All Quasar's have black holes for hearts - but that doesn't mean they are unfriendly. In fact, 9 billion light year distant QSO2237+0305 may like us so much that it wants to make sure we see it even though it is actually hidden by a much nearer spiral galaxy. What can we learn from QSO2237+0305? For one, the cross that bears Einstein's name can tell us a lot about space-time curvature. For another, it can teach us invaluable lessons about how to see things otherwise hidden from view. If you have access to the scope and the skies, you too can see what the whole spectacle is all about.
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As part of its new Vision for Space Exploration, NASA will first be returning to the Moon before sending human explorers to Mars. Although Mars is a much more Earth like environment, with an atmosphere, similar length of day and large amounts of water, the Moon is going to be the agency's first target. Why? Mainly, it's much closer, so astronauts can practice working in an extreme environment close to home before making the much more difficult and riskier journey to Mars.
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Officials from the European Space Agency and Indian Space Research Organisation have approved on a cooperative project to send a spacecraft to the Moon. ISRO will launch Chandrayaan-1 in 2007/2008 to analyze the Moon to help understand its origin and evolution. Europe will provide three scientific instruments identical to ones on SMART-1, which is currently orbiting the Moon.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft was recently in a lucky position in space earlier this month to watch its own private lunar eclipse, as one of Saturn's moons (Mimas) passed in front of another (Janus). Cassini's camera was rolling the whole time, and the spacecraft captured 37 images that have been stitched together into a movie of the event. Some large terrain is visible on Mimas, including its gigantic crater (the one that makes it look like the Death Star from Star Wars).
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An international team of astrophysicists have developed a new theory to explain the accelerating expansion of the Universe, known as "dark energy". Instead of a mysterious energy which is pushing matter apart at an accelerating rate, the team believes it could be the natural outcome of ripples in space and time created during the earliest moments of inflation after the Big Bang. These ripples could extend beyond what we can see with our telescopes, so we can only calculate their existence.
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During its many months orbiting Saturn, Cassini has gotten a few good looks at Hyperion, one of the planets many moons. This irregularly shaped moon is reasonably large (266 km or 165 miles across) and chaotically tumbles in its orbit around Saturn. Cassini took these images in October 2004 and February 2005 at relatively similar distances. It will get a much better view in September, 2005, when the spacecraft is scheduled to make a flyby at an altitude of only 990 km (615 miles).
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Researchers have discovered evidence of recent glacier movements and volcanic eruptions on Mars, overturning the long-held opinion that it's a cold, dead world. As recently as 350,000 years ago, glaciers moved from Mars' poles to its tropics, covering the planet in sheets of ice. And several of Mars' giant volcanoes were active as recently as 2 million years ago. The heat from these volcanoes could sustain microbial life in underground pools of liquid water.
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An instrument on board the Mars Exploration rover Opportunity is malfunctioning, so mission controllers have decided to turn it off until they can figure out what's causing the problem. The problem is with its miniature thermal emission spectrometer (Mini-TES), which Opportunity uses to sense the mineral composition of distant rocks. The problem could be with a broken switch that helps position the mirror that directs infrared light into the Mini-TES. Even if engineers can't figure out a solution, Opportunity can still return some science with the instrument partially functioning.
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Astronomers have known since 1998 that a mysterious force seems to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe. An international team of astronomers have observations from Hubble and a powerful computer simulation to find evidence of dark energy much closer to home. The team studied the motion of our local group of galaxies (40 galaxies within 5 million light years) and found that you could only explain their current positions if you include the influence of dark energy.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has made a surprising discovery about Saturn's moon Enceladus: it has an atmosphere of water vapour. Cassini detected the atmosphere during both of its recent close flybys. Scientists are sure what's causing this cloud of water vapour, but it could be caused by volcanoes, geysers, or gasses escaping from the moon's interior. Enceladus' gravity is very small, so it wouldn't be able to hold onto an atmosphere for very long. This means there must be some continuous source replenishing it.
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A hardy robot from Carnegie Mellon has found life in Chile's Atacama desert; one of the driest and most lifeless places on Earth. Life is barely detectable over most parts of Atacama, but the rover (named Zo?) was able to detect lichens and bacterial colonies in two regions that it explored. The solar-powered rover provides a good example of the kind of technology that will probably used to search for life on Mars. Next year Zo? will travel autonomously for two months, traveling 50 km in the search for life.
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European astronomers have found a group of stars in the Omega Centauri globular cluster which seem to be some of the most rich in helium ever seen. These are bluer stars, and astronomers would expect that they contained lighter elements, but the team found exactly the opposite - they have more heavy elements than red stars. One theory to explain this is that previous generations of stars exploded as supernovae, and seeded the region with helium and heavier elements. These blue stars then formed from this material.
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! While the Moon will figure prominently in this week's scheme, there will be many occultations to view as well as lunar features. We'll return to visit both the M50 and M44, as well as learn about double star - Algieba There are two minor meteor showers and planets to explore. So grab your binoculars and telescopes, because...
Here's what's up!
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NASA's Spirit rover has been fortunate enough this week to spot a tiny dust devil scurrying across the surface of Mars. The various orbiters have seen crisscrossing dust devil tracks, but this is the first time one has been captured on camera from the surface. It also appears that Spirit was recently dusted off by one of these mini-twisters, cleaning off accumulations of dust, and boosting its available power for operations. This also happened a few months ago to Spirit's twin, Opportunity.
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A powerful Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canavaral on Friday, carrying its heaviest cargo to date: the 5,959 kg (13,138 pound) Inmarsat 4-F1 satellite. The rocket had three additional solid boosters to help it carry this weight into orbit. The launch was delayed one day because of technical problems, but the launch itself went smoothly in good weather. The satellite will be used by Inmarsat to provide voice and data communication services.
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Thanks to data collected by NASA's WMAP probe in 2001 and 2002, plus the hard work of astrophysicists, we now know that the Universe is 13.7 billion years of age - give or take a few hundred million years. And thanks to the way distant galaxy clusters interacted with the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) some 7 billion years ago, we may soon be able to peel away layers of time and better understand irregularities in the shape of the universe as it is today.
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Amateur photographer Bojan Stajcar took this picture of the lunar occulation of Jupiter on the 27th of February. This picture was taken 10 minutes after the Moon partially occulted Jupiter, at 11:04 pm local time, from Melbourne, Australia. The camera used was a mechanically modified Connectix Quickcam, with 320x240 pixel CCD sensor in the focus of the motorized ("Bartelized") homemade 10", f5.6 reflector. Note the difference in the surfaces brightness of the Moon and Jupiter. Despite the fact that the moon surface consists of very low reflective material (dominantly basalt), it is brighter, as Jupiter is 5 times further away from the Sun.
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Scientists are in agreement that a rock from space smashed into the ground in Arizona 50,000 years ago, carving out a pit 1,250 metres (4,100 feet) across. But they're now starting to disagree on the speed the asteroid was going when it hit. One mystery that has been puzzling scientists: where is all the impact-melted rock? If it was going as much as 20 km/s (44,000 mph) as originally believed, it should have fractured into pieces which would have rained down over a larger area. But a new simulation calculates that it was going only half that speed, and probably came down as a swarm of material, not a single rock.
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New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope are helping astronomers fine tune their models of star formation, including an estimate of just how massive a star can become. Hubble carefully observed the Arches cluster, a group of stars collectively weighing 10,000 solar masses. Standard theories predicted 20 to 30 stars in the cluster would have 150 solar masses, but none turned up; although, at least a dozen push 100 solar masses. What variables could limit the amount of mass a star can pack on?
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It appears that galaxies in the early Universe didn't evolve at similar speeds or in the same ways. Almost right from the beginning, the Universe was filled with galaxies large and small, dusty and clear, active with star formation and relatively sedate. Researchers from the US used Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) aboard NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to study galaxies 10-12 billion light-years away. Instead of finding a similar set of galaxies, they turned up tremendous varieties, as much as we see in the night sky today.
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Cassini has made a few passes of Titan now, and the European Space Agency's Huygens probe has landed on its surface, so Saturn's largest moon is starting to reveal its secrets. Scientists involved with the mission have recently published some of their findings in the Journal Nature. Some of their insights include the discovery of a long river, 1,500 km (930 miles) long and evidence that winds on Titan blow faster than the moon rotates. The climate seems to revolve around liquid methane, which can flow in rivers, fall as rain, and collect in vast lakes.
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NASA scientists have finally worked out why there's a safe zone in the Earth's radiation belts, thousands of km above the surface. It turns out that lightning in the lower atmosphere generates radio waves which interact with radiation around the Earth, removing some of its energy and changing the direction of charged particles. This safe zone could be used as a haven by satellites to reduce the damage they take while operating in these regions.
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Biologists - and all parents - have a pretty good idea that "life begets life". Beginning with the most primitive anaerobic bacteria and leading up to the most sophisticated and accomplished astronomer, it's pretty clear that offspring don't necessarily resemble their parent(s) in all particulars. Meanwhile exobiologists are unlikely to ever disprove the fact that life exists beyond the Blue Planet because disproving something is much harder than proving it. After all if intelligent life could happen here - it could happen elsewhere...
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Astronomers have used the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton telescope to watch X-rays coming from Jupiter. These X-rays are mostly reflected solar radiation, which is bounced back through Jupiter's atmosphere. Since Jupiter seems to brighten and dim during solar flares, solar astronomers can detect flares occurring on the far side of the Sun. Jupiter is a poor mirror for X-rays, though, typically only reflecting back less than 0.1% of the radiation that hits it.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this photograph of Saturn's F ring that shows distinct twists and kinks. The perturbations are caused by the gravitation interaction of Saturn's F ring shepherd moon Prometheus as it orbits the Ringed Planet once every 14.7 hours - Prometheus just passed through the region in this photograph, so the eddies are fresh. This photograph was taken by Cassini on Jan. 19, 2005 at a distance of 1.9 million km (1.2 million miles).
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The quaint view that black holes gobble up matter quickly and efficiently is being replaced with observations and simulations that show a tremendous amount of violence and turbulence. Like too much water trying to get down a drain, matter backs up and creates an environment unique in the Universe. A new simulation from Johns Hopkins University shows how matter around a black hole can take on relativistic speeds, extreme densities, intense magnetic fields, all the while blasting out torrents of energy.
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers. During the vernal equinox it is possible for most observers to see all 110 Messier Objects in a single night. Thanks to New Moon on March 10, the best night to do this will be on Thursday. For many of us, ?marathoning? during the week isn't so easy. Why not try your own style of marathoning as we take a week long look at the observing list and enjoy these splendid objects "one night at a time?" So get out your scopes and binoculars...
Because here's what's up.
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Scientists have begun firing a beam of neutrinos through the Earth to a target 735 km (456 miles) away. This experiment will help the team understand how neutrinos can pass through tremendous amounts of matter, but barely interact. And if they're lucky, they'll catch the particles as they morph into different varieties: electron, muon and tau. One detector, at Fermilab, near Chicago, will sample the beam as it leaves the Main Injector. Another detector is stationed deep underground at the Soudan Mine in Northern Minnesota. Only muon neutrinos will be generated, so if the other varieties show up, scientists will know it happened in between the detectors.
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It's called Dawn, and in a little more than a year, this spacecraft will blast off from Florida, bound for two separate asteroids: Vesta and Ceres. Visiting the two most massive asteroids in our Solar System will be an ambitious undertaking; maybe one of the most difficult and dangerous orbital missions attempted. Dawn will bring a suite of scientific instruments to these two asteroids and serve as a time machine to help scientists understand what our Solar System looked like 4.6 billion years ago.
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The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft swept past the Earth and Moon on Friday, gaining a gravity speed boost on its 10-year journey to reach Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. At its closest point, Rosetta passed just 1954 km (1214 miles) above the Pacific Ocean before speeding back off into space. This flyby allowed controllers to rehearse their procedures on a "fake asteroid" (the Moon), as Rosetta will visit two asteroids as part of its mission. Rosetta will make two more visits to Earth and one to Mars before its trip is complete.
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Radio astronomers have detected a series of powerful radio wave blasts from near the centre of the Milky Way that defies an easy explanation, and could lead to the discovery of a new class of object. The team was watching the galactic centre with the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array when they saw 5 bursts occur every 77 minutes, each lasting 10 minutes long. The team will attempt to match up X-rays to the radio busts, as it will help pin down the source of these unusual emissions.
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Scientists are fairly certain that the Earth went through a snowball glaciation 600-800 million years ago, when the entire planet was locked in snow and ice. One new theory to explain this extreme cooling is the possibility that the Solar System passed through an interstellar cloud of dust and gas, which obscured the light from the Sun. Even if the cloud wasn't thick enough to obscure light from the Sun, it could have enabled charged particles to pass into the Earth's atmosphere and destroy the ozone layer. These clouds are huge, and it would take the Solar System 500,000 years to pass through one.
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Imagine you had a telescope powerful enough to watch a snail crawling across the surface of Mars. Divide that speed by 100, and that's how quickly galaxy M33 is moving sideways in the sky. Radio astronomers achieved this astounding measurement with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), which was even more difficult because they had to cancel out the Earth's motion around the Sun. Astronomers have watched galaxies speed away or move towards us for years, but this is the first time the sideways (or proper) motion of a galaxy this distant has been recorded.
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The 17th Progress cargo ship docked with the International Space Station on Tuesday, delivering a pile of supplies. The ship is carrying air, water, food, equipment, and science experiments. But one of its most important cargoes is a new high resolution digital camera that the astronauts will use to inspect space shuttles when they dock with the station. The docking was completed autonomously; however, cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov was ready at the manual controls to take over if there had been a problem.
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Even though they're well past their warranties, the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity are acting remarkably spry. Opportunity has just wrapped up three days of hard driving, covering more distance than Spirit made in its first 70 days on Mars. It set a one-day record, reaching 177.5 metres (582 feet) on a single day. The rovers have been using their autonomous driving mode to set their own routes around obstacles without micromanagement from controllers on Earth.
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The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a photograph of irregular galaxy NGC 1427A on a death plunge into the Fornax cluster of galaxies. NGC 1427A has the beautiful blue colour of intense star formation, because gravitation interaction with the cluster has already collapsed much of its gas. Astronomers think that the galaxy will be completely ripped apart within a billion years, and its stars assimilated into other galaxies in the cluster.
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Astronomers have found a core burning star, like our own Sun, that's only 16% larger than Jupiter; although, it has 96 times as much mass. The observations were made using the European Southern Observatory's 8.2m VLT Kueyen telescope in Chile. Astronomers watched tracked 60 stars which were known to have a regular dip in brightness, when a dimmer object was passing in front. This survey found 7 of these low mass stars which eclipsed their brighter companion.
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Scientists have long been puzzled how chondrules could have formed. These are tiny, millimetre-sized spheres that make up primitive meteorites, and were somehow baked 4.6 billion years ago. New calculations show that the as giant planets, like Jupiter, formed in the early Solar System, they created regions of higher pressure and radiation called "shocks". As tiny particles entered these shocks at more than 30,000 kph, they were melted together to form these tiny chondrule droplets.
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Astronomers have found an embryonic star in a stellar nursery giving off a healthy glow of X-rays, even though it's much too young. The observations were mostly made using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory, and suggest that some unknown process is superheating the star's surface to generate X-rays. Matter is falling towards the star 10 times faster than it should just with gravity, so it could be that the star's magnetic field is somehow responsible, channeling gas into the star.
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A team of European astronomers have discovered a highly structured cluster of thousands of galaxies at an incredible 9 billion light-years away. In other words, this structure was highly evolved only a few billion years after the Big Bang; a situation that should be impossible, according to current theories. Incredibly, some of the galaxies in the cluster are red and elliptical, which would indicate that they were already quite old at only a few billion years old.
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How do you hide some of the brightest galaxies in the Universe? Behind a shroud of dust, of course. NASA's Spitzer space telescope has uncovered a strange class of galaxies which are incredibly bright - shining with the light of 10 trillion suns - but obscured behind a thick veil of dust and gas. So, why are they so dusty? The dust is churned out by stars, but it's strange how well distributed it is. It could be that all galaxies started out this dusty, and then became clearer over time, or maybe the massive black hole at their center has something to do with it.
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Jupiter's massive magnetic field is so powerful, it can generate auroras one thousand times more powerful than we'll see here on Earth. One of the best ways to study Jupiter's aurora is in the X-ray spectrum, watching how particles and ions crash into Jupiter's atmosphere. Observations from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory suggest that these particles are partly coming from the Sun, but also from Io, Jupiter's volcanically active moon, which is known to be blasting out steady streams of particles.
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The chances are very high that you will encounter another intelligent life-form in the course of your life and when you do it may come as a big surprise. When, for instance, did you last visit the zoo? Remember those chimpanzees - very smart. And how about those dolphins at the marine aquarium? Brilliant! And that cat of yours is probably smarter than you think - but your dog will never admit it. Finally that grey parrot your Uncle Ned has may actually know what its talking about! Ultimately by paying attention to signs of intelligence on Earth, we may also come to recognize signs of intelligence amongst the stars.
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Recent discoveries on Mars such as methane in the atmosphere, a subterranean ice pack near the equator, and evidence of flowing water in the planet?s past brings new speculation to the most frequently asked questions about the Red Planet: Is there, or was there ever life on Mars?
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A Zenit-3SL rocket roared up from Sea Launch this morning, delivering a replacement satellite for XM Satellite Radio. The rocket lifted off at 0351 GMT (10:51 pm EST Monday), and the XM-3 satellite reached its geosynchronous transfer orbit about an hour later. The launch had been delayed several times because of poor weather and ocean conditions at the launch site in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
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The 17th Progress cargo ship blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome yesterday, carrying two tonnes of supplies for the International Space Station and a special camera designed to inspect the Space Shuttle for damage. The Progress should reach the station by Wednesday, and dock in afternoon. The previous cargo ship, now filled with garbage, was detached from the station on Sunday, and will reenter and burn up in the Earth's atmosphere on March 9.
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! As another month ends and a new one begins, let's celebrate the early evening dark and "set the skies on fire" by studying AE Aurigae! Want a challenge for the big scope? We'll check out southern galactic clusters for binoculars and telescopes and learn the location of several comets. It's North America's turn as the Moon occults not one - but two stars in the same night! And right when you thought you could sleep late, the moments before dawn will offer a morning conjunction worth waking up for! So mark your calendars and hope for clear skies because here's what's up!
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An unmanned Progress cargo ship is about to blast off from Kazakhstan, carrying much needed supplies to the International Space Station. If everything goes well, the 17th Progress mission will lift off today carrying a variety of supplies: food, water, air, spare parts, and life support equipment. One important piece of cargo is a new digital camera that the station crew will use to inspect the space shuttle for damage when it docks.
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