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Wow, Meade Instruments Just Filed for Bankruptcy Protection

Meade Instruments, a company familiar to any backyard astronomer who’s drooled over their telescopes, has filed for bankruptcy. The company has fallen on hard times in recent years, as they’ve faced increasing competition. Meade also recently lost a lawsuit, which pushed them over the edge into bankruptcy.

The company is based in Irvine, California, and was founded in 1972. They started out selling small refracting telescopes. They expanded into Newtonian reflectors and Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes over the years. Now, they sell telescope models worth upwards of $10,000.

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This Galaxy Has Been Home to 5 Supernovae in the Last 20 Years

When stars die, they don’t die quietly but prefer to go out with a bang! This is known as a supernova, which occurs when a star has expended all of its fuel and undergoes gravitational collapse. In the process, the outer layers of the star will be blown off in a massive explosion visible from billions of light-years away. For decades, NASA has been monitoring galaxies beyond the Milky Way and detected numerous supernova taking place.

For instance, over the past 20 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has been monitoring the galaxy NGC 5468 – an intermediate spiral galaxy located roughly 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. In that time, this galaxy has experienced 5 supernovae and, thanks to its orientation (perpendicular to our own), astronomers have been able to study this galaxy and its supernovae in glorious detail.

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We Know We’re Made of Stardust. But Did it Come From Red Giants?

We’ve all heard this one: when you drink a glass of water, that water has already been through a bunch of other people’s digestive tracts. Maybe Attila the Hun’s or Vlad the Impaler’s; maybe even a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s.

Well, the same thing is true of stars and matter. All the matter we see around us here on Earth, even our own bodies, has gone through at least one cycle of stellar birth and death, maybe more. But which type of star?

That’s what a team of researchers at ETH Zurich (Ecole polytechnique federale de Zurich) wanted to know.

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Weekly Space Hangout: December 11, 2019 – Charlie Duke and Tom O’Conner from Astrograms

Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)

Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg & ChartYourWorld.org)

Dave Dickinson (www.astroguyz.com / @astroguyz)

Carolyn Collins Petersen (TheSpaceWriter.com / @spacewriter)

Moiya McTier (https://www.moiyamctier.com/ / @GoAstroMo)

Tonight we are pleased to welcome Tom O’Connor and Charlie Duke, founders of AstroGrams, to the Weekly Space Hangout.

AstroGrams is a unique project intended to promote awareness of space by allowing people to feel part of the space program by creating personalized aluminimum plaques which celebrate and commemorate key events in their lives. These plaques are then sent to space aboard select space missions such as visiting the ISS and then returning to earth.

Charlie Duke is an Apollo-era astronaut who became the youngest man to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 16 mission in April 1972. During that mission he brought his family along with him in the form of a family photo which he then left on the moon. This was part of the inspiriation behind AstroGrams

You can learn more about AstroGrams by visiting their webpage https://astrograms.com/Story.php and following them on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/AstroGrams/

Announcements:

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We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page – Please subscribe!

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Why Does Enceladus Have Stripes at its South Pole?

Saturn’s moon Enceladus has captivating scientists ever since the Voyager 2 mission passed through the system in 1981. The mystery has only deepened since the arrival of the Cassini probe in 2004, which included the discovery of four parallel, linear fissures around the southern polar region. These features were nicknamed “Tiger Stripes” because of their appearance and the way they stand out from the rest of the surface.

Since their discovery, scientists have attempted to answer what these are and what created them in the first place. Thankfully, new research led by the Carnegie Institute of Science has revealed the physics governing these fissures. This includes how they are related to the moon’s plume activity, why they appear around Enceladus’ south pole, and why other bodies don’t have similar features.

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NASA’s TESS Watched an Outburst from Comet 46P/Wirtanen

TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, has imaged an outburst from the comet 46P/Wirtanen. It caught the outburst in what NASA is calling the clearest images yet of a comet outburst from start to finish. A comet outburst is a significant but temporary increase in the comet’s activity, outside of the normal sunlight-driven vaporization of ices that creates a comet’s coma and tail.

Astronomers aren’t certain what causes them, but a new study based on this observation is shedding some light on them.

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December Meteor Squalls: Prospects for the 2019 Geminids and Ursids

2019 Geminids

December means chillier climes for northern hemisphere residents, a time to huddle inside near the campfire, both real and cyber. I’ve always thought this was a shame, as the cold crisp nights of winter also offer up sharp, clear skies. Over the past decade or so, December gives observers another reason to brave the cold: the Geminids.

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New Project Headed by Apollo’s Charlie Duke to Send Messages to Space

When astronaut Charlie Duke walked on the Moon in April of 1972 during the Apollo 16 mission, he brought along a very personal memento with a message he wanted to leave behind.   

“When I walked on the Moon, I took a photo of my family along and wrote a brief message on the back of the photo to leave on the Moon,” Duke said. “I wanted my family to be part of my mission and it was my way of taking them with me – to celebrate my family.”

Duke has now helped spearhead a project that allows people on Earth to send their message into space. He says this project, called AstroGrams, enables anyone to celebrate, commemorate or communicate in space in a truly unique way.

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