http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/astronomy-blog.html Astronomy blog From Astronomy blog Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:17:02 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/3-2010/shocking-recipe-for-making-killer-electrons.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2010/shocking-recipe-for-making-killer-electrons.html Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:17:02 GMT Take a bunch of fast-moving electrons, place them in orbit and then hit them with the shock waves from a solar storm. What do you get? Killer electrons. That's the shocking recipe revealed by ESA's Cluster mission. Killer electrons are highly energetic particles trapped in Earth's outer radiation belt, which extends from 12 000 km to 64 000 km above the planet's surface. During solar storms their number grows at least ten times and they can be dislodged, posing a threat to satellites. As the name suggests, killer electrons are energetic enough to penetrate satellite shielding and cause microscopic lightning strikes. If these electrical discharges take place in vital components, the satellite can be damaged or even rendered inoperable........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2010/sample-from-asteroid-time-capsule.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2010/sample-from-asteroid-time-capsule.html Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:17:02 GMT Meet asteroid 1999 RQ36, a chunk of rock and dust about 1,900 feet in diameter that could tell us how the solar system was born, and perhaps, shed light on how life began. It also might hit us someday. "This asteroid is a time capsule from before the birth of our solar system," said Bill Cutlip of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., one of the leaders of Goddard's effort to propose a mission called OSIRIS-REx that will return a sample from RQ36........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/mapping-the-milky-way.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/mapping-the-milky-way.html Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:17:02 GMT At this very moment, tens of thousands of home computers around the world are quietly working together to solve the largest and most basic mysteries of our galaxy. Enthusiastic and inquisitive volunteers from Africa to Australia are donating the computing power of everything from decade-old desktops to sleek new netbooks to help computer researchers and astronomers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute map the shape of our Milky Way galaxy. Now, just this month, the collected computing power of these humble home computers has surpassed one petaflop, a computing speed that surpasses the world's second fastest supercomputer........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/merging-galaxies-create-a-binary-quasar.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/merging-galaxies-create-a-binary-quasar.html Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:17:02 GMT Astronomers have found the first clear evidence of a binary quasar within a pair of actively merging galaxies. Quasars are the extremely bright centers of galaxies surrounding super-massive black holes, and binary quasars are pairs of quasars bound together by gravity. Binary quasars, like other quasars, are believed to be the product of galaxy mergers. Until now, however, binary quasars have not been seen in galaxies that are unambiguously in the act of merging. But images of a new binary quasar from the Carnegie Institution's Magellan telescope in Chile show two distinct galaxies with "tails" produced by tidal forces from their mutual gravitational attraction........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/student-built-satellite.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/student-built-satellite.html Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:17:02 GMT A tiny communications satellite designed and built by University of Colorado at Boulder undergraduates has been selected as one of three university research satellites to be launched into orbit in November as part of a NASA space education initiative. The three satellites, dubbed "CubeSats" because of their shape, were built by CU-Boulder, Montana State University and Kentucky Space, which is a consortium of state universities. CubeSats are roughly four inches on a side, have a volume of about one quart and weigh about 2.2 pounds. The satellites are being flown as part of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellite, or ELaNA, mission, said Chris Koehler, director of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, or COSGC, which is headquartered at CU-Boulder........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/new-research-on-star-formation.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/new-research-on-star-formation.html Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:17:02 GMT "Crazy" and "cool" are two of the words Michigan State University astronomer Megan Donahue uses to describe the two distinct "tails" found on a long tail of gas that is thought to beforming stars where few stars have been formed before. Donahue was part of an international team of astronomers that viewed the gas tail with a very long, new observation made by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and detailed it in a paper published this month in the publication Astrophysical Journal........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/differences-between-ganymede-and-callisto.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/differences-between-ganymede-and-callisto.html Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:17:02 GMT Differences in the number and speed of cometary impacts onto Jupiter's large moons Ganymede and Callisto some 3.8 billion years ago can explain their vastly different surfaces and interior states, as per research by researchers at the Southwest Research Institute appearing online in Nature Geoscience Jan. 24, 2010........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/meteorite-hits-doctors-office.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/meteorite-hits-doctors-office.html Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:17:02 GMT Of course, it happened with a doctor’s office, what else? An excerpt from the Washington Post ......... ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/first-comprehensive-sky-map.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/first-comprehensive-sky-map.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT Ever since NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, mission researchers released the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system's edge in particles, solar physicists have been busy revising their models to account for the discovery of a narrow "ribbon" of bright emission that was completely unexpected and not predicted by any model at the time........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/fossil-fireballs-from-supernovae.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/fossil-fireballs-from-supernovae.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT Studies of two supernova remnants using the Japan-U.S. Suzaku observatory have revealed never-before-seen embers of the high-temperature fireballs that immediately followed the explosions. Even after thousands of years, gas within these stellar wrecks retain the imprint of temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the sun's surface........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/galactic-gps.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/galactic-gps.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT Radio astronomers have uncovered 17 millisecond pulsars in our galaxy by studying unknown high-energy sources detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The astronomers made the discovery in less than three months. Such a jump in the pace of locating these hard-to-find objects holds the promise of using them as a kind of "galactic GPS" to detect gravitational waves passing near Earth........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/sun-glints-seen-from-space.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/sun-glints-seen-from-space.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT n two new videos from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft, bright flashes of light known as sun glints act as beacons signaling large bodies of water on Earth. These observations give scientists a way to pick out planets beyond our solar system (extrasolar planets) that are likely to have expanses of liquid, and so stand a better chance of having life........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/new-mathematical-model-for-early-universe.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/1-2010/new-mathematical-model-for-early-universe.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT Researchers have made a number of discoveries about the origins of our 13 billion-year-old universe. But a number of scientific mysteries remain. What exactly happened during the Big Bang, when rapidly evolving physical processes set the stage for gases to form stars, planets and galaxies? Now astrophysicists using supercomputers to simulate the Big Bang have a new mathematical tool to unravel those mysteries, says Daniel R. Reynolds, assistant professor of mathematics at SMU........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/fog-on-titan.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/fog-on-titan.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT Saturn's largest moon, Titan, looks to be the only place in the solar systemaside from our home planet, Earthwith copious quantities of liquid (largely, liquid methane and ethane) sitting on its surface. As per planetary astronomer Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Earth and Titan share yet another feature, which is inextricably linked with that surface liquid: common fog........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/vista-pioneering-new-survey-telescope.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/vista-pioneering-new-survey-telescope.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT VISTA is the latest telescope to be added to ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is housed on the peak adjacent to the one hosting the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) and shares the same exceptional observing conditions. VISTA's main mirror is 4.1 metres across and is the most highly curved mirror of this size and quality ever made its deviations from a perfect surface are less than a few thousandths of the thickness of a human hair and its construction and polishing presented formidable challenges........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/super-massive-black-holes.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/super-massive-black-holes.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT An international team of researchers has observed four super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies, which may provide new information on how these central black hole systems operate. Their findings appear in December's first issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics These super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies are called active galactic nuclei. For the first time, the team observed a quasar with an active galactic nucleus, as part of the group of four, which is located more than a billion light years from Earth. The researchers used the two Keck telescopes on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. These are the largest optical/infrared telescopes in the world........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/brightest-ever-blazar-flare.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/brightest-ever-blazar-flare.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT A galaxy located billions of light-years away is commanding the attention of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and astronomers around the globe. Thanks to a series of flares that began September 15, the galaxy is now the brightest source in the gamma-ray sky -- more than ten times brighter than it was in the summer........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/nrls-misse7-l.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/nrls-misse7-l.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT The Materials on the International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) 7, designed and built by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), launched aboard STS-129 on November, 16, for transport to the International Space Station. MISSE7 consists of two Passive Experiment Carriers (PEC7a and PEC7b) and three experiments mounted to the Express Pallet Assembly (ExPA). The individual experiments on MISSE7 include in situ monitoring of materials exposure, environmental monitoring including temperature, atomic oxygen exposure, and ionizing radiation. "The results will provide a better understanding of the durability of advanced materials and electronics when they are exposed to vacuum, solar radiation, atomic oxygen, and extremes of heat and cold," explains Mr. Phillip Jenkins, principal investigator. These materials and electronics, including solar cells, coatings, thermal protection, optics, sensors, and computing elements, have the potential to increase the performance and useful life of the next generation of satellites and launch systems........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/about-first-black-holes.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/about-first-black-holes.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT The first large black holes in the universe likely formed and grew deep inside gigantic, starlike cocoons that smothered their powerful x-ray radiation and prevented surrounding gases from being blown away, says a newly released study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. The formation process involved two stages, said Mitchell Begelman, a professor and the chair of CU-Boulder's astrophysical and planetary sciences department. The predecessors to black hole formation, objects called supermassive stars, probably started forming within the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago. A supermassive star eventually would have grown to a huge size -- as much as tens of millions of times the mass of our sun -- and would have been short-lived, with its core collapsing in just in few million years, he said........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/hidden-details-in-the-birth-of-super-suns.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/hidden-details-in-the-birth-of-super-suns.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:45:29 GMT The constellation of Orion is a hotbed of massive star formation, most prominently in the Great Nebula that sits in Orion's sword. The glowing gas of the Nebula is powered by a group of young massive stars, but behind it is a cluster of younger stars and clumps of gas. Still gathering together under gravity's pull, these gas clumps will eventually ignite into stars........ ]]>