For various reasons, I've decided to take my syndication feed offline while I think of a new solution. Hopefully this won't affect people too much.
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Are you chasing Comet 177/P 2006 M3 (Barnard 2)? If so, I'd like to hear your comments on this fast and diffuse traveler before the Moon takes it out for awhile. In the meantime, journey along to rest of the night skies, because….
Here's what's up!
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It might sound hard to believe, but dozens of spacecraft have crashed themselves onto the surface of the Moon. All in the name of science. The first was the Soviet spacecraft Luna 2, which smashed into the lunar surface in 1959. Well, an upcoming mission is all set to do it again. NASA's Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will launch in 2008 together with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Its booster rocket will smash into the Moon first, carving out a large crater, and then the smaller Shepherding spacecraft will smash into the same spot, analyzing the debris cloud before it's destroyed too.
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Look at a quasar and a gamma ray burst - two of the most luminous objects in the Universe - and you're 4 times more likely to see intervening galaxies in front of the burst. This conclusion was reached by astronomers from UC Santa Cruz, who studied more than 50,000 quasars, and a handful of gamma ray bursts. There shouldn't be a connection between the quasar or burst in the background, and the number of galaxies in the foreground… but there is, and right now that relationship is a complete mystery.
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New research is suggesting that planet-wide dust storms on Mars could create a snow of corrosive chemicals toxic to life. These Martian storms generate a significant amount of static electricity, and could be capable of splitting carbon dioxide and water molecules apart. The elements could then reform into hydrogen peroxide molecules, and fall to the ground as a snow that would destroy organic molecules associated with life. This toxic chemical might be concentrated in the top layers of Martian soil, preventing life from surviving.
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Have you gotten a copy of the email yet? If you haven't, you probably will. Forwarded from a friend, forwarded again and again until the original source is lost in the murky cloud of the Internet, it encourages you to get set for the experience of a lifetime. When MARS WILL LOOK AS LARGE AS THE FULL MOON!!!!! Is this going to happen? No. But there's a strange gem of truth at the heart of this misunderstanding/hoax. I'll give you the history and then everything you need to explain what's going on to your excited but misinformed email forwarding friends.
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Nope, that's not an error in the photograph. The ghostly white stripe in Saturn's rings was captured by Cassini on July 23, 2006. This is the first time that Cassini has seen spokes in Saturn's rings in nearly a year, and the first time from the sunlit side of the rings. Some scientists think the spokes might be caused by meteoroid impacts onto the rings. Others suggest they're created by an instability in Saturn's magnetic field.
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Astronomers have used the Subaru and Keck telescopes to discover gigantic filaments of galaxies stretching across 200 million light-years in space. These filaments, formed just 2 billion years after the Big Bang, are the largest structures ever discovered in the Universe. The filaments contain at least 30 huge concentrations of gas, each of which contains 10x the mass of the Milky Way.
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New research from NASA, published in the journal Nature suggests that it's always raining on Titan. Not thunderstorms, but a low level liquid methane drizzle that never stops. When Huygens landed onto the surface of Titan, it came down with a splat, presumably into mud. Scientists estimate that the amount of rain amounts to about 5 cm (2 inches) a year of accumulation - the same amount that falls in Death Valley on Earth. But this rain falls steadily, keeping the ground relatively damp.
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This photograph of galaxy NGC 908 was taken with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. This spiral galaxy was first discovered in 1786 by William Herschel, and is considered a starburst galaxy. Clusters of young, massive stars pepper its spiral arms indicating regions of furious star formation. NGC 908 must have had a recent encounter with another galaxy; the gravitational interaction between the galaxies caused gas clouds to collapse, igniting star formation.
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Look into the sky with X-ray instruments, and you'll see a background radiation in all directions. Astronomers think these X-rays are produced by the supermassive black holes at the centres of most galaxies. But astronomers can't find these black holes, which should be bright in the most energetic range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Maybe they're hiding; shrouded in thick clouds of gas and dust. Or maybe something else is generating all the X-ray background radiation.
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Pulsars are the rapidly spinning corpses of massive stars. And although they were discovered nearly 40 years ago, they still hold many mysteries. One such mystery: why do pulsars have million-degree hotspots around their poles? New data from ESA's XMM-Newton X-Ray observatory have cast doubt on the theory that charged particles are colliding with the pulsar's surface at its poles. XMM-Newton failed to see the X-ray emissions in several old pulsars that should have been very bright if particles were continuously colliding.
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Natural disasters are, unfortunately, something that we must contend with. For example, a flash flood can plunge towns into unexpected chaos, a hurricane strike can suddenly devastate an entire region and science has found evidence of an ancient asteroid impact that curtailed the rein of the dinosaurs by affecting climate across our planet. But these kind of events occur on an even greater scale - natural circumstances can lead to catastrophes that engulf whole galaxies such as seen in this picture.
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When ESA's Huygens probe landed on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan last year, it continued to transmit data for 71 minutes. The signal relayed through Cassini had a strange fluctuation in power as the angle between the lander and spacecraft changed. Researchers were able to reproduce this power oscillation when they realized that the signal was bouncing off of pebbles on Titan's surface. They were able calculate that the surface around Huygens is mostly flat, but littered with 5-10 cm (2-4 inch) rocks.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found new evidence of hydrocarbon lakes in Titan's northern latitudes. In a new set of images, the dark patches - thought to be liquid methane or ethane - seem to have channels leading in and out, like rivers. Under Cassini's radar view, they're completely black, which means they don't reflect any radar signals back. This leads scientists to believe they're very smooth, liquid surfaces.
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Some of the brightest objects in the Universe are quasars. A mystery for decades, most astronomers now believe quasars are the bright centres of galaxies with actively feeding supermassive black holes. A team of researchers have found evidence that there might be something very different at the heart of these galaxies to cause quasars. Instead of black holes consuming matter, there could be objects with powerful magnetic fields that act like propellers, churning matter back into the galaxy.
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Consider the dramatic binary system of RS Ophiuchi. A tiny white dwarf star, about the size of our Earth, is locked in orbit with a red giant star. A stream of material is flowing from the red giant to the white dwarf. Every 20 years or so, the accumulated material erupts as a nova explosion, brightening the star temporarily. But this is just a precursor to the inevitable cataclysm - when the white dwarf collapses under this stolen mass, and then explodes as a supernova. Dr. Jennifer Sokoloski has been studying RS Ophiuchi since it flared up earlier this year; she discusses what they've learned so far, and what's to come.
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Welcome to a land of all sight and no sound… A land where shadow meets substance. Welcome to the "X" zone! Caught in a time warp? Not this week. Be sure to enjoy some of the best observing of the year as we head towards the center of our galaxy, walk on the lunar surface and chase shooting stars. So head out into the twilight, because….
Here's what's up!
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Nearly all of the extrasolar planets discovered so far have been huge, Jupiter-sized and above. The question is: could smaller, Earth-sized planets last in the same star systems? Researchers created a simulation where tiny planets were put into the same system as larger planets to see if they could gather enough material to become as large as the Earth. They found that one nearby system - 55 Cancri - could have formed terrestrial planets, with substantial water in the habitable zone.
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Astronomers have been predicting the meetup for months; Jupiter's Great Red Spot and its newly formed "Red Spot Jr." were bound to have a close encounter. This high-resolution photo from the Gemini Observatory shows how they looked July 13, 2006. Although both are red in visible light, they look white because the image was captured in the near-infrared wavelength, which can reveal more details. Astronomers don't think anything dramatic is going to happen as the storms slip past each other this time around.
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New data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are giving astronomers a sense of how protoplanetary disks might act as a brake to slow stellar rotation. Young stars spin very quickly, often completing a rotation in less than a day. They could spin even faster, but something is slowing them down. Spitzer gathered data on 500 young stars in the Orion Nebula. The fastest spinning stars don't have planetary disks around then. It might be that the magnetic field of the star interacts with the planetary disk, slowing the star down.
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A team of astronomers recently used Arizona's Infrared-Optical Telescope Array (IOTA) of three linked telescopes to peer 4 billion years into the future, when our Sun balloons up to become a red giant star. The three instruments act as a powerful interferometer, providing a view that would only be possible with a much larger instrument. They observed several red giant stars - the eventual fate of our Sun - and discovered their surfaces to be mottled and varied, covered with enormous sunspots.
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NASA today announced the astronaut assignments for the upcoming STS-122 space shuttle mission, tentatively scheduled for October 2007. The commander will be Stephen N. Frick, and the pilot will be Alan G. Poindexter. The mission specialists will be Rex J. Walheim, Stanley G. Love, Leland D. Melvin and European Space Agency astronaut Hans Schlegel. During this mission, the space shuttle will deliver the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station.
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New radar images of Titan show surprisingly familiar terrain on Saturn's largest moon. The radar images show a strip 4,500 km (2,796 miles) long, straight through the Xanadu region. Some images show hills, valleys and dark sand dunes cut by river networks - the similarity to Earth is striking. Of course, Titan is so cold it can't be water; these rivers are probably formed by liquid methane or ethane. Cassini will return to Titan on Saturday, July 22 and capture images of the northern latitudes.
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You're looking at the heart of your own galaxy with X-ray specs. This photograph was captured by NASA's Chandra X-Ray observatory, and shows the three massive star clusters that surround the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. These star clusters have so many large, bright stars that the whole area blazes in the X-ray spectrum. This photo shows 1 million seconds of accumulated observing time by Chandra of these mysterious region of our galaxy.
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