Virginia Trimble, Eric Mamajek, John Johnson, and William Welsh (left to right) presented during the extrasolar planet press conference at AAS. // Photo by Liz Kruesi.Members of the Kepler mission to discover extrasolar planets revealed some exciting new finds. William Welsh of San Diego State University in California announced two more cases of an exoplanet orbiting a double star system — the “Tatooine” situation. Each of these worlds (Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b) are roughly Saturn-sized, and in the first example, the exoplanet orbits two stars similar to the Sun. While the planet in the previous announcement (Kepler-16b, in September) was just outside its stellar habitable zone (HZ), Kepler-34b is a bit too close to its stars to be within the HZ. Welsh added that he and colleagues expect there to be millions more of these cases, where a planet orbits a double star, and that in the next few dozen discoveries he expects to find one in its system’s HZ.

At the same press conference, John Johnson of the Kepler team announced a planetary system containing three worlds smaller than Earth, and orbiting a red dwarf star about 13 percent the size of the Sun. The innermost planet orbits its star (KOI 961) in about 10.8 hours, and astronomers haven’t yet determined the orbital period of the other two planets, but they know both are less than two days.

After a third exoplanet announcement of an extrasolar dusty disk (with a ring system) more than 400 light-years away, Virginia Trimble, an astronomer and science historian at the University of California, Irvine, spoke about how astronomy is changing due to recent discoveries. (She specifically spoke of “paradigm shifts.” While at college, all freshmen were required to read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and so I felt that I really got what Trimble was saying.) 

Newly discovered Kepler-34b, shown in this illustration, orbits binary stars that are similar to the Sun. // Photo by David A. Aguilar (CfA)While the topic of exoplanets seems to dominate this blog post, it certainly wasn’t the only research area discussed at today’s meeting. Steven Rodney of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, announced the discovery of the most distant type 1a supernova yet. It exploded when the universe was just about 4.2 billion years old, and its light has redshifted out of visible and into infrared due to the universe’s expansion. The star that evolved into this supernova was younger than the Sun is currently (which is about 4.5 billion years) when it exploded. Astronomers expect to find supernovae in data from when the universe was just 3 billion years old.

So those were some of the science highlights of my third full day at the AAS meeting in Austin, Texas. And today, I also finally got to enjoy some tasty Texas BBQ.

Read about my Tuesday at AAS and Monday at AAS here.

Astronomy.com blog

APOD

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Observatory's data at its highest energies reveal the outline of the giant gamma-ray bubbles discovered in 2010. // Photo byNASA/DOE/Fermi LAT CollaborationThe Fermi team also released its view of a largely unexplored region of high-energy astrophysics. These energies are greater than 10 billion electronvolts and extend up to about 300 billion electron volts (visible light has an energy of about 2 or 3 electronvolts). At these energies, the Fermi all-sky map also shows signatures of the giant gamma-ray bubbles quite clearly. The observatory has found 496 objects in this energy region, and 168 are unidentified. Dave Thompson, Fermi deputy project scientist, added that multiwavelength observations of these unknown objects are crucial to figuring out what they are.

A later press conference focused on (pun intended) the lower end of the electromagnetic spectrum — infrared radiation. Astronomers from four projects released gorgeous images that are also jam-packed with information about star formation. Scientists can observe dust and thus trace the cold raw material that eventually becomes hot stars, and observe young stars forming behind dust clouds, using infrared light.

These four projects look at slightly different wavelengths, and so astronomers can combine data from different telescopes to see great detail. One of the observations presented today did just that: Data from both the European Space Agency’s Herschel satellite and NASA’s Spitzer telescope show current and potential sites of star formation in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The images show detail about 5 light-years across.

Tuesday's second press conference focused on infrared radiation. // Photo by Liz Kruesi.Another project used Spitzer to survey the Cygnus X star-formation region, which contains all phases of star creation. The released image covers about 25 square degrees (100 times the size of the Full Moon) and contains some 4 million stars. Astronomers with the project specifically were looking for stellar objects in the early stages of formation.

In the same press conference, Xavier Koenig of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) released new findings about how massive stars form. His team selected a sample of regions in a 1,000-square-degree mosaic of WISE data, and mapped the distributions of young stars in those regions. The data indicate that stars form in a chain reaction once nearby massive star formation begins.

Tuesday included many other highlights — such as a great talk by Gaspar Bakos of Princeton University. He gave an overview of the extrasolar planet search project HATNet, which has been searching for nearly 10 years for planets passing in front of their stars. It’s found about 30 so far. This project is just one case of small telescopes doing big science. (The automated telescope system is made up of 4-inch and 8-inch scopes across the globe.)

Tomorrow promises another exciting day filled with announcements, poster presentations, and interesting talks.

Read about my recap of Monday at AAS here.

Astronomy.com blog

This enormous section of the Milky Way galaxy is a mosaic of images from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus are featured in this 1,000-square degree expanse. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Astronomers trying to understand the formation of massive clusters of stars are getting a better idea of how the process works from the latest images and data from the WISE spacecraft. NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer has captured a vast stretch of nearly a dozen nebulae popping with new star birth, which is helping to narrow the field of possible star-forming scenarios.

“We are trying to understand how huge clusters of stars form at the same time from a large cloud of gas,” said Xavier Koenig from Goddard Space Flight Center, speaking at a press briefing from the American Astronomical Society meeting this week. “We have two possible pictures of how this process works and WISE is helping us piece together the chain of events.”
(…)
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The LOFAR project has begun taking data, and will be completely installed later this year. // Photo by Liz KruesiAt the first press conference of the day, astronomers released the largest dark matter maps yet. They combined five years of observations from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope showing how the invisible dark matter in massive galaxy clusters warps background radiation. Each map is comparable to the size of the palm of your hand. The team released two-dimensional maps today, but they’ve also collected three-dimensional data and plan on incorporating this later.

After the dark matter announcement, I listened in on a few presentations about extrasolar planets. A major theme was how important it is to understand the star when investigating the planets orbiting it. The star is the system’s prime energy and gravity source, and its characteristics (especially temperature) define the system’s habitable zone — where water could possibly exist on a world’s surface. Along those lines, a talk by Billy Quarles of the University of Texas at Arlington described the habitability of the Kepler-16 system. His team suggested astronomers look to see if a moon is orbiting the Saturn-sized Kepler-16b, because if so, it could be habitable.

After lunch, we reconvened for another press conference — this one about the LOFAR radio telescope. This project is located in the Netherlands, a seemingly unusual place for a radio observatory. However, with advanced computer processing, it has so far been successful at filtering out background radio sound (although the motion of windmill blades seems to cause some problems). The LOFAR team announced today that the project’s hardware will be fully installed and online later this year, and LOFAR has already begun taking data in two bands: the low band looks at frequencies between 30 and 75 Megahertz (MHz), and the high band observes between 115 and 185 MHz. There’s a gap between 75 and 115 MHz because of FM radio signals.

Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg gave the last talk of the evening on Monday January 9. // Photo by Liz KruesiThe last session of the night — a public talk by Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate of physics — was great, but also a bit depressing. Titled “Big science in crisis,” he focused on how difficult it is for huge science projects (such as particle accelerators and space observatories) to get funding. The current financial climate, combined with the requirement to cut 8 percent of the federal non-defense budget at the end of the year, means it will only get harder.

So spread your excitement for science, and get others interested in it. Until the public perception changes and people realize that science is important, and that it leads to incredible technology, funding will continue to decrease.

Astronomy.com blog

APOD

Spirit Mars rover – view from Husband Hill summit
Spirit snapped this self portrait from the summit of Husband Hill inside Gusev crater on Sol 618 on 28 September 2005. The rovers were never designed or intended to climb mountains. It took more than 1 year for Spirit to scale the Martian mountain. This composite image was created by an international team of amateur astronomers and appeared on the cover of the 14 November 2005 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine and the April 2006 issue of Spaceflight magazine. Also selected by Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) on 28 November 2005. Credit: Marco Di Lorenzo, Douglas Ellison, Bernhard Braun and Kenneth Kremer. NASA/JPL/Cornell/Aviation Week & Space Technology

January 2012 marks the 8th anniversary since of the daring landing’s of “Spirit” and “Opportunity” – NASA’s now legendary twin Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), on opposite sides of the Red Planet in January 2004. They proved that early Mars was warm and wet – a key finding in the search for life beyond Earth.

I asked the leaders of the MER team to share some thoughts celebrating this mind-boggling milestone of “8 Years on Mars” and the legacy of the rovers for the readers of Universe Today. This story focuses on Spirit, first of the trailblazing twin robots, which touched down inside Gusev Crater on Jan. 3, 2004. Opportunity set down three weeks later on the smooth hematite plains of Meridiani Planum.

“Every Sol is a gift. We push the rovers as hard as we can,” Prof. Steve Squyres informed Universe Today for this article commemorating Spirit’s landing. Squyres, of Cornell University, is the Scientific Principal Investigator for the MER mission. (…)
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This is going to be one of the “how we know what we know” kind of shows. How do scientist determine the age of things? How do we know the age of everything from stone tools, to the age of the Earth, to the age of the very Universe.

This episode of Astronomy Cast was recorded as a live Google+ hangout. If you’d like to participate in future recordings, circle Fraser on Google+ to get a notification about when the episode starts.

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Illustration of how a tiny robotic explorer could use bacteria as a fuel source. Credit: NASA/Naval Research Laboratory

As technology advances, a lot of the gadgets and other things we use keep getting smaller, lighter and thinner. Now that trend may soon be taken to another extreme – small robotic space explorers which in turn use a miniscule power source – bacteria.

(…)
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Example of signals KOI 817 and KOI 812. Credit: The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence at UC Berkeley

As the Kepler space telescope begins finding its first Earth-sized exoplanets, with the ultimate goal of finding ones that are actually Earth-like, it would seem natural that the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program would take a look at them as well, in the continuing search for alien radio signals. That is exactly what SETI scientists are doing, and they’ve started releasing some of their preliminary results.

(…)
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Asteroid 2005 YU55 isn't a moon now, but it could be… someday. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech.

Look up in a clear night sky. How many moons do you see? Chances are, you’re only going to count to one. Admittedly, if you count any higher and you’re not alone, you may get some funny looks cast in your direction. But even though you may not be able to actually see them, there may very well be more moons out there orbiting our planet.

For the time being, anyway.

(…)
Read the rest of How Many Moons Does Earth Have? (556 words)

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An artist impression of an exomoon orbiting an exoplanet, could the exoplanet's wobble help astronomers? (Andy McLatchie)

Recently, I posted an article on the feasibility of detecting moons around extrasolar planets. It was determined that exceptionally large moons (roughly Earth mass moons or more), may well be detectable with current technology. Taking up that challenge, a team of astronomers led by David Kipping from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has announced they will search publicly available Kepler data to determine if the planet-finding mission may have detected such objects.

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Supernova PTF11kly/2011fe in M101. Credit: Rick Johnson

When discovered on August 24, 2011, supernova 2011fe was the closest supernova since the famous SN 1987A. Located in the relatively nearby Pinwheel galaxy (M101), it was a prime target for scientists to study since the host galaxy has been well studied and many high resolution images exist from before the explosion, allowing astronomers to search them for information on the star that led to the eruption. But when astronomers, led by Weidon Li, at the University of California, Berkeley searched, what they found defied the typically accepted explanations for supernovae of the same type as 2011fe.

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APOD

Today’s article is about nothing.

According to Wikipedia, a journal club is a group of individuals who meet regularly to critically evaluate recent articles in scientific literature. Being Universe Today if we occasionally stray into critically evaluating each other’s critical evaluations, that’s OK too. And of course, the first rule of Journal Club is… don’t talk about Journal Club.

So, without further ado – today’s journal article under the spotlight is about nothing.(…)
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SpaceX Dragon set to dock at International Space Station on COTS 2/3 mission
Falcon 9 launch of Dragon on COTS 2/3 mission is slated for Feb.7, 2012 from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Artist’s rendition of Dragon spacecraft with solar panels fully deployed on orbit. ISS crew will grapple Dragon and berth to ISS docking port. Credit: NASA

The Dragon has grown its mighty wings

SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft has gotten its wings and is set to soar to the International Space Station (ISS) in about a month. NASA and SpaceX are currently targeting a liftoff on Feb. 7 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Dragon is a commercially developed unmanned cargo vessel constructed by SpaceX under a $ 1.6 Billion contract with NASA. The Dragon spacecraft will launch atop a Falcon 9 booster rocket also built by SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies.(…)
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A mineral brought back to Earth by the first men on the Moon and long thought to be unique to the lunar surface has been found in Australian rocks more than one billion years old, scientists say. Image Credit: Birger Rasmussen

When it comes to our natural human curiosity, we want to know if there’s something new out there… something we haven’t discovered yet. That’s why when lunar rock samples were returned, geologists were thrilled to find very specific minerals – armalcolite, pyroxferroite and tranquillityite – which belonged only to our Moon. However, over the years the first two were found here on Earth and tranquillityite was disclosed in specific meteorites. Named for Tranquility Base, site of the first Moon landing, tranquillityite was supposed to be the final hold-out… the last lunar unique mineral… until now.

Birger Rasmussen, paleontologist with Curtin University in Perth, and colleagues report in their Geology paper that they’ve uncovered tranquillityite in several remote locations in Western Australia. While the samples are incredibly small, about the width of a human hair and merely microns in length, their composition is undeniable. What’s more, tranquillityite may be a lot more common here on Earth than previously thought.

Rasmussen told the Sydney Morning Herald, “This was essentially the last mineral which was sort of uniquely lunar that had been found in the 70s from these samples returned from the Apollo mission.The mineral has since been found exclusively in returned lunar samples and lunar meteorites, with no terrestrial counterpart. We have now identified tranquillityite in six sites from Western Australia.”

Why has this remote mineral stayed hidden for so long? One major reason is its delicate structure. Composed of iron, silicon, oxygen, zirconium, titanium and a tiny bit of yttrium, a rare earth element, tranquillityite erodes at a rapid pace when exposed to natural environmental conditions. Another explanation is that tranquillityite can only form through a unique set of circumstance – through uranium decay. Rasmussen explains it’s evidence these minerals were ‘always’ located here on Earth and we share the same chemical processes as our satellite.

“This means that basically we have the same chemical phenomena on the Moon and on Earth.” says Rasmussen. And one of the reasons why it has taken so long to be found is, “No one was looking hard enough.”

Image Credit: Birger Rasmussen

And exactly what does it take to locate it? More than a billion years old, the only sure way to identify tranquillityite is to subject it to a series of electron blasts. By exposing it to a high-energy accelerating electron beam, it produces spectra. From there “an elemental composition in combination with back-scattered electron (BSE) brightness and x-ray count rate information is converted into mineral phases.” According to Rasmussen’s paper, “Terrestrial tranquillityite commonly occurs as clusters of fox-red laths closely associated with baddeleyite and zirconolite in quartz and K-feldspar intergrowths in late-stage interstices between plagioclase and pyroxene.”

While it has no real economic value, terrestrial tranquillityite is another good reason why mankind should try to preserve pristine regions such as the northeast Pilbara Region and the Eel Creek formation. Who knows what else we might find?

Original Story Source: PhysOrg.com.

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For those of you following me on Google+, you know that I’ve been hosting virtual star parties with Phil Plait and Pamela Gay. We’ve teamed up with astronomer Mike Phillips who has been livestreaming his telescopes into a Google+ Hangout and then broadcasting it live so everyone can watch. So, it’s sort of like looking through an amazing telescope, but with color commentary from us at the same time.

It’s been an amazing experience so far, but I know it can be even better. I need to find more astronomers able to livestream the view from their telescopes into a webcam and then into a Google+ Hangout. I’d like to have multiple telescopes going at the same time, with different views of the skies. Some focused on planets, others at deep sky objects.

And it doesn’t have to be big telescopes. There are beautiful objects in the sky, like open clusters, which look better with a wider field of view.

So, if you’re interested in participating, you’ll need to have a way to get the view from your telescope, into a webcam, and then use that webcam to join a Google+ Hangout. If you can do that, drop me an email at info@universetoday.com and we’ll run some tests.

Here are two previous nights of experiments that we’ve done so far.

Virtual Star Party – January 6th, 2012

Virtual Star Party – January 5th, 2012

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APOD

The English Channel Island of Sark became an official dark-sky site in 2011, helping propel “Dark Sky” as one of the most important phrases of the year. // Photo by Phillip CapperBut, nestled in among words like Kardash (“A unit of time measuring 72 days”) and Super Committee (“A group of 12 lawmakers … that tried to make a plan on how to reduce the deficit”), was a familiar old term: Dark Sky. Barrett says it “designates a place free of nighttime light pollution. For example, the island of Sark in the English Channel is a dark-sky island.” So pretty much the accepted definition, I thought to myself.

Still, it’s exciting to see an astronomical concept pointed out as an important remnant of 2011’s language. It may not be a huge deal, but it’s always nice to see our favorite science (and particularly the touchy subject of light pollution) get some time in the spotlight. With any luck, it’ll remain an issue that even non-astronomers care about. Though, even I’ll admit, perhaps not as fervently as other items on Barrett’s list.

What words from 2011 do you think will stick with us? Do you think “Dark Sky” deserves its place in Barrett’s pantheon? Let me know in the comments section below.

Astronomy.com blog

Some 2,800 astronomers are expected to attend the AAS conference, and the press schedule looks packed with new discoveries. There are also a few presentations about the state of huge projects (like the James Webb Space Telescope [Hubble’s successor] and the Kepler mission to detect extrasolar planets) and other public events, so if you’re in the Austin area for those, consider heading over to the convention center.

While at the conference, I’ll be blogging and tweeting (@Astronomymag) to report new science findings. It’s also a great time to catch up with the astronomers I’ve communicated with for our Ask Astro column and other articles in the magazine (plus my previous professors and fellow science writers).

Astronomy.com blog

APOD

Artist's conception of a "hot Jupiter" orbiting close to its star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)

It’s only a few days into 2012 and already some new exoplanet discoveries have been announced. As 2011 ended, there were a total of 716 confirmed exoplanets and 2,326 planetary candidates, found by both orbiting space telescopes like Kepler and ground-based observatories. The pace of new discoveries has accelerated enormously in the past few years. Now there are four more confirmed exoplanets to add to the list.

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Read the rest of Four New Exoplanets to Start Off the New Year! (296 words)

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APOD

As part of the COTS 3 objectives Dragon approaches the ISS, so astronauts can reach it with the robotic arm. Illustration: NASA / SpaceX.

In a media chat on Wednesday three crew members from the International Space Station said they are anticipating the historic arrival of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo ship to the ISS next month. “For all of us, we’re very excited about it,” said ISS Commander Dan Burbank. “Number one, for the sake of the Space Station, that is critical capability — to resupply the station and be able to return critical hardware, or payloads… And down the road it also affords capability to actually deliver crew to the station. I think that is very exciting.”

Burbank called the first arrival of a commercial vehicle “the start of new era.”
(…)
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Was the 44th President of the United States a top-secret teenage Mars explorer?

Forget 2012 prophecies, Mayan calendars and lurking planets that go only by the name “X”… there’s an even kookier conspiracy theory in town, and it has to do with our nation’s fearless leader and his teenage teleportation adventures on Mars.

Yes, you read that right.

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Maybe you have some astronomy stuff like telescopes, eyepieces, accessories, cameras, or books that you no longer use. If so, this event offers a great opportunity for you to sell or swap your items with other amateur astronomers. Or come on by to pick up something you’ve been searching for, and then stay for a while to chat with like-minded individuals.

In addition to the Swap ’N’ Sell, you’ll also have the opportunity to sit in on four talks. At 10 a.m., Jeff Setzer will present “Sir Patrick Moore: The Most Famous Amateur Astronomer You’ve Barely Heard Of.” Randy Griffin’s noon talk is “Where in the Universe?” At 1 p.m., Ty Westbrook goes the historical route in his production, “The Leviathan of Parsons Town: Irish Astronomy in the Victorian Age.”

Oh, and the fourth talk? It’s at 11 a.m., and it’s by me. Apparently, I’m making a big announcement that will affect the future of all amateur astronomy in this region. Is that enough of a tease? (And, no, I won’t be proclaiming the world’s end in December.)

Wisconsin Astronomy (www.wiastro.com) will be providing $ 500 in door prizes. And, because this is Wisconsin, there will be brats and (non-alcoholic) drinks for sale.

Astronomy.com blog

Jane Houston Jones from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides an overview of what is in the night sky this month, including a pretty parade of planets: Venus shining brightly at dusk, while Jupiter watches from overhead; Mars comes up before midnight, and you can see Saturn near sunrise.

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GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B spacecraft reached Lunar Orbit on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day
Illustration shows NASA’s twin GRAIL spacecraft flying in tandem orbit around the Moon. They will map the Moon's gravity field with unprecedented precision to unlock hidden secrets about the Moon’s interior composition and determine if it possesses an inner core to enable a reconstruction of the Moon’s early evolution. Credit: Lockheed Martin

Take a good close look at the Moon today and consider this; Two new Moon’s just reached orbit.

NASA is ringing in the New Year with a double dose of campaign toasts celebrating the back to back triumphal insertions of a pair of tiny probes into tandem lunar orbits this weekend that seek to unravel the hidden mysteries lurking deep inside the Moon and figure out how the inner solar system formed eons ago.

Following closely on the heels of her twin sister, NASA’s GRAIL-B spacecraft ignited her main braking rockets precisely as planned on New Year’s Day (Jan.1) to go into a formation flying orbit around the Moon, chasing behind GRAIL-A which arrived on New Year’s Eve (Dec. 31).

“Now we have them both in orbit. What a great feeling!!!!” NASA manager Jim Green told Universe Today just minutes after the thruster firing was done. (…)
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Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar – Credit: Richard Conn Henry/Johns Hopkins University

It’s another new year and time to remember to write new dates again. While it might take a few weeks to remember to do it right first time, Johns Hopkins Scholars say our traditional calendar needs a major overhaul. By utilizing computer programs and mathematical formulas, Richard Conn Henry, an astrophysicist in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and Steve H. Hanke, an applied economist in the Whiting School of Engineering, have devised a new calendar where each year is identical to the year before it… and the year after. (…)
Read the rest of New Year – New Calendar… But Johns Hopkins Scholars Say We Need A Permanent Edition (782 words)

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The Cosmic Energy Inventory chart by Markus Pössel, Haus der Astronomie. Click for larger version.

Editor’s Note: Markus Pössel is a theoretical physicist turned astronomical outreach scientist. He is the managing scientist at the Centre for Astronomy Education and Outreach “Haus der Astronomie” in Heidelberg, Germany.

Now that the old year has drawn to a close, it’s traditional to take stock. And why not think big and take stock of everything there is?

Let’s base our inventory on energy. And as Einstein taught us that energy and mass are equivalent, that means automatically taking stock of all the mass that’s in the universe, as well – including all the different forms of matter we might be interested in.

Of course, since the universe might well be infinite in size, we can’t simply add up all the energy. What we’ll do instead is look at fractions: How much of the energy in the universe is in the form of planets? How much is in the form of stars? How much is plasma, or dark matter, or dark energy?

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Read the rest of Guest Post: The Cosmic Energy Inventory (1,798 words)

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GRAIL-A spacecraft achieved Lunar Orbit Insertion on New Year’s Eve.
Artists concept shows twin GRAIL spacecraft orbiting the Moon. The twin GRAIL spacecraft will fly in tandem to map the moon’s gravity field with unprecedented precision to unlock hidden secrets about the moons interior composition, determine if it possesses an inner core, and yield a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed. Credit: NASA
See JPL Mission Control photos below

Cheers erupted after the first of NASA’s twin $ 496 Million Moon Mapping probes entered orbit on New Year’s Eve (Dec. 31) upon completion of the 40 minute main engine burn essential for insertion into lunar orbit. The small GRAIL spacecraft will map the lunar interior with unprecedented precision to deduce the Moon’s hidden interior composition.

“Engines stopped. It’s in a great initial orbit!!!! ”

- NASA’s Jim Green told Universe Today, just moments after verification of a successful engine burn and injection of the GRAIL-A spacecraft into an initial eliptical orbit. Green is the Director of Planetary Science at NASA HQ and was stationed inside Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Ca (see photos below).

“Pop the bubbly & toast the moon! NASA’s GRAIL-A spacecraft is in lunar orbit,” NASA tweeted (…)
Read the rest of First GRAIL Twin Enters Lunar Orbit – NASA’s New Year’s Gift to Science (870 words)

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2011 – NASA’s Year of the Solar System – The Story of How We Came to Be!
Asteroid Vesta from Dawn – Unveiling a Former Fuzzy Blob with Exquisite Clarity
NASA's Dawn spacecraft achieved orbit at the giant asteroid Vesta in July 2011. The depiction of Vesta is based on images obtained by Dawn's framing cameras. Dawn is an international collaboration of the US, Germany and Italy. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A year ago, 2011 was proclaimed as the “Year of the Solar System” by NASA’s Planetary Science division. And what a year of excitement it was indeed for the planetary science community, amateur astronomers and the general public alike !

NASA successfully delivered astounding results on all fronts – On the Story of How We Came to Be.

“2011 was definitely the best year ever for NASA Planetary Science!” said Jim Green in an exclusive interview with Universe Today. Green is the Director of Planetary Science for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA HQ. “The Search for Life is a significant priority for NASA.”(…)
Read the rest of 2011: Top Stories from the Best Year Ever for NASA Planetary Science! (2,405 words)

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Post tags: 1 Ceres, 4 vesta, Cassini Saturn, Comet Tempel 1, Comet Wild 2, Curiosity Rover, Dawn Asteroid Orbiter, deep impact mission, Earth, GRAIL Lunar mission, Juno mission, Jupiter, Main Asteroid Belt, Mars, Mars Rovers, Mars Science Laboratory, Mercury, Mercury MESSENGER, Moon, NASA, Opportunity Rover, Search for Life, stardust mission, STARDUST-NExT

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Artist's conception of a terraformed Mars. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

As we continue to explore farther out into our solar system and beyond, the question of habitation or colonization inevitably comes up. Manned bases on the Moon or Mars for example, have long been a dream of many. There is a natural desire to explore as far as we can go, and also to extend humanity’s presence on a permanent or at least semi-permanent basis. In order to do this, however, it is necessary to adapt to different extreme environments. On the Moon for example, a colony must be self-sustaining and protect its inhabitants from the airless, harsh environment outside.

Mars, though, is different. While future bases could adapt to the Martian environment as well, there is also the possibility of modifying the surrounding environment instead of just co-existing with it. This is the process of terraforming – essentially trying to tinker with Mars’ atmosphere and environment to make it more Earth-like. Although still a long ways off technologically, terraforming the Red Planet is seen as a future possibility. Perhaps the bigger question is, should we?

(…)
Read the rest of Should We Terraform Mars? (645 words)

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The stellar stream in the halo of the nearby dwarf starburst galaxy NGC 4449 is resolved into its individual starry constituents in this exquisite image taken with the 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope and Suprime-Cam. Image credit: R. Jay GaBany and Aaron J. Romanowsky (UCSC) in collaboration with David Martinez-Delgado (MPIA) and NAOJ. Image processed by R. Jay GaBany

Dark matter… It came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang. Within its confines, galaxies formed and evolved. If you add up all the parts contained within any given galaxy you derive its mass, yet its gravitational effects can only be explained by the presence of this mysterious subatomic particle. It would be easy to believe that the larger the galaxy, the larger the amount of dark matter should be present, but new research shows that isn’t so. Dwarf galaxies have even higher proportions of dark matter than their larger counterparts. Although the dwarfs are the most common of all, we know very little about them – even when they consume each other. Enter the star stream… (…)
Read the rest of Little Galaxies Are Big on Dark Matter (576 words)

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Screenshot of the Distant Suns version 3.

With the plethora of mobile apps now available for astronomy applications, its hard to keep track of them all. Thanks to astronomer Andy Fraknoi and the American Astronomical Society there’s now a catalog for that. “This catalog is a first attempt to make a list of those of particular interest to astronomy educators,” wrote Fraknoi.

The catalog, published by the Astronomy Education Review, includes a short description and reviews of some — but not all — the apps to help people distinguish which app will best cover their needs. However, “the number of apps is fast outpacing the ability of reviewers to keep up,” Fraknoi said, adding that suggestions and additions for this catalog are most welcome.

Click here to access the app catalog.

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Twin GRAIL Probes are GO for Lunar Orbit Insertion on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day
GRAIL probes use precision formation-flying technique to map Lunar Gravity. The twin GRAIL spacecraft will map the moon's gravity field, as depicted in this artist's rendering. Radio signals traveling between the two spacecraft provide scientists the exact measurements required as well as flow of information not interrupted when the spacecraft are at the lunar farside, not seen from Earth. The result should be the most accurate gravity map of the moon ever made. The mission also will answer longstanding questions about Earth's moon, including the size of a possible inner core, and it should provide scientists with a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed. GRAIL is a part of NASA's Discovery Program. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In less than three days, NASA will deliver a double barreled New Year’s package to our Moon when an unprecedented pair of science satellites fire up their critical braking thrusters for insertion into lunar orbit on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

NASA’s dynamic duo of GRAIL probes are “GO” for Lunar Orbit Insertion said the mission team at a briefing for reporters today, Dec. 28. GRAIL’s goal is to exquisitely map the moons interior from the gritty outer crust to the depths of the core with unparalled precision.

“GRAIL is a Journey to the Center of the Moon”, said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge at the press briefing. (…)
Read the rest of NASAs Unprecedented Science Twins are GO to Orbit our Moon on New Years Eve (949 words)

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First Ever Portrait of the International Space Station and docked Shuttle Endeavour from Soyuz capsule. This image was taken by Expedition 27 crew member Paolo Nespoli from the Soyuz TMA-20 following its undocking on May 23, 2011. It is the first-ever image of a space shuttle docked to the International Space Station. Endeavour at left. European ATV cargo carrier at right. Credit: NASA/Paolo Nespoli

2011 was a picturesque year! The year brought us new discoveries, a new supernova, the end of an era in human spaceflight, and much more. Here’s a look back at some of the best images we’ve posted on Universe Today in 2011, listed in no particular order:

Above, is the first-ever images of a space shuttle docked to the International Space Station were taken by ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli on May 23, 2011 through a window inside the Soyuz TMA-20 vehicle as he and two crewmates were departing the ISS for their return trip to Earth. See the entire gallery of images of this event here.

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Read the rest of Our Picks of Best Space and Astronomy Images from 2011 (1,176 words)

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The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this high-resolution, natural-color images on December 23, 2011 showing an island being formed in the Red Sea. Credit: NASA

Looking for some new lake-front property? Here’s the newest available on the planet. Volcanic activity in the Red Sea that started in mid-December has created what looks like a new island. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured a high-resolution, natural-color image on December 23, 2011 showing an apparent island where previously there was none. Here, a thick plume of volcanic ash still rises from the new island.

See below for an image from 2007 of the same region.

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Read the rest of As Seen From Space: Volcanic Eruption Creates New Island in the Red Sea (101 words)

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A waning crescent Moon on Dec. 22, 2011 from British Columbia. Credit: Suraky

A beautiful crescent Moon graced the morning and evening skies over the past holiday weekend, and skywatchers around the world were out with with their cameras! Above, Suraky from British Columbia, Canada took this lovely image of the waning sliver of the Moon from his bedroom window. “The Moon was lit by Earthshine on the dark side, at 7am, with Baker poking out between the trees,” he commented on the image.

See more from other astrophotographers below.
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Read the rest of Astrophotos: Christmas Crescent Moon from Around the World (212 words)

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Part of the Soyuz rocket that brought the latest trio of crew members to the International Space Station fell back to Earth on Dec. 24, and its fiery re-entry was captured by several skywatchers in Europe. This footage taken from Germany is the best view of it, and there’s another good view below. Some people mistakenly thought it was a comet; and since this lightshow occurred on Christmas Eve, there were a few who suggested it might be Santa flying across the fly. That would have been bad news, however, to see debris breaking off the sleigh…

Additionally, there are reports that debris from the failed Soyuz rocket that was supposed to send a communications satellite into orbit fell and hit a house in Siberia. An animation of that event is also posted below. (…)
Read the rest of Soyuz Rocket’s Comet-like Re-Entry Captured on Video (0 words)

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The James Webb Space Telescope mirrors at Marshall Space Flight Center. Credit: Emmett Given, NASA Marshall

The last of the 21 mirrors for the James Webb Space Telescope have come out of deep freeze – literally! – and are now approved for space operations, a major milestone in the development of the next generation telescope that’s being hailed as the “successor to Hubble.”

(…)
Read the rest of James Webb Mirrors Pass Deep-Freeze Exams (242 words)

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Comet Lovejoy from Canberra. Image Credit: Barry Armstead

Barry Armstead was among the lucky people who were able to capture the amazing show made by Comet Lovejoy in the skies of the Southern hemisphere the past few days.

“I got up on Thursday night/Friday morning at 3am, checked the sky and it was a black blanket of cloud. I observed for around 20 minutes while simultaneously checking the Bureau of Meteorology to confirm that the clouds weren’t going anywhere. Back to bed to grind my teeth and grumble something about Murphy’s law.

This morning, I stayed up until 1:30am, had a little snooze on the couch and checked the night sky every half hour. At 2:30am the sky turned crystal clear! I loaded everything in the ute and took off like a bull at a gate for the mountains south-west of Canberra and away from the city light.

And there it was! Comet Lovejoy in all it’s glory, lighting up the heavens like a searchlight, signalling passing spacecraft.”

More images from Barry Armstead below!(…)
Read the rest of Astrophoto: Comet Lovejoy from Canberra by Barry Armstead (118 words)

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Today’s Journal Club involves the mysterious case of PSR J1841-500, the pulsar that didn’t pulse.

According to Wikipedia, a Journal Club is a group of individuals who meet regularly to critically evaluate recent articles in the scientific literature. Since this is Universe Today if we occasionally stray into critically evaluating each other’s critical evaluations, that’s OK too.

And of course, the first rule of Journal Club is… don’t talk about Journal Club. So, without further ado – today’s journal article involves the mysterious case of PSR J1841-500, the pulsar that didn’t pulse.(…)
Read the rest of Journal Club: The Pulsar That Wasn’t (340 words)

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M42 & M43 The Great Orion Nebulae & it’s Core Complex known as the Trapezium Region. Image Credit: John Chumack

The Great Orion nebula is one of the brightest nebulae visible in the night sky. It is located about 1300 light years away in the southern part of the Orion’s belt.

We’ve collected several amazing images of the Great Orion nebula submitted by readers online. Here’s hoping that you’ll enjoy them as much as we did!

The image above was obtained by John Chumack from the high res close-up image of Trapezium taken with his 10” scope ( 30 sec., 1 minute, & 5 minutes) in his backyard in Dayton combined with the image taken using his homemade 16” scope data (10 minutes) taken at his observatory in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

“My image Data was captured in 2010 & 2011 and was then combined. I used my Modified Canon Rebel Xsi (Baader Filter) @ ISO 400, dark frames subtracted, and post processing in Adobe. Total exposure time for all Data was 16.5 minutes.

I processed it for the Trapezium’s core, I wanted to show all the small dark nebula / Dusty Bok Globules buried in that bright Zone, which is often over exposed in most images of this region!

It came out very detailed, especially the Trapezium region and its bright core stars which are also individually visible!”

More images below!(…)
Read the rest of Astrophotos: The Great Orion Nebula (413 words)

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The moons Titan and Dione are photographed with rings and Saturn in the background. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

“Hey! Look what our Santa at Saturn has sent our way!” said Carolyn Porco, the Cassini imaging team lead, in a post on Twitter. This wonderful collection of just-released colorful images from the Saturn system are a holiday gift from the Cassini and CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations)team.

Above, Saturn’s third-largest moon, Dione, can be seen through the haze of the planet’s largest moon, Titan, in this view of the two posing before the planet and its rings from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

More treats below!
(…)
Read the rest of Colorful Holiday Treats from Saturn (171 words)

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Comet Lovejoy by Colin Legg

It’s been one more day since Colin Legg posted his previous amazing photos and videos of Comet Legg. This new version is even better, especially with it reflecting off the water.

Here’s what Colin had to say about it on IceinSpace:

Had another lovely view of the comet last night wandering the shore of the Estuary. It’s quite unique down there. The Perth and Mandurah sky domes light up the northern half of the sky, while the east and south east are pitch black (except for a couple of small towns). The north glow is enough to walk by once dark adapted.

Anyway, while wandering I came across a small embayment with still water and nice reflections of the comet. Used the same settings as last night to get the attached shot.

Check out some of Colin’s videos over on Vimeo.

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I’ve finally figured out what to do with all the browser tabs that I have open, but never get around to using: Tumblr. Our new Tumblr blog is a slush pile of links, photos and videos that we just don’t have the time or energy to incorporate into the main Universe Today blog. I’ll warn you, it could easily be 20+ items a day just dumped in there, so if Universe Today is already overwhelming, that’ll be like drinking from a firehose.

Just to let you know, I’m still wrapping my brain around Tumblr, so if you have any suggestions on how to use it better, I’m all ears.

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Stonehenge Winter Solstice Credit: telegraph.co.uk

Depending on how the calendar falls, the December solstice occurs annually on a day between December 20 and 23. This year, the December solstice will occur at 05:30 UTC (12:30 a.m. EST) on December 22, 2011. While the southern hemisphere is experiencing the long days of summer, the northern hemisphere will have the “winter solstice” – often called the shortest day of the year.

Conversely, six months ago the northern hemisphere experienced the longest day with the summer solstice, with the southern hemisphere having their winter solstice. This is part of a never ending cycle and is at the heart of our seasons.

So, why do we call it the shortest day of the year for the winter solstice and longest day for the solstice in the summer? Do we lose some time off the clock in winter, and in summer do we miraculously gain time on the clock in a bizarre cycle that is imposed by old men in charge of calendars and times around the world? (I used to think this as a small boy…)(…)
Read the rest of Winter Solstice – The Shortest day of the Year (261 words)

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The Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft is lifted on to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Monday, Dec. 19, 2011. The rocket is being prepared for launch on December 21 to carry the crew of Expedition 30 to the International Space Station. Photo Credit: (NASA/Carla Cioffi)

Brrrr! It was frigid in Kazakhstan yesterday as the next Soyuz to the ISS rolled to the launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Thermometers read a frosty 24 degrees below zero C, prompting astronaut Don Pettit to comment, “It is so cold that even microphones have a fur hat.” Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers will launch aboard their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft at 13:16 UTC (8:16 a.m. EST) Wednesday, to bring the crew compliment on the ISS back to six.

You can watch the launch on NASA Television (coverage of the launch begins at 12: 30 UTC (7:30 a.m. EST) or on ESA’s website. ESA TV Live coverage starts for a lift-off (at 14:16) with inserts from Baikonur and TSUP Moscow Mission Control Centre and inside Soyuz capsule.
(…)
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Venus as seen by the Pioneer orbiter in 1979. Image Credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

In the mid-1960s, before any Apollo hardware had flown with a crew, NASA was looking ahead and planning its next major programs. It was a bit of a challenge. After all, how do you top landing a man on the Moon? Not wanting to start from scratch, NASA focused on possible missions that would use the hardware and software developed for the Apollo program. One mission that fit within these parameters was a manned flyby of our cosmic twin, Venus. (…)
Read the rest of Missions that Weren’t: NASA’s Manned Mission to Venus (662 words)

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NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover is currently cruising to Mars and is already investigating the lethality of the interplanetary space radiation environment to humans. After touchdown, Curiosity will investigate Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Barely two weeks into the 8 month journey to the Red Planet, NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Lab (MSL) rover was commanded to already begin collecting the first science of the mission by measuring the ever present radiation environment in space.

Engineers powered up the MSL Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) that monitors high-energy atomic and subatomic particles from the sun, distant supernovas and other sources.

RAD is the only one of the car-sized Curiosity’s 10 science instrument that will operate both in space as well as on the Martian surface. It will provide key data (…)
Read the rest of Curiosity Starts First Science on Mars Sojurn – How Lethal is Space Radiation to Life’s Survival (764 words)

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Artist's rendering showing the jet fully established. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab

Is everything quiet in deep space?  Not hardly.  It’s a place jammed with noises of all kinds.  So much noise, in fact, that it could be quite difficult to pick up a faint signature of something small…  something like the smallest black hole known.  Thanks to  NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) , an international team of astronomers have found the pulse they were looking for and it’s a pattern that’s only been seen in one other black hole system.  Its name is IGR J17091-3624 and it’s a binary system which consists of a normal star and a black hole with a mass that measures only about three times solar.  In theoretical terms, that’s right at the edge where possibility of being a black hole begins.   (…)
Read the rest of In The Still Of The Night… Listening To The “Heartbeat” Of A Tiny Black Hole (612 words)

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Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have made progress finding the elusive Higgs boson, shown here in a simulated particle collision decay path. // Simulation still by CERNSo what did CERN announce? In a word: progress. They can’t say with enough certainty that they’ve found the Higgs boson, but the data are certainly shaping up to indicate they will, perhaps as soon as next year. They’ve also narrowed down the range for the possible mass the particle can take on, which is also helpful. That might not seem like much to announce right now, but it’s still pretty exciting for physicists.

While CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (the particle accelerator making the search possible) has only gotten enough data to indicate the existence of the elusive particle, but not confirm it, even that much is revealing. The results so far paint the Higgs boson just about how current theories predicted, and there’s little evidence of it turning up with wildly different properties. This means that, should it actually be the Higgs boson they’re looking at, modern physics has everything more or less right.

Basically, the Higgs boson explains why particles have mass, something modern physics can only guess at. The actual details are a bit complicated, but the usual analogy is to think of a crowded party. Little-known guests can walk through the crowds relatively quickly, but famous guests would find it harder to move because they’d be surrounded by groups of people. Higgs bosons would act like these groups, impeding the progress of certain particles and thus imbuing them with mass.

There’s also a tendency to refer to the Higgs boson as the “God particle.” Almost every scientist I know hates this term, mostly because it just makes no sense. (There’s nothing divine about the particle, and it doesn’t answer every question about the universe, or even just physics.) The heavenly appellation comes from the title of a book by Nobel laureate Leon Lederman (with Dick Teresi), The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? (Houghton Mifflin, 1993) Apparently, even Lederman is no fan of the nickname; he wanted to name it “The *** Particle” because it was so hard to find, but his editor wouldn’t allow it.

So, while this is good and interesting news for fans of the Higgs boson, CERN still has a way to go before it can officially claim discovery. But that’s how science is — less “Eureka” than hard experiments. If anyone can do it, though, it’s CERN!

Of course, if you think Fermilab has it in the bag, or if you like the name “God particle,” be sure to let us know in the comments section below.

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ZEBRA (Zodiacal dust, Extragalactic Background and Reionization Apparatus) is a small, passively cooled optical to near-infrared instrument package that could be added to an outer solar system probe. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech

Editors note — Science journalist and author Bruce Dorminey spoke to two NASA scientists about the possibility of mounting a telescope on a spacecraft for an outer planets mission.

Light pollution in our inner solar system, from both the nearby glow of the Sun and the hazy zodiacal glow from dust ground up in the asteroid belt, has long stymied cosmologists looking for a clearer take on the early Universe.

But a team at NASA, JPL and Caltech has been looking into the possibility of hitching an optical telescope to a survey spacecraft on a mission to the outer solar system.

(…)
Read the rest of NASA Considers Sending a Telescope to the Outer Solar System (1,269 words)

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The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) with minor satellite galaxy M32

Beginning around 2005, astronomers began discovering the presence of very large galaxies at a distance of around 10 billion lightyears. But while these galaxies were large, they didn’t appear to have a similarly large number of formed stars. Given that astronomers expect galaxies to grow through mergers and mergers tend to trigger star formation, the presence of such large, undeveloped galaxies seemed odd. How could galaxies grow so much, yet have so few stars?

(…)
Read the rest of How Can Growing Galaxies Stay Silent? (442 words)

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In Orbiter Processing Facility-1 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, space shuttle Discovery’s payload bay is moments away from being concealed from view as its doors swing shut with the aid of yellow-painted strongbacks, hardware used to support and operate the doors when the shuttle is not in space. Discovery was powered down and the doors were closed for the final time during Space Shuttle Program transition and retirement activities. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Space Shuttle Discovery was powered down forever and the payload bay doors were locked tight for the final time on Friday, Dec. 16, by technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.

Take a good last glimpse inside the retiring Discovery’s payload bay as the clamshell like doors seal off all indigenous US human spaceflight capability for several years at a minimum.

The historic “Power Down” came after both of the 60 foot long cargo bay doors were swung shut this morning for the last time inside the shuttle hanger known as Orbiter Processing Facility-1 (OPF-1) – in the shadow of the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). (…)
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There’s hope for us all if a mild-mannered patent office clerk can become Person Of The 20th Century.

Einstein’s explanation of special relativity, delivered in his 1905 paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies focuses on demolishing the idea of ‘absolute rest’, exemplified by the theoretical luminiferous aether. He achieved this very successfully, but many hearing that argument today are left puzzled as to why everything seems to depend upon the speed of light in a vacuum.

Since few people in the 21st century need convincing that the luminiferous aether does not exist, it is possible to come at the concept of special relativity in a different way and just through an exercise of logic deduce that the universe must have an absolute speed – and from there deduce special relativity as a logical consequence.(…)
Read the rest of Astronomy Without A Telescope – Special Relativity From First Principles (585 words)

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Ken Crawford stands next to his 20-inch RC Optical Systems Ritchey-Chrétien reflector in his observatory in Rancho Del Sol Camino, California. Crawford used this telescope to take the images of NGC 7600 he discusses in this blog.Some of you might know Ken in a different capacity. He’s one of the prime movers of the Advanced Imaging Conference held in Santa Clara, California, each year. What follows is a great response to someone who asks, “What do amateur astronomers contribute to science?”

Dear Michael,
 “It Matters.”
I am excited to bring you some news about a special event that just occurred. I apologize for the long post, but some background needs to go with this story.

Cold Dark Matter is a theory that most of the material in the universe cannot be seen (it’s dark) and that it moves very slowly (it’s cold). It is the leading theory explaining the formation of galaxies, galaxy groups, and even the current known structure of the universe. One of the problems with the theory is that it predicts large amounts of small satellite galaxies called dwarf galaxies. These tiny galaxies are about 1/1000 the mass of our Milky Way, but the problem is that nobody has observed them. If this theory is correct, then where are all the dwarf galaxies that should be there?

Enter professional star-stream hunter David Martinez-Delgado. David is the principal investigator of the Stellar Tidal Stream Survey at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. He believes the reason we do not see large amounts of dwarf galaxies is because larger galaxies absorb them as part of their formation process. If this is correct, then we should find remnants of these mergers in astronomical observations. These leftovers would show up as trails of dwarf galaxy debris made up mostly of stars. Astronomers call these debris trails star streams.

An international team of professional astronomers led by Martinez-Delgado has identified enormous star streams on the periphery of nearby spiral galaxies. With long-exposure images, the team showed the process of galactic cannibalism theorized between the Milky Way and the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy. This is happening in our own backyard! Part of the work involves using computer modeling to show how larger galaxies merge and absorb the smaller ones.

Enter the amateurs. David recruited a small group of astroimagers to help search for and detect these stellar fossils. The team leader is R. Jay GaBany [another longtime Astronomy contributor], and you can read more about the Pilot Star Stream Survey here: http://www.cosmotography.com/images/stellar_stream_survey_overview.html.

Several years ago, GaBany asked me to become part of this team, and I have made several contributions to the survey. I am excited to announce that my latest contribution has resulted in a professional letter that has been accepted by The Astronomical Journal.

What makes this special is that Carlos Frenk, the director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University in England, and his team found that my image of galaxy NGC 7600 helped validate their computer model. In particular, my picture helped explain how larger galaxies form by absorbing satellite dwarf galaxies and why we do not see large number of dwarf galaxies today. Carlos has appeared on several shows on the Science and Discovery channels, to name a few, to explain and show some of these amazing simulations. You can read more about Carlos here: http://www.iau.org/public_press/images/detail/iau1103c.

Of course, I got excited about my participation in this pro-am collaboration. The target galaxy has some special features called shells. I had to take long exposures and then carefully process the images to detect these structures and show the delicate anatomy within. Previous images of NGC 7600’s shell structures have not shown them this well. I also included two movies below the images on this website: http://www.imagingdeepsky.com/Galaxies/NGC7600/NGC7600.htm. The top one shows my image of NGC 7600 blending into the simulation at about the point when the shells start to form. The bottom movie shows the complete simulation. Don’t forget to click the full-screen button to zoom and pan around for the details.

What is groundbreaking scientifically is that the simulation uses the Cold Dark Matter theory modeling the dark matter halos of the galaxies. As you can see, it is pretty convincing. So now you know why we do not observe lots of dwarf galaxies in the universe. And it took an amateur’s help to find out.

Here is a link to The Astronomical Journal Letters paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.2864.

Kindest Regards,

Ken Crawford
www.imagingdeepsky.com

Great work, Ken, and congratulations! And keep those images coming.

Astronomy.com blog

There have been some great images and video of Comet Lovejoy’s close encounter with the Sun, but this video put together by Scott Wiessinger from Goddard Spaceflight Center combines and zooms in on the best views from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which adjusted its cameras in order to watch the trajectory.

The first part of the video from SDO, (taken in 171 Angstrom wavelength, which is typically shown in yellow) taken on Dec 15, 2011 showing Comet Lovejoy moving in toward the Sun, with its tail “wiggling” from its interaction with the solar wind. The second part of the clip shows the comet exiting from behind the right side of the Sun, after an hour of travel through its closest approach.

Amazing to be able to follow this comet’s journey so closely!

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The huge fireball event as seen from a remote camera in Orangeville, Ontario. Credit: University of Western Ontario

In newly released footage from the University of Western Ontario, a bright, slow-moving fireball was captured in the skies near Toronto, Canada on December 12, 2011 by remote cameras watching for meteors. Although this meteor looks huge as it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere, astronomers estimate the rock to have been no bigger than a basketball. Footage reveals it entered the atmosphere at a shallow angle of 25 degrees, moving about 14 km per second. It first became visible over Lake Erie then moved toward the north-northeast.

See below for the video.

But in a meteorite-hunter alert, Peter Brown, the Director of Western’s Centre for Planetary & Space Exploration said that data garnered from the remote cameras suggest that surviving fragments of the rock are likely, with a mass that may total as much as a few kilograms, likely in the form of many fragments in one gram to hundreds of a gram size range.

(…)
Read the rest of Meteorite Alert! Remote Cameras Capture Slow-Moving Fireball near Toronto (277 words)

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Craters and secondary craters create a hellish scene in this MESSENGER image of Mercury. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Editor’s note: Bruce Dorminey, science journalist and author of “Distant Wanderers: The Search for Planets Beyond the Solar System,” interviews NASA’s MESSENGER mission Project Scientist Ralph McNutt about what we are learning about Mercury.

Thirty-five years after NASA’s Mariner 10 interplanetary probe flew by and imaged less than half of tiny Mercury’s surface, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft now orbits our Solar System’s enigmatic and poorly understood innermost planet. After a six-and-a-half-year journey — which included three flybys of Mercury — MESSENGER is now the first spacecraft to take up long-term residence around this hard-to-reach and hellish planet.

Crater-scarred Mercury lies at an average distance of only 58 million kms from the Sun, so searingly close that its angular separation (or elongation) from our own star is never more than 28 degrees.  This all makes it extremely difficult to study from Earth.

Thus, planetary scientists are thrilled to finally be analyzing new in situ data from the MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft.

To get some perspective on the findings and Mercury itself, we turned to the  MESSENGER Project Scientist Ralph McNutt at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab.

Dorminey — Is the MESSENGER data already shaking up Mercury paradigms?
(…)
Read the rest of Our Own Private Hell: Unlocking Mercury’s Enigmatic Past (1,198 words)

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Stratolaunch Systems Carrier Aircraft – Air Launch to Orbit Space Launch System
Developed by Scaled Composites, the aircraft manufacturer and assembler founded by Burt Rutan. The carrier will loft and drop the 500,000 pound multistage SpaceX rocket that will propel payloads to orbit at dramatically reduced costs. It will be the largest aircraft ever flown with a wing span of 385 feet and weighing 1.2 million pounds. Credit: Stratolaunch Systems
Watch complete video animation description below

A mega quartet of luminaries led by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen and legendary aerospace designer Burt Rutan have joined forces to create a revolutionary new approach to space travel entailing the privately funded development of a mammoth air-launched space transportation system that aims to dramatically cut the high costs and risks of launching both cargo and human crews to low Earth orbit.

Allen and Rutan are teaming up with Elon Musk, founder of Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, and Michael Griffin, former NASA Administrator, to build the world’s largest aircraft ever flown and use it as a platform to loft a multi-stage SpaceX rocket that will deliver a payload of some 13,500 pounds into earth orbit, about the same class as a Delta II. .

Allen and Rutan hope to build (…)
Read the rest of Revolutionary Air-Launched Commercial Rocket to Orbit Announced by Microsoft Billionaire Paul Allen (608 words)

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Configuration of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft. Credit: NPO Lavochkin

Editor’s note: Dr. David Warmflash, principal science lead for the US team from the LIFE experiment on board the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, provides an update on the mission for Universe Today.

As last-ditch efforts to recover control of the unpiloted Phobos-Grunt spacecraft continue, officials, engineers, and scientists at the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) have shifted their focus to the issue of reentry. Launched November 9 by a Zenit-2 rocket on a mission to return a sample from Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two small moons, the spacecraft reached low Earth orbit. However, since the engine of the upper stage that was to propel it on a trajectory to Mars failed to ignite, the spacecraft continues to orbit Earth in a low orbit. Despite some limited success in communicating with Phobos-Grunt by way of tracking stations that the European Space Agency (ESA) operates in Perth, Australia, and Masplalomas, Canary Islands, the spacecraft remains stranded in an orbit whose decay will take the craft into the atmosphere sometime in early January.
(…)
Read the rest of Russian Space Program Prepares for Phobos-Grunt Re-Entry (438 words)

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Astronomy magazine's new special collector's DVD set is the perfect cure for anyone with sagging bookshelves! Kalmbach Publishing Co. photo If you suffer from any of these symptoms, then I have great news for you, my friend. Every issue of your favorite astronomy title — from its inception in August 1973 to December 2010 — is now available on two small, slim computer DVDs! That’s right, you can possess every issue of the world’s best-selling astronomy magazine in full digital clarity and convenience in a format that takes up no more space than that copy of Alien Autopsy you won’t admit you own.

After a tremendous amount of work this summer by the staff of Astronomy magazine, we’re proud to announce the release of “The Complete Collection 1973–2010” on DVD ROM.

Imagine accessing any issue without the fear of those paper towers falling on you. Can’t you just hear the sigh of relief from your bookshelves once relieved of their weighty burden? You’ll soon walk in straight lines again. And finding those snickering kids? Forget about it!

Seriously, this special collector’s set is awesome. Not only will you be able to access on your Mac or PC every issue published during the past four decades, but you’ll also enjoy the convenience of quick keyword searches to help you locate the articles you seek, and you can print anything you need for easy reference. Plus, this DVD set includes bonus material you can’t get anywhere else, including a complete 38-page history of the magazine written by Astronomy Editor David J. Eicher with dozens of behind-the-scenes photographs.

Released just in time for the holidays, this special collector’s set makes the perfect gift for that person on your list who loves the night … er, has always shown a passion for … all right, YOU.

Astronomy.com blog

December 10 lunar eclipse by Joseph Brimacombe

Photographer Joseph Brimacombe created this stunning image of a ruddy Moon made during the total lunar eclipse of December 10, 2011. Images taken during the penumbral and total phases of the eclipse were combined to create a full-face image of the Moon in color. Beautiful!

(…)
Read the rest of A Blood-Red Moon (98 words)

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Dawn Orbiting Vesta
This artist's concept shows NASA's Dawn spacecraft orbiting the giant asteroid Vesta. The depiction of Vesta is based on images obtained by Dawn's framing cameras. Dawn is an international collaboration of the US, Germany and Italy. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Dawn Asteroid Orbiter successfully spiraled down today to the closest orbit the probe will ever achieve around the giant asteroid Vesta, and has now begun the most critical science observations that will ultimately yield the highest resolution measurements to be obtained of this spectacular body throughout the entire mission.

“What can be more exciting than to explore an alien world that until recently was virtually unknown!” Dr. Marc Rayman gushed in an exclusive to Universe Today. Rayman is Dawn’s Chief Engineer from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.. and a protégé of Star Trek’s Mr. Scott.

Before Dawn, Vesta was little more than a fuzzy blob in the world’s most powerful telescopes. Vesta is the second most massive object in the main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.(…)
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Climate scientist Michael Mann from Penn State recently spoke at a TED event, and what he says in this video is nearly the same as in the article I wrote a year ago after hearing Mann speak.

The real shame here is that he needs to keep telling these same stories despite the overwhelming scientific evidence for anthroprogenic climate change.

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An artists concept of the Phobos-Grunt Mission. Credit: Roscosmos

Editor’s note: Dr. David Warmflash, principal science lead for the US team from the LIFE experiment on board the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, provides an update on the mission for Universe Today.

It has been trapped in low Earth orbit for more than a month. So low is the orbit that it moves too fast to be contacted – unless controllers on the ground just happen to beam a signal at some unlikely angle. So short does its battery power last that it must be in sunlight while also in position to receive signals. Then, it must still have power to send telemetry back to the ground.

Even with these obstacles, Russia’s Phobos- Grunt probe did manage to communicate with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) antenna in Perth, Australia twice a couple of weeks ago, indicating that some of its systems were functioning. But subsequent attempts at communication have failed, despite the addition of ESA’s Canary Islands antenna at Maspalomas to the worldwide effort to reestablish control over the spacecraft.
(…)
Read the rest of A Day in the Sun: Will It Make a Difference for Russia’s Phobos-Grunt? (381 words)

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2011 Geminids in the Winter Triangle. Image Courtesy of John Chumack

Have you been watching the Geminid Meteor Shower? With just hours to go before the peak, activity has been high – despite this year’s Moon! If you’d like to know more on the history of this meteor shower, then check out this great article by Adrian West. If you plan on watching and would like to do something cool and unusual, then step inside… (…)
Read the rest of Geminid Meteor Shower Reminder and There’s An App For That! (588 words)

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A composite image of the Whirlpool Galaxy (also known as M51). The green image is from the Hubble Space Telescope and shows the optical wavelength. The submillimetre light detected by SCUBA-2 is shown in red (850 microns) and blue (450 microns). The Whirlpool Galaxy lies at an estimated distance of 31 million light years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici Credit: JAC / UBC / Nasa

The stars and faint galaxies you see when you look up at the night sky are all emitting light within the visible light spectrum — the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum we can see with our unaided eyes or through optical telescopes. But our galaxy, and many others, contain huge amounts of cold dust that absorbs visible light. This accounts for the dark regions.

A new camera recently unveiled at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii promises to figuratively shed light on this dark part of the universe. The SCUBA-2 submillimetre camera (SCUBA in this case is an acronym for Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array) can detect light at lower energy levels, allowing astronomers to gather data on these dark areas and ultimately learn more about our universe and its formation. (…)
Read the rest of New Submillimetre Camera Sheds Light on the Dark Regions of the Universe (599 words)

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The Sundial aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover. Credit: MER Sundial Team

There’s been a lot of artifacts sent to the surface of Mars – and now there’s about to be another one left for future generations to discover. Artist Jon Lomberg has collaborated with a team of space scientists to design a sundial which sports edges with designs and images. These embellishments have been authored by Jim Bell and the MER sundial team with the graphics designed by Lomberg. (…)
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Now here’s a refreshing idea: create a “dark sky oasis” in suburban locations where city-dwellers can gather to see the stars and learn about the night sky. The International Dark-Sky Association has proposed a project to bring access to the starry night to urban areas through the creation of Suburban Outreach Sites. To make this project a reality, the IDA needs your help, and all it takes is a click of your mouse. Every year the Pepsi Refresh project gives away tens of thousands of dollars in grants to improve communities. The IDA is competing for one of these grants and needs your vote!
(…)
Read the rest of A Refreshing Idea! Vote for Enabling City Kids to See Starry Skies (217 words)

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A high-resolution infrared image of Dragonfish association, showing the shell of hot gas. Credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech/GLIMPSE Team/Mubdi Rahman

At the University of Toronto, a trio of astronomers have been fishing – fishing for a copious catch of young, supermassive stars. What they caught was unprecedented… Hundreds of thousands of stars with several hundreds of these being the most massive kind. They hauled in blue stars dozens of times heavier than the Sun, with light so intense it ate its way through the gas that created it. All that’s left is the hollow egg-shell… A shell that measures a hundred light years across. (…)
Read the rest of In The Dragonfish’s Mouth – The Next Generation Of “SuperStars” (763 words)

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Opportunity discovers Water related mineral vein at Endeavour Crater – November 2011
Opportunity rover discovered Gypsum at the Homestake mineral vein, while exploring around the base of Cape York ridge at the westerm rim of Endeavour Crater. The vein is composed of calcium sulfate and indicates the ancient flow of liquid water at this spot on Mars. Opportunity drove North (ahead) from here in search of a sunny winter haven.
This panoramic mosaic of images was taken on Sol 2761, November 2011.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Kenneth Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
click to enlarge

NASA’s long lived Opportunity rover has discovered the most scientifically compelling evidence yet for the flow of liquid water on ancient Mars. The startling revelation comes in the form of a bright vein of the mineral gypsum located at the foothills of an enormous crater named Endeavour, where the intrepid robot is currently traversing. See our mosaic above, illustrating the exact spot.

Researchers trumpeted the significant water finding this week (Dec. 7) at the annual winter meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

“This gypsum vein is the single most powerful piece of evidence for liquid water at Mars that has been discovered by the Opportunity rover,” announced Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., Principal Investigator for Opportunity, at an AGU press conference. (…)
Read the rest of Opportunity Discovers Most Powerful Evidence Yet for Martian Liquid Water (1,542 words)

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Lunar eclipses, like this partial one in February 2008, should not be missed! Chris Raymond photo If you won’t be favorably positioned for the premature darkening of our natural satellite, fear not. You can catch the entire eclipse in real time courtesy of SLOOH, the online organization whose mission is to provide scientific enlightenment to the masses. Using a series of telescopes, SLOOH will again broadcast this latest celestial event live starting at 8:00 a.m. EST on December 10.

Astronomy magazine’s well-known columnist Bob Berman, SLOOH’s editor and author of “Strange Universe” and the current special issue Bob Berman’s 50 Weirdest Objects in the Cosmos, will host the three-hour event. Duncan Copp, a presenter for BBC and National Geographic and director-producer of many astronomy films and TV shows including In the Shadow of the Moon, an award-wining film about the Apollo astronauts, will join him, as will Dr. Lucie Green, solar researcher based at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London’s Department of Space and Climate Physics.

I watched the June 15 lunar eclipse in its entirety via my computer courtesy of the SLOOH feed, and, while I’m planning to catch some of tomorrow’s event with my own eyeballs, I know I’m not positioned well again. The Moon will set here in Wisconsin during the initial stages of the eclipse. At that point, I’ll head inside, fire up my Mac, and watch the rest of this spectacle while listening to Berman’s many insights.

If you’ve never experienced a celestial event via SLOOH before, I encourage you to check it out tomorrow. It’s free — all you need to do is visit this link and click the “On Air” button in the upper right if you’re not automatically transferred to the event.

Whatever you do, make an effort to catch this event no matter where you call home. It’s the last total lunar eclipse until April 15, 2014!

Astronomy.com blog

Fig. 3: In this map of the sky, a correction for the effect of the galactic disk has been made in order to emphasize weaker magnetic field structures. The magnetic field directions above and below the disk seem to be diametrically opposed, as indicated by the positive (red) and negative (blue) values. An analogous change of direction takes place accross the vertical center line, which runs through the center of the Milky Way.

Kudos to the scientists at the Max Planck Institut and an international team of radio astronomers for an incredibly detailed new map of our galaxy’s magnetic fields! This unique all-sky map has surpassed its predecessors and is giving us insight into the magnetic field structure of the Milky Way beyond anything so far seen. What’s so special about this one? It’s showing us a quality known as Faraday depth – a concept which works along a specific line of sight. To construct the map, data was melded from 41,000 measurements collected from a new image reconstruction technique. We can now see not only the major structure of galactic fields, but less obvious features like turbulence in galactic gas. (…)
Read the rest of Mapping The Milky Way’s Magnetic Fields – The Faraday Sky (990 words)

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Coronal Mass Ejection as viewed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 7, 2011.
Image Credit: NASA/SDO

According to a new set of NASA computer simulations, solar storms and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) can erode the lunar surface. Researchers speculate that not only can these phenomenon erode the lunar surface, but could also be a cause of atmospheric loss for planets without a global magnetic field, such as Mars.
(…)
Read the rest of Could Solar Storms ‘Sandblast’ the Moon? (685 words)

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These super-sharp images of the unusual vampire double star system SS Leporis were created from observations made with the VLT Interferometer at ESO’s Paranal Observatory using the PIONIER instrument. The system consists of a red giant star orbiting a hotter companion. Note that the stars have been artificially coloured to match their known temperatures. Credit: ESO/PIONIER/IPAG

How do you peer into the dark heart of a vampire star? Try combining four telescopes! At ESO’s Paranal Observatory they created a virtual telescope 130 metres across with vision 50 times sharper than the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and observed a very unusual event… the transfer of mass from one star to another. While you might assume this to be a violent action, it turns out that it’s a gradual drain. Apparently SS Leporis stands for “super slow”. (…)
Read the rest of Staking Out A Vampire Star (325 words)

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In her seventh year on the Red Planet, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has discovered a mineral vein pointing conclusively to water on Mars. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL – Caltech

Just because Curiosity is on her way to Mars does not mean that Opportunity can take a break – and she hasn’t. The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) has yielded yet another scientific discovery that deepens scientists’ understanding about Mars’ water story. In this case, the rover has discovered a mineral vein that provides further evidence of water flowing on the Red Planet.(…)
Read the rest of Opportunity Discovers Mineral Vein Furthering Evidence of Water on Mars (627 words)

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Artist concept of Russia’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft. Credit Roscosmos.

Editor’s note: Dr. David Warmflash, principal science lead for the US team from the LIFE experiment on board the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, provides an update on the mission for Universe Today.

Russia’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft is in no better position than it was a month ago, when it reached low Earth orbit on November 9 yet failed to ignite the upper stage engine that was to propel it to Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two small moons. Indeed, with an orbit measuring 204.823 kilometers at perigee (the low point) and 294.567 kilometers at apogee as of today, the spacecraft is well on its well to a fiery reentry through Earth’s atmosphere in early January if it cannot be rescued in the intervening time. But the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, is not ready to give up on the probe yet, and have asked ESA to resume trying to contact Phobos-Grunt.

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Read the rest of Not Giving Up Yet: ESA Resumes Effort to Communicate with Phobos-Grunt (636 words)

© David Warmflash for Universe Today, 2011. |
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An artist's impression of a supermassive black hole. Image credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA artwork by Lynette Cook

For years, astronomer Karl Gebhardt and graduate student Jeremy Murphy at The University of Texas at Austin have been hunting for black holes — the dense concentration of matter at the centre of galaxies. Earlier this year, they made a record-breaking discovery. They found a black hole weighing 6.7 billion time the mass of our Sun in the centre of the galaxy M87.

But now they shattered their own record. Combining new data from multiple observations, they’ve found not one but two supermassive black holes that each weigh as much as 10 billion Suns.(…)
Read the rest of Astronomers Find the Most Supermassive Black Holes Yet (672 words)

© Amy Shira Teitel for Universe Today, 2011. |
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Over the weekend Armadillo Aerospace successfully launched an advanced sounding rocket from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The launch took place on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. (MST), and the STIG A rocket reached its expected sub-orbital altitude of 41.91 km (137,500 feet). Below is an image of Earth taken by a camera on board the rocket.

This latest launch is the thirteenth vertical launch test from the Spaceport America Vertical Launch Complex since 2006.
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Read the rest of Armadillo Aerospace Successfully Lauches a Sounding Rocket from Spaceport America (331 words)

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APOD

The video highlights a global view of Vesta and its mysterious equatorial band of ridges and troughs, three young craters dubbed the “Snowman” in the asteroid’s northern hemisphere, and a massive mountain at Vesta’s south pole that’s more than twice the height of Mt. Everest. Dawn has been orbiting Vesta since July 15 and is currently spiraling down to its low-altitude mapping orbit, which will bring the spacecraft within about 130 miles (210 kilometers) of the asteroid’s surface.

Dawn has already provided an extensive amount of new data about the 330-mile-wide (530km) asteroid, but it’s kind of fun to see the information in a new way. I hope this won’t be the last 3-D video of Vesta we get before Dawn moves on to the asteroid Ceres in July 2012. The cinematic equivalent might give me a headache in theaters sometimes, but 3-D imagery is pretty cool when it shows off new views of an unfamiliar world.

Embedded video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology

Astronomy.com blog

This is an artist's concept of the fastest rotating star found to date. The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102, rotates at a million miles per hour, or 300 times faster than our Sun does. Centrifugal forces from this dizzying spin rate have flattened the star into an oblate shape and spun off a disk of hot plasma, seen edge on in this view from a hypothetical planet. The star may have "spun up" by accreting material from a binary companion star. The rapidly evolving companion later exploded as a supernova. The whirling star lies 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a star named VFTS 102 is spinning its heart out… Literally. Rotating at a mind-numbing speed of a million miles per hour (1.6 million kph), this hot blue giant has reached the edge where centrifugal forces could tear it apart. It’s the fastest ever recorded – 300 times faster than our Sun – and may have been split off from a double star system during a violent explosion. (…)
Read the rest of Incredible Spinning Star Rotates At A Million Miles Per Hour! (345 words)

© tammy for Universe Today, 2011. |
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Post tags: Ejected Star, ESO, Fastest Rotating Star, Large Magellanic Cloud, Massive Star, VLT

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Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Spacecraft During Cruise – with Navigation Stars
Artist’s concept of Curiosity during its cruise phase between launch on Nov. 26, 2011 and final approach to Mars in August 2012. MSL will use the stars to navigate. The spacecraft includes a disc-shaped solar powered cruise stage (on the left) attached to the aeroshell (right). Curiosity and the descent stage are tucked inside the aeroshell. Along the way to Mars, the cruise stage will perform several trajectory correction maneuvers to adjust the spacecraft's path toward its final, precise landing site on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Nov 26 Launch Video below – capptured from inside the Pad 41 security fence

Curiosity’s interplanetary injection was spot on ! – following her Nov. 26 blastoff aboard the 2 million pound thrust Atlas V booster from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

For a birds-eye view of where it all started, watch the cool close-up launch video, below taken from within the Atlas pad security fence.

Indeed the launch precision was so good that mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadsena, Calif., have announced they postponed the first of six planned course correction burns for the agency’s newest Mars rover (…)
Read the rest of Flawlessly On Course Curiosity Cruising to Mars – No Burn Needed Now (864 words)

© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2011. |
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Rotation curves of the Andromeda Galaxy. Actual rotational velocities of the outer stars are the white line, while velocities that would be expected from the estimated mass of the visible matter in the galaxy are the red line. Hence, we conclude that over 80% of the galaxy’s mass must be dark matter. (Credit Queens Uni.).

You probably want to put on your skeptical goggles and set them to maximum for this one. An Italian mathematician has come up with some complex formulae that can, with remarkable similarity, mimic the rotation curves of spiral galaxies without the need for dark matter.

Currently, these galactic rotation curves represent key evidence for the existence of dark matter – since the outer stars of spinning galaxies often move around a galactic disk so fast that they should fly off into intergalactic space – unless there is an additional ‘invisible’ mass present in the galaxy to gravitationally hold them in their orbits.(…)
Read the rest of Astronomy Without A Telescope – Could Dark Matter Not Matter? (732 words)

© Steve Nerlich for Universe Today, 2011. |
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