Astronomy news

October 24, 2007, 7:25 PM CT

To Catch a Galactic Thief

On Earth, thieves steal everything from diamonds to art to bags full of money. In space, gas - fuel for making stars - is a commodity worth the price of theft.

New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal a distant, massive galaxy in the act of ripping off vast reservoirs of gas - the equivalent of one billion suns - from its smaller, neighbor galaxy. The stolen gas, which has become scorching hot during the heist, will likely cool down and get turned into new stars and planets.

"We may be viewing the larger galaxy in a rare, brief stage of its reincarnation from an old galaxy to a youthful one studded with brilliant stars," said Patrick Ogle of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. Ogle is the lead author of a new paper on the findings in the Oct. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

The robber galaxy, called 3C 326 North, is about the mass of our Milky Way galaxy, and its victim, 3C 326 South, is about half its mass. They are close enough to perturb each other gravitationally and might eventually collide. Such galaxy mergers are common in the universe: Gas and stars in two nearby galaxies become tangled until they join up into one seamless galaxy. The case of 3C 326 is the clearest example yet of large quantities of gas being heated and siphoned from one galaxy to another......... Posted by: Aron      Read more         Source

October 21, 2007, 10:04 PM CT

Biggest 'small' black hole discovered

New Haven, Conn. Discovery of the largest example of a small black hole one formed from the collapse of a single massive star at the end of its lifetime has led researchers to revaluate of how black holes come into being, as per a report in Nature.

The theory we operated with for the last decade was that single-star black holes are formed from the remnants of massive stars the more massive the star, the more massive the remnant. But, all of the stellar mass black holes were expected to be in the range of 10 times the mass of the sun or less, since only the core regions of the star would collapse, said Charles Bailyn, the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Yale, and a member of the research team.

The research team, who identified the black hole with 15.65 times the mass of the sun, took advantage of nature to make an uncommonly precise measurement and mandatory the surprised astronomers to reevaluate a long-standing theory.

Since black holes can't be seen because they trap all matter and light that enters them they are detected by the gravitational effects they have on nearby stars or other matter that is near them. This team made their calculations by measuring the motion of a star as it orbited abound the black hole, known as M33 X-7. The black hole completes one orbit every 3.45 days around its massive companion star......... Posted by: Aron      Read more         Source

May 14, 2007, 8:56 PM CT

U.S. Naval Academy-Built Satellite to Carry NASA Experiments

Researchers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., are taking advantage of the opportunity to carry promising technologies into orbit for evaluation.

For MidSTAR-2, midshipmen are in the process of developing a satellite bus, which is the main portion of the satellite. It is similar to the prior MidSTAR-1 satellite, which was launched earlier in 2007. The MidSTAR-1 satellite was a highly successful proof of design for the MidSTAR-2 satellite bus design concept.

The NASA experiments that will fly on MidSTAR-2 are part of the Internal Research and Development Program at NASA Goddard. "The NASA-Naval Academy partnership is extremely exciting," said Professor Billy R. Smith, Director of the U.S. Naval Academy's Small Satellite Program. "We get the benefit of their experience in building satellites and in return make a genuine contribution to their cutting-edge space research. It is this, more than anything else, that elevates our program above the simple student project level and makes it real for the midshipmen".

MidSTAR is a relatively low-cost type of satellite that will fly small instruments into space. The MidSTAR project at the U.S. Naval Academy is part of the Small Satellite Program. That program uses technical assistance from NASA, the Computer Sciences Corp, CNS Systems Inc., the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Honeywell. All of these helped build MidSTAR-1 with a grant from the Boeing Corporation. Once the satellite is built, it is approved by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and launched through their Space Test Program......... Posted by: Aron      Read more         Source

February 19, 2007, 8:28 PM CT

Where is Beagle 2?

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft has used its onboard High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE) to take a colour image of a region of Mars in the vicinity of the intended landing site of Beagle 2.

H20 crater.

Credit: NASA's Mars Reconnaissance OrbiterIncluded in the image is new coverage of the crater H2O which was considered by the Beagle 2 team as unique in the area that had been searched for evidence of the missing Lander. Beagle 2 was targeted to land in an ellipse approximately 50km x 10km in size.

The new image does not show any features inside the crater that can be reconciled with peculiarities (i.e. possible components of the entry descent and landing system) encountered in the two previous lower resolution images taken soon after Beagle 2 was due to arrive on Mars in December 2003. The previous images were captured by the Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.

Commenting on the latest image, Prof Colin Pillinger of the Open University and lead scientist for Beagle 2, said "Of course this is disappointing. We had hoped that the HiRISE camera would clarify the oddities we had seen in the crater but this is not the case. Nevertheless, I am extremely grateful to the camera team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Arizona for trying and congratulate them on the exceptional quality of the images. I remain optimistic that future images may yet show us where Beagle 2 finally came to rest"......... Posted by: Aron      Read more         Source

January 24, 2007, 7:30 PM CT

The jet stream of Titan

A pair of rare celestial alignments that occurred in November 2003 helped an international team of astronomers investigate the far-off world of Titan. In particular, the alignments helped validate the atmospheric model used to design the entry trajectory for ESA's Huygens probe.

Now the unique results are helping to place the descent of Huygens in a global context, and to investigate the upper layers of Titan's atmosphere.

Occasionally Titan passes directly in front of a distant star. When it does so, the light from the star is blocked out. Because Titan has a thick atmosphere, the light does not 'turn off' straight away. Instead, it drops gradually as the blankets of atmosphere slide in front of the star. The way the light drops tells astronomers about the atmosphere of Titan.

By pure chance on 14 November 2003, fourteen months before Huygens' historic descent through Titan's atmosphere, Titan passed in front of two stars, just seven and a half hours apart. Bruno Sicardy, Observatoire de Paris, France, organised expeditions to record the occultations, as such events are called.

The first occultation was visible just after midnight from the Indian Ocean and the southern half of Africa. The second could be seen from Western Europe, the Atlantic Ocean, Northern and Central Americas. Teams of astronomers set up along the occultation tracks.........

Posted by: Aron      Read more         Source

January 11, 2007, 4:52 AM CT

Research To Solve Aurora Mystery

The aurora is a bright glow observed in the night sky, usually in the polar zone. For this reason some scientists call it a "polar aurora" (or "aurora polaris"). In northern latitudes, it is known as the aurora borealis, which is named after the Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for north wind, Boreas. Especially in Europe, it often appears as a reddish glow on the northern horizon, as if the sun were rising from an unusual direction. The aurora borealis is also called the northern lights since it is only visible in the North sky from the Northern Hemisphere. The aurora borealis most often occurs from September to October and from March to April. Its southern counterpart, aurora australis, has similar properties.

NASA will launch the largest number of scientific satellites ever sent into orbit aboard a single rocket. A handful of Alberta scientists will be at Kennedy Space Center watching and waiting. For Dr. Ian Mann and Dr. John Samson, researchers in the Department of Physics at the University of Alberta, the real fun will begin when the satellites start taking measurements in the eye of space storms above observatories spread across North America.

The satellites, all carrying identical suites of electric, magnetic, and particle detectors, are part of the NASA THEMIS mission (for "time history of events and macroscale interactions during substorms"). THEMIS is a collaborative effort of scientists from the US, Canada and Europe that will study processes occurring in near-Earth space and elsewhere in the universe.........

Posted by: Aron      Read more         Source

January 9, 2007, 8:45 PM CT

Universe's Oldest Objects

The deepest reaches of space are permeated by a cloak of infrared radiation, an uneven energy swath generated by long-dead objects from the early universe.

Now, researchers have teased apart overlapping signals from that cosmic infrared background, building upon an earlier study to show that uneven patches of energy may actually be clusters of the first objects to emerge from the Big Bang.

The astronomers believe the objects are either extremely bright stars more than 1,000 times more massive than our sun, or quasars, large black holes that consume enormous amounts of gas and debris and re-emit the materials in almost unparalleled bursts of energy. If the patches are star clusters, they may be the first galaxies, smaller than most known galaxies yet containing a mass on the scale of 1 million suns.

With a grant from the National Science Foundation, researchers studied archival data from the calibration of the NASA Spitzer telescope and conducted several stages of cleaning to remove signals from more recent galaxies and other objects to get to the underlying signals.

"Observing the cosmic infrared background is like watching distant fireworks from within a brightly lit city," said lead author Alexander Kashlinsky of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's as if we have turned off the city lights one by one to see the bursts more clearly. While we can't resolve each spark in the fireworks, we can see the large scale structures and their glow".........

Posted by: Aron      Read more         Source

December 18, 2006, 8:56 PM CT

The Frozen Secrets Of Comet Wild 2

Eleven months ago, NASA's Stardust mission touched down in the Utah desert with the first solid comet samples ever retrieved from space. Since then, nearly 200 researchers from around the globe have studied the minuscule grains, looking for clues to the physical and chemical history of our solar system. Eventhough years of work remain to fully decipher the secrets of comet Wild 2, scientists are sure that it contains some of the most primitive and exotic chemical structures ever studied in a laboratory.

Preliminary results appear in a special section of the December 15 issue of Science. Overall, research efforts have focused on answering "big-picture" questions regarding the nature of the comet samples that were returned, including determining mineral structures, chemical composition, and the chemistry of the organic, or carbon-containing, compounds they carry. Carnegie scientists made key contributions to the latter effort. Out of seven papers in total, four involved Carnegie researchers from the Geophysical Laboratory (GL) and the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM).

"Carnegie enjoys a unique concentration of instrumentation and expertise to be able to engage in cutting-edge questions such as those posed by the Stardust mission," said GL's Andrew Steele.........

Posted by: Aron      Permalink         Source

November 28, 2006, 8:25 PM CT

Integral Catches A New Erupting Black Hole

ESA's gamma-ray observatory, Integral, has spotted a rare kind of gamma-ray outburst. The vast explosion of energy allowed astronomers to pinpoint a possible black hole in our Galaxy.

The outburst was discovered on 17 September 2006 by staff at the Integral Science Data Centre (ISDC), Versoix, Switzerland. Inside the ISDC, astronomers constantly monitor the data coming down from Integral because they know the sky at gamma-ray wavelengths can be a swiftly changing place.

"The galactic centre is one of the most exciting regions for gamma ray astronomy because there are so a number of potential gamma-ray sources," says Roland Walter, an astronomer at the ISDC, and lead author of these results.

To reflect the importance of this region, Integral is now running a Key Programme, in which almost four weeks of its observing time is given over to the study of the galactic centre. This is allowing astronomers to understand the gamma-ray characteristics of the galactic centre and its celestial objects, better than ever before.

It was during one of the first of these observations that astronomers saw the outburst take place. An unexpected event of this kind is known as a 'target of opportunity'. At first they did not know what kind of eruption they had detected. Some gamma ray outbursts last for only a short period of time and so they immediately alerted other observatories around the world of the outburst's position, allowing them to target the explosion, too. Fortunately, Integral has the capability to pinpoint the position of such a very bright event incredibly accurately.........

Posted by: Aron      Permalink         Source

November 22, 2006, 4:32 AM CT

First Live HDTV Broadcast From Space

Images from the world's first high definition television (HDTV) broadcast from space flashed across the screen on Nov 15th in Times Square. On Nov. 15, 2006, NASA made history with the first live HDTV broadcasts from space, in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Discovery HD Theater and Japanese broadcast network NHK.

The two HDTV broadcasts featured Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria on the International Space Station, with Flight Engineer Thomas Reiter serving as camera operator aboard the 220-mile-high laboratory.

"HDTV provides up to six times the resolution of regular analog video," said Rodney Grubbs, NASA principal investigator. "On prior missions, we've flown HDTV cameras but had to wait until after the mission to retrieve the tapes, watch the video and share it with the science and engineering community, the media and the public. For the first time ever, this test lets us stream live HDTV from space so the public can experience what its like to be there."

Known as the Space Video Gateway, the system transmits high bandwidth digital television signals to the ground that are not only spectacular, but also valuable to scientists, engineers and managers.

NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, along with both NHK and Discovery, are cooperating in this effort though a Space Act Agreement originally signed in 2002.........

Posted by: Sean      Permalink         Source

October 31, 2006, 6:48 PM CT

Esperanza Fire

Smoke from the Esperanza Fire washed over the mountains southeast of Los Angeles and over the Pacific Ocean.
Waves of gray-brown smoke washed over the mountains southeast of Los Angeles and out over the Pacific on Oct. 26, 2006, on the same day on which four firefighters were killed fighting the blaze. West of Palm Springs, Calif., the Esperanza Fire had ballooned under the influence of Santa Ana winds to encompass more than 19,000 acres as of the morning of Oct. 27, as per the daily report from the National Interagency Fire Center. Racing through grass, brush, and timber, the blaze had forced hundreds to evacuate, and it killed several firefighters who were working to protect homes. Fire officials are reporting the cause of the blaze as arson.

This photo-like image shows the fire and surrounding area captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite on Oct. 26. Places where MODIS detected actively burning fire are outlined in red. The Santa Ana Mountains peak out from beneath the smoke near the southeastern suburbs of Los Angeles.

Santa Ana winds are a California firefighter's nightmare. These blustery, dry and often hot winds blow out of the desert and race through canyons and passes in the mountains on their way toward the coast. The air is hot not because it is bringing heat from the desert, but because it is flowing downslope from higher elevations. As fall progresses, cold air begins to sink into the Great Basin deserts to the east of California. As the air piles up at the surface, high pressure builds, and the air begins to flow downslope toward the coast. When winds blow downslope, the air gets compressed, which causes it to warm and dry out. In fact, the air can warm at a rate of 10 degrees Celsius per kilometer of descent (29 degrees Fahrenheit per mile). Canyons and passes funnel the winds, which increases their speed. Not only do the winds spread the fire, but they also dry out vegetation, making it even more flammable.........

Posted by: Sean      Permalink         Source

October 25, 2006, 5:03 AM CT

The Space Tourism Industry Can Really Make Money

So far, only one craft has flown in space, sending test pilots to the final frontier at an expense of $25 million-plus to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize. Market right now doesn't show the prospects that were expected by the investors in the space tourism industry.

But this doesn't mean that people in the real world don't have any respect for this industry. Space Tourism is not aimed at "space geeks" only. This seems the way it is because people in the real world can't afford the million dollars ride into the space and it looks like they are less bothered about what is going on in the space tourism industry.

Every body around the world would like to see the futuristic industry to succeed in the splendid mission they are trying to achieve. The market will sooner prove that investors can really make money on space tourism. There are no doubt high risks in investing millions or billions of dollars. But all of this is going to come out in its totality in two to four years.

Via:msnbc........

Posted by: Aron      Permalink         Source

October 12, 2006, 8:15 PM CT

Closer to the Edge of a Black Hole

NASA researchers and their international partners using the new Japanese Suzaku satellite have collected a startling new set of black hole observations, revealing details of twisted space and warped time never before seen with such precision.

The observations include clocking the speed of a black hole's spin rate and measuring the angle at which matter pours into the void, as well as evidence for a wall of X-ray light pulled back and flattened by gravity.

The findings rely on a special feature in the light emitted close to the black hole, called the "broad iron K line," once doubted by some researchers because of poor resolution in earlier observations, now unambiguously revealed as a true measure of a black hole's crushing gravitational force. This technique can be exploited in future X-ray missions.

"Across the board, we are finding the broad iron K line to be an incredibly robust measure of black hole properties," said Andrew Fabian of Cambridge University, England, who led one of the teams. "We are entering the era of precision black hole measurements".

Fabian is the team leader on Suzaku's black hole spin and light-bending observations. James Reeves of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, led a second team that observed the first accurate measurement of the angle of a disk of material swirling around a black hole.........

Posted by: Aron      Permalink         Source

October 12, 2006, 5:04 AM CT

Evidence Of A Modern-day Collision

Researchers on NASA's Cassini mission have spied a new, continuously changing feature that provides circumstantial evidence that a comet or asteroid recently collided with Saturn's innermost ring, the faint D ring.

Imaging researchers see a structure in the outer part of the D-ring that looks like a series of bright ringlets with a regularly spaced interval of about 30 kilometers (19 miles). An observation made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 also saw a periodic structure in the outer D ring, but its interval was then 60 kilometers (37 miles). Thus, unlike a number of features in the ring system which have not changed over the last few decades, the interval of this pattern has been decreasing over time.

These findings are being presented today at the Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting of the American Astronomical Society held in Pasadena, Calif. Images are available at http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini, and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

"This structure in the D ring reminds us that Saturn's rings are not eternal, but instead are active, dynamical systems, which can change and evolve," said faint ring specialist, Dr. Matt Hedman, Cassini imaging team associate at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

When Cassini scientists viewed the D ring along a line of sight nearly parallel to the ringplane, they observed a pattern of brightness reversals: a part of the ring that appears bright on the far side of the rings appeared dark on the near side of the rings, and vice versa.........

Posted by: Aron      Permalink         Source

October 8, 2006, 6:55 PM CT

Back From Deep Hibernation

Cluster 2, Artist's view
On 15 September, flight controllers at ESA's Space Operations Centre watched tensely as 'Rumba', No. 1 in the four-spacecraft Cluster fleet, was switched into a low-power, deep hibernation mode. The aim was to survive a challenging eclipse.

Each year, in autumn, the Cluster fleet must pass several times through the Earth's shadow with respect to the Sun. During these eclipses, which last about three hours, sunlight is blocked by the Earth and the spacecraft solar panels cannot generate electricity.

Batteries then generate electrical power, which is used to run heaters - keeping the spacecraft warm - and to operate on-board computers and maintain spacecraft control.

However, the Cluster fleet, launched in mid-2000, has been in orbit for over six years and batteries, in particular, are beginning to age. This year, spacecraft No. 1, Rumba, had the most severe battery problems; three out of five have already been declared non-operational for nominal use and one has a high leakage current.

As a result, mission engineers forecast that only about half of the battery power mandatory by Rumba would be available during eclipse season.

ESOC, ESTEC, industry team solves power shortfall

The pending power shortfall was recognized in 2005, and an interdisciplinary team of engineers comprising representatives from the Flight Control Team at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), scientists at ESA's Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) and the spacecraft's builder was established to devise a solution. ........

Posted by: Aron      Permalink         Source

September 14, 2006, 6:54 PM CT

Picture of Atlantis

Look! Birds don't fly this high. Airplanes don't go this fast. The Statue of Liberty weighs less. No species other than human can even comprehend what is going on, nor could any human just a millennium ago. The launch of a rocket bound for space is an event that inspires awe and challenges description.

Pictured above, the Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off to visit the International Space Station during the morning of 2006 September 9. From a standing start, the two million kilogram rocket ship left to circle the Earth where the outside air is too thin to breathe and where there is little noticeable onboard gravity. Rockets bound for space are now launched from somewhere on Earth about once a week.........

Posted by: Aron      Permalink         Source

September 14, 2006, 5:07 AM CT

most energetic explosions in the solar system

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 Suns 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 Suns surface. Its 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 Londons Mullard Space Science Laboratory [UCL/MSSL].........

Posted by: Aron      Permalink         Source