Dave Reneke's

'WORLD of SPACE and ASTRONOMY'

Weird, Wild & Breaking News Stories in Space and Astronomy from around the World 24/7 delivered free every week with regular updates as they happen.

It's FREE, It's Safe - Subscribe Now!

Here’s a selection of Astronomy/Space related stories you may find interesting. Be sure to sign up for your own copy of Astro Space News. I absolutely do not disclose your address to anyone! There is no cost and no obligation for this service. Anyone can subscribe by completing the opt in form just over there on the right … see it, do it now! We work 24/7/365 to report the most relevant ‘Astro-Space’ news back to you … virtually as it breaks. Bookmark this page and check back regularly.

For The Media

If you are interested, an interview with astronomer, writer, educator and public lecturer representing Australasian Science Magazine and Editor of Astro Space News, Dave Reneke(Astro-Dave) can be arranged by contacting Dave by Phone/Fax(02) 65 85 2260 Mobile: 0400 636 363 or email Dave for an instant reply to davereneke@gmail.com. David is well experienced talking to the media and presents information in an easy to understand, up to date and informative manner. Interviews can be on any subject, tailored to your requirements.

---

                                              AUSTRALASIAN SCIENCE MAGAZINE

Get your science news straight from the scientists themselves. No hype, no spin, no bull: just the facts.Australia’s most inspiring scientists choose to write about their world-class discoveries in Australasian Science, Australia’s only monthly science magazine.

Australasian Science is dedicated to Australian and New Zealand science, providing a unique local perspective on scientific developments and issues that other science magazines can’t match. Australasian Science boasts Australia’s most experienced team of science journalists, including Australia's only two international Science Journalism Laureates.

Its Patrons are Nobel Laureate Prof Peter Doherty and renowned science broadcaster Robyn Williams, representing excellence in science and its communication. Written in simple language, Australasian Science is a unique and independent source of news and commentary on local scientific developments.

Check out the latest issue NOW: http://www.australasianscience.com.au/  For school & institution rates please contact Control Publications on 03 9500 0015. Fax: (03) 9500 0255 Email science@control.com.au

---

 

 LETTERS TO DAVE

 Your letters are welcome on any subject covered by the scope of this newsletter or any aspect of astronomy/space in general. All letters requesting help or advice will be answered personally by me.

 MY GRIPE

* First of all – In a recent press release concerning the 'Blue Moon' in December, in a few cases, my presss release was edited down for space requirements. As I write for a world audience to 3 dozen or so world-wide outlets that take my stories it inevitably happens that an Australian newspaper  might then take their copy from one of the overseas sources.  Therefore some rising/setting times of planets and stars would be incorrrect for this region. Can't be helped. That's the nature of the game.. .BUT I've had one individual from a Victorian group continually attack me without determining the facts from me directly, even after I wrote back explaining the situation.

Here's a line from one newspaper that came out wrong. They quoted me as saying:  "In January and February stars appear in the evening sky rather than the morning sky,” David said.  One word was printed incorrectly – the word 'star' – which now put a completely diffent spin to the story… and made me look or sound sillier than this Victorian chap thinks I am. I was of course referring to some planets, not star, that are now better seen in the evening.

Anyway, I was more than happy with the dozens of radio stations and newspapers that ran the story and interviewed me. Thank you for your professionalism and interest.  And ……how was your week ???

---

 Hi Mr.  Dave Reneke

Please, let me introduce myself: My name is angelo blanco-munoz, 60 years old and I am from Spain.  I am an electrical engineer in London as well as A spiritual healer, a mediator and also an investigator of the UFO phenomena.  I do not know why me, the fact is that since November 1991 I am in contact with mayor oxalc and lord sampiac, from which I channel messages.  In 1992 or 1993, we were on holidays when we channeled a message from joachim, one of the 24 elders from the council of the 24 elders of the star.  They have a kind of "united nations" council settled in Ganymede, one of the Jupiter moons.  Throughout all these years, we have had many sightings experiences after channeling we were going to see them.  Or unexpectedly they just turned up in the sky with their machines.  This is the last message I have received from the lord sampiac (he is from Orion constellation-but they also live here on earth with us, in the bases) 

Yeah, right!!!!!  Good luck with all this but it's slightly out of my area. 

---

Good morning Dave,

Very slack of me for not giving you feedback but we regularly run your items and I am sure they are always of interest to our readers.  All the best for the New Year and keep up the good work!  Cheers Christian Knight Editor.  The Armidale Express

Hi Christian

Thank you so very much and I really do appreciate the support you and your newspaper have been to me and my school program over the years.  All the best for a safe, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Regards, Dave

---

 Hi Dave,

Would you add me to your email list please.  I notice in the article in the Manning Great Lakes Extra on Dec 24th you are a Mid North coast resident.  I live at Upper Lansdowne and have toyed for years with the idea of getting a decent telescope – any suggestions?
Regards.  Breck M.

Hi Breck

Very nice to hear from you and I've included you on my email newsletter list.  Now, as for telescopes, I've included a big section on my newsletter for you.  go to www.davidreneke.com then look at the top row of links and click on the TWO that mention telescopes.  Then get back to me and we'll talk more OK?  I will help you out but let me know what you think on what you see.  It will help immensely.

---

Hello again David.

I have solved the problem with the mount. ( we had some protarcyed correspondence here. Ed) Sorry to have bothered you but it should now allow me to se Orion!!!  Thank you once again.  Hope to meet you sometime.

Regards Peter K.

Heh heh …  they can be more trouble than you'd believe.  Glad it was something relatively simple.  Happy viewing and if you need help I'm always available for you.

Good luck.  Dave Reneke    

---

   Advertising Opportunities

I have been approached by a number of people on this issue: 'Astro-Space News' is always willing to accept ads and sponsors for this site.  Please note that any ads posted on this site must be relevant to the subject matter of the pages on which they will be placed.  Ads that contain adult content or that are in poor taste will not be accepted.  If you have an idea talk to us. And no, it won't cost you the earth!

If you are interested in placing an ad on this site or are interested in sponsoring the site, please contact Dave at this email address: davereneke@gmail.com
 

---

      THIS WEEK'S TOP STORY

 Spirit Broken Wheel Spins Again After Three Years

 Spirit's right-front wheel, which had stopped operating in March 2006, revolved with apparently normal motion during the first three of four driving segments on Sol 2117 (Wednesday, Dec.  16) but stopped early in the fourth segment of the drive. The rover's right-rear wheel, which stalled nearly three weeks ago, remained immobile during the entire Sol 2117 drive.  The other four wheels all drove forward in this part of the continuing attempt to extricate Spirit from the sand trap where it is embedded.  The sol's total commanded motion was 10 meters (33 feet) worth of wheel rotations.

The resulting movement of the rover was about 2 millimeters (0.08 inch) forward and 4 millimeters (0.16 inch) downward.  That ratio of forward to downward is well below what would be necessary over longer distance for extrication.  Part of the downward motion on Sol 2117 resulted from the right-front wheel digging in as it rotated about 10 times.

Engineers are analyzing results from the Sol 2117 drive and from electrical tests conducted prior to the drive.  Movement of the right-front wheel for about 3.5 minutes was a surprise, despite an indication from an electrical-resistance test on Sol 2113 (Saturday, Dec. 12) that some motion might be possible by the long-disused wheel.

It is not clear whether the wheel will work again, since it stopped during the final drive segment.  It is also not clear whether extrication from the sand trap would be possible even with an operable right-front wheel. The drive conducted on Sol 2117 had been planned for one sol earlier, but was delayed after analysis of the Sol 2113 test led to discovery of a new electrical issue on Spirit.

Engineers learned that a persistent voltage now exists between the rover electric ground and the rover chassis where no voltage should exist. This condition might be related to problems with the right-rear wheel. Spirit ran diagnostic tests related to this grounding issue on Sol 2117 prior to driving and during the drive.  The single-point ground showed a sustained minus 5 volts that increased to minus 25 volts whenever any of the six wheel-driving motors or four wheel-steering motors were powered.

This suggests the unusual electrical behavior is associated with the rover motor controller board since the behavior is seen with all 10 motors associated with that electronics board.  The rover has other motors not related to the wheels, but the persistent voltage has not been associated with any of those.

The plan ahead is to perform another set of low-voltage tests on the three right-side wheels and then command another four-step forward drive. This drive would not use the right-front wheel in conjunction with the others, but that wheel would be driven briefly by itself after each step to gain more information about its possible usefulness.

 Mars Daily 

---

     MORE ASTRO-SPACE NEWS   

  

Supernova That Could Wipe Out Earth 

A star primed to explode in a blast that could wipe out the Earth was revealed by astronomers yesterday. It will self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.

New studies show the star, called T Pyxidis, is much closer than previously thought at 3,260 light-years away – a short hop in galactic terms.

 Risk …  impression of T Pyxidis So the blast from the thermonuclear explosion could strip away our ozone layer that keeps out deadly space radiation.  Life on Earth would then be frazzled.

The doomsday scenario was described yesterday by astronomers from Villanova University, Philadelphia, US.

They said the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite has shown them that T Pyxidis is really two stars, one called a white dwarf that is sucking in gas and steadily growing.  When it reaches a critical mass it will blow itself to pieces.

It will become as bright as all the other stars in the galaxy put together and shine like a beacon halfway across the universe.

The experts said the Hubble space telescope has photographed the star gearing up for its big bang with a series of smaller blasts or "burps", called novas. These explosions came regularly about every 20 years from 1890 – but stopped after 1967.

 So the next blast is nearly 20 years overdue, said scientists Edward M Sion, Patrick Godon and Timothy McClain at the American Astronomical Society in Washington.  Robin Scagell, vice-president of the UK's Society for Popular Astronomy, said last night: "The star may certainly became a supernova soon – but soon could still be a long way off so don't have nightmares."

Sun

How Common are Solar Systems Like Ours?
On the whole, we'd like to think we're special, but we also hope we aren't alone in the Universe.  Astronomers have been trying to figure out just how common solar systems like ours are across the cosmos, and during one moment of epiphany one scientist figured out how to make the calculations. 

It took a worldwide collaboration of astronomers to do the work, but they concluded that about 10 – 15 percent of stars in the universe host systems of planets like our own, with several gas giant planets in the outer part of the solar system.

"Now we know our place in the universe," said Ohio State University astronomer Scott Gaudi.  "Solar systems like our own are not rare, but we're not in the majority, either." The find comes from a collaboration headquartered at Ohio State called the Microlensing Follow-Up Network (MicroFUN), which searches the sky for extrasolar planets.

MicroFUN astronomers use gravitational microlensing — which occurs when one star happens to cross in front of another as seen from Earth. The nearer star magnifies the light from the more distant star like a lens.  If planets are orbiting the lens star, they boost the magnification briefly as they pass by. Gaudi said, "Planetary microlensing basically is looking for planets you can't see around stars you can't see."

This method is especially good at detecting giant planets in the outer reaches of solar systems — planets analogous to our own Jupiter. This latest MicroFUN result is the culmination of 10 years' work — and one sudden epiphany, explained Gaudi and Andrew Gould, professor of astronomy at Ohio State.

Ten years ago, Gaudi concluded that less than 45 percent of stars could harbour a configuration similar to our own solar system. Then, in December of 2009, Gould was examining a newly discovered planet with Cheongho Han of the Institute for Astrophysics at Chungbuk National University in Korea.  The two were reviewing the range of properties among extrasolar planets discovered so far, when Gould saw a pattern.

"Basically, I realized that the answer was in Scott's thesis from 10 years ago," Gould said.  "Using the last four years of MicroFUN data, we could add a few robust assumptions to his calculations, and we could now say how common planet systems are in the universe." The find boils down to a statistical analysis: in the last four years, the MicroFUN survey has discovered only one solar system like our own — a system with two gas giants resembling Jupiter and Saturn, which astronomers discovered in 2006 and reported in the journal Science in 2008.

"We've only found this one system, and we should have found about eight by now — if every star had a solar system like Earth's," Gaudi said. The slow rate of discovery makes sense if only a small number of systems — around 10 percent — are like ours, they determined. "While it is true that this initial determination is based on just one solar system and our final number could change a lot, this study shows that we can begin to make this measurement with the experiments we are doing today," Gaudi added.

As to the possibility of life as we know it existing elsewhere in the universe, scientists will now be able to make a rough guess based on how many solar systems are like our own. Our solar system may be a minority, but Gould said that the outcome of the study is actually positive. "With billions of stars out there, even narrowing the odds to 10 percent leaves a few hundred million systems that might be like ours," he said.

  Universe Today

 
R.I.P.  NASA Space Shuttle Program 1972-2010

Formally announced by President Nixon in 1972, NASA began to conceptualize the Space Shuttle program as early as 1968. 

One test shuttle, originally intended to be christened the Constitution but was quickly changed to Enterprise because of a deluge of letters from fans of Star Trek, was followed by five fully functional shuttles: the Columbia, delivered to the Kennedy Space Center in 1979, Challenger in 1982, Discovery in 1983, Atlantis in 1985, and the Endeavor in 1991. 

The five American shuttles would become the backbone of the world's space endeavors for almost forty years.  Officially named the Space Transportation System (STS), the first shuttle mission, STS-1, was launched in 1981. 

It was followed by dozens of successful missions involving the launch of communication and GPS satellites and observatory platforms such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope.

The fleet has been used to deliver parts for the construction of the International Space Station and to carry personnel back and forth.  Other international endeavors utilizing the shuttle include the servicing and crew rotation of the Russian Mir orbital station.

Notable American firsts involving the shuttle include the first woman and the first black man in 1983 followed by the first black woman in 1992. The first Hispanic and the first Arab followed in later flights.

The Space Shuttle program was not without tragedy.  Two shuttles were lost in flight: the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003.  The entirety of both shuttle crews was lost with the vehicles.  Replacing the Challenger shuttle, the Endeavor has been in service longer and completed more missions than its predecessor.  The Space Shuttle Columbia, however, has not been given a replacement.

Associated Content

NASA: Hubble Peers 13 Billion Years Back In Cosmic History

Less than a year after getting a major overhaul, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has snapped panoramic, full-color images that let astronomers peer more than 13 billion years back into cosmic history.

The newly souped-up Hubble telescope is acting as something of a time machine that allows scientists to see galaxies as they were billions of years ago.  Hubble captured images in September and October that have been stitched together to show 7,500 galaxies stretching back through most of the universe's history.

"With the rejuvenated Hubble and its new instruments, we are now entering unchartered territory that is ripe for new discoveries," said Garth Illingworth of the University of California and leader of the survey team.  "The deepest-ever, near-infrared view of the universe has now been combined with the deepest-ever optical image to push back the frontiers of the searches for the first galaxies and to explore their nature."

NASA said the closest images captured by the telescope emitted their observed light about a billion years ago.  The furthest galaxies photographed, which appear as very faint red specks in the images, are seen as they appeared more than 13 billion years ago, or roughly 650 million years after the Big Bang.

The space agency also pointed out that without the Hubble upgrades completed last spring, the telescope could not have captured such intricate images.  The newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 is credited with expanding the capabilities to allow capture of such faraway images.

Last May, the seven-astronaut crew of the NASA space shuttle Atlantis rendezvoused with Hubble and conducted five spacewalks to repair and upgrade the telescope.The flight team replaced all six of the Hubble's gyroscopes and all six of its batteries.  The astronauts also replaced a computer unit that had failed months earlier.

The team also restored a broken-down wide-field imaging camera, while also installing another new, more powerful one.  Similarly, the astronauts fixed an existing Imaging Spectrograph while installing a new one.  NASA calls the spectrograph is its primary black-hole hunter.

NASA expects the upgrades to keep the orbiting telescope running for at least another five years.  Hubble has been aloft for about 20 years so far. During its time in orbit, Hubble's discoveries have been so important that they have forced academics to revise astronomy text books.  It took deep photographs of the universe and captured images of the birth and death of stars.

The telescope has played a key role in the discovery that the universe, driven by a mysterious force called dark energy, is expanding at an accelerating rate.  And Hubble also showed that most galaxies in the universe contain massive black holes.

 Computerworld

WOW … What a Big 'Un!!!

 

Hey, is that a Bazooka you're carrying or are you just happy to see me? Neither. One of the US amateur astronomers carrying his 'baby' – his BigScope – spotted by your editor, Dave Reneke in the Florida Keys, USA, 2008 at the Winter Star Party.

Happy Birthday Buzz

Buzz Aldrin…Astronaut.  Explorer.  Hero.  Space Advocate. As one of the leading space exploration advocates, Buzz continues to chart a course for future space travel from Planet Earth to the Moon and on to the stars. He turns 80 on January 20, 2010.

Pic: (left) Dave Reneke and Buzz Aldrin at Buzz's home in Califiornia 2008

Selected by NASA in 1963 into the third group of astronauts, Aldrin was the first with a doctorate and became known as "Dr.  Rendezvous." The docking and rendezvous techniques he devised for spacecraft in Earth and lunar orbit became critical to the success of the Gemini and Apollo programs, and are still used today. 

He also pioneered underwater training techniques, as a substitute for zero gravity flights, to simulate spacewalking.  In 1966 on the Gemini 12 orbital mission, Buzz performed the world's first successful spacewalk, overcoming prior difficulties experienced by Americans and Russians during extra-vehicular activity (EVA), and setting a new EVA record of 5 ½ hours. 

On July 20, 1969, Buzz and Neil Armstrong made their historic Apollo 11 moonwalk, becoming the first two humans to set foot on another world.  They spent 21 hours on the lunar surface and returned with 46 pounds of moon rocks.  An estimated 600 million people – the world's largest television audience in history – witnessed this unprecedented heroic endeavor.

In February 2008 I was the invited guest to Buzz Aldrin's home in Beverly Hills, California.  In a one-to-one personal interview and conversation with the second man to walk on the Moon, I gained a much deeper insight of this history-making flight from the man who actually carried out this unique feat. 

In honor of his 80th birthday, The Planetary Society is gathering good wishes from all over the planet to present to Buzz.  We will personally deliver all your messages in a giant birthday card!    

The deadline is coming up fast, so send in your greetings by January 20, 2010. Don’t forget to tell your friends — the more greetings the bigger the card! The Planetary Society Staff. Click here to send your birthday wishes.

Planetary Society.  

 Just 5 Missions Left for NASA's Space Shuttles

The end is beginning for NASA's three aging space shuttles, with just five more missions on tap this year before the orbiter fleet retires in the fall.That is, unless NASA needs a few more months to fly those remaining missions or President Barack Obama chooses to extend the shuttle program to fill a looming gap in U.S.  human spaceflight capability.

Though the ultimate path forward for NASA has not yet been decided, the space agency is at a turning point after nearly 29 years of shuttle flight. "Obviously it's the end of an era," said Roger Launius, space history curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.  "There's a certain amount of nostalgia and a sense of loss, no question."

The very last space shuttle flight, the STS-133 mission of the shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station, is scheduled for September 2010.  The launch will be the 134th shuttle voyage since the fleet's debut in 1981.

"It's starting to hit home, I have to admit to you," said NASA's shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach after the Nov.  16 liftoff of Atlantis on the STS-129 flight, the fifth and last shuttle trip of 2009.  "After this one, there's one more scheduled for Atlantis, two more for each of the other vehicles."

Shuttle legacy The shuttle has had incredible highs, and terrible lows, over its decades-long history since the launch of Columbia on STS-1 on April 12, 1981. Fourteen astronauts have been killed and two shuttles, Challenger and Columbia, lost during accidents. "It had some very notable and public failures, and those are often what it's remembered for," Launius told SPACE.com.  "The loss of the two vehicles with the crews was just tragic.  But overall, it was a pretty successful program."

The space shuttle, officially NASA's Space Transportation System, was the first-ever reusable spacecraft.  It consists of a payload bay-equipped orbiter to carry crew and cargo, with separate reusable solid rocket boosters to help it lift to space, and a disposable orange external tank to hold the chilled liquid fuel for its main engines.

"They built a reusable vehicle," Launius said.  "That's pretty remarkable that they pulled that off.  Nobody had ever done that before." But the space shuttle fleet hasn't achieved all its goals.  Originally, NASA conceived it as a system that could fly frequent and inexpensive trips to space on almost an airline-like brisk schedule.

"It was supposed to be routine, safe and affordable, in addition to being highly capable.  But it was never routine, [and] it was very expensive," said John Logsdon, a space policy expert and professor emeritus at George Washington University in St.  Louis. The shuttle's safety record was "decent, but not decent enough," he said.  "It's riskier than we would like for a vehicle carrying people."

Nonetheless, it accomplished a lot, including the launch and multiple servicing trips of what's probably the world's best-known and loved observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope.  And the shuttle has played a vital role in constructing the space station, the world's largest space laboratory and residence.

 "The assembly of the space station could not have been done without the space shuttle, and the assembly of the space station is one of the great engineering achievements of mankind," said space shuttle program manager John Shannon.  "So the space shuttle will have done a good job."

Of course, an unforgettable part of the space shuttle's legacy will always be its tragic accidents.  On Jan.  28, 1986, the world watched stunned as the shuttle Challenger and its seven-member crew, including teacher Christa McAuliffe, were lost in a fiery explosion shortly after launch.  And again on Feb.  1, 2003, disaster struck when the shuttle Columbia and its seven astronauts perished while re-entering the atmosphere during their descent back to Earth.

 "You know, we lost seven astronauts, and that was awful, just devastating," Leinbach said of the Columbia tragedy.  "But we also lost an orbiter. And it's hard to explain to people, that when we lost Columbia that was like losing a family member almost.  It's almost that deep when you work on these machines day in and day out." After each catastrophe, NASA took a break to investigate the failures, and was able to regroup and resume the shuttle program.

 The final flights If the current schedule stays on track, 2010 will see the launches of the last five shuttle flights. Getting so many missions off the ground is a tall order, but one that NASA has accomplished before — indeed, the agency launched five flights in
2009.  The record for most shuttle launches in a single year (nine missions in all) was set back in 1985.

"In terms of next year, I think the teams are very well prepared," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, after the final launch in 2009.  "We're at the right pace, the tempo feels good, it doesn't feel rushed.  The challenge will be to just stay focused, just take it one flight at a time." I rocket and the Orion crew capsule, by 2015.

But outside experts have said it will likely be later, sometime in 2017, when the new spacecraft will be ready to launch astronauts into space. An independent committee that reviewed NASA's plan to replace the shuttle fleet and return astronauts to the moon said last year that commercially built spacecraft may be able to help ease the coming gap in U.S.  manned spaceflight capability.

While the future is uncertain, the year 2010 will be sure to be an eventful one for NASA, and could mark the end of the space shuttle era. Shannon said that finale was likely to be bittersweet. "I'm sure it will be emotional," he said.  "But I suspect that it will not be sadness over the passing of that era, but happiness that we were a part of it."

 MSNBC/Space.Com

 Sneak Preview Of The Sun's Death

Stunning images of an unstable fusion reactor so vast it can only be kept in space.  It's not the next disaster movie (though they're bound to run out of Earth landmarks son enough) but a glimpse of the far future: a sun-like star going through its death throes under observation by astronomers.  Let's hope they've got popcorn.

Chi Cygni is a wildly variable star: hundreds of light years away, it can range from visible with the naked eye to undetectable without a large telescopes, and it's got a very good excuse for such unstable behaviour.  It's dying.  Having expended its hydrogen core the star is now being crushed by the force of gravity.  But stars don't go quietly into the night, with the increased pressure and temperature triggering intense fusion reactions of other materials in areas around the core – blasting pieces of the star into space and creating an an extremely asymmetrical pulsating surface.

Chi Cygni is only five billion (plus a few hundred) years ahead of our own Sun – it's at the point where it would have eaten Mars, had we been careless enough to live in a Chi Cygni-lar system instead of a solar one.  Scientists of the Observatoire de Paris are studying the breakdown using the infra-red interferometric IOTA telescope in Arizona.  The star will eventually explode, blasting off most of its outer mass into a nebula when the core collapses into a white dwarf.

It's the ultimate in mortality; never mind men dying left and right, this is a spectacular study in how even the very symbol of life will violently expire.  Though if man last long enough to deal with Sol's slow death, we'll be doing far better than we expect – in fact, if we even make it long enough to see Chi's final death we'll beat of the odds.

Daily Galaxy

Titan's Lakes Could Be Explored By Boat
If a suggestion to be made to NASA comes to fruition, vast lakes thought to be filled with liquid hydrocarbons near the north pole of Saturn's moon Titan, may one day be explored by boat.

A scientific team led by Dr Ellen Stofan from Proxemy Research in Washington DC in the US, has been studying the concept for around two years, and is now ready to submit a proposal to NASA.

The proposal is for a future mission to explore the Ligeia Mare and/or the Kraken Mare in the north of Titan by boat.  Both lakes are huge, with Kraken Mare being bigger than the Caspian sea, the largest lake on Earth.  If the mission eventuates, they would be the first lakes to be explored outside of Earth.

Evidence of the existence of dark patches thought to be lakes on Titan was first found by the Cassini mission in 2005, with Kraken Mare being discovered in 2007.  Many dark areas were observed to have channels leading into them, and the contours of the channels imply they were created by liquid flowing into or out of the lakes.  Methane and other hydrocarbons are stable liquids in Titan's frigid conditions (where the temperature can be as low as -179C), but water is not, so scientists interpreted the dark areas as lakes of liquid methane, ethane, or a mixture of the two.

The proposal is to launch the mission, dubbed the Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) in January 2016, and to make flybys of Earth and then Jupiter to pick up the required gravitational energy to reach Saturn's moon.  It would arrive on Titan in June 2023.  The estimated cost of the mission is less than $425 million, which is quite low in comparison to many space exploration missions, such as the $3.2 billion Cassini-Huygens mission launched in 2004.

The boat would carry a mass spectrometer, sonar, cameras and meteorology instruments.  The main objective of the proposed mission is to analyze the lakes to determine their precise chemical composition, but a secondary objective is to study the cycling of methane and other hydrocarbons to work out how these systems operate.  Sonar would be carried to check the depths of the lakes and the bottom contours, and the cameras would send images back to Earth.

Titan resembles Earth in that there seems to be a circulation of liquid between the land, water bodies, and the atmosphere.  On Earth this is the hydrologic cycle.  In Titan's case the liquid is not water but would probably behave in the same way.  The cycle has been dubbed the methane- ologic cycle.  According to Stofan's team, studying the shared climate processes on Titan could help us better understand climate processes on Earth, since if we could develop models that work on both Earth and Titan, we would be more certain we understand the fundamentals for Earth.

NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency) are considering a joint mission to Jupiter, but have no immediate plans to visit Saturn.  There may be an opportunity for the Titan mission under NASA's Discovery Class program, for which bids open early in 2010.

PhysOrg

Avatar moons May Become a Science Fact

Habitable alien moons like the one depicted in the blockbuster movie Avatar may become science fact within the next few years, according to a leading astronomer. In the 3D film, a race of 10ft blue-skinned giants inhabits an Earth-like moon called Pandora.

US astronomer and planet-hunter Lisa Kaltenegger, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, believes there is every chance a real-life version of Pandora exists and will soon be found.

She has conducted research showing that a planned new space telescope will be able to identify nearby "exomoons" and discover if they are habitable. The American space agency Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is due to be launched in 2014.

Dr Kaltenegger said: "If Pandora existed, we potentially could detect it and study its atmosphere in the next decade." Astronomers have already spotted hundreds of Jupiter-sized gas giants orbiting stars, but none have conditions suitable for Earth-type life. However a rocky moon orbiting a gas giant could harbour life if it was in the parent star's "habitable zone" – the region where temperatures are just right for liquid water.

"All of the gas giant planets in our solar system have rocky and icy moons," said Dr Kaltenegger.  "That raises the possibility that alien Jupiters will also have moons.  Some of those may be Earth-sized and able to hold onto an atmosphere." A Pandora-type moon could be identified when its planet "transits" across the face of the parent star.  If the moon has an atmosphere, this will absorb a tiny amount of light from the star, leaving a spectrographic fingerprint of its composition.

Dr Kaltenegger calculated that Alpha Centauri A, the star featured in Avatar, would provide an excellent target for astronomers hunting habitable moons. Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to the Sun, being only 4.37 light years away.  It consists of three stars, the largest being Alpha Centauri A, which is slightly brighter than the Sun.

"Alpha Centauri A is a bright, nearby star very similar to our Sun, so it gives us a strong signal," said Dr Kaltenegger.  "You would only need a handful of transits to find water, oxygen, carbon dioxide and methane on an Earth-like moon such as Pandora. "If the Avatar movie is right in its vision, we could characterise that moon with JWST in the near future."

She said small, dim red dwarf stars may provide the best evidence of habitable planets or moons.  This is because the habitable zone for a red dwarf is closer to the star, which increases the likelihood of a transit as seen from the Earth.  Red dwarfs are also the most common kind of star in our galaxy, the Milky Way.

A planet close enough to a red dwarf to be in its habitable zone may also be tidally "locked" by gravity so that the same face always points towards the star.  This could be a problem for life, since one side of the planet would bake in constant sunlight, while the other would freeze in constant darkness.

An exomoon orbiting the planet, on the other hand, would have regular day-night cycles and moderate temperatures. "Alien moons orbiting gas giant planets may be more likely to be habitable than tidally locked Earth-sized planets or super-Earths," said Dr Kaltenegger.  "We should certainly keep them in mind as we work toward the ultimate goal of finding alien life."

The Independent    

 

Missionary In Papua New Guinea Recounts UFO Sigthing, 50 Years Ago

William Gill was 31 years of age when he was working as a missionary in Boianai.  A village in the mountains near Dogura.
His letters to David Durie, principal of St Aidan’s College, reflect his few encounters with UFO craft and his observations of humanoid like creatures in them.

Read this excerpt from William Gill’s letter:

“We watched figures appear on top – four of them – no doubt that they are human.“Two smaller UFOs were seen at the same time, stationary.  One above the hills west, another overhead. “On the large one, two of the figures seemed to be doing something near the centre of the deck .  .  .  were occasionally bending over and raising their arms as though adjusting or setting up something (not visible). “One figure seemed to be standing looking down at us (a group of about a dozen).  I stretched my arm above my head and waved.  To our surprise the figure did the same…”

IT is now 50 years since a 31-year-old Australian Anglican missionary in Papua New Guinea, William Gill, and 37 parishioners and staff made the best attested and least explained sighting of unidentified flying objects in the long, otherwise kooky history of the genre.

The day before the celebrated encounter of a mystifying kind, Gill had written a letter to David Durie, acting principal of St Aidan’s College, which trained teacher-evangelists at Dogura, then the headquarters of the church in PNG. Gill, who was priest in charge at Boianai, a large village on the mountainous north coast of Milne Bay province, about 25km west of Dogura, told Durie of a UFO sighting by Stephen Moi, then an assistant teacher.

He wrote: “There have been quite a number of reports over the months from reliable witnesses.“The peculiar thing about these most recent reports is that the UFOs seem to be stationary at Boanai or to travel from Boianai,” a beautiful location brilliantly captured by pioneer Australian photographer Frank Hurley in 1921.  “I myself saw a stationary white light twice on the same night on April 9 .  .  .  the assistant district officer, Bob Smith, and Mr Glover have seen it.  I do not doubt the existence of these things, but my simple mind still requires scientific evidence before I can accept the from-outer-space theory.  I am inclined to believe that probably many UFOs are more likely some form of electric phenomena or perhaps something brought about by the atom bomb explosions etc. “That Stephen should actually make out a saucer could be the work of the unconscious mind, as it is very likely that at some time he has seen illustrations of some kind in a magazine.“It is all too difficult to understand for me; I prefer to wait for some bright boy to catch one to be exhibited in Martin Place.
“Yours, Doubting William.”

The following day, he wrote again: “Dear David, life is strange, isn’t it?  Yesterday I wrote you a letter, expressing opinions re the UFOs.  Now, less than 24 hours later I have changed my views somewhat. “Last night we at Boianai experienced about four hours of UFO activity, and there is no doubt whatsoever that they are handled by beings of some kind.  At times it was absolutely breathtaking.  Here is the report. “Cheers, Convinced Bill.

“P.S.  Do you think P.  Moresby should know about this?  If people think it worthwhile, I will stand the cost of a radio conversation if you care to make out a comprehensive report from the material on my behalf!!”

What had Gill and his parishioners seen? The notes he made following his encounter describe a bright white light appearing in the northwestern sky, approaching the mission station, then hovering about 100m in the air.  .Read the full story at The Australian

 Submitted by Javier Ortega on January 2, 2010 

Exclusive: Mystery 'UFOs' are Chinese party lights Jan 2 2010

THE truth is up there, and it seems it's not as exciting as some people thought. Scotland's emergency services have been fielding calls for two weeks about mysterious UFOs in our night sky.

Strange lights have been hovering over our homes, then apparently hurtling off into the galaxy at warp speed. But don't get excited – it doesn't look like we're about to be first-footed by aliens.

Experts have told the Record the "spaceships" are probably nothing more exotic than paper Chinese lanterns.

Most of the sightings were reported in Angus and Fife.  One of the witnesses, Fife councillor and RAF veteran Ron Caird, said: "As a former member of the RAF, it was clear to me that this was no hovering helicopter, nor indeed any other aircraft.

"After observing this strange phenomenon for three to four minutes, I was astounded when the ball suddenly reduced to a pinprick of light in seconds, suggesting that it had moved away at incredibly high speed.

"I can assure you my eyes did not deceive me." Ron was far from the only one to be convinced something strange was going on in the sky. But as cynics often suspect, the truth is likely to be more dull. More and more people are releasingChineselanterns-paper lights with a candle inside – into the skies to celebrate birthdays and weddings. The rice paper lanterns can float for miles on the wind.  And when the candle goes out, it looks just like the object has raced away at incredible speed.

A source at RAF Leuchars in Fife told us there was every chance the lanterns were to blame for the UFO alerts. He said: "We've been monitoring these sightings with some interest but we've yet to pick any up on our radar. "A Chinese lantern wouldn't be spotted by our systems, but would easily be bright enough to be seen from the ground.

"The fact they go out quickly would also give the illusion of an object flying directly away from the viewer at very high speed."

Daily Record UK

Astro – Dave Comes To Visit ABC radio New England

If you've ever wondered what he looks like – here he is

Astro Dave (aka Dave Reneke) popped into the ABC New England North West studios while he was in Tamworth

Here's a picture of (from leftt) Emelia, Dave, Kelly & Darrell, Dave's partner in the schools program.. Dave was in town talking at schools and giving a night sky tour.

Since 2004, David has been touring most of the primary and secondary schools throughout NSW introducing a new interactive astronomy and space education program that he's developed called 'Astronomy Outreach'.

  Designed especially for Australian school students and their teachers, it gives students a refreshing new look at the latest discoveries in astronomy and space science.  Austar and Discovery Science channel financially and physically sponsor David's outreach program promoting him to schools across NSW.  On a recent visit during 2009 the program donated a telescope and a $2,000 grant to each school visited.

 Dave Reneke

Yet Another Doomsday Prediction For 2012!

The doomsday predictions for 2012 are still around, much to the dismay of my colleague Geoff who wrote about the alleged galactic alignment last year, and they're just getting weirder. Here's another part of the 2012 hoax: 'Nibiru', a so-called rogue planet on a long elliptical orbit that will bring it into the inner solar system to collide with the Earth.

This idea was proposed in the mid-1990s by people who believed they were telepathically communicating with aliens through brain implants — not exactly trustworthy experts.  The timing of Nibiru's collision with Earth has been revised over and over again (originally 2003, then 2010, now 2012) and has been absorbed into the collection of random non-facts surrounding the Mayan calendar hoax, which it was not originally a part of!  If an object this big was that close to Earth, it would be easily observable already.

 

Pictures of an eerie grey sphere with a red heart have been circulated with the claim that they are pictures of Nibiru, but these pictures are actually of V838 Mon, a star with a spherical expanding gas cloud.  The speedy expansion of the cloud is easy to pass off as an object that is getting closer and appearing larger as it does so — if you aren't a Hubble Space Telescope fan who recognizes what it really is.

Also, Nibiru is known to archaeologists as an ancient Babylonian word that is sometimes associated with the bright naked-eye planet Jupiter.  I think there's a case of mistaken identity here.

The 2012 doomsday scenario is based on an obscure interpretation of an ancient South American calendar system, the Long Count.  The full timespan covered by this calendar is about 5,125 years long.  This 'Great Cycle' started (if you convert to the modern Gregorian calendar) on August 13th, 3114 BC, which the ancient Mayans believed was the date of the creation of the world, and will end on December 21st, 2012 AD.

The 31st Century BC was an important period in history.  Writing was developing in Mesopotamia, great earth and stoneworks were being built in England, northern Africa was drying out and making times tough for herding and farming communities.  South American people were just getting a foothold on their new continent, and some of the oldest known New World pottery comes from this time.

Can you spot the problem?  Yes, the world did in fact exist before 3114 BC.  The Long Count is one calendar based on one culture's religion, and many religions have calendars that don't correspond with scientific analyses of the age of the world or civilization.  If the beginning of the Long Count wasn't really the beginning, why should we think 2012 AD will be the end?

Honour puts stellar Beames in spotlight

Ken Beames had a great name for a telescope maker.  Mr Beames, who died in 1989, was Australia's foremost optics manufacturer for much of the 20th century.

 Pic: Ken Beames’s final apprentice Ian Bridges admires the amazing Linden Observatory, which is now on the State Heritage Register.  Photo: Adam Hollingworth

The NSW Government will announce today that Mr Beames's life work, the Linden Observatory, has been added to the State Heritage Register.
NSW Planning Minister Tony Kelly said the listing would preserve Mr Beames's legacy.

''Mr Beames was a leading figure of 20th-century amateur astronomy in Australia, who built and funded the entire facility himself,'' Mr Kelly said. ''Mr Beames's skill in building telescopes and other instruments won praise from both amateur and professional astronomers as masterpieces of craftsmanship and engineering." The observatory was used by amateur astronomer Brett White to discover two supernovae – exploding stars – in 1998 and 2000.

The Reverend Bob Evans, a trustee of the observatory, has visually discovered 42 supernovae, a world record.  Mr Evans, who became a trustee on the recommendation of science writer and commentator Karl Kruszelnicki, said that the two supernovae discovered at Linden are useful for measuring interstellar distances.

''Unusually, there were four supernovae in the same galaxy.  He could only see two with his telescope, but he was lucky and he put in the hard work,'' Mr Evans said. Finding supernovae visually is painstaking and meticulous work.  Galaxies must be located in the sky and checked closely against old photos for tiny differences in light.

The days of amateur astronomers discovering supernovae at Linden might be coming to an end, Mr Evans said. ''Almost all the supernovae these days are found by computerised telescopes and machinery,'' he said. The heritage listing also protects the 40 hectares of bush around the Blue Mountains observatory that stops man-made light from interfering with the star gazing.

After leaving school at 14, Mr Beames concealed his age and fought in Palestine during World War I. When he returned, he trained as a mechanical engineer and set up his own company.  The first telescope he made, with a 23-centimetre lens, landed him on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald in 1934.  He was described as ''a manufacturer of radio receiving sets, motor accessories, jewellery, cigarette holders and other articles''.

During World War II, he made gun sights and telescopes for the navy.  Ian Bridges, Mr Beames's final apprentice and one of the trustees of the observatory, said Mr Beames was self reliant in a way that is not often seen any more.

''People ask 'Did he ever sleep?' He'd be up when the sun came up and he'd still be going at midnight.  When I arrived at work at seven in the morning he'd say: 'The sun's been up two hours.  Where have you been?''' In his will, Mr Beames left money to the observatory trust and expressed his wish that it be used as an educational centre. At the time of his death, he was still working on building a planetarium at Linden.

Mr Bridges doubts that the planetarium will ever be finished. ''The problem is we have all the plans and drawings up to where it is now but the rest was in his head,'' he said.

 SMH

 Do Parallel Universes Exist? (VIDEO)

The Hollywood blockbuster, The Golden Compass, adapted from the first volume of Pullman's classic sci-fi trilogy, "His Dark Materials" portrays various universes as only one reality among many, but how realistic is this kind of classic sci-fi plot? 

While it hasn’t been proven yet, many highly respected and credible scientists are now saying there’s reason to believe that parallel dimensions could very well be more than figments of our imaginations.

"The idea of multiple universes is more than a fantastic invention—it appears naturally within several scientific theories, and deserves to be taken seriously," stated Aurelien Barrau, a French particle physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

There are a variety of competing theories based on the idea of parallel universes, but the most basic idea is that if the universe is infinite, then everything that could possibly occur has happened, is happening, or will happen.

According to quantum mechanics, nothing at the subatomic scale can really be said to exist until it is observed.  Until then, particles occupy uncertain "superposition" states, in which they can have simultaneous "up" and "down" spins, or appear to be in different places at the same time.  The mere act of observing somehow appears to "nail down" a particular state of reality.  Scientists don’t yet have a perfect explanation for how it occurs, but that hasn’t changed the fact that the phenomenon does occur.

Unobserved particles are described by "wave functions" representing a set of multiple "probable" states.  When an observer makes a measurement, the particle then settles down into one of these multiple options, which is somewhat how the multiple universe theory can be explained.

The existence of such a parallel universe "does not even assume speculative modern physics, merely that space is infinite and rather uniformly filled with matter as indicated by recent astronomical observations," Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at MIT in Boston, Massachusetts concluded in a study of parallel universes published by Cambridge University.

Mathematician Hugh Everett published landmark paper in 1957 while still a graduate student at Princeton University.  In this paper he showed how quantum theory predicts that a single classical reality will gradually split into separate, but simultaneously existing realms. "This is simply a way of trusting strictly the fundamental equations of quantum mechanics," says Barrau.  "The worlds are not spatially separated, but exist as kinds of 'parallel' universes."

Partly because the idea is so uncomfortably strange, it’s dismissed as sci-fi by many critics.  But there are also many credible, respected proponents of the theory—a group that is continuously gaining new adherents as new research unveils new evidence.  Some Oxford research—for the first time—recently found a mathematical answer that sweeps away one of the key objections to the controversial idea.  Their research shows that Everett was indeed on the right track when he came up with his multiverse theory.  The Oxford team, led by Dr David Deutsch, showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes.

The work has another strange implication.  The idea of parallel universes would apparently side-step one of the key complaints with time travel. Every since it was given serious credibility in 1949 by the great logician Kurt Godel, many eminent physicists have argued against time travel because it undermines ideas of cause and effect.  An example would be the famous “grandfather paradox” where a time traveler goes back to kill his grandfather so that he is never born in the first place.

But if parallel worlds do exist, there is a way around these troublesome paradoxes.  Deutsch argues that time travel shifts happen between different branches of reality.  The mathematical breakthrough bolsters his claim that quantum theory does not forbid time travel.  "It does sidestep it.  You go into another universe," he said.  But he admits that there will be a lot of work to do before we can manipulate space-time in a way that makes “hops” possible.  While it may sound fanciful, Deutsch says that scientific research is continually making the theory more believable.

"Many sci-fi authors suggested time travel paradoxes would be solved by parallel universes but in my work, that conclusion is deduced from quantum theory itself." The borderline between physics and metaphysics is not defined by whether an entity can be observed, but whether it is testable, insists Tegmark.

He points to phenomena such as black holes, curved space, the slowing of time at high speeds, even a round Earth, which were all once rejected as scientific heresy before being proven through experimentation, even though some remain beyond the grasp of observation.  It is likely, Tegmark concludes that multiverse models grounded in modern physics will eventually be empirically testable, predictive and disprovable. Ref: Daily Galaxy 

    

---

 * NASA Has Released a Freebie Calendar

Our friends over at SCP Forum have alerted me to this.But WARNING!  Large file size (10.2MB)

Download at: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/402659main_2010%20ISScalendar.pdf

 

   TIP: JPL Wallpaper - Our Space Meets Yours
Visit jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper to snag your view of space and read instructions on how to apply your JPL Wallpaper.

  

---

  NEWS SNIPPETS

Scientists reveal Milky Way's magnetic attraction

 

Galaxy History Revealed in This Colorful Hubble View (w/ Video)

 

WISE Eye Spies First Glimpse of the Starry Sky

 

First Earth-like planet spotted outside solar system likely a volcanic wasteland

 

Astronomers Detect Cosmic 'Dark Energy' in Galaxies Nearest Earth

 

Massive Stars: Good Targets for Planet Hunts, Bad Targets for SETI

 

Plenty of Solar Systems Like Ours Expected 

 Astronomers get new tools for gravitational-wave detection 

Centuries-Old Star Mystery Coming to a Close

 

Researchers recalculate age of Solar System

 

Isaac Newton Birthday: Inventions and Discoveries

 

                          

 

---

 FEATURE STORY

 
As the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) comes to a close, the true scope of the venture is becoming clear.  The final count of countries involved stands at 148, a staggering number that confirms that the IYA2009 network is the largest ever in science.

Activities and events from these participating nations paint a picture of professional and amateur astronomers bringing the Universe down to Earth through countless projects, opening the eyes of the public to the wonders above.

IYA2009 was launched by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and UNESCO under the theme “The Universe, Yours to Discover”.  Abundant in grass-roots initiatives and global projects, this venture has been highly visible and its impact will last for years.  As from today, astronomers from around the world have gathered in Padua, Italy for the two-day official conclusion of IYA2009.  Reflecting on the events of the past year is on the agenda, and there is no shortage of success stories to tell.

Most of the incredible initiatives have come from individual countries.  IYA2009 supporters in Sweden created the world’s largest model of the Solar System.  The Sun is represented by the huge spherical Ericsson Globe Arena in central Stockholm and the planets are distributed along the country.  Finland also made a huge scale Solar System model, with the Sun located at the Helsinki Central Railway Station, with a giant sticker representing our local star.
During the display around 50,000 people saw it every day!  Sticking with the transport theme, some Paris Metro stations have been decked out with about 500 meters of astronomical images, allowing millions of passengers to marvel at the Universe.

During 2009 more than one million Canadians have experienced a so-called “Galileo moment”, an engaging astronomical experience that has opened their eyes to the Universe.  In Portugal more than 300,000 people participated in this year’s astronomy-themed Oceans festival. It featured a Guinness World Record 4.8-km long canvas painted with the help of enthusiastic volunteers.  In Japan more than 7 million people were outside stargazing during 2009.

The IYA2009 presence in the new media sphere has been tremendous: the number of IYA2009-related blog entries and tweets reached millions. The IYA2009 Cornerstone Project Cosmic Diary, a blog where 60 professional astronomers from around the world blog about their lives, families, friends, hobbies and interests, as well as their work, had more than 250,000 visitors and more than 2100 blog entries.  As another example, more than 10,000 people participated in Meteorwatch on Twitter, making this the first event of its kind, and also one of the biggest mass-participation events of IYA2009.  On both nights of the Perseid meteor shower it was the #1 top “trending topic”, by far the most-discussed thing on the Twitter network anywhere in the world!

Astronomy enthusiasts proved keen to innovate in ways of sharing astronomy with the public, and one original way was through street parades. In January Indian astronomers took the grand opportunity to showcase IYA2009 to the citizens of India by presenting a tableau on astronomy in the Republic Day Parade in New Delhi.  Around 30,000 people were present to witness it.  During the Brazilian carnival Unidos da Tijuca, a samba school from Rio de Janeiro themed its parade “astronomy” in celebration of IYA2009.  The parade typically has 600,000 spectators, and the number of TV viewers can reach hundreds of millions, or even a billion.  In Dublin astronomy topics lined the streets during the St.  Patrick’s Day Parade, with more than 675,000 participants.  In October a Galileo-actor marched as part of the famous Columbus Day Parade in New York City, the world’s largest celebration of Italian-American culture.

The global IYA2009 projects have also been more successful than anyone initially dared to imagine.  Two worldwide star parties were held in 2009: 100 Hours of Astronomy in April, and Galilean Nights in October. In total more than 3 million people got involved, with many members of the public seeing night sky objects such as planets and the Moon through a telescope for the very first time; a life-changing experience for many.  A record-breaking and unprecedented live 24-hour webcast called Around the World in 80 Telescopes was a true highlight during 100 Hours of Astronomy.  Featuring astronomical research observatories both on and off the planet, the webcast gave members of the public a snapshot of life at research observatories around the world during a single 24-hour period, showing viewers the wide range of astronomers’ activities at many, often very different, observatories.  The marathon webcast, which had at least 200,000 viewers worldwide, gave a striking demonstration of the global diversity of astronomical research.

Another hit of IYA2009 is the Galileoscope, a low-cost telescope kit especially designed for the project.  More than 110,000 of these educational tools have been distributed in 96 countries, and another 70,000 are in production.  This style of practical science extended to a wide variety of award-winning dark-skies education programs that are underway worldwide.  More than 20,000 measurements of the night sky were made by citizen scientists during IYA2009; many of these projects will continue in 2010.  These involve people in scientific research that is beneficial to researchers measuring the impact of human development on our environment, highlighting the fact that we all live on a single planet with shared resources.

Seventeen developing countries, namely Macedonia, Nepal, Uganda, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Gabon, Rwanda, Uruguay, Tajikistan, Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, Mozambique, Pakistan and Tanzania, have received seed grants to stimulate astronomy educational and outreach.  Their activities span from astronomy education workshops for teachers, recording and preservation of indigenous astronomy knowledge, production of school astronomy education resources in local languages and many more.

The From Earth to the Universe project enabled more than 500 exhibits of the most beautiful and inspiring large-format astronomical images in 70 countries.  The IYA2009 Special project, The World at Night, coordinated exhibitions in 24 shopping centers in 18 states across the US, during summer and autumn 2009.  Both global projects are a reminder of the beauty of the night sky and for others it was the impression of how all humanity is one family under the universal eternal roof of the celestial vault. More than 75 nations have run Galileo Teacher Training Programs, creating one of the largest astronomy education networks at a global level. The Portal to the Universe created the first “one-stop shop” for astronomy news and has so far had more than 300,000 visitors since its opening in April 2009.

Catherine Cesarsky is the Chair of the IYA2009 Working Group and was the IAU’s President during the majority of IYA2009.  She says, “Over the past 12 months we have seen astronomy enter the public’s imagination and inspire people to ask the grandest questions.  The International Year of Astronomy 2009 has been an unforgettable journey and I am pleased to see that many of the projects will continue.” Political interest in IYA2009 was also high, which in itself is an achievement for any popularization initiative.  In the United States of America, the House of Representatives passed a resolution supporting IYA2009.  The Spanish Congress of Deputies also passed a law supporting astronomy in the framework of IYA2009.  Heads of State were keen to express their support for the Year.  The President of the Portuguese Republic, Prof.  Dr.  Aníbal Cavaco Silva, personally presided over the Portuguese IYA2009 Honor Committee.  The President of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr.  Danilo Turk, became the patron of IYA2009 in Slovenia.

Lech Kaczynski presided over the Polish IYA2009 Honor Committee, while Prince Felipe of Spain (Prince of Asturias) did the same for the Spanish IYA2009 Honor Committee.  The former Belgium Prime Minister and current President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, voiced support of astronomy during an IYA2009 event in Belgium held in April 2009.  The former European Commissioner for Science and Research and present European Commissioner for Environment, Janez Poto?nik, expressed his support of astronomy during the European opening of IYA2009 in Prague, Czech Republic.  In the US, the event celebrating IYA2009 at the White House with President Obama and the First Family on 5 October 2009 made headlines.  In Nepal the total solar eclipse observation event on 22 July 2009 was attended by the Prime Minister of Nepal, Madhav Kumar together with thousands of members of the public. 

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pointed that IYA2009 provided a chance for young scientists to develop a more vivid vision of man’s future during his inaugural speech of the 3rd International Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad in Tehran, Iran.  Pope Benedict XVI gave an eloquent speech in which he said “The International Year of Astronomy is meant not least to recapture for people throughout our world the extraordinary wonder and amazement which characterized the great age of discovery in the sixteenth century.” IYA2009 was a huge event not only on Earth, but also above it.  In March the space shuttle Discovery launched towards the International Space Station.  On board was the Japanese astronaut and IYA2009 supporter Koichi Wakata.  He took a special flag with the IYA2009 logo with him.

Another IYA2009 enthusiast, Canadian Space Agency Astronaut and Expedition 20/21 crew member Bob Thirsk, recorded a special IYA2009 message during his long-term mission on board the International Space Station, to remind the marvels of the night sky and propose once more a rediscovery of interest in astronomy and the Universe.  In May the space shuttle Atlantis was launched to refurbish the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, carrying on board a replica of Galileo’s telescope that was used 400 years ago to change our view of the Universe and our place within it.  May also saw the launch of the highly anticipated European Space Agency missions Herschel and Planck, which are probing the origins of our Universe.  The IYA2009 logo was proudly displayed on the Ariane 5 launcher that lifted the two spacecraft into space.

Several IYA2009-affiliated movies were made during the Year, and received critical acclaim.  More than 300,000 ‘Eyes on the Skies’ DVDs, a film documenting the story of the telescope in 33 languages, were distributed worldwide and received a MEDEA 2009 Jury Award.  Another film, ‘400 Years of the Telescope,’ has been seen by over 2.5 million individuals.  The film has garnered four peer-reviewed Telly awards for animations, writing, cinematography and documentary production.
‘Naming Pluto,’ the film about Venetia Burney Phair, the most influential 11 year-old in the history of science, has won cinematic and scientific acclaim in different festivals, including the prize for Best Documentary, second place at the Palm Springs SHORTFEST, the Best Short Documentary at the Rockport Film Festival, Best UK Documentary at the Falstaff Film Festival, a Remi Jury Award at the Houston Worldfest and the Festival Award at the Paso Robles Festival.

Some projects crossed country borders in a literal sense.  The GalileoMobile was a science education itinerant project that spent two months bringing life-changing experiences and the excitement of astronomy to young children in Chile, Bolivia and Peru.  In total the GalileoMobile visited around 3000 children in 30 schools, covering a distance of 7000 km.  Tunisia’s Astro-Bus was a similar project.  From January to September the Astro-Bus visited around 60 regions all over the country, crossing approximately 15,000 km, sharing its content with 100,000 Tunisians of all ages.  Telescopes have also travelled more than 20,000 km across Argentina, providing thousands of people with the opportunity of observing the firmament through a telescope.

The International Year of Astronomy 2009 was never seen as a “one-off” event lasting just one year, but as a means of creating structures for collaboration, lasting self-sustaining activities and innovative concepts for the communication of astronomy.  Most of the IYA2009 Cornerstone projects will continue beyond 2009 unchanged or in a slightly changed form. The maintenance of the IYA2009 networks is one of the priorities of the IYA2009 legacy and the global networks will continue to operate and engage millions of people.

Robert Williams, the current IAU President, continues: “IYA2009 may be over, but it leaves an important legacy for us to continue.  The groundwork has been laid for astronomers and enthusiasts around the world to use the momentum gained from IYA2009 to ensure that the Universe is still ours to discover far into the future.

Pedro Russo. IYA2009 Coordinator

---

 ASTRO PIC OF THE WEEK 

Are We Alone?

This gorgeous island universe begs the question: "are we alone?" With an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the Universe, we think not.  Well, perhaps in the Milky Way; but, again, we think not.  NGC 7331, 50 million light-years distant in the northern constellation Pegasus, is often touted as a twin spiral analog to our Galaxy.  NGC 7331 was recognized early on as a spiral nebula and is actually one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier's famous 18th century catalog.

Since the galaxy's disk is inclined to our line-of-sight, long telescopic exposures often result in an image that evokes a strong sense of depth.
The effect is further enhanced in this well-framed view by the galaxies that lie beyond.  The background galaxies are about one tenth the apparent size of NGC 7331 and so lie roughly ten times farther away.

Image credit: Vicent Peris (OAUV/CAHA/PTeam)
  

     __________________________________________________________________

       ASTRONOMY – SPACE PODCASTS   

  

A teaspoon-full of Neutron star would weigh about 112 million tonnes.

 

---

  Story Opportunities from Australasian Science, January 2010

The Birth of Our Solar System (and Life as We Know It)
When the Sun was born, the radioactivity pervading the material around it may have helped to create conditions for life in the rocks that formed the planets. Understanding the origin of this radioactivity could tell us how likely it is that life could exist elsewhere in the Universe. 

Black Holes: The Missing Link
Evidence for the existence of small and very large black holes is quite convincing, and now there is strong evidence for one in the “medium” range.

The Myopia Epidemic
The prevalence of myopia is increasing in children and adolescents, but pharmaceutical intervention is on the horizon. 

Humpback Love Songs
New insights into the context of when humpback whales sing and with whom suggest that a function of the song could be as a courtship display to females. 

Food Security in a Changing World
Increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 will change the nutritional value of food for both people and livestock – and even lead to higher levels of toxic cyanide in some staple foods and pastures.

A Sticky Lunar Problem
A dusty problem for the Apollo astronauts has taken on new significance with US plans to return to the Moon by 2020.

Switches for the Gene Machine
We share the same number of genes as simple roundworms. Newly discovered systems of gene control explain why.

Quantum Memory
New models of human cognition inspired by quantum theory could underpin information technologies that are better aligned with howwe recall information.

The Light Fantastic
By controlling how individual wavelengths of light diffract, researchers are harnessing the power of white light lasers that open up the visible spectrum in optical chips.

Message from a Refugee
One of the least recognised issues faced by refugees is access to technologies enabling them to keep in touch with their families.

Left for Dead
The discovery that a man who had been in a coma for 23 years was still conscious has raised questions over the treatment of people who are in a permanent vegetative state.

Curbing Population Growth Limits Global Warming
Few can have any doubt that halting population growth in developed and developing countries is the greatest challenge now facing our world.

  Please cite AUSTRALASIAN SCIENCE MAGAZINE as the source of these stories    

 

---

         Download The Evening Sky Map