Astro News Rag

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The second and equally powerful new “eye” the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph will also be replacing an older, outdated model, the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR).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

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