http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/astronomy-blog.html Astronomy blog From Astronomy blog Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 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/10-2011/alma-opens-its-eyes.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/10-2011/alma-opens-its-eyes.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT Scientists presented details about an eagerly awaited new astronomical observatory during a live webcast last Thursday with the National Science Foundation and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). Astronomers Kartik Sheth and Adam Leroy of the NRAO's North American ALMA Science Center, and Brad Whitmore of the Space Telescope Science Institute, discussed details of the first scientific observing cycle with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array or ALMA. They explained how ALMA will contribute to understanding the universe........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/big-step-forward-for-ska.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/big-step-forward-for-ska.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT The discovery potential of the future international SKA radio telescope has been glimpsed following the commissioning of a working optical fibre link between CSIRO's Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope in Western Australia, and other radio telescopes across Australia and New Zealand. 7 July 2011........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/final-space-shuttle-to-carry-5-cu-boulder.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/final-space-shuttle-to-carry-5-cu-boulder.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT The University of Colorado Boulder is involved with five different space science payloads ranging from antibody tests that may lead to new bone-loss therapys to an experiment to improve vaccine effectiveness for combating salmonella when Atlantis thunders skyward July 8 on the last of NASA's 135 space shuttle missions........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2011/jupiters-foray-robbed-mars-of-mass.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2011/jupiters-foray-robbed-mars-of-mass.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT Planetary researchers have long wondered why Mars is only about half the size and one-tenth the mass of Earth. As next-door neighbors in the inner solar system, probably formed about the same time, why isn't Mars more like Earth and Venus in size and mass? A paper reported in the journal Nature this week provides the first cohesive explanation and, by doing so, reveals an unexpected twist in the early lives of Jupiter and Saturn as well........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/4-2011/swift-and-hubble-probe-asteroid-collision-debris.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/4-2011/swift-and-hubble-probe-asteroid-collision-debris.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT Late last year, astronomers noticed an asteroid named Scheila had unexpectedly brightened, and it was sporting short-lived plumes. Data from NASA's Swift satellite and Hubble Space Telescope showed these changes likely occurred after Scheila was struck by a much smaller asteroid. "Collisions between asteroids create rock fragments, from fine dust to huge boulders, that impact planets and their moons," said Dennis Bodewits, an astronomer at the University of Maryland in College Park and main author of the Swift study. "Yet this is the first time we've been able to catch one just weeks after the smash-up, long before the evidence fades away"........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/4-2011/frozen-comet-had-a-watery-pas.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/4-2011/frozen-comet-had-a-watery-pas.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT For the first time, researchers have found convincing evidence for the presence of liquid water in a comet, shattering the current paradigm that comets never get warm enough to melt the ice that makes up the bulk of their material. "Current thinking suggests that it is impossible to form liquid water inside of a comet," said Dante Lauretta, an associate professor of cosmochemistry and planet formation at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Lauretta is the principal investigator of the UA team involved in analysis of samples returned by NASA's Stardust mission........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/a-look-inside-red-giant-stars.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/a-look-inside-red-giant-stars.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT NASA's Kepler Mission is giving astronomers such a clear view of changes in star brightness that they can now see clues about what's happening inside red giant stars. "No one anticipated seeing this before the mission launched," said Steve Kawaler, an Iowa State University professor of physics and astronomy and a leader of the Kepler Asteroseismic Investigation. "That we could see so clearly down below a red giant star's surface was unexpected"........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/the-rose-red-glow-of-star-formation.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/the-rose-red-glow-of-star-formation.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT The object dominating this image may resemble a pool of spilled blood, but rather than being linked to death, such regions of ionised hydrogen -- known as HII regions -- are sites of creation with high rates of recent star birth. NGC 371 is an example of this; it is an open cluster surrounded by a nebula. The stars in open clusters all originate from the same diffuse HII region, and over time the majority of the hydrogen is used up by star formation, leaving behind a shell of hydrogen such as the one in this image, along with a cluster of hot young stars........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/clearest-picture-yet-of-perseus-galaxy-cluster.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/clearest-picture-yet-of-perseus-galaxy-cluster.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT X-ray observations made by the Suzaku observatory provide the clearest picture to date of the size, mass and chemical content of a nearby cluster of galaxies. The study also provides the first direct evidence that million-degree gas clouds are tightly gathered in the cluster's outskirts. Suzaku is sponsored by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) with contributions from NASA and participation by the international scientific community. The findings will appear in the March 25 issue of the journal Science........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/a-millisecond-from-doom.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/a-millisecond-from-doom.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory has spotted extremely hot matter just a millisecond before it plunges into the oblivion of a black hole. But is it really doomed? These unique observations suggest that some of the matter appears to be making a great escape. No one would want to be so close to a black hole. Just a few hundred kilometres away from its deadly surface, space is a maelstrom of particles and radiation. Vast storms of particles are falling to their doom at close to the speed of light, raising the temperature to millions of degrees........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/is-space-like-a-chessboard.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/is-space-like-a-chessboard.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT Physicists at UCLA set out to design a better transistor and ended up discovering a new way to think about the structure of space. Space is commonly considered infinitely divisible � given any two positions, there is always a position halfway between. But in a recent study aimed at developing ultra-fast transistors using graphene, scientists from the UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy and the California NanoSystems Institute show that dividing space into discrete locations, like a chessboard, may explain how point-like electrons, which have no finite radius, manage to carry their intrinsic angular momentum, or "spin." ........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/seasonal-rains-on-titan.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/seasonal-rains-on-titan.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT As spring continues to unfold on Saturn, April showers on the planet's largest moon, Titan, have brought methane rain to its equatorial deserts, as revealed in images captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. This is the first time researchers have obtained existing evidence of rain soaking Titan's surface at low latitudes. The observations are released recently in the journal Science....... ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/hubble-snaps-close-up-of-the-tarantula.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/hubble-snaps-close-up-of-the-tarantula.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT The wispy arms of the Tarantula Nebula were originally thought to resemble spindly spider legs, giving the nebula its unusual name. The part of the nebula visible in this image from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys is criss-crossed with tendrils of dust and gas churned up by recent supernovae. These supernova remnants include NGC 2060, visible above and to the left of the centre of this image, which contains the brightest known pulsar........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/nasas-glory-satellite-scheduled-for-launch-march-4.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2011/nasas-glory-satellite-scheduled-for-launch-march-4.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT NASA's Glory spacecraft is scheduled for launch on Friday, March 4. Technical issues with ground support equipment for the Taurus XL launch vehicle led to the scrub of the original Feb. 23 launch attempt. Those issues have been resolved. The March 4 liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., is targeted for 5:09:43 a.m. EST, in the middle of a 48-second launch window. Spacecraft separation occurs 13 minutes after launch........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2011/januarys-eclipse-in-dubai.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2011/januarys-eclipse-in-dubai.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT On 4 January 2011, the people of Dubai had the exciting opportunity to view a partial solar eclipse during the afternoon. Just after noon, viewers could see the celestial body passing over the sun, creating a partial eclipse that lasted for a few hours. This was the first partial eclipse viewed in Dubai since 2008. A full solar eclipse has not occurred since 1999. The next solar eclipse will happen in 2019. ....... ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2011/2-timing-spacecraft-has-date-with-another-comet.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2011/2-timing-spacecraft-has-date-with-another-comet.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT NASA's Stardust spacecraft, equipped with the University of Chicago's Dust Flux Monitor Instrument (DFMI), is hurtling at more than 24,000 miles an hour toward a Valentine's Day encounter with comet Tempel 1. Stardust will approach to within 124 miles of Tempel 1 at 10:56 p.m. CST Monday, Feb. 14. The spacecraft flew within 150 miles of comet Wild 2 in 2004, when it collected thousands of tiny dust particles streaming from the comet's nucleus for laboratory analysis........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2011/tracking-the-origins-of-speedy-space-particles.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2011/tracking-the-origins-of-speedy-space-particles.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT Time History of Events and Macroscale Interaction during Substorms (THEMIS) spacecraft combined with computer models have helped track the origin of the energetic particles in Earth's magnetic atmosphere that appear during a kind of space weather called a substorm. Understanding the source of such particles and how they are shuttled through Earth's atmosphere is crucial to better understanding the Sun's complex space weather system and thus protect satellites or even humans in space........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2011/research-on-asteroid-deflection.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2011/research-on-asteroid-deflection.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT So you think global warming is a big problem? What could happen if a 25-million-ton chunk of rock slammed into Earth? When something similar happened 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs and other forms of life were wiped out. "A collision with an object of this size traveling at an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 mile per hour would be catastrophic," as per NASA researcher and New York City College of Technology (City Tech) Associate Professor of Physics Gregory L. Matloff. His recommendation? "Either destroy the object or alter its trajectory"........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2011/the-best-way-to-measure-dark-energy.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2011/the-best-way-to-measure-dark-energy.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT Dark energy is a mysterious force that pervades all space, acting as a "push" to accelerate the Universe's expansion. Despite being 70 percent of the Universe, dark energy was only discovered in 1998 by two teams observing Type Ia supernovae. A Type 1a supernova is a cataclysmic explosion of a white dwarf star........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2011/physicists-discover-crab-nebula-is-slowly-dimming.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2011/physicists-discover-crab-nebula-is-slowly-dimming.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:05:45 GMT The Crab Nebula, once considered to be a source of energy so stable that astronomers used it to calibrate their instruments, is dimming. LSU physicists Mike Cherry, Gary Case and graduate student James Rodi, together with an international team of colleagues using the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, or GBM, on NASA's Fermi gamma-ray space telescope, discovered the anomaly. This revelation has proven astonishing for astronomers........ ]]>