Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Galaxy Zoo is Expanding to Include a Whole New “Zooniverse”

Galaxy Zoo has been an enormously successful citizen science project; so much so, that other astronomers, as well as scientists from other disciplines, have taken notice and now they want to get in on the act of having the public help make discoveries about our world and Universe. Today, the Galaxy Zoo team has launched Zooniverse. This new website will be a platform, or “home” to a plethora of new science projects where the public can take their pick of where and how they can make meaningful contributions and discoveries.

“Zooniverse became inevitable around the time that Galaxy Zoo launched in 2007,” said Chris Lintott, one of the founders of the original Galaxy Zoo, and now Zooniverse, “because it was obvious a few hours into the first day that we had hit on a way of doing science that was really powerful. And it was clear that this was not only going to work with for galaxies, but for other science as well. Soon we’ll we have solar investigations, climate science, and a lot of other citizen science projects coming online.”

For those “Zooites” who love Galaxy Zoo – don’t worry, that project isn’t going anywhere.

“Galaxy Zoo itself will remain the sort of comfortable old sofa in the corner,” Lintott told Universe Today, “so anyone who is comfortable with that can remain sitting there, classifying galaxies and discovering things. But for people who want to explore a bit further and find new and exciting places to be, we’re going to expand the Zooniverse by pointing some new data to the sofa.”

On Dec. 16 an astrophysics project will be introduced in Beta to people already involved in Galaxy Zoo and the offshoot projects: Galaxy Zoo 2, Supernova Hunt, and Galaxy Mergers. If all goes well, it will be launched “live” to the public early 2010.

With new advanced instruments and ways of gathering data, scientists in almost all disciplines are inundated with data but don’t have an efficient way to sort through, organize and classify the information. Galaxy Zoo’s success (over 51 million classifications by over 250,000 people, as well as new discoveries and several science papers published) has attracted the attention of other scientists, many who have contacted Lintott and his team, wondering if there was any way they could use that same model to have the public help with other unique science tasks.

Lintott said they have a long list of additional projects that are already under development. “In a couple of years’ time we should have some wonderful projects come online, such as studying ancient artifacts, oceanography projects, looking at Earth from space, animal behavior projects, and more. We keep getting new really great projects contacting us all the time.”

“We’ve known this has been coming for years, but we didn’t really know how to do it,” said Arfon Smith from Oxford University, one of the developers of the Zooniverse site, who has been working on how to integrate other science projects into the Galaxy Zoo model. “We needed a big project to come along that wasn’t dealing with galaxies to actually get us pointed in the right direction. The technical challenge was to make the Zooniverse a nice place to be, and to make it easy for users to move between the different ‘Zoos.'”

If you are registered on Galaxy Zoo, you’ll notice you can now access and seamlessly move between Galaxy Zoo, the Mergers and Supernova Hunt sites without re-logging in. The same will hold true for the new science projects that will be coming online on the Zooniverse in the coming months and years.

“There’s an opportunity here for people to explore a range of citizen science projects,” said Smith. “Zooniverse will be a place where people can check to see what projects they might want to work on.”

“The common thread is that each project needs the public’s help to increase our understanding of the Universe, and each will produce results that could not happen without the public,” said Lintott. “Soon, there should be a science project for everyone’s interests.”

Lintott said Universe Today readers will have to wait a little while to see what they actually are, but we will definitely keep everyone updated on the new citizen science projects as they become available.

Alongside the Zooniverse, another new website, Citizen Science Alliance, has been launched for the organizations who will be coming to the Zooniverse. “The Citizen Science Alliance involves our partners,” said Lintott, “and all of us believe that making use the public’s skills, talents and energy is not only helpful in dealing with the flood of data confronting us, but it is necessary.”

Source: interview with Chris Lintott and Arfon Smith

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Join the World in Looking for Geminids This Weekend with #MeteorWatch

Amateur astronomers around the world will be watching for what is predicted to be one of the year’s best meteor showers, the Geminids. Join in and make it a global experience with another #Meteorwatch on Twitter. #Meteorwatch, which occurred during the Perseid meteor shower in mid-August, is a social media astronomical event that was a big hit among Twitterers. But there’s lots of ways to join in, not only on Twitter. Everyone is welcome whether they are an astronomer or just have an interest in the night sky. The aim is to get as many people to look up as possible and maybe see meteors or even some fireballs for the first time.
Continue reading “Join the World in Looking for Geminids This Weekend with #MeteorWatch”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Phobos and Deimos Together At Last!

ESA’s Mars Express orbiter took images last month of Mars two moons, Phobos and Deimos. This is the first time the moons have been imaged together in high resolution, but as Emily Lakdawalla points out on Planetary Blog, not the first time the two have been imaged together: the Spirit rover did it back in 2005! But these new image definitely provide a ‘wow’ factor, as well as helping to validate and refine existing orbit models of the two moons.

Phobos and Deimos together for the first time in high resolution. Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
Phobos and Deimos together for the first time in high resolution. Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

“It doesn’t happen very often that both Martian moons are right in front of the camera, directly one behind the other,” said Harald Hoffmann from the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

“During the now more than six-year long project, we have had several opportunities to photograph the two moons together,” said Klaus-Dieter Matz, who worked with Hoffmann to plan the acquisition of these images. “The geometry of the constellation during Orbit 7492 on 5 November 2009 was especially favorable, so this time we wanted to try taking a sequence of photographs – and this first attempt has delivered the expected result!”

The geometrical relationships between Mars, its moons and the Mars Express probe at the time of the sequence. Credit: DLR
The geometrical relationships between Mars, its moons and the Mars Express probe at the time of the sequence. Credit: DLR

Phobos, the larger of the two moons, orbits closer to the Red Planet, circling it every 7 hours and 39 minutes. It travels faster relative to Mars than the Moon relative to Earth. It was 11,800 km from Mars Express when the images were taken. Deimos was 26,200 km away.

The images were acquired with the Super Resolution Channel (SRC) of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The camera took 130 images of the moons on 5 November at 9:14 CET over period of 1.5 minutes at intervals of 1s, speeding up to 0.5-s intervals toward the end. The image resolution is 110 m/pixel for Phobos and 240 m/pixel for Deimos — since Deimos was more than twice as far from the camera.

Sources: DLR, ESA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Earth’s Atmosphere Came from Outer Space

A new study from the University of Heidelberg suggests that flash-heating and carbon depletion could have been intrinsic to the emergence and evolution of life on Earth. Credit: NASA

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A new study finds the gases which formed the Earth’s atmosphere – as well as its oceans – did not come from inside the Earth but from comets and meteorites hitting Earth during the Late Heavy Bombardment period. A research team tested volcanic gases to uncover the new evidence. “We found a clear meteorite signature in volcanic gases,” said Dr. Greg Holland the project’s lead scientist. “From that we now know that the volcanic gases could not have contributed in any significant way to the Earth’s atmosphere. Therefore the atmosphere and oceans must have come from somewhere else, possibly from a late bombardment of gas and water rich materials similar to comets.”

Holland said textbook images of ancient Earth with huge volcanoes spewing gas into the atmosphere will have to be rethought.

According to the theory of the Late Heavy Bombardment, the inner solar system was pounded by a sudden rain of solar system debris only 700 million years after it formed, which likely had monumental effects on the nascent Earth. So far, the evidence for this event comes primarily from the dating of lunar samples, which indicates that most impact melt rocks formed in this very narrow interval of time. But this new research on the origin of Earth’s atmosphere may lend credence to this theory as well.

The researchers analyzed the krypton and xenon found in upper-mantle gases leaking from the Bravo Dome gas field in New Mexico. They found that the two noble gases have isotopic signatures characteristic of early Solar System material similar to me teorites instead of the modern atmosphere and oceans. It therefore appears that noble gases trapped within the young Earth did not contribute to Earth’s later atmosphere.
The study is also the first to establish the precise composition of the Krypton present in the Earth’s mantle.

“Until now, no one has had instruments capable of looking for these subtle signatures in samples from inside the Earth – but now we can do exactly that,” said Holland.

The team’s research, “Meteorite Kr in Earth’s Mantle Suggests a Late Accretionary Source for the Atmosphere” was published in the journal Science.

Sources: Science, EurekAlert

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Wow! Astronauts on EVA, As Seen From Earth

Ralf Vandebergh’s detail of an image he took on March 21, 2009 showing astronauts working outside the ISS. Credit: Ralf Vandebergh

Remember when it was a big deal when amateur astronomers starting imaging the International Space Station as seen from Earth, showing individual modules and other parts of the space station? One of the most proficient astrophotographers in that department has now just upped the game: Ralf Vandebergh has captured images of astronauts working outside the ISS during an EVA. Vandebergh, who lives in The Netherlands, used his 10-inch Newtonian backyard telescope to capture an image of STS-119 astronauts Joe Acaba and Steve Swanson working outside the ISS to install equipment on one of the trusses during the second EVA of the mission on March 21, 2009. Vandebergh told me he has been trying to image astronauts working outside the ISS since 2007, but hasn’t been successful until now. “In all opportunities I had until now, the astronauts were not on a visible part of the station,” he said “or they were in shadow or the pass or the seeing was simply not favourable.”

Below, enjoy the video Vandebergh created about his extreme zoom-in handiwork, and his explanation of how he was able to take the images.

Nice job Ralf! Check out his website of other telescopic spacecraft image here.

“It was great luck they were working on the Earth-facing side of the port 3 truss on this spacewalk,” Vandebergh said. “Why? This truss is a reasonable open structure, which means it appears a little bit transparent as seen from the Earth with the black space as a background. This makes this particular truss (and the Starboard 3 truss on the other side) look considerably darker then the other trusses in the vicinity.
When a high reflective white suited spacewalker works in front of this truss, there is a very good
chance you receive light from it on your CCD. By following very precisely the live station camera’s–
and helmet cam recordings on NASA TV, I knew exactly were to expect them on the image.”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Extra Star Found in the Big Dipper

The handle of the Big Dipper just got stronger! Astronomers have found an additional star located in the Dipper’s gripper that is invisible to the unaided eye. Alcor, one of the stars that makes the bend in the Big Dipper’s handle has a smaller red dwarf companion orbiting it. Now known as “Alcor B,” the star was found with an innovative technique called “common parallactic motion,” and was found by members of Project 1640, an international collaborative team that gives a nod to the insight of Galileo Gallilei.

“We used a brand new technique for determining that an object orbits a nearby star, a technique that’s a nice nod to Galileo,” says Ben R. Oppenheimer, Curator at the Museum of Natural History. “Galileo showed tremendous foresight. Four hundred years ago, he realized that if Copernicus was right—that the Earth orbits the Sun—they could show it by observing the ‘parallactic motion’ of the nearest stars. Incredibly, Galileo tried to use Alcor to see it but didn’t have the necessary precision.”

If Galileo had been able to see change over time in Alcor’s position, he would have had conclusive evidence that Copernicus was right. Parallactic motion is the way nearby stars appear to move in an annual, repeatable pattern relative to much more distant stars, simply because the observer on Earth is circling the Sun and sees these stars from different places over the year.

The collaborative team that found the star includes astronomers from the American Museum of Natural History, the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, the California Institute of Technology, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Alcor is a relatively young star twice the mass of the Sun. Stars this massive are relatively rare, short-lived, and bright. Alcor and its cousins in the Big Dipper formed from the same cloud of matter about 500 million years ago, something unusual for a constellation since most of these patterns in the sky are composed of unrelated stars. Alcor shares a position in the Big Dipper constellation with another star, Mizar. In fact, both stars were used as a common test of eyesight—being able to distinguish “the rider from the horse”—among ancient people. One of Galileo’s colleagues observed that Mizar itself is actually a double, the first binary star system resolved by a telescope. Many years later, the two components Mizar A and B were themselves determined each to be tightly orbiting binaries, altogether forming a quadruple system.

In March, members of Project 1640 attached their coronagraph and adaptive optics to the 200-inch Hale Telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California and pointed to Alcor. “Right away I spotted a faint point of light next to the star,” says Neil Zimmerman, a graduate student at Columbia University who is doing his PhD dissertation at the Museum. “No one had reported this object before, and it was very close to Alcor, so we realized it was probably an unknown companion star.”

The team retuned a few months later and found the star had the same motion as Alcor, proving it was a companion star.

Alcor and its smaller companion Alcor B are both about 80 light-years away and orbit each other every 90 years or more. The team was also able to determine Alcor B is a common type of M-dwarf star or red dwarf that is about 250 times the mass of Jupiter, or roughly a quarter of the mass of our Sun. The companion is much smaller and cooler than Alcor A.

“Red dwarfs are not commonly reported around the brighter higher mass type of star that Alcor is, but we have a hunch that they are actually fairly common,” says Oppenheimer. “This discovery shows that even the brightest and most familiar stars in the sky hold secrets we have yet to reveal.”

The team plans to use parallactic motion again in the future. “We hope to use the same technique to check that other objects we find like exoplanets are truly bound to their host stars,” says Zimmerman. “In fact, we anticipate other research groups hunting for exoplanets will also use this technique to speed up the discovery process.”

Source: EurekAlert

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Saturn’s Hexagon Endures!

This movie from Cassini, made possible only as Saturn’s north pole emerged from winter darkness, shows new details of a jet stream that follows a hexagon-shaped path and has long puzzled scientists.

You can also check out these cool telescopes that will help you see the beauty of planet Saturn.

The Cassini spacecraft was able to take another look at one of Saturn’s strangest features – a bizarre six-sided cloud structure circling the entire north pole. This structure was hinted at when the Voyager spacecraft first visited the planet nearly 30 years ago, and Cassini was able to take a brief look a few years ago with Cassini’s infrared camera. But these latest images provide evidence the hexagon-shaped jet stream is still there, (the north pole has been shrouded in darkness but has now recently emerged into sunlight) and gives scientists the most detail yet to study the intriguing hexagon shape crowning the planet.

The hexagon shape is the path of a jet stream flowing around the north pole, and new images reveal concentric circles, curlicues, walls and streamers not seen in previous images. Much to the delight and bafflement of Cassini scientists, the location and shape of the hexagon in the latest images match up with what they saw in the Voyager pictures.

“The longevity of the hexagon makes this something special, given that weather on Earth lasts on the order of weeks,” said Kunio Sayanagi, from the Cassini imaging team. “It’s a mystery on par with the strange weather conditions that give rise to the long-lived Great Red Spot of Jupiter.”

The hexagon was originally discovered in images taken by the Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s. It encircles Saturn at about 77 degrees north latitude and has been estimated to have a diameter wider than two Earths. The jet stream is believed to whip along the hexagon at around 100 meters per second (220 miles per hour).

But what causes the hexagon? Scientists aren’t quite sure. Particularly intriguing is where it gets and expels its energy and how it has stayed so organized for so long. The Cassini team plans to search the new images for clues, taking an especially close look at the newly identified waves that radiate from the corners of the hexagon — where the jet takes its hardest turns — and the multi-walled structure that extends to the top of Saturn’s cloud layer in each of the hexagon’s six sides. There’s also the a large dark spot that appeared in a different position in a previous infrared image from Cassini. In the latest images, the spot appears in the 2 o’clock position.

Early hexagon images from Voyager and ground-based telescopes suffered from poor viewing perspectives. Cassini, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, has a better angle for viewing the north pole. But the long darkness of Saturnian winter hid the hexagon from Cassini’s visible-light cameras for years. Infrared instruments, however, were able to obtain images by using heat patterns. Those images showed the hexagon is nearly stationary and extends deep into the atmosphere. They also discovered a hotspot and cyclone in the same region.

The visible-light cameras of Cassini’s imaging science subsystem, which have higher resolution than the infrared instruments and the Voyager cameras, got their long-awaited glimpse of the hexagon in January, as the planet approached equinox. Imaging team scientists calibrated and stitched together 55 images to create a mosaic and three-frame movie. The mosaics do not show the region directly around the north pole because it had not yet fully emerged from winter night at that time.

Because Saturn does not have land masses or oceans on its surface to complicate weather the way Earth does, its conditions should give scientists a more elementary model to study the physics of circulation patterns and atmosphere, said Kevin Baines, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who has studied the hexagon with Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer.

“Now that we can see undulations and circular features instead of blobs in the hexagon, we can start trying to solve some of the unanswered questions about one of the most bizarre things we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” Baines said. “Solving these unanswered questions about the hexagon will help us answer basic questions about weather that we’re still asking about our own planet.”

Source: JPL

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Where In The Universe #82

Here’s this week’s image for the Where In The Universe Challenge, to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. You know what to do: take a look at this image and see if you can determine where in the universe this image is from; give yourself extra points if you can name the instrument responsible for the image. We’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.

UPDATE: The answer is now posted below.

This is Centaurus A as seen in radio wavelengths (408 MHz, to be exact.) (Close, DrFlimmer, but not quite…) This image comes from the Chromoscope, the new online tool that allows you to look at the Universe in whatever wavelength you desire. Stuart Lowe, the lead developer of Chromoscope, showed me this particular image at the dotAstronomy conference last week (and thanks to Scibuff for not giving away the answer!)

The image comes from the all-sky continuum survey done at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.

Check back next week for another WITU Challenge!

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

What was the Norway Spiral?

Light in the sky over Norway, see at 7:50 am local time. Photo: Jan Petter Jørgensen via Vaeret

Just what created the big blue spiral in the sky over Norway in the early morning hours of Dec. 9, 2009? Time traveling Borgs? Psychedelic aliens? Most likely, it was something much more terrestrial and much more boring. Many reports say it was the failed launch of a Russian rocket, probably a Bulava ICBM, a problem-plagued Russian missile that reportedly had several test launches scheduled. Although Russian officials haven’t confirmed this (and in fact one official denied there was any rocket launch in the area) an anonymous Russian military source said it actually was failed launch from a submarine in the White Sea early Wednesday morning.

UPDATE (Dec. 10): Russia has finally admitted a missile accident with the Bulava ICBM. This rocket already has failed six of 13 previous tests, according to the BBC, so Russia might have been a little embarrassed about it.


In what seems to confirm a rocket launch, yesterday, a message from NAVTEX was issued message warning airplanes not to fly, and ships not to sail in that area:

ZCZC FA79
031230 UTC DEC 09
COASTAL WARNING ARKHANGELSK 94
SOUTHERN PART WHITE SEA
1.ROCKET LAUNCHING 2300 07 DEC TO 0600 08 DEC
09 DC 0200 TO 0900 10 DEC 0100 TO 0900
NAVIGATION PROHIBITED IN AREA

Additionally, a researcher at the Tromsø Geophysical Observatory (where they observe auroras) Truls Lynne Hansen is certain that the light was caused by a missile launch. “The missile has probably come out of control and exploded,” Hansen was quoted in the Barents Observer. “The peculiar spiral shaped light pattern comes from reflection of the sun in the leaking fuel.”
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Visible in the images and videos is the sunlight just beginning to peek over the horizon which would have back-lit the fuel.

Another launch on November 1 also caused strange light phenomenon in northern parts of Norway, although not as spectacular as the one today. It also caused speculation as to the cause, but it came from the launch of a Sineva missile from the nuclear submarine in the White Sea.

Doug Ellison from UnmannedSpaceflight.com has created a video (updated and improved from his earlier version we had in our previous article) showing the morphology of a tumbling rocket stage throwing out unspent fuel in two directions. “This is a set of rendered views using 3DS Max to produce a coarse simulation of what may have occurred to produce the beautiful formation in the sky over Norway earlier today,” he said. “It is not an ‘official’ answer, though. It looks beautiful, but there’s probably a fairly ordinary explanation.”

Other explanations?

Here are just a few that were emailed to me today:

Aurora: Not likely. No aurora has ever taken on this shape.

Birkeland Current: Again, not likely. A Birkeland Current a magnetic field aligned current in the Earth’s magnetosphere which flows from the magnetotail towards the Earth on the dawn side and in the other direction on the dusk side of the magnetosphere. Birkeland currents often show filamentary, or twisted “rope-like” magnetic structure, and they create the aurora Borealis and Australis when they reach the upper atmosphere.

Poisk module: This Russian module undocked from the International Space Station yesterday, and a employee at Boeing said the module would have had unspent fuel which would have been released on reentry. However, the timing doesn’t seem to be right as to when it would have burned up the in the atmosphere.

Projection: There has been some talk this was just a projection on the sky. However, the phenomenon was seen in a wide area, meaning such a projection would have to be huge. Again, not likely.

Sources: Barents Observer, Navtex

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Weird Giant Spiral Seen in Sky over Norway

Light in the sky over Norway, see at 7:50 am local time. Photo: Jan Petter Jørgensen via Vaeret

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Apparently, this is not a Photoshopped image, as there are several more just like it, taken from various locations. This morning in northern Norway, people saw a strange light in the sky which shocked residents and so far, the phenomenon has yet to be explained. This picture was taken from a pier, looking to the east, approximately at 07.50 am local time. “I can imagine that it went on for two, three minutes,” said the photographer Jan Petter Jørgensen. “It was unbelievable. I was quite shaken when I saw it.”

The spiral as seen over Borras, Norway. Via Altaposten.no
The spiral as seen over Borras, Norway. Via Altaposten.no

“It consisted initially of a green beam of light similar in colour to the aurora with a mysterious rotating spiral at one end,” said another eyewitness, Nick Banbury of Harstad, quoted on Spaceweather.com. “This spiral then got bigger and bigger until it turned into a huge halo in the sky with the green beam extending down to the earth. According to the press, this could be seen all over northern norway and must therefore have been very high up in the atmosphere to be seen hundreds of km apart.”

Here’s a link to a video of the spiral forming.

“[A popular] suggestion at the moment is that it was a rocket shot up by a Russian submarine in the White Sea, but the Russians deny this apparently. A big mystery indeed!”

UPDATE (Dec. 10): Russia has finally admitted a missile accident with the Bulava ICBM. This rocket already has failed six of 13 previous tests, according to the BBC, so Russia might have been a little embarrassed about it. See our additional article the on “Norway Spiral.”

According to NRK, there were advance warnings about several Russian missile launches from the White Sea from December 7-10, but an anonymous source in the Northern Fleet said they had no information about the incident. Press Attaché from Russia’s Embassy in Oslo, Vladimir Isupov, did not have any immediate information that could explain the light phenomenon over Northern Norway.

UPDATE: Doug Ellison from UnmannedSpaceflight.com did a very cool simulation of a tumbling rocket stage throwing out unspent fuel in two directions, and what it would look like. The question, though would be how the spiral of fuel was lit. It possibly could have been back-lit by the soon-to-rise sun.

Another eyewitness said, “We saw it from the Inner Harbor in Tromsø. It was absolutely fantastic. It almost looked like a rocket that spun around and around, and then went diagonally down the heavens. It looked like the moon was coming over the mountain, but then came something completely different, “said Totto Eriksen.

We’ll keep you posted on any explanations that come out on this!

I also received a report today from a geophysicist in Papua, Indonesia who observed “an enormous flare (bolide?) visible here at Tomage (2°39’27″S 132°59’27″E), and the sighting was at a bearing approximately 165 (East of South) and the flare seemed to begin at about 30 degrees above the horizon.” Paul Anderson said the date and time of the flare was approximately 2009.12.09 12:39 UTC

“I have seen meteors all my life but this was extraordinarily bright and lit up the sky. Not sure what the trajectory was aside from a slight (15 degrees, perhaps) trend to the West but this should probably be known
somewhere. My guess is it entered steeply from the North,” he said.

Anyone else in or near Indonesia see anything similar?

Sources: Vaeret, Altaposten, NRK, Spaceweather.com