I wanted to take a moment and point your browsers at a few websites that I really enjoy, and I think you will too. You’ve probably heard of the Bad Astronomer, but do you know of the Angry Astronomer? Jon Voisey is an astronomy major at the University of Kansas. Jon has recently been journaling the battle against intelligent design and antiscience movements, but if you dig a little deeper into his archives, you’ll see some great articles explaining concepts in astronomy.
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What’s Up this Week: September 18 – September 24, 2006
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! As the week opens, we’re treated to several lovely views of the waning Moon and the bright winter objects just before dawn. Early evening dark skies mean an opportunity to galaxy hunt and study planetary nebulae. Mark your calendar to enjoy a weekend meteor shower, too! It’s time to dust off the scopes and head out, because…
Here’s what’s up!
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The Location of the Oldest Recorded Supernova Discovered
Ancient Chinese astronomers recorded the occurence of a bright star in the sky in 185 AD; probably a supernova explosion. And now modern astronomers think they’ve found that explosion’s corpse: supernova remnant RCW 86. New calculations have found that RCW 86 is about 2000 years old, making it the best candidate for this ancient supernova. This new data was gathered using the XMM-Newton and Chandra X-Ray observatories.
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Brown Dwarf Discovered in Planetary System
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has directly imaged a small brown dwarf star orbiting a larger star – the first time this has ever been seen. The brown dwarf, HD 3651, is classified as a “T dwarf”, has about 50 times the mass of Jupiter, and orbits about 10 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto. Astronomers theorized that the system contained a brown dwarf, because a Saturn-sized planet had a strangely elliptical orbit; something was tugging on it.
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Burning Smell Fills the Station
The crew of the International Space Station had a bit of a scare today when they smelled a noxious odor in the air of the confined station. It turned out the smell was coming from a malfunctioning oxygen generator. NASA now believes a rubber gasket in the generator overheated, creating smoke and an odor. The event won’t cause any problems with the upcoming crew change.
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Expedition 14 Launches in Russian Soyuz
A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome early Monday, carrying a new team to the International Space Station. On board are Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin, as well as space tourist Anousheh Ansari. The crew of Expedition 14 will remain on board the station, while Ansari will remain on board for a week, and then return with the crew of Expedition 13. They’re expected to arrive at the station early Wednesday.
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Pulsars Confirm Einstein’s Theories
Einstein was right. Well, according to new observations of a double pulsar, he was at least 99.95% right. An international team of astronomers have been measuring the pulsar pair for three years, and have detected several effects that match Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It’s believed the two pulsars are losing energy through the radiation of gravitational waves, and will eventually spiral into each other.
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Huge, Lightweight Planet Discovered
A new, lightweight planet has been discovered orbiting a star 450 light-years away in the constellation Lacerta. This unusual planet is larger than Jupiter, but it has only half its mass; astronomers estimate it has the same density as cork. The planet, named HAT-P-1, orbits its host star every 4.5 days. A network of automated telescopes detected how the planet dims its parent star by 1.5% when it passes in between the star and the Earth. Why this planet is so swollen is still a mystery to astronomers.
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Subaru Finds the Most Distant Galaxy
The powerful Subaru telescope in Hawai’i has found the most distant galaxy ever seen, located 12.88 billion light-years away – this is only 780 million years after the Big Bang. Observing objects this distant is extremely difficult, not only because of the great distances involved, but because much of the Universe was obscured behind neutral hydrogen. Stars only then began clearing out this neutral hydrogen, making the Universe transparent.
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Identifying Planets with Life
Telescope technology is advancing quickly, as larger and larger instruments are getting built. Eventually, an observatory will be built capable of resolving Earth-sized worlds orbiting other stars. If there’s life there, will we recognize it? Researchers from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and NASA have developed a list of epochs in Earth’s atmosphere’s history that could be visible through this instrument; from the earliest times that life emerged to our current, oxygen/nitrogen-abundant atmosphere.
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