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Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Science, Culture, & Humanities => Topic started by: Body-by-Guinness on April 09, 2009, 01:18:02 PM

Title: Astronomy and Outer Space
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on April 09, 2009, 01:18:02 PM: Top 10 Hubble Telescope pics:

http://nowthatsnifty.blogspot.com/2009/04/ten-greatest-hubble-telescope.html
Title: Saturn & Moons
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on April 21, 2009, 07:39:39 PM: Some amazing pics of Saturn and its moons:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1172205/Saturn-close-Sensational-cosmic-images-bring-ringed-planet-life.html
Title: Carina Nebula
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on May 26, 2009, 07:41:25 AM: (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0905/carina2_hst.jpg)

Carina Nebula Panorama from Hubble
Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (U. California, Berkeley) et al., and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Explanation: In one of the brightest parts of Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebulas. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically. The Keyhole Nebula, visible left of center, houses several of the most massive stars known and has also changed its appearance. The entire Carina Nebula spans over 300 light years and lies about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. Pictured above is the most detailed image of the Carina Nebula ever taken. The controlled color image is a composite of 48 high-resolution frames taken by the Hubble Space Telescope two years ago. Wide-field annotated and zoomable image versions are also available.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090524.html
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on May 29, 2009, 02:10:55 PM: Get Our Free Newsletters Via Email

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SOLAR SCIENCE
New Solar Cycle Predictions

This plot of sunspot numbers shows the measured peak of the last solar cycle (Solar Cycle 23) in blue and the predicted peak of the next solar cycle (24) in red. Credit: NOAA/Space Weather Prediction Center.

by Tony Phillips

Boulder CO (SPX) May 28, 2009

(http://www.spacedaily.com/images/solar-cycle-23-peak-24-predicted-peak-bg.jpg)

An international panel of experts has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle, stating that Solar Cycle 24 will peak in May 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots. Led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and sponsored by NASA, the panel includes a dozen members from nine different government and academic institutions.

Their forecast sets the stage for at least another year of mostly quiet conditions before solar activity resumes in earnest.

"If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78," says panel chairman Doug Biesecker of the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, Boulder, Colo.

It is tempting to describe such a cycle as "weak" or "mild," but that could give the wrong impression. "Even a below-average cycle is capable of producing severe space weather," says Biesecker. "The great geomagnetic storm of 1859, for instance, occurred during a solar cycle of about the same size we're predicting for 2013."

The 1859 storm - named the "Carrington Event" after astronomer Richard Carrington who witnessed the instigating solar flare - electrified transmission cables, set fires in telegraph offices, and produced Northern Lights so bright that people could read newspapers by their red and green glow.

A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause $1 to 2 trillion in damages to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina caused $80 to 125 billion in damage.

The latest forecast revises a prediction issued in 2007, when a sharply divided panel believed solar minimum would come in March 2008 and would be followed by either a strong solar maximum in 2011 or a weak solar maximum in 2012. Competing models of the solar cycle produced different forecasts, and researchers were eager for the sun to reveal which was correct.

"It turns out that none of the models were really correct," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. NASA's lead representative on the panel. "The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way."

Astronomers first noted the solar cycle in the mid-1800s. Graphs of sunspot numbers resemble a roller coaster, going up and down with an approximately 11-year period. Predicting the peaks and valleys has proven troublesome because cycles vary in length from 9 to 14 years. Some peaks are high, others low.

The valleys are usually brief, lasting only a couple of years, but sometimes they stretch much longer. In the 17th century, the sun plunged into a 70-year period of spotless quiet known as the Maunder Minimum that still baffles scientists.

Right now, the solar cycle is in a valley--the deepest of the past century. In 2008 and 2009, the sun set Space Age records for low sunspot counts, weak solar wind, and low solar irradiance. The sun has gone more than two years without a significant solar flare.

"In our professional careers, we've never seen anything quite like it," says Pesnell. "Solar minimum has lasted far beyond what we predicted in 2007."

In recent months, however, the sun has begun to show signs of life. Small sunspots and "proto-sunspots" are popping up with increasing frequency. Enormous currents of plasma on the sun's surface ("zonal flows") are gaining strength and slowly drifting toward the sun's equator.

Radio astronomers have detected a tiny but significant uptick in solar radio emissions. All these things are precursors of an awakening Solar Cycle 24 and form the basis for the panel's new, almost unanimous forecast.

According to the forecast, the sun should remain generally calm for at least another year. From a research point of view, that's good news because solar minimum has proven to be more interesting than anyone imagined. Low solar activity has a profound effect on Earth's atmosphere, allowing it to cool and contract. Space junk accumulates in Earth orbit because there is less aerodynamic drag.

The becalmed solar wind whips up fewer magnetic storms around Earth's poles. Cosmic rays that are normally pushed back by solar wind instead intrude on the near-Earth environment. There are other side-effects, too, that can be studied only so long as the sun remains quiet.

Meanwhile, the sun pays little heed to human committees. There could be more surprises, panelists acknowledge, and more revisions to the forecast.

"Go ahead and mark your calendar for May 2013," says Pesnell. "But use a pencil."

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/New_Solar_Cycle_Predictions_999.html
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 30, 2009, 04:55:11 AM: Fascinating.
Title: Volcano Eruption as seen on the ISS
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on June 22, 2009, 09:36:00 AM: (http://i.livescience.com/images/090622-matua-volcano-02.jpg)

Sarychev Peak on Matua Island is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, northeast of Japan. Astronauts took this photo of an eruption on June 12. The plume appears to be a combination of brown ash and white steam. The vigorously rising plume gives the steam a bubble-like appearance; the surrounding atmosphere has been shoved up by the shock wave of the eruption. Credit: NASA/ISS/Earth Observatory

http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?s=environment&c=news&l=on&pic=090622-matua-volcano-02.jpg&cap=Sarychev+Peak+on+Matua+Island+is+one+of+the+most+active+volcanoes+in+the+Kuril+Island+chain%2C+northeast+of+Japan.+Astronauts+took+this+photo+of+an+eruption+on+June+12.+The+plume+appears+to+be+a+combination+of+brown+ash+and+white+steam.+The+vigorously+rising+plume+gives+the+steam+a+bubble-like+appearance%3B+the+surrounding+atmosphere+has+been+shoved+up+by+the+shock+wave+of+the+eruption.+Credit%3A+NASA%2FISS%2FEarth+Observatory&title=
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: DougMacG on June 22, 2009, 02:37:12 PM: BBG, Amazing photo!! Curious, do they apply for a greenhouse gas permit before eruption or, like Communist China, is God excluded from Kyoto jurisdiction?
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on June 22, 2009, 08:37:18 PM: Doug, these emissions are all natural, which, by definition, means they must be good, at least judging by all the labels I see at the supermarket.
Title: Sauron's Sky?
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 27, 2009, 05:32:18 AM: (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0907/ngc1097_spitzer.jpg)

NGC 1097: Spiral Galaxy with a Central Eye
Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SINGS Team (SSC)
Explanation: What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 1097? No one is sure, but it likely involves a supermassive black hole. Matter falling in from a bar of stars and gas across the center is likely being heated by an extremely energetic region surrounding the central black hole. From afar, the entire central region appears in the above false-color infrared image as a mysterious eye. Near the left edge and seen in blue, a smaller companion galaxy is wrapped in the spectacular spiral arms of the large spiral, lit in pink by glowing dust. Currently about 40 thousand light-years from the larger galaxy's center, the gravity of the companion galaxy appears to be reshaping the larger galaxy as it is slowly being destroyed itself. NGC 1097 is located about 50 million light years away toward the constellation of the furnace (Fornax).

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Title: Skipped Solar Cycle?
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 01, 2009, 06:31:08 PM: This abstract is pretty dense, and leads to the full piece that's even denser. Not sure either is worth wading through, though I do think it's important to note how small the data set for our star is and how it's failed to adhere to the model extrapolated from that small data set. As the sun is the source of the energy that warms the planet, one would think the global warming crowd would be inspired toward humility by pieces like this.

Some speculation that solar cycle 25 has already begun
1
08
2009
Leif Svalgaard writes:

Some speculation that solar cycle 25 has already begun:
http://xrt.cfa.harvard.edu/resources/pubs/savc0707.pdf

(http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/images/longrange/predictions3_strip.jpg)

From a 2006 NASA News article - In red, David Hathaway's predictions for the next two solar cycles and, in pink, Mausumi Dikpati's prediction for cycle 24, and the expected "low" cycle 25.
Graph source: NASA News

This would be stunning, because it suggests that the sun has skipped a solar cycle (#24) . Researchers, three from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the other from Marshall Space Flight Center-NASA, have published a paper that suggests this possibility.

Does a polar coronal hole’s flux emergence follow a Hale-like law?
A. Savcheva1, J.W. Cirtain2, E.E. DeLuca1, L. Golub1

ABSTRACT
Recent increases in spatial and temporal resolution for solar telescopes sensitive to EUV and X-ray radiation have revealed the prevalence of transient jet events in polar coronal holes. Using data collected by the X-Ray Telescope on Hinode, Savcheva et al. (2007) confirmed the observation, made first by the Soft X-ray Telescope on Yohkoh, that some jets exhibit a motion transverse to the jet outflow direction.

The velocity of this transverse motion is, on average, 20 kms−1. The direction of the transverse motion, in combination with the standard reconnection model for jet production (e.g. Shibata et al. 1992), reflects the magnetic polarity orientation of the ephemeral active region at the base of the jet. From this signature, we find that during the present minimum phase of the solar cycle the jet-base ephemeral active regions in the polar coronal holes had a preferred east-west direction, and that this direction reversed during the cycle’s progression through minimum.

In late 2006 and early 2007, the preferred direction was that of the active regions of the coming sunspot cycle (Cycle 24), but in late 2008 and early 2009 the preferred direction has been that of the active regions of sunspot cycle 25. These findings are consistent with the results of Wilson et al. (1988) that there is a high latitude expansion of the solar activity
cycle.

Full paper here:

http://xrt.cfa.harvard.edu/resources/pubs/savc0707.pdf

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/01/some-speculation-that-solar-cycle-25-has-already-begun/
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 03, 2009, 10:59:56 PM: BBG:

The diversity of your reading impresses.
Title: Cosmic Ray Cloud Connection
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 08, 2009, 10:43:03 AM: Not quite astronomy, but not far afield enough to inspire a new weather topic. Note that throughout this piece the process of cloud formation is said to be poorly understood, which again ought to inspire humility in circles where certainty is regularly trumpeted.

Do Clouds Come From Outer Space?

By Phil Berardelli
ScienceNOW Daily News
5 August 2009

Most of Earth's clouds get their start in deep space. That's the surprising conclusion from a team of researchers who argue that interstellar cosmic rays collide with water molecules in our atmosphere to form overcast skies.
As common as clouds are on Earth, the processes that produce them are not well understood. Scientists think particles of dust or pollen can serve as nuclei for water droplets, which in turn gather by the trillions into clouds. That would help explain how clouds form over urban areas: Fine particles called aerosols are emitted from the exhaust pipes of millions of vehicles and work their way into the atmosphere, where they are thought to attract water molecules. But it doesn't explain how clouds formed in preindustrial society--or how they form today over vast stretches of rainforest and ocean.

That's where cosmic rays come in. The idea goes like this: High-speed cosmic ray particles--protons and neutrons of still-mysterious origins that travel at nearly the speed of light--collide with water molecules in the atmosphere, stripping away electrons from those molecules and converting them into electrically charged ions. The ions then begin attracting other water molecules, which eventually form clouds.

The theory seems to hold water in the lab. In 2006, physicist Henrik Svensmark of the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen and colleagues produced aerosols artificially in an atmospheric chamber by bombarding water molecules with a particle beam. "More ions resulted in more aerosols," Svensmark says.

In the new study, Svensmark's team wanted to see if the idea also worked in the real world. The researchers focused on a phenomenon known as a Forbush decrease. Here, a massive storm on the sun's surface flings a superhot fog of particles, called a coronal mass ejection, past Earth, temporarily shielding our planet from cosmic rays. If cosmic rays really do contribute to cloud formation, Svensmark and colleagues hypothesized, then cloud cover should dip during Forbush decreases.

And indeed that's what Svensmark's team found. When the researchers examined cloud data collected by weather satellites over the past 22 years and compared them with 26 Forbush decreases, they discovered that, for the five strongest events, the water-droplet content of Earth's clouds decreased by an average of 7%. It's like bare patches forming in a field, says Svensmark, whose team reports its findings this month in Geophysical Research Letters. The cloud patterns eventually returned to normal, he says, but they took weeks to do so. "We're now convinced that aerosols are affected by the Forbush decrease," Svensmark says.

Geoscientist Jón Egill Kristjánsson of the University of Oslo, Norway, calls the findings "astonishing." He and other researchers have searched for years for relationships between Forbush decreases and cloud formation and have found nothing, or they have found significant relationships "only in very remote locations." If the data can be confirmed by other observations, he says, "Svensmark's new results would greatly strengthen the case for a cosmic ray-cloud connection."

Svensmark argues that the findings suggest a link between cosmic rays and climate change. Because clouds bring rain and reflect light from the sun, fewer clouds would mean a warmer Earth. But Kristjánsson isn't willing to go that far. Monitoring instruments "over the last 50 years or so show either no trend or a slightly upward trend" in cosmic rays hitting Earth, he notes. According to Svensmark's theory, that would mean either no increase in cloud formation or a slight increase--neither of which would warm the world.

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/805/1
Title: 13 Images
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 09, 2009, 07:54:06 AM: A nice selection of 13 astronomical images:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/picture-galleries/5990759/Photography-that-is-out-of-this-world.html
Title: Sunspots & Space Weather
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 22, 2009, 11:14:14 AM: A nice site that reports on the sun/earth space weather environment.

ARE SUNSPOTS DISAPPEARING? Sunspots are made of magnetism. The "firmament" of a sunspot is not matter but rather a strong magnetic field that appears dark because it blocks the upflow of heat from the sun's fiery depths. Without magnetism, there would be no sunspots.

That's what makes the following graph a little troubling:

(http://spaceweather.com/swpod2009/22aug09/penn1_strip.jpg)

According to Bill Livingston and Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, sunspot magnetic fields are waning. The two respected solar astronomers have been measuring solar magnetism since 1992. Their technique is based on Zeeman splitting of infrared spectral lines emitted by iron atoms in the vicinity of sunspots. Extrapolating their data into the future suggests that sunspots could completely disappear within decades. That would be a bummer for Spaceweather.com.

Don't count out sunspots just yet, however. While the data of Livingston and Penn are widely thought to be correct, far-reaching extrapolations may be premature. This type of measurement is relatively new, and the data reaches back less than 17 years. "Whether this is an omen of long-term sunspot decline, analogous to the Maunder Minimum, remains to be seen," they caution in a recent EOS article.

http://spaceweather.com/
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on September 02, 2009, 09:18:35 AM: Nice shuttle launch pic:

(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0909/sts128_cooper900.jpg)

Discovery's Rainbow
Credit: NASA, Ben Cooper (Launch Photography)
Explanation: Just one minute before midnight EDT, Friday, August 28, the Space Shuttle Discovery began a long arc into a cloudy sky. Following the launch, a bright and remarkably colorful trail was captured in this time exposure from the Banana River Viewing Site, looking east toward pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. On STS-128, Discovery docked with the International Space Station Sunday evening. The 13-day mission will exchange space station crew members and deliver more than 7 tons of supplies and equipment. Of course, the equipment includes the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT).
Title: Jupiter Impact
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on September 08, 2009, 12:27:47 PM: The image is animated at the NASA site, but doesn't appear to be working here.

(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0909/jupiterimpact_alpo.gif)

Unexpected Impact on Jupiter
Credit: ALPO, Theo Ramakers
Explanation: Two months ago, something unexpected hit Jupiter. First discovered by an amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley on 2009 July 19, the impact was quickly confirmed and even imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope the very next day. Many of the world's telescopes then zoomed in on our Solar System's largest planet to see the result. Some of these images have been complied into the above animation. Over the course of the last month and a half, the above time-lapse sequence shows the dark spot -- first created when Jupiter was struck -- deforming and dissipating as Jupiter's clouds churned and Jupiter rotated. It is now thought that a small comet -- perhaps less than one kilometer across -- impacted Jupiter on or before 2009 July 19. Although initially expected to be visible for only a week, astronomers continue to track atmospheric remnants of the impact for new information about winds and currents in Jupiter's thick atmosphere.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090908.html
Title: Milky Way Pic
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on September 26, 2009, 07:15:42 AM: (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0909/milkywaypan_brunier_h600.jpg)

Gigagalaxy Zoom: Milky Way
Credit: ESO / Serge Brunier, Frederic Tapissier - Copyright: Serge Brunier (TWAN)
Explanation: Our magnificent Milky Way Galaxy sprawls across this ambitious all-sky panorama. In fact, at 800 million pixels the full resolution mosaic strives to show all the stars the eye can see in planet Earth's night sky. Part of ESO's Gigagalaxy Zoom Project, the mosaicked images were recorded over several months of 2008 and 2009 at exceptional astronomical sites; the Atacama Desert in the southern hemisphere and the Canary Islands in the northern hemisphere. Also capturing bright planets and even a comet, the individual frames were stitched together and mapped into a single, flat, apparently seamless 360 by 180 degree view. The final result is oriented so the plane of our galaxy runs horizontally through the middle with the bulging Galactic Center at image center. Below and left of center are the Milky Way's satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090926.html
Title: Solar Minimum's & Cosmic Rays
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 03, 2009, 12:37:42 PM: Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High

09.29.2009

September 29, 2009: Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high.

"In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years," says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. "The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions."

(http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/images/cosmicrays/GCR_Fe_SolCyc2009_strip.gif)

Above: Energetic iron nuclei counted by the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer on NASA's ACE spacecraft reveal that cosmic ray levels have jumped 19% above the previous Space Age high. [larger image]

The cause of the surge is solar minimum, a deep lull in solar activity that began around 2007 and continues today. Researchers have long known that cosmic rays go up when solar activity goes down. Right now solar activity is as weak as it has been in modern times, setting the stage for what Mewaldt calls "a perfect storm of cosmic rays."

"We're experiencing the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, "so it is no surprise that cosmic rays are at record levels for the Space Age."

Galactic cosmic rays come from outside the solar system. They are subatomic particles--mainly protons but also some heavy nuclei--accelerated to almost light speed by distant supernova explosions. Cosmic rays cause "air showers" of secondary particles when they hit Earth's atmosphere; they pose a health hazard to astronauts; and a single cosmic ray can disable a satellite if it hits an unlucky integrated circuit.

The sun's magnetic field is our first line of defense against these highly-charged, energetic particles. The entire solar system from Mercury to Pluto and beyond is surrounded by a bubble of magnetism called "the heliosphere." It springs from the sun's inner magnetic dynamo and is inflated to gargantuan proportions by the solar wind. When a cosmic ray tries to enter the solar system, it must fight through the heliosphere's outer layers; and if it makes it inside, there is a thicket of magnetic fields waiting to scatter and deflect the intruder.

(http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/images/cosmicrays/heliosphere2009_med.jpg)

Right: An artist's concept of the heliosphere, a magnetic bubble that partially protects the solar system from cosmic rays. [larger image]

"At times of low solar activity, this natural shielding is weakened, and more cosmic rays are able to reach the inner solar system," explains Pesnell.

Mewaldt lists three aspects of the current solar minimum that are combining to create the perfect storm:

1. The sun's magnetic field is weak. "There has been a sharp decline in the sun's interplanetary magnetic field down to 4 nT (nanoTesla) from typical values of 6 to 8 nT," he says. "This record-low interplanetary magnetic field undoubtedly contributes to the record-high cosmic ray fluxes." [data]

2. The solar wind is flagging. "Measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft show that solar wind pressure is at a 50-year low," he continues, "so the magnetic bubble that protects the solar system is not being inflated as much as usual." A smaller bubble gives cosmic rays a shorter-shot into the solar system. Once a cosmic ray enters the solar system, it must "swim upstream" against the solar wind. Solar wind speeds have dropped to very low levels in 2008 and 2009, making it easier than usual for a cosmic ray to proceed. [data]

3. The current sheet is flattening. Imagine the sun wearing a ballerina's skirt as wide as the entire solar system with an electrical current flowing along its wavy folds. It's real, and it's called the "heliospheric current sheet," a vast transition zone where the polarity of the sun's magnetic field changes from plus to minus. The current sheet is important because cosmic rays are guided by its folds. Lately, the current sheet has been flattening itself out, allowing cosmic rays more direct access to the inner solar system.

(http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/images/cosmicrays/currentsheet_med.jpg)

Right: The heliospheric current sheet is shaped like a ballerina's skirt. Image credit: J. R. Jokipii and B. Thomas, Astrophysical Journal 243, 1115, 1981.

"If the flattening continues, we could see cosmic ray fluxes jump all the way to 30% above previous Space Age highs," predicts Mewaldt. [data]

Earth is in no great peril. Our planet's atmosphere and magnetic field provide some defense against the extra cosmic rays. Indeed, we've experienced much worse in the past. Hundreds of years ago, cosmic ray fluxes were at least 200% to 300% higher than anything measured during the Space Age. Researchers know this because when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, they produce an isotope of beryllium, 10Be, which is preserved in polar ice. By examining ice cores, it is possible to estimate cosmic ray fluxes more than a thousand years into the past. Even with the recent surge, cosmic rays today are much weaker than they have been at times in the past millennium. [data]

"The space era has so far experienced a time of relatively low cosmic ray activity," says Mewaldt. "We may now be returning to levels typical of past centuries."

NASA spacecraft will continue to monitor the situation as solar minimum unfolds. Stay tuned for updates.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/29sep_cosmicrays.htm
Title: Night Sky Panorama
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 11, 2009, 07:50:32 PM: The Milky Way pic referenced above is available as part of a 360 degree panorama at this site:

http://www.sergebrunier.com/gallerie/pleinciel/index-eng.html
Title: Re: Night Sky Panorama
Post by: rachelg on October 11, 2009, 08:22:38 PM: Quote from: Body-by-Guinness on October 11, 2009, 07:50:32 PM
The Milky Way pic referenced above is available as part of a 360 degree panorama at this site:

http://www.sergebrunier.com/gallerie/pleinciel/index-eng.html

That was very cool-- Thanks!!!
Title: The Galaxy Zoo
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 26, 2009, 07:57:15 AM: (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0910/mergers_galaxyzoo.jpg)

Galaxy Zoo Catalogs the Universe
Credit & Copyright: SDSS, Galaxy Zoo; Composite: Richard Nowell & Hannah Hutchins
Explanation: You, too, can Zoo. The Galaxy Zoo project has been enabling citizen scientists -- inquisitive people like yourself armed with only a web browser-- to sort through the universe. Specifically, after a brief training session, volunteers are asked to use the superior image-processing power of their minds to classify and measure properties of galaxies in the vast Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In its two short years of existence, millions of galaxies have already been inspected by thousands of enthusiastic volunteers. Using Galaxy Zoo data, for example, the universe has been discovered to create no preferred spin direction, an unusual and unclassified object was found that is still being investigated, and a whole class of small galaxies dubbed Green Peas were uncovered where star formation occurs at an extraordinary high rate. Further, the Galaxy Zoo may be setting a precedent for a new type of scientific inquiry where the web helps collect, focus and coordinate human and machine intelligence. Pictured above, a group of vibrant mergers found by Zooites demonstrates the diverse zoo-like nature of many interacting galaxies in the universe.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091026.html
Title: Craters of Phobos
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 07, 2009, 07:37:00 AM: (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0911/PSP_007769_9010_IRB_Stickney800.jpg)

Explanation: Stickney Crater, the largest crater on the martian moon Phobos, is named for Chloe Angeline Stickney Hall, mathematician and wife of astronomer Asaph Hall. Asaph Hall discovered both the Red Planet's moons in 1877. Over 9 kilometers across, Stickney is nearly half the diameter of Phobos itself, so large that the impact that blasted out the crater likely came close to shattering the tiny moon. This stunning, enhanced-color image of Stickney and surroundings was recorded by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it passed within some six thousand kilometers of Phobos in March of 2008. Even though the surface gravity of asteroid-like Phobos is less than 1/1000th Earth's gravity, streaks suggest loose material has slid down inside the crater walls over time. Light bluish regions near the crater's rim could indicate a relatively freshly exposed surface. The origin of the curious grooves along the surface is mysterious but may be related to the crater-forming impact.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091107.html
Title: The Galactic Center
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 11, 2009, 09:16:20 AM: (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0911/galacticcenter_greatobs.jpg)

Great Observatories Explore Galactic Center
Credit: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC, and STScI
Explanation: Where can a telescope take you? Four hundred years ago, a telescope took Galileo to the Moon to discover craters, to Saturn to discover rings, to Jupiter to discover moons, to Venus to discover phases, and to the Sun to discover spots. Today, in celebration of Galileo's telescopic achievements and as part of the International Year of Astronomy, NASA has used its entire fleet of Great Observatories, and the Internet, to bring the center of our Galaxy to you. Pictured above, in greater detail and in more colors than ever seen before, are the combined images of the Hubble Space Telescope in optical light, the Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory in X-ray light. A menagerie of vast star fields is visible, along with dense star clusters, long filaments of gas and dust, expanding supernova remnants, and the energetic surroundings of what likely is our Galaxy's central black hole. Many of these features are labeled on a complementary annotated image. Of course, a telescope's magnification and light-gathering ability create only an image of what a human could see if visiting these places. To actually go requires rockets.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091111.html
Title: Interstellar Light Echo
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 22, 2009, 10:18:34 AM: (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0911/v838mon_hst.jpg)

Light Echoes from V838 Mon
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)
Explanation: What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this has never been seen before -- supernovas and novas expel matter out into space. Although the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the complex array of ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros), while the light echo above spans about six light years in diameter.
Title: Solar Activity Very Low
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 09, 2009, 11:36:59 AM: Solar geomagnetic activity is at an all time low – what does this mean for climate?
9
12
2009
I’ve mentioned this solar data on WUWT several times, it bears repeating again. Yesterday, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center released their latest data and graph of the interplanetary geomagnetic index (Ap) which is a proxy for the activity of the solar dynamo. Here is the data provided by SWPC. Note the graph, which I’ve annotated below.

(http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/ap-noaa-dec2009.png?w=510&h=389)

The value, for the second straight month, is “3″. The blue line showing the smoothed value, suggests the trend continues downward. To get an idea of how significant this is in our history, take a look at this data (graph produced by me) from Dr. Leif Svalgaard back to the 1930’s.

The step change in October 2005 is still visible and the value of 3.9 that occurred in April of this year is the lowest for the entire dataset at that time. I’m hoping Dr. Svalgaard will have updated data for us soon.

(http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/ap-bgs-svalgaard.png?w=510&h=393&h=393)

Click for a larger image
Why is this important? Well, if Svensmark is right, and Galactic Cosmic Rays modulated by the sun’s magnetic field make a change in cloud cover on Earth, increasing it during low solar magnetic activity, we are in for some colder times.

There’s a presentation by Jasper Kirkby, CLOUD Spokesperson, CERN, which shows what we currently know about the correlations between Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR’s) and variations in the climate.

The CLOUD experiment uses a cloud chamber to study the theorized link between GCR’s and cloud formation in Earth’s atmosphere. Kirkby talks about the results from the first CLOUD experiment and the new CLOUD experiment and what it will deliver on the intrinsic connection between GCR’s and cloud formation. This is from the Cern, one of Europe’s most highly respected centers for scientific research.

Kirkby’s one hour video presentation is hosted here. It is well worth your time to view it.

h/t to Russ Steele

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/solar-geomagnetic-activity-is-at-an-all-time-low-what-does-this-mean-for-climate/#more-13917
Title: M51 Hubble Remix
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 26, 2009, 08:39:10 AM: (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0912/M51HST-Gendler800r.jpg)

M51 Hubble Remix
S. Beckwith (STScI), Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI/AURA), ESA, NASA
Additional Processing: Robert Gendler
Explanation: The 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog is perhaps the original spiral nebula - a large galaxy with a well defined spiral structure also cataloged as NGC 5194. Over 60,000 light-years across, M51's spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (right), NGC 5195. Image data from the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys has been reprocessed to produce this alternative portrait of the well-known interacting galaxy pair. The processing has further sharpened details and enhanced color and contrast in otherwise faint areas, bringing out dust lanes and extended streams that cross the small companion, along with features in the surroundings and core of M51 itself. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant. Not far on the sky from the handle of the Big Dipper, they officially lie within the boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091226.html
Title: Nat Geo: Top 10 Space Pics, 2009
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 28, 2009, 07:47:13 AM: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/photogalleries/best-space-news-pictures-2009/index.html
Title: WSJ: Killing Killer Asteroids
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 06, 2010, 08:04:29 AM: By MICHIO KAKU
Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Space Agency, caught scientists off guard when he called for a closed meeting of Russian scientists to counter a killer asteroid headed our way. He said that a potential impact from the asteroid Apothis around 2036 could kill hundreds of thousands of people. Immediately this conjured up images of Bruce Willis and his space cowboys riding the Space Shuttle to blow up a comet in the movie "Armageddon." Scientists, realizing that the danger is slight but real, have in fact seriously proposed various ways in which to deflect the asteroid.

As asteroids go, Apophis is a whopper, measuring 1,000 feet across, about the size of the Rose Bowl. In 2029 it will make its first pass around the earth, so close that it will travel beneath our communication satellites. In fact, you might see it whiz by overhead with binoculars. Depending on how it whips around the earth, there is a slight chance it might actually hit the earth when it returns in 2036 (but the latest calculations only show a one in a hundred thousand chance of impact).

The Russians take such a threat seriously, since a "city buster" hit Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, flattening about a thousand square miles of forest, destroying about 100 million trees, and leaving a huge scar in the Earth. The object that struck Siberia was probably only 100 feet across, yet it created a blast about 1,000 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. The shock waves were so intense they were detected in Europe. It created a strange glow which spread over Asia and Europe so that you could read the London papers at night. If it had hit Moscow, it would have completely flattened that city and beyond. A city-buster like that happens once every 100-300 years, with most of them hitting the oceans.

A hit from Apothis, however, would be another story. It would be a "country buster," capable of creating fire storms, shock waves, and a rain of fiery debris that would destroy an area almost the size of France, or perhaps the entire Northeast of the U.S. The energy of the impact would be roughly 100,000 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. If it hits the Pacific Ocean, it could also generate a huge tidal wave, a gigantic wall of water that could swamp most coastal cities in the Americas and Asia. An impact from an Apophis-like asteroid is estimated to happen once in a thousand years. (The worst case scenario, however, would be an impact from a "planet buster" as little as six miles across, like the one that hit Mexico and probably wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.)

Plans to counter such a hypothetical threat, however, are sketchy. A staple of science fiction is to send the Space Shuttle to blow it up. Bad idea.

First, this might only crack the asteroid, so you would have a swarm of deadly mini-asteroids headed your way. Second, the Space Shuttle can only circle the Earth; it is incapable of reaching deep space to intercept the asteroid. And it is going to be phased out this year anyway and a replacement won't be ready for about five years.

Several proposals made by scientists are currently being studied. One likely scenario is to nudge the asteroid while it is still in deep space so that it eventually misses the Earth. This deflection might be done via rockets to push the asteroid years before it passes the Earth. Or, the gravity of the spacecraft itself may be used to gently tug on its trajectory. Yet another proposal is to use mirrors and even paint to increase the pressure of sunlight so that, over decades, its trajectory is modified.

At present, none of the hardware for such a mission exists, so we will be helpless for years if a real threat emerges. And any serious proposal will require tens of billions of dollars, for new booster rockets and the complex machinery to deflect the asteroid.

But given these hard economic times, money is scarce even to maintain the current space program. The Augustine Report on the future of space travel, commissioned by NASA and presented to President Obama in October, stated that manned missions to the moon and Mars were "unsustainable" without a new injection of funds. However, it did leave open the possibility of landing on an asteroid. So one real possibility is to land a probe on the asteroid in 2029 so that scientists can study its properties as well as get a free ride through the solar system. We know so little about Apothis that it might be a solid object or just a loose collection of rocky debris held together by gravity.

Some conspiracy theorists have raised the dark possibility that any nation that can deflect an asteroid could also send it hurtling toward its enemies. But such a weapon is simply too unstable and unreliable to be taken seriously.

Indeed, scientists are applauding the Russian Space Agency for addressing the issue, even if the danger from Apophis is very slight. Sooner or later, we will face a catastrophic threat from space. Of all the possible threats, only a gigantic asteroid hit can destroy the entire planet. If we prepare now, we better our odds of survival. The dinosaurs never knew what hit them.

Mr. Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at City College of New York, is the author of "Physics of the Impossible" (Doubleday, 2008) and host of "Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible," on the Science Channel.
Title: Solar Magnetic Minimum
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 07, 2010, 11:44:08 AM: Though sunspots have appeared lately, solar magnetic activity is dropping towards zero. Implications thereof discussed here:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/07/suns-magnetic-index-reaches-unprecedent-low-only-zero-could-be-lower-in-a-month-when-sunspots-became-more-active/#more-14980
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Rarick on January 07, 2010, 11:50:52 AM: @BBG- so the lessening of sunspot activity could mean a cooling, will it be enough for an Ice Age? or will the harder to observe magnetic flux activity on the sun keep us warm enough?
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 07, 2010, 11:54:20 AM: As the piece states, sunspots are proxies for solar magnetic flux while this low rate of observed magnetic activity is close to being without precedent. As such I'd say careful observation is in order rather than predictions.
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Rarick on January 07, 2010, 12:03:10 PM: Watch to see if the cooling happens.......
Title: The Universe as we Know It
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 20, 2010, 11:33:08 AM: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

The Known Universe
Credit & Copyright: American Museum of Natural History
Explanation: What would it look like to travel across the known universe? To help humanity visualize this, the American Museum of Natural History has produced a modern movie featuring many visual highlights of such a trip. The video starts in Earth's Himalayan Mountains and then dramatically zooms out, showing the orbits of Earth's satellites, the Sun, the Solar System, the extent of humanities first radio signals, the Milky Way Galaxy, galaxies nearby, distant galaxies, and quasars. As the distant surface of the microwave background is finally reached, radiation is depicted that was emitted billions of light years away and less than one million years after the Big Bang. Frequently using the Digital Universe Atlas, every object in the video has been rendered to scale given the best scientific research in 2009, when the video was produced. The film has similarities to the famous Powers of Ten video that has been a favorite of many space enthusiasts for a generation.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100120.html
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Rarick on January 21, 2010, 03:56:00 AM: Missed the Oort cloud, The Cometary limits, Nebulae, Clusters, and some other things on the way. (blackholes?)
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 21, 2010, 05:02:18 AM: They missed the moon, for that matter, though they showed it's orbit. As I saw it they pulled back so far from the objects in question that, as a matter of scale, theyd didn't appear in the representation.
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: prentice crawford on January 22, 2010, 09:13:56 PM: Check this out, a meteorite came through the roof of a doctor's office last Monday. www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=111487&provider=top
P.C.
Title: Auspicious Start
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 20, 2010, 04:44:38 PM: NASA recently launched the Solar Dynamic Observer, a satellite that will be used to monitor the sun. While launching the rocket went supersonic as it went through some high, thin clouds. Check out the following video and watch the shock waves in the clouds as the rocket breaks the sound barrier:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2010/images/coolmovie/anna-herbst1.mov
Title: Sun's Quiet Cycle
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on June 14, 2010, 08:33:59 PM: Sun's Strange Behavior Baffles Astronomers
By Denise Chow
SPACE.com Staff Writer
posted: 14 June 2010
06:53 am ET
The sun's temper ebbs and flows on what scientists had thought was a pretty predictable cycle, but lately our closest star has been acting up.

Typically, a few stormy years would knock out a satellite or two and maybe trip a power grid on Earth. Then a few years of quiet, and then back to the bad behavior. But an extremely long stretch of low activity in recent years has scientists baffled and scrambling for better forecasting models.

An expected minimum of solar activity, between 2008 and 2009, was unusually deep. And while the sun would normally ramp up activity by now, heading into its next cycle, the sun may be on the verge of a weak solar cycle instead, astronomers said at the 216th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Miami last month.

"We're witnessing something unlike anything we've seen in 100 years," said David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The sun's constant interaction with Earth makes it important for solar physicists to keep track of solar activity. Stormy periods can force special safety precautions by satellite operators and power grid managers, and astronauts can be put at risk from bursts of radiation spat out by solar storm. Scientists need to more reliably predict what's in store.

At the conference, four solar physicists presented four very different methods of measuring and tracking solar cycles.

The sun has spots

Sunspots are areas of concentrated magnetic activity that appear as dark dots on the solar surface. The ebb and flow of the sun's magnetic activity, manifested in the appearance of sunspots, make up the solar cycle.

Typically, a cycle lasts about 11 years, taking roughly 5.5 years to move from a solar minimum, a period of time when there are few sunspots, to peak at the solar maximum, during which sunspot activity is amplified.

The previous cycle 23's extraordinary minimum recorded the highest number of days without sunspots that researchers had seen since 1913, said Hathaway.

Hathaway and his team of researchers measured what is called the meridional flow, which is the circulation of stellar material from the sun's equator toward the poles and back again. This flow can often influence a cycle's strength.

The scientists examined the changes in the structure of the flow, and the levels of geomagnetic activity, as they corresponded to the minimums and maximums of the previous solar cycles.

"We found that there were variations in the strength of that flow," Hathaway said. "The last minimum in 1996, that velocity was about 11 meters per second (about 22 miles an hour), which is pretty slow for an object as big as the sun. That flow slowed down as we went to maximum in 2001."

The meridional flow then quickly increased again, and by 2004, it was faster than it was at the last maximum, said Hathaway. This flow continued to stay fast on the approach to this most recent minimum.

"My suspicion is that this sunspot cycle 23 was a weaker cycle than the last two, with fewer sunspots and weaker magnetic fields. These may feed into what happens with the meridional flow that is going to lead to another weak cycle."

Hathaway predicts that cycle 24 should reach its peak in mid-2013 at about half the size of the last three cycles.

The sun's out of sync

In a different approach, Sushanta Tripathy of the National Solar Observatory used the frequencies of acoustic oscillations to look for signatures of changes in the solar activity cycle.

Tripathy found that changes in acoustic frequencies were, for the most part, in phase with solar activity. But, during the extended minimum, he noticed that the frequencies of waves that cover a large portion of the solar interior became out of sync with solar activity.

"We find that the frequencies of sound waves that travel to the deep interior show an early minimum during late 2007, while the waves that are confined to near the surface show the signature of minimum in late 2008, nearly coinciding with solar activity minimum."

The two seismic lulls detected using acoustic oscillation have not been seen before in previous cycles, said Tripathy, leading researchers to conclude that the extended minimum between cycles 23 and 24 is quite unusual.

Jet streams on the sun

Frank Hill, also of the National Solar Observatory, took a separate approach, attempting to predict the sunspot cycle based on a phenomena on the sun that can be likened to solar jet streams.

This east-west flow on the surface of the sun was first discovered in 1980, and is known as "torsional oscillation."

The jet stream exists at a depth of at least 65,000 miles (about 105,000 kilometers) below the solar surface, and Hill and his team of researchers were able to examine its behavior at a depth of 600 miles (966 km).

"The position of the magnetic field is very highly correlated with the position of this flow," Hill said. "From helioseismology, we see the flows for two prominent cycles – Cycle 23, the cycle that we're coming out of, and Cycle 24, the cycle that we're in now."

It turns out that the flow appears well before the level that solar activity spikes. This led the researchers to conclude that there is some sort of triggering mechanism that appears before the onset of activity.

While observations of the solar jet could one day be useful for predicting the timing of the solar cycles, a larger data set is still required to ensure the method's accuracy.

"We're definitely going to need several cycles to improve the predictions," Hill said.

Further investigation will also be needed to determine whether the jet stream is a cause or effect of the solar cycle.

Our magnetic star

In yet another approach, Julia Saba of SP Systems and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., used X-ray and magnetic field strength indicators in order to predict the precise time mark for the onset of solar cycles.

Saba used magnetic maps of the sun, called synoptic charts, to observe solar cycles 21 through 23 and into 24. By evaluating trends in X-ray activity, Saba was able to predict the onset approximately 18 months ahead of time, and was accurate to within two months.

"By May of 2010, we see that cycle 24 is clearly underway, though things are still pretty quiet in the southern hemisphere in general," Saba said.

This method of determining a solar cycle's onset could be a valuable way to compare the different phases in solar activity because it can be observed in near real-time, Saba explained.

"It's a little easier to tell in real time than by solar maximum or solar minimum," she said.

While the four ways of monitoring solar activity take different approaches, the researchers are all in agreement that we are witnessing an interesting minimum. And while these methods could be useful for future studies of solar cycles, they all require further research.

"One problem we have with all solar cycle studies is the statistics of small numbers," Hathaway said. "Even with 23 sunspot cycles, it's not enough. What we've seen today are some newer measurements that weren't available even two cycles ago that are shedding new light. We need to be careful with using what we've seen from one or two cycles to make inferences for all of them."

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solar-cycle-results-aas216-100614.html
Title: Southern Lights
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on June 21, 2010, 06:53:01 AM: The green fire of the southern lights

Check this out! The aurora australis — the southern lights — snakes its way across the Earth’s magnetic field as seen from above!

Wow, that’s slick. It was taken on May 29th by an Expedition 23 astronaut aboard the International Space Station (it’s unknown which one; NASA and the astronauts decided to give the expedition the credit, not an individual crew member). At that moment, the ISS was 350 km (190 miles) above the Indian ocean, and the astronaut was looking south. You can see the limb of the Earth and some stars in the background as well. Click the picture to get a bigger version with more detail.

(http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/44000/44348/ISS023-E-58455_lrg.jpg)

This aurora was probably caused by subatomic particles from an explosive event called a coronal mass ejection from the Sun five days earlier. The particles interact with our magnetic field, which channels them to the north and south poles. They slam into the air, ripping electrons off the atoms and molecules. When the atoms recombine, they give off light. The green glow seen here is characteristic of oxygen.
The aurorae are usually between 80 – 160 km (50 – 100 miles) above the Earth’s surface, so the ISS was actually higher up. However, the station was a couple of thousand kilometers away from the lights when this shot was taken.
I’ve only seen the northern lights (technically, the aurora borealis) once, when I lived in Maryland years ago… and it was just a faint red smear to the north. Someday I hope to see it in its full glory. But even then, it must pale — literally — to seeing such a thing from space.
Picture credit: NASA/Expedition 23

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/20/the-green-fire-of-the-southern-lights/
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: bigdog on June 21, 2010, 02:04:00 PM: That is amazing! This is a very cool thread. I used to want to be an astronomer when I was a boy. This thread is a good reminder of why!
Title: Lightning Show
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 22, 2010, 08:13:15 PM: (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/1007/lightning_kotsiopoulos.jpg)

Lightning Over Athens
Credit & Copyright: Chris Kotsiopoulos
Explanation: Have you ever watched a lightning storm in awe? Join the crowd. Oddly, nobody knows exactly how lightning is produced. What is known is that charges slowly separate in some clouds causing rapid electrical discharges (lightning), but how electrical charges get separated in clouds remains a topic of much research. Lightning usually takes a jagged course, rapidly heating a thin column of air to about three times the surface temperature of the Sun. The resulting shock wave starts supersonically and decays into the loud sound known as thunder. Lightning bolts are common in clouds during rainstorms, and on average 6,000 lightning bolts occur between clouds and the Earth every minute. Pictured above, an active lightning storm was recorded over Athens, Greece earlier this month.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100720.html
Title: CME & Northern Lights
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 05, 2010, 07:21:19 PM: Recent coronal mass ejection made for a spectacular display of Northern Lights, with videos captured at the link:

http://www.citizentube.com/2010/08/solar-tsunami-creates-brilliant.html
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: prentice crawford on August 18, 2010, 08:08:03 PM: Baby Black Hole

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100818/sc_afp/spaceastronomystars (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100818/sc_afp/spaceastronomystars)

P.C.
Title: Sculptures of Hydrogen & Dust
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on September 20, 2010, 03:15:52 PM: (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/483046main_image_1763_946-710.jpg)

Cosmic Ice Sculptures
In the cold vacuum of space, radiation from massive stars carves away at cold molecular clouds, creating bizarre, fantasy-like structures. These pillars of cold hydrogen and dust, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, are located in the Carina Nebula. Violent stellar winds and powerful radiation from massive stars sculpt the surrounding nebula.

This image of dust pillars in the Carina Nebula is a composite of 2005 observations taken of the region in hydrogen light (light emitted by hydrogen atoms) along with 2010 observations taken in oxygen light (light emitted by oxygen atoms), both times with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The immense Carina Nebula is an estimated 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Project (STScI/AURA)
Title: Ef Waldo, Where's Pluto?
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on September 20, 2010, 03:18:44 PM: 2nd post.

(http://www.perseus.gr/Images/dso-nebulae-b92-b93.jpg)

When Pluto was discovered 80 years ago, it happened to be moving through Gemini, a part of the sky that had a lot of stars. Clyde Tombaugh did an amazing job finding it, since it was almost lost among those stars.
I wonder if he could’ve found it had he been looking earlier this year? "Amateur" astronomer Anthony Ayiomamitis sent me this image he took of Pluto as was in Sagittarius, the most densely-packed area of the sky!

[Click to undwarfplanetate.]
Hard to spot, isn’t it? Pluto is unresolved in the picture, so it looks like just another star. And there are a lot of stars here; this region of sky is actually a cluster called Messier 24 (or just M24, and it’s pronounced "MEZ-ee-ay", since Charles Messier was French); the two dark splotches are thick dust clouds called Barnard 92 and 93. Finding Pluto in this ain’t easy.

… or is it? When I first looked over the picture, I found Pluto almost immediately, and then laughed, because I know a secret. First, take a look… can you find it?
OK, here’s the secret: this is a color picture, which means Anthony had to take four images, one each through a red, green, and blue filter, and one unfiltered. The stars all look good because they don’t move, but by the time he took the red image Pluto had moved a bit compared to the stars’ positions. So when my eye happened to catch a bright red spot in the image, I knew right away I was seeing Pluto. The picture here has Pluto’s position marked; click it to see the full sized version.
In modern terms, Pluto is pretty bright; I’ve never seen it with my own eyes through a telescope, but using a small ’scope equipped with a digital camera I’ve gotten decent images of it in under a minute! But Tombaugh didn’t have that, nor did he have a computer to tell him where it was. He had to take picture after picture, night after night, guiding the telescope, developing the glass plates, then comparing each picture one after another. That’s why it took him months to find Pluto!
And remember, he didn’t even know if it existed!
Astronomy is not for the faint of heart. But for those of us who love it, it truly is something we do from the heart.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/09/20/pluto-wanders-into-a-messier-situation/
Title: The Big Red Spot
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on September 27, 2010, 08:23:27 AM: Blogs / Bad Astronomy

The Great Red Spot, almost true size

One of the fun things about astronomical data is that a lot of it is public; if you know where to look you can find it. And a lot of telescopes and space probes produce so much data there’s simply no way professional scientists can look at it all… giving "amateurs" (in the sense that they aren’t professionals, not that they aren’t possessed of vast talent) a chance to create images from these data.
And man oh man, am I glad some folks do just that. Behold!

(http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/files/2010/09/voyager_jupiter_grs.jpg)

WOW! That is, of course, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot as seen by the Voyager 1, a spacecraft that flew by Jupiter more than 30 years ago now. The gifted astrophotographer Björn Jónssen reprocessed the images to produce this simply stunning portrait of the centuries-old storm. Remember: when you look at this, you’re seeing a storm that is easily twice as big as the entire Earth!
Björn posts his work on the terrific Unmanned Spaceflight board, a great place to see what folks are doing with space imagery, and where you’ll find other (and some far bigger) versions of this magnificent shot.
For more details on this, Emily Lakdawalla has written it up at the Planetary Society blog. She has lots of details and insight on this, and I strongly urge you to give it a read. I think it’s wonderful that so much of the sky has opened up for everyone.
Image credit: NASA / JPL / Björn Jónsson

Big image here:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=22426
Title: Near Earth Orbit Miss
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 12, 2010, 09:33:38 AM: For my money, the "sky is falling" global warming types ought to be paying more attention to stuff like this. Of course rocks in near earth orbit don't provide reason enough to tell everyone what choices they ought to make and how they ought to live:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PPplJtb9Z4&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Title: DIY Space Cam
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 14, 2010, 08:08:42 AM: Some wicked cool homebrew space photography:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zku7R_GftV4&feature=player_embedded
Title: Sun Gets Frisky
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 21, 2010, 09:25:02 AM: (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/490391main_image_1786_946-710.jpg)

Crackling with Solar Flares
Fast-growing sunspot 1112 is crackling with solar flares. So far, none of the blasts has hurled a substantial CME, or coronal mass ejection, toward Earth. In addition, a vast filament of magnetism is cutting across the sun's southern hemisphere. This filament is so large it spans a distance greater than the separation of Earth and the moon. A bright 'hot spot' just north of the filament's midpoint is UV radiation from sunspot 1112. The proximity is no coincidence; the filament appears to be rooted in the sunspot below. If the sunspot flares, it could cause the entire structure to erupt. Thus far, none of the flares has destabilized the filament.

Image Credit: NASA

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1786.html
Title: Astounding Comet Closeups
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 04, 2010, 09:44:27 AM: I'm floored:

Amazing close-ups of comet Hartley 2!

Just an hour ago as I write this, the NASA spacecraft EPOXI passed just 700 km from the nucleus of comet Hartley 2! The flyby was successful, and it took incredible images of the comet’s solid heart:

(http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/files/2010/11/expoxi_medres_hartley2.jpg)

Wow! These images are in order of approach (left to right, top to bottom), as EPOXI flew by. We knew from ground-based radar that the nucleus wasn’t round, but these pictures clearly show it to be shaped like a peanut. That’s not too surprising; this shape is common in asteroids and comet nuclei. But what detail! You can see the surface is irregular and contoured. There’s a groove of some sort on the left side, and what might be an impact crater or pit on the very left tip.
And those bright streamers of light? Those are jets of gas shooting away from the comet, formed when frozen material on the comet surface gets heated by the Sun, expands, and shoots away!

Amazing. And very lovely.
Here’s the fourth image a bit bigger:

(http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/files/2010/11/epoxi_hartley2_closeup1.jpg)

Looking more carefully, weird things pop up. The round ends of the nucleus are bumpy and rough, indicating material is loosely aggregated there. But the waist looks smooth! There also appear to be bands of material circling the round ends separating the waist from the tips. You can also see what looks like a large boulder or spire of ice on the right side of the smooth section, poking up into the Sun. That’s a testament to the weak gravity of the comet; the nucleus is only about 2.2 km (1.4 miles) across, so there’s not much mass there. That piece jutting up is probably about a hundred or so meters high.

[UPDATE to note that there will be a live press conference at 20:00 UT (16:00 Eastern US time) where scientists will discuss these images. You can watch it live on NASA TV and on JPL's Ustream channel. Also, Emily Lakdawalla has written her thoughts on the comet on her blog, too.]
And mind you, these are not the highest-resolution images! These are medium-res; even better ones will be coming soon. Trust me, as soon as they’re available I’ll have them here. I want to add that this part of the mission is a bonus; the mission was extended after the Deep Impact part back in 2005. Renamed EPOXI, it has gone on to do some amazing work in characterizing how we look for extrasolar planets. It was a very smart decision to continue this mission, and now we have these images and data, a whole new comet to investigate and understand.

Congratulations to the EPOXI team for a successful and amazing cometary encounter!

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/11/04/amazing-close-ups-of-comet-hartley-2/

NASA feed of the satellite pass: http://epoxi.umd.edu/
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Vicbowling on March 03, 2011, 10:49:18 AM: WOoW! Absolutely gorgeous image! I can't believe how far we've come. Everytime I look up at the stars, I have to tell myself that it's not just a ceiling to our world but a completely vast universe. Sounds ridiculous but it's easy to just forget.
Quote from: Body-by-Guinness on September 02, 2009, 09:18:35 AM
Nice shuttle launch pic:

(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0909/sts128_cooper900.jpg)

Discovery's Rainbow
Credit: NASA, Ben Cooper (Launch Photography)
Explanation: Just one minute before midnight EDT, Friday, August 28, the Space Shuttle Discovery began a long arc into a cloudy sky. Following the launch, a bright and remarkably colorful trail was captured in this time exposure from the Banana River Viewing Site, looking east toward pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. On STS-128, Discovery docked with the International Space Station Sunday evening. The 13-day mission will exchange space station crew members and deliver more than 7 tons of supplies and equipment. Of course, the equipment includes the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT).

cabo san lucas all inclusive (http://bookit.com/mexico/sanjosedelcabo/hotels/hotel-riu-palace-cabo-san-lucas/)
Title: How to Create a Hubble Image
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 29, 2011, 09:33:37 AM: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p5c1XoL1KFs[/youtube]
Title: Mercury, Up Close
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 29, 2011, 04:08:26 PM: (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/531902main_MESSENGEROrbitImage-4x3_946-710.jpg)

First Image Ever Obtained from Mercury Orbit
At 5:20 am EDT on Mar. 29, 2011, MESSENGER captured this historic image of Mercury. This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the Solar System's innermost planet. Over the subsequent six hours, MESSENGER acquired an additional 363 images before downlinking some of the data to Earth. The MESSENGER team is currently looking over the newly returned data, which are still continuing to come down.

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1907.html
Title: Terrestrial Anti-Matter Observed
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on April 26, 2011, 08:20:11 PM: Trent Perrotto
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0321
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

Janet Anderson
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-6162
janet.l.anderson@nasa.gov

Jan. 10, 2011

RELEASE : 11-008

NASA'S Fermi Catches Thunderstorms Hurling Antimatter Into Space

WASHINGTON -- Scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.

Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF), a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 TGFs occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected.

"These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams," said Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He presented the findings Monday, during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

Fermi is designed to monitor gamma rays, the highest energy form of light. When antimatter striking Fermi collides with a particle of normal matter, both particles immediately are annihilated and transformed into gamma rays. The GBM has detected gamma rays with energies of 511,000 electron volts, a signal indicating an electron has met its antimatter counterpart, a positron.

Although Fermi's GBM is designed to observe high-energy events in the universe, it's also providing valuable insights into this strange phenomenon. The GBM constantly monitors the entire celestial sky above and the Earth below. The GBM team has identified 130 TGFs since Fermi's launch in 2008.

"In orbit for less than three years, the Fermi mission has proven to be an amazing tool to probe the universe. Now we learn that it can discover mysteries much, much closer to home," said Ilana Harrus, Fermi program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The spacecraft was located immediately above a thunderstorm for most of the observed TGFs, but in four cases, storms were far from Fermi. In addition, lightning-generated radio signals detected by a global monitoring network indicated the only lightning at the time was hundreds or more miles away. During one TGF, which occurred on Dec. 14, 2009, Fermi was located over Egypt. But the active storm was in Zambia, some 2,800 miles to the south. The distant storm was below Fermi's horizon, so any gamma rays it produced could not have been detected.

"Even though Fermi couldn't see the storm, the spacecraft nevertheless was magnetically connected to it," said Joseph Dwyer at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla. "The TGF produced high-speed electrons and positrons, which then rode up Earth's magnetic field to strike the spacecraft."

The beam continued past Fermi, reached a location, known as a mirror point, where its motion was reversed, and then hit the spacecraft a second time just 23 milliseconds later. Each time, positrons in the beam collided with electrons in the spacecraft. The particles annihilated each other, emitting gamma rays detected by Fermi's GBM.

Scientists long have suspected TGFs arise from the strong electric fields near the tops of thunderstorms. Under the right conditions, they say, the field becomes strong enough that it drives an upward avalanche of electrons. Reaching speeds nearly as fast as light, the high-energy electrons give off gamma rays when they're deflected by air molecules. Normally, these gamma rays are detected as a TGF.

But the cascading electrons produce so many gamma rays that they blast electrons and positrons clear out of the atmosphere. This happens when the gamma-ray energy transforms into a pair of particles: an electron and a positron. It's these particles that reach Fermi's orbit.

The detection of positrons shows many high-energy particles are being ejected from the atmosphere. In fact, scientists now think that all TGFs emit electron/positron beams. A paper on the findings has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.

"The Fermi results put us a step closer to understanding how TGFs work," said Steven Cummer at Duke University. "We still have to figure out what is special about these storms and the precise role lightning plays in the process."

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership. It is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.

The GBM Instrument Operations Center is located at the National Space Science Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala. The team includes a collaboration of scientists from UAH, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and other institutions.

For more Fermi information, images and animations, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/fermi
Title: Missing Bits of Universe Found?
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on May 27, 2011, 10:36:05 AM: I love it when amateurs make big discoveries:

Universe's Not-So-Missing Mass
ScienceDaily (May 24, 2011) — A Monash student has made a breakthrough in the field of astrophysics, discovering what has until now been described as the Universe's 'missing mass'. Amelia Fraser-McKelvie, working within a team at the Monash School of Physics, conducted a targeted X-ray search for the matter and within just three months found it -- or at least some of it.

What makes the discovery all the more noteworthy is the fact that Ms Fraser-McKelvie is not a career researcher, or even studying at a postgraduate level. She is a 22-year-old undergraduate Aerospace Engineering/Science student who pinpointed the missing mass during a summer scholarship, working with two astrophysicists at the School of Physics, Dr Kevin Pimbblet and Dr Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway.
The School of Physics put out a call for students interested in a six-week paid astrophysics research internship during a recent vacation period, and chose Ms Fraser-McKelvie from a large number of applicants. Dr Pimbblet, lecturer in the School of Physics put the magnitude of the discovery in context by explaining that scientists had been hunting for the Universe's missing mass for decades.
"It was thought from a theoretical viewpoint that there should be about double the amount of matter in the local Universe compared to what was observed. It was predicted that the majority of this missing mass should be located in large-scale cosmic structures called filaments -- a bit like thick shoelaces," said Dr Pimbblet.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110524094515.htm
Astrophysicists also predicted that the mass would be low in density, but high in temperature -- approximately one million degrees Celsius. This meant that, in theory, the matter should have been observable at X-ray wavelengths. Amelia Fraser-McKelvie's discovery has proved that prediction correct.
Ms Fraser-McKelvie said the 'Eureka moment' came when Dr Lazendic-Galloway closely examined the data they had collected.
"Using her expert knowledge in the X-ray astronomy field, Jasmina reanalysed our results to find that we had in fact detected the filaments in our data, where previously we believed we had not."
X-ray observations provide important information about physical properties of large-scale structures, which can help astrophysicists better understand their true nature. Until now, they had been making deductions based only on numerical models, so the discovery is a huge step forward in determining what amount of mass is actually contained within filaments.
Still a year away from undertaking her Honours year (which she will complete under the supervision of Dr Pimbblet), Ms Fraser-McKelvie is being hailed as one of Australia's most exciting young students. Her work has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"Being a published author is very exciting for me, and something I could never have achieved without the help of both Kevin and Jasmina. Their passion and commitment for this project ensured the great result and I am very thankful to them for all the help they have given me and time they have invested," said Ms Fraser-McKelvie.
Dr Pimbblet said that he had under his tuition a very talented student who excelled in performing the breakthrough research.
"She has managed to get a refereed publication accepted by one of the highest ranking astronomy journals in the world as a result of her endeavours. I cannot underscore enough what a terrific achievement this is. We will use this research as a science driver for future telescopes that are being planned, such as the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, which is being built in outback Western Australian."
Title: Sun activity
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 09, 2011, 07:26:23 PM: \
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyi4hjG6kDM
Title: It is not a bird! It is not a plane!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 19, 2011, 02:36:44 PM: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasa-satellite-expected-to-hit-earth-this-week/2011/09/18/gIQARnpVdK_story.html?hpid=z4

It’s the biggest piece of NASA space junk to fall to Earth in more than 30 years. It should create a light show. The satellite will partially burn up during reentry and, by NASA’s calculation, break into about 100 pieces, creating fireballs that should be visible even in daytime.

An estimated 26 of those pieces will survive the re-entry burn and will spray themselves in a linear debris field 500 miles long. The largest chunk should weigh about 300 pounds.
Title: Solar Eclipse this Sunday!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 16, 2012, 04:53:50 PM: Q: What's the best place to view the eclipse in Southern California?

A: The partial solar eclipse will occur late in the day in Southern California on Sunday, beginning at 5:24 p.m., reaching its maximum coverage at 6:38 p.m., and exiting the sun's path at 7:42 p.m., just 10 minutes before sunset. "That means the sun is fairly low in the northwest, and you want a clear view of the northwest horizon," said Griffith Observatory director Ed Krupp.

He suggested a place with a clear view of the northwest, with an elevated view and a clear horizon, to see the moon obscure the sun's beams. Griffith Observatory, which is run by the city of Los Angeles, will have extra telescopes and staff on hand to help people view the eclipse for free.

"They'll be seeing something that is really unusual -- a big bite coming out of the sun. And that's the real charm of this event," Krupp said.

Q: How big of a bite will the moon's shadow take of the sun?

A: According to the Griffith Observatory, 86% of the sun's diameter will be covered up by the moon. (That statistic is the standard one astronomers like to use; lay people may prefer knowing that 79% of the area of the sun will be covered up.) "It's a pretty deep eclipse here in Los Angeles," Krupp said
Title: Last Venus transit between earth and sun for century on Tuesday
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 29, 2012, 08:31:31 AM: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/science/space/venuss-transit-between-earth-and-sun-will-be-last-until-2117.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120529
Title: Sun Block
Post by: prentice crawford on September 01, 2012, 09:09:49 AM: Woof,
http://news.yahoo.com/small-ky-town-focus-eclipse-chasers-072945138.html (http://news.yahoo.com/small-ky-town-focus-eclipse-chasers-072945138.html)

Also the hometown of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Cayce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Cayce)

P.C.
Title: Four star plentary system
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 15, 2012, 10:13:58 PM: Pasting BD's post in the science thread here as well.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49419466/ns/technology_and_science-space/
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: DougMacG on October 17, 2012, 07:58:37 AM: Planet same size as Earth found right outside solar system

Published October 16, 2012

Associated Press

Nearby Planet_Angu.jpg

Oct. 16, 2012: This artists impression made available by the European Southern Observatory shows a planet, right, orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B, center, a member of the triple star system that is the closest to Earth. Alpha Centauri A is at left. The Earth's Sun is visible at upper right. (AP)

WASHINGTON – European astronomers say that just outside our solar system they've found a planet that's the closest you can get to Earth in location and size.

It is the type of planet they've been searching for across the Milky Way galaxy and they found it circling a star right next door -- 25 trillion miles away. But the Earth-like planet is so hot its surface may be like molten lava. Life cannot survive the 2,200 degree heat of the planet, so close to its star that it circles it every few days.

The astronomers who found it say it's likely there are other planets circling the same star, a little farther away where it may be cool enough for water and life. And those planets might fit the not-too-hot, not-too-cold description sometimes call the Goldilocks Zone.

That means that in the star system Alpha Centauri B, a just-right planet could be closer than astronomers had once imagined.

It's so close that from some southern places on Earth, you can see Alpha Centauri B in the night sky without a telescope. But it's still so far that a trip there using current technology would take tens of thousands of years.

But the wow factor of finding such a planet so close has some astronomers already talking about how to speed up a 25 trillion-mile rocket trip there. Scientists have already started pressuring NASA and the European Space Agency to come up with missions to send something out that way to get a look at least.

The research was released online Tuesday in the journal Nature. There has been a European-U.S. competition to find the nearest and most Earthlike exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system. So far scientists have found 842 of them, but think they number in the billions.

While the newly discovered planet circles Alpha Centauri B, it's part of a system of three stars: Alpha Centauri A, B and the slightly more distant Proxima Centauri. Systems with two or more stars are more common than single stars like our sun, astronomers say.

This planet has the smallest mass -- a measurement of weight that doesn't include gravity -- that has been found outside our solar system so far. With a mass of about 1.1 times the size of Earth, it is strikingly similar in size.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/10/16/planet-same-size-as-earth-found-right-outside-solar-system/#ixzz29X1jV84D

Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, who heads the European planet-hunting team, said this means "there's a very good prospect of detecting a planet in the habitable zone that is very close to us."

And one of the European team's main competitors, Geoff Marcy of the University of California Berkeley, gushed even more about the scientific significance.

"This is an historic discovery," he wrote in an email. "There could well be an Earth-size planet in that Goldilocks sweet spot, not too cold and not too hot, making Alpha Centauri a compelling target to search for intelligent life."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/10/16/planet-same-size-as-earth-found-right-outside-solar-system/#ixzz29X21Ou8x
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: G M on October 17, 2012, 04:27:31 PM: The European astronomers must have been very excited to find this. Perhaps the aliens can bail out the EU!

Quote from: DougMacG on October 17, 2012, 07:58:37 AM
Planet same size as Earth found right outside solar system

Published October 16, 2012

Associated Press

Nearby Planet_Angu.jpg

Oct. 16, 2012: This artists impression made available by the European Southern Observatory shows a planet, right, orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B, center, a member of the triple star system that is the closest to Earth. Alpha Centauri A is at left. The Earth's Sun is visible at upper right. (AP)

WASHINGTON – European astronomers say that just outside our solar system they've found a planet that's the closest you can get to Earth in location and size.

It is the type of planet they've been searching for across the Milky Way galaxy and they found it circling a star right next door -- 25 trillion miles away. But the Earth-like planet is so hot its surface may be like molten lava. Life cannot survive the 2,200 degree heat of the planet, so close to its star that it circles it every few days.

The astronomers who found it say it's likely there are other planets circling the same star, a little farther away where it may be cool enough for water and life. And those planets might fit the not-too-hot, not-too-cold description sometimes call the Goldilocks Zone.

That means that in the star system Alpha Centauri B, a just-right planet could be closer than astronomers had once imagined.

It's so close that from some southern places on Earth, you can see Alpha Centauri B in the night sky without a telescope. But it's still so far that a trip there using current technology would take tens of thousands of years.

But the wow factor of finding such a planet so close has some astronomers already talking about how to speed up a 25 trillion-mile rocket trip there. Scientists have already started pressuring NASA and the European Space Agency to come up with missions to send something out that way to get a look at least.

The research was released online Tuesday in the journal Nature. There has been a European-U.S. competition to find the nearest and most Earthlike exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system. So far scientists have found 842 of them, but think they number in the billions.

While the newly discovered planet circles Alpha Centauri B, it's part of a system of three stars: Alpha Centauri A, B and the slightly more distant Proxima Centauri. Systems with two or more stars are more common than single stars like our sun, astronomers say.

This planet has the smallest mass -- a measurement of weight that doesn't include gravity -- that has been found outside our solar system so far. With a mass of about 1.1 times the size of Earth, it is strikingly similar in size.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/10/16/planet-same-size-as-earth-found-right-outside-solar-system/#ixzz29X1jV84D

Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, who heads the European planet-hunting team, said this means "there's a very good prospect of detecting a planet in the habitable zone that is very close to us."

And one of the European team's main competitors, Geoff Marcy of the University of California Berkeley, gushed even more about the scientific significance.

"This is an historic discovery," he wrote in an email. "There could well be an Earth-size planet in that Goldilocks sweet spot, not too cold and not too hot, making Alpha Centauri a compelling target to search for intelligent life."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/10/16/planet-same-size-as-earth-found-right-outside-solar-system/#ixzz29X21Ou8x
Title: five planets in tight orbit
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 20, 2012, 06:27:38 PM: http://io9.com/5952542/astronomers-find-five-planets-packed-into-a-ridiculously-tight-orbit-around-the-same-star
Title: Planetary Influence on Solar Activity
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 10, 2012, 06:10:58 PM: Fascinating look at a new paper that charts planetary tidal influence upon the sun and then relates them to known terrestrial solar cycles. If true it ought to suggest to carbon fetishists that there are subtle and powerful influences on the earth's climate that transcend the single variable they obsess over.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/10/is-there-is-a-planetary-influence-on-solar-activity-it-seems-so-according-to-this-new-paper/
Title: Jupiter
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 21, 2013, 10:27:22 PM: Jupiter appears to be right next to the moon right now.
Title: Asteroid to narrowly miss earth next week
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2013, 09:54:32 AM: Asteroid to Narrowly Miss Earth Next Week .
Article Video Interactive Graphics more in Opinion |
By ROBERT LEE HOTZ
WSJ

Astronomers are keeping a wary eye on a large asteroid expected to narrowly miss hitting Earth next Friday in the closest known approach of a dangerous cosmic object since NASA started tracking such debris.

Next Friday, a 130,000 ton asteroid is set to pass perilously close to earth. WSJ's Robert Lee Hotz runs down what you need to know about the 2012 DA14.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration experts who plotted its trajectory are confident that the primordial rock, weighing an estimated 130,000 metric tons, will pass within "a remarkably close distance" of Earth, nearer than many orbiting communications satellites but far enough away to safely speed past the planet.

At its closest approach—a distance of about 17,200 miles or so away—the asteroid will pass over the eastern Indian Ocean, off Sumatra at 2:24 pm ET Friday, Feb. 15. It will be travelling eight times as fast as a bullet from a high-powered rifle. Depending on local weather, it may be visible from Eastern Europe, Australia and Asia, with binoculars or a moderately powered telescope, space-agency officials said.

"No Earth impact is possible," said asteroid expert Donald Yeomans at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The asteroid poses no danger to the 400 or so satellites in higher orbits around Earth, agency officials said.

Known officially as 2012 DA14, the asteroid is about 150 feet across and was discovered last February by astronomers at the La Sagra Sky Survey operated by the Astronomical Observatory of Mallorca in Spain.

In its journey through space, Earth is bombarded by a hailstorm of comets, meteors and asteroids. Most are motes that sparkle like fireflies as they burn up entering the atmosphere, about 100 tons worth each day. Others have had catastrophic consequences.

Highlighting the risks such asteroids pose to the planet, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, on Thursday tightened the link between the demise of most dinosaurs 66 million years ago and the impact of a six-mile-wide asteroid that left a 110-mile-wide crater off the Yucatan coast of Mexico. On a geologic time scale, the two events occurred at virtually the same moment, according to new and more precise dating results that they reported in the journal Science.

All told, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory estimate there are about 500,000 objects about the size of asteroid 2012 DA14 that regularly cross Earth's path. At least one object that size flies close to Earth about every 40 years and one likely hits the planet about once every 1,200 years, astronomers calculate.

They believe the impact of an asteroid that size would generate about 2.5 megatons of blast energy—about twice the explosive power of the B83 nuclear warhead currently deployed in the U.S. military arsenal.
Title: A warning from asteroid hunters
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 14, 2013, 09:16:24 AM: A Warning From the Asteroid Hunters
The likelihood in this century of an asteroid impact with 700 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima A-bomb: 30%..
By ED LU AND MARTIN REES
WSJ

In the game of cosmic roulette that is our solar system, we just got lucky. Earth will get a very close shave on Friday, Feb. 15, when Asteroid 2012 DA14 passes just 17,000 miles from our planet. That is less than the distance from New York to Sydney and back, or the distance the Earth travels around the sun in 14 minutes. We are dodging a very large bullet.

The people of Earth also are getting a reminder that even in our modern society, our future is affected by the motion of astronomical bodies. The ancients were correct in their belief that the heavens affect life on Earth—just not in the way they imagined. Sometimes those heavenly bodies actually run into Earth. That is why we must make it our mission to find asteroids before they find us.

The last major asteroid impact on Earth was on June 30, 1908, when one about the size of an office building (140 feet across) slammed into Siberia with a destructive energy 700 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That asteroid devastated a region roughly the size of the San Francisco Bay area. Asteroid 2012 DA14, which will be passing over our heads on Friday, is about the same size as the asteroid that devastated Siberia's Tunguska region.

Many wonder about the odds that an asteroid may hit Earth in their lifetime. As it turns out, that is something scientists can measure quite well. We can count asteroids passing near the Earth using telescopes. We can count the number of craters on the moon. And we can count shooting stars in the sky, which are just small asteroids burning up in our upper atmosphere. We know how often asteroids of different sizes hit the Earth—and the odds of a dangerous one are cause for reflection.

The chance of another Tunguska-size impact somewhere on Earth this century is about 30%. That isn't the likelihood that you will be killed by an asteroid, but rather the odds that you will read a news headline about an asteroid impact of this size somewhere on Earth. Unfortunately, that headline could be about the destruction of a city, as opposed to an unpopulated region of Siberia.

Enlarge Image

Close
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Associated Press

This image shows a simulation of asteroid 2012 DA14 approaching the Earth.
.The chance in your lifetime of an even bigger asteroid impact on Earth—with explosive energy of 100 megatons of TNT—is about 1%. Such an impact would deliver many times the explosive energy of all the munitions used in World War II, including the atomic bombs. This risk to humanity is similar to an individual's odds of dying in a car accident. That risk is small, but would you drive a car without air bags and seat belts? The question is apt because our society is effectively doing so with regard to the risk of a devastating asteroid strike.

The impact on Earth from a 3,000-foot-wide asteroid would cause an explosion equivalent to 40,000 megatons of TNT—and would likely end human civilization altogether, regardless of where it hit. The odds that such an asteroid impact would make us the last generation of human civilization are no lower than the odds of an average American dying in an earthquake (about 0.001%).

NASA has managed to find and track more than 90% of these major asteroids, so a civilization-ending impact in the next 100 years could come only from one of the undiscovered 10% of asteroids larger than 3,000 feet across. But smaller and more numerous asteroids remain a threat simply because we have mapped only a small percentage of them and therefore don't know if an impact is imminent.

We have the technology to deflect these asteroids—through small spacecraft known as kinetic impactors and gravity tractors that can change an asteroid's trajectory—but only if we have years of advance warning. We discovered 2012 DA14 only a year ago, so had it been on a collision course with Earth, there is nothing we could have done about it except evacuate the area near the expected impact site and hope for the best.

To defend ourselves, we first have to find and track the asteroids (like 2012 DA14) large enough to do great damage should they strike Earth. There are about one million such asteroids in dangerous orbits near Earth, yet scientists have identified the trajectories of less than 1% of them (fewer than 10,000). For every 2012 DA14 we know of, there are 99 more we know nothing about.

That is why the B612 Foundation was established in 2002 and since 2012 has been building the Sentinel Space Telescope to find threatening asteroids before they find us. It is part of the most ambitious and important private space mission in history. The Sentinel telescope will give humanity decades of warning before a future asteroid impact so we can employ space technology to protect the planet. Because this is a privately financed project, the general public can get involved in making Sentinel a success.

On most days, human civilization wins the game of cosmic roulette. But just as we take precautions to reduce our individual risks of dying in car accidents or earthquakes, we should be doing the same to reduce our societal risk of a catastrophic asteroid impact. Let's open our eyes and stop gambling with our future.

Mr. Lu, a former NASA astronaut, is CEO of the B612 Foundation in Mountain View, Calif. Lord Rees is astronomer royal of the U.K. and the author of "From Here to Infinity" (W.W. Norton, 2012).
Title: habital zone
Post by: ccp on May 15, 2013, 05:33:34 PM: This may dated 2009. Probably a lot more now:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler-62-kepler-69.html
Title: Moon
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 21, 2013, 09:04:01 PM: Is it me or is the moon unusually bright this cycle?
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 21, 2013, 09:25:57 PM: "Because the moon's orbit around our planet is elliptical, its precise distance varies, depending on where it is in the orbit. It is rare to have the moon in perigee when it is Full.
Therefore it will look about 10-15% larger but nearly 30% brighter on Sunday!"
Title: Sun about to flip magnetic poles
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 06, 2013, 01:45:18 PM: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/05aug_fieldflip/
Title: That's a big caterpillar!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 30, 2013, 08:43:47 AM: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2406611/Cosmic-caterpillar-spotted-Hubble-telescope-thats-6-TRILLION-miles-long.html
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: ccp on August 31, 2013, 08:00:29 AM: The zoom effect was great!
Title: Life on Mars in the past?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 10, 2013, 02:20:23 PM: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/science/space/on-mars-an-ancient-lake-and-perhaps-life.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131210
Title: Hubble Ultra Field
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 26, 2013, 11:15:20 AM: http://www.flixxy.com/hubble-ultra-deep-field-3d.htm=
Title: Four blood moon alignment
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 10, 2014, 08:53:35 AM: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/469228/Four-blood-moons-Does-alignment-of-Mars-Earth-and-Sun-mean-the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh
Title: Re: Astronomy : Two more planets beyond Pluto?
Post by: DougMacG on June 16, 2014, 01:59:32 PM: At least two more large planers in our solar system out past Pluto?

http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.0715

Astrophysics > Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Extreme trans-Neptunian objects and the Kozai mechanism: signaling the presence of trans-Plutonian planets?

...The analysis of several possible scenarios strongly suggest that at least two trans-Plutonian planets must exist.
Title: multiverse theory
Post by: ccp on October 01, 2014, 04:26:05 PM: Big Bang Discovery Opens Doors to the "Multiverse"

Gravitational waves detected in the aftermath of the Big Bang suggest one universe just might not be enough.
.

An illustration of multiple universes.

This illustration depicts a main membrane out of which individual universes arise; they then expand in size through time.

ART BY MOONRUNNER DESIGN
.

By
Dan Vergano

National Geographic

Published March 18, 2014

Bored with your old dimensions—up and down, right and left, and back and forth? So tiresome. Take heart, folks. The latest news from Big Bang cosmologists offers us some relief from our humdrum four-dimensional universe.

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Gravitational waves rippling through the aftermath of the cosmic fireball, physicists suggest, point to us inhabiting a multiverse, a universe filled with many universes. (See: "Big Bang's 'Smoking Gun' Confirms Early Universe's Exponential Growth.")

That's because those gravitational wave results point to a particularly prolific and potent kind of "inflation" of the early universe, an exponential expansion of the dimensions of space to many times the size of our own cosmos in the first fraction of a second of the Big Bang, some 13.82 billion years ago.

"In most models, if you have inflation, then you have a multiverse," said Stanford physicist Andrei Linde. Linde, one of cosmological inflation's inventors, spoke on Monday at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics event where the BICEP2 astrophysics team unveiled the gravitational wave results.

Essentially, in the models favored by the BICEP2 team's observations, the process that inflates a universe looks just too potent to happen only once; rather, once a Big Bang starts, the process would happen repeatedly and in multiple ways. (Learn more about how universes form in "Cosmic Dawn" on the National Geographic website.)

"A multiverse offers one good possible explanation for a lot of the unique observations we have made about our universe," says MIT physicist Alan Guth, who first wrote about inflation theory in 1980. "Life being here, for example."

Lunchtime

The Big Bang and inflation make the universe look like the ultimate free lunch, Guth has suggested, where we have received something for nothing.

But Linde takes this even further, suggesting the universe is a smorgasbord stuffed with every possible free lunch imaginable.

That means every kind of cosmos is out there in the aftermath of the Big Bang, from our familiar universe chock full of stars and planets to extravaganzas that encompass many more dimensions, but are devoid of such mundane things as atoms or photons of light.

In this multiverse spawned by "chaotic" inflation, the Big Bang is just a starting point, giving rise to multiple universes (including ours) separated by unimaginable gulfs of distance. How far does the multiverse stretch? Perhaps to infinity, suggests MIT physicist Max Tegmark, writing for Scientific American.

That means that spread across space at distances far larger than the roughly 92 billion light-year width of the universe that we can observe, other universes reside, some with many more dimensions and different physical properties and trajectories. (While the light from the most distant stuff we can see started out around 14 billion light-years away, the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, stretching the boundaries of the observable universe since then.)

Comic Mismatches

"I'm a fan of the multiverse, but I wouldn't claim it is true," says Guth. Nevertheless, he adds, a multiverse explains a lot of things that now confuse cosmologists about our universe.

For example, there is the 1998 discovery that galaxies in our universe seem to be spreading apart at an accelerating rate, when their mutual gravitational attraction should be slowing them down. This discovery, which garnered the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics, is generally thought to imply the existence of a "dark energy" that counteracts gravity on cosmic scales. Its nature is a profound mystery. About the only thing we understand about dark energy, physicists such as Michael Turner of the University of Chicago have long said, is its name.

"There is a tremendous mismatch between what we calculate [dark energy] ought to be and what we observe," Guth says. According to quantum theory, subatomic particles are constantly popping into existence and vanishing again in the vacuum of space, which should endow it with energy—but that vacuum energy, according to theoretical calculations, would be 120 orders of magnitude (a 1 followed by 120 zeroes) too large to explain the galaxy observations. The discrepancy has been a great source of embarrassment to physicists.

A multiverse could wipe the cosmic egg off their faces. On the bell curve of all possible universes spawned by inflation, our universe might just happen to be one of the few universes in which the dark energy is relatively lame. In others, the antigravity force might conform to physicists' expectations and be strong enough to rip all matter apart.

A multiverse might also explain away another embarrassment: the number of dimensions predicted by modern "superstring" theory. String theory describes subatomic particles as being composed of tiny strings of energy, but it requires there to be 11 dimensions instead of the four we actually observe. Maybe it's just describing all possible universes instead of our own. (It suggests there could be a staggeringly large number of possibilities—a 1 with 500 zeroes after it.)

Join the "multiverse club," Linde wrote in a March 9 review of inflationary cosmology, and what looks like a series of mathematical embarrassments disappears in a cloud of explanation. In a multiverse, there can be more things dreamt of in physicists' philosophy than happen to be found in our sad little heaven and earth.

Life, the Universe, and Everything

The multiverse may even help explain one of the more vexing paradoxes about our world, sometimes called the "anthropic" principle: the fact that we are here to observe it.

To cosmologists, our universe looks disturbingly fine-tuned for life. Without its Goldilocks-perfect alignment of the physical constants—everything from the strength of the force attaching electrons to atoms to the relative weakness of gravity—planets and suns, biochemistry, and life itself would be impossible. Atoms wouldn't stick together in a universe with more than four dimensions, Guth notes.

If ours was the only cosmos spawned by a Big Bang, these life-friendly properties would seem impossibly unlikely. But in a multiverse containing zillions of universes, a small number of life-friendly ones would arise by chance—and we could just happen to reside in one of them.

"Life may have formed in the small number of vacua where it was possible, in a multiverse," says Guth. "That's why we are seeing what we are seeing. Not because we are special, but because we
Title: ASteroid flies by earth today
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2015, 09:40:25 AM: http://www.space.com/28363-huge-asteroid-earth-flyby-webcast.html?adbid=10152604632791466&adbpl=fb&adbpr=17610706465&cmpid=514630_20150126_39394037
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: ccp on October 01, 2015, 04:45:25 PM: Are not his conclusions rather obvious? We all know the Earth and Sun will not exist forever, and that there is likely life out there and whatever it is it may not be nice to us. And yeah I saw and loved many of the sci-fi movies of the 50 and 60s:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/advanced-aliens-could-conquer-colonise-6545914
Title: Awesome photos
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 24, 2016, 10:00:47 PM: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/12/2016-hubble-space-telescope-advent-calendar/509306/?utm_source=nl-atlantic-daily-121916&utm_source=nl-atlantic-daily-122016
Title: Full moon lunar eclipse and comet on same night
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2017, 04:16:18 PM: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/02/08/a-full-moon-lunar-eclipse-and-comet-all-in-one-night-heres-how-to-watch-it-friday/?tid=pm_local_pop&utm_term=.4ddff9dccbbd
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Andy55 on February 09, 2017, 01:47:24 AM: the pictures brought to my mind the scenes from the Gravity movie, very impressive.
what do you guys think about the Arrival movie? i'm still going to watch it, only got no time :-(
Title: Seven Exoplanets Discovered
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2017, 10:56:08 AM: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/science/trappist-1-exoplanets-nasa.html?emc=edit_na_20170222&nl=breaking-news&nlid=49641193&ref=cta&_r=0
Title: Chaotic Solar System
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 24, 2017, 11:01:55 PM: http://news.wisc.edu/from-rocks-in-colorado-evidence-of-a-chaotic-solar-system/
Title: Re: Astronomy, why is the speed of light so slow?
Post by: DougMacG on June 12, 2017, 10:22:53 AM: When you gaze at the night sky, you are not seeing stars in their position in the sky, you are seeing where they were some four thousand years ago due to the slow speed of light, at 300 million meters per second. If we could devise a way to travel to one of these places at the speed of light, it would take hundreds of human generations to do so.
http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2017/06/12/why_is_the_speed_of_light_so_slow.html
Title: multiverse hypotheses
Post by: ccp on June 13, 2017, 05:30:11 AM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

infinity is concept that just does not make sense really.
we live in a finite world (Earth) in an infinite number of universes?
Title: The wanderers - "rogue" planets
Post by: ccp on October 03, 2017, 07:00:15 PM: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/110805-planets-survive-supernovas-ejected-rogues-space-science/
Title: Harvest Moon
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 12, 2017, 10:42:17 AM: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/when-is-harvest-moon-october-space-science/
Title: Really fast rock
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 21, 2017, 11:52:14 AM: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/science/interstellar-object-solar-system.html?mc=adintl&mcid=facebook&mccr=subscribers&subid2=orange&ad-keywords=GlobalTruth&subid1=TAFI&_r=0
Title: Perseid Meteor Shower
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 12, 2018, 11:35:28 PM: Tonight was supposed to be the big night for this year's Perseid meteor shower. We went to the far side of the Palos Verdes peninsula to minimize light pollution, but were unable to see any meteors.
Title: Are black holes actually dark energy stars
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 21, 2018, 02:39:14 PM: http://nautil.us//blog/are-black-holes-actually-dark-energy-stars?utm_source=Nautilus&utm_campaign=25098baa7a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_19_08_33&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_dc96ec7a9d-25098baa7a-61805061
Title: Repeated radio signals coming from galaxy 1.5 billion light years away
Post by: bigdog on January 14, 2019, 02:27:26 PM: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/radio-signals-fast-radio-bursts-frbs-galaxy-signal-repeated-space-scientists-a8719886.html
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: ccp on January 14, 2019, 02:51:10 PM: FRB flung out with the same energy that our sun produces in a year!

If this was alien life I am glad they are 1.5 billion light yrs away .

I remember astronomy in 1975 Quasars were the farthest objects in the universe known at that time .
No one knew what they were though .

It appears we still are not sure what the heck they are :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar
Title: beyond the quasars
Post by: ccp on January 16, 2019, 05:52:08 PM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_distant_astronomical_objects

"protogalaxy"?
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2019, 12:17:39 PM: That Russian Red Wolf Moon eclipse was awesome!
Title: Universe is a hologram
Post by: bigdog on March 17, 2019, 03:56:51 PM: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/new-evidence-for-the-strange-idea-that-the-universe-is-a-hologram
Title: Re: Universe is a hologram
Post by: G M on March 17, 2019, 11:12:39 PM: Quote from: bigdog on March 17, 2019, 03:56:51 PM
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/new-evidence-for-the-strange-idea-that-the-universe-is-a-hologram

That's just what the Matrix wants you to think.

Episode 10 of the podcast below addresses this topic.

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/how-stuff-works/the-end-of-the-world-with-josh-clark

There’s one last thing. Maybe the reason why we don’t see other intelligent life, maybe the reason we are in the astoundingly unique position of having to save the future of the human race, is because we are simulated human beings. It would explain a lot.
Title: Moon stuff
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 19, 2019, 05:59:31 PM: https://www.popsci.com/blue-moon-super-moon-guide?cmpid=ene20190319&utm_source=internal&utm_medium=email&cid=53044&mid=468181748#page-3
Title: Massive Asteroid will pass closer to earth than to moon.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 19, 2019, 04:27:29 PM: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/massive-asteroid-will-pass-closer-to-earth-than-the-moon-nasa-warns/ar-BBW2aAC?ocid=ob-fb-engb-1511253547831&fbclid=IwAR1qL6VTt5HaHPDUhczfOtNhiXShYmVj0Ho8LAQPzXjkN9yxhF_vNy0mdEc
Title: Haley's Comment tonight and tomorrow night
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 21, 2019, 10:29:45 PM: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2019/10/18/last-seen-in-1986-halleys-comet-will-make-its-presence-known-this-week-with-shooting-star-show/?fbclid=IwAR2_g_ObS24P_M-YS3ggKJtxG_WlrITHTU3slCEpGujCyXHXCp7yDf-0bAc#18cf56ff7732
Title: Ancient Greek device for predicting eclipses?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 12, 2020, 09:55:05 PM: https://bigthink.com/robby-berman/an-ancient-device-too-advanced-to-be-real-gives-up-its-secrets-at-last?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1578844821
Title: Jupiter theory
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 16, 2020, 08:13:20 AM: https://www.foxnews.com/science/jupiter-is-flinging-asteroids-at-earth-like-a-sniper-top-scientist-warns
Title: booster landing back on Earth - pinpoint precision!!!!!!
Post by: ccp on May 31, 2020, 03:08:52 PM: This is unbelievabe - something out of a 1930s Flash Gordon flick or 1950s science fiction movie!

Maybe need new thread. for this: USA in Space ! :-D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm__ZSLc6Is
Title: How to see the comet
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2020, 08:18:35 PM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JmqgaYPVXs&feature=youtu.be
Title: How to see the comet 2.0
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 22, 2020, 06:02:16 AM: https://www.9news.com/article/weather/accuweather/comet-neowise-how-to-view-see/507-8a626fab-0c02-4171-8fd1-a0b1b4e03521
Title: Some planets better for Life than Earth
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 05, 2020, 04:26:58 PM: https://scitechdaily.com/some-planets-may-be-better-for-life-than-earth-researchers-identify-24-superhabitable-exoplanets/
Title: Jupiter and Saturn to align for Christmas
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 04, 2020, 12:01:56 PM: https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/article/jupiter-and-saturn-will-align-to-create-the-first-christmas-star-in-nearly-800-years/ar-BB1bzzF4?ocid=sf&fbclid=IwAR3cW_si1GL6SCA32tdv0e7NnLs-yrDqTpVne7BD-FzbB6Lwn59iq8hQWS4
Title: James Webb Space Telescope
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2021, 09:35:12 AM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P8fKd0IVOs
Title: Solar Storm coming
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 12, 2021, 02:26:54 AM: https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/solar-storm-expected-to-hit-earth-soon-could-cause-power-grid-satellite-disruptions-agency_4043159.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-10-12&mktids=651f3475548f8989f507e025f83b639c&est=g%2BoEtGymIqp8LTfyLNr3mp5kCp31v%2FhYMHjDUlrJN9aCL6LyUz8aUnm7wJKPQILu9nHK
Title: Pop Sci: Blue Glow at ISS
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2021, 02:46:17 PM: https://www.popsci.com/space/blue-glow-international-space-station/?utm_source=Camden+Contacts&utm_campaign=c5d32a69b8-&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_387276506e-c5d32a69b8-515834222#affinity=Space
Title: Alan Shepard 1998.
Post by: ccp on December 30, 2021, 10:26:18 AM: https://www.johnmbarry.com/the_great_influenza__the_story_of_the_deadliest_pandemic_in_history__133171.htm
Title: Testing how to deflect asteroids
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 04, 2022, 06:34:45 AM: https://bigthink.com/hard-science/scientists-test-how-to-deflect-asteroids-with-nuclear-blasts/#Echobox=1641044845
Title: Meteor Showers right now
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 30, 2022, 06:09:37 AM: 2 Meteor Showers to Converge for a Late-Summer Light Show in the Night Sky—Here’s What You Need to Know
BY MICHAEL WING TIMEJULY 29, 2022 PRINT
What began as a hunk of frozen gas and space dust orbiting the sun 20,000 years ago will soon appear as a light show in the early morning sky.

Stargazers will be treated to two distinct meteor showers which converge in late summer and will soon make their yearly rendezvous again.

The famous Perseid meteor shower and the lesser-known Delta Aquariids will appear together at the same time—and may even cross paths—with the Delta Aquariids starting from mid-July and the Perseids joining them from August for the rest of the month.

The Delta Aquariids are already upon us and currently in full display. The shower’s nominal (predicted) peak, on July 29, coincides with the new moon, making for dark conditions and ideal meteor sighting. That’s soon—but it’s not too late to catch them, as the Delta Aquariids ramble on for weeks. One can expect to see as many as 20 Delta Aquariid meteors per hour under dark skies with no moonlight during peak period, according to EarthSky.

Epoch Times Photo
A meteor seen in the southern sky of New England, photographed in Sherborn, Massachusetts, early Nov. 18, 2001. (John Mottern/Getty Images)
The second shower, the Perseids, will join and intermingle with the Delta Aquariids come August. The Delta Aquariids tend to be fainter than the Perseids, but not this year; while the Perseids will peak on August 12–13, the waxing moon (becoming full August 12) will wash out some of their drama.

Thus, the early weeks of August present ample opportunity for meteor spotting in the northern hemisphere.

Particularly notable to watch for are the glowing ionized trails of gas that meteors sometimes leave behind, called persistent trains, which can last for one or two seconds after the meteor passes. About 5 to 10 percent of the Delta Aquariid meteors have these spectacular streaks.

Both light shows will trail off and end on August 21, saying sayonara until next year.

How to Catch the Delta Aquariids and the Perseids
The Delta Aquariids shoot from the direction of constellation Aquarius. The shower’s “radiant,” the single point from which meteors emanate, is located near Aquarius’ third brightest star, the constellation’s “delta,” hence the name “Delta Aquariids.”

The Delta Aquariids, like the Eta Aquariids, favor viewership in the southern hemisphere, but they can readily be seen from latitudes across the southern U.S. Looking southward from the northern hemisphere, sky watchers will see the constellation arc across the southern sky. Stargazers further north than this tend to discount the Delta Aquariids. From mid-July until the end of August, the shower’s radiant will rise in mid-evening, reach its highest around 2 a.m., then set low in the sky by dawn.

The Perseids’ radiant hits the constellation Perseus, which stretches from the low northeast to high north when viewed from the northern hemisphere.

To best glimpse both meteor showers, find a position away from artificial light on a moonless night with a field of view that captures as much sky as possible. One need not look to the radiant for meteors, as they shoot outward from there and may appear anywhere across the heavens.

Image of comet and Venus close to the Sun.
Comet 96P Machholz orbits the sun about every 5.3 years. (NASA/ESA/SOHO)
File:96P 20070403 000500 HI1A.png
Comet 96P Machholz, the parent of the Delta Aquariid meteor shower, on May 12, 1986. (PD-US)
Where Do the Delta Aquariids Originate From?
Meteors are the dispersed remnants of comets—amorphous chucks of frozen gas and space dust that constantly shed their material as they travel throughout outer space.

Our solar system has many comets orbiting the sun, one of which being 96P Machholz, discovered by Don Machholz in 1986, which has been shedding its matter for millennia up until today. Material leaving the comet’s nucleus about 20,000 years ago caused the Delta Aquariid, a recent study suggests. The parent comet is also part of a the 96P Machholz Complex, comprising eight different meteor showers, the Marsden and Kracht comet groups, and at least one asteroid, called 2003 EH1. Over eons, their orbits around the sun gradually diverged.

Over millennia, 96P Machholz’s orbit has shifted in shape and tilt. It circles the sun every 5.3 Earth years, and brushes as close as 0.12 astronomical units (or AU, the distance between Earth and the sun) from the sun, well inside Mercury’s orbit. Comet 96P Machholz has quite literally scattered its detritus throughout the inner solar system. That matter, when it encounters Earth, falls and burns up in the atmosphere, causing meteor showers.

Peak meteor viewing is already in full swing. But the opening of August will definitely host a symphony of lights in the early morning sky as two meteor showers team up until month’s end. Enjoy the show!
Title: Solar flare heading our way?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 02, 2022, 06:47:43 PM: https://www.newsweek.com/sunspot-growing-release-x-class-solar-flare-towards-earth-1738900
Title: from outer space :lonsdaleite
Post by: ccp on September 16, 2022, 07:33:14 AM: really cool 8-):

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/16/world/space-diamond-lonsdaleite-scn/index.html

it may get even more expensive to get a wedding ring :-D
Title: Lunar Eclipse on Election Day
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2022, 04:04:41 PM: https://www.theepochtimes.com/first-ever-election-day-total-lunar-eclipse-to-rise-in-us-on-november-8-and-it-wont-happen-again-until-2394_4805653.html?utm_source=Bright&src_src=Bright&utm_campaign=bright-2022-10-30&src_cmp=bright-2022-10-30&utm_medium=email&est=dPK0iDedKEgcwxPrsk9tWUWsCf7Rg0nf4pknJ9tDZ5IfZB7jGpReb1lGqMAbhYzj9Yby
Title: Hot Tuna with Paul Kantner
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 07, 2022, 11:52:58 AM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rC023OGdDY
Title: Leonid Meteor Shower on Nov. 17
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 13, 2022, 07:38:32 AM: Leonid Meteor Shower Expected to Rain Down on Earth on Night of Nov. 17—Here’s What You Need to Know
BY MICHAEL WING TIMENOVEMBER 10, 2022 PRINT

Every mid-November, Earth passes through a region of outer space littered with bits of cosmic debris that habitually light up like matches in the night sky. The leftover remnants of a comet, called 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, manifest as a stream of space dust, rock, and frozen gas trailing throughout the solar system. Their striking the Earth’s atmosphere results in a pyrotechnic spectacle called a meteor shower, which sometimes turns into a prolific, even sublime, meteor storm.

This particular November meteor shower is called the Leonids, so named because it seems to radiate from a point located in the constellation Leo the lion. If you want to catch this celestial light show, you still have a few days before they peak.

How to Spot the Leonids

The Leonids have already gotten underway—they last from Nov. 3 through Dec. 2—but are expected to peak on the evening of Nov. 17 through the morning of Nov. 18. So, there’s lots of time for meteor sighting.

One can expect to see as many as 15 meteors per hour under ideal conditions. Nov. 17 will mark the fat waning crescent moon, so there should be ample darkness to provide the necessary contrast to see them. Try to find an unobstructed viewpoint where there are no city lights.

Wherever you may reside, the best time to catch the Leonids is between late evening and moonrise. The meteor shower’s “radiant”—the point from which shooting stars appear to emanate—is located smack dab in the middle of Leo the lion’s mane; more precisely, it is just above the star Algieba. The radiant will rise around midnight and appear highest in the sky at dawn.

One needn’t look precisely at the radiant to find meteors—to the contrary. You won’t see many appearing there, because they radiate outward from that point. They can be spotted anywhere across the night sky and are most visible when seen about 30 degrees from their point of origin. But why do they all seem to emanate from a single point? Why do they have a radiant?

Where Meteors Come From

The Leonids, just like other meteor showers which occur annually at various times throughout the year, are associated with their particular parent comet, which is constantly shedding streams of debris along its elliptical orbit around the sun (becoming more prolific during its closest approach to the sun).

That debris travels in nearly the exact same direction as their corresponding comet; that’s why whenever Earth passes through one of these debris streams, the subsequent shooting stars seem to all radiate from the same point. A trick of perspective makes it seem like they converge: just like a pair of train tracks running parallel appear to converge on the horizon, meteors traveling in parallel appear to emanate from the radiant.

Speaking of comets, the Leonids’ parent comet, 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, was so named because it was discovered independently by two different astronomers around the same time. On the evening of Dec. 19, 1865, William Tempel of Marseilles Observatory in France first sighted it in the northern sky, under the north star. Then, 17 days later, on the evening of January 5, 1866, it was spotted again by Horace Tuttle of Harvard College Observatory. Because the second discovery was independent, Tuttle’s name was added.

Based on calculations taken from the comet back then, astronomers estimated it would return in 33.17 years, after completing its laborious orbit around the sun. With 55P/Tempel-Tuttle’s discovery, astronomers also concluded that the meteor showers and storms occurring annually this time of year were products of the comet.

In 1833, stargazers witnessed one of the most famous meteor storms in modern memory, during which over 100,000 Leonids per hour rained down upon the Earth, giving some observers a strong sense of the Earth traveling through space, fording a stream of cosmic detritus. Since then, meteor enthusiasts have gazed up every 33 years scouting out Leonid storms. In the years 1866 and 1867, the Leonids delivered more spectacular storms.

After the comet’s discovery, astronomers and stargazers expected November 1899 to present a big show—the comet’s return took a backseat to the prospect of a Leonid storm, which was highly anticipated. It was considered a great public disappointment in astronomy, however, when it did not materialize.

There were no great Leonid storms again until Nov. 17, 1966, when observers in the southwestern United States reported spotting as many as 40 to 50 meteors per second within a span of 15 minutes. The comet’s return in 1998 (when it became visible with binoculars) was followed by a dazzling meteor storm display from 1999 through 2001. The comet is expected to return in early 2031, possibly with a Leonid storm encore.

This year’s Leonids are anticipated is be less of a lion and more of a lamb. Nevertheless, if you gaze up on the evening of Nov. 17, the starry expanse surrounding the constellation Leo could yield a few noteworthy shooting stars.

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Title: are worm holes real ?
Post by: ccp on December 01, 2022, 12:03:16 PM: https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-build-baby-wormhole-sci-222452633.html
Title: The Green Comet visible now!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 20, 2023, 02:28:46 PM: https://www.ktvh.com/news/how-to-see-the-rare-green-comet-before-it-passes-for-another-50-000-years?fbclid=IwAR3_gg6LDs5MfJHY82OFli7BaCrlLYoFbs7D7LH4o31H0lAFJgM1ldywuvg
Title: the rings of Neptune
Post by: ccp on April 17, 2023, 11:11:56 AM: thanks to Hubble :
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/21/science/neptune-webb-telescope-photos.html
Title: Universe maybe not expanding
Post by: ccp on June 21, 2023, 09:02:33 AM: and apparently this theory solves some problems giving it merit

if this turns out to be correct I see a Nobel in the cards:

https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/dark-energy/the-expansion-of-the-universe-could-be-a-mirage-new-theoretical-study-suggests
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 21, 2023, 02:41:48 PM: Intriguing!
Title: Euclid will join James Webb Space Telescope
Post by: ccp on July 02, 2023, 09:37:34 AM: using Elon rocker vs Russian rocket to get to 4 x the distance away from Earth the the moon:

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/07/02/europes-space-telescope-launches-to-study-dark-mysteries-of-the-universe/

Euclid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_(spacecraft)

I guess it is coincidence Euclid includes first same two letters as Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid

"The new mission concept was called Euclid, honouring the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria (~300 BC), who is considered the father of geometry. In October 2011, Euclid was selected by ESA's Science Programme Committee for implementation, and on 25 June 2012 it was formally adopted.[1]"
Title: Uranus
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 08, 2023, 10:57:20 AM: https://www.popsci.com/science/how-did-uranus-get-its-name/?utm_term=PSCENE070823&utm_campaign=PopSci_Newsletter&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email
Title: Perseid meteor shower
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 05, 2023, 08:24:34 AM: https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/bright/perseid-meteor-shower-the-years-best-soon-to-grace-summer-skies-heres-how-to-catch-it-5426610?utm_source=Bright&src_src=Bright&utm_campaign=bright-2023-08-01&src_cmp=bright-2023-08-01&utm_medium=email&est=HPVDczDDrQo1nv9ScOmUl2mSCO0YdkuaCyFUlm5bBf84iXVhIxitWl1xX0gY8nc3UK8q
Title: 250 grams of "black dust" retrieved from the asteroid
Post by: ccp on October 01, 2023, 11:27:35 AM: 7 yr mission for half pound of dust:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/mysterious-black-dust-found-on-bennu-asteroid-samples-forces-nasa-to-pause/ar-AA1hs1Al

:-o
Title: New Map of 400 K “Nearby” Galaxies
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 19, 2023, 10:25:37 PM: Info here:

https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/new-map-of-space-precisely-measures-nearly-400000-nearby-galaxies?utm_source=main_feed_click&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=main_feed&utm_content=click
Title: Patching Voyager Spacecraft Software at the Edge of the Solar System
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 24, 2023, 10:35:32 PM: Perhaps misfiled, but I didn’t want to risk the wrath of our esteemed moderator by starting a “space exploration” thread.

The Voyager spacecraft that have been traveling toward the outer reaches of the solar system are receiving a software patch essentially updating their 50 year old OS. Pretty wicked cool….

I wonder what the Earth to Pluto baud rate is…/

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/10/23/004220/nasa-transmits-patches-to-the-two-voyager-probes-launched-in-1977?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
Title: Re: Astronomy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 26, 2023, 01:26:43 PM: Good call :-D

To clarify matters I have added Outer Space to the name of this thread.

Yes, there is also another Space thread and yes this can be confusing and it is not the only example. in the coming days i will be looking to combine such threads and/or block duplicative ones.

Also, key point here-- many posts can fit well in more than one thread-- feel free to post worthy posts in more than one thread-- this will help the findability of such posts down the road.
Title: Not easy for humans to balance in 1/6 Earth gravity
Post by: ccp on January 09, 2024, 08:22:46 AM: https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&ei=UTF-8&p=gravity+on+moon+astronauts&type=E210US1494G0#id=2&vid=38c61f5a903e716199779fb4193c057a&action=click

Which falls faster on the moon a hammer or a feather:

https://moon.nasa.gov/resources/331/the-apollo-15-hammer-feather-drop/

How high would we jump on other planets:

https://www.space.com/how-high-can-jump-on-other-worlds
Title: Alien Life on an Exoplanet Found?
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 12, 2024, 02:54:15 PM: Hmm, might this be the year we learn there is life well beyond earth and our solar system?

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/have-we-just-discovered-aliens/?
Title: Sh!t Oh Dear, Mining the Moon Might Despoil an Airless Rock
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 25, 2024, 09:37:01 AM: Tempted to file this in Pathological Science given that this author is wringing hands over making a mining mess on an uninhabited, airless moon, that has little in the way of weather, running bodies of water, etc. to worry about polluting and hence poisoning people downstream or whatever. Seems like a preemptive attempt to impose biota-rich planetary standards on a place that is anything but, to the detriment of humankind, particularly those in resource-poor countries in desperate need of inexpensive raw materials. Another "Progressive" day at the office, in short:

https://hackaday.com/2024/01/25/could-moon-mining-spoil-its-untouched-grandeur-and-science-value/
Title: Has life been discovered in another world ?
Post by: ccp on January 25, 2024, 12:45:21 PM: Maybe: indications it has an ocean, an atmosphere, is a planet 2.6 diameters of the Earth and goldi-locks distance from a red dwarf star:

https://www.livescience.com/space/exoplanets/james-webb-telescope-sees-potential-signs-of-alien-life-in-the-atmosphere-of-a-distant-goldilocks-water-world

but 50 light years away.....
Title: You Say Zoozve, While I Say 2002-VE
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 28, 2024, 01:14:48 PM: Fascinating bit of Venusian detective work:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1750952860131729544.html
Title: New X-ray Satellite Data Reveals Clumpy Universe
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 04, 2024, 03:44:08 PM: Findings confirm cosmological theory:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/fresh-x-rays-reveal-a-universe-as-clumpy-as-cosmology-predicts-20240304/
Title: Unobtainium: Asteroid Contains New, Super-Dense Element?
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 07, 2024, 10:16:59 AM: Newly noted substance twice as dense as lead found on asteroid?

https://charmingscience.com/asteroids-are-hiding-never-seen-elements-from-beyond-the-periodic-table/
Title: 2.4 Million Earth/Mars Gravitational Dance …
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 25, 2024, 05:35:18 PM: … impacts Earth’s orbit, driving it closer to the sun while stirring up deep ocean currents. Posted as this is yet another potential confounding variable where “climate change” is concerned:

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/rivers-oceans/every-24-million-years-mars-tugs-on-earth-so-hard-it-changes-the-ocean-floor
Title: Black Holes Shown to have Magnetic Fields
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 28, 2024, 07:37:35 PM: Cool stuff:

Now We Can See the Magnetic Maelstrom Around Our Galaxy’s Supermassive Black Hole

Astronomers unveil magnetic fields around black

•Singularity Hub / by Jason Dorrier / Mar 27, 2024 at 6:17 PM

Black holes are known for ferocious gravitational fields. Anything wandering too close, even light, will be swallowed up. But other forces may be at play too.

In 2021, astronomers used the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) to make a polarized image of the enormous black hole at the center of the galaxy M87. The image showed an organized swirl of magnetic fields threading the matter orbiting the object. M87*, as the black hole is known, is nearly 1,000 times bigger than our own galaxy’s central black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) and is dining on the equivalent of a few suns per year. With its comparatively modest size and appetite—Sgr A* is basically fasting at the moment—scientists wondered if our galaxy’s black hole would have strong magnetic fields too.

Now, we know.

In the first polarized image of Sgr A*, released alongside two papers published today (here and here), EHT scientists say the black hole has strong magnetic fields akin to those seen in M87*. The image depicts a fiery whirlpool (the disc of material falling into Sgr A*) circling the drain (the black hole’s shadow) with magnetic field lines woven throughout.

In contrast to unpolarized light, polarized light is oriented in only one direction. Like a pair of quality sunglasses, magnetized regions in space polarize light too. These polarized images of the two black holes therefore map out their magnetic fields.

And surprisingly, they’re similar.

Side-by-side polarized images of supermassive black holes M87* and Sagittarius A*. Image Credit: EHT Collaboration
“With a sample of two black holes—with very different masses and very different host galaxies—it’s important to determine what they agree and disagree on,” Mariafelicia De Laurentis, EHT deputy project scientist and professor at the University of Naples Federico II, said in a press release. “Since both are pointing us toward strong magnetic fields, it suggests that this may be a universal and perhaps fundamental feature of these kinds of systems.”

Making the image was no simple task. Compared to M87*, whose disc is larger and moves relatively slowly, imaging Sgr A* is like trying to photograph a cosmic toddler—its material is always in motion, reaching nearly the speed of light. The scientists had to use new tools in addition to those that yielded the polarized image of M87* and weren’t even sure the image would be possible.

Such technical feats take enormous teams of scientists organized across the globe. The first three pages of each new paper are dedicated to authors and affiliations. In addition, the EHT itself spans the world. Astronomers stitch observations made by eight telescopes into a virtual Earth-sized telescope capable of resolving objects the apparent size of a donut on the moon as viewed from the surface of our planet.

The EHT team plans to make more observations—the next round for Sgr A* begins next month—and add telescopes on Earth and space to increase the quality and breadth of the images. One outstanding question is whether Sgr A* has a jet of material shooting out from its poles like M87* does. The ability to make movies of the black hole later this decade—which should be spectacular—could resolve the mystery.

“We expect strong and ordered magnetic fields to be directly linked to the launching of jets as we observed for M87*,” Sara Issaoun, research co-leader and a fellow at Harvard & Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics, told Space.com. “Since Sgr A*, with no observed jet, seems to have a very similar geometry, perhaps there is also a jet lurking in Sgr A* waiting to be observed, which would be super exciting!”

The discovery of a jet, added to strong magnetic fields, would mean these features may be common to supermassive black holes across the spectrum. Learning more about their features and behavior can help scientists piece together a better picture of how galaxies, including the Milky Way, evolve over eons in tandem with the black holes at their hearts.

Image Credit: EHT Collaboration

https://singularityhub.com/2024/03/27/now-we-can-see-the-magnetic-maelstrom-around-our-galaxys-supermassive-black-hole/