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A Winter Solstice, a Meteor Shower, Jupiter and Saturn Walk Into Your Night Sky
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/science/winter-solstice-jupiter-saturn-ursids.html?
Retrocausal Quantum Switch
Any science fiction nerds in here?
In theory this experiment would receive information from the future.
The image at the bottom was taken from the following video and is the first of 3 ideas for the experiment.
The Further Adventures of Betelgeuse, the Fainting Star
The red supergiant is no closer to exploding, it seems. It also no longer appears round.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/science/betelgeuse-pictures-supernova.html
JUst purchased a 3D printer. I've used them in the past to move prime focus on my reflector OTA. I've even 3D printed the Canon t-ring adapter and Bahtinov Masks. Now that I have one of my own, there will be more creative uses with my astrophotography setup.
The printer is a Creality3D Ender-3 pro High Precision 3D Printer. Anyone else using 3D printers to improve their AP?
Just boggles the mind - does it not ? *Of a layman
I think it was Einstein who said we only use 20% of our brain.
It's probably time we started seriously thinking about replacing Hubble.
High school student discovers planet 6.9 times larger than earth and (get this) which is 1,300 light years away !.....
Vera Rubin Gets a Telescope of Her Own
The astronomer missed her Nobel Prize. But she now has a whole new observatory to her name.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/science/vera-rubin-telescope-astronomy.html?algo=identity&fellback=false&imp_id=502964313&imp_id=710746026&action=click&module=Science%20%20Technology&pgtype=Homepage
Ok so I am hiring assistants for the board now that we have attracted attention.
There is no pay and you can update the Ibox as you please.
Ok so I am hiring assistants for the board now that we have attracted attention.
There is no pay and you can update the Ibox as you please.
Just a Fainting Spell? Or Is Betelgeuse About to Blow?
A familiar star in the constellation Orion has dimmed noticeably since October. Astronomers wonder if its explosive finale is imminent.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/science/astronomy-supernova-betelgeuse.html
My Telescope Setup for Astrophotography
When I setup my telescope, I found it important to be accurate with the initial steps.
My telescope setup begins with finding north.
The tripod and mount must have good polar alignment. I use a smartphone app to identify where north is located.
The second step is leveling the tripod. The mount I have is a GEM (German Equatorial Mount) so it has to sit on a level tripod on order to begin to come close to tracking the night sky. I use a traditional level I purchased from the hardware store.
Next the setup must be balanced after I install the mount, telescope, weights and camera. For this in each direction of motion I unlock the mount and adjust the weights or telescope assembly till it doesn't move without a push.
In long exposure astrophotography, I installed a motor to the RA of the mount. No I don't have a fancy electronic GoTo mount. This hobby can be very expensive. In order to complete the final steps, this motor is needed to dial in the polar alignment accuracy of the setup.
All of these steps will give you pictures like this:
M42 The Great Orion Nebula and Running Man Nebula
Anyone Doing Narrowband Imaging?
I'm taking the plunge into narrowband imaging and realize that changing filters can be cumbersome with a manual filter wheel (which also presents balancing concerns). In order to make my choice from the many brands that are out there, I'm asking for what you use. I also think 3D printing one may be suitable. If you have experience there, I'm interested as well.
Photo Book
Lots of good astronomy, astrophysics videos these days.
I like Carolin Crawford's Gresham University lectures.
I was waiting for people to show up.
Here is a good link from the NYT regarding 2009.
And welcome to the board.
What We Learned in Space and Astronomy News in 2019
By The New York Times
Published Dec. 22, 2019
Updated Dec. 23, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/22/science/space-astronomy-news-2019.html
Building an observatory is a sweet idea! And living under dark skies has to be a cherished experience. I would love to see a pic of the finished observatory. All the best and clear skies!
Thanks. I live in a very remote part of Arizona with very dark skies.
The time has come for me to build an observatory to house the Meade so I don't have to move it outside and back inside every time I want to use it.
The telescope has an onboard computer so it is fairly easy to find objects once the telescope is properly oriented. Having a permanent installation will save a lot of time in orienting the scope.
Fan Mountain is not far from where I grew up in the Shenandoah Valley. It is a nice observatory. I was there long ago but understand they have done a lot of upgrades over the years.
ok thanks for sharing. I hope you find an opportunity to use the telescope in the near future.
I also like to visit other observatories and use theirs, like the RRRT on Fan Mountain in VA.
It is not for sale.
Can you post a picture of this 10 in Meade Telescope and how much you're asking.
Looks like it...
I have used a 10" Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope for many years. I never built an enclosure for it so I could just go outside and use it. Now, as a retired older guy, the damn thing is too heavy to schlep in and out of the house.
A first world problem.
No other posts since 2014. Looks like this is a pretty dead board
I was watching a short video, and she mention being able to see the Int. Space Station at night. I never realized it was visible.
It looked like a fast moving star in the video.
Hello to you from me. I'm new to this site. I'm passionate about Astronomy, and found this board from a Google search. So now I'm curious how Astronomy affects the stock market. I'm guessing it's directly related to government research, but maybe private sector organizations are doing impactful work as well. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Kevin Francis
Anyone got some detailed close ups of the moon?
Perseid Meteor Shower Is Peaking Now: How to Watch
by Tariq Malik, Managing Editor | August 11, 2013 09:35am ET
The annual Perseid meteor shower created by leftover bits of a comet is at its best in the night sky now, but there are a few tips to keep in mind to make the most the cosmic fireworks show.
The 2013 Perseid meteor shower will peak in the late overnight hours of Sunday and Monday (Aug. 11 and 12), and could light up the night sky with up to 100 meteors an hour for stargazers with the best viewing conditions. To see the most meteors, you will need clear weather and a dark sky far from the interference of bright city lights.
"For optimal viewing, find an open sky because Perseid meteors come across the sky from all directions. Lie on the ground and look straight up into the dark sky," NASA scientists advised in a skywatching guide. "Again, it is important to be far away from artificial lights. Your eyes can take up to 30 minutes to adjust to the darkness, so allow plenty of time for your eyes to dark-adapt."
The Perseids appear to radiate out of the constellation Perseus, which is how they get their name. The constellation is currently in the northeastern night sky after sunset, but observers will likely see more meteors by looking straight up, and not directly at the constellation, NASA scientists have said.
If bad weather spoils your Perseids viewing, don't fret. You can also watch the meteor display online tonight in two free webcasts. You can watch the Perseid meteor shower webcasts live on SPACE.com, courtesy of NASA and the Slooh Space Camera.
Beginning at nightfall, NASA's all-sky camera at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will offer a live view of the night sky and any meteors that flare up overhead. The webcast caught 14 Perseid meteors during its first night on Saturday (Aug. 10), MSFC officials said.
At 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) tonight, the Slooh Space Camera, an online stargazing website that uses remotely operated telescopes, will offer a free webcast from its observatory on Mt. Tiede in the Canary Islands, off the western coast of Africa. You can watch the feed on SPACE.com or directly from Slooh via the Slooh Space Camera website.
http://www.space.com/22332-perseid-meteor-shower-peaking-now.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
Total Solar Eclipse Today is Last Until 2015
By Mike Wall | SPACE.com – 6 hrs ago.
The skies over a slice of northern Australia will darken for a few minutes today as the planet experiences its first total solar eclipse in more than two years.
Today's total solar eclipse — the first since July 2010 and the last until March 2015 — begins at 3:35 p.m. EST (2035 GMT) today, which corresponds to shortly after dawn Wednesday (Nov. 14) local time in Australia. Weather permitting, will be visible from slivers of the continent's Northern Territory and state of Queensland, as well as a large, empty stretch of the Pacific Ocean.
More than 50,000 spectators are expected to watch the celestial event from Queensland, according to tourism officials. But forecasts of cloudy weather may put a damper on their viewing experience, according to media reports.
Most of the world's population will be far from the eclipse's path. But anyone with access to the Internet can follow the action live, for several organizations will provide free webcasts of the alignment of sun and moon. Two such outfits are Tourism Tropical North Queensland and the Slooh Space Camera, which will begin their broadcasts at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) and 2:30 p.m. EST (1930 GMT) on Tuesday, respectively.
You can watch both webcasts of the total solar eclipse live here at SPACE.com.
The shadow's path
Tuesday's total eclipse of the sun will begin over the Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory, where the moon's shadow will touch down at 3:35 p.m. EST (2035 GMT). [Video: Watch Path of Nov. 13-14 Total Solar Eclipse]
From there, the eclipse path moves southeast across the Gulf of Carpentaria to Queensland, darkening the skies over towns such as Mitchell River and Palmerville before reaching the coastal city of Cairns at 3:39 p.m. EST (2039 GMT).
Many eclipse chasers are converging on Cairns, a tourist hotspot on Queensland's northeast coast. The world-famous Great Barrier Reef lies just offshore, and patches of tropical rainforest draw visitors inland as well.
Shortly after sunrise, skywatchers in Cairns will witness a total solar eclipse lasting two minutes. The obscured sun will be just 14 degrees above the horizon at the time, researchers say. (Your clenched fist held at arm's length measures about 10 degrees.)
From Cairns, the moon's shadow will cruise out into the vast Pacific Ocean, with the total eclipse finally petering out 610 miles (980 kilometers) west-northwest of Santiago, Chile, at 6:48 p.m. EST (2348 GMT). The eclipse's path of totality is about 108 miles (174 km) wide and covers 9,000 miles (14,500 km) over a three-hour period.
Warning: If you are planning to watch the total solar eclipse in person, be extremely careful. Never look directly at the sun, either with the naked eye or through telescopes or binoculars without the proper filters. To safely view solar eclipses, you can purchase special solar filters or No. 14 welder's glass to wear over your eyes. Standard sunglasses will NOT provide sufficient protection.
An unforgettable experience
Observers in parts of Asia, the Pacific and western North America were treated to a "ring of fire" annular eclipse this past May.
The next total solar eclipse occurs in March 2015 and will be visible from some areas in the North Atlantic region, such as Norway's Svalbard Islands. However, a so-called "hybrid" eclipse — which shifts between total and annular at different points on the globe — will come to parts of the Atlantic and central Africa in November 2013.
Observing an eclipse is a special experience most skywatchers — and scientists — never forget. Tuesday's event will be the 56th solar eclipse that Williams College astronomer Jay Pasachoff has seen in his career, for example, but he still finds each one thrilling.
"Oh, each one is very exciting — each in its own way," Pasachoff told SPACE.com via email. "It is very wonderful to be uncovering part of the mysteries about the sun's atmosphere and magnetic field, and to be outdoors surrounded by the darkening of a solar eclipse is a primally fabulous experience."
The eclipse isn't the only celestial treat skywatchers can look forward to this week. The annual Leonid meteor shower, which has produced some truly spectacular shows over the years, peaks overnight Saturday (Nov. 17).
Editor's note: If you are along the eclipse path in Australia or elsewhere and snap an amazing photo of Tuesday's total solar eclipse that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please send images, comments and location information to managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.
Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com
VIDEO: Flash seen on Jupiter, possibly hit by an asteroid, image caught by amateur astronomer:
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/10/13789057-flash-spotted-on-jupiter-is-it-a-hit?lite
http://www.flickr.com/photos/19299984@N08/7976507568
Thanks. My son has a telescope and he was disappointed about not catching Venus for himself. I'm going to have him practice with the moon and we'll post his results.
I have something like this, but for the transit of Venus, I just held the camera to the eyepiece, since I was also doing some visual observing.....
http://www.telescope.com/Astrophotography/Camera-Adapters-T-Rings/Orion-SteadyPix-Universal-Camera-Mount/pc/-1/c/4/sc/62/p/5228.uts
PS:
The afocal method is a posh name for a simple thing- it means just putting the camera up to the eyepiece and taking the picture.
Afocal photography can be done using any camera, but digital cameras are best for this method (see my camera guide) because you get the chance to see the photo immediately and you can quickly learn from your mistakes and pick up the technique. You can't use ordinary digital cameras for all astrophotography methods as they can't do long exposures, but with the afocal method only short exposures are required.
This method is good for photographing the moon and planets. The moon is the best place to start, it's easy to find and very bright, which makes photographing it very easy. The moon only requires exposures smilar to daylight (1/250th-1/30th) so experiment to find the best exposure (or, especially if you're using film, heres a good exposure guide). Pictures of a half or crescent moon look better than pictures of the full moon, because the light casts shadows on the moon's craters.
http://www.astronomyforbeginners.com/astrophotography/afocal.php
I'd be interested to see a photo of how you have the camera mounted to the telescope if you get a chance.
an older Olympus digital camera, since that isn't the limiting factor....
Nice. We went to one of the local colleges but the clouds weren't in our favor. What kind of camera did you use?
my transit of Venus pic:
I took this with my telescope and a solar filter yesterday.....the weather was not the greatest, a thin haze of clouds, but got this pic during a brief clearing, although still a bit hazy.....
the haze didn't make for the best conditions, but lucky I got anything!!!!
some image enhancement was done (contrast, brightness adjustments, etc), but nothing added:
The Supermoon is Upon Us
The biggest full moon of the year will light up the night sky starting this Saturday
By Aylin Zafar | @azafar | May 4, 2012
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/05/04/the-supermoon-is-upon-us-the-years-biggest-full-moon-lights-up-the-sky-this-saturday/#ixzz1ttsqjSDC
In the Sky Above
Sometime in the next few nights, if the sky is clear, go out and find the western horizon just after dark. Look for the Moon and the two bright objects below it — the planets Jupiter and, closer to the horizon, Venus — all in a rare moment of alignment. Mercury will have just set, and in the east, Mars will be rising. If you’re able to watch the sky for several nights in a row, into early March, Jupiter and Venus will appear to be getting closer and closer to each other while the Moon drops behind, even as it swells toward full moon on March 8.
These are glorious nights for realizing just where we are, for looking out upon our neighboring planets and recognizing that we all do, indeed, belong to a system: the solar system. Watching Jupiter and Venus converging in the night sky, you can easily imagine the plane in which the planets lie as they orbit around the sun. Yet it’s also easy to imagine the pre-Copernican view of things, as though we were the fixed point in the sky and all those celestial objects were revolving around us.
With a little help, you can puzzle out just how these celestial movements work — why Jupiter and Venus appear to be approaching each other now, why the Moon lags farther and farther behind them. But, even if you don’t, you can still look up at a remarkable night sky that reminds us how infinitesimal human affairs are against the celestial scale. And, by the middle of March, when the Moon is growing wan and rising later and later in the evening, you’ll be able again — from the darkest places — to glimpse the uncanny depth of the stars, the uncanny minuteness of the planet we call home.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/opinion/planet-gazing-in-the-sky-above.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
This broad panorama of the Carina Nebula, a region of massive star formation in the southern skies, was taken in infrared light using the HAWK-I camera on ESO's Very Large Telescope. Image released February 8, 2012.
http://www.space.com/14557-carina-nebula-infrared-panorama.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
Out of this world: This amazing picture of Saturn was taken by the Cassini probe. If you look carefully, you can see planet Earth to the left, nestling just above the bright rings
Incredible picture of Saturn that runs rings around all the others (and if you look carefully, you'll see Earth in the distance)
By Ted Thornhill
Last updated at 5:16 PM on 7th September 2011
There have been some amazing photographs taken of Saturn over the years, but none quite like this.
The stunning image comes courtesy of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft while it was in orbit around the planet, which is the sixth furthest from the sun and lies around 800million miles from Earth.
It was taken at night as the probe looked back at the eclipsed sun, resulting in a picture that one Nasa astronomer described as ‘like no other’.
Here’s his explanation of why the image is so unusual: ‘First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system.
‘Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated colour image.
‘Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above.’
He also points out that, if you look very carefully, planet Earth can be seen to the left, just above the bright main rings.
The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, one of the largest ever built, was launched in 1997 and has taken thousand of breath-taking photographs, as well as providing some remarkable scientific data.
In November 2006, for instance, it spied a storm on Saturn that makes Earth’s hurricanes look like gentle summer breezes.
Raging at the planet’s south pole was a storm measuring 5,000 miles across and 43 miles high, with winds peaking at 350mph. Cassini also discovered seven new moons in orbit around Saturn, bringing the total number to 62.
Cassini has spent some of its mission-time analysing Jupiter, too, taking a staggering 26,000 photographs of the giant planet. These led to a far greater understanding of its atmospheric conditions.
The probe’s mission will end when it is sent crashing into the surface of Saturn in 2017, sending back readings as it goes.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2034615/The-picture-Saturn-runs-rings-others.html#ixzz1XYxePqkp
The Shuttle Ends Its Final Voyage and an Era in Space
By KENNETH CHANG
The last space shuttle flight rolled to a stop just before 6 a.m. on Thursday, closing an era of the nation’s space program.
“Mission complete, Houston,” said Capt. Christopher J. Ferguson of the Navy, commander of the shuttle Atlantis for the last flight. “Afterserving the world for over 30 years, the space shuttle has earned its place in history, and it’s come to a final stop.”
It was the 19th night landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to end the 135th space shuttle mission. For Atlantis, the final tally of its 26-year career: 33 missions, accumulating just short of 126 million miles during 307 days in space.
A permanent marker will be placed on the runway to indicate the final resting spot of the space shuttle program.
The last day in space went smoothly. Late on Wednesday night, the crew awoke to the Kate Smith version of “God Bless America.” With no weather or technical concerns, the crew closed the payload doors at 2:09 a.m. on Thursday.
At 4:13 a.m., Barry E. Wilmore, an astronaut at mission control in Houston, told the Atlantis crew, “Everything is looking fantastic, there you are go for the deorbit burn, and you can maneuver on time.”
“That’s great, Butch,” replied Captain Ferguson. “Go on the deorbit maneuver, on time.”
Thirty-six minutes later, as it was passing over Malaysia, the Atlantis fired its maneuvering engines for 3 minutes 16 seconds, slowing it down by 225 miles per hour and beginning the fall back into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The shuttle, which travels backward while in orbit, flipped around to a nose-first position. In the clear, windless predawn, sonic booms announced its impending arrival. It made a wide turn in preparation for the approach for its final landing.
During the 13-day mission, the Atlantis ferried 8,000 pounds of supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station. With the retirement of the shuttles, the space station will now rely on Russian, European and Japanese rockets to bring up supplies.
NASA is also counting on two commercial companies, the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation of Hawthorne, Calif., and the Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., to begin cargo flights next year.
For Atlantis, NASA will now begin the work of transforming it into a museum piece. It will be mounted nearby at Kennedy’s visitor center.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/science/space/22space-shuttle-atlantis.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
Albert Einstein vs Stephen Hawking!!!!!!!
for v much lower than c (the speed of light):
where
E= energy
m=mass
v=velocity
in other words, velocity matters much more than how much matter!!!!
PS: the relativistic version.....yikes!!!....a subatomic particle with the energy of a brick falling on your toe!!!!....about as close to c as can be.......
http://journal.batard.info/post/2008/09/12/lhc-how-fast-do-these-protons-go
When getting very close to c, the energy difference between two particles going at almost the same speed can be very large. A famous example of a very high-energy particle detected on Earth is the so-called “Oh-My-God particle”, probably a proton detected at a speed close to 0.9999999999999999999999951 c:
The energy of the Oh My God particle seen by the Fly's Eye is equivalent to 51 joules—enough to light a 40 watt light bulb for more than a second—equivalent, in the words of Utah physicist Pierre Sokolsky, to “a brick falling on your toe.” The particle's energy is equivalent to an American baseball travelling fifty-five miles an hour.
[...]
After traveling one light year, the particle would be only 0.15 femtoseconds—46 nanometres—behind a photon that left at the same time.
Debris Gives Space Station Crew Members a 29,000-M.P.H. Close Call
By KENNETH CHANG
One of the hundreds of thousands of pieces of space-age litter orbiting Earth zipped uncomfortably close to the International Space Station on Tuesday.
The six crew members of the space station took refuge in their “lifeboats” — two Soyuz space capsules they would use to escape a crippled station — as the unidentified object hurtled past them at a speed of 29,000 miles per hour, missing the space station by only 1,100 feet. The episode took place at 8:08 a.m. Eastern time.
“We believe the probability that it would the hit the station was about 1 in 360,” said Lark Howorth, who leads the team at NASA that tracks the space station’s trajectory. NASA rules call for precautions when the risk of impact is greater than 1 in 10,000.
In the section of the station run by the United States, astronauts closed the hatches in case the debris — commonly known as space junk — crashed through, to limit the danger of explosive decompression. To prepare for a rapid departure, the clamps holding the Soyuz capsules to the station were released.
“They would be one command away from releasing the hooks and undocking,” said Edward Van Cise, NASA’s lead flight director.
Mission controllers gave the all-clear signal four minutes later, and the crew members returned to work. There was no sign of damage or impact to the station.
It was only the second time in the 10-year history of people living on the space station that the crew needed to take such precautions; on March 12, 2009, a piece of an old satellite motor went zipping by.
If the station had been hit, the crew could have quickly undocked and returned to Earth. The risk of space junk hitting a Soyuz capsule is much slimmer.
Usually, when NASA gets a warning, several days in advance, that something that might come too close to the station, it moves the station by firing thrusters. Or, if a space shuttle happened to be visiting at the time, the shuttle would nudge the station out of danger. That has happened 12 times.
This time, however, the warning came Monday evening, less than 15 hours in advance, too little time to plan a maneuver.
Since the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched was in 1957, the space neighborhood has become cluttered with human-made detritus — more than half a million pieces, by recent estimates, from the size of a marble on up. If the orbits of two intersect, the result can be a destructive collision.
“It’s getting kind of dangerous,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who has become an expert on space debris. “Most active satellites now have a regular process of maneuvering to avoid debris.”
NASA estimates that for each six-month period, there is a 1-in-100 chance that some or all of the space station crew might need to evacuate, and most of that risk comes from the possibility of impact from debris or natural micrometeroids. Over 10 years, the current planned lifetime of the station, the cumulative risk is nearly one in five.
“It’s at the level where it probably won’t happen in the lifetime of the station, but it could easily,” Dr. McDowell said.
The debris includes spent rocket stages, and sometimes over time residual fuel combines and explodes. “You now no longer have a rocket stage,” Dr. McDowell said. “You have 500 pieces of shrapnel.”
Also still in orbit are broken satellites or almost incidental litter. In the past, lens covers on satellite cameras and sensors were simply popped off and left to float away. Now satellite makers put the lens cap on a hinge.
Military antisatellite tests also make a big mess, notably when the Chinese blew up one of their satellites in 2007.
Close Up, Mercury Is Looking Less Boring
By KENNETH CHANG
For years, many planetary scientists did not express much curiosity about Mercury, which looked gray and cratered — a slightly larger version of the Moon.
But data released Thursday from NASA’s Mercury Messenger spacecraft, which entered orbit around Mercury in March, is painting a more vibrant picture of the solar system’s innermost planet.
“Mercury ain’t the Moon,” Ralph L. McNutt Jr., the mission’s project scientist, said at a NASA news conference on Thursday.
Among the new findings: Some of Mercury’s topography is not seen anywhere else in the solar system — rimless pits, for instance — and its mineralogy is vastly different from the Moon’s, whose rocks have much less potassium. Scientists already knew that Mercury has a magnetic field, while the Moon does not.
The latest batch of data includes the clearest pictures yet of Mercury’s polar regions, plus readings of the elements in its crust, which have helped scientists rule out some theories about the planet’s origins. Mercury Messenger has also discovered that the planet’s magnetic field is stronger in its northern hemisphere than in its southern, which hints at something odd in the structure of its molten core.
The new information could reveal how Mercury formed and changed over the 4.5-billion-year history of the solar system, which in turn could help astronomers understand the panoply of Earth-size planets around other stars and the possibility of conditions friendly for life on them. NASA’s Kepler telescope has discovered dozens of possible Earth-size planets, but its observations can determine little beyond their size.
“We have in our solar system four experiments in how four Earthlike planets evolve once they form under slightly different conditions,” said Sean C. Solomon, the principal investigator for Mercury Messenger, referring to Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, the four rocky planets of the inner solar system.
“What we’re learning is that each of those experiments had an extraordinarily different outcome,” Dr. Solomon said. “And one of those experiments we live on. So it really behooves us, in a very general way, to understand how Earthlike planets form and evolve and operate.”
One of the mysteries is why the iron core of Mercury is unusually large, extending out three-quarters of the way to the surface. Earth’s core, by contrast, extends a little more than halfway.
One idea was that Mercury was originally larger, and the young Sun was so intense that the radiation stripped away the outer layers, leaving behind the Mercury seen today. But that theory predicted low abundances of certain elements like potassium that would have easily evaporated in the intense heat. Mercury Messenger measured ample amounts of potassium.
“We can rule out this kind of model,” said Larry R. Nittler, a staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and a member of the science team.
Another theory is that Mercury formed out of metal-rich meteorites. By and large, the observed composition of the surface rocks does not fit with that theory either, although a variation could still prove the correct explanation, Dr. Nittler said.
A third idea is that a giant impact early in Mercury’s history knocked off a large fraction of the planet. “This is the model that is still in the running,” Dr. Nittler said. “There are probably going to be many more models devised before we have an answer on this.”
High-resolution images of craters revealed irregular pits, ranging in width from several hundred feet to a few miles. The pits do not have rims like craters produced by impacts, leading the scientists to speculate that they were etched by some unstable material that evaporated quickly when exposed at the surface.
Mercury Messenger’s one-year mission around the planet is only one-quarter done, so more information about the planet will be forthcoming. Already, Dr. Solomon said, the orbiter has dispelled the misconception that Mercury is a boring place, and that what NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft saw in 1974 and 1975 during three flybys was all that was to be seen.
“Some even in the planetary community, after the Mariner 10 mission, placed a low priority on returning a spacecraft to Mercury on the grounds that it was very much like the Moon, we’d been to the Moon,” Dr. Solomon said. “It was an example, to use a phrase coined by a very famous space scientist, of ‘one of the burnt-out cinders of the solar system.’ And it is anything but that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/science/space/17mercury.html?ref=space&pagewanted=print
OT: Woman's plane photos of space shuttle go viral
This citizen journalism photo taken with a cell phone by Stefanie Gordon aboard a passenger flight from New York to Palm Beach, Fla. shows the space shuttle Endeavor as it streaks toward orbit shortly after liftoff Monday May 16, 2011. Gordon says she had just awakened from a nap on the flight when the pilot announced the shuttle might come into view. (AP Photo/Stefanie Gordon)
By MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press Matt Sedensky, Associated Press – Tue May 17, 7:37 pm ET
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Groggy from a late night watching the Yankees, frigid from a chilled airplane cabin, Stefanie Gordon stirred to action after the pilot's announcement. Lifting her iPhone to the plane's window, she captured an otherworldly image that rocketed around the globe as fast as her subject: Space shuttle Endeavour soaring from a bank of clouds, its towering plume of white smoke lighting the azure sky.
She had never imagined the response her airborne image — capturing the last launch of Endeavour and the next-to-last space shuttle flight — would ignite. The images and video have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter alone, landed on network newscasts and been published in newspapers worldwide.
In turn, they've made a photographic celebrity of sorts of the unemployed 33-year-old from Hoboken, N.J.
"It just blew up," she said of the attention.
Gordon caught an early Delta flight from New York to West Palm Beach on Monday to visit her parents and had a whole row to herself, never imagining the history she would record.
She stretched out and took a nap. Then she awoke shortly before the pilot announced the descent had begun and a sighting of the shuttle was possible. She had forgotten Endeavour was even taking off at 8:56 a.m. EDT, but readied her iPhone just in case.
Then, the pilot came on again, alerting passengers the shuttle was in sight.
"Everybody ran over to the east side of the plane," Gordon said Tuesday, "and all of a sudden there it was in the clouds."
All told, she shot 12 seconds of footage of the shuttle arcing on its simple stream of smoke into space. She also shot three still photographs.
The plane landed minutes later in West Palm Beach and while she was waiting at the luggage carousel, at 9:31 a.m., she began uploading to Twitter. As she waited for her father to pick her up, she realized her work was making a splash.
"My phone just started going crazy," she said.
Among those who reached out to Gordon was Anne Farrar, a photo editor at The Washington Post, who saw the images after they were posted by a friend on Facebook. She said she'd never seen anything quite like this view of a shuttle launch before.
"It was just a really imaginative way to bring it to our readers," Farrar said. "It's almost like an underwater view."
Endeavour is on a 16-day trip — the second to last space shuttle flight. Its main mission is to attach to the space station a $2 billion physics experiment.
The Associated Press contacted Gordon through Facebook and purchased the images. The AP often obtains photos from eye witnesses, called citizen journalists.
As for Gordon, she lost her job at as a meeting planner at a nonprofit organization last month. If the exposure from her pictures helps land her dream job of working in the sports field on special events and promotions, she said, it would all be worth it. Or if someone thinks her photographic eye qualifies her for a permanent job shooting video or photos, she wouldn't turn that down either.
For now, she's basking in the afterglow of her launch shots and hoping for some rest once the media frenzy passes.
"Laying by the pool would be really nice," she said.
NASA Telescopes Join Forces to Observe Unprecedented Explosion04.07.11 Images from Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical (white, purple) and X-ray telescopes (yellow and red) were combined in this view of GRB 110328A. The blast was detected only in X-rays, which were collected over a 3.4-hour period on March 28. Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler
› Expanded image with labels
This is a visible-light image of GRB 110328A's host galaxy (arrow) taken on April 4 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3. The galaxy is 3.8 billion light-years away. Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Fruchter (STScI)
› Larger image
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory completed this four-hour exposure of GRB 110328A on April 4. The center of the X-ray source corresponds to the very center of the host galaxy imaged by Hubble (red cross). Credit: NASA/CXC/ Warwick/A. Levan
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GRB 110328A has repeatedly flared in the days following its discovery by Swift. This plot shows the brightness changes recorded by Swift's X-ray Telescope. Credit: NASA/Swift/Penn State/J. Kennea
› Larger image WASHINGTON -- NASA's Swift, Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory have teamed up to study one of the most puzzling cosmic blasts yet observed. More than a week later, high-energy radiation continues to brighten and fade from its location.
Astronomers say they have never seen anything this bright, long-lasting and variable before. Usually, gamma-ray bursts mark the destruction of a massive star, but flaring emission from these events never lasts more than a few hours.
Although research is ongoing, astronomers say that the unusual blast likely arose when a star wandered too close to its galaxy's central black hole. Intense tidal forces tore the star apart, and the infalling gas continues to stream toward the hole. According to this model, the spinning black hole formed an outflowing jet along its rotational axis. A powerful blast of X- and gamma rays is seen if this jet is pointed in our direction.
On March 28, Swift's Burst Alert Telescope discovered the source in the constellation Draco when it erupted with the first in a series of powerful X-ray blasts. The satellite determined a position for the explosion, now cataloged as gamma-ray burst (GRB) 110328A, and informed astronomers worldwide.
As dozens of telescopes turned to study the spot, astronomers quickly noticed that a small, distant galaxy appeared very near the Swift position. A deep image taken by Hubble on April 4 pinpoints the source of the explosion at the center of this galaxy, which lies 3.8 billion light-years away.
That same day, astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to make a four-hour-long exposure of the puzzling source. The image, which locates the object 10 times more precisely than Swift can, shows that it lies at the center of the galaxy Hubble imaged.
"We know of objects in our own galaxy that can produce repeated bursts, but they are thousands to millions of times less powerful than the bursts we are seeing now. This is truly extraordinary," said Andrew Fruchter at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
"We have been eagerly awaiting the Hubble observation," said Neil Gehrels, the lead scientist for Swift at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The fact that the explosion occurred in the center of a galaxy tells us it is most likely associated with a massive black hole. This solves a key question about the mysterious event."
Most galaxies, including our own, contain central black holes with millions of times the sun's mass; those in the largest galaxies can be a thousand times larger. The disrupted star probably succumbed to a black hole less massive than the Milky Way's, which has a mass four million times that of our sun
Astronomers previously have detected stars disrupted by supermassive black holes, but none have shown the X-ray brightness and variability seen in GRB 110328A. The source has repeatedly flared. Since April 3, for example, it has brightened by more than five times.
Scientists think that the X-rays may be coming from matter moving near the speed of light in a particle jet that forms as the star's gas falls toward the black hole.
"The best explanation at the moment is that we happen to be looking down the barrel of this jet," said Andrew Levan at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, who led the Chandra observations. "When we look straight down these jets, a brightness boost lets us view details we might otherwise miss."
This brightness increase, which is called relativistic beaming, occurs when matter moving close to the speed of light is viewed nearly head on.
Astronomers plan additional Hubble observations to see if the galaxy's core changes brightness.
NASA Goddard manages Swift, and Hubble, and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages Chandra. The Hubble Space Telescope was built and is operated in partnership with the European Space Agency. Science operations for all three missions include contributions from many national and international partners. Francis Reddy
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/star-disintegration.html
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