April 7, 2008, 10:47 PM CT

Cosmic engines surprise XMM-Newton

XMM-Newton has been surprised by a rare type of galaxy, from which it has detected a higher number of X-rays than thought possible. The observation gives new insight into the powerful processes shaping galaxies during their formation and evolution.

Researchers working with XMM-Newton were looking into the furthest reaches of the universe, at celestial objects called quasars. These are vast cosmic engines that pump energy into their surroundings. It is thought an enormous black hole drives each quasar.

As matter falls into the black hole, it collects in a swirling reservoir called the accretion disc, which heats up. Computer simulations suggest that powerful radiation and magnetic fields present in the region eject some of gas from the gravitational clutches of the black hole, throwing it back into space.

This outflow has a profound effect on its surrounding galaxy. It can create turbulence in the gas throughout the galaxy, hampering star formation. Thus, understanding quasars is an important step to understanding the early history of galaxies.

However, the structure surrounding a quasar is difficult to see because they are so distant. The light and X-rays from them takes thousands of millions of years to reach us.

About 10-20% of quasars are of a special type called BAL quasars. The BAL stands for 'broad absorption line' and seems to indicate that a thick cocoon of gas surrounds the quasar......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

April 6, 2008, 8:36 PM CT

Meteorites delivered the 'seeds' of Earth's left-hand life

Flash back three or four billion years Earth is a hot, dry and lifeless place. All is still. Without warning, a meteor slams into the desert plains at over ten thousand miles per hour. With it, this violent collision may have planted the chemical seeds of life on Earth.

Researchers presented evidence today that desert heat, a little water, and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up one of the first prerequisites for life: The dominance of left-handed amino acids, the building blocks of life on this planet.

In a report at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, Ronald Breslow, Ph.D., University Professor, Columbia University, and former ACS President, described how our amino acid signature came from outer space.

Chains of amino acids make up the protein found in people, plants, and all other forms of life on Earth. There are two orientations of amino acids, left and right, which mirror each other in the same way your hands do. This is known as chirality. In order for life to arise, proteins must contain only one chiral form of amino acids, left or right, Breslow noted.

If you mix up chirality, a proteins properties change enormously. Life couldnt operate with just random mixtures of stuff, he said.

With the exception of a few right-handed amino acid-based bacteria, left-handed L-amino acids dominate on earth. The Columbia University chemistry professor said that amino acids delivered to Earth by meteorite bombardments left us with those left-handed protein units......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

April 3, 2008, 9:38 PM CT

Transatlantic research connection in astronomy

In the first project pursued under this agreement, the MPIfR will contribute $299,000 to upgrade the continent-wide Very Long Baseline Array's (VLBA) capability to receive radio emissions at a frequency of 22 GHz. This improvement will enhance the VLBA's scientific productivity and will be especially important for cutting-edge research in cosmology and enigmatic cosmic objects such as gamma-ray blazars.

"This agreement follows a number of years of cooperation between our institutions and recognizes the importance of international collaboration for the future of astronomical research," said Fred K.Y. Lo, NRAO Director.

"Our two institutions have a number of common research goals, and joining forces to keep all our telescopes at the forefront of technology will be highly beneficial for the science," said Anton Zensus, Director at MPIfR.

In addition to the VLBA, the NRAO operates the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico and the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia. The MPIfR operates the 100-meter Effelsberg Radio Telescope in Gera number of and the 12-meter APEX sub-millimeter telescope in 5100 m altitude in the Chilean Atacama desert (together with the European Southern Observatory and the Swedish Onsala Space Observatory). With the 100-meter telescope it is part of the VLBA network in providing transatlantic baselines. Both institutions are members of a global network of telescopes (the Global VLBI Network) that uses simultaneous observations to produce extremely high-resolution images, and another network (the High Sensitivity Array) that uses the same technique with large telescopes to observe especially faint celestial objects. With this technique, NRAO telescopes work with MPIfR's Effelsberg telescope to produce images hundreds of times more detailed than those from the Hubble Space Telescope......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

April 3, 2008, 9:11 PM CT

Europe's automated ship docks to the ISS

ATV Jules Verne, the European Space Agency's first resupply and reboost vehicle, has successfully performed a fully automated docking with the International Space Station (ISS). This docking marks the beginning of Jules Verne's main servicing mission to deliver cargo, propellant, water, oxygen and propulsion capacity to the Station, as well as ESA's entry into the restricted club of the partners able to access the orbital facility by their own means.

The 19-ton unmanned spaceship manoeuvred from a holding position 39 km behind the 275-ton space outpost and conducted a 4-hour staged approach with several stops at reference points for checks. It autonomously computed its own position through relative GPS (comparison between data collected by GPS receivers both on the ATV and the ISS) and in close range it used videometers pointed at laser retroreflectors on the ISS to determine its distance and orientation relative to its target. Final approach was at a relative velocity of 7 cm/s and with an accuracy of less than 10 cm, while both the ATV and the ISS were orbiting at about 28000 km/h, some 340 km above the Eastern Mediterranean. ATV Jules Verne's docking probe was captured by the docking cone at the aft end of Russia's Zvezda module at 16:45 CEST (14:45 GMT). Docking was completed with hooks closing at 16:52 CEST (14:52 GMT)......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

April 3, 2008, 7:55 PM CT

The fickle moon, the inconstant moon

Lost in space.....

While most debris from comets and meteorites that hit the moon is lost in space, if it finds its way into a "cold trap" on one of the poles of the moon, it remains there forever. In 1994, the Clementine polar-orbiting spacecraft used its radio transmitter to illuminate some of the moon's cold trap areas, which suggested the presence of lunar ice that may have resulted from a build up of water-bearing minerals from debris in those areas. However, there are still a number of unanswered questions. Now a spacecraft called the Mini-SAR is preparing for India's Chandrayaan-1 Mission to the moon with a goal of mapping the moon for two years. This mission will help to answer questions about the presence, extent and purity of polar ice. Paul D. Spudis, a scientist with the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas will discuss the mission in "Mini-SAR: An imaging radar for the Chandrayaan-1 mission to the Moon" on Thursday, April 3 from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. in the Physics & Astronomy Building, Room 123.

One giant step.....

The moon is a valuable resource for scientific inspiration and its exploration provides a training ground to help us explore other planetary surfaces. It can be seen as a stepping stone for journeys much farther into the universe. The moon's role in future space exploration is the focus of the 5th Annual Planetary Science Public Lecture, "The Moon: A New Destination for Humanity," by Paul D. Spudis, a scientist with the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, on Thursday, April 3 from 7 to 8 p.m. at the Physics & Astronomy Building, room 215. Since 1982, Spudis has been a principal investigator in the Planetary Geology and Geophysics Program of the NASA Office of Space Science, Solar System Exploration Division, specializing in research on the processes of impact and volcanism on the planets. He was also Deputy Leader of the science team for the U.S. Department of Defense's Clementine mission to the moon in 1994 and is the principal investigator of an imaging radar experiment on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 Mission, to be launched to the moon this year. Additionally, Spudis is co-author of more than 150 scientific papers and three books, including "The Once and Future Moon", a book for the general public in the Smithsonian Library of the Solar System series......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

April 1, 2008, 8:42 PM CT

A Planet in Progress?

Scientists are one more step closer to understanding how new planets form, thanks to research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and carried out by a team of astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.

Ben R. Oppenheimer, assistant curator in the museum's Department of Astrophysics, and colleagues have used the Lyot Project coronograph attached to a U.S. Air Force telescope on Maui, Hawaii, to construct an image of material that seems to be coalescing into a body from the gas and dust cloud surrounding AB Aurigae, a well-studied star. The body is either a planet or a brown dwarf--something with mass between a star or a planet. Brown dwarfs have been found orbiting stars since a team that included Oppenheimer first discovered one in 1995.

The research results, accepted for publication in June's Astrophysical Journal, represent a significant step toward direct imaging and the study of exoplanets, which orbit stars other than the Sun, and may advance theories of planet and brown dwarf formations.

"The research builds upon Dr. Openheimer's past successes in the detection of a brown dwarf and several debris disks and take advantage of an improved, deformable, secondary mirror which was installed at the telescope facility in 2006," said NSF Program Manager Julian Christou. "The image produced speaks directly to the biggest, unresolved question of planet formation--how the thick disk of debris and gas evolves into a thin, dusty region with planets." Young stars generally have a lot of material caught in their gravitational pull--material that organizes itself into a disc over time. Astronomers believe planets form in this disc......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

April 1, 2008, 8:10 PM CT

New Star Systems First of Their Kind

Scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced recently in Astrophysical Journal Letters that they have discovered a faraway binary star system that could be the progenitor of a rare type of supernova.

The two yellow stars, which orbit each other and even share a large amount of stellar material, resemble a peanut. The Ohio State University astronomers and their colleagues believe the two stars in the system, 13 million light years away and tucked inside a small galaxy known as Holmberg IX, appear to be nearly identical, each 15 to 20 times the mass of our Sun.

This work was funded through an NSF continuing grant to support a systematic study of the most massive stars in the local universe. The study is expected to yield masses and radii for dozens of massive stars discovered in a variety of environments. The data produced can be used to test models of massive star atmospheres, winds, and how they evolve both as single stars and in binaries.

"To have discovered a pair of massive interacting stars in this configuration is truly exceptional--sort of like rare squared," said NSF Program Manager Michael Briley. "There is a lot these stars can tell us about how they work and how they influence their environment. But the really exciting part is they may also hold the key to finally understanding why some massive yellow stars explode"......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

March 31, 2008, 9:27 PM CT

Newly discovered galaxy cluster

UC Irvine researchers have discovered a cluster of galaxies in a very early stage of formation that is 11.4 billion light years from Earth - the farthest of its kind ever to be detected. These galaxies are so distant that the universe was in its infancy when their light was emitted.

The galaxy proto-cluster, named LBG-2377, is giving researchers an unprecedented look at galaxy formation and how the universe has evolved. Before this discovery, the farthest known event like this was approximately 9 billion light years away.

"When you observe objects this far away, you are actually seeing the universe as it was a very long time ago," said Jeff Cooke, a McCue Postdoctoral Fellow in physics and astronomy at UCI and lead author of this study. "It is as if a timeline is just sitting out there in front of you. These galaxies represent what the universe looked like well before the Earth existed".

This research is published in the online bulletin astro-ph.

Using the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, Cooke detected LBG-2377 while looking for single galaxies. At first, it appeared to be a bright, single object. But after analyzing the wavelengths of its light (galaxies emit light with telltale colors) he discovered it was three galaxies merging together, and likely two additional smaller galaxies......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

March 26, 2008, 10:14 PM CT

A Planet in Progress?

Scientists are one more step closer to understanding how new planets form, thanks to research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and carried out by a team of astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.

Ben R. Oppenheimer, assistant curator in the museum's Department of Astrophysics, and colleagues have used the Lyot Project coronograph attached to a U.S. Air Force telescope on Maui, Hawaii, to construct an image of material that seems to be coalescing into a body from the gas and dust cloud surrounding AB Aurigae, a well-studied star. The body is either a planet or a brown dwarf--something with mass between a star or a planet. Brown dwarfs have been found orbiting stars since a team that included Oppenheimer first discovered one in 1995.

The research results, accepted for publication in June's Astrophysical Journal, represent a significant step toward direct imaging and the study of exoplanets, which orbit stars other than the Sun, and may advance theories of planet and brown dwarf formations.

"The research builds upon Dr. Openheimer's past successes in the detection of a brown dwarf and several debris disks and take advantage of an improved, deformable, secondary mirror which was installed at the telescope facility in 2006," said NSF Program Manager Julian Christou. "The image produced speaks directly to the biggest, unresolved question of planet formation--how the thick disk of debris and gas evolves into a thin, dusty region with planets." Young stars generally have a lot of material caught in their gravitational pull--material that organizes itself into a disc over time. Astronomers believe planets form in this disc......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

March 20, 2008, 7:23 PM CT

Eyes on the stars, even under cloudy skies

Graduate student Cristina Thomas has been making observations of asteroids using a large NASA telescope in Hawaii, at least once a month for more than three years now. Doing this kind of astronomical research has traditionally mandatory a lot of time and money for travel, but Thomas commonly can get to the telescope just by walking down the hall.

Like dozens of students in Professor Richard Binzel's astronomy classes, Thomas gets to operate one of the world's leading infrared telescopes, perched 14,000 feet above sea level on the summit of Hawaii's extinct volcano Mauna Kea, without ever leaving the MIT campus.

NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), a three-meter telescope fitted with a variety of electronic cameras and spectrographs, is one of just a few in the world's prime astronomical locations that has been set up so that it can be controlled from anywhere in the world through a high-speed Internet connection. Astronomers anywhere can sit for hours in a convenient office and control the scope's motions with the click of a mouse, while watching the images it is capturing right on their computer monitors--just as they would do if they were on the mountaintop.

Actually controlling the huge scope is a complex bit of choreography, an interplay between a technician at the observatory in Hawaii, the student sitting in MIT's Green building and automated software that handles the finest-level autoguidance system......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source