This Cassini photograph shows particles from Saturn’s F ring streaming after its moon Prometheus. Even though the moon is only 102 km (63 miles) across, its gravity has this kind of an effect on the ring particles. Astronomers are looking forward to 2009, when the moon will travel into the F ring’s core, plowing straight through the particles. Cassini took this photo on Oct.16, 2006 when it was 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Prometheus.
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Dark Energy Has Been With Us For a Long Time
Dark energy isn’t new, in fact, it’s been around for at least 9 billion years. According to new data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope, this mysterious force was already working to speed up the expansion of the Universe was only a few billion years old. Hubble measured the light from 24 of the most distant supernovae ever seen, and found that the Universe is further apart than it should be if only gravity was around to slow things down.
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Supernova Remnant Acts as a Particle Accelerator
Instead of investing in particle accelerators here on Earth, physicists might consider just blowing up a few stars. New images taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory show how supernova remnant Cassiopeia A acts as a natural particle accelerator, firing out cosmic rays. As particles move around the remnant, they’re accelerated by the tremendous magnetic fields, eventually nearing the speed of light. The images from Chandra show that the particles are being accelerated to the maximum rate predicted by theories.
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Leonid Meteor Shower: November 19, 2006
One of the best meteor showers of the year is about to get rolling, so make sure you mark your calendar. The Leonid Meteor Shower will be peaking on Sunday, November 19, 2006, and you might be able to see as many as 100 meteors an hour. Find the darkest possible skies that you can, and wait until the constellation Leo is highest in the sky. Observers in western Europe, Africa, Brazil and the eastern parts of North America will get the best view this year.
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New Stellar Neighbours Found
Astronomers have turned up 20 new star systems in our corner of the Milky Way. The discoveries were made by the Research Consortium on Nearby Stars (RECONS) using the parallax method. The angles to various stars were measured at different times in the year – when the Earth is on opposite sides of the Sun. The closer a star is, the more its position will shift in the sky. This new batch of stars included the 23rd and 24th closest stars to the Earth.
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What’s Up this Week: November 13 – November 19, 2006
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Here’s the week you’ve been waiting for… It’s almost time for the annual Leonid meteor shower! Although it won’t reach its peak until later this week, there will still be plenty to explore as we look at everything from the Andromeda family to the mighty M13. Time to get out your binoculars or telescopes, because…
Here’s what’s up!
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Podcast: Measuring Distance in the Universe
You hear distances all the time in astronomy. This star is 10 light-years away; that galaxy is 50 million light-years away; that Big Bang over there happened 13.7 billion years ago. But how did astronomers actually figure out how far away everything is? It’s not a single measuring stick. Instead, astronomers have built up a series of overlapping measuring tools (yes, we’re calling supernovae and variable stars “tools”), which take us from right around the corner to very ends of the Universe. Get out your ruler… no, the bigger one… never mind… just listen.
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Photos of Mercury’s Transit
I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t able to watch the Mercury transit directly. Fortunately, our hardworking friends in the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today Forum were outside with telescopes and cameras rolling. There are some still photographs, some mosaics of the transit, and some movies.
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Saturn’s Golden Rings
Nothing but rings in this Cassini photograph. NASA’s spacecraft captured this beautiful image of Saturn’s outer B and inner A rings. The colour of the rings looks more golden now than earlier in the mission because the Cassini’s angle to the rings has changed. This view has a high phase angle, towards the unlit side of the rings. Cassini took this image on September 29, 2006 when it was approximately 1.829 million kilometers (1.137 million miles) from Saturn.
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Sex in Space
As some avid campaigners say, “life begins at conception”. And except for a few farm yard animals, this means sex. The book “Sex in Space”, by Laura Woodmansee, moves this sensitive topic into a place without appreciable gravity and provides some weighty thoughts. For, of course, it was sex that brought us into this world and it may be a significant reason for our departure.
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