Astro News Rag

Hazards of the Solar System

Our Solar System may appear beautiful and tame through the lens of a telescope, but danger is constantly lurking. Last year on July 19, 2009, amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley noticed a disturbance on Jupiter’s surface. This was no storm brewing in the atmosphere but a scar caused by an impact of an asteroid. With the Hubble Telescope, scientists were able to photograph the event, which show for the first time the aftermath of an asteroid collision with another planet. Coincidentally, this discovery was made on the anniversary of the Shoemaker-Levy comet which collided into Jupiter only 15 years before in 1994. Now on June 3rd, 2010, another disturbance is visible on the surface. With comparisons to these previous collisions, astronomers are saying the culprit is an asteroid about 1600 feet wide.

These collisions are disastrous.  The one that took place in 2009 was equal to a few thousand nuclear bombs exploding. These bombardments have proven that the Solar System is a little bit more hazardous than astronomers first believed.  They had hypothesized that these collisions would occur every few hundred to a few thousand years. Even with surveys cataloging asteroids, many smaller bodies go unnoticed and can show up anytime to wreck havoc.

For more information, visit http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/03/new-hubble-images-zoom-in-on-asteroid-impact-on-jupiter/

Hubble Ultra Deep Field Reveals that Early Universe Felt Blue

      Our night sky isn’t just a festival of lights, but also a time machine. This is because the speed of light is a constant and it takes time for it to reach our eyes. For example, when you look up at the Sun, you are seeing it as it was 8 ½ minutes ago. So by peering into the beyond, we are going back into time. The Hubble Space Telescope does this regularly and in 2009 took images of the early Universe as it was around 800 million years after the Big Bang.
      The Hubble Ultra Deep Field has revealed to scientists that the early Universe is very different than what we expected. By studying each of the primordial galaxies, scientists have found that early galaxies were 1/20th the diameter of our own Milky Way and only 1% our mass. The most intriguing thing that astronomers have found is that most of the early galaxies appear to be intrinsically blue. This is because they may have been deficient in heavier elements, and as a result, is quite free of dust that would have otherwise reddened the light by scattering it.
      These galaxies existed in a period known as the reionization epoch. The problem with these new findings though is that the early galaxies still don’t account for enough radiation to reionize the early Universe. Basically what this means is that when the Universe cooled, electrons and protons were able to form neutral hydrogen. But when they began to form stars, they radiated energy outward and changed the hydrogen back to being ionized. For scientists, this is troubling because we still don’t know yet when this era actually began, just that it ended about 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
      The launch of Hubble has pioneered science and has allowed astronomers to study parts of the Universe that just would not have been possible to see even with some of the world’s largest ground-based telescopes. The Jordan Planetarium is offers a show where visitors will be able to experience different views of the Universe both near and far. There are astronomical murals of Hubble’s images in our lobby that showcase its ability to show the beauty of the cosmos and allow spectators to get a small glimpse of just what’s out there.

Early Black Holes Discovered

March 17, 2010 - The Spitzer Space Telescope has found two primitive supermassive black holes.  Supermassive black holes are black holes found at the center of galaxies. Quasars are often seen around supermassive black holes.  A quasar is a dense region in the center of a large galaxy surrounding a supermassive black hole. The quasars around the two primitive black holes found were different than any others seen before.  More information about black holes can be learned in the Jordan Planetarium’s show, Black Holes.

The quasars, called J0005-0006 and J0303-0019, didn’t have any hot dust that quasars normally have in them. The lack of dust indicates that the two black holes in the center of the “clean quasars” were created before dust formed in the universe. Astronomers think that at the beginning of the universe there was no dust.  Dust was later created by stars.  "We have found what are likely first-generation quasars, born in a dust-free medium and at the earliest stages of evolution," said Linhua Jiang of the University of Arizona, Tucson.  This is another step in our understanding of the early formation of the universe. 

For more informaiton, visit http://www.universetoday.com/2010/03/17/spitzer-spies-earliest-black-holes/

Earth's Magnetic Field Discovered to be Older than We Thought

March 5, 2010 - Scientists have discovered that the Earth’s magnetic field existed 200 million years earlier than was previously thought.  At that time it was about half the strength it is now and much closer to the surface of the Earth.  The Earth having a magnetic field that early on would have protected the atmosphere and the water on Earth enough to allow life to form.  It is thought that Mars has such a thin atmosphere because it didn’t have a magnetic field to protect it and the sun stripped away its atmosphere and water.  This gives scientists new things to look for when looking for planets that could support life beyond our solar system.

Scientists discovered records of the earlier magnetic field in quartz that had formed 3.5 billion years ago.  The quartz had tiny pieces of iron in it which recorded the strength and direction of Earth’s magnetic field as the quartz was forming. Once the rock cooled, the quartz protected the record left in the iron. Using specially designed instruments, scientists can read the record left on the iron. They compared the age of the quartz with what is known about the strength of the solar wind from the sun at that time to find out how much radiation would have made it to the earth.  It was discovered that the sun had stolen a large amount of water from the Earth, meaning the Earth had a vast amount of water to begin with.

For more information please visit: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/03/05/earth-raised-up-its-magnetic-shield-early-protecting-water-and-emerging-life/

Water Found on the North Pole of the Moon

March 1, 2010 – NASA has found a lot of water on the north pole of the moon.  This is a great discovery for NASA because it means that in the future a lunar base could be mostly self sufficient, allowing astronauts to stay on the moon for months at a time.  The ice could be melted into drinking water, or broken down into air for breathing. It could even be made into rocket fuel.

The water was discovered by an Indian moon probe, Chandrayaan-1. Chandrayaan-1 had a NASA radar system on it that detected over 40 craters, from a mile wide to 9 miles wide, which had ice in them on the north pole of the moon. It is estimated that there are over 600 million metric tons of water ice in the craters.

NASA had planned on sending astronauts to the moon again by 2020 as part of their Constellation program. President Obama however cancelled the program last month, saying NASA should focus on using commercial spacecraft to launch astronauts into space in order to free up NASA to concentrate on other exploration missions.  NASA chief Charles Bolden told the US Congress that a base on Mars is the ultimate goal of NASA, but a base on the moon would be a stepping stone on the way to more distant space exploration.

For more information, visit: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35653907/ns/technology_and_science-space/

An XO for Valentines Day

The planet XO-3b and star XO-3 positions

February 10, 2010 - On February 13, 2010, the Bareket Observatory will webcast the transit of an extra solar planet named “XO-3b”. Viewers will get to witness an extrasolar planet pass in front of its host star, and for a moment see a planet outside our solar system in the night sky. This is an important event because it shows that even amateur astronomers can enjoy the wonders of exoplanets. Coming up in March, the Jordan Planetarium will be having a new show “Strange Planets” which will further discuss exosolar planets.

Bareket Observatory and The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) are working hard on variable-object studies to create a local standard against which you can compare the host star for variability. These are important findings to scientists because it gives them better techniques at finding new planets that orbit close to their host star. Scientists are able to do this by calculating the drop in the brightness of the star. This drop is proportionate to the planet’s surface and is the key feature researchers are looking for.

The webcast will air on Bereket’s home page and viewers can watch for free a live, real-time video of the transiting planet. So if chocolates and flowers aren’t enough for you and your valentine, then watch this historic event at http://www.bareket-astro.com/live/transit_xo-3b/cast.html and watch a strange new world appear anew in the night sky.

For more information visit:
http://www.universetoday.com/2010/02/10/an-xo-for-valentines-day/
http://www.bareket-astro.com/live/transit_xo-3b/cast.html

Hubble Sees Asteroid Collision

February 2, 2010 - A strange, X-shaped object was discovered in the asteroid belt.  At first it was thought to be a comet, but closer investigation revealed it to be the result of the collision of two asteroids. While astronomers suspect that the asteroid belt is being ground down by similar collisions, no collision has actually been seen before. 

The X-shaped object, which was named P/2010 A2, is different from a comet in a few ways. One of the major differences is, normal comets come from icy areas of the galaxy outside our solar system.  When they come closer to the sun, some of the ice melts and leaves a trail that is pushed back by radiation from the sun. P/2010 A2 though came from a warmer area in the middle of the solar system. This means that the trail behind it isn’t a result of ice that melted off the object; it’s a trail of dust that formed when two asteroids collided.

The asteroid belt is full of evidence of ancient collisions between asteroids. The direct aftermath of a collision has not been seen before.  Using the Hubble telescope’s new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) astronomers were able to capture this rare occurrence.
For more information visit: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2010/02feb_asteroidcollision.htm

Two New Exoplanets Baffle Scientists

February 4, 2010 - On March 6, 2009, NASA launched the Delta II rocket carrying the Kepler telescope into Earth’s orbit. The purpose of this mission is to search a patch of sky containing 100,000 stars like our Sun. With its special detectors, Kepler will look for a slight dimming in the stars which would indicate a terrestrial body is present. The idea behind finding these extrasolar planets is to find Earth-like planets that could sustain life and answer the question, “Are we alone?” Upcoming in March at the Jordan Planetarium, we have our new show “Strange Planets” which will discuss astronomical techniques for identifying extrasolar planets.

Kepler has been operating now for just over 10 months, but continues to find new planets orbiting a host star. Recently Kepler found 2 new planets that are so different from what we know that we’re just not quite sure what they are. These 2 new planets orbit within the Kuiper belt, a region just beyond our solar system, and are roughly the size of Jupiter. The anomaly though that scientists found with these two planets is that their surface temperature are incredibly hot. In fact, they’re hotter than their host star.

Since this discovery, scientists are baffling to find an answer to this problem. Some current theories are that the planets evolved from their host star and are now in the process of cooling off. But there isn’t enough data to prove this theory, only speculation. Time will tell as scientists race to find an answer to this puzzling mystery. With the Kepler telescope now part of their arsenal, finding planets like our Earth is becoming more and more likely as we discover new, unique planets .This is an exciting time for scientists as they learn more new things about planets beyond our own solar system and with the brand new Kepler Telescope, finding planets like our very own may come soon in the near future. “Strange Planets” will be showing in March every Sunday at 2:00pm.

for more information on extra-solar planets, Visit these websites:

Nasa.gov

UniverseToday.com

GalaxyMaine.com

Cosmic Ribbon at the Edge of out Solar System

February 4, 2010 - Last year NASA scientists discovered a ribbon-like band at the edge of our solar system. Since the discovery, researchers have puzzled over its origin calling it a “shocking result”. Now scientists are beginning to understand a little more about this enigma and believe they’ve come up with an answer. Here at the Jordan Planetarium, we will be having a show discussing the IBEX mission and how its importance in helping scientists better understand our Universe.

IBEX, (Interstellar Boundary Explorer), launched October of 2008, is a spacecraft built to construct a comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy. The purpose of this is to understand the interaction between our galaxy and the sun. When IBEX discovered this “ribbon”, scientists were clueless to its origin. Now researchers believe that this ribbon is a reflection of solar wind particles that get reflected back to us by a galactic magnetic field. And although maps of the ribbon tend to show a ribbon-like band, the ribbon itself does not actually emit any light. What scientists are actually seeing are energetic neutral atoms that IBEX’s sensors pick up.

These findings are important because Interstellar space beyond our solar system is mostly unexplored territory and little is known about this region. Now scientists know that there could be a strong, well-organized magnetic field right at the edge of our solar system. If you would like more information about IBEX and its missions, the Jordan Planetarium offers private group showings of IBEX: Search For The Edge Of The Solar System.

For more information, visit Nasa.gov

Black Hole Breaks Distance Record

NGC 300 X-1 in the spiral galaxy NGC 300

January 27, 2010 - Six million light-years away, in the spiral galaxy called NGC 300, astronomers have discovered a black hole with similar mass to a star.  It is farther away than any other black hole of its kind discovered so far.  It is also the second most massive of the star sized black holes ever found.  A close neighbor of the black hole, a Wolf-Rayet star, which is a massive star that is close to its death and rapidly losing mass, is likely to soon become a black hole itself, which could result in the formation of one massive black hole. All this month at the Jordan Planetarium you can learn more about black holes like this one in their OmniDome presentation of the show Black Holes Fridays at 7:00pm.  This show teaches about the science behind black holes while dazzling audiences spectacular visual effects.

The black hole in NGC 300 was not known about until periodic, intense X-ray emissions were recorded coming from that galaxy. Astronomers knew that it could be a black hole causing the X-rays.  Using European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope, astronomers were able to locate the black hole, and its partner star, the Wolf-Rayet star.  Later observations with the one of the Very Large Telescope's instruments, the FORS2, which is a spectrograph, allowed them to see that the star and the black hole circle each other every 32 hours.  They also saw that the black hole is stripping matter away from the star.

Only one other system like this has been seen before, but other similar systems are expected to exist.  These systems help astronomers to see a connection between black hole mass and the composition of the galaxy the black holes are found in.  “We have noticed that the most massive black holes tend to be found in smaller galaxies that contain less ‘heavy’ chemical elements,” said Paul Crowther. “Bigger galaxies that are richer in heavy elements, such as the Milky Way, only succeed in producing black holes with smaller masses."  Knowing more about the composition of a galaxy is just one way that black holes help us to learn more about the universe.

Sources:

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/01/27/extra-galactic-whopper-black-hole-breaks-distance-record/

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1004/

Alma Telescope Takes Its First Sub-Millimeter Measurements of Space

November 20, 2009 - The ALMA observatory in Chile, the largest, most ambitious ground-based astronomy tool ever created, made its first measurements on Tuesday from its overlook 17,400 above sea level. The interferometric measurements of radio signals, or "fringes," from a distant quasar at sub-millimeter wavelengths prove that ALMA isn't just hype, boasting unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, and that's using just two of the eventual 66 antennas making up the array.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array is currently under construction on the Chajnantor plateau in northern Chile's Atacama desert, with completion slated for 2012. When all 66 antennas are working in synch, researchers believe ALMA will revolutionize the way we see the universe, probing deep into some of the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang and observing planets in mid-formation around young stars. That's not to mention that she's one beautiful radio telescope.

Atlantis Space Shuttle Ready to Launch

November 16, 2009 – Space shuttle Atlantis is all fueled up and ready for launch. Liftoff time is slated for 2:28 PM EST Monday. The only concern is the possibility of low cloud ceilings this afternoon. The countdown clock began ticking at T minus 6 hours with the start of fueling and continues smoothly towards an afternoon liftoff at 2:28 PM EST.

The primary goal is to deliver nearly 30,000 pounds (15 tons) of critical spare parts and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) which cannot be transported by any other existing launch system. The cargo bay is loaded with two spare gyroscopes, two nitrogen tank assemblies, two pump modules, an ammonia tank assembly and a spare latching end effector for the station's Canadian built robotic arm. Atlantis’s crew will conduct three spacewalks during the nominal 11 day flight to transfer the spare parts from the payload bay and install them onto the station’s external structures.

This is the 129th Space Shuttle flight, the 31st flight of Atlantis and the last flight of 2009. Only 5 flights remain after STS 129. As the shuttle enters its final year of operation, the countdown clock is ticking towards blast-off of Space Shuttle Atlantis and her six man crew at 2:28 PM EST on 16 November 2009 towards the International Space Station (ISS).

Planck Looks Through Time

August 10, 2009 - For years science fiction writers have been dreaming about time travel. Moving back and forth in time has always been considered impossible, but scientists at the European Space Agency have found a way to at least look backwards in time. The successful launch of the Planck satellite in May means that soon astronomers will be able to look backwards in time and detect leftover radiation from when the universe was only 380,000 years old. This look back into the universe’s infancy will provide insight into how the universe grew up and what changes it might go through in the future.

The Jordan Planetarium plans to premiere a new Omnidome show this November in honor of the Planck mission. Follow the telescope as it makes its journey though space and see in detail what it has to show us. Keep an eye on the calendar page to see when this expansive show will make its premiere.

For more information on the Planck mission, take a look at the ESA’s Planck website.

IBEX Explores the Limits of Our Solar System

August 10, 2009 - Late last year the IBEX mission moved into action. Short for Interstellar Boundary EXplorer, the IBEX is a satellite the size of a bus tire that orbits the Earth once ever five to eight days. Its purpose is to study the ways that the charged particles streaming out of the sun (known as solar wind) can help us define the limits of our solar system.

There are a variety of ways to determine the boundaries of a location. Some boundaries can simply be drawn on a map. The solar system is not so easy to define. One could define the solar system as all the areas affected by the sun’s light, or perhaps its gravity, but neither of these methods would work. The light of the sun can be seen from light years away, even if it’s just a small speck in the sky. The same goes for the sun’s gravity: the farther you get from the sun the weaker the effects of its gravity are, but they are still present. Astronomers think the best way to determine the limits of our solar system is to take a look at how far out our sun’s solar wind can reach. The IBEX satellite is designed to find and answer to that question.

If you find you have questions about the IBEX mission do some exploring on your own! Check out the official IBEX website for updates on how the mission is going. For a more immersive experience do not miss the Jordan Planetarium’s presentation of IBEX: Search for the Edge of the Solar System. This Omnidome show will make its premiere on the Jordan Planetarium dome this October.

Kepler Detects Extra Solar Planet

August 7, 2009 - NASA’s Kepler mission was created with an extraordinary goal – find evidence of planets that are like our home planet Earth. Recently this satellite has proven that it is indeed capable of this mission by finding its first extrasolar planet. An extrasolar planet is simply a planet located outside the solar system. Hundreds of these planets have been found by other missions over the past few years.

Kepler’s first extrasolar planet (with the oh so memorable name of HAT-P-7b) is about the same size as Jupiter. The star it orbits is similar to our sun and is found in a patch of sky near the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. Kepler will be trained on this patch of sky throughout its lifetime, searching in only this area of space for extrasolar planets.

Finding an extrasolar planet is not as simple as just visually seeing a hunk of rock orbiting a star. Kepler and other missions looking for these planets must instead detect minute changes in the amount of light given by stars. As a planet passes in front of a star it blocks some of the star’s light from reaching Earth. By detecting where these shifts in light occur, astronomers can figure out where a potential extrasolar planet may be.

Kepler still has more than three years ahead of it to look at the stars. This recent discovery raises hopes of what this telescope may find in the future. If you’re interested in what might be out there for Kepler to find, check out the Jordan Planetarium’s new show “Strange planets” premiering this fall. For more information on Kepler’s most recent discovery, take a look at this article at Universe Today, or explore the official Kepler website.

India Will See Longest Eclipse of the Century

July 21, 2009 - A small village in India named Tarenga has become famous overnight. It is the epicenter of a solar eclipse happening on July 22, 2009. Scientists and tourists from all over the world are expected to congregate in Tarenga (whose name means “counting stars” in Hindi) to see this eclipse.

Any total solar eclipse is a breath-taking sight, but this year’s eclipse is particularly interesting. This eclipse is expected to last longer than any other eclipse this century, clocking in at over six and a half minutes. While this may not seem like a long amount of time, the maximum length of a solar eclipse is seven and half minutes. Eclipses of this length only happen a few times every millennium. Six and a half minutes is long enough to make July’s eclipse the longest of the century.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon’s shadow blocks the light of the sun from hitting the earth. The shadow of the moon is small compared to the earth, making it so only a small part of the earth can see an eclipse at any time. The moon’s shadow can cover part of the sun’s light, creating a partial solar eclipse, or it can completely blot out the sun, creating a total solar eclipse. Tarenga is expected to experience a total eclipse, leading to an eerie, nightlike landscape as the sun’s light is completely covered.

Unfortunately for us living in Maine, this year’s solar eclipse will not be viewable from North America. The next solar eclipse viewable from our continent will take place in 2011. The next total eclipse that can be seen from Maine will take place April of 2024.

For more information on this July’s long solar eclipse take a look at the BBC article on Tarenga or The Daily Green's article on long eclipses.

Jupiter's Mysterious Impact

July 21, 2009 - 15 years ago pieces of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into the surface of the planet Jupiter. This week a similar event happened to the same planet. An impact on the giant planet was observed by amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley. Soon after this initial observation was made the dark spot on Wesley’s pictures was confirmed by NASA to be an impact and not just a weather disturbance.

Since the impact has been confirmed a team of astronomers have been tracking Jupiter around the clock in order to get more information on the phenomenon. The Jovian planet seems to be cooperating with astronomers, showing the right part of itself at the right time to give researchers the best view. “We couldn't have planned it better,” explains Glenn Orton, an astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Orton and his team have been leading the continuing observation of Jupiter.

While professional astronomers have been keeping an eye on this impact, it was an amateur who made this important observation. As the technology available to amateurs becomes more advanced, bigger and bigger discoveries can be made by non-professionals. Anthony Wesley is one of many space enthusiasts who have made amateur observations that have brought about advancements in our understanding of the solar system.

Little is known about this particular impact yet, but it continues to be an object of interest in our solar system. For more information on this impact and some words from Anthony Wesley, take a look at the Universe Today article.

Hubble's Last Check-up

May 01, 2009 - We’ve all seen the astounding photos the Hubble Space Telescope has given us, and in the nineteen years it’s been up there, Hubble has shown us more about the Universe than we could have ever imagined. Like all machines, though, parts of the telescope have broken or malfunctioned on many occasions, and regular repair trips have made it possible for it to continue snapping pictures of our visible, and invisible, universe. One such repair trip is scheduled to launch on May 11 for a final re-tuning of our most famous observatory.

The Hubble Space Telescope is getting some repairs, as well as some fancy new instrumentation. One will allow the telescope to take ultra-violet and infrared shots with amazing detail and clarity, as well as very good visible light pictures. The shocking part is, it’s all with one camera. There will be a spectrograph that will be able to take in the light from a very dim quasar, and study the changes as it travels through all of the stellar gas between us and the object.

The fixes and installations that will be performed by the shuttle crew STS 125 will allow the Hubble Space telescope to be more robust than ever and function for at least another five years. In that time, who knows what brilliant photographs and ground-breaking information will come to us through that lens?

The Death of Planet X

April 16, 2009 - If you spend much time watching TV or looking at tabloids, chances are good you're heard of Planet X. Conspiracy theorists claim that this mysterious planet (sometimes called Nibiru) is orbiting at the edge of the solar system, waiting for the year 2012. While the worry over Planet X is a relatively new phenomenon, the idea of this planet has been around for a while.

At the beginning of the 20th century astronomer Percival Lowell noticed something odd about the way the planet Neptune orbited the sun. To account for this oddity he hypothesized that there was a yet undiscovered planet lurking deeper in space. He called this planet “Planet X” and expected it to be a large planet. In 1930 Clyde Tombaugh seemed to prove Lowell right by discovering Pluto. As time went on and our ability to observe the solar system grew better, it became apparent that Pluto was not large enough to account for the discrepancies in Lowell’s research. In fact, it was an error in observing that created the oddity, not another planet. No other scientific evidence has arisen to support the idea of planet X. Despite this, the idea of an unseen member of the solar system became cemented in the minds of many. Physicist Lorenzo Iorio hopes to put the Planet X myth to rest using research he has recently completed.

If there was a large body (a large planet or a small star) nearby, we would be able to see its gravitation influence on the way the planets orbit around the sun. Iorio has calculated the closest a planet could be without our being able to notice our effects. The minimum distance a Mars size, Earth size, Jupiter size, or sun size planet could be is 62 AU, 430 AU, 886 AU and 8995 AU respectively. An AU (or Astronomical Unit) is the distance from the Earth to the sun, about 93 million miles. Pluto orbits the sun at about 39 AU, meaning that there’s 23 more AU to go before the possibility of something the size of Mars exists. This evidence makes the possibility of a large planet or small star somewhere in the outer solar system pretty small.

“A small possibility is still a possibility!” some would say. It wouldn’t be too hard to imagine a large planet somewhere in the vicinity of 300 AU away. “Not so fast” says David Jewitt, from the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii. According to a report he made in 2004, if there were an object at that distance we would have observed it by now. With no scientific evidence supporting it, it would seem that the myth of Planet X is over. For more information on the controversy around Planet X, take a look at some of these articles from Universe Today:

Constraining the Orbits of Planet X and Nemesis

2012: No Planet X

Warp Speed Ahead! What Do You Mean 'Not Possible'?

April 8, 2009 - Ever wanted to travel faster than the speed of light?  Well, physics says no, but we keep trying to find loopholes around this anyway.  One theory was that we could create a sort of “bubble” in the space-time by pushing extra dimensions together in front of a ship, then spreading them out behind.  That way, the universe stays in equilibrium and the ship would not be moving faster than the speed of light, but rather time and space would be hurtling by at alarming speeds around it. 

Sounds great, right?  Wrong.  By squishing the dimensions together you create horizons at the front and rear of the bubble.  This in turn causes Hawking Radiation to be emitted, effectively heating up the contents of to bubble to a toasty 1030K (that’s about 1,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit…and you thought 130 degrees was bad!).  Just imagine if you could find a way to convert all that radiation to energy used to create the horizons.

Creating the bubble in the first place would be no easy task, either.  If you took the most massive planet in our solar system, Jupiter, and converted it to energy, you might have enough to accomplish this task.  If we could efficiently create that much, the world’s energy problems would be dissipated..no more! 

Though, if you ignore that little energy hitch, very, very fast speed could be possible with this bubble theory.  Once you hit the speed of light, physics changes and the universe itself feels like it’s fighting you every step of the way.  If faster than light speed travel is not attempted, no horizons form and no super hot temperatures roast you on a spit; so there is still hope as long as you’re going no faster than nearly the speed of light.    

Related Articles:
Universe Today
Warp Drive and Cloaking Devices: Not Just Science Fiction Anymore?

Morristown New Jersey Makes a Name for Itself

April 8, 2009 - Earlier this year you may have heard about a big, five day UFO sighting in Morristown, New Jersey.  It was featured in newspapers around the country, talk shows, and even got a spot on the History Channel show, UFO Hunters.  Reliable eyewitnesses and respectable investigators clamored over what was believed to be a real extraterrestrial UFO, and the whole country got excited over the possibility that aliens were visiting our humble rock. 

Two locals, Joe Rudy and Chris Russo, set up the entire thing.  They wanted to show how easy it is to create mass illusions of outer planetary beings, and have so many professionals call it true.  “We set out on a mission to help people think rationally and question the credibility of so-called UFO “professionals.””  The entire phenomenon was created by tying flares to a few helium balloons; why not try it for yourself?

Related Articles:
Universe Today
Skeptic.com
Bad Astronomer

Where Shall Hubble Go Next?

Feruary 13, 2009 - This year is the International Year of Astronomy (IYA), a celebration of the leaps and bounds our understanding of the universe has made since Galileo first pointed his telescope to the night sky 400 years ago. Our technique and technology for stargazing has grown so much that we’ve been able to send a powerful research camera into space to escape the distortion the Earth’s atmosphere causes in images taken form the surface. Since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, the telescope has given us over a thousand dazzling insights on what lies just beyond our field of vision. Now it’s your turn to put your vote in and tell NASA what you want to see from Hubble.

In light of the IYA celebrations, NASA has decided to let the inhabitants of earth decide where in the universe to point Hubble next. There are six never-before-Hubbled space objects to choose from; NGC 6634, NGC 6072, NGC 40, NGC 5172, NGC 4289, and Arp 274. Those names mean little more to me then they probably mean to you. The more “population friendly” names might give you a better idea of what these space destinations are.

NGC 6634 is commonly known as the Cat or Bear’s Paw Nebula, and has birthed stars with masses almost 10 times that of our sun. NGC 6072 is a planetary nebula within the constellation Scorpius, and appears as a giant planet when viewed through a small telescope. The heart of NGC 40, the Bow-Tie Nebula, is a dying star whose outer layer of gasses heats up to almost 20 thousand degrees F and is about a light year, or 5.8 trillion miles, across.

The last three are spiral galaxies that can give valuable insight on our own, the Milky Way. NGC 5172 has over 100 billion stars in its pinwheel arms thin center disk, and NGC 4289 is another spiral galaxy viewed side-on. ARP 274 is like a glimpse into the future; two spiral galaxies colliding with one another, drawn together by their gravity. Our Milky Way is also on a collision course; with the nearby Andromeda galaxy which is visible with the naked eye.

Visit hubblesite to cast your vote by March 1st and tune in to IYA’s 100 Hours of Astronomy from April 2nd to the 5th for the distribution of the winning image.

More Evidence of Life on Mars?

February 13, 2009 - Is there life on Mars? Has there ever been? Every new tidbit of information about the planet gives an ambiguous yes as an answer, including some recent discoveries about methane gas in the planet’s atmosphere. It’s possible that these giant plumes were produced by microorganisms millions of years ago…but they were more likely the result of an impacting comet or the planet’s crust moving and displacing the gas.

Methane gas was detected as whiffs in 2003, but thanks to some new data-analyzing methods specified for finding methane, those ‘whiffs’ are now known to be full blown plumes of gas, mixed with some water vapor. This was big news in the astronomy community since it was the first definitive account of methane on Mars.

One theory on the emergence the gas is that a comet had recently collided with the planet and this caused the large amount of methane. This, however, was soon put aside as scientists realized just how big a comet would have to be in order for the gas to survive impact and avoid combustion. Comets carry 1% methane as compared to their water makeup and, ignoring the fact that a lot of that would be lost to combustion upon impact, it would take a 300 meter comet to carry the 19,000 tons of methane gas. Something that large hitting the surface would cause a new crater, and there were no fresh holes in the red planet. The gas could not have been produced by a volcano since there were no other volcanic gasses in the area, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of geological activity. Iron oxide buried deep beneath the planet’s crust can undergo geochemical reactions, a by-product of which is methane. The gas builds up in pockets and when the crust of the planet shifts these pockets are ‘popped’ and the methane spouts out like water from a fountain, a phenomenon known as serpentization.

Of course, no Mars discovery would be complete without the possibility of life. There might have been microorganisms that fed on hydrogen gas and excreted methane gas as a waste product millions of years ago. This is very similar to cows and sheep, whose burps and flatulence contain high amounts of the gas. The methane accumulated and eventually, via serpentization, was released into Mars’ atmosphere. It could have also been that the gas occurred naturally and organisms fed on it rather than it being their waste. Either way, the presence of large amounts of Methane on Mars increases the chance that there might have once been life there.

When the scientists looked again in 2006, the methane was gone and now they had to figure out how it was dissipated soquickly; that amount of gas would have taken more than three years for the sun to eradicate. NASA’s Phoenix Lander discovered perchlorate, and the Viking found hydrogen peroxide in the surface dust of the planet. Either one of those chemicals would have happily bonded with the abundant methane. We won’t know much more about the mysterious methane and its disappearing act until 2011, when NASA launches the Mars Science Laboratory.

For more information on Mars and methane, check out some of these Sky and Telescope articles:

Mars Methane Boosts Chances for Life

Water and methane maps overlap on Mars: a new clue?

The Curious Case of Martian Methane

Galaxy Gains Holiday Pounds

January 8th, 2009-

For many of us stepping on the bathroom scale just after the holidays can reveal a substantial surprise. Likewise, astronomers looking closely at the Milky Way have found our galaxy is more massive than previously thought. High-precision measurements of the Milky Way disclose our galaxy is rotating about 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously understood. “That increase in speed,” said Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “increases the Milky Way’s mass by 50 percent. The larger mass, in turn, means a greater gravitational pull that increases the likelihood of collisions with the Andromeda galaxy or smaller nearby galaxies.”

The Milky Way Galaxy was once thought to have been about 100,000 light years in length. This means that a beam of light traveling at about 186,290 miles per second would require 100,000 years to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. This distance is unfathomably large. For reference: that same beam of light would only require 1/10th of a second to spin around Earth's equator. Now, astronomers using an array of radio telescopes, have determined that the Milky Way Galaxy might be as much as 15% larger in breadth.

Life becomes more active when you have more matter hanging about. The stars within the galaxy move because the galaxy is rotating. It has been a well established fact since the time of Newton that the speed of an orbiting body depends upon the mass of the object that's in orbit and the body around which it is revolving. If the bodies are heavier, the orbital speeds will be greater. We now believe that the galaxy is turning at 567,000 miles per hour, as compared to the previous lethargic estimate of 490,910 miles per hour.

So, now that we know we're more massive, how do we compare with other galaxies in our neighborhood? "In our local group of galaxies, Andromeda was thought to be the dominant big sister," said Reid at the American Astronomical Society’s meeting in Long Beach, California, "but we're basically equal in size and mass. We're not identical twins, but more like fraternal twins. And it’s likely the two galaxies will collide sooner than we thought, but it depends on a measurement of the sideways motion, which hasn't been done yet."

This inevitable merger of the Andromeda and Milky Way will indeed happen, but not for about 1 - 2 billion years. While this time frame pinpoints the event well beyond the duration of our lives, it will occur in about half the time of previous estimates. We felt safe and secure in the knowledge that the Andromeda and Milky Way wouldn't be drawn together for about five billion years, or so: around the same time when the Sun exhausts its core hydrogen reserves. Now, of course, the galactic collision will happen while the Sun is still merrily burning through its hydrogen. Will the impact of this LESSER galaxy into the Milky Way be a disaster for the solar system? Probably not. Both galaxies have hundreds of billions of stars and the merger will cause a great disruption between the star systems. However, that doesn't mean that the planets will be stripped away from the Sun. Our solar system will be churning along quite swimmingly, even as the stars merge, turn and mix together. Mind you, the Sun will be brought along for a ride, most likely, and our night sky will be quite a sight when the galaxies draw close to each other. The bigger problem will be the increasing luminosity -energy output- of the Sun and the resultant heating of Earth.

So Smile widely, walk proudly, and be merry! You live in a big, brilliant and beautiful galaxy.

Scientists View a Planet Orbiting a Star Outside Our Solar System

Click on picture for a detailed veiw

November 24th, 2008- With the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have spotted for the first time, a planet orbiting a star outside our solar system. The star that it orbits is Fomalhaut. The planet is now known as Fomalhaut b. It has three times the mass of Jupiter and is located about 25 million light years away among the stars of the constellation Pisces Australis.

Scientists discovered this planet by watching a ring of protoplanetary dust and debris around the star about 21.5 billion miles across. They first saw this dust in the early 1980’s and continued watching it for the next two decades in infrared. This disk of debris has been compared to the Kuiper Belt in our solar system. Scientists at NASA believe that the key to finding exosolar planets is to study protoplanetary dust for irregularities. Although scientists have been studying the ring of dust and debris for decades, it was not until 2004 that they were able to obtain a visual image of the ring of debris from the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble images showed the dusty disk around the star Fomalhaut that was being gravitationally modified by a planet between Fomalhaut and the inner edge of the dust ring.

Fomalhaut b is about 1.8 million miles inside the ring of debris surrounding the star. The planet, Fomalhaut b is about 10.7 light years away from its star that is ten times the distance of the planet Saturn to our Sun. Fomalhaut b was originally very hard to spot because it is one billion time duller than its star. Future observations will attempt to see the planet in infrared light and will look for evidence of water vapor clouds in the atmosphere.

November 6th, 2008 - Scientists are learning more and more about super-massive black holes all of the time. This is due, in part, to technological advancements in ground-based telescopes in the past ten years. One example, the Submillimeter Array, consists of eight six meter diameter radio telescopes that are arranged as a single collector for submillimeter wavelength observations. They are located at Mauna Kea Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

Recent Observations with the Submillimeter Array suggest that colossal black holes were even common 12 billion years ago. This means that these black holes were present when the universe was as young as 1.7 billion years old and the galaxies were in the formation process. This discovery is based on the sighting of two distant galaxies that both have black holes at their center. These galaxies are actually colliding with one another. This means that their two black holes are likely to combine to form one colossal black hole.

New observations from the Submillimeter Array show that one of these galaxies stripped material from its neighbor while the two black holes were merging. Scientists are describing this new phenomenon as being analogous to fraternal twin galaxies. However, because of the speed that light travels through the universe, the images from the Submillimeter Array are really seeing this occurrence as they happened almost 12 billion years ago. The discovery of more massive black holes at the center of galaxies leads scientists to suspect that every galaxy in the universe contains a massive black hole.

The Jordan Planetarium will be showing its popular Black Holes program every Saturday in November at 7:00 pm.

The Messenger Spacecraft’s 2nd Flyby of Mercury

October 6, 2008- Early this morning, the Messenger spacecraft passed within 200 kilometers above the planet Mercury. During this flyby the spacecraft was able to take pictures on its approach of the planet Mercury. This is the mission’s second flyby of its target planet, Mercury. The purpose of the flyby was to enable the spacecraft to use Mercury for a gravity assist.

Mercury’s gravity will be an essential part of the Messenger’s mission. Mercury's gravity will capture the spacecraft in 2011, when Messenger is scheduled to be the first spacecraft ever to enter into orbit around Mercury. The spacecraft will also send back important observatrions about our solar system. During its journey it has sent new information and measurements about Earth and Venus as well as Mercury.

This second flyby of Mercury was beneficial because it allowed the spacecraft to present us with new information and measurements of its target planet. The Messenger spacecraft was launched August 3rd, 2004 with a very specific purpose: to become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.The spacecraft is scheduled to begin its orbit around Mercury on March 18th, 2011, and the third and final Mercury flyby is scheduled to occur on September 29th, 2009. The Messenger’s journey will return the first new spacecraft data from Mercury since the Mariner 10 mission over 30 years ago.

Rosetta Flyby of Asteroid Steins

September 10, 2008 - In March of 2004 the Rosetta space craft began its journey towards comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Just a few days ago it completed one of its first objectives: flying by and imaging the asteroid 2867 Steins.

"Steins looks like a diamond in the sky," said the Principal Investigator for Rosetta’s imaging system, Uwe Keller. This is no understatement! Steins has an unusual diamond shape and is pocked with almost two dozen craters. The asteroid is about 4.6 kilometers across, but half of that surface is covered with a giant crater. In order to determine the age of the asteroid the number of craters on its surface need to be counted. The more craters there are the older the asteroid is. 23 craters have been counted so far.

Scientists hope to find out more about the asteroid by studying Rosetta’s images. “It looks like a typical asteroid, but it is really fascinating how much we can learn from just the images,” says Gerhard Schwehm, the Mission Manager for Rosetta. Information about why Steins is so bright and details about the fine grains of regolith that cover its surface will be gleaned from further study of the images.

For more information about the Rosetta mission and the ongoing study of the Steins images, take a look at the European Space Agency’s Rosetta page.

Hubble Servicing Mission 4

August 14, 2008 - The Hubble Space Telescope, the largest outer space telescope created by NASA and the European Space Agency, will be getting an upgrade this October. The servicing mission is scheduled for October 8 th, 2008 and will be done by the crew aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. This will be the fourth of the servicing missions for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) since it began its service in April 1990. The previous servicing missions have fixed an imaging flaw inside the telescope, repaired small problems, and upgraded the equipment for better, more modern, observing apparatus.

In October the HST will be getting another facelift with two entirely new scientific instruments being installed, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The crew of the Atlantis will be replacing batteries, pieces of the movement mechanism, some of the guidance equipment, and thermal blankets used to maintain temperature. They will also repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) along with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). All of these replacements and repairs will give the HST an even deeper and more defined look into deep space.

The most interesting part of this servicing mission is the installation of the new “eyes” of the Telescope. The first piece, the Wide Field Camera 3 replaces its much older brother the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) that has been in place since 1993. The new camera will be creating panchromatic imaging with two channels covering near-ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths. This means the telescope will be able to get imaging from 200nm to 1700nm, a very wide range in electromagnetic radiation, or light, giving it a wider field of view with greater sensitivity.

The second and equally powerful new “eye” the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph will also be replacing an older, outdated model, the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR). This new model will enhance the sensitivity that the fifteen year old COSTAR had by at least ten times. It uses ultraviolet spectroscopy to break down the light it receives from distant objects and reveals information on the object that is emitting the light. One of the main reasons that the HST works so well is that here on Earth the atmosphere blocks most of the ultraviolet light. As the HST is in outer space, far away from the atmosphere, it can pick up on all of this ultraviolet light.

The two instruments that will be repaired, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, have not been working properly since 2007 and 2004 respectively. Once they are both up and running again, they can return to their duties of collecting information from cosmic objects. The STIS gives astronomers information through spectroscopy on galaxies, planets, and even black holes. The ACS is the main camera for the HST with a very wide field of view and enough power to have the capability of giving scientists the deepest view of the cosmos.

All of this servicing should take five separate space walks and if everything goes as planned it will be the first time in history that the Hubble Space Telescope has had all of its instruments working together and performing properly at the same time. Never has the telescope been as powerful as it will be and with all the repairs and replacements it should last well into the next decade when it will finally be brought back down to Earth.

If you would like more information on the Hubble Servicing Mission, you can read all about it at http://hubble.nasa.gov/missions/sm4.php.

Pluto Dubbed King of the Plutoids

Over the last few days the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has established that the celestial body Pluto has been reclassified yet again. From now on the dwarf planet and some other bodies farther out in the solar system will be called “Plutoids.” This comes two years after the reclassification that demoted Pluto from a full planet to a “Dwarf Planet.” (See below)

The demotion was taken in 2006 after Mike Brown from the California Institute of Technology discovered Eris, a bright object farther away from the Sun than Pluto and bigger in size than Pluto. This forced the IAU to redefine what was and was not a planet. A “Dwarf Planet” is a celestial body big enough to be spherical in shape, orbiting around the sun, and has not cleared its neighborhood of other small objects.

At the time the IAU decided to create the Dwarf Planet category, they also planned to create a designation for those dwarf planets that lay farther out in the solar system than Neptune, a region knonw as the Kuiper Belt. They could not come to an agreement and assigned the task to a committee. Now, two years later, we have the “Plutoids.” According to the IAU “any Solar System body having (a) a semimajor axis greater than that of Neptune, and (b) an absolute magnitude brighter than H = +1 magnitude will, for the purpose of naming, be considered to be a plutoid ” But what does this mean?

Well, having a semi-major axis greater than Neptune is the scientific way of saying that the objects must be farther away from our sun than Neptune. This would include the dwarf planets Pluto and Eris, but not Ceres, a dwarf planet that resides inside the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. An absolute magnitude brighter than H=+1 means that if the objects were to sit one Astronomical Unit from the Earth and the Sun that they must be bright enough to pass this value. This is to make sure that there are no problems with measuring how round a body is or how precisely big it may be.

One potential problem that might occur from having a brightness criteria rather than a size limit is that the surface material covering some objects is brighter than others. As Mike Brown himself pointed out, “ if you take Eris, which is currently the intrinsically brightest object, bring it closer to the sun (where it will be in 290 years), melt some of the ice on the surface, and exposure some of the darker substrate, it might just get dark enough to no longer be a Plutoid.” Regardless of how people feel on the subject, the ruling will stand. Pluto is no longer one of our nine planets, but a dwarf planet and the king of the Plutoids.

-Zack Schiller

For more information please visit the IAU website and view the official press release here: http://www.iau.org/public_press/news/release/iau0804/

Phoenix Lander Explores Mars' North Pole

June 4, 2008 - More evidence of human technology has made its way to Mars this spring. On May 25 th the Phoenix lander joined twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity in a picture perfect landing on the red planet. Unlike its mobile brethren, the Phoenix is designed to stay put. Like the mythological bird it was named for, the Phoenix rose from the ashes of two previous, unsuccessful Mars missions. The spacecraft itself comes from the Mars Surveyor mission that was cancelled in 2001. It is small, only 18 feet across with its solar panels out, but the job scientists hope it will do is great.

Within a week and half of landing the Phoenix has provided gratification for both the University of Arizona scientists who designed and launched it and countless astronomers around the world who have spent the past days glued to their computer monitors. As the lander passed through Mars’s atmosphere the HiRise orbiter stole a few pictures of it (seen here), something that has never been done before. Once Phoenix settled into its spot on Mars’s north pole, it took pictures suggesting that its landing site is actually a sheet of ice covered by a thin layer of dirt. This is an extremely exciting discovery for the mission as water in its ice form is exactly what the Phoenix is looking for.

Through Phoenix's explorations astronomers hope to learn more about the climate and the geology of the planet and perhaps be able to determine if Mars is capable of supporting life. Once all this has been accomplished scientists will have information that will help them plan the best ways to send humans to explore Mars. This lander made up of parts that were thrown away will help pave the way for a new era of space exploration.

For much more information about the Phoenix lander and its plans for the future, please visit the official Phoenix mission site.

Lightning Storms on Venus

December 4, 2007 - Despite its atmosphere of sulfuric acid and out of control greenhouse effect, Venus is a planet that has often been though to be a twin of Earth. Recently scientists have discovered another way the two planets are similar, besides their size. ESA's Venus Express Spacecraft has recently made the discovery that, like Earth, Venus has lightning storms.

Being a planet with lightning storms puts Venus in a special group along with Earth, Saturn and Jupiter. No other planet in our solar system that we know of has this sort of activity. Venus still finds a way to be unique, though. Its lightning stems from clouds of sulfuric acid, not from clouds of water vapor like the lightning on Earth, Saturn and Jupiter. Lightning activity also seems to happen more often there than it does on Earth, giving one more challenge to scientists who already have crushing pressure, intense heat, and thick clouds of corrosive acid to contend with when sending out probes.

Finding lightning on another planet is always intriguing. Lightning can shake up the atmosphere of a planet by ripping molecules apart and putting them back together in strange ways.

Scientists have decided to continue watching Venus with the Express Spacecraft. It will continue to explore for at least two more Venusian days. This may not sound very impressive until you take into account the length of a Venusian day – about 117 Earth days! The spacecraft will be looking for lava flow on Venus’s surface using infrared radiation. There are other big plans for Venus in the future that will hopefully shed some light on the mysteries of Earth’s strange twin.

For more information please visit NASA's press release.

Insight Into Cosmic Mystery

November 9, 2007 Using the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory in South America, astronomers believe they have found the answer to a puzzling cosmic question: What causes cosmic rays? Protons mostly comprise high energy cosmic rays, those formerly mysterious beams that are accelerated to remarkable velocities. When they collide with the Earth's atmosphere, they produce a blast of energy and other particles that can be detected on the surface. To give an idea how fast these particles are moving, just a single particle can have the same energy as fast moving tennis ball. In fact, if a high energy cosmic ray and a beam of light were to race across our galaxy (assuming one could race a beam of light!), the light beam would not win by much! However, our atmosphere protects us from the potential danger they pose in space.

A team of 370 researchers from 17 countries have been working on the answer using the newly developed Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory, located in the mountains of South America. The observatory is essentially an array of detectors spread out over a 3,000 square kilometer area. As the cosmic rays collide with the atmosphere, the resulting spray of particles is caught by the detectors, which house large tanks of water. The detectors are so sensitive they can be used to triangulate the direction whence the cosmic ray came, as the particles follow a straight path from their source. Before the Pierre Auger observatory, cosmic ray detections were rare. Astronomers simply have not had enough data to determine cosmic ray sources. However, over the last 3 years the observatory has recorded around one million cosmic rays, including 80 of the highest energy.

With the new data, astronomers have found that those cosmic rays observed have come from actively feeding super massive black holes. Now, the detailed process that gives rise to cosmic rays is not fully understood. However, astronomers believe that the environment around an active super massive black hole is extremely tumultuous. Powerful magnetic fields are generated that can act like natural particle accelerators, blasting protons to energy levels much higher than that which physicists are able to recreate with contemporary technology. Once again, astronomers have given us another insight into the Great Unknown!

To read the original article, visit this Universetoday.com site.

The Sun Has a Twin!

October 15, 2007 - Astronomers at the University of Texas in Austin have discovered a star that is more similar to the sun than any other that has been observed. Over 200 light years away in the constellation Draco, this star goes by the not too memorable name of HIP 56948. Although it's older than our sun by about a billion years, it is still being hailed as a solar twin.

A star is thought to be a twin of our sun not if it is the same age as our star (a middle-aged 4.6 billion years), but rather by its chemical make-up. In the past there have been three stars that were considered twins of our sun (18 Scorpii, HD 98618 and HIP 100963). While these three stars were very similar to our sun, they differed in one way: the amount of lithium they had. Compared to these stars our sun had a very low amount of lithium. This led scientists to wonder if this made our sun unique. Perhaps it could have even helped explain why there is life on Earth! HIP 56948 changed this view: it too has a low amount of lithium.

What does this mean for further space exploration? Because HIP 56948 is so much like our sun there is a chance another earth-like planet orbits it. This leads Jorge Melendez and Ivan Ramirez, the two astronomers who discovered the star, to suggest it as a good place for SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrail Intelligence) researchers to search. The sun also serves as a baseline for many other scientific studies. Because it's so close and so bright, though, it can't be studied like more distant stars can. Scientists will be able to learn more about stars' chemical composition and be able to see first hand how stars evolve.

If you're feeling creative, check out this blog and give your opinion on what the new star should be named.

For more information on HIP 56948 please visit this Space.com article.

Total Eclipse of the Moon

August 14, 2007 - People on the east coast are advised to set their alarms a few hours early for August 28. With an early wake-up call and a cup of coffee one will be ready for a spectacular sky event - a lunar eclipse. Starting at 4:51am Eastern Time the moon will be partially eclipsed, and by 5:52 it will be fully eclipsed. For observers on the east coast the moon will set as it is just starting its eclipse, but those in the western Americas and the Pacific will be able to watch the entire show. Unfortunately, those in Europe and Africa will not be able to see this event.

A lunar eclipse can occur only during a full moon and only when the moon passes through the shadow of the Earth. The Earth casts a cone-shaped shadown behind it as it revolves around the sun. Usually the moon passes above or below this shadow as it revolves around the Earth, but every once in a while its orbit leads it through the Earth's shadow. When this happens the light from the sun is blocked and the moon loses its bright glow.

The shadow the Earth casts is made of two parts, the umbra and the penumbra. The penumbra is the outer part of the shadow. In the penumbra only part of the sun's light is blocked. The umbra, however, is the inner part of the Earth's shadow that blocks all of the sun's light. If the moon simply passes through the penumbra a partial eclipse occurs. This event is not as interesting for the casual observer because the changes in the appearance of the moon are subtle and hard to spot. When the moon passes all the way into the umbra, however, a total eclipse occurs. LIght shines around the Earth onto the moon, but the Earth's atmosphere filters out much of the blue light, giving the moon a beautiful red glow.

Early risers on the east coast and space lovers everywhere are encouraged to keep an eye out for this event on the morning of August 28. Although the moon will set as it is being eclipsed this time around, observers on the east coast can look forward to another total eclipse next March.

For more information about this eclipse, please visit NASA's eclipse page.

BEWARE THE MARS HOAX
From http://spaceweather.com

It's August, which means it's time for the annual Mars Hoax. An email is going around claiming that Mars will approach Earth on August 27th; the encounter will be so close, the email states, that Mars will rival the full Moon in size and brightness. (Imagine the tides!)
Don't believe it. The Mars Hoax email first appeared in 2003. On August 27th of that year, Mars really did come historically close to Earth. But the email's claim that Mars would rival the Moon was grossly exaggerated.
Every August since 2003, the email has staged a revival.

Here's something that is true: Mars is having a close encounter with the Pleiades star cluster, easily seen in the eastern sky before sunrise. Especially good mornings to look are August 6th and 7th when the crescent
Moon joins the planet and the cluster to form a pretty celestial triangle.
Set your alarm!

Pluto no longer king of the dwarf planets

(Eris and her moon, Dysnomia)

June 18, 2007 - It seemed the entire order of the solar system was shaken when Pluto was demoted to the category of “dwarf planet” last year. Now a new discovery delivers another blow to this former planet. Pluto’s position as the largest of the dwarf planets has been lost as more information about another dwarf planet, Eris, has been determined. By calculating the movements of Eris’s moon, scientists have found Eris’s mass to be 27% larger than Pluto’s.

Who is this upstart who stole Pluto’s title? Eris is a relatively small, icy body whose orbit is highly eccentric. Discovered in 2005 by a Mount Palomar-based team led by Mike Brown, Eris (then known as 2003 UB313) was hastily announced to the public after lose security measures led to the announcement of another of the team’s finds by a rival observatory. Eris’s orbit leads it very far away from the sun, almost 10 billion miles at its farthest point. Despite its distance it is a bright object and can even be seen by some amateur telescopes.

Pluto and Eris have many characteristics in common. Although Eris has the larger mass, its diameter is not that much bigger than Pluto’s (an estimated 2,600km to 2,397km). Infrared telescopes tell us that the surface of Eris is covered with methane ice, as is Pluto’s, and the two dwarf planets share the same inner composition of rock and ice. Finally, both objects have satellites. Pluto has three, Charon, Nix, and Hydra, while Eris has one, Dysnomia. It was this moon that led to the discovery of Eris’s mass. By measuring the amount of time it takes Dysnomia to make one revolution around Eris (about 15.75 days) it was determined that Eris’s mass is 27% higher than Pluto’s.

The name Eris was one that took a lot of thought to come to. While in the early stages of discovery the planet was affectionately referred to as Xena. “We chose it since it started with an X (planet “X”),” explains Mike Brown, “it sounds mythological (OK, so it’s TV mythology, but Pluto is named after a cartoon, right?), and (this part is actually true) we’ve been working to get more female deities out there.” Persephone was a favorite before the object was given a dwarf planet status, but unfortunately this name was already taken by an asteroid. Finally the team settled on Eris. Eris was a Greek goddess who was the personification of discord. Perhaps it was named so to reflect the discord felt in the astronomical community during the debate over dwarf planets? Whether this is true or not it is strikingly appropriate.

For more information please visit Mike Brown's Eris page.

High Energy Upheaval Detected

June 1, 2007 - The recent detection of a high energy event occuring in a gigantic galaxy cluster is leaving scientists excited and slightly confused. A bright arc of tremendously hot gas has been spotted, an arc that extends over two million light years into space. Such an even requires a more energetic origin than anything previously detected. What could cause such an event? This question is leaving scientists gleefully theorizing.

One of the favored explanations thus far suggests that two massive galaxies are coliding at a rate of over 4 million miles an hour. Sharp changes in pressure around the area where this collision is occuring results in the detected arc of light. A collision as extreme as this one would be the most powerful ever seen, however scientists believe that it is plausible. The only downside to this theory is that only one arc of X-ray emision can be detected - two arcs are expected in a situation like this.

Another leading hypthosis involves an outburst generated by a supermassive black hole in a central galaxy. For this theory to be plausible the black hole would have to have consumed too much matter and choked. This would cause the excess matter to burst outward in two jets that heat up and push away the surrounding gas. Phenomena such as this have been known to occur in this galaxy (3C438) but on a lesser scale. The amount of material necessary for the black hole to have consumed equals 30 billion times the sun's mass over a period of 200 million years. These values are so large that the likelihood of an occurance is very low.

Continued observations of this area are expected and it is hoped that more information will lead to a clearer view of what is occuring.

For more information please visit the Chandra Press Room.

Once in a Blue Moon

May 16, 2007- The Moon becomes full on May 31, 2007, at 9:04 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. In the time zones of the Americas this is the second full Moon of May — the first was on May 2nd — and everyone’s already talking about the coming one as the blue Moon.

In Europe, 9:04 p.m. EDT on May 31st is 1:04 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on June 1st. But another full Moon is due on June 30th. So for Europe it’s June, not May, that has two full Moons in 2007.

The next month with two full Moons (for both North America and Europe) is December 2009, and the next after that is August 2012.

Go to http://skytonight.com/observing/home/Buzz_About_the_Blue_Moon.html for more on this article!

Origins of “Blue Moon”

Many words have more than one meaning. But how does a word get a second meaning, and a third? Often it's because somebody, somewhere, used it incorrectly, and the new meaning stuck. This, in fact, is what happened with the term Blue Moon.

The modern meaning of a “blue moon” is that there are two full moons in a calendar month. The history of this meaning is that a writer of an article back in 1946 for the magazine Sky and Telescope misunderstood the term “blue moon” when using the Maine Farmers’ Almanac as a reference. It was over fifty years before the magazine realized its mistake and by then this had become the accepted definition.

Originally, the term “Blue Moon” has been used in the Maine Farmers’ Almanac to refer to the third full Moon in a three-month season containing four. The seasons begin and end with the solstices and equinoxes, not calendar months. The origin of this earlier definition remains unclear.

Check out http://skytonight.com/observing/objects/moon/3305141.html for more on the history and fantasy of the Blue Moon.

New Earth-like Planet 'Habitable'

April 24, 2007 — Astronomers have found the first Earth-sized world circling its mother star at a distance suitable for life. It also has good prospects for liquid surface water — believed to be a key ingredient for life.

"This planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life," said Xavier Delfosse, with Grenoble University in France.

The planet, which is about 50 percent larger than Earth, circles a star in the constellation Libra known as Gliese 581, about 20.5 light-years away. The new planet, which is the smallest planet beyond our solar system found to date, circles its star 14 times closer than Earth orbits the sun. But because Gliese 581 is smaller and colder than our sun, the system's so-called habitability zone, where liquid water and thus life is possible, is closer to the mother star than in our solar system. Astronomers estimate the mean temperature of the newly discovered planet to be between 0 degrees and 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Water would be liquid," notes lead researcher Stephane Udry with Switzerland's Geneva Observatory. "Models predict that the planet should be either rocky — like our Earth — or covered with oceans."

For more information go to

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/04/24/earthlikeplanet_spa.html?category=space

Or

http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2007/pr-22-07.html

New 3-d images of the sun!

New mages were of the sun were captured by SECCHI/Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope on March 20, 2007. The blue false color image show the sun's atmospheres at a temperatures of 1 million degrees C (171 Å), Credit: NASA.

The images are expected to help solar scientists learn more about the structure of the Sun and, especially, how to deal with disruptions to satellites in Earth-orbit and power grids on the surface of the Earth from energy outpourings originating from the Earth’s star.

Some of the most dramatic outpourings of energy from the Sun are called coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are very violent eruptions of matter from the Sun. They are largely responsible for the electrical disruptions that are frequently felt in electronic devices on and above the Earth.

Get the full story at : http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/11515/1066/.

PLANETS FOUND THRIVING AROUND STELLAR TWINS

The double sunset that Luke Skywalker gazed upon in the film "Star Wars" might not be a fantasy...

(Planets and a not one, but two suns. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle; Double sunset. Credit: steroids circle aroundNASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt)

Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have observed that planetary systems - dusty disks of asteroids, comets and possibly planets - are at least as abundant in twin-star systems as they are in those, like our own, with only one star. Since more than half of all stars are twins, or binaries, the finding suggests the universe is packed with planets that have two suns. Sunsets on some of those worlds would resemble the ones on Luke Skywalker's planet, Tatooine, where two fiery balls dip below the horizon one by one.

Of the approximately 200 planets discovered so far outside our solar system, about 50 orbit one member of a wide stellar duo. The new Spitzer study focuses on binary stars with separation distances between zero and 500 astronomical units.

In the most comprehensive survey of its kind, the team looked for disks in 69 binary systems between about 50 and 200 light-years away from Earth. All of the stars are somewhat younger and more massive than our middle-aged sun. The data show that about 40 percent of the systems had disks, which is a bit higher than the frequency for a comparable sample of single stars. This means that planetary systems are at least as common around binary stars as they are around single stars.

"Binary systems were largely ignored before," says David Trilling of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "They are more difficult to study, but they might be the most common sites for planet formation in our galaxy."

For more information, visit: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/.

BIG AURORAS ON JUPITER

So you thought Northern Lights were big in Alaska? "That's nothing," says Randy Gladstone of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "Jupiter has auroras bigger than our entire planet!"

(Image credit: X-ray NASA/CXC/SwRI/R.Gladstone et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage)

The purple ring traces Jupiter's X-ray auroras. Gladstone says they're "hundreds of times more energetic than auroras on Earth," and he hopes it will help him solve some mysteries that have lingered for almost 30 years.

Jupiter's auroras were discovered by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1979. A thin ring of light on Jupiter's nightside looked like a stretched-out version of our own auroras on Earth, but the real action was taking place at high-energy wavelengths invisible to the human eye. In the 1990s, ultraviolet cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope photographed raging lights thousands of times more intense than anything ever seen on Earth.

Gladstone explains the difference: On Earth, the most intense auroras are caused by solar storms. An explosion on the sun hurls a billion-ton cloud of gas in our direction, and a few days later, it hits. Charged particles rain down on the upper atmosphere, causing the air to glow red, green, and purple. On Jupiter, however, the sun is not required. "Jupiter is able to generate its own lights," says Gladstone.

The process begins with Jupiter's spin: The giant planet turns on it axis once every 10 hours and drags its planetary magnetic field around with it. "Jupiter's polar regions are crackling with electricity," says Gladstone, "and this sets the stage for non-stop auroras."

For more information, visit http://science.nasa.gov/default.htm.

SUPER MASSIVE BLACK HOLES

(This picture is a composite of images from NASA's Chandra X-Ray observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and several ground-based telescopes. Bootes Panorama. Image credit: NASA/CSC/CfA/R. Hickox)

A black hole is an object with a gravitational field so powerful that even electromagnetic radiation, such as light, cannot escape its pull. In the photo above, you can see exactly how big black holes really are. Each of the multicolored dots represents a black hole; there are more than a thousand black holes in this picture.

Each of the multicolored dots represents a super massive black hole in the heart of a different galaxy. These are called active galactic nuclei, or AGNs. However, these new pictures and recent surveys have brought uncertainties about what the real environment around black holes is like. The old theory was that black holes were surrounded by a torus, or doughnut, of gas, causing our view of certain types of radiation sometimes to be blocked. However, the new research shows the black holes are either completely visible or totally obscured.

In new studies, astronomers will have to look at the environment of black holes a little more closely, in order to better understand this surprising revelation. For more information you can visit, http://www.universetoday.com or http://www.nasa.gov. And if you want to experience black holes personally, the Jordan Planetarium is featuring a new type of program to take you there. Saturdays at 7pm in April, a new OmniDome show, Black Holes, will be showing to family and general public visitors. More show and ticket information is found on our public show page.

Seas discovered ON titan

(Titan’s lake compared with Lake Superior. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI)

Planetary scientists have recently released news about the discovery of lakes around Titans Southern Pole; however now they are reporting there is also liquid on the Northern Hemisphere as well. These seas are not filled with water, but are filled with massive amounts of liquid methane or ethane.

The seas were found by Cassini’s radar instrument, while on a flyby past Titans North Pole. These "seas" are about 100,000 square kilometers, which is a surface area larger than Lake Superior, however scientists cannot be sure of what they are looking at, since the radar only caught a portion of them (meaning scientists can only have an idea of what their minimum size is).

"We've long hypothesized about oceans on Titan and now with multiple instruments we have a first indication of seas that dwarf the lakes seen previously," said Dr. Jonathan Lunine, Cassini interdisciplinary scientist at the University of Arizona, Tucson. For more information visit http://www.universetoday.com and/or http://www.nasa.gov

SOLAR ECLIPSE NOT visible from Maine

On March 19 around 0230 UT, the Moon will pass in front of the Sun, producing a partial solar eclipse visible from Russia, India, China and the northern reaches of Alaska. In those places the normally-round sun will turn into a crescent and cast strangely-curved shadows on the ground. Visit http://spaceweather.com for more information,
and check back there on March 19th for photos from the eclipse zone.

New Horizons to fly Passed JupiteR

Although New Horizons’ main target is Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, it’ll have plenty of opportunities to do some science along the way. Next up, Jupiter. The spacecraft is now just a few weeks away from its closest approach to the gas giant, where it’ll capture some images but also receive a much needed speed boost.

New Horizons will reach Jupiter on February 28, 2007, passing as close as 2.3 million km away from the planet’s centre. Jupiter’s gravity will accelerate New Horizons towards Pluto, giving it an additional 14,500 km/h velocity. The stage will then be set for New Horizons to reach Pluto in 2015.

The spacecraft is expected to make 700 observations of Jupiter and its moons during the flyby. Both to help test the spacecraft’s scientific equipment as well as gather science data.

Good luck New Horizons!

For more information about this story and the New Horizons mission go to http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/011807.htm

NASA Study Finds New Kind of Organics in Stardust Mission

A team of scientists found a new class of organics in comet dust captured from comet Wild 2 in 2004 by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.

The discovery is described in a technical paper, "Organics Captured from Comet Wild 2 by the Stardust Spacecraft," in the Dec. 15 issue of Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science.

In January 2004, the Stardust spacecraft flew through comet dust and captured specks of it in a very light, low-density substance called aerogel. Stardust's return capsule parachuted to the Utah Test and Training Range on Jan. 15, 2006, after a seven-year mission. The science canister containing the comet particles and interstellar dust particles arrived at Johnson Space Center on Jan. 17. From there, the cometary samples have been processed and distributed to about 150 scientists worldwide who are using a variety of techniques to determine the properties of the cometary grains.

"A portion of the organic material in the samples is unlike anything seen before in extraterrestrial materials," said Scott Sandford, the study's lead author and a scientist from NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "Capturing the particles in aerogel was a little bit like collecting BBs by shooting them into Styrofoam."

The comet organics collected by the Stardust spacecraft are more "primitive" than those seen in meteorites and may have formed by processes in nebulae, either in space clouds between the stars, or in the disk-shaped cloud of gas and dust from which our solar system formed, the study's authors found.

"Comets are a major source of the water and carbon on the moon," said S. Pete Worden, NASA Ames director. "Therefore, understanding comets will help scientists learn what natural resources to search for on our nearest neighbor in space -- resources that will aid astronauts in exploration beyond Earth," Worden explained.

The study's scientists used many highly sophisticated, state-of-the-art techniques to analyze the Stardust samples.

Several of the analyses indicated that the samples contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), scientists said. PAHs are molecules made of carbon and hydrogen that are common in interstellar space - and in barbeque grill soot.

Certain PAHs chemical varieties also contain oxygen and nitrogen. Some scientists believe that these PAHs variants exist in interstellar space as well. They are of interest to astrobiologists because these kinds of compounds play important roles in terrestrial biochemistry, according to Sandford.

"Our studies of the comet dust show that the organics are very rich in oxygen and nitrogen," Sandford said. "The data are not incompatible with some of it being in the PAHs, but we still have a lot to learn in this area."

Although some of the other organics captured by the Stardust spacecraft look somewhat similar to the fairly stable organics found in meteorites, Sandford noted that many of the organic compounds appear to be very volatile. One sample even showed an abundance of material containing alcohols.

Many scientists believe that comets are largely made of the original material from which our solar system formed and could contain pre-solar system, interstellar grains. According to scientists, continued analysis of these celestial specks may well yield important insights into the evolution of the sun, its planets and possibly, even the origin of life.

"I anticipate that people will be asking for and working on these samples for decades to come," said Sandford. "What we report in the papers that appear this week is just the beginning of what we will learn from these samples. One of the advantages of returned samples is that they are available for study into the future, a gift that keeps on giving."

The organics paper is one of seven in the journal Science reporting the findings of the preliminary examination team that made the initial study of the cometary samples.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Stardust mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Dr. Peter Tsou of JPL is deputy principal investigator and is a co-author of the paper.

For more information about Stardust studies and other mission information, visit: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

JPL Media Contact for Stardust:
DC Agle
Phone: 818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Pluto, King of the Dwarf Planets