Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Deep Blue Astrophotography – Imaging Galactic Shells

NGC7600 is an elliptical galaxy and is around 50 Mpc in distance. This image shows an interleaved system of shells that are described in this Astronomical Journal Letters here. These types of structures around elliptical galaxies were first revealed by Malin & Carter in 1980. This deep image of NGC7600 shows faint features not previously seen. Credit: Ken Crawford

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As a professional astronomy journalist, I read a lot of science papers. It hasn’t been all that long ago that I remember studying about galaxy groups – with the topic of dark matter and dwarf galaxies in particular. Imagine my surprise when I learn that two of my friends, who are highly noted astrophotographers, have been hard at work doing some deep blue science. If you aren’t familiar with the achievements of Ken Crawford and R. Jay Gabany, you soon will be. Step inside here and let us tell you why “it matters”…

According to Ken’s reports, Cold Dark Matter (or CDM) is a theory that most of the material in the Universe cannot be seen (dark) and that it moves very slowly (cold). It is the leading theory that helps explain 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 small galaxies are about 1000th the mass of our Milky Way but the problem is, these are not observed. If this theory is correct, then where are all of the huge amounts of dwarf galaxies that should be there?

Enter professional star stream hunter, Dr. 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 they are absorbed (eaten) by larger galaxies as part of the galaxy formation. If this is correct, then we should find remnants of these mergers in observations. These remnants would show up as trails of dwarf galaxy debris made up mostly of stars. These debris trails are called star streams.

“The main aim of our project is to check if the frequency of streams around Milky Way-like galaxies in the local universe is consistent with CDM models similar to that of the movie.” clarifies Dr. Martinez-Delgado. “However, the tidal destruction of galaxies is not enough to solve the missing satellite problem of the CDM cosmology. So far, the best given explanation is that some dark matter halos are not able to form stars inside, that is, our Galaxy would surround by a few hundreds of pure dark matter satellites.”

Enter the star stream hunters professional team. The international team of professional astronomers led by Dr. David Martinez-Delgado has identified enormous star streams on the periphery of nearby spiral galaxies. With deep images he showed the process of galactic cannibalism believed to be occurring between the Milky Way and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. This is in our own back yard! Part of the work is using computer modeling to show how larger galaxies merge and absorb the smaller ones.

This image has been inverted and contrast enhanced to help display the faint shell features and debris fragments. The farthest fragment is 140 kpc in projection from the center of the galaxy. Credit: Ken Crawford
“Our observational approach is based on deep color-magnitude diagrams that provide accurate distances, surface brightness, and the properties of stellar population of the studied region of this tidal stream.” says Dr. Martinez-Delgado (et al). “These detections are also strong observational evidence that the tidal stream discovered by the Sloan Digitized Sky Survey is tidally stripped material from the Sagittarius dwarf and support the idea that the tidal stream completely enwraps the Milky Way in an almost polar orbit. We also confirm these detections by running numerical simulations of the Sagittarius dwarf plus the Milky Way. This model reproduces the present position and velocity of the Sagittarius main body and presents a long tidal stream formed by tidal interaction with the Milky Way potential.”

Enter the team of amateurs led by R. Jay Gabany. David recruited a small group of amateur astrophotographers to help search for and detect these stellar fossils and their cosmic dance around nearby galaxies, thus showing why there are so few dwarf galaxies to be found.

“Our observations have led to the discovery of six previously undetected, gigantic, stellar structures in the halos of several galaxies that are likely associated with debris from satellites that were tidally disrupted far in the distant past. In addition, we also confirmed several enormous stellar structures previously reported in the literature, but never before interpreted as being tidal streams.” says the team. “Our collection of galaxies presents an assortment of tidal phenomena exhibiting strikingly diverse morphological characteristics. In addition to identifying great circular features that resemble the Sagittarius stream surrounding the Milky Way, our observations have uncovered enormous structures that extend tens of kiloparsecs into the halos of their host’s central spiral. We have also found remote shells, giant clouds of debris within galactic halos, jet-like features emerging from galactic disks and large-scale, diffuse structures that are almost certainly related to the remnants of ancient, already thoroughly disrupted satellites. Together with these remains of possibly long defunct companions, our survey also captured surviving satellites caught in the act of tidal disruption. Some of these display long tails extending away from the progenitor satellite very similar to the predictions forecasted by cosmological simulations.”

The .5 meter Ritchey-Chretien Telescope of the Blackbird Observatory is situated at 7300 ft.(2225 meters) elevation under spectacularly clear and dark skies in the south central Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, near Mayhill. Photo credit: R. Wodaski

Can you imagine how exciting it is to be part of deep blue science? It is one thing to be a good astrophotographer – even to be an exceptional astrophotographer – but to have your images and processing to be of such high quality as to be contributory to true astronomical research would be an incredible honor. Just ask Ken Crawford…

“Several years ago I was asked to become part of this team and 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 recently accepted by the Astronomical Journal.” comments Ken. “There are a few things that make this very special. One, is that Carlos Frenk the director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University (UK) and his team found that my image of galaxy NGC7600 was similar enough to help validate their computer model (simulation) of how larger galaxies form by absorbing satellite dwarf galaxies and why we do not see large number of dwarf galaxies today.”

Dr. Carlos Frenk has been featured on several television shows on the Science and Discovery channels, to name a few, to explain and show some of these amazing simulations. He is the director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University (UK), was one of the winners of the 2011 Cosmology Prize of The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation.

“The cold dark matter model has become the leading theoretical picture for the formation of structure in the Universe. This model, together with the theory of cosmic inflation, makes a clear prediction for the initial conditions for structure formation and predicts that structures grow hierarchically through gravitational instability.” says Frenk (et al). “Testing this model requires that the precise measurements delivered by galaxy surveys can be compared to robust and equally precise theoretical calculations.”

The Rancho Del Sol Observatory is located in the foothills of the northern California's Sierra Mountains approximately one hour north of Sacramento. It houses a .5 meter Ritchey-Chretien Telescope. Credit: Ken Crawford
And it requires very accurate depictions of studies. According to the team, this pilot survey was conducted with three privately owned observatories equipped with modest sized telescopes located in the USA and Australia. Each observing site features very dark, clear skies with seeing that is routinely at and often below 1.5 arcseconds. These telescopes are manufactured by RC Optical Systems and follow a classic Ritchey-Chretien design. The observatories are commanded with on-site computers that allow remote operation and control from any global location with highband web accesses. Each observatory uses proven, widely available remote desktop control software. Robotic orchestration of all observatory and instrument functions, including multiple target acquisition and data runs, is performed using available scripting software. Additional use of a wide field instrument was employed for those galaxies with an extended angular size. For this purpose, they selected the Astro Physics Starfire 160EDF6, a short focal length (f/7) 16 cm aperture refractor that provides a FOV of 73.7 × 110.6 arcmin. But, it’s more than just taking a photograph. The astrophotographer needs to completely understand what needs to be drawn out of the exposure. It’s more than just taking a “pretty picture”… it’s what matters.

The formation of shell galaxies in the cold dark matter universe from Kenneth Crawford on Vimeo.

“The galaxy I want to show you has some special features called ‘shells’. I had to image very deep to detect these structures and carefully process them so you can see the delicate structures within.” explains Crawford. “The galaxy name is NGC7600 and these shell structures have not been captured as well in this galaxy before. The movie above shows my image of NGC7600 blending into the simulation at about the point when the shells start to form. The movie below shows the complete simulation.”

“What is ground breaking is that the simulation uses the cold dark matter theory modeling the dark matter halos of the galaxies and as you can see, it is pretty convincing.” concludes Crawford. “So now you all know why we do not observe lots of dwarf galaxies in the Universe.”

But, we can observe some very incredible science done by some very incredible friends. It’s what matters…

For Further Reading: Tracing Out the Northern Tidal Stream of the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, Stellar Tidal Streams in Spiral Galaxies of the Local Volume, Carlos Frenk, Simulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars, The formation of shell galaxies similar to NGC 7600 in the cold dark matter cosmogony, Star Stream Survey Images By Ken Crawford and be sure to check out the zoomable Full Size Image of NGC 7600 done by Ken Crawford. We thank you all so much for sharing your work with us!

Posted on by Ray Sanders

Galaxy Zoo Reveals Curious ‘Violin Clef’ Quadruple Galaxy Merger

Shown at lower right is the "Violin Clef" galaxy merger. Click for larger image. Credit SDSS

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About a month ago, a Galaxy Zoo contributor named Bruno discovered a very unique galaxy merger in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. The merger appeared to be a triple, or possibly quadruple system, which are indeed quite rare, and it includes curiously thin and long tidal tails. The Galaxy Zoo team has been informally referring to this merger as the “Violin Clef” or the “Integral” based on the unique shape as shown above.

What about this merger make it so interesting to scientists? What can they learn from these type of galaxy mergers?

Galaxy Zoo contributor Bruno had some insights on what makes the merger so interesting, stating: “These are some really beautiful tidal tails – They are extremely long and thin and appear curiously poor in terms of star formation, which is odd since mergers do tend to trigger star formation.” Bruno also added at the time of discovery: “There is no spectrum so we do not know the redshift of the object. It is also not clear if the objects at either end are associated or just a projection.”

(Note: Redshift is a term used to measure distance to distant objects. The higher the number, the older and more distant the object)

Based on Bruno’s curious discovery, the Galaxy Zoo team put in significant efforts to learn more about this merger. Galaxy Zoo team member Kyle Willett provided an update this week, highlighting several new insights, along with more information on this merger’s significance.

Close-Up view of Violin Clef galaxy merger. Image Credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey
( http://www.sdss3.org )

One of the additional reasons the system is of scientific interest is that while merging galaxies are quite common in our universe, the merging process is fairly quick compared to the lifetime of a galaxy. What is not common is to observe a system with long tails and multiple companions, which gives researchers an opportunity to test their models of galaxy interaction against a system “caught in the act”.

Researchers are also interested in the content of galaxies and their tails – specifically the gas and stars. In most mergers, there is a compression of gas by gravity, which leads to a short burst of new star formation in the galaxies and their tails.

The resulting star formation results in young, hot stars which are typically blue. (Note: Younger/hotter stars are bluer, older/cooler stars are redder). What is odd about the Violin Clef merger is that all four galaxies and the tidal tails are red.

Willett stated “If that’s the case, then we want to estimate the current age of the system. Were the galaxies all red ellipticals to begin with, with very little gas that could form new stars?” Willett also added, “Or has the starburst already come and gone – and if so, how long-lived are these tidal tails going to be?”

By using analyzing the light given off by the merging galaxies, researchers can obtain a treasure trove of information. By measuring how much the spectra is redshifted, researchers can determine an accurate distance. In the case of the Violin Clef merger, an accurate redshift would let the team know for certain if all four galaxies genuinely belong to a single interacting group.

Once researchers have a distance estimate, they can study UV and radio flux data and determine an estimate of the total star formation rate. Additionally, if researchers have very accurate data from light received (spectroscopy), it’s possible to measure the relative velocities of each interacting galaxy, and build a sort of “3-D” picture of how the four galaxies are interacting.

Since there wasn’t any existing spectral analysis data of the merger system, Danielle Berg, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, observed the Violin Clef in September using the 6.5-meter Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona and provided the additional data needed to answer some of the questions the Galaxy Zoo team had about the system.

Spectral analysis of the "Violin Clef" galaxy merger. Image Credit: Danielle Berg/University of Minnesota/Multiple Mirror Telescope

After the team analyzed the spectral data, they learned that all four galaxies are at the same redshift (z=0.0956 +- 0.002), and as such, are most likely members of the same group. Further analysis reinforced the lack of evidence for strong star formation, which helps to confirm the red colors see in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data.

Based on these recent discoveries, the Galaxy Zoo team is putting out a second call for assistance on analyzing the Violin Clef merger. According to the team, the next step in the analysis will be working with simulations like the ones in Merger Zoo. Now that the team has confirmed the Violin Clef is almost certainly a quadruple merger, the number of merger models than need to be ran is greatly reduced.

How can citizen scientists help the Galaxy Zoo team with this step of their research?

You can start by visiting the Galaxy Zoo mergers project page at: http://mergers.galaxyzoo.org/

By participating in the Galaxy Zoo mergers project, you can identify simulations that resemble the Violin Clef. Your participation can also provide the Galaxy Zoo team with additional data which may enable them to have another scientific publication, plus these types of projects can be very fun and exciting to work with!

Learn more about becoming a Galaxy Zoo participant at: http://www.galaxyzoo.org/how_to_take_part

Source: Galaxy Zoo

Posted on by Ray Sanders

Citizen Science: Help Find Life on Mars

This photo was taken by a DeepWorker submersible in Kelly Lake. Credit: NASA

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Interested in helping NASA scientists pinpoint where to look for signs of life on Mars?

If so, you can join a new citizen science website called MAPPER, launched in conjunction with the Pavilion Lake Research Project’s 2011 field season.

How can the MAPPER and Pavilion Lake Research projects help scientists look for off-Earth life?

Since 2008, the Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) has used DeepWorker submersible vehicles to investigate the underwater environment of two lakes in Canada (Pavilion and Kelly). With the MAPPER project, citizen scientists can work with NASA scientists and explore the lake bottoms from the view of a DeepWorker pilot.

The PLRP team’s main area of focus are freshwater carbonate formations known as microbialites. By studying microbialites that thrive in Pavilion and Kelly Lake, the scientists believe a better understanding of how the formations develop. Through a greater understanding of the carbonate formations, the team believes they will gain deeper insights into where signs of life may be found on Mars and beyond.

To investigate the formations in detail, video footage and photos of the lake bottom are recorded by DeepWorker sub pilots. The data requires analysis in order to determine what types of features can be found in different parts of the lake. Analyzing the data allows the team to answer questions such as; “how does microbialite texture and size vary with depth?” and “why do microbialites grow in certain parts of the lake but not in others?”.

The amount of data to analyze is staggering – if each image taken were to be printed, the stack would be taller than the depth of Pavilion Lake (over 60 meters). If each image were reviewed one-by-one, the PLRP’s team would never be able to complete their work. Distributing the work to the general public solves the problem, due in part by spreading the massive work out over many volunteers across the Internet.

Since the PLRP 2011 field season Morphology Analysis Project for Participatory Exploration and Research (MAPPER) MAPPER has been open to the general public. By opening MAPPER to the public, anyone can explore Pavilion and Kelly Lake as full-fledged members of PLRP’s Remote Science Team.

So how do volunteers use MAPPER to help the PLRP team?

Once volunteers create an account at: getmapper.com, the volunteers complete a brief tutorial, which provides the necessary training to tag photos in the PLRP dataset. MAPPER has ease-of-use in mind, providing users with a simple interface, which makes tagging features like sediment, microbialites, rocks, and algae easy. In case a user is unsure of how to tag a photo, examples and descriptions of each feature are available.

Screenshot of Mapper in action. Image Credit: NASA

In a manner similar to online games, each photo tagged earns the volunteer points which can be used to unlock new activities. Volunteers can also compete with other Remote Science Team members on the MAPPER leaderboard. Volunteers can also check to see how close each dataset is to being completely reviewed and see how much they have contributed to said dataset, as well as seeing what features have been tagged the most. Volunteers who tag a photo as ‘cool’ save said image to their Cool Photos album, allowing them to easily find the image at a later date.

PLRP Remote Science Team members from across North America, Europe and Asia have already been making discoveries in Pavilion and Kelly Lake. If you’d like to become a PLRP Remote Science Team member, visit: www.getmapper.com
You can also learn more by visiting the MAPPER Facebook page

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Big Find: Citizen Scientists Discover Two Extrasolar Planets

Three exoplanet candidates found by the Planet Hunters citizen science project. Credit: Zooniverse

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Hip-hip hooray for citizen scientists! The first two exoplanet candidates have been identified by members of the public through the citizen science project Planet Hunters. The project, which began in December 2010, uses public archive data from the planet-hunting Kepler mission, and excitingly, the planets were found within the first month after the project began. One planet is potentially a rocky Earth-like planet, while the other is likely a gas-giant like Jupiter.

“I think it’s truly amazing that someone sitting at home at their computer was the first to know that a star somewhere out there in our Milky Way likely has a companion,” said Meg Schwamb, a Yale University researcher and Planet Hunters co-founder.

By all accounts, the Kepler mission has been a spectacular success – with over 1,200 planet candidates detected so far– and the data obtained by the spacecraft has been a treasure trove for scientists. But over 40,000 web users from around the world have been helping professional astronomers analyze the light from 150,000 stars in the hopes of discovering planets – and especially Earth-like planets — orbiting around them.

“These planet candidates just show what wealth of interesting gems still remaining to be found in the Kepler data,” Schwamb told Universe Today. She added that for the science team, the Planet Hunters project was somewhat of a gamble, as no one was sure human eyes would be able to spot things possibly missed by automated routines.

“The gamble paid off, and we’re all very excited about the discovery of these planet candidates,” she said. “These candidates have demonstrated the truly amazing power of human pattern recognition. Planet Hunters doesn’t replace the great work and the analysis being done by the Kepler team. But it has proven itself to be a valuable and complementary tool in the search for extrasolar planets.”

The Planet Hunters team sent the top 10 candidates found by the citizen scientists to the Kepler team, and two of the planets have survived the initial checks for false-positives, whether they are masquerading as eclipsing binaries, for example. Scientists used the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) at Caltech to analyze the host stars and determined that two of the 10 met their criteria for being classified as planet candidates.

The two candidates were flagged as potential planets by several dozen different Planet Hunters users, as the same data are analyzed by more than one user.

The two candidate planets orbit their host stars with periods ranging from 10 to 50 days — much shorter than the 365 days it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun — and have radii that range in size from two-and-a-half to eight times Earth’s radius. Despite one planet having the potential to be a rocky world, it does not lie in the so-called “habitable zone” where liquid water, and therefore life as we know it, could exist.

Schwamb said to confirm a transiting planet, the team scientists will look at the radial velocities to measure the wobble of the star back and forth caused by the orbiting body.

“This allows you to get the mass of the orbiting companion,” she said. “Kepler was always intended to be a statistical mission. The majority of the over 1,200 Kepler planet candidates and the planet candidates found by Planet Hunters will not be confirmed with radial velocity measurements either because the star is too faint or the radial velocity signal caused by the orbiting planet would be smaller than the current sensitivity limits of the world’s best spectrographs. If it’s possible that we can confirm the presence of these planets with radial velocities measured on the Keck telescopes, we will definitely try.”

As of now, the Planet Hunter scientists, which also includes Yale astronomer Debra Fisher, say there is at least a 95% chance that these two candidates are bona fide planets.

Spurred by success, the Planet Hunters citizen scientist are now sifting through a new round of publicly available data from the Kepler mission in hopes of finding even more planets. “This is what we found after just a preliminary glance through the first round of Kepler data,” Fischer said. “There’s no doubt that, with each new round of data, there will be more discoveries to come.”

Read the team’s paper here. It has been submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Posted on by VirtualAstro

The Mission to Find the Missing Lunar Module

Apollo LM orbiting the sun, Credit: Adrian West http://twitter.com/virtualastro

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Where is the Apollo 10 Lunar lander module? It’s somewhere out there — orbiting the Sun — and there’s a new initiative to try and find it!

The Apollo 10 mission launched on May 18, 1968 and was a manned “dry run” for its successor Apollo 11, testing all of the procedures and components of a Moon landing without actually landing on the Moon itself.

After carrying out a successful lunar orbit and docking procedure, the Lunar Module (called “Snoopy”) was jettisoned and sent into an orbit around the Sun.

After 42 years, it’s believed to still be in a heliocentric orbit and a team of UK and international astronomers working with schools are going to try and find it.

The idea is the brainchild of British amateur astronomer Nick Howes who helped coordinate a very successful asteroid and comet project with schools and Faulkes Telescope during this past summer.

After consulting with people from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other orbital dynamics experts, the Howes has assembled a team of facilities and experts, including the Faulkes Telescope, Space Exploration Engineering Corp, astronomers from the Remanzacco Observatory in Italy and schools across the UK.

They know they have a massive undertaking ahead of them to find Snoopy.

“The key problem which we are taking on is a lack of solid orbital data since 1969,” Howes told Universe Today. “We’ve enlisted the help of the Space Exploration Engineering Corp who have calculated orbits for Apollo 10 and working closely with people who were on the Apollo mission team in the era will help us identify search coordinate regions.”

“We’re expecting a search arc anywhere up to 135 million kilometres in size which is a huge amount of space to look at, ” Howes continued. “We’re aware of the scale and magnitude of this challenge but to have the twin Faulkes scopes assist the hunt, along with schools, plus the fact that we’ll doubtless turn up many new finds such as comets and asteroids makes this a great science project too. We’re also encouraging anyone to have a go as we’ll be posting the coordinates on to the Faulkes Telescope website starting in a few days”

While the challenge ahead of Howes and the team is enormous, and the chances of the team finding Snoopy are very small, the team are enthusing thousands of people with their own “Apollo Mission” – the mission to find the missing Apollo Lunar module.

Credit: Faulkes Telescope
Posted on by Ray Sanders

Backyard Science: How You Can Make a Difference

Three people enjoy the summer sky over the Delaware river, NJ, USA in August 2006. Image Credit: Wikimedia

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It’s a great time to be an amateur astronomer!  Nowadays, “backyard” astronomers armed with affordable CCD imagers, high-quality tracking mounts, inexpensive PC’s and the internet at their fingertips are making real contributions to Astronomy science.

How are people in their backyards contributing to real science these days?

Consider that in 1991, the Hubble Space Telescope launched with a main camera of less than 1 megapixel.  (HST’s array was 800×800 pixels – just over half a megapixel).   Currently, “off-the-shelf” imaging equipment available for a few hundred dollars or less easily provides 1 megapixel or more.  Even with a “modest” investment, amateurs can easily reach the ten megapixel mark. Basically, the more pixels you have in your imaging array, the better resolution your image will have and the more detail you’ll capture (sky conditions notwithstanding).

With access to fairly high resolution cameras and equipment, many amateurs have taken breathtaking images of the night sky. Using similar equipment other hobbyists have imaged comets, supernovae, and sunspots. With easy access to super-precise tracking mounts and high-quality optics, it’s no wonder that amateur astronomers are making greater contributions to science these days.

One spectacular example of amateur discoveries was covered by Universe Today earlier this year. Kathryn Aurora Gray, a ten year old girl from Canada, discovered a supernova with the assistance of her father and another amateur astronomer, David Lane. The discovery of Supernova 2010lt (located in galaxy UGC 3378 in the constellation of Camelopardalis) was Kathryn’s first, her father’s seventh and Lane’s fourth supernova discovery. You can read the announcement regarding Ms. Gray’s discovery courtesy of The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada at: http://www.rasc.ca/artman/uploads/sn2010lt-pressrelease.pdf

Often times when a supernova is detected, scientists must act quickly to gather data before the supernova fades. In the image below, look for the blinking “dot. The image is a before and after image of the area surrounding Supernova 2010lt.

A before and after animation of Supernova 2010lt. Credit: Dave Lane

Before Kathyrn Gray, astronomer David Levy made headlines with his discovery of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. In 1994, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke apart and collided with Jupiter’s atmosphere. Levy has gone on to discover over twenty comets and dozens of asteroids. Levy has also published several books and regularly contributes articles to various astronomy publications. If you’d like to learn more about David Levy, check out his internet radio show at http://www.letstalkstars.com/, or visit his site at http://www.jarnac.org/

Hubble image of comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9, taken on May 17, 1994. Image Credit: H.A. Weaver, T. E. Smith (Space Telescope Science Institute), and NASA
The International Space Station and Space Shuttle Atlantis transiting the sun. Image Credit: Thierry Legault

Rounding out news-worthy astronomers, astrophotographer Thierry Legault has produced many breathtaking images that have been featured here on Universe Today on numerous occasions. Over the past year, Thierry has taken many incredible photos of the International Space Station and numerous images of the last few shuttle flights. Thierry’s astrophotography isn’t limited to just the sun, or objects orbiting Earth. You can read more about the objects Thierry captures images of at: http://www.astrophoto.fr/ You can also read more about Thierry and the equipment he uses at: http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/info.html

Performing science as an amateur isn’t limited to those with telescopes. There are many other research projects that ask for public assistance. Consider the Planet Hunters site at: http://www.planethunters.org/. What Planet Hunters aims to achieve is a more “hands-on” approach to interpreting the light curves from the publicly available data from the Kepler planet finding mission. Planet Hunters is part of the Zooniverse, which is a collection of citizen science projects. You can learn more about the complete collection of Zooniverse projects at: http://www.zooniverse.org

Sample light curve data. Image Credit: Zooniverse/PlanetHunters.org

Another citizen science effort recently announced is the Pro-Am White Dwarf Monitoring (PAWM) project. Led by Bruce Gary, the goal of the project is to explore the possibility of using amateur and professional observers to estimate the percentage of white dwarfs exhibiting transits by Earth-size planets in the habitable zone. The results from such a survey are thought to be useful in planning a comprehensive professional search for white dwarf transits. You can read more about the PAWM project at: http://www.brucegary.net/WDE/

Transit simulation. Image Credit: Manuel Mendez/PAWM

One very long standing citizen project is the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). Founded in 1911, the AAVSO coordinates, evaluates, compiles, processes, publishes, and disseminates variable star observations to the astronomical community throughout the world. Currently celebrating their 100th year, the AAVSO not only provides raw data, but also publishes The Journal of the AAVSO, a peer-reviewed collection of scientific papers focused on variable stars. In addition to data and peer reviewed journals, the AAVSO is active in education and outreach, with many programs, including their mentor program designed to assist with disseminating information to educators and the public.

If you’d like to learn more about the AAVSO, including membership information, visit their site at: http://www.aavso.org/

Sample AAVSO light curve plot. Image Credit: AAVSO

For over a decade, space enthusiasts across the internet have been taking part in SETI@Home. The official description of SETI@home is “a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)”. By downloading special client software from the SETI@Home website at http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/, volunteers from around the world can help analyze radio signals and assist with SETI’s efforts to find “candidate” radio signals. You can learn more about SETI@Home by visiting http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_about.php

The projects and efforts featured above are just a small sample of the many projects that non-scientists can participate in. There are many other projects involving radio astronomy, galaxy classification, exoplanets, and even projects involving our own solar system. Volunteers of all ages and educational backgrounds can easily find a project to help support.

Ray Sanders is a Sci-Fi geek, astronomer and space/science blogger. Visit his website Dear Astronomer and follow on Twitter (@DearAstronomer) or Google+ for more space musings.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Help Scientists Decide on Which KBOs the New Horizons Spacecraft Will Visit

How would you like to help choose an additional destination or two for a spacecraft heading to the outer solar system? A new citizen science project from the Zooniverse — called Ice Hunters — will allow the public to help discover a potential new, icy follow-on destination for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which is currently en route to make the first flyby of the Pluto system. However, after it zooms past Pluto, the spacecraft will have the capability to explore other Kuiper Belt Objects. But, the destination has yet to be chosen. That’s where you can help.

“Projects like this make the public part of modern space exploration,” said Dr. Pamela Gay. “The New Horizon’s mission was launched knowing we’d have to discover the object it would visit after Pluto. Now is the time to make that discovery and thanks to IceHunters, anyone can be that discoverer.”

With Ice Hunters, the public can help scientists search through specially-obtained deep telescopic images for currently unknown objects in the Kuiper Belt. While the images you’ll be perusing in Ice Hunters won’t be the beautiful astronomical images seen in the Galaxy Zoo classification of galaxies or the Moon Zoo images of the Moon, the science rewards in Ice Hunters will be spectacular.

And there’s more: there’s also the potential for discovering variable stars and asteroids.

What’s cool is that you’ll be searching for KBO’s and potential dwarf planets in much the same way that Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto: comparing images of the same region of the Kuiper Belt and looking for objects that move or vary in brightness.

“The New Horizons project is breaking new ground in many ways,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern. “We’re flying by a new kind of planet and we’ll be making the most distant encounters with planetary bodies in the history of space exploration, and now we’re employing citizen science to help find our potential extended mission flyby targets, perhaps a billion kilometers farther than even distant Pluto and its moons. We’re very excited to be working with Zooniverse and breaking this new kind of ground. We hope the public will be excited to join in with us and with Zooniverse to make a little history of their own by discovering our next flyby target after Pluto.”

Somewhere, on the outer edges of the solar system an icy body lurks undiscovered, orbiting on a path that will just happen to carry it toward a potential rendezvous with the New Horizons spacecraft.

New Horizons will flyby Pluto in 2015, and there will be enough gas in the spacecraft’s tank to fly toward at least one and possibly two Kuiper Belt Objects in the distant outer solar system. The expected date of the KBO flyby will be between 2016 and 2020, depending on the object chosen and its distance from Pluto.

Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to find the most interesting KBO possible for New Horizons to visit. If that object can be found , it will become the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft from Earth.

The Kuiper Belt is a region of the outer solar system, extending past Neptune, (from 30AU) out to nearly twice Neptune’s orbit (out to roughly 55AU), which contains icy bodies in a variety of different sizes up to thousands of kilometers across. The first KBO other than Pluto was only discovered in 1992, and the KBO population is still not well mapped. Ice Hunters will do its part to study one small slice of the Kuiper Belt as it looks for an object along New Horizon’s trajectory after its Pluto flyby.

Using some of the largest telescopes in the world, scientists have imaged that region, producing millions of pictures for that could contain images of the rare objects that are orbiting toward just the right location, along with many other small worlds on different trajectories.

In “difference” images, which are created by subtracting observations taken at two different times, scientists can mostly (but not entirely) remove the light from constant sources like stars and galaxies. Left behind are the things that move or vary in brightness, which is what the users of IceHunters will be looking for. Since the stars never subtract off perfectly, the images appear messy, and computers can’t be trained to find objects as effectively as people can.

“When you’re looking for something special in masses of messy, real-world data, sometimes there’s no substitute for the human eye, and Zooniverse Ice Hunters will put thousands of eyes to work on this important job,” said John Spencer of Southwest Research Institute, a member of the New Horizons science team who is coordinating the search effort.

Just as other Zooniverse projects have easy-to-use websites, IceHunters.org is no different. “Using just about any modern web-browser, users can circle potential KBOs and mark with a star the locations of asteroids,” said web developer Cory Lehan from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, who has participated in several Zooniverse web designs. “The website is filled with examples to help get people started. Anyone should be able to take part – No Flash required.”

So check out Ice Hunters and start discovering today!

You can follow Universe Today senior editor Nancy Atkinson on Twitter: @Nancy_A. Follow Universe Today for the latest space and astronomy news on Twitter @universetoday and on Facebook.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Copenhagen Suborbitals Upcoming Launch Attempt in June

Kristian Von Bengtson checks the cockpit before the launch dummy is loaded. Photo credit: Bo Tornvig, Copenhagen Suborbitals.

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Copenhagen Suborbitals hopes to launch the world’s first amateur-built rocket for human space travel and have announced an upcoming launch window for their Tycho Brahe capsule. The window extends from June 1-14, 2011 and they are currently shooting for Thursday, June 2 for an unmanned suborbital test flight, according the their website. The group is headed by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, and their HEAT 1-X rocket is being prepared for launch from a steel catamaran in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Denmark.

If all goes well with this test flight, Madsen hopes to be inside the capsule himself for a manned flight in the near future.

The company, which is funded by donations, is working towards launching tourists on suborbital flights in the single-seat capsule to altitudes above 100 kilometers (62.5 miles).

And talk about a wild ride : the Tycho Brahe capsule will provide a single passenger capsule with a full view through a polymer plexiglas-dome so that the person can see and experience the entire ballistic ride. It has a pressurized volume providing support for one upright standing/half-sitting person. It will also have additional pressurized space, around and behind the astronaut, available for several other systems necessary for the flight procedure, and to support additional scientific and commercial project.

The flight trajectory for the HEAT rocket. Credit: Copenhagen Suborbitals.

No specific launch time has been announced, so check their website for more updated information. There will also be live coverage and launch parties in Denmark.

Check these links for possible online coverage:

Live internet coverage: www.ing.dk/live
and http://maylaunch.dotsquare.dk/

Copenhagen Suborbitals were hoping to launch their first test flight last summer, but ran into problems with their rocket.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

The View from 100,000 Feet

I love these student projects that send a camera via a balloon high in the atmosphere to film the view of Earth below. Here’s another from a group of German students who were able to film in HD from an altitude of more than 100,000 ft. (30,480 meters). Enjoy the music, too.

“Our challenge was to survive ambient air pressures as low as 1/100th of an atmosphere, temperatures as low as -60°C and finally to locate and recover the Camera,” Tobias Lohf wrote UT. “We had a HD-Cam, GPS tracker and a heating pad on board, and all the construction had a total weight of about 1kg.”

The rest of the team included Marcel Dierig, Tobias Stodieck, Tristan Eggers and Marvin Rissiek and they hope to inspire other students to try the same project. “All you need need is a camera, weather balloon and Duct Tape,” they said.