September 20, 2006, 7:58 PM CT
Launching Of Solar-B
Image above: An artist concept of Solar-B
Image credit: NASA/GSFC/C. Meane
Solar-B is an international mission to study our nearest star, the sun. To accomplish this, the Solar-B mission includes a suite of three science instruments -- the Solar Optical Telescope, X-ray Telescope and Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer.
Together, these instruments will study the generation, transport, and dissipation of magnetic energy from the photosphere to the corona and will record how energy stored in the sun's magnetic field is released, either gradually or violently, as the field rises into the sun's outer atmosphere.
By studying the sun's magnetic field, researchers hope to shed new light on explosive solar activity that can interfere with satellite communications and electric power transmission grids on Earth and threaten astronauts on the way to or working on the surface of the moon. In particular they want to learn if they can identify the magnetic field configurations that lead to these explosive energy releases and use this information to predict when these events may occur.
Led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Solar-B mission is a collaboration between the space agencies of Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe. NASA helped in the development, funding and assembly of the spacecraft's three science instruments. Solar-B is part of the Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program within the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Solar Terrestrial Probes Program is managed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., managed the development of instrument components provided by NASA, with additional support by academia and industry.........
Posted by: Sean Permalink Source
September 14, 2006, 8:26 PM CT
New lunar meteorite found in Antarctica
Image courtesy of www.meteorite.ch
Eventhough last year's inclement weather resulted in fewer Antarctic meteorite recoveries than usual, researchers have recently discovered that one of the specimens is a rare breed -- a type of lunar meteorite seen only once before.
The new specimen was found by a field party from the U.S. Antarctic Search for Meteorites program (ANSMET) headquartered at Case Western Reserve University. The meteorite was discovered on Dec. 11, 2005, on an icefield in the Miller Range of the Transantarctic Mountains, roughly 750 km from the South Pole. This 142.2 g black rock, slightly larger than a golfball and officially designated MIL 05035, was one of 238 meteorites collected by ANSMET during the 2005-2006 austral summer. Heavy snows limited search efforts during much of the remainder of the six-week field season, making this meteorite, discovered just 600 m from camp, a especially welcome find.
Researchers involved in classification of Antarctic finds at NASA's Johnson Space Center and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History said the mineralogy and texture of the meteorite are unusual. The new specimen is a very coarse-grained gabbro, similar in bulk composition to the basaltic lavas that fill the lunar maria, but its very large crystals suggest slow cooling deep within the Moon's crust. In addition, the plagioclase feldspar has been completely converted to glass, or maskelynite, by extreme shock (presumably impact events). The new specimen most closely resembles another Antarctic meteorite, Asuka 881757, one of the oldest known lunar basalt samples.........
Posted by: Sean Permalink Source
September 14, 2006, 6:57 PM CT
Eclipsed Moon Rising Over England
Credit & Copyright: Gain Lee
Last Thursday, part of our Moon turned dark. The cause, this time, was not a partial lunar phase -- the Moon was full -- but rather that part of the Moon went into Earth's shadow. The resulting partial lunar eclipse was visible from the eastern Atlantic Ocean through Europe, Africa, and Asia and into the western Pacific Ocean. The darkest part of the lunar eclipse, when part of the Moon was completely shielded from sunlight, lasted about 90 minutes.
Pictured above, a partially eclipsed Moon is seen rising over an estate in Huddersfield, England. The above image was taken far away from the house in the foreground, as only this would allow it to appear as angularly small as the half-degree Moon far in the background. A setting twilight Sun lit the foreground. The next eclipse of the Moon will occur in March 2007.........
Posted by: Sean Permalink Source
September 14, 2006, 6:43 PM CT
Spiral Galaxy in Triangulum
M33: Spiral Galaxy in Triangulum
Credit & Copyright: Thomas V. Davis (tvdavisastropix.com)
The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way.
About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself believed to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other's grand spiral star systems. As for the view from planet Earth, this detailed, wide field image nicely shows off M33's blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions which trace the galaxy's loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the cavernous NGC 604 is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 1 o'clock position from the galaxy center. Like M31, M33's population of well-measured variable stars have helped make this nearby spiral a cosmic yardstick for establishing the distance scale of the Universe.........
Posted by: Sean Permalink Source
September 11, 2006, 10:17 PM CT
Solar Flares
Solar Flares
Solar flares are tremendous explosions on the surface of our Sun, releasing as much energy as a billion megatons of TNT in the form of radiation, high energy particles and magnetic fields. The Sun's magnetic fields are known to be an extremely important factor in producing the energy for flaring and when these magnetic fields lines clash together, dragging hot gas with them, an enormous maelstrom of energy is released. This boiling cauldron of plasma is ejected at huge speeds into the solar system and high energy particles, such as protons, can arrive at Earth within tens of minutes, to be followed a few days later by Coronal Mass Ejections, huge bubbles of gas threaded with magnetic field lines, which can cause major magnetic disturbances on Earth, sometimes with catastrophic results. Whilst researchers understand the flaring process very well they cannot predict when one of these enormous explosions will occur. The Solar-B mission, designed and built by teams in the UK, US and Japan, will investigate the so called 'trigger phase' of these events.
"Solar flares are fast and furious they can cause communication black-outs at Earth within 30 minutes of a flare erupting on the Sun's surface. It's imperative that we understand what triggers these events with the ultimate aim of being able to predict them with greater accuracy" said Prof. Louise Harra, the UK Solar-B project scientist based at University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory [UCL/MSSL].........
Posted by: Sean Permalink Source
September 10, 2006, 6:42 AM CT
Latest Astrophotos
Amazing pictures of the moon captured with EOS-20D digital camera.
Stacked from 15 exposures of 1/5 second at ISO 100 This image is a mosaic of 15 separate and slightly overlapping 8.2 megapixel images from my Canon EOS-20D (unmodified), taken in Raw mode and converted and stitched together in Photoshop CS2. The exposures were each 1/5 second at ISO 100.
I mounted my 20D to my Meade LX200 GPS UHTC 10" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope via my 2x Televue Powermate (a focal length doubler, similar to a teleconverter, which also serves to mate my camera to the 2" telescope eyepiece tube). Effective focal length was 5000mm f/20.
Looking through the viewfinder I swept across the surface in a zig-zag fashion, trying for about 1/3 overlap between frames. I triggered the shutter with my TC80-N3 remote timer/controller. I did the stitching by hand in Photoshop.
Thank you.........
Posted by: Sean Permalink Source
September 9, 2006, 9:59 AM CT
Collaboration On Moon Data
Photo courtesy NASA
Amid a bevy of international space exploration missions to the Moon, the Washington University Department of Earth and Planetary Science in Arts & Sciences and ShanDong University at WeiHai (SDU at WH) in Mainland China have agreed to cooperate on scientific research and joint training of students in the two institutions.
The agreement comes less than a year away from the planned launch of Chang'E-1, the Chinese lunar probe project, in April, 2007. The goals of China's Chang'E-1 project are first to place a satellite into orbit around the Moon in 2007; then to land an unmanned vehicle on the Moon by 2010; and to collect samples of lunar soil with an unmanned vehicle by 2020. The spacecraft carries five instruments to image and measure different features of the Moon.
Within two years, three additional missions from the United States, India and Japan will generate a furious flurry of data that will keep space scientists enthralled for the better part of the next decade. The Japanese Selene mission is scheduled to launch in the summer of 2007, the Indian Chandrayan-1 in late 2007 or early 2008, and the United States' Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for October 2008.
Raymond E. Arvidson, Ph.D., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and chair of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, Bradley Jolliff, Ph.D., research associate professor in earth and planetary sciences, and Alian Wang, Ph.D., senior research scientist in earth and planetary sciences, traveled to WeiHai in July of this year to meet the president of ShanDong University and members of the science faculty and to sign the formal agreement at Shan Dong WeiHai on July 22.........
Posted by: Sean Permalink Source
September 9, 2006, 7:48 AM CT
Planet or failed star?
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows one of the smallest objects ever seen around a normal star.
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have photographed one of the smallest objects ever seen around a normal star beyond our Sun. Weighing in at 12 times the mass of Jupiter, the object is small enough to be a planet. The riddle is that it is also large enough to be a brown dwarf, a failed star.
The Hubble observation of the diminutive companion to the low-mass red dwarf star CHRX 73 is a dramatic reminder that astronomers do not have a consensus in deciding which objects orbiting other stars are truly planets - even though they have recently provided the definition of 'planet' for objects inside our Solar System.
Kevin Luhman of Penn State University, USA, leader of the international team that found the object (called CHRX 73 'B') is casting his vote for a brown dwarf. "New, more sensitive telescopes are finding smaller and smaller objects of planetary-mass size," said Luhman. "These discoveries have prompted astronomers to ask the question, are planetary-mass companions always planets?" .
Some astronomers suggest that an extra-solar object's mass determines whether it is a planet. Luhman and others advocate that an object is only a planet if it formed from the disk of gas and dust that usually encircles a newborn star. Our Solar System planets formed 4.6 thousand million years ago out of a dust disk around our Sun.........
Posted by: Sean Permalink Source
September 5, 2006, 9:47 PM CT
Supernova In Real-time
For the first time a star has been observed in real-time as it goes supernova a mind bogglingly powerful explosion as the star ends its life, the resulting cosmic eruption briefly outshining an entire galaxy. UK scientists, in collaboration with international colleagues, used NASA's Swift satellite and a combination of orbiting and ground-based observatories to catch a supernova in the act of exploding. The results, including an associated and intriguing Gamma Ray Burst [GRB], appear in 31 recent issue of Nature.
The event began on the 18th February, 2006, in a star forming galaxy about 440 million light-years away toward the constellation Aries. At that time it was immediately realised that this was an unusual gamma-ray burst, about 25 times closer and 100 times longer than a typical gamma-ray burst. The burst lasted for almost 40 minutes as opposed to a typical GRB of a few milliseconds to tens of seconds. Because the burst was so long Swift was able to observe the bulk of the explosion with all three of its instruments: the Burst Alert Telescope, which detected the burst and relayed the location to ground observatories within 20 seconds; the X-ray telescope [XRT] and Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope [UVOT], which provide high-resolution imagery and spectra across a broad range of wavelengths.........
Posted by: Sean Permalink Source
September 4, 2006, 10:11 PM CT
SMART-1 swan song
Right up to its final orbits, SMART-1 continued delivering valuable data, extending the mission's legacy as a technology and scientific success. Scientists and engineers met today at ESOC to review mission achievements including final AMIE camera images.
At a press event held today at ESA's Spacecraft Operations Centre (ESOC), SMART-1 engineers, operations experts and scientists are presenting data and preliminary results obtained by the spacecraft prior to its impact on the Moon at 07:42 CEST, 3 September 2006.
Perhaps the most sentimental image sequence was taken by AMIE just four days before impact, on 29 August at 21:00 CEST (19:00 UT), when the camera was pointed back towards the Earth to capture, in the best tradition of many previous lunar missions, a view of our home planet. The sequence of images is centred over Brazil at approximately 44.9º West and 19.2º South (North is to the left). The Kourou area in French Guiana, from where SMART-1 was launched in 2003, is also visible.
Remarkably, this movie sequence shows the Moon passing in front of the Earth, beautifully underlining the close gravitational relationship between the Earth and its natural satellite.
Final orbits offered new imaging opportunitiesDuring SMART-1's final orbits on 1 and 2 September, the spacecraft was passing at extremely low altitude over the Moon's surface, which was in darkness, prompting scientists to take advantage of this unique observational situation by pointing the AMIE camera laterally toward the Moon's limb (horizon). The camera gathered images of the thin dust envelope surrounding the Moon, which will be analysed by scientists in the future.........
Posted by: Sean Permalink Source
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