http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/astronomy-blog.html Astronomy blog From Astronomy blog Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT en-us http://www.astronomy-blog.com/images/blogs/astronomy-blog-22390.jpg http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/astronomy-blog.html 100 75 http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2009/new-focus-on-the-moon.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2009/new-focus-on-the-moon.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) has taken and received its first images of the Moon, kicking off the year-long mapping mission of Earth's nearest celestial neighbor. The LROC imaging system, under the watchful eyes of Arizona State University professor Mark Robison, the principal investigator, consists of two Narrow Angle Cameras (NACs) to provide high-resolution black-and-white images, a Wide Angle Camera (WAC) to provide images in seven color bands over a 60-kilometer (37.28-mile) swath, and a Sequence and Compressor System (SCS) supporting data acquisition for both cameras........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2009/meteorite-grains-divulge-earths-cosmic-roots.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2009/meteorite-grains-divulge-earths-cosmic-roots.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT The interstellar stuff that became incorporated into the planets and life on Earth has younger cosmic roots than theories predict, as per the University of Chicago postdoctoral scholar Philipp Heck and his international team. of colleagues. Heck and colleagues examined 22 interstellar grains from the Murchison meteorite for their analysis. Dying sun-like stars flung the Murchison grains into space more than 4.5........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2009/planet-forming-disk-orbiting-twin-suns.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2009/planet-forming-disk-orbiting-twin-suns.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT Astronomers are announcing today that a sequence of images collected with the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA) clearly reveals the presence of a rotating molecular disk orbiting the young binary star system V4046 Sagittarii. The SMA images provide an uncommonly vivid snapshot of the process of formation of giant planets, comets, and Pluto-like bodies. The results also confirm that such objects may just as easily form around double stars as around single stars like our Sun........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2009/victoria-crater-unveils-more-of-mars-geologic-past.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2009/victoria-crater-unveils-more-of-mars-geologic-past.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT After thoroughly investigating Victoria Crater on Mars for two years, the instruments aboard the Rover Opportunity reveal more evidence of our neighboring red planet's windy, wet and wild past. The overview of the findings compiled in one source is reported in the latest issue of the journal Science (May 22, 2009)........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2009/hubble-repair-mission-carrying.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2009/hubble-repair-mission-carrying.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT A $70 million instrument designed by the University of Colorado at Boulder to probe the evolution of galaxies, stars and intergalactic matter from its perch on the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope is on schedule for its slated May 11 launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard NASA's space shuttle Atlantis........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/4-2009/we-owe-it-all-to-comets.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/4-2009/we-owe-it-all-to-comets.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT Comets have always fascinated us. A mysterious appearance could symbolize God's displeasure or mean a sure failure in battle, at least for one side. Now Tel Aviv University justifies our fascination - comets might have provided the elements for the emergence of life on our planet. While investigating the chemical make-up of comets, Prof. Akiva Bar-Nun of the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University found they were the source of missing ingredients needed for life in Earth's ancient primordial soup. "When comets slammed into the Earth through the atmosphere about four billion years ago, they delivered a payload of organic materials to the young Earth, adding materials that combined with Earth's own large reservoir of organics and led to the emergence of life," says Prof. Bar-Nun........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/4-2009/fermi-active-galaxies-ready-for-their-close-up.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/4-2009/fermi-active-galaxies-ready-for-their-close-up.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT An international team of astronomers has used the world's biggest radio telescope to look deep into the brightest galaxies that NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope can see. The study solidifies the link between an active galaxy's gamma-ray emissions and its powerful radio-emitting jets. "Now we know for sure that the fastest, most compact, and brightest jets we see with radio telescopes are the ones that are able to kick light up to the highest energies," said Yuri Kovalev, a team member at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Gera number of........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/4-2009/challenge-to-galaxy-formation-theories.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/4-2009/challenge-to-galaxy-formation-theories.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT A team led by an Indiana University astronomer has found a sample of massive galaxies with properties that suggest they may have formed relatively recently. This would run counter to the widely-held belief that massive, luminous galaxies (like our own Milky Way Galaxy) began their formation and evolution shortly after the Big Bang, some 13 billion years ago. Further research into the nature of these objects could open new windows into the study of the origin and early evolution of galaxies........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2009/a-new-x-ray-spectroscopic-tool.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2009/a-new-x-ray-spectroscopic-tool.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT Astronomy and Astrophysics is publishing the first clear detection of signatures long sought in the spectra of X-ray astronomical sources. These signatures, the so-called EXAFS standing for "Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure", were observed with an X-ray spectroscopic technique that is common in materials sciences. Up to now, EXAFS studies of astronomical sources have been unsuccessful because of the weak X-ray signals received from celestial objects. Using the Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) onboard the XMM-Newton satellite, Dutch astronomers C.P. de Vries and E. Costantini have obtained high-quality X-ray spectra of Scorpius X-1, one of the brightest X-ray sources in the sky, located about 2800 parsecs from the Earth. For the first time, they have found clear evidence of an EXAFS signature coming from the dust seen toward a celestial source........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2009/the-erratic-black-hole.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2009/the-erratic-black-hole.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT New results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have made a major advance in explaining how a special class of black holes may shut off the high-speed jets they produce. These results suggest that these black holes have a mechanism for regulating the rate at which they grow. Black holes come in a number of sizes: the supermassive ones, including those in quasars, which weigh in at millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, and the much smaller stellar-mass black holes which have measured masses in the range of about 7 to 25 times the Sun's mass. Some stellar-mass black holes launch powerful jets of particles and radiation, like seen in quasars, and are called "micro-quasars"........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2009/outer-space-to-ground-impact.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2009/outer-space-to-ground-impact.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT Reports by researchers of meteorites striking Earth in the past have resembled police reports of so a number of muggings - the offenders came out of nowhere and then disappeared into the crowd, making it difficult to get more than very basic facts. Now an international research team has been able to identify an asteroid in space before it entered Earth's atmosphere, enabling computers to determine its area of origin in the solar system as well as predict the arrival time and location on Earth of its shattered surviving parts........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2009/a-curious-pair-of-galaxies.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2009/a-curious-pair-of-galaxies.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT Sometimes objects in the sky that appear strange, or different from normal, have a story to tell and prove scientifically very rewarding. This was the idea behind Halton Arp's catalogue of Peculiar Galaxies that appeared in the 1960s. One of the oddballs listed there is Arp 261, which has now been imaged in more detail than ever before using the FORS2 instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope. The image proves to contain several surprises........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2009/the-lower-atmosphere-of-pluto-revealed.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2009/the-lower-atmosphere-of-pluto-revealed.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have gained valuable new insights about the atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto. The researchers found unexpectedly large amounts of methane in the atmosphere, and also discovered that the atmosphere is hotter than the surface by about 40 degrees, eventhough it still only reaches a frigid minus 180 degrees Celsius. These properties of Pluto's atmosphere appears to be due to the presence of pure methane patches or of a methane-rich layer covering the dwarf planet's surface........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2009/observing-first-moments-of-universe.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2009/observing-first-moments-of-universe.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT During the next decade, a delicate measurement of primordial light could reveal convincing evidence for the popular cosmic inflation theory, which proposes that a random, microscopic density fluctuation in the fabric of space and time gave birth to the universe in a hot big bang approximately 13.7 billion years ago........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2009/the-first-moments-of-universe.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2009/the-first-moments-of-universe.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT During the next decade, a delicate measurement of primordial light could reveal convincing evidence for the popular cosmic inflation theory, which proposes that a random, microscopic density fluctuation in the fabric of space and time gave birth to the universe in a hot big bang approximately 13.7 billion years ago........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2009/astronauts-on-international-space-station.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2009/astronauts-on-international-space-station.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT Astronauts spending months in space lose significant bone strength, making them increasingly at risk for fractures during the later part of life. UC Irvine and UC San Francisco led a study evaluating 13 astronauts who spent four to six months on the International Space Station and observed that, on average, astronauts' hipbone strength decreased 14 percent. Three astronauts experienced losses of 20 percent to 30 percent, rates comparable to those seen in older women with osteoporosis........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2009/solving-an-old-astronomy-mystery.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2009/solving-an-old-astronomy-mystery.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT Researchers may have solved one of the most longstanding astrophysical mysteries of all times: How massive stars - up to 120 times the mass of our sun - form without blowing away the clouds of gas and dust that feed their growth. New research by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley has shown how a massive star can grow despite outward-flowing radiation pressure that exceeds the gravitational force pulling material inward. The study appears in the Jan. 15 online edition of Science Express........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2009/mars-is-not-a-dead-planet.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2009/mars-is-not-a-dead-planet.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT A team of NASA and university researchers has achieved the first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. This discovery indicates the planet is either biologically or geologically active. The team found methane in the Martian atmosphere by carefully observing the planet throughout several Mars years with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility and the W.M. Keck telescope, both at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The team used spectrometers on the telescopes to spread the light into its component colors, as a prism separates white light into a rainbow. The team detected three spectral features called absorption lines that together are a definitive signature of methane........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2009/looking-through-galileos-eyes.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2009/looking-through-galileos-eyes.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT In 1609, exactly four centuries ago, Galileo revolutionised humankind's understanding of our position in the Universe when he used a telescope for the first time to study the heavens, which saw him sketching radical new views of the moon and discovering the satellites orbiting Jupiter. In synch with the International Year of Astronomy (IYA), which marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's discoveries, a group of astronomers and curators from the Arcetri Observatory and the Institute and Museum of the History of Science, both in Florence, Italy, are recreating the kind of telescope and conditions that led to Galileo's world-changing observations, reports January's Physics World....... ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2009/how-martian-winds-make-rocks-walk.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2009/how-martian-winds-make-rocks-walk.html Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:08:12 GMT Rocks on Mars are on the move, rolling into the wind and forming organized patterns, as per new research. The new finding counters the prior explanation of the evenly spaced arrangement of small rocks on Mars. That explanation suggested the rocks were picked up and carried downwind by extreme high-speed winds thought to occur on Mars in the past........ ]]>