Universe Today

The Hubble Space Telescope has recently provided us with some astonishing images of exoplanets orbiting distant stars. This is a departure from the indirect detection of exoplanets by measuring the "wobble" of stars (revealing the gravitational presence of a massive planetary body) or the transit of exoplanets through the line of sight of the parent star (causing its brightness to dim). Scientists have refined Hubble's exoplanet hunting abilities to directly image these alien worlds in visible light. However, astronomers now have another trick to find these mysterious worlds. A new imaging technique is allowing us to see exoplanets already hiding in archival Hubble data…
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Filed under: Astronomy, Extrasolar Planets | 22 Comments »

Approximately $400 million extra has become available for NASA manned space flight and managers are currently discussing the possibility of using it toward a second test flight of the Ares I-X. The first test flight of the next generation launch vehicle is planned for a summer 2009 launch, and with this extra funding comes the possibility of a second test flight dubbed "Ares I-X prime". In a renewed vigour for getting the US back to the Moon by 2020, and the looming "5-year gap", it appears the extra funding may allow NASA to hasten the development of the Constellation Program…
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Filed under: Constellation | 25 Comments »

We've all heard that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will collide particles together at previously unimaginable energies. In doing so, the LHC will recreate the conditions immediately after the Big Bang, thereby allowing us to catch a glimpse of what particles the Universe would have been filled with at this time. In a way, the LHC will be a particle time machine, allowing us to see the high energy conditions last seen immediately after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

So, if we wanted to understand the conditions inside a giant exoplanet, how could we do it? We can't directly measure it ourselves, we have to create a laboratory experiment that could recreate the conditions in the core of one of these huge exoplanet gas giants. Much like the LHC will recreate the conditions of the Big Bang, a powerful laser intended to kick-start fusion reactions will be used in an effort to help scientists have a very brief look into the cores of these distant worlds…
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Filed under: Extrasolar Planets, Physics | 17 Comments »

It may be old, but it ain't dead. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has found the oldest isolated pulsar ever detected. While this pulsar is ancient, this exotic object is still kicking and is surprisingly active. According to radio observations, the pulsar, PSR J0108-1431 (J0108 for short) is about 200 million years old. Among isolated pulsars — ones that have not been spun-up in a binary system — it is over 10 times older than the previous record holder. A team of astronomers led by George Pavlov of Penn State University observed J0108 in X-rays with Chandra, and found that it glows much brighter in X-rays than was expected for a pulsar of such advanced years.

At a distance of 770 light years, it is also one of the nearest pulsars we know of.
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Filed under: Astronomy, Chandra | 55 Comments »

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter unexpectedly rebooted its computer Monday morning, Feb. 23, and put itself into a limited-activity mode, an automated safety response to an anomalous event such as a cosmic ray hit on part of the electronics on board the spacecraft. This is the fifth time since August of 2005 that the spacecraft has gone into safe mode. However, the symptoms from this week's event do not match any of the prior safe-mode events. "We are going to bring the spacecraft back to normal operations, but we are going to do so in a cautious way, treating this national treasure carefully," said Jim Erickson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project manager for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. "The process will take at least a few days."
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Filed under: Mars, Missions | 14 Comments »

Scientists have mapped vast dune fields on Titan that may align with the wind on Saturn’s biggest moon — flowing opposite the way climate models had predicted.

The maps, as above, represent four years of radar data collected by the Cassini spacecraft. They reveal rippled dunes that are generally oriented east-west, which means Titan’s winds probably blow toward the east instead of the west. If so, Titan’s surface winds blow opposite the direction suggested by previous global circulation models. On the example above, the arrows indicate the general wind direction. The dark areas without arrows might have dunes but have not yet been imaged. 

“At Titan there are very few clouds, so determining which way the wind blows is not an easy thing, but by tracking the direction in which Titan’s sand dunes form, we get some insight into the global wind pattern,” says Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. “Think of the dunes sort of like a weather vane, pointing us to the direction the winds are blowing.”

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Filed under: Astronomy, Saturn, Titan | 31 Comments »

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Are you ready for the weekend? Then let's tackle both fun and serious studies as we take on a bright open star cluster, Herschel 400 objects, lunar subjects, planets, comets and even a galaxy cluster. If you're ready to learn more about the history behind the observing and have some fun under the stars, then just follow me… Read more…

Filed under: Astronomy, Observing | 7 Comments »

In a budget blueprint released by the White House on Thursday, President Barack Obama has confirmed his intent to carry out the planned retirement of the ageing Space Shuttle next year. Additionally, the the blueprint affirms Obama's stance on a return trip to the Moon. The US will return to the lunar surface by the year 2020, following the time scale set out by George W. Bush's 2004 Vision for Space Exploration. However, there is no mention that the next manned lunar mission will be carried out by the Constellation Program, a project plagued by criticism about its design and technology.

Although the blueprint may differ from the final budget submitted to Congress in April, it looks like there is some certainty about the future of the shuttle and the direction NASA will be taking over the next decade. And now the space agency has a little bit more money to do something about that troublesome 5-year gap in US manned access to space…
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Filed under: Moon, NASA, Space Shuttle | 25 Comments »

"Just like household dust, cosmic dust can be a nuisance," said astronomer Ryan Scranton of the University of California, Davis. Scranton is part of a team of researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey that have been analyzing the colors of distant quasars whose light passes in the vicinity of foreground galaxies on its way to the Earth. What they found is that the vast expanses of intergalactic space appear to be filled with a haze of tiny, smoke-like "dust" particles that dim the light from distant objects and subtly change their colors. "Galaxies contain lots of dust, most of it formed in the outer regions of dying stars," said team leader Brice Ménard of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. "The surprise is that we are seeing dust hundreds of thousands of light-years outside of the galaxies, in intergalactic space."

An implication of this finding means that since most distant supernovae are seen through some haze, our current estimates of their distances may be affected.
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Filed under: Astronomy | 26 Comments »

Roughly 38 million miles from Earth and traveling at a relative velocity of 140,000 miles per hour, the speedy Comet C/2007 N3 Lulin has caught our imaginations in a big way during the beginning months of the International Year of Astronomy. Right now, Comet Lulin has already sped past the Sun, slipped by stately Saturn from our point of view and is on a parabolic trajectory heading out from our solar system. This means it will never come back… Read more…

Filed under: Comets | 6 Comments »

Engineers working on the problematic hydrogen flow control valves on space shuttle Discovery have made enough progress that NASA has tentatively set a March 12 launch date for the mission to bring the last set of solar arrays to the International Space Station. NASA said an exact target launch date will be determined as work progresses with the three valves on the shuttle. Launching Discovery in March would allow plans to proceed for the Hubble repair mission, planned for liftoff on May 12 launch with Atlantis, as well as shuttle mission STS-127, also in May. If Discovery is delayed to April, the Hubble flight would slip to around June 2.
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Filed under: Space Flight, Space Shuttle | 3 Comments »

The Winter issue of Space Lifestyle Magazine is now online and available for free. There is a great article by Ian O'Neill about SpaceX, a fascinating look at space media by writer Lois Elfman (featuring Miles O'Brien, Alan Boyle, Bill Harwood, Irene Klotz, Disco Dave Mosher and more), an interesting overview about the work being done to create magnetic shielding for spacecraft, a comprehensive rundown of the X PRIZE Lunar Lander Challenge competition last fall, and much more including book reviews (Death From the Sky by Phil Plait) and a special discount for the National Space Symposium to be held March 30-April 2 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. If you haven't already "subscribed" to SLM, please do so for the chance to win a Zero-G parabolic flight and other prizes. Enjoy!

Check out Space Lifestyle Magazine.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

This week's WITU Challenge image was sent in by a faithful reader of Universe Today who frequents the comment section as NeoGuru. I'll not give any hints as to where NeoGuru got the image, or what it is, or whether this image can be found anywhere else on the web (for those of you that like to search online for the image and link the answer!). You'll have to wait until tomorrow (Thursday) for the answer to be revealed for this week's Challenge.

UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below — don't peek before you make your guess!
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Filed under: Where In the Universe? | 41 Comments »

A new type of lunar robots is being designed which could help prepare locations on the Moon for human outposts and landing pads. With supervised autonomy, small robots the size of riding mowers and weighing 300 kg or less could prepare a site in about 6 months, says a new study by Astrobotic Technology Inc. in cooperation with Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.

Anyone else having visions of Wall-E on the Moon?
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Filed under: Moon, Space Exploration | 41 Comments »

 

When Mars and Jupiter migrated to their present orbits around 4 billion years ago, they left scars in the asteroid belt that are still visible today.

The evidence is unveiled in a new paper in this week's issue of the journal Nature, by planetary scientists David Minton and Renu Malhotra from the University of Arizona in Tucson.  

The asteroid belt has long been known to harbor gaps, called Kirkwood gaps, in distinct locations. Some of these gaps correspond to unstable zones, where the modern-day gravitational influence of Jupiter and Saturn eject asteroids. But for the first time, Minton and Malhotra have noticed that some clearings don't fit the bill.

"What we found was that many regions are depleted in asteroids relative to other regions, not just in the previously known Kirkwood gaps that are explained by the current planetary orbits," Minton wrote in an email. In an editorial accompanying the paper, author Kevin Walsh added, "Qualitatively, it looks as if a snow plough were driven through the main asteroid belt, kicking out asteroids along the way and slowing to a stop at the inner edge of the belt." 

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Filed under: Asteroids, Astronomy, Jupiter, Saturn, Solar System | 118 Comments »