakthrough starshot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoCm6vZDDiQ
Outlook for Down Under
The future for astrophysics in Australia in 2017 looks particularly bright, with two ARC Centres of Excellence: CAASTRO-3-D studying the build of atoms over cosmic time; and OzGRav exploring the universe with gravitational waves; as well as SABRE, the world's first dark matter detector in the Southern Hemisphere, installed by end of the year.
If you thought 2016 was a great year in space, then you're in for a treat in 2017.
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Hubble gazes at a cosmic 'megamaser'
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center | December 29, 2016
This entire galaxy essentially acts as an astronomical laser that beams out microwave emission rather than visible light (hence the 'm' replacing the 'l').
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/12/161229113426_1_900x600.jpgThis megamaser galaxy is named IRAS 16399-0937 and is located over 370 million light-years from Earth. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image belies the galaxy's energetic nature, instead painting it as a beautiful and serene cosmic rosebud. The image comprises observations captured across various wavelengths by two of Hubble's instruments: the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS).
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
This galaxy has a far more exciting and futuristic classification than most -- it hosts a megamaser. Megamasers are intensely bright, around 100 million times brighter than the masers found in galaxies like the Milky Way. The entire galaxy essentially acts as an astronomical laser that beams out microwave emission rather than visible light (hence the 'm' replacing the 'l').
A megamaser is a process that involves some components within the galaxy (like gas) that is in the right physical condition to cause the amplification of light (in this case, microwaves). But there are other parts of the galaxy (like stars for example) that aren't part of the maser process.
This megamaser galaxy is named IRAS 16399-0937 and is located over 370 million light-years from Earth. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image belies the galaxy's energetic nature, instead painting it as a beautiful and serene cosmic rosebud. The image comprises observations captured across various wavelengths by two of Hubble's instruments: the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS).
NICMOS's superb sensitivity, resolution, and field of view gave astronomers the unique opportunity to observe the structure of IRAS 16399-0937 in detail. They found it hosts a double nucleus -- the galaxy's core is thought to be formed of two separate cores in the process of merging. The two components, named IRAS 16399N and IRAS 16399S for the northern and southern parts respectively, sit over 11,000 light-years apart. However, they are both buried deep within the same swirl of cosmic gas and dust and are interacting, giving the galaxy its peculiar structure.
The nuclei are very different. IRAS 16399S appears to be a starburst region, where new stars are forming at an incredible rate. IRAS 16399N, however, is something known as a LINER nucleus (Low Ionization Nuclear Emission Region), which is a region whose emission mostly stems from weakly-ionized or neutral atoms of particular gases. The northern nucleus also hosts a black hole with some 100 million times the mass of the sun!
Why the New Year begins on January 1
Daniela Breitman and Deborah Byrd in Human World | January 1, 2017
We celebrate the New Year on January 1 for reasons that are mainly historical, not astronomical. And yet nature cooperates to make January 1 a satisfying time to start anew.
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The date of a new year isn’t precisely fixed by any natural or seasonal marker. Instead, our celebration of New Year’s Day on January 1 is a civil event. That’s despite the fact that, for us in the Northern Hemisphere where the amount of daylight has ebbed to its lowest point and the days are getting longer again, there’s a feeling of rebirth in the air.
Our modern celebration of New Year’s Day stems from an ancient Roman custom, the feast of the Roman god Janus – god of doorways and beginnings. The name for the month of January also comes from Janus, who was depicted as having two faces. One face of Janus looked back into the past, and the other peered forward to the future.
To celebrate the new year, the Romans made promises to Janus. From this ancient practice comes our tradition of making New Year’s Day resolutions.
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January 1 hasn’t been New Year’s Day throughout history, though. In the past, some New Year’s celebrations took place at an equinox, a day when the sun is above Earth’s equator, and night and day are equal in length. In many cultures, the March or vernal equinox marks a time of transition and new beginnings, and so cultural celebrations of a new year were natural for that equinox. The September or autumnal also had its proponents for the beginning of a new year. For example, the French Republican Calendar – implemented during the French Revolution and used for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805 – started its year at the September equinox.
The Greeks celebrated the new year on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.
Today, although many do celebrate New Year’s Day on January 1, some cultures and religions do not. Jews use a lunar calendar and celebrate the New Year on Rosh Hashana, the first day of the month of Tishri, which is the first month of their calendar. This date usually occurs in September.
Most are also familiar with the Chinese New Year, celebrated for weeks in January or early February. In 2017, the Chinese New Year of the Rooster begins on January 28.
By the way, in addition to the longer days here in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s another astronomical occurrence around January 1 each year that’s also related to Earth’s year, as defined by our orbit around the sun. That is, Earth’s perihelion – or closest point to the sun – happens every year in early January. In 2017, perihelion comes on January 4.
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We don’t celebrate New Year’s Day on January 1 for this reason, but it would make sense if we did. Perihelion – our closest point to the sun in our yearly orbit – takes place each year around January 4. Image via NASA
Bottom line: The reason to celebrate New Year’s Day on January 1 is historical, not astronomical. The New Year was celebrated according to astronomical events – such as equinoxes and solstices – eons ago. Our modern New Year’s celebration stems from the ancient, two-faced, Roman god Janus, after whom the month of January is also named. One face of Janus looked back into the past, and the other peered forward to the future.
Mysterious radio signal traced to dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years away
James Griffiths, CNN | 4 January 2016
(CNN) A mysterious signal that has confounded scientists for years has been traced to a spot in the sky more than 3 billion light-years away.
Almost a decade after the first fast radio burst (FRB) was discovered, an international team of researchers has pinpointed the origin of one such signal as a dwarf galaxy in the pentagon-shaped constellation Auriga.
Scientists originally thought the signal -- sporadic bursts of radio waves -- was coming from within the Milky Way itself, or from our closest galactic neighbors, but a new report in the journal Nature confirms it emanates from a tiny galaxy 1% the mass of our own.
"These radio flashes must have enormous amounts of energy to be visible from over 3 billion light-years away," Cornell University researcher Shami Chatterjee said in a statement.
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Visible-light image of the dwarf galaxy from which signal FRB121102 is emanating.
Distant signals
Fast radio bursts were first discovered in 2007, and scientists have been trying to ascertain their origin and cause ever since.
There are currently 18 known FRBs, but they were all detected by non-specialist radio telescopes that were unable to narrow down their origin to a precise location, according to researchers at McGill University.
In 2012, scientists at Cornell spotted that one signal just three one-thousandths of a second long -- FRB121102 -- was repeating sporadically.
"There's a patch of the sky from which we're getting this signal -- and the patch of the sky is arc minutes in diameter. In that patch are hundreds of sources. Lots of stars, lots of galaxies, lots of stuff," Chatterjee said.
After more than 50 hours examining the skies hoping to get a spot of the signal, they got lucky, and were able to trace it to its origin.
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What next?
Now than an FRB has been traced to its origin, scientists may finally be close to explaining what causes the peculiar signals.
Unfortunately for alien enthusiasts, extraterrestrial intelligence is not near the top of the list of explanations.
"We think it may be a magnetar -- a newborn neutron star with a huge magnetic field, inside a supernova remnant or a pulsar wind nebula -- somehow producing these prodigious pulses," Chatterjee said.
Neutron stars are incredibly small and dense objects with a mass around twice that of the sun. They are formed by the supernova explosion of a massive star as it reaches the end of its lifespan and detonates its remaining fuel in spectacular fashion.
The signals could also be caused by a black hole at the center of the dwarf galaxy -- also known as an active galactic nuclei -- which gives off bursts of light as particles fall into at incredible speed.
While these are the most common explanations for FRBs, Bryan Butler of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory pointed out that they may not apply to this particular signal.
"We do have to keep in mind that this FRB is the only one known to repeat, so it may be physically different from the others," he said in a statement.
NASA’s NEOWISE mission spies one comet, maybe two
Stephen Clark, Astronomy Now
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An artist’s rendition of 2016 WF9 as it passes Jupiter’s orbit inbound toward the sun. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
NASA’s NEOWISE mission has recently discovered some celestial objects traveling through our neighborhood, including one on the blurry line between asteroid and comet. Another — definitely a comet — might be seen with binoculars through next week.
An object called 2016 WF9 was detected by the NEOWISE project on Nov. 27, 2016. It’s in an orbit that takes it on a scenic tour of our solar system. At its farthest distance from the sun, it approaches Jupiter’s orbit. Over the course of 4.9 Earth-years, it travels inward, passing under the main asteroid belt and the orbit of Mars until it swings just inside Earth’s own orbit. After that, it heads back toward the outer solar system. Objects in these types of orbits have multiple possible origins; it might once have been a comet, or it could have strayed from a population of dark objects in the main asteroid belt.
2016 WF9 will approach Earth’s orbit on Feb. 25, 2017. At a distance of nearly 32 million miles (51 million kilometers) from Earth, this pass will not bring it particularly close. The trajectory of 2016 WF9 is well understood, and the object is not a threat to Earth for the foreseeable future.
A different object, discovered by NEOWISE a month earlier, is more clearly a comet, releasing dust as it nears the sun. This comet, C/2016 U1 NEOWISE, “has a good chance of becoming visible through a good pair of binoculars, although we can’t be sure because a comet’s brightness is notoriously unpredictable,” said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
As seen from the northern hemisphere during the first week of 2017, comet C/2016 U1 NEOWISE will be in the southeastern sky shortly before dawn. It is moving farther south each day and it will reach its closest point to the sun, inside the orbit of Mercury, on Jan. 14, before heading back out to the outer reaches of the solar system for an orbit lasting thousands of years. While it will be visible to skywatchers at Earth, it is not considered a threat to our planet either.
NEOWISE is the asteroid-and-comet-hunting portion of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. After discovering more than 34,000 asteroids during its original mission, NEOWISE was brought out of hibernation in December of 2013 to find and learn more about asteroids and comets that could pose an impact hazard to Earth. If 2016 WF9 turns out to be a comet, it would be the 10th discovered since reactivation. If it turns out to be an asteroid, it would be the 100th discovered since reactivation.
What NEOWISE scientists do know is that 2016 WF9 is relatively large: roughly 0.3 to 0.6 mile (0.5 to 1 kilometer) across.
It is also rather dark, reflecting only a few percent of the light that falls on its surface. This body resembles a comet in its reflectivity and orbit, but appears to lack the characteristic dust and gas cloud that defines a comet.
“2016 WF9 could have cometary origins,” said Deputy Principal Investigator James “Gerbs” Bauer at JPL. “This object illustrates that the boundary between asteroids and comets is a blurry one; perhaps over time this object has lost the majority of the volatiles that linger on or just under its surface.”
Near-Earth objects (NEOs) absorb most of the light that falls on them and re-emit that energy at infrared wavelengths. This enables NEOWISE’s infrared detectors to study both dark and light-colored NEOs with nearly equal clarity and sensitivity.
“These are quite dark objects,” said NEOWISE team member Joseph Masiero, “Think of new asphalt on streets; these objects would look like charcoal, or in some cases are even darker than that.”
NEOWISE data have been used to measure the size of each near-Earth object it observes. Thirty-one asteroids that NEOWISE has discovered pass within about 20 lunar distances from Earth’s orbit, and 19 are more than 460 feet (140 meters) in size but reflect less than 10 percent of the sunlight that falls on them.
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has completed its seventh year in space after being launched on Dec. 14, 2009.
Astronomers predict explosion that will change the night sky in 2022
Matt Kucinski, Lynn Rosendale, Phys.Org | January 9, 2017
https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/astronomypro.jpgMolnar’s prediction is that a binary star (two stars orbiting each other) he is monitoring will merge and explode in 2022. Credit: Calvin College
Calvin College professor Larry Molnar and his students along with colleagues from Apache Point Observatory (Karen Kinemuchi) and the University of Wyoming (Henry Kobulnicky) are predicting a change to the night sky that will be visible to the naked eye.
"It's a one-in-a-million chance that you can predict an explosion," Molnar said of his bold prognostication. "It's never been done before."
Molnar's prediction is that a binary star (two stars orbiting each other) he is monitoring will merge and explode in 2022, give or take a year; at which time the star will increase its brightness ten thousand fold, becoming one of the brighter stars in the heavens for a time. The star will be visible as part of the constellation Cygnus, and will add a star to the recognizable Northern Cross star pattern.
A question leads to exploration
Molnar's exploration into the star known as KIC 9832227 began back in 2013. He was attending an astronomy conference when fellow astronomer Karen Kinemuchi presented her study of the brightness changes of the star, which concluded with a question: Is it pulsing or is it a binary?
Also present at the conference was then Calvin College student Daniel Van Noord '14, Molnar's research assistant. He took the question as a personal challenge and made some observations of the star with the Calvin observatory.
"He looked at how the color of the star correlated with brightness and determined it was definitely a binary," said Molnar. "In fact, he discovered it was actually a contact binary, in which the two stars share a common atmosphere, like two peanuts sharing a single shell.
"From there Dan determined a precise orbital period from Kinemuchi's Kepler satellite data (just under 11 hours) and was surprised to discover that the period was slightly less than that shown by earlier data" Molnar continued.
This result brought to mind work published by astronomer Romuald Tylenda, who had studied the observational archives to see how another star (V1309 Scorpii) had behaved before it exploded unexpectedly in 2008 and produced a red nova (a type of stellar explosion only recently recognized as distinct from other types). The pre-explosion record showed a contact binary with an orbital period decreasing at an accelerating rate. For Molnar, this pattern of orbital change was a "Rosetta stone" for interpreting the new data.
Making a bold prediction
Upon observing the period change to continue through 2013 and 2014, Molnar presented orbital timing spanning 15 years at the January 2015 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, making the prediction that KIC 9832227 may be following in the footsteps of V1309 Scorpii. Before taking the hypothesis too seriously, though, one needed to rule out other, more mundane, interpretations of the period change.
In the two years since that meeting, Molnar and his team have performed two strong observational tests of the alternative interpretations. First, spectroscopic observations ruled out the presence of a companion star with an orbital period greater than 15 years. Second, the rate of orbital period decrease of the past two years followed the prediction made in 2015 and now exceeds that shown by other contact binaries.
Moving from theory to reality
"Bottom line is we really think our merging star hypothesis should be taken seriously right now and we should be using the next few years to study this intensely so that if it does blow up we will know what led to that explosion," said Molnar.
To that end, Molnar and colleagues will be observing KIC 9832227 in the next year over the full range of wavelengths: using the Very Large Array, the Infrared Telescope Facility, and the XMM-Newton spacecraft to study the star's radio, infrared and X-ray emission, respectively.
"If Larry's prediction is correct, his project will demonstrate for the first time that astronomers can catch certain binary stars in the act of dying, and that they can track the last few years of a stellar death spiral up to the point of final, dramatic explosion," said Matt Walhout, dean for research and scholarship at Calvin College.
Watching in wonder
"The project is significant not only because of the scientific results, but also because it is likely to capture the imagination of people on the street," said Walhout. "If the prediction is correct, then for the first time in history, parents will be able to point to a dark spot in the sky and say, 'Watch, kids, there's a star hiding in there, but soon it's going to light up.'"
Molnar says that this is the beginning of a story that will unfold over the next several years, and people of all levels can participate.
"The orbital timing can be checked by amateur astronomers," said Molnar. "It's amazing the equipment amateur astronomers have these days. They can measure the brightness variations with time of this 12th magnitude star as it eclipses and see for themselves if it is continuing on the schedule we are predicting or not."
An asteroid swooped right between the Earth and the moon today
Nicole Kiefert, Astronomy | Monday, January 09, 2017
The newly discovered asteroid came within half the distance from the Earth to the Moon
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2017/01/PHA2017AG13OribitDiagram.jpg?mw=1000&mh=800
A diagram of the asteroid's orbit
An asteroid came within half the distance from Earth to the Moon, flying through cis-lunar space this morning. Scientists at the Catalina Sky Survey discovered the asteroid, which is being called asteroid 2017 AG13, on Saturday.
The asteroid was between 50-111 feet across and was moving at about 10 miles (16 kilometers) per second, which was the same size as the asteroid that hit Russia in 2013. The size of the asteroid coupled with how fast it was moving and its low albedo (brightness) made it difficult to view through a telescope.
Asteroid 2017 AH13 is particularly interesting to astronomers because of its proximity to Earth in a group called the Aten Asteroids. Slooh Astronomer Eric Edelman said in a video that this asteroid is following an elliptical orbit versus the usual circular orbit, and crosses through the orbits of both Venus and Earth.
Seeking Alpha Centauri’s unseen planets
Deborah Byrd, Space | January 9, 2017
A new agreement between the European Southern Observatory and Breakthrough Initiatives will let ESO’s Very Large Telescope seek planets in the star system next door.
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Things are getting exciting, both in the search for planets beyond Earth and in our ability to visit these worlds, someday. Earlier today (January 9, 2017), the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced it has signed a new agreement with Breakthrough Initiatives – which was founded by Russian high-tech billionaire Yuri Milner – to adapt ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile to the task of seeing planets in the Alpha Centauri system, the nearest star system to Earth. Such planets could be the targets for an eventual launch of very fast nano space probes by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative.
Cool, yes?
The Alpha Centauri system is an attractive place to seek planets – and possibly someday visit – especially since ESO’s 2016 discovery of a planet for Proxima Centauri, the closest of Alpha Centauri’s three stars. ESO’s Pale Red Dot campaign searched … and found it. The planet appears to be only slightly more massive than Earth, and it’s in Proxima Centauri’s habitable zone, meaning there’s a potential for liquid water to exist on its surface.
And it’s only, approximately, 4 light-years away. By conventional wisdom, it would take a spacecraft tens of thousands of years to travel that distance. But Breakthrough Initiatives isn’t satisfied with convention wisdom. More about that below.
First, the newly announced agreement, which was signed in late 2016. It provides funds for the VISIR (VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared) instrument, mounted at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to be modified in order to greatly enhance its ability to see Proxima Centauri’s planet. That’s important because no one has actually seen it yet. Like most of the several thousand known exoplanets – planets orbiting distant suns – Proxima’s planet is known only by the the tiny back and forth wobble of its star, presumably caused by the unseen planet’s gravitational pull.
The agreement also provides for telescope time to allow a careful search program to be conducted in 2019.
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ESO explained in today’s announcement:
Knowing where the nearest exoplanets are is of paramount interest for Breakthrough Starshot, the research and engineering programme launched in April 2016, which aims to demonstrate proof of concept for ultra-fast light-driven ‘nanocraft,’ laying the foundation for the first launch to Alpha Centauri within a generation.
In fact, Breakthrough Starshot plans not only to launch within a generation, but to get somewhere on a timescale we humans can fathom.
The plan is to spend $100 million to begin proof-of-concept studies for a 100-million-mile-per-hour flyby mission to the Alpha Centauri system. The stars are about 4 light-years or 25 trillion miles (40 trillion km) away. Breakthrough Starshot is seeking confirmation that it’s possible to use a 100-gigawatt light beam to propel approximately 1,000 ultra-lightweight nanocraft to 20 percent of light speed.
If it’s shown to be possible, this fleet of nanostarships could reach Alpha Centauri within about 20 years of launch.
Due to the finite travel speed of light (including radio waves), we would then wait 4 more years to hear back from any nanocraft that successfully swept through the Alpha Centauri system.
The first step in all of this, of course, is to examine the Alpha Centauri system closely using earthly telescopes. That is what the agreement between ESO and Breakthrough Initiatives is all about.
Bottom line: On January 9, 2017, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced a new agreement with Breakthrough Initiatives. It’ll allow an instrument upgrade – and purchase telescope time – to gain more information about planets in the Alpha Centauri system, the star system next door.
Watch 2017’s 2nd spacewalk January 13
Eleanor Imster in Human World | January 12, 2017
ISS astronauts will work on a complex upgrade to the station’s power system during Friday’s spacewalk. Live TV coverage starts at 5:30 a.m. EST (1030 UTC). The spacewalk begins at 7 a.m. EST (1200 UTC) and is expected to last about 6 hours.
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NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson went spacewalking January 6, 2017, to upgrade power systems on the International Space Station. Photo via @Space_Station
ISS astronauts will work on a complex upgrade to the station’s power system during Friday’s spacewalk. Live TV coverage starts at 5:30 a.m. EST (1030 UTC). The spacewalk begins at 7 a.m. EST (1200 UTC) and is expected to last about 6 hours.
On Friday, January 13, 2017, two International Space Station (ISS) astronauts will perform the second spacewalk of 2017 to continue work on a complex upgrade to the station’s power system. The year’s first spacewalk happened on January 6. This week’s spacewalk will begin at 7 a.m. EST (1200 UTC) and last about six hours. Coverage of the spacewalk will begin at 5:30 a.m. EST (1030 UTC) on NASA TV.
Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) will perform Friday’s spacewalk. This will be Kimbrough’s fourth spacewalk. He’ll be be designated extravehicular crew member 1 (EV 1), wearing the suit with red stripes. Pesquet will be making the first spacewalk of his career. He’ll be designated extravehicular crew member 2 (EV 2), wearing the suit with no stripes.
Here’s what the astronauts will be doing outside the station, according to a NASA statement:
Working on the right side truss of the space station, the crew members will install adapter plates and hook up electrical connections for six new lithium-ion batteries that were delivered to the station in December, 2016.
Prior to each spacewalk, the new batteries will be robotically extracted from a pallet to replace 12 older nickel-hydrogen batteries through a series of robotic operations. Nine of the older batteries will be stowed in a cargo resupply craft for later disposal, while three will remain on the station’s truss, disconnected from the power grid. The robotic operations will not air on NASA TV.
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By the way, we carry NASA TV. Look for it a little bit below CNN US. - Ilan
The Moon is much older than everyone thought
Nicole Kiefert, Astronomy Magazine | Thursday, January 12, 2017
Somewhere between 40 million and 140 million years older, to be exact.
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Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon
NASA
The Moon has been a constant in the sky, but have you wondered just how old it actually is? A team of researchers at UCLA wondered that exact thing and conducted a study to find an exact age and found the Moon is as much as 140 million years older than we’ve previously known. This moves the potential age back to 4.51 billion years old.
The team studied zircons, or minerals from the Moon, brought back from the Apollo 14 mission in 1971. In 2016, a UCLA research team reported that the collision between the Earth and planetary embryo Theia was a violent, head-on collision that resulted in the creation of the Moon.
Mélanie Barboni, a research geochemist in UCLA’s Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences and lead author on this study, said in a press release that looking for the age of the Moon has been difficult because “whatever was there before the giant impact has been erased.”
To find some answers, Barboni studied eight zircons in a lab at Princeton using a mass spectrometer.
“Zircons are nature’s best clocks,” Kevin McKeegan, a UCLA professor of geochemistry and cosmochemistry, and a co-author of the study said in the press release. “They are the best mineral in preserving geological history and revealing where they originated.”
The Moon was initially covered in a magma ocean after the collision between Earth and Theia, which later cooled and became the Moon’s mantle and crust. To see when that happened, Barboni studied the uranium zircon and how it had decayed to lead. To figure out when the magma itself formed, she studied the lutetium zircons and how it decayed to hafnium.
“Mélanie was very clever in figuring out the moon’s real age dates back to its pre-history before it solidified, not to its solidification,” said Edward Young, a UCLA professor of geochemistry and cosmochemistry and a co-author of the study.
These findings were published in the Science Advances journal on January 11, 2017. The team is still studying the zircons to find more information about the early ages of the Moon.
Farthest stars in Milky Way might be ripped from another galaxy
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics | 11 January 2017
The 11 farthest known stars in our galaxy are located about 300,000 light-years from Earth, well outside the Milky Way's spiral disk. New research shows that half of those stars might have been ripped from another galaxy: the Sagittarius dwarf. Moreover, they are members of a lengthy stream of stars extending one million light-years across space, or 10 times the width of our galaxy.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2017/01/170111110810_1_900x600.jpg
In this computer-generated image, a red oval marks the disk of our Milky Way galaxy and a red dot shows the location of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. The yellow circles represent stars that have been ripped from the Sagittarius dwarf and flung far across space. Five of the 11 farthest known stars in our galaxy were probably stolen this way. Credit: Marion Dierickx / CfA
The 11 farthest known stars in our galaxy are located about 300,000 light-years from Earth, well outside the Milky Way's spiral disk. New research by Harvard astronomers shows that half of those stars might have been ripped from another galaxy: the Sagittarius dwarf. Moreover, they are members of a lengthy stream of stars extending one million light-years across space, or 10 times the width of our galaxy.
"The star streams that have been mapped so far are like creeks compared to the giant river of stars we predict will be observed eventually," says lead author Marion Dierickx of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
The Sagittarius dwarf is one of dozens of mini-galaxies that surround the Milky Way. Over the age of the universe it made several loops around our galaxy. On each passage, the Milky Way's gravitational tides tugged on the smaller galaxy, pulling it apart like taffy.
Dierickx and her PhD advisor, Harvard theorist Avi Loeb, used computer models to simulate the movements of the Sagittarius dwarf over the past 8 billion years. They varied its initial velocity and angle of approach to the Milky Way to determine what best matched current observations.
"The starting speed and approach angle have a big effect on the orbit, just like the speed and angle of a missile launch affects its trajectory," explains Loeb.
At the beginning of the simulation, the Sagittarius dwarf weighed about 10 billion times the mass of our Sun, or about one percent of the Milky Way's mass. Dierickx's calculations showed that over time, the hapless dwarf lost about a third of its stars and a full nine-tenths of its dark matter. This resulted in three distinct streams of stars that reach as far as one million light-years from the Milky Way's center. They stretch all the way out to the edge of the Milky Way halo and display one of the largest structures observable on the sky.
Moreover, five of the 11 most distant stars in our galaxy have positions and velocities that match what you would expect of stars stripped from the Sagittarius dwarf. The other six do not appear to be from Sagittarius, but might have been removed from a different dwarf galaxy.
Mapping projects like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have charted one of the three streams predicted by these simulations, but not to the full extent that the models suggest. Future instruments like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which will detect much fainter stars across the sky, should be able to identify the other streams.
Capt.Kangaroo
01-16-2017, 11:26 PM
https://scontent.fbna1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/p480x480/15965595_10154813599001772_3208190967094413368_n.j pg?oh=3a43d7dde8e8a12fedf9505df2cac715&oe=59148649
We are saddened by the loss of retired NASA astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon.
NASA
:(
R.I.P. Gene
Farmer1
01-17-2017, 12:01 AM
RIP Gene ..............
You left your footprint here and on the moon. Very few can say that! RIP Gene...
Black holes hide in our cosmic backyard
Elizabeth Landau, PHYS.ORG | January 8, 2017
https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2017/blackholeshi.jpgNGC 1448, a galaxy with an active galactic nucleus hidden by gas and dust, is seen in this image. Credit: Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey/NASA/JPL-Caltech
Monster black holes sometimes lurk behind gas and dust, hiding from the gaze of most telescopes. But they give themselves away when material they feed on emits high-energy X-rays that NASA's NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) mission can detect. That's how NuSTAR recently identified two gas-enshrouded supermassive black holes, located at the centers of nearby galaxies.
"These black holes are relatively close to the Milky Way, but they have remained hidden from us until now," said Ady Annuar, a graduate student at Durham University in the United Kingdom, who presented the results at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, Texas. "They're like monsters hiding under your bed."
Both of these black holes are the central engines of what astronomers call "active galactic nuclei," a class of extremely bright objects that includes quasars and blazars. Depending on how these galactic nuclei are oriented and what sort of material surrounds them, they appear very different when examined with telescopes.
Active galactic nuclei are so bright because particles in the regions around the black hole get very hot and emit radiation across the full electromagnetic spectrum—from low-energy radio waves to high-energy X-rays. However, most active nuclei are believed to be surrounded by a doughnut-shaped region of thick gas and dust that obscures the central regions from certain lines of sight. Both of the active galactic nuclei that NuSTAR recently studied appear to be oriented such that astronomers view them edge-on. That means that instead of seeing the bright central regions, our telescopes primarily see the reflected X-rays from the doughnut-shaped obscuring material.
"Just as we can't see the sun on a cloudy day, we can't directly see how bright these active galactic nuclei really are because of all of the gas and dust surrounding the central engine," said Peter Boorman, a graduate student at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.
https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2017/1-blackholeshi.jpgThis galaxy, called IC 3639, also contains an example of an obscured supermassive black hole. Credit: ESO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI
Boorman led the study of an active galaxy called IC 3639, which is 170 million light years away. Researchers analyzed NuSTAR data from this object and compared them with previous observations from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Japan-led Suzaku satellite. The findings from NuSTAR, which is more sensitive to higher energy X-rays than these observatories, confirm the nature of IC 3639 as an active galactic nucleus. NuSTAR also provided the first precise measurement of how much material is obscuring the central engine of IC 3639, allowing researchers to determine how luminous this hidden monster really is.
More surprising is the spiral galaxy that Annuar focused on: NGC 1448. The black hole in its center was only discovered in 2009, even though it is at the center of one of the nearest large galaxies to our Milky Way. By "near," astronomers mean NGC 1448 is only 38 million light years away (one light year is about 6 trillion miles).
Annuar's study discovered that this galaxy also has a thick column of gas hiding the central black hole, which could be part of a doughnut-shaped region. X-ray emission from NGC 1448, as seen by NuSTAR and Chandra, suggests for the first time that, as with IC 3639, there must be a thick layer of gas and dust hiding the active black hole in this galaxy from our line of sight.
Researchers also found that NGC 1448 has a large population of young (just 5 million year old) stars, suggesting that the galaxy produces new stars at the same time that its black hole feeds on gas and dust. Researchers used the European Southern Observatory New Technology Telescope to image NGC 1448 at optical wavelengths, and identified where exactly in the galaxy the black hole should be. A black hole's location can be hard to pinpoint because the centers of galaxies are crowded with stars. Large optical and radio telescopes can help detect light from around black holes so that astronomers can find their location and piece together the story of their growth.
"It is exciting to use the power of NuSTAR to get important, unique information on these beasts, even in our cosmic backyard where they can be studied in detail," said Daniel Stern, NuSTAR project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
This study shows Earth may have harbored complex life 2 billion years ago
Nicole Kiefert, Astronomy Magazine | January 18, 2017
And how selenium could expand the search of extraterrestrial life
http://astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2017/01/100_0527SchreiberbeachGunflintbasalstrom.jpg?mw=10 00&mh=800
This photo taken by a coauthor of the study shows the Gunflint Formation, a 1.9 billion-year-old mound of microbes in shallow water, in Minnesota.
Eva Stüeken
Everyone is still looking for evidence of life on another planet, and there’s no better way to start a search than to look at what’s already been successful and why.
That’s why a team at the University of Washington did a study of Earth’s oceans and ended up finding that they held suitable conditions for life at one point in time. This point occurred more than a billion years before the first fossils appeared.
Michael Kipp, a UW doctoral student in Earth and Space Sciences and lead author of the paper, studied sedimentary rocks to derive the amount of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere between 2 and 2.4 billion years ago. During this study, he analyzed isotopic ratios of selenium in the sedimentary rocks to measure the oxygen amounts.
Professor Roger Buick, coauthor of the study and faculty member of the UW Astrobiology Program, said in a press release that the evidence they found dates very far back.
“There is fossil evidence of complex cells that go back maybe 1.75 billion years,” Buick said. “But the oldest fossil is not necessarily the oldest one that ever lived because the chances of getting preserved as a fossil are pretty low.”
He added that though this fossil was evidence of enough oxygen to allow complex cells to evolve and “become ecologically important,” that doesn’t necessarily mean that they did.
The team analyzed selenium in sedimentary shale to see if the element had been affected by oxygen, or oxidized. If selenium was oxidized, it could cause a shift in the rocks’ isotopic ratios. The presence of oxygen should also increase the amount of selenium in the rocks.
It has always been assumed that the oxygen levels on Earth steadily increased from a little to the amount we have now, but Buick said this research may prove otherwise.
“What it looks like now is, there was a period of a quarter of a billion years or so where oxygen came quite high, and then sunk back down again,” Buick said.
It’s still unknown why the oxygen levels rose and fell, but using selenium to look for oxygen could be a helpful tool in the search for life beyond Earth.
“This is a new way of measuring oxygen in a planet’s historical past, to see whether complex life could have evolved there and persisted long enough to evolve into intelligent beings,” Buick said.
Farmer1
01-20-2017, 08:53 PM
good read .....
Yes, that pushes living organisms waaay back!
Capt.Kangaroo
01-20-2017, 10:02 PM
The CIA just declassified millions of pages.
You can search using "keywords" ie...UFO's, mind control etc... at this site.
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/search/site/UFO
Lots of interesting reading this weekend...:)
Enjoy!!!
Thanks... Will have to comb that over the next few days.
Capt.Kangaroo
01-20-2017, 10:14 PM
Thanks... Will have to comb that over the next few days.
Yes,looks to be interesting for sure
Capt.Kangaroo
01-21-2017, 09:29 PM
Iranian Military OPENS FIRE On UFO! 1/21/17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppb0RbyaSOM
It mimics the movies. Without knowing what "the craft" is all about, they're trying to shoot it down.
crazed 9.6
01-21-2017, 10:36 PM
It mimics the movies. Without knowing what "the craft" is all about, they're trying to shoot it down.
I was thinking the same thing.
Why would they open fire on it ?
I got thinking about drones... I suppose shooting at it could be atrributed to all the drones in the skys these days and we all now know what these drones are capable of. at the hands of the governements.
These guys may not have thought UFO, but instead were thinking drone :eek:
Capt.Kangaroo
01-21-2017, 10:51 PM
They should've scrambled some jets and intercepted it to see what it was
A case of shoot first and ask questions later.
ALMA starts observing the Sun
Stephen Clark, Astronomy Now | 17 January 2017
http://astronomynow.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/eso1703a.jpg
This ALMA image of an enormous sunspot was taken at a wavelength of 1.25 millimetres. Sunspots are transient features that occur in regions where the Sun’s magnetic field is extremely concentrated and powerful. They have lower temperatures than their surrounding regions, which is why they appear relatively dark. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
New images taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile have revealed otherwise invisible details of our Sun, including a new view of the dark, contorted centre of a sunspot that is nearly twice the diameter of the Earth. The images are the first ever made of the Sun with a facility where ESO is a partner.
The results are an important expansion of the range of observations that can be used to probe the physics of our nearest star. The ALMA antennas had been carefully designed so they could image the Sun without being damaged by the intense heat of the focussed light.
Astronomers have harnessed ALMA’s capabilities to image the millimetre-wavelength light emitted by the Sun’s chromosphere — the region that lies just above the photosphere, which forms the visible surface of the Sun. The solar campaign team, an international group of astronomers with members from Europe, North America and East Asia, produced the images as a demonstration of ALMA’s ability to study solar activity at longer wavelengths of light than are typically available to solar observatories on Earth.
Astronomers have studied the Sun and probed its dynamic surface and energetic atmosphere in many ways through the centuries. But, to achieve a fuller understanding, astronomers need to study it across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, including the millimetre and submillimetre portion that ALMA can observe.
http://astronomynow.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/eso1703c.jpg
A map of the whole disc of the Sun was also made with a single ALMA antenna, using a technique called fast-scanning, at a wavelength of 1.25 millimetres. The accuracy and speed of observing with a single ALMA antenna make it possible to produce a map of the entire solar disc in just a few minutes. These maps show the distribution of temperatures in the chromosphere over the whole disc at low spatial resolution and therefore complement the detailed interferometric images of individual regions of interest. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
Since the Sun is many billions of times brighter than the faint objects ALMA typically observes, the ALMA antennas were specially designed to allow them to image the Sun in exquisite detail using the technique of radio interferometry — and avoid damage from the intense heat of the focussed sunlight. The result of this work is a series of images that demonstrate ALMA’s unique vision and ability to study our Sun.The data from the solar observing campaign are being released this week to the worldwide astronomical community for further study and analysis.
The team observed an enormous sunspot at wavelengths of 1.25 millimetres and 3 millimetres using two of ALMA’s receiver bands. The images reveal differences in temperature between parts of the Sun’s chromosphere. Understanding the heating and dynamics of the chromosphere are key areas of research that will be addressed in the future using ALMA.
Sunspots are transient features that occur in regions where the Sun’s magnetic field is extremely concentrated and powerful. They are lower in temperature than the surrounding regions, which is why they appear relatively dark.
The difference in appearance between the two images is due to the different wavelengths of emitted light being observed. Observations at shorter wavelengths are able to probe deeper into the Sun, meaning the 1.25 millimetre images show a layer of the chromosphere that is deeper, and therefore closer to the photosphere, than those made at a wavelength of 3 millimetres.
ALMA is the first facility where ESO is a partner that allows astronomers to study the nearest star, our own Sun. All other existing and past ESO facilities need to be protected from the intense solar radiation to avoid damage. The new ALMA capabilities will expand the ESO community to include solar astronomers.
Fallout from an ancient asteroid collision still rains on Earth
Nathaniel Scharping, Astronomy Magazine | Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Extraterrestrial objects are constantly bombarding Earth; thankfully the vast majority are microscopic.
http://astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2017/01/PIA18469AsteroidCollisionNearStarNGC2547ID82013.jp g?mw=1000&mh=800
Thanks to the planet’s atmosphere, we live largely unaware of this celestial fusillade, which averages about 100 tons a day and mostly burns up long before hitting the ground. From the few that do make impact, researchers can gather clues about the composition of our solar system, with the goal of understanding how planets and other bodies emerged from an embryonic disk of dust and gas some 5 billion years ago.
However, it seems many of the samples researchers have to work with originated from a single event that’s been raining fallout for some 466 million years, giving us a biased picture of what’s actually out there.
Brief Moment in Time
At the moment, we seem to experiencing a fairly heavy rain of rocky meteorites called ordinary chondrites, which are distinguished by the presence of drop-like structures embedded in their bodies. Chondrites are further divided into three classes: H, L and LL, each thought to correspond to a different impact event long ago. We’re currently seeing a disproportionate number of H and L-type chondrites hit the Earth, but, it wasn’t always so.
Researchers from the Field Museum of Natural History, the University of Chicago and Lund University in Sweden recently conducted an analysis of sediment samples from the Ordovician period, some 466 million years ago, to give us a glimpse of what was hitting the Earth at a very different point in its history. They collected their samples from a site near St. Petersburg in Russia, where the layers of rock are known to have built up very slowly, thus making it much more likely that a meteorite will be found in any given strata. A similar site in Sweden was responsible for the “extinct” Österplana 065 meteorite discovered in 2016.
[We’re] doing space exploration with geological methods, essentially,” says Philipp Heck, the curator of meteorites for the Field Museum and lead author of the paper.
The researchers then dissolved 600 pounds of rock in acid and sieved through the remains in the hopes of sifting out tiny grains of chromite, called spinels, delivered to Earth by meteorites. Analyzing the isotopic composition of these spinels allows researchers to classify the kind of meteorites they came from and take a kind of census of impacts at different points in the Earth’s history. They published their work Monday in Nature Astronomy.
Turning Point
The time period the researchers were interested in occurred just before a major impact event somewhere in our solar system that delivered a hail of L-chondrite meteors to Earth beginning 466 million years ago. The bombardment was so heavy that it obscured nearly all other impacts in the geologic record for a million years, and we’re still feeling the fallout today.
Looking at a slice of time around a million years before the event, the researchers took a census of the meteorites that intersected the Earth’s orbit, and found that the cosmic rain looked very different back then.
Instead of the L- and H-chondrites that we see today, a different kind of meteorite, called achondrites, made up nearly half of the micrometeorite impacts in the Ordovician. Anywhere from 10 to 29 percent of these were a type of achondrite that likely resulted from a massive collision on Vesta, the second-largest asteroid in the solar system at over 300 miles in diameter.
Achondrites are meteorites that appear to have been melted and reformed at some point in their lives, such as on Vesta, where molten lava flows likely reshaped the surface at some point early in its life. Today, achondrites are considered rare, say the researchers.
In addition, there were many more LL-chondrites and fewer H-chondrites during the Ordovician. While the origins of these meteorites remain unclear, they likely result from periodic collisions among asteroids and other objects in the solar system, as well as gravitational perturbations from planets that alter the path of the millions of asteroids and other objects floating around the solar system.
By just studying meteorites, we’re likely to never get a balanced view of the solar system, however, says Heck. Not only did they find that our current barrage of meteorites was biased, but their results indicate that some kind of bias is always present.
“The composition of meteorites doesn’t match the composition of asteroids,” he says. “[It] depends on what collision happened, we get different fragments from other sources.”
In other words, the heavenly rock showers that bathe the Earth give us only a snapshot of what the solar system looks like right now. For the full picture, we need to look elsewhere.
Star birth with a chance of winds?
Karl Hille, Phys.Org | 27 january 2017
https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2017/starbirthwit.jpg
The lesser-known constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs), is home to a variety of deep-sky objects -- including this beautiful galaxy, known as NGC 4861. Astronomers are still debating on how to classify it. While its physical properties -- such as mass, size and rotational velocity -- indicate it to be a spiral galaxy, its appearance looks more like a comet with its dense, luminous 'head' and dimmer 'tail' trailing off. Features more fitting with a dwarf irregular galaxy. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
The lesser-known constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs), is home to a variety of deep-sky objects—including this beautiful galaxy, known as NGC 4861. Astronomers are still debating on how to classify it. While its physical properties—such as mass, size and rotational velocity—indicate it to be a spiral galaxy, its appearance looks more like a comet with its dense, luminous "head" and dimmer "tail" trailing off. Features more fitting with a dwarf irregular galaxy.
Although small and messy, galaxies like NGC 4861 provide astronomers with interesting opportunities for study. Small galaxies have lower gravitational potentials, which simply means that it takes less energy to move stuff about inside them than it does in other galaxies. As a result, moving in, around, and through such a tiny galaxy is quite easy to do, making them far more likely to be filled with streams and outflows of speedy charged particles known as galactic winds, which can flood such galaxies with little effort.
These galactic winds can be powered by the ongoing process of star formation, which involves huge amounts of energy. New stars are springing into life within the bright, colorful 'head' of NGC 4861 and ejecting streams of high-speed particles as they do so, which flood outwards to join the wider galactic wind. While NGC 4861 would be a perfect candidate to study such winds, recent studies did not find any galactic winds in it.
Capt.Kangaroo
01-30-2017, 11:33 PM
Want your mind blown?
Watch this
https://youtu.be/gIbfYsQfNWs
Quite cool... I'm re-reading Hawking's A Brief History of Time. It, too, is a mind blower.
Capt.Kangaroo
01-31-2017, 06:35 PM
Quite cool... I'm re-reading Hawking's A Brief History of Time. It, too, is a mind blower.
Cool,great read...:)
Marley
02-01-2017, 04:03 AM
wow
http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/wonder/asteroid-whizzing-by-earth-six-times-closer-than-the-moon/vi-AAmq9JF
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