Astronomy's topics - tribe.net

Space oddities

2008-06-24T00:33:23Z

"The deeper that astronomers peer into the universe, the stranger and more extreme it seems. New instruments and techniques have recently uncovered a whole new set of cosmic superlatives: objects whose size, shape or behaviour go beyond anything seen before. Here is a sampling of the latest record holders.."

check it out...some amazing things in there...and reallly cool photos
http://discovermagazine.com/photos/07-battleground-galactica

posted in Astronomy - 1 reply

We may all be space aliens: study

2008-06-23T19:48:41Z

http://news.sbs.com.au/worldnewsaustralia/we_may_all_be_space_aliens_study_549287

We may all be space aliens: study
Saturday, 14 June, 2008

Genetic material from outer space found in a meteorite in Australia may well have played a key role in the origin of life on earth, according to a study to be published on Sunday.

European and US scientists have proved for the first time two bits of genetic coding, called nucleobases, contained in the meteor fragment, are truly extraterrestrial.

Previous studies had suggested the space rocks, which hit earth about 40 years ago, might have been contaminated upon impact.

Both of the molecules identified, uracil and xanthine, "are present in our DNA and RNA," said lead author Zita Martins, a researcher at Imperial College London.

RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is another key part of the genetic coding that makes up our bodies.

These molecules would also have been essential to the still-mysterious alchemy that somehow gave rise, about four billion years ago, to life itself.

"We know that meteorites very similar to the Murchison meteorite, which is the one we analysed, were delivering the building blocks of life to earth 3.8 to 4.5 billion years ago," Martins told AFP in an interview.

Competing theories suggest nucleobases were synthesised closer to home, but Martins said the atmospheric conditions of early earth would have rendered that process difficult or impossible.

A team of European and US scientists showed the two types of molecules in the Australian meteorite contained a heavy form of carbon - carbon 13 - which could only have been formed in space.

"We believe early life may have adopted nucleobases from meteoric fragments for use in genetic coding, enabling them to pass on their successful features to subsequent generations," Martins said.

If so, this would have been the start of an evolutionary process leading over billions of years to all the flora and fauna - including human beings - in existence today.

The study, to be published in Earth Planetary Science Letters, also has implications for life on other planets.

"Because meteorites represent leftover materials from the formation of the solar system, the key components of life - including nucleobases - could be widespread in the cosmos," said co-author Mark Sephton, also at Imperial College London.

"As more and more of life's raw materials are discovered in objects from space, the possibility of life springing forth wherever the right chemistry is present becomes more likely," he said.

Uracil is an organic compound found in RNA, where it binds in a genetic base pair with another molecule, adenine.

Xanthine is not directly part of RNA or DNA, but participates in a series of chemical reactions inside the RNA of cells.

The two types of nucleobases and the ratio of light-to-heavy carbon molecules were identified through gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, technologies that were not available during earlier analyses of the now-famous meteorite.

Even so, said Martins, the process was extremely laborious and time-consuming, one reason it had not be carried out up to now by other scientists.

Source: AAP

posted in Astronomy - 4 replies

panspermia

2008-06-20T04:23:29Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia

just fielding thoughts

that's okay, right?

posted in Astronomy - 6 replies

NASA Plans to Visit the Sun

2008-06-20T01:57:18Z

http://physorg.com/news132323644.html

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

The Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence

2008-06-09T23:34:44Z

Here's a pearl, folks.
Enjoy. ::))
_____________________________________________

This email is being sent to the Disclosure Project Updates email announcements list.
Disclosure Project is a project of CSETI - The Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Time critical!

The upcoming CSETI Ambassador to the Universe training in Crestone, Colorado, from June 29 to July 5, still has has a few spaces open. Crestone is where the new Cosmic Consciousnesss (Zen dome) mantra CD was recorded. If you want to attend please let us know immediately!

We also are still accepting applications for the training in Mt. Shasta, California from August 31 to September 6th, and the others this fall in Virginia and Southern California (Palm Springs).

Please see the following web site for more information:
http://www.cseti.org/programs/Trainings2008.htm or email coordinator@cseti.org
as soon as possible to get registered while space is available.

______________________________________________

posted in Astronomy - 2 replies

Ineractive Site with imagery from the Spitzer

2008-06-06T20:08:21Z

http://www.alienearths.org/glimpse/glimpse.php

posted in Astronomy - 6 replies

hey come and post your galaxy fotos!

2008-06-06T14:59:02Z

http://tribes.tribe.net/galaxyluv if your not on galaxyzoo.org check it out it is wonderful...i amcreating this tribe to specifically post fotos from hubble and speculate about them!

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

Dark stars?

2008-06-03T06:32:52Z

So, I have a possibly stupid question...

There are red dwarfs. There are stars having all kinds of different shades...

Are there any stars out there that don't emit light in the human-visible spectrum? I.E., maybe a star that only emits light in the ultra-violet or infra-red? A "dark star", as far as we would understand it if we didn't have devices capable of seeing outside the visible spectrum?

posted in Astronomy - 16 replies

Animation of Phoneix Landing on Mars

2008-06-02T23:00:29Z

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080525.html

posted in Astronomy - 1 reply

Blazars in Space

2008-06-01T13:14:42Z

From Andrew Zimmerman Jones,

When a quasar, http://physics.about.com/od/glossary/g/quasar.htm , is oriented so that it points directly at the Earth, it is called a blazar. A team at Boston University has focused on the study of these blazars and announced some intriguing findings last week.

The question the team tried to address was why these entities form as a jet, as opposed to say just exploding or radiating in all directions. The solution, it turns out, is similar to the exhaust from jet engines. Instead of being focused by the mechanical structure of the jet engine, the blazar output is focused into jets by the spiraling magnetic field generated from the black hole, http://physics.about.com/od/astronomy/f/BlackHole.htm . It is this process that causes the matter to be cast away from the black hole, as opposed to being sucked in by the intense gravitation.

Related Articles:

* Boston University Institute for Astrophysical Research - Blazar Research at Boston University, http://www.bu.edu/blazars/index.html
* Nature - Blazars: model behavior, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7190/edsumm/e080424-06.html
* Science - Follow That Cosmic Jet, http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/423/2
* Scientific American - Black Hole Plasma Jet Spotted Tracing Corkscrew Path, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=black-hole-plasma-jets-trace-corkscrew-path

From: Subscription Email

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

Strange Ring Found Circling Dead Star

2008-05-29T03:21:38Z

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-086 May 28, 2008

Pasadena , Calif. -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found a bizarre ring of material around the magnetic remains of a star that blasted to smithereens.

The stellar corpse, called SGR 1900+14, belongs to a class of objects known as magnetars. These are the cores of massive stars that blew up in supernova explosions, but unlike other dead stars, they slowly pulsate with X-rays and have tremendously strong magnetic fields.

"The universe is a big place and weird things can happen," said Stefanie Wachter of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena , who found the ring serendipitously. "I was flipping through archived Spitzer data of the object, and that's when I noticed it was surrounded by a ring we'd never seen before." Wachter is lead author of a paper about the findings in this week's Nature. You can see the ring at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/20080528.html .

Wachter and her colleagues think that the ring, which is unlike anything ever seen before, formed in 1998 when the magnetar erupted in a giant flare. They believe the crusty surface of the magnetar cracked, sending out a flare, or blast of energy, that excavated a nearby cloud of dust, leaving an outer, dusty ring. This ring is oblong, with dimensions of about seven by three light-years. It appears to be flat, or two-dimensional, but the scientists said they can't rule out the possibility of a three-dimensional shell.

"It's as if the magnetar became a huge flaming torch and obliterated the dust around it, creating a massive cavity," said Chryssa Kouveliotou, senior astrophysicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., and a co-author of the paper. "Then the stars nearby lit up a ring of fire around the dead star, marking it for eternity."

The discovery could help scientists figure out if a star's mass influences whether it becomes a magnetar when it dies. Though scientists know that stars above a certain mass will "go supernova," they do not know if mass plays a role in determining whether the star becomes a magnetar or a run-of-the-mill dead star. According to the science team, the ring demonstrates that SGR 1900+14 belongs to a nearby cluster of young, massive stars. By studying the masses of these nearby stars, the scientists might learn the approximate mass of the original star that exploded and became SGR 1900+14.

"The ring has to be lit up by something, otherwise Spitzer wouldn't have seen it," said Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz of the University of California , Santa Cruz . "The nearby massive stars are most likely what's heating the dust and lighting it up, and this means that the magnetar, which lies at the exact center of the ring, is associated with the massive star-forming region."

Rings and spheres are common in the universe. Young, hot stars blow bubbles in space, carving out dust into spherical shapes. When stars die in supernova explosions, their remains are blasted into space, forming short-lived beautiful orbs called supernova remnants. Rings can also form around exploded stars whose expanding shells of debris ram into pre-existing dust rings, causing the dust to glow, as is the case with the supernova remnant called 1987A.

But the ring around the magnetar SGR 1900+14 fits into none of these categories. For one thing, supernova remnants and the ring around 1987A cry out with X-rays and radio waves. The ring around SGR 1900+14 only glows at specific infrared wavelengths that Spitzer can see.

At first, the astronomers thought the ring must be what's called an infrared echo. These occur when an object sends out a blast wave that travels outward, heating up dust and causing it to glow with infrared light. But when they went back to observe SGR 1900+14 later, the ring didn't move outward as it should have if it were an infrared echo.

A closer analysis of the pictures later revealed that the ring is most likely a carved-out cavity in a dust cloud -- a phenomenon that must be somewhat rare in the universe since it had not been seen before. The scientists plan to look for more of these rings.

"This magnetar is still alive in many ways," said Ramirez-Ruiz. "It is interacting with its environment, making a big impact on the young star-forming region where it was born."

Other paper authors include V. Dwarkadas of the University of Chicago, Ill.; J. Granot of the University of Hertfordshire , England ; S.K. Patel of the Optical Sciences Corporation, Huntsville , Ala. ; and D. Figer of the Rochester Institute of Technology, N.Y. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif. , manages the Spitzer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center . Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer's infrared array camera, which made the observations, was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center , Greenbelt , Md. Its principal investigator is Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

-end-

From: Subscription Email

posted in Astronomy - 1 reply

NASA Satellite Finds Interior of Mars is Colder

2008-05-28T18:19:33Z

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

May 15, 2008

New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought.

The findings suggest any liquid water that might exist below the planet's surface, and any possible organisms living in that water, would be located deeper than scientists had suspected.

"We found that the rocky surface of Mars is not bending under the load of the north polar ice cap," said Roger Phillips of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder , Colo. Phillips is the lead author of a new report appearing in this week's online version of Science. "This implies that the planet's interior is more rigid, and thus colder, than we thought before."

The discovery was made using the Shallow Radar instrument on the spacecraft, which has provided the most detailed pictures to date of the interior layers of ice, sand and dust that make up the north polar cap on Mars. The radar images reveal long, continuous layers stretching up to 600 miles (1,000 kilometers), or about one-fifth the length of the United States .

"In our first glimpses inside the polar ice using the radar on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, we can clearly see stacks of icy material that trace the history of Mars' climate," said Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif. Plaut is a science team member and a co-author of the paper. "Radar has opened up a new avenue for studying Mars' past."

The radar pictures show a smooth, flat border between the ice cap and the rocky Martian crust. On Earth, the weight of a similar stack of ice would cause the planet's surface to sag. The fact that the Martian surface is not bending means that its strong outer shell, or lithosphere -- a combination of its crust and upper mantle -- must be very thick and cold.

"The lithosphere of a planet is the rigid part. On Earth, the lithosphere is the part that breaks during an earthquake," said Suzanne Smrekar, deputy project scientist for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at JPL. "The ability of the radar to see through the ice cap and determine that there is no bending of the lithosphere gives us a good idea of present day temperatures inside Mars for the first time."

Temperatures in the outer portion of a rocky planet like Mars increase with depth toward the interior. The thicker the lithosphere, the more gradually the temperatures increase. The discovery of a thicker Martian lithosphere therefore implies that any liquid water lurking in aquifers below the surface would have to be deeper than previously calculated, where temperatures are warmer. Scientists speculate that any life on Mars associated with deep aquifers also would have to be buried deeper in the interior.

The radar pictures also reveal four zones of finely spaced layers of ice and dust separated by thick layers of nearly pure ice. Scientists think this pattern of thick, ice-free layers represents cycles of climate change on Mars on a time scale of roughly one million years. Such climate changes are caused by variations in the tilt of the planet's rotational axis and in the eccentricity of its orbit around the sun. The observations support the idea that the north polar ice cap is geologically active and relatively young, at about 4 million years.

On May 25, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is scheduled to touch down not far from the north polar ice cap. It will further investigate the history of water on Mars, and is expected to get the first up-close look at ice on the Red Planet.

The Shallow Radar instrument was provided by the Italian Space Agency, and its operations are led by the InfoCom Department, University of Rome "La Sapienza." Thales Alenia Space Italia, in Rome , is the Italian Space Agency's prime contractor for the radar instrument. Astro Aerospace of Carpinteria , Calif. , a business unit of Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp., developed the instrument's antenna as a subcontractor to Thales Alenia Space Italia.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington . Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver was the prime contractor for the orbiter and supports its operations.

For more detailed information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mro . For more information about the Mars Phoenix Lander, visit http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix .

-end-

From: Subscription email

posted in Astronomy - 1 reply

Milky Way's mass is drastically reduced

2008-05-28T18:11:10Z

11:00 28 May 2008
NewScientist.com news service
David Shiga

Our galaxy is only half as massive as previously thought, new measurements suggest. The finding has yet to be confirmed, but it fits in with recent studies hinting that the Milky Way has a weaker gravitational hold on nearby dwarf galaxies than previously believed.
The Sun resides in a large galaxy called the Milky Way. As in other galaxies, most of the Milky Way's mass is in the form of dark matter, a mysterious, invisible substance that only reveals its presence by the way its gravity tugs on stars and gas.
In order to measure the mass of the galaxy, astronomers measure the speeds of stars as they orbit around it. The faster they move, the greater the mass of the galaxy must be to keep them from escaping into intergalactic space.
Two trillion SunsPrevious studies of the speeds of 50 to 500 stars suggested the Milky Way's mass is about 2 trillion times the mass of the Sun. Other studies have measured the speeds of dwarf galaxies thought to be orbiting the Milky Way and arrived at about the same figure.
But a new study that measured the velocities of nearly 2500 stars suggests that the true mass is just under 1 trillion Suns.
"The Galaxy is slimmer than we thought," says Xiangxiang Xue of the National Astronomical Observatories of China in Beijing, who led the study.
Xue's team analysed data from a survey of stars called SEGUE (Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration), which is part of a larger project called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) that uses a 2.5-metre telescope in New Mexico. The stars in the sample ranged from about 13,000 to nearly 200,000 light years from the galactic centre. The Sun is about 25,000 light years from the centre.
Star motionsSEGUE measured the light spectrum from each star, which can be used to calculate the star's velocity towards or away from Earth. Xue's team compared these velocities with simulations of star motions in galaxies of different masses to estimate the Milky Way's mass.
They arrived at a Milky Way mass of 0.93 trillion times that of the Sun. The true value could be as much as 0.25 trillion solar masses more or less than this figure when uncertainties in the measurements are taken into account, the team says.
"The total mass of the Galaxy is hard to measure because we're stuck in the middle of it," says team member Timothy Beers of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US. "But it is the single most fundamental number we have to know if we want to understand how the Milky Way formed or compare it to distant galaxies that we see from the outside."
Huge advantageDespite the mismatch between this and previous measurements, the team is confident in their result because of the huge number of stars it is based on. "The enormous size of SEGUE gives us a huge statistical advantage," says team member Hans-Walter Rix, director of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.
The previous studies that used the motions of dwarf galaxies might have been wrong to assume all the galaxies they measured were orbiting the Milky Way, the team suggests. They point to recent measurements suggesting that the Milky Way has a weaker hold on two nearby dwarf galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds than previously thought.
A more precise measurement of the Milky Way mass could be obtained in future with a proposed extension of SDSS called SDSS-III, which would include measurements of stars more than 300,000 light years from the galactic centre.
Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal (in press, abstract on arXiv)

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13997-milky-ways-mass-is-drastically-reduced.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

posted in Astronomy - 1 reply

ring around the moon

2008-05-27T19:51:18Z

it is a slightly overcast night in queensland australia but some stars and the moon are still visible. also one thing i don't remember seeing before.. an enormous ring of light around the moon. i can only crudely measure.. if i stretch my arm before me straight, the radius is the length of my hand. it is only as thick as one finger.
what is it?

posted in Astronomy - 3 replies

Dwarf Planet Outweighs Pluto

2008-05-27T00:59:44Z

By Ker Than
Staff Writer
posted: 14 June 2007
02:00 pm ET

The dwarf planet that effectively forced astronomers to strip Pluto of its planethood is not only bigger than the former ninth planet, but also much more massive, a new study finds.

Michael Brown, a planetary scientist at Caltech, and his graduate student Emily Schaller have determined that Eris, discovered in 2005 by Brown and his team, is about 27 percent more massive than Pluto.

The finding, detailed in the June 15 issue of the journal Science, also confirms Eris and Pluto have similar compositions.

The moon holds the key

Eris circles the sun from about 9 billion miles away-about twice the distance of Pluto at the farthest point in its orbit. Its discovery was one of several factors that led some astronomers to create a new definition for planethood at the 2006 meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague. The ruling reduced the planet count in our solar system to eight and left Pluto renamed as a "dwarf planet."

To determine Eris' mass, the researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory to calculate the orbital speed of its moon, Dysnomia. According to Newtonian physics, the more massive a celestial object is, the faster its satellite will zip around it.

"So by looking at the time it takes the moon to go around Eris, we're able to calculate the mass," Schaller said.

Because Eris and Dysomnia are located more than 90 times farther from the sun than Earth--out in the Kuiper Belt region of the solar system, they appear as little more than pricks of light in telescope observations. "Eris is slightly larger than a point source, but just barely," Schaller said.

Dysnomia is thought to be less than 100 miles (150 km) across and to take about 16 Earth-days to make one trip around Eris.

Eris itself is believed to have a diameter of 1,490 to 1,860 miles (2,400 to 3,000 km). "To put that into perspective, if you took all the asteroids in the asteroid belt [between Mars and Jupiter] and multiplied by four, they would easily all fit into Eris," Schaller told SPACE.com.

Pluto has a diameter of about 1,430 miles (2,300 km) across.

Knowing Eris' mass and size, the researchers were also able to confirm that Eris' density is similar to that of Pluto, and that it is therefore likely made up mainly of rock and water ice.

Born into controversy

Formerly known as 2003 UB313, the dwarf planet was rechristened Eris (pronounced ee'-ris) by astronomers last year. The name is fitting: Eris is the Greek goddess of discord and strife, who stirred up jealousy and envy among the goddesses that led to the Trojan War. When Eris the dwarf planet was discovered, it created a furor among astronomers that led to the controversial decision last year to demote Pluto.

While some planetary scientists still oppose the decision on grounds that the new definition of planet is not specific enough, Schaller thinks the IAU made the right choice. "I think that really only the big eight planets distinguish themselves as clearly different from all the other objects," Schaller said.

Schaller points to the example of Ceres, a former asteroid whose naming history resembles that of Pluto. When Ceres was first discovered in 1801, it was classified as a planet on account of its large size (it is 530 miles across). But "once they started discovering more and more asteroids, it got a bit ridiculous," Schaller said.

As with Pluto, Ceres was downgraded to the status of asteroid once scientists realized it was just the first-known of a class of rocky bodies residing mainly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Last year, the IAU voted to reclassify Ceres as a dwarf planet, elevating it to the same ranks as Pluto and Eris.

In the current debate surrounding Pluto, Schaller sees history repeating itself. "Pluto was discovered and for a really long time there wasn't anything else discovered," she said. "But if it had transpired in the same way to the asteroid belt where the following year many more objects were discovered, then I think we wouldn't be having this discussion right now."

Original Posting: www.space.com

posted in Astronomy - 27 replies

WorldWide Telescope

2008-05-27T00:56:37Z

new web-based program lets users surf space

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080513.wtelescope0513/BNStory/Science/home

The Associated Press

May 13, 2008 at 8:40 AM EDT

SEATTLE — Microsoft Corp. has launched its WorldWide Telescope bringing the free web-based program for zooming around the universe to a broad audience.

WorldWide Telescope, launched late Monday, was developed by Microsoft's research arm.

It knits together images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and others.

Computer users can browse through the galaxy on their own or take guided tours of different outer-space destinations developed by astronomers and academics.

The site lets users choose from a number of different telescopes and switch between different light wavelengths.

Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates said the WorldWide Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe.

posted in Astronomy - 4 replies

Hello

2008-05-27T00:52:58Z

Hi,

My name is Derek and I am new to tribe and found this. I am the assistant director for the Seminole Community College Planetarium and an Astronomer. I just wanted to say hello and look foward to chating with you all. I have a tribe called dark horizons which is my little fight against light pollution forum so please check it out and post anything you feel might help.

posted in Astronomy - 7 replies

Historic pictures sent from Mars

2008-05-26T10:46:28Z

A Nasa spacecraft has sent back historic first pictures of an unexplored region of Mars.

The Mars Phoenix lander touched down in the far north of the Red Planet, after a 680 million-km (423 million-mile) journey from Earth.

The probe is equipped with a robotic arm to dig for water-ice thought to be buried beneath the surface.

It will begin examining the site for evidence of the building blocks of life in the next few days.

A signal confirming the lander had reached the surface was received at 2353 GMT on 25 May (1953 EDT; 0053 BST on 26 May).

Engineers and scientists at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California clapped and cheered when the landing signal came through.

"Phoenix has landed - welcome to the northern plain of Mars," a flight controller announced.

The final seven minutes of the probe's 10-month journey to Mars were regarded as the hardest part of the mission.

The probe had to survive a fiery plunge through the planet's thin atmosphere, slowing from a speed of nearly 21,000km/h (13,000 mph).

Soft landing

It released a parachute, used pulsed thrusters to slow to a fast walking speed, and then descended the last few metres to the Martian soil to land on three legs.

The Nasa team monitored each stage of the descent and landing process through radio messages relayed to Earth via the Odyssey satellite in orbit around Mars.

"In my dreams, it couldn't have gone as perfectly as it did tonight," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at JPL.

Nasa found out more about the landing when pictures from the probe reached the Earth.

The first images showed the "Arctic plain" where Phoenix came to rest - a region of Mars that has never been seen up close before.

Other shots confirmed that the probe's solar arrays had unfurled successfully, and that it had landed safely on its legs.

The spacecraft will begin its three-month science mission in the next few days.

It will use a robotic arm to dig through the protective Martian topsoil and lift samples of both soil and ice to its deck for scientific analysis.

Dr Tom Pike of Imperial College, London, is part of the British team involved in the project.

"The main goal of the mission is to get below the surface of Mars to where we are almost certain there is water," he told BBC News.

He said orbiters flying around Mars had surveyed the landing site in great detail and found signs that water ice is buried 10cm or less below the surface.

"Water, of course, is of critical importance because it is one of the building blocks - one of the essential habitats we need - for life," he said.

High failure rate

Landing on Mars is a notoriously tricky business. There has been about a 50% failure rate on all Mars missions since Russia launched the first one in 1960.

Phoenix is an apt name for the current mission, as it rose from the ashes of two previous failures.

In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft crashed into the Red Planet following a navigation error caused when technicians mixed up "English" (imperial) and metric units.

A few months later, another Nasa spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL), was lost near the planet's South Pole.

Phoenix uses hardware from an identical twin of MPL, the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander, which was cancelled following the two consecutive failures.

The probe was launched on 4 August 2007 on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7411113.stm

posted in Astronomy - 1 reply

NASA Extends Cassini's Grand Tour of Saturn

2008-05-24T22:50:32Z

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Carolina Martinez 818-354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif.
carolina.martinez@jpl.nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-060 April 15, 2008

NASA Extends Cassini's Grand Tour of Saturn

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA is extending the international Cassini-Huygens mission by two years. The historic spacecraft's stunning discoveries and images have revolutionized our knowledge of Saturn and its moons.

Cassini's mission originally had been scheduled to end in July 2008. The newly-announced two-year extension will include 60 additional orbits of Saturn and more flybys of its exotic moons. These will include 26 flybys of Titan, seven of Enceladus, and one each of Dione, Rhea and Helene. The extension also includes studies of Saturn's rings, its complex magnetosphere, and the planet itself.

"This extension is not only exciting for the science community, but for the world to continue to share in unlocking Saturn's secrets," said Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington. "New discoveries are the hallmarks of its success, along with the breathtaking images beamed back to Earth that are simply mesmerizing."

"The spacecraft is performing exceptionally well and the team is highly motivated, so we're excited at the prospect of another two years," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena , Calif.

Based on findings from Cassini, scientists think liquid water may be just beneath the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. That's why the small moon, only one-tenth the size of Titan and one-seventh the size of Earth's moon, is one of the highest-priority targets for the extended mission.

Cassini discovered geysers of water-ice jetting from the Enceladus surface. The geysers, which shoot out at a distance three times the diameter of Enceladus, feed particles into Saturn's most expansive ring. In the extended mission, the spacecraft may come as close as 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the moon's surface.

Cassini's observations of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, have given scientists a glimpse of what Earth might have been like before life evolved. They now believe Titan possesses many parallels to Earth, including lakes, rivers, channels, dunes, rain, snow, clouds, mountains and possibly volcanoes.

"When we designed the original tour, we really did not know what we would find, especially at Enceladus and Titan," said Dennis Matson, the JPL Cassini project scientist. "This extended tour is responding to these new discoveries and giving us a chance to look for more."

Unlike Earth, Titan's lakes, rivers and rain are composed of methane and ethane, and temperatures reach a chilly minus 180 degrees Celsius (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit). Although Titan's dense atmosphere limits viewing the surface, Cassini's high-resolution radar coverage and imaging by the infrared spectrometer have given scientists a better look.

Other activities for Cassini scientists will include monitoring seasons on Titan and Saturn, observing unique ring events, such as the 2009 equinox when the sun will be in the plane of the rings, and exploring new places within Saturn's magnetosphere.

Cassini has returned a daily stream of data from Saturn's system for almost four years. Its travel scrapbook includes nearly 140,000 images, and information gathered during 62 revolutions around Saturn, 43 flybys of Titan and 12 close flybys of the icy moons.

More than 10 years after launch and almost four years after entering into orbit around Saturn, Cassini is a healthy and robust spacecraft. Three of its science instruments have minor ailments, but the impact on science-gathering is minimal. The spacecraft will have enough propellant left after the extended mission to potentially allow a third phase of operations. Data from the extended mission could lay the groundwork for possible new missions to Titan and Enceladus.

Cassini launched Oct. 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral , Fla. , on a seven-year journey to Saturn, traversing 3.5 billion kilometers (2.2 billion miles). It is one of the most scientifically capable spacecraft ever launched, with a record 12 instruments on the orbiter and six more instruments on the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which piggybacked a ride to Titan on Cassini. Cassini receives electrical power from three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which generate electricity from heat produced by the natural decay of plutonium. The spacecraft was captured into Saturn orbit in June 2004 and immediately began returning data to Earth.

More information is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena , manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

-end-

From: subscription email

posted in Astronomy - 3 replies

Real Death Star Could Strike Earth

2008-05-15T06:56:55Z

Real Death Star Could Strike Earth

"A beautiful pinwheel in space might one day blast Earth with death rays, scientists now report.

Unlike the moon-sized Death Star from Star Wars, which has to get close to a planet to blast it, this blazing spiral has the potential to burn worlds from thousands of light-years away.

"I used to appreciate this spiral just for its beautiful form, but now I can't help a twinge of feeling that it is uncannily like looking down a rifle barrel," said researcher Peter Tuthill, an astronomer at the University of Sydney. "

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080310/sc_space/realdeathstarcouldstrikeearth

;

posted in Astronomy - 27 replies

Physics and astronomy notes online?

2008-05-14T22:55:29Z

Hi All

I've just been to an astronomical society lecture (for the first time in years) and found myself wanting to brush up on things I neglected at university like thermodynamics and astrophysics. So I googled free physics notes and came up with this site (that looks good): http://us.geocities.com/alex_stef/mylist.html If there are there any suggestions for good, free lecture notes in physics I would be very grateful.

Many thanks,
Mark

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

Simulated view of Phoenix approach to Mars:

2008-05-14T19:08:37Z

As seen here:

http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=499&vbody=-84&month=5&day=14&year=2008&hour=00&minute=00&fovmul=1&rfov=45&bfov=30&porbs=1&showsc=1

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

NASA Kepler Mission Offers Opportunity to Send Names Into Space

2008-05-07T00:57:01Z

Jane Platt/Whitney Clavin 818-354-0880/354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif.
Jane.platt@jpl.nasa.gov, whitney.b.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Michael Mewhinney 650-604-3937
NASA Ames Research Center , Moffett Field , Calif.
Michael.S.Mewhinney@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-073 May 5, 2008

PASADENA, Calif. -- How cool would it be to have your name on board the spacecraft that discovers the first known Earth-like planet beyond our solar system? Well, here's your chance.

NASA today announced an opportunity for anyone to submit their name to be included on a DVD and rocketed into space as part of NASA's Kepler Mission, scheduled to launch in February 2009 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center , Fla.

"This mission will provide our first knowledge of Earth-like planets beyond our solar system," said Kepler Mission principal investigator William Borucki.

The Name in Space DVD will be mounted on the exterior of the spacecraft in November 2008. A video of the DVD being mounted on the spacecraft will be taken and posted on the Kepler mission Web site prior to the spacecraft being shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in December of this year. A copy of the DVD with all of the names and messages will be given to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum , Washington .

"It's a way for the public to participate in our space program," explained David Koch, deputy principal investigator for the Kepler Mission. According to Koch, there's no limit to the number of names that can be submitted for inclusion on the DVD.

"We're looking for several million names," Koch said. "The only limitation is people's interest."

Anyone who wants to participate in the Name in Space project should submit their name, the state or country they live in and, if they desire, a short statement (500 words or less) answering the question: "Why do you think the Kepler Mission is important?" The deadline for submissions to the Kepler Mission Web site is Nov. 1, 2008.

Certificates of Participation will be available for printing from the Kepler mission Web site.

The certificate states that the person whose name has been submitted has been included on the list of names launched in 2009 with the Kepler spacecraft into orbit around the sun. There is no charge for participating in the project or for printing the certificate.

Name in Space is an international activity associated with the International Year of Astronomy 2009 in recognition of the 400th anniversary of Johannes Kepler's publication of his first two laws of planetary motion.

Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission. NASA Ames is the home organization of the science principal investigator and is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. Kepler mission development is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder , Colo. , is responsible for developing the Kepler flight system.

To submit names and learn more about the Kepler Mission, visit http://kepler.nasa.gov/ .

For more information about NASA programs, visit http://www.nasa.gov .

From: subscription email

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

Physicists discover that the structure of a brain cell is the same as the entire universe.

2008-05-05T19:29:19Z

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/brain-universe.html

posted in Astronomy - 30 replies

Astronomy Radio

2008-05-01T23:24:08Z

For those interested, here's a link to RSS feeds from various radio stations that also broadcast via internet. You can find a whole variety of programming about Astronomy, at the convenient for YOU time.

Enjoy.

http://stardate.org/feeds/rss.xml

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

New Image Gallery Has an Eye for Beauty

2008-04-30T02:07:02Z

JPL's new online Space Gallery captures the beauty of Earth, the solar system and the Universe in a single web site. A scrollable image navigation makes browsing easy, and users can view individual planet "galleries" as slide shows. Pictures can also be emailed to friends and searched for using "tags", or words that help describe the image. Take your own tour at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/?msource=FL20080429&tr=y&auid=3620007

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vote for JPL

The JPL home page has been nominated for a Webby Award in the science category. The Webby is a leading international prize honoring excellence on the Internet. The Webby Award includes a People's Choice Award so please cast your vote. May 1 is the last day to vote.
Go to the Webby voting page (registration required): http://pv.webbyawards.com/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JPL Open House: May 3 and 4

JPL rolls out the welcome mat for the public this weekend, May 3 and 4. Highlights for this year's Open House include watching 700-pound robots glide under artificial stars in the Robodome and close-up views of models of Mars rovers - past, present and future. Children will be able to participate in many hands-on activities. The free event runs 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both days.
Open House information: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pso/oh.cfm?msource=FL20080429&tr=y&auid=3620336

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Podcast: IT Came From Vesta

This new JPL podcast tells the tale of some Earthbound visitors from the asteroid belt. Did they come from the solar system's second largest asteroid - Vesta - and if so, why?
Listen now: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcast/dawn20080428/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can find more features at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

Cosmic Debris

2008-04-26T06:11:32Z

I was just re-reading the introduction in my Audubon Society's Field Guide to the Night Sky, and it basically says that we're the poop of the Universe. Ok, well, they don't exactly put it in those terms, but I find it makes me laugh when I look at it this way...and I like laughing. Here's their real quote from the introduction...

"Most of the material in the Universe is hydrogen gas; much of the remainder is helium gas, while only a minute portion takes the form of elements heavier than helium. Thus, the material out of which we and all other objects in the Universe are made (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and so on) is literally cosmic debris."

...And...Frank Zappa wrote a song about that...go Frank Go!.... : )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-E6FDf9GkA

posted in Astronomy - 4 replies

Stellar Birth in the Galactic Wilderness

2008-04-20T15:35:04Z

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

IMAGE ADVISORY: 2008-061 April 16, 2008

A new image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows baby stars sprouting
in the backwoods of a galaxy -- a relatively desolate region of space more
than 100,000 light-years from the galaxy's bustling center.

The striking image, a composite of ultraviolet data from the Galaxy Evolution
Explorer and radio data from the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array
in New Mexico, shows the Southern Pinwheel galaxy, also known simply as M83.

In the new view, the main spiral, or stellar, disk of M83 looks like a pink and
blue pinwheel, while its outer arms appear to flap away from the galaxy like giant
red streamers. It is within these so-called extended galaxy arms that, to the
surprise of astronomers, new stars are forming.

"It is absolutely stunning that we find such an enormous number of young stars up
to 140,000 light-years away from the center of M83," said Frank Bigiel of the Max
Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, lead investigator of the new Galaxy
Evolution Explorer observations. For comparison, the diameter of M83 is only
40,000 light-years across.

The new image is online at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/20080416.html .

Some of the "outback" stars in M83's extended arms were first spotted by the Galaxy
Evolution Explorer in 2005. Remote stars were also discovered around other galaxies
by the ultraviolet telescope over subsequent years. This came as a surprise to
astronomers because the outlying regions of a galaxy are assumed to be relatively
barren and lack high concentrations of the ingredients needed for stars to form.

The newest Galaxy Evolution Explorer observations of M83 (colored blue and green)
were taken over a longer period of time and reveal many more young clusters of stars
at the farthest reaches of the galaxy. To better understand how stars could form in
such unexpected territory, Bigiel and his colleagues turned to radio observations
from the Very Large Array (red). Light emitted in the radio portion of the electromagnetic
spectrum can be used to locate gaseous hydrogen atoms, or raw ingredients of stars. When
the astronomers combined the radio and Galaxy Evolution Explorer data, they were
delighted to see they matched up.

"The degree to which the ultraviolet emission and therefore the distribution of young
stars follows the distribution of the atomic hydrogen gas out to the largest distances
is absolutely remarkable," said Fabian Walter, also of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy,
who led the radio observations of hydrogen in the galaxy.

The astronomers speculate that the young stars seen far out in M83 could have formed under
conditions resembling those of the early universe, a time when space was not yet enriched
with dust and heavier elements.

"Even with today's most powerful telescopes, it is extremely difficult to study the first
generation of star formation. These new observations provide a unique opportunity to
study how early generation stars might have formed," said co-investigator Mark Seibert
of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena.

M83 is located 15 million light-years away in the southern constellation Hydra.

Other investigators include: Barry Madore of The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution
of Washington; Armando Gil de Paz of the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain; David
Thilker of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Elias Brinks of the University of
Hertfordshire, England; and Erwin de Blok of the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena leads the Galaxy Evolution Explorer
mission and is responsible for science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, also in Pasadena, manages the mission and built the science instrument.
Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program
managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Researchers sponsored by
Yonsei University in South Korea and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in
France collaborated on this mission.

The Very Large Array is part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a facility
of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Additional information about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer is online at
http://www.nasa.gov/galex and http://www.galex.caltech.edu .

-end-

From: subscription email

posted in Astronomy - 8 replies

NASA Event

2008-04-17T20:47:38Z

Carolina Martinez 818-354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif.
carolina.martinez@jpl.nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-065 April 17, 2008

"Saturn Images Showcased in New York City"

A selection of the best images from Saturn, its rings and moons will appear in an exhibition opening on April 26 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City .

The show, called "Saturn: Images from the Cassini-Huygens Mission," will run through March 29, 2009. It features dramatic, up-close-and-personal images in small individual views and super-large mosaics. Roughly 50 images taken by the Cassini-Huygens mission in visible light, infrared and radar have been hand-picked by a team of Cassini scientists.

"The images show the Saturn system as we had never seen it before. They perfectly blend exploration, science and beauty," said Joe Burns, the exhibit's guest co-curator and a Cassini imaging scientist at Cornell University , Ithaca , N.Y. "We are excited to have the opportunity to show these breathtaking photographs to the broader public in one of the world's greatest science museums." Burns, along with colleagues at Cornell University and on the Cassini project, has been collaborating with museum curators for the past year on the image selection, scientific captions and exhibit design.

The Cassini spacecraft has been in orbit around Saturn for nearly four years. It is the first orbiter to study Saturn in detail. The piggybacked Huygens probe, provided by the European Space Agency, plunged through the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in 2005. Huygens was the first probe to land on the surface of a moon other than our own. The orbiter and probe have shown birdseye and ground-level views of Titan, an Earth-like world featuring river valley networks and lakes filled with hydrocarbons. Cassini has discovered water-ice geysers spewing from Enceladus, a smaller moon of Saturn, and has detected five new moons and observed a very dynamic ring system.

For exhibition information see: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/photo/saturn/ . More information about the Cassini-Huygens mission is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena , manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

-end-

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

German schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA's asteroid figures: paper

2008-04-17T18:01:37Z

Tue Apr 15, 5:44 PM ET

BERLIN (AFP) - A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA's estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.

Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.

NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.

The schoolboy took into consideration the risk of Apophis running into one or more of the 40,000 satellites orbiting Earth during its path close to the planet on April 13 2029.

Those satellites travel at 3.07 kilometres a second (1.9 miles), at up to 35,880 kilometres above earth -- and the Apophis asteroid will pass by earth at a distance of 32,500 kilometres.

If the asteroid strikes a satellite in 2029, that will change its trajectory making it hit earth on its next orbit in 2036.

Both NASA and Marquardt agree that if the asteroid does collide with earth, it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes, which will crash into the Atlantic Ocean.

The shockwaves from that would create huge tsunami waves, destroying both coastlines and inland areas, whilst creating a thick cloud of dust that would darken the skies indefinitely.

The 13-year old made his discovery as part of a regional science competition for which he submitted a project entitled: "Apophis -- The Killer Astroid."

From: Yahoo!News

posted in Astronomy - 7 replies

Anyone else in Boston?

2008-04-09T03:47:31Z

I just discovered that they host an open house at the Clay Center Observatory (Newton Street in Brookline- near JP) on Tuesday nights from 7:30-9:00pm.

I'm gonna join in soon. Wanna come along?

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

This day in the History of Astronomy...

2008-04-06T20:45:30Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jovian-Plutonian_gravitational_effect

posted in Astronomy - 3 replies

Educators Needed to Assist with NASA INSPIRE

2008-04-05T03:40:34Z

Colleagues,

NASA has a summer internship program at each field center that brings in high school students for an eight week work experience. Students between their junior and senior years (typically 17 years of age) are provided room and board during the internship. NASA, through our contract partner Oklahoma State University, is looking for chaperones to supervise the students during their out-of-work time. If you are interested, please visit the link below. US citizenship is required.

The program is INSPIRE: Interdisciplinary National Science Project Incorporating Research and Education Experience.

https://opportunities.nasa.okstate.edu/index.cfm?liftoff=applications.PositionDetails&JobPostingID=20

This position requires a professional educator to coordinate NASA INSPIRE activities within the NASA Center region during non-work day hours. The INSPIRE Counselor will be the designated point of contact for INSPIRE participants at the assigned NASA Center. The INSPIRE Counselor's travel expenses to/from their assigned NASA Field Center, lodging, meals, stipend, and Oklahoma State University (OSU) graduate credit (if desired) are paid by OSU. Training will be provided prior to assignment at a NASA Field Center and travel maybe required.

Each counselor will be the advisor to Tier 2B (see INSPIRE website: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/postsecondary/programs/INSPIRE_Project.html ) participants during their 8-week on-NASA center experience away from home. They will be the point of contact for safety and health-related issues. During NASA Field Center work hours INSPIRE Counselors have the opportunity to earn graduate credit, if desired.
One position is assigned to each of the ten (10) NASA Field Centers. Tier 2B event dates vary by NASA Field Center.

For details regarding employment and graduate credit opportunities, please see
https://opportunities.nasa.okstate.edu/

From: Subscription email

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

Yuri's Night

2008-04-04T00:36:13Z

http://www.yurisnight.net/2008/

Yuri's Night is like the St Patricks Day or Cinco de Mayo for space. It is one day when all the world can come together and celebrate the power and beauty of space and what it means for each of us. Join us!

Find a party near you: http://www.yurisnight.net/2008/party-central/find-party.php

posted in Astronomy - 2 replies

Arthur C. Clarke (OT)

2008-04-03T23:36:45Z

_____________________________________

Sci-fi guru Clarke dies in Sri Lankan hospital

British-born science fiction guru, Arthur C. Clarke, died at a hospital in Sri Lanka on Wednesday, his aide Rohan de Silva told AFP. He was 90.
Clarke, who shot to fame after writing "2001: A Space Odyssey," had been in and out of hospital since his 90th birthday in December and had breathing difficulties, de Silva said.

"Sir Arthur passed away a short while ago at the Apollo Hospital," de Silva said.

Clarke, who in 1945 predicted the establishment of communication satellites, has written more than 80 books. He was Sri Lanka's best-known resident guest and has a scientific academy named after him.

His vallet, W. K. M. Dharmawardena, said funeral arrangements would be finalised after his close family returned to the island from Australia.

Dharmawardena said Clarke's condition began to deteriorate in recent weeks and he had been in hospital for the past four days.

Clarke marked his birthday on December 16 wishing for peace in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, where he has lived for the past five decades. He also ran a diving school that was affected by the December 2004 tsunami.

Clarke blew out a single candle on his cake to mark his birthday, which was celebrated at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka building within Colombo's high security zone. Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse joined the government-organised festivities.

The author said he had sadly watched -- for close to half his lifetime -- a bitter ethnic conflict tearing up Sri Lanka.

"I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible," he said, referring to Asia's longest-running war in which the Tamil Tigers' campaign for an independent homeland has left tens of thousands dead.

Although the conflict started in 1972, fighting has been escalating in the island since late 2005, when a Nordic-brokered truce unravelled.

"But I'm aware that peace cannot just be wished -- it requires a great deal of hard work, courage and persistence," he said in a taped message released to reporters here before the celebrations.

Clarke, who also wished for evidence of extra-terrestrial life and for the world to adopt cleaner fuels on his birthday, said he did not feel "a day older than 89" as he completed "90 orbits around the sun."

"I have no regrets and no more personal ambitions," said the writer, who was confined for the past three decades to a wheelchair because of the effects of childhood polio.

© 2008 AFP
___________________________________

From: http://www.physorg.com/news125088012.html

posted in Astronomy - 6 replies

Stardust Stars on Earth as it Does in the Heavens

2008-04-03T21:47:00Z

Feature April 3, 2008

April 3, 2008 - Stardust Spacecraft is currently 208 million miles from Earth

While their spacecraft's journeys may have taken it more than halfway to Jupiter, members of the Stardust team have lately been doing some roaming of their own. A great deal of the traveling has been to accept awards and receive the accolades of their aerospace and science-oriented peers. Among the honors the Stardust team has received: the Aviation Week & Space Technology Program Excellence Award; the Popular Mechanics' Breakthrough Award; and the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement. Now, Stardust can add above its mantle the National Air and Space Museum Trophy Award.

"We feel a little like Tiger Woods," said Tom Duxbury, Stardust's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena , Calif. "It is great for the team to receive such recognition for our accomplishments, but we understand that significant challenges lie ahead that will take our dedicated attention and focus."

What is behind Stardust -- and made them so honorable - is nine years of deep space travel, two Earth flybys, one close flyby of a comet's nucleus, one record-setting high-speed return to Earth of samples from said comet, and literally dozens of groundbreaking scientific papers based on those samples. What lies ahead for Stardust and its team is a new challenge -- a new comet.

"Stardust came through its historic comet Wild 2 flyby and Earth sample return with resources to spare," said Duxbury. "NASA took a look at what was left in the tanks -- of both spacecraft and personnel -- and decided Stardust should head on out to explore another comet, Tempel 1."

You could say comet Temple 1 is the temple of high-velocity deep space exploration. On July 4, 2005, an impactor deployed by another NASA spacecraft -- Deep Impact -- was run over by comet Tempel 1 at about six miles a second. Like Stardust, Deep Impact provided great strides for cometary science. Now the plan is for the Stardust spacecraft to revisit the site of Deep Impact's triumph. Called Stardust-NExT, the mission will employ the Stardust spacecraft's camera, cometary dust analyzer and dust flux monitor during a Feb. 2011 flyby of Tempel 1, where it will observe changes to the surface of the comet since the Deep Impact mission's visit in 2005.

"Tempel 1 made its closest approach to the sun on July 5, 2005, a day after Deep Impact's visit," said Joe Veverka, a scientist at Cornell University , Ithaca, N.Y. and the principal investigator of Stardust-NExT. "Things happen to comets when they get closest to the sun and Stardust-NExT is our first opportunity to observe these changes firsthand."

While comet Tempel 1 is the future of Stardust science, comet Wild 2 is the not-so-distant past and a big reason for the Smithsonian Trophy. A lot has happened since Stardust's sample return capsule entered Earth's atmosphere in the early morning of Jan 15, 2006, at a record speed of 28,860 miles per hour.

"The samples that Stardust returned to Earth are helping rewrite the very history of our solar system," said Don Brownlee, a scientist at the University of Washington , Seattle , and the Stardust mission's principal investigator. "The samples have been distributed to researchers around the world and their findings are just beginning to come in."

Among the discoveries garnered by Stardust was the finding that comets are a very odd mix of materials that formed at the highest and lowest temperatures that existed in the early solar system. Comets have been cold for billions of years, but their ingredients are remarkable products of both fire and ice. Because the rocky materials in comet Wild 2 formed at such high temperatures, scientists believe that they formed in the hot inner regions of the young solar system and were then transported all the way to beyond the orbit of Neptune .

Want to know more about Stardust science? Click here: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/

"Comet Wild 2 is a collection of materials that probably came from all regions of the young solar system and thus it has turned out to be a wonderful "time capsule," said Brownlee. "The instruments and techniques used to study our samples have already greatly improved since we began looking at them in 2006, so the original Stardust mission and its discoveries should continue for years to come."

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages both Stardust and Stardust-NExT for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington , D.C. Don Brownlee of University of Washington , Seattle , is Stardust's principal investigator. Joseph Veverka of Cornell University is Stardust-NExT's principal investigator. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver Colo. , manages day-to-day mission operations.

D.C. Agle (818) 393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Source: subscription email

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

First movie of 'tsunami' on Sun

2008-04-02T16:56:50Z

By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News, Belfast

Astronomers have captured the first footage of a solar "tsunami" hurtling through the Sun's atmosphere at over a million kilometres per hour.

The event was captured by Nasa's twin Stereo spacecraft designed to make 3D images of our parent star.

Naturally, this type of tsunami does not involve water; instead, it is a wave of pressure that travels across the Sun very fast.

Details were reported at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast.

In a solar tsunami, a huge explosion near the Sun, such as a coronal mass ejection or flare, causes a pressure pulse to propagate outwards in a circular pattern.

Last year's solar tsunami, which took place on 19 May 2007, lasted for about 35 minutes, reaching peak speeds about 20 minutes after the initial blast.

Co-author David Long, from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland, commented: "The energy released in these explosions is phenomenal; about two billion times the annual world energy consumption in just a fraction of a second.

In half an hour, we saw the tsunami cover almost the full disc of the Sun, nearly a million kilometres away from the epicentre."

His colleague Dr Peter Gallagher, who is also from TCD, said the shockwave moved out exactly like a tsunami on Earth.

"A series of troughs and crests in pressure causes it to propagate outwards. But on the Sun, we have hot gas," he explained.

"When I’m talking to someone in a room, my voice is carried by pressure waves in the gas that's between us; it's the much the same on the Sun."

However, it was not exactly the same, Dr Gallagher added, because on the Sun, magnetic fields also helped the waves along. The phenomenon is therefore known as a magneto-acoustic wave.

Theory problem

Solar tsunamis were originally discovered by the Soho spacecraft almost a decade ago.

However, the observations did not fit at all well with theory: the problem was that the waves were travelling too slowly.

After the two Stereo spacecraft launched in 2006, scientists were able to get images of the Sun at a much higher rate than was possible with Soho.

And when they observed a solar tsunami again last year, their observations matched theoretical predictions.

"We found that the speed was probably twice as fast as we had previously thought," Dr Gallagher told BBC News.

"We've seen from this set of observations that if the time interval between images is too long, it’s easy to underestimate the speed that the waves are moving."

With Soho, the researchers were only able to take images in the upper section of the corona - the outer part of the Sun’s atmosphere.

Stereo's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) instruments monitor the Sun at four wavelengths, which allowed astronomers to see how the wave moved through the different layers of the solar atmosphere.

"We were able to show for the first time that this wave actually propagates almost all the way from the surface of the Sun to high up in the Sun's atmosphere," said Dr Gallagher.

The researchers even saw the pressure wave bouncing off irregular regions of the Sun’s atmosphere, generating reflections or diffraction patterns - exactly as tsunamis have been observed to do on Earth when they crash against land.

Embedded video footage of Sun Tsunami at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7326097.stm

posted in Astronomy - 1 reply

Astronomers see 'youngest planet'

2008-04-02T13:28:34Z

By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News, Belfast

An embryonic planet detected outside our Solar System could be less than 2,000 years old, astronomers say.

The ball of dust and gas, which is in the process of turning into a Jupiter-like giant, was detected around the star HL Tau, by a UK team.

Research leader Dr Jane Greaves said the planet's growth may have been kickstarted when another young star passed the system 1,600 years ago.

Details were presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast.

The scientists studied a disc of gas and rocky particles around HL Tau, which is 520 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus and thought to be less than 100,000 years old.

The disc is unusually massive and bright, making it an excellent place to search for signs of planets in the process of formation.

The researchers say their picture is one of a proto-planet still embedded in its birth material.

Dr Greaves, from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, said the discovery of a forming planet around such a young star was a major surprise.

"It wasn't really what we were looking for. And we were amazed when we found it," she told BBC News.

"The next youngest planet confirmed is 10 million years old."

If the proto-planet is assumed to be the same age as the star it orbits, this would be some one hundred times younger than the previous record holder.

But there is an intriguing suggestion that the gas giant, which is some 14 times the size of our Jupiter, could be even younger.

Using the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes in the US, the researchers studied the system at emission wavelengths specifically chosen to search for rocky particles about the size of pebbles. The presence of these pebbles is a clue that rocky material is beginning to clump together to form planets.

In the UK, scientists used the Merlin radio telescopes based on Jodrell Bank in Cheshire to study the same system at longer wavelengths. This allowed them to confirm the emissions were from rocks and not from other sources such as hot gas.

In addition to detecting super-large dust in the disc around HL Tau, they also saw an extra bright "clump" of material.

This confirmed a so-called "nebulosity" seen a few years earlier at about the same position, by a team led by Dr Jack Welch of the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Array, US.

Formation theories

Dr Ken Rice, from the Institute of Astronomy in Edinburgh, said the discovery shed new light on theories of planet formation.

According to one model, planets form from the bottom up. Under this scenario, particles of rocky material collide and "stick" to one another, forming a bigger and bigger object.

But he thinks the proto-planet in HL Tau formed relatively quickly when a region of the disc collapsed to form a self-contained structure. This could occur because of gravitational instability in the disc itself.

Dr Rice said his computer simulations were such a good fit for the observations that it seemed the mechanism might really operate in nature.

Intriguingly, another young star in the same region called XZ Tau may have made a close pass of HL Tau about 1,600 years ago.

Although not required for planet formation, it is possible that this flyby perturbed the disc, making it unstable. This would be a very recent event in astronomical terms.

"It's possible it gave a 'yank' to one side of the disc around HL Tau, making it unstable, and that this was a 'trigger' for the planet to form," Dr Greaves explained.

"If the planet formed in the last 1,600 years, that would be incredibly recent."

The Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting 2008 continues until Friday at Queen’s University Belfast.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7326318.stm

posted in Astronomy - 0 replies

Color movie of giant Saturn storm released (It's about the Hexagon Spot, remember?)

2008-03-28T17:46:16Z

18:20 27 March 2008
NewScientist.com news service
David Shiga

A false-color movie of a whirling vortex at Saturn's south pole has been released. The storm may be driven by updrafts of warm, moist air – just like hurricanes on Earth.

The vortex was discovered, http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn10499-spectacular-storm-rages-on-saturns-south-pole.html , in images taken by the Cassini spacecraft when it flew over Saturn's south pole in October 2006. It is about 8000 kilometers across and rotates in the same direction as the planet's overall rotation, but about 550 kilometers per hour faster. A video, http://www.nasa.gov/mov/172386main_pia09187.mov , pieced together from infrared images was released at the time, giving a black and white view of the whirling storm.

Scientists have now released false-color images and a false-color video of the storm, made from the 2006 infrared observations. The images are described in a paper in the journal Science, written by Ulyana Dyudina of Caltech in Pasadena, US, and her colleagues.

In the colour images, red shows deep clouds while bluish-green reveals high-floating haze. The inner eye of the storm appears red because its clouds are about twice as deep as the clouds covering most of the rest of the planet.

Outside the 4000-kilometre-wide eye is a ring of bluish-green haze, suggesting that gas rich in water vapor is rising in this area from deeper within the planet's atmosphere.

Hurricane force

The orange spots outside the eye are smaller, rotating storms that are hundreds of kilometres wide. Their bright appearance is thought to be due to the presence of cumulus clouds, which form when water vapour condenses from rising flows of moisture-rich gas.

Overall, the images fit the idea that the vortex's rotation is powered in a similar way to hurricanes on Earth, which form from warm, moisture-rich air rising above the ocean. "For Saturn, this might tell us that underneath the clouds, there's a moist atmosphere and that might be driving this whole circulation [of the vortex]," Dyudina told New Scientist.

The poles of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune might sport similar vortices, Dyudina says. Ground-based observations of Neptune have shown that its atmosphere is warmer towards its poles, suggesting something similar might be present there, since Saturn's south polar vortex is several degrees warmer than its surroundings.

In Saturn's northern hemisphere there is a huge hexagon-shaped, http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11478-bizarre-hexagon-circles-saturns-north-pole.html , structure about 25,000 kilometres across centered on the north pole.

Scientists are not sure if that structure boasts a vortex similar to the one at the south pole because it has been shrouded in darkness during the northern hemisphere winter. That means it is not lit up at the short infrared wavelengths used to discover the south polar vortex. But scientists hope to find out after mid-2009, when spring will dawn in the planet's northern hemisphere.

Journal reference: Science, http://sciencemag.org/ (DOI: 10.1126/science.1153633)

Original Publication (w/ video): http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13547-colour-movie-of-giant-saturn-storm-released.html?feedId=space_rss20

Video (directly): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD5iejS8Pmc

posted in Astronomy - 3 replies

Lucas offers peek at new `Clone Wars' (Good News, Everyone!)

2008-03-27T15:36:06Z

By DAVID GERMAIN,
AP Movie Writer

LAS VEGAS - Fans never seem to get their fill of "Star Wars," and George Lucas is happy to oblige.

Lucas offered a glimpse into the latest creation in his sci-fi universe at the theater-owners convention ShoWest on Thursday, showing a sequence from "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," a computer-animated movie due in theaters Aug. 15. It will be followed by a TV series of the same name, to air on the Cartoon Network and TNT this fall.

The movie came about as an afterthought while Lucas was developing an animated TV show of the same name. That show debuts this fall, but Lucas figured it was ripe for big-screen treatment, too.

"You've got the whole assembly line built, and then you say, `Hey, we can make up something,'" Lucas said in an interview. "It was like old-time moviemaking. What I love about television, it's like Monogram Pictures or the old studio system, where a couple guys come to work and they sit and have some coffee and go, `Why don't we make a movie about such and such? OK, fine.' And at the end of the day, it's pretty much on its way."

Set in the years between episodes II and III — "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith" — of the big-screen "Star Wars" chronicle, the movie and series present fresh adventures of Jedi warrior Anakin Skywalker, his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and other colleagues.

The movie introduces a female Jedi, Ahsoki, who is Anakin's young apprentice.

"It's like `Band of Brothers' in space, with Jedi," Lucas, 63, said. "You can tell lots of stories. They come up all the time."

Lucas said he plans to produce at least 100 hours worth of TV episodes of "Clone Wars."

He also is moving forward with a live-action "Star Wars" TV show focusing largely on new characters removed from the Skywalker family. That show will be set in the decades between "Revenge of the Sith" and the period when the original film, 1977's "Star Wars," takes place.

So can fans ever get enough of "Star Wars"?

"I don't know," Lucas said. "I'm thankful every year that it keeps going."

___

Time Warner Inc. owns TNT, the Cartoon Network and the film's distributor, Warner Bros.

___

On the Net:

"Star Wars":

http://www.starwars.com/

From: Yahoo!News

posted in Astronomy - 27 replies

WMAP Neutrinos

2008-03-26T15:41:06Z

Cosmic Neutrinos, the End of the Dark Ages, and Inflation: 5 Years of WMAP Data
Written by Fraser Cain

We now know the Universe is around 13.7 billion years old. But just a few years ago, cosmologists had no idea, putting the range around 10-20 billion years old - some even thought it could be 100 billion years old. We can thank NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe for giving us the concrete answer. And now, NASA released 5 years of data collection, telling astronomers more about the earliest moments in the Universe, the background sea of cosmic neutrinos and the end of the Dark Ages.

WMAP looks at the Universe with microwave eyes. It may sound like a strange wavelength to use when witnessing the highest energy event ever - the aftermath of the Big Bang. But there's a trick, over the billions of years of time, the Universe has been expanding. Radiation has had its wavelengths stretched out across the billions of light-years of distance and expansion. The visible light after the Big Bang has become a diffuse glow of microwaves in all directions.
Astronomers use WMAP to study the subtle temperature variations in this microwave background radiation to understand what the Universe looked like at the very beginning.
This 5th anniversary release of data is the icing on the cake, with some significant new findings.
First up, WMAP found evidence for a background sea of cosmic neutrinos that permeate the background of the Universe. These almost weightless sub-atomic particles zip around at nearly the speed of light. In fact, there are millions passing through your body right now, blasted out from the Sun. They don't interact with anything, so they don't cause any harm. In fact, a neutrino could probably make it through several light years of solid lead without being stopped.
So, in addition to the solar neutrinos there seem to be a sea of background neutrinos, generated during the Universe's early development.

posted in Astronomy - 1 reply

Astronomers Detect First Organic Molecule on an Exoplanet

2008-03-22T20:13:06Z

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Ray Villard 410-338-4514
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore , Md.
villard@stsci.edu

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-046 March 19, 2008

A team of astronomers led by Mark Swain of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif. , has made the first detection ever of an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting another star. The breakthrough, made with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is an important step in eventually identifying signs of life on a planet outside our solar system.

The molecule found by Hubble is methane, which under the right circumstances can play a key role in prebiotic chemistry - the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life as we know it.

This discovery proves that Hubble and upcoming space missions, such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, can detect organic molecules on planets around other stars by using spectroscopy, which splits light into its components to reveal the "fingerprints" of various chemicals.

"This is a crucial stepping stone to eventually characterizing prebiotic molecules on planets where life could exist," said Swain, lead author of a paper appearing in the March 20 issue of Nature.

The discovery comes after extensive observations made in May 2007 with Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer. It also confirms the existence of water molecules in the planet's atmosphere, a discovery made originally by NASA's Spitzer Space

Telescope in 2007. "With this observation there is no question whether there is water or not - water is present," said Swain.

The planet now known to have methane and water is located 63 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. Called HD 189733b, the planet is so massive and so hot it is considered an unlikely host for life. HD 189733b, dubbed a "hot Jupiter," is so close to its parent star it takes

just over two days to complete an orbit. These objects are the size of Jupiter but orbit closer to their stars than the tiny innermost planet Mercury in our solar system. HD 189733b's atmosphere swelters at 1700 degrees Fahrenheit, about the same temperature as the melting point of silver.

Though the star-hugger planet is too hot for life as we know it, "this observation is proof that spectroscopy can eventually be done on a cooler and potentially habitable Earth-sized planet orbiting a dimmer red dwarf-type star," Swain said. The ultimate goal of studies like these is to identify prebiotic molecules in the atmospheres of planets in the "habitable zones" around other stars, where temperatures are right for water to remain liquid rather than freeze or evaporate away.

The observations were made as the planet HD 189733b passed in front of its parent star in what astronomers call a transit. As the light from the star passed briefly through the atmosphere along the edge of the planet, the gases in the atmosphere imprinted their unique signatures on the starlight from the star HD 189733.

The astronomers were surprised to find that the planet has more methane than predicted by conventional models for "hot Jupiters." "This indicates we don't really understand exoplanet atmospheres yet," said Swain.

"These measurements are an important step to our ultimate goal of determining the conditions, such as temperature, pressure, winds, clouds, etc., and the chemistry on planets where life could exist. Infrared spectroscopy is really the key to these studies because it is best matched to detecting molecules," said Swain.

More information on the discovery and artist's concepts are online at:

http://hubblesite.org/news/2008/11 . Swain's co-authors on the paper include Gautam Vasisht of JPL and Giovanna Tinetti of University College , London .

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency and is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt , Md. The Space Telescope Science Institute conducts Hubble science operations. The institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., Washington , DC . Scheduled for launch in 2013, the James Webb Space Telescope is an international collaboration between NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). GSFC is managing the development effort. The prime contractor is Northrop Grumman Space Technologies. STScI will operate JWST after launch.

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena . Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Previous Spitzer discoveries regarding HD 189733b from Swain and others can be read at http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2007-04/release.shtml .

Read a profile about astronomer Mark Swain at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1641

-end-

From: subscription email

posted in Astronomy - 9 replies

How to Make a Shooting Star!

2008-03-18T03:25:44Z

Well...THIS will certainly change the way you look at space (or DON'T look at space, from this moment on!)

And to Jack Horkheimer, whose catch phrase is... "Just keep looking up," well, I think he'd better revise it! LOL...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2fa9Pf6X6w

:D

posted in Astronomy - 1 reply

The Universe is 13.73 +/- .12 billion years old!

2008-03-14T19:50:37Z

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/03/05/the-universe-is-1373-12-billion-years-old/

posted in Astronomy - 5 replies

First Light

2008-03-11T23:30:05Z

The World's Most Powerful Telescope Sees First Light
Written by Fraser Cain

First light is a big deal. That's when a new observatory opens up for the first time and gathers light on its detectors. It's even a bigger deal when the world's most powerful telescope sees the night sky for the first time. Astronomers get ready for the Large Binocular Telescope.

I've been writing stories about the LBT for years now, so it seems a little surreal to be reporting on its first light. But here we are. So, for those of you who haven't been obsessing about this monster since it was first conceived, here's the breakdown.
The Large Binocular Telescope, in case you hadn't guessed, is actually two 8.4-metre telescopes perched side-by-side. Although they're separate, they work together to act like a single, much larger telescope. They have the light-collecting power of an 11.8-metre telescope, and their combined light produces an image sharpness of a single 22.8-metre scope.
The first light images for the LBT were captured in January, and show the galaxy NGC 2770, located 102 million light-years away. The same scene was captured in ultraviolet and green light to show the regions of active star formation. And then it was captured again in red to show the older, cooler stars. Finally, a third composite image was put together that shows both features at the same time.

posted in Astronomy - 3 replies