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.

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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.

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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. 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

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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.

Hi Dave

As usual you cover some good stories… I’m particularly interested in the Shimizu Corporation and their plans for the Lunar Ring and Space tourism. I’ve sent an email with a bit of an intro – do you know anyone affiliated with them?Cheers, Aria Colton

Managing Director. Spicybrains Group Pty Ltd

Hi Aria

Wish I could help further but no, I have no more info on them and no affiliates. Sorry but good luck in your endeavours to contact them. It’s a great initiative!

Regards

Dave

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Hi Dave,

I would like to interview someone regarding a couple of articles in Australasian Science during the week commencing June 21 – when I’m on nights. Cheers,

Jeff Burzacott Presenter FiveAA

Thanks Jeff

Good to hear from you and appreciate the fact you’re so receptive to the articles featured in Australasian Science and thanks for promoting us via our weekly radio talks. The editor is Guy Nolch and by email cc I’m passing your enquiry across to him. I’m sure this request will be not only warmly received but acted on quickly. All the best for now.

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Hi David

My name is Mitchell C. (surname witheld) and I listened to your talk when you visited Hennessy Catholic College in Young, NSW. I am in year 10 and am thinking about which subjects I should choose for year 11. I have a great interest in the topics of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology. My teacher suggested talking to you and thought you could give me some advice. I do have a rough advice of which subjects I need to choose.

Thank you.

Mitchel Cooke.

[Mitchell received advice from us and directionality which has helped his decision making]

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Hello Dave,

I listened with great interest the other evening with your absorbing information re harnessing solar energy from the moon. I was relating this story to my 17 year old grand-daughter who is very interested in astronomy. She listened intently and then after a few moments expressed her concern that man had not taken care of the planet earth and how could we be sure that the same thing couldn’t happen to the moon. Perhaps you could help me explain this to her.

Yours faithfully, Diana B.

Hi Diana

Nice to hear from you and thanks for the kind words. Thanks too for such an interesting question. Young people ask this a lot and have a RIGHT to because, after all they are about to inherit what we once ‘owned’ – this planet! The generation that went before them (us) messed the earth up a bit – no question about it – BUT they learned of their mistakes and took steps to remedy things. We stopped pumping greenhouse gases into the air, we stopped using CFC’s which contained Chlorine that broke up the Ozone layer, we made less polluting cars and factories have standards they now must maintain to reduce pollution to a minimum. And the list goes on.

Believe it or not the earth can and does repair itself. The Ozone layer a decade back was the size of Europe, now it’s getting much smaller as the earth starts to produce more ozone to cover the hole. The hole can disappear entirely within 40 -70 years or so if we leave it alone and not pump more pollutants into the atmosphere. NOW, will we do the same on the Moon? I think not. There are treaties now being looked at that no one country can have the rights to any celestial real estate – in other words no one country or government can claim ownership of the Moon, Mars, or other planets. Asteroids are another thing though entirely and watch the scramble for these one day. So by not ‘owning’ the Moon or any part of it you can’t legally go out and pollute it… it will belong to all. At least, that’s how it is hoped it will all play out.

One important thing to remember is the Moon has no air – no atmosphere – so it can’t be polluted can it? The only thing we can do is chuck rubbish around but at least that can easily be cleaned up.

Human beings, by nature, mess things up. We have done some bad things in the past but I believe we are learning to take care of this planet. There are laws in place now about polluting and fines imposed… we are aware of the danger in polluting the atmosphere, groups have now formed to keep an eye on these things and most people now accept the fact earth cannot survive the way we have been going. To finalize, I believe future generations will run with the ball that is currently rolling. New young people will take up the challenge and push for cleaner air and environment. We will solve our earthbound pollution problems then we will take that knowledge to the planets and on to the stars.

Remember, not everyone is the same and has the same ideals but see how effective public campaigns are in eliminating socially unacceptable practices… smoking, drinking to excess, aids, racialism, teasing, etc etc. I think environmental issue will follow and help make the changes to society’s attitudes that will be needed to address and fix the kind of problems our 17 year old young lady is now thinking about.

Hope this helps

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Dave

Hi, my name is Monika, and I live in Tanunda, South Australia. about half an hour ago, I was taking out my rubbish, and in the sky I saw a huge “shooting star” looking thing…but waaay bigger. and it looked like it had a fiery tail. it was travelling way too fast to be a plane or anything like that…have been searching the net for answers…but I cant find anything. Do you guys know anything about it? it was around about 7.40pm (SA time). I’ve never seen anything like it! It started up way high, and quickly descended the same way a shooting star does. But as I said, it was so much bigger! please help… I’m dying to know what it was!!!!

Cheers, Monika

Hi Monika

Nice to hear from you and thanks for your interesting report. I’m 100% positive you saw what’s called a ‘Fireball’ shooting across the sky. I’ve seen the same sort of thing on many occasions. They are in fact larger than normal meteors travelling so fast they actually start to burn and melt, that’s what gives them that tremendous looking tail. I’m doing a talk on S.A. radio soon with Jeff Burzacott on FiveAA (5AA Adelaide) and might mention this and see if anyone else saw it too.

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Hi Dave!

Oh wow!! that is so awesome! Thankyou so much for emailing me back…this has made my day to know what it was!! I actually feel quite privileged to have seen it…I’m not what one would call a “star gazer” or anything really…it was by sheer chance that I saw it! But seriously, thankyou soooo much for getting back to me!! That is way cool of you!

have a great day!

Monika

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Dave,

Thanks for the reply! I have enjoyed your radio segments over a number of years and the information you share via the net. I am heading to Japan on the 26th as part of a small group of educators to visit the space centres there and hopefully catch up on all the latest on the return of the samples on Hayabusa. The trip is jointly funded by the Australia Japan Foundation and JAXA and I can’t wait! Hope your trip was a successful one.

Stuart Maish,

Principal, Delaneys Creek State School

Treasurer – Qld Primary T&F

Hi Stuart

What a pleasure to hear from you. Thanks do much for the kind words. What a great trip you are about to undertake and I wish you all well. If you can, write me up say 300 words or so about the visit with maybe a pic or two and I’ll run it as a story on my webpage, on the Astro Space News section.

All the best

Dave

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Hi Dave,

Re the UFO sightings in Australia Saturday 5 June ( by the way, I am a sceptic, but this is rather intriguing) I received a phone call from my rellies in HOLLAND this morning, and over there they also saw the same UFO, but their sighting was on Sunday afternoon, which was Sunday evening in Oz. In Oz the sightings were on Saturday morning. Could this still have been the supposed rocket launch? An erratic spiralling object, appearing to come closer and then retreating before disappearing is very hard to imagine to be an out of whack rocket? And the time difference is a little puzzling. I alerted them to the you tube videos posted by witnesses in Oz and they confirmed it looked the same. It has been reported by several people to the Dutch meteorological authorities. May be worth a look or an explanation.

Cheers, Bianca

Hi Bianca

Yes, I can understand the confusion here. Someone has got have their dates and times mixed up because the event did happen at 5.50am Saturday our time and witnessed by thousands, as the internet and media reports testify. I have no explanation how your relations in Holland saw the same (?) thing a day later…. doesn’t make sense because events like this are pretty rare and there would not be two happening at the same time period. Anyway, rest assured it was an errant rocket launched hours earlier from Cape Canaveral. They fire them to the East and people here saw the upper stage as it headed for orbit but spinning around causing the swirling effect we see. The same thing happened in Norway last year… same image and same reaction. If you find out any more I’d like to know. All the best

Dave

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Dave,

Thank you for yet another info packed, entertaining and educational collection of astronomy news. I’ve marked in June 26 for the partial lunar eclipse especially as I recently bought a set of Plossl eyepieces for my Celestron 130SLT including some filters which will greatly enhance my observing. My scope has been in “storage” for some time now for a number of reasons but I’m looking forward to setting it up again once we get some clear skies. You asked me recently if I would be willing to assist if you come to Woy Woy once again with your travelling Astronomy show. All things being equal I would do my best to be there with my scope and perhaps you might even teach me some new tricks on the night. Keep the Astro Space News coming my way. I enjoy it immensely.

Best wishes and lots of clear dark skies

Robert S.

Woy Woy

Hi Robert

Good to hear from you. Apologies for the late reply, been so busy and didn’t have a chance to write till now. I’m off to New Zealand on Sunday to help open up and promote astronomy tours to the south island in conjunction with Grand Pacific Tours and NZ tourism so I’ll be away for a week or so. Hope the partial eclipse is decent to look at and good to see you’re getting prepared and let’s hope to the camera gear and tracking are sorted out. Send me some details on your observations with any pics of you and your scope or night scope shots and I’ll run ‘em in the newsletter. Send me a link to your news page. Good luck.

Regards

Dave

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Hi Dave

I’ve been searching to try and find out if the Hayabusa will be visible on re-entry … or to find out its trajectory at least in relation to Sydney. Do you know anything about that?? It would be something to see…..

Anne L.

Hi Anne

Lucky, you just caught me. I’m heading off to New Zealand in the morning to help set up astro-tourism for the South Island through a major tour company. The Hyabusa spacecraft, if it makes it through the atmosphere at 4,000km/h, will only be visible I’d say to folks living in the vicinity of Woomera S.A. much like you’d expect to see a meteor flashing through the sky – I’m not sure anyone yet has the specs on re-entry? The NASA people and a team of Japanese scientists will be hovering there in a copter with thermal imaging gear and radio detection equipment. I doubt anyone would get within 100km of the place. The spacecraft has a homing beacon on board. Here’s some interesting stuff I found poking around for you… maybe worth a look

All the best

Dave

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Hi Dave,

Could you please confirm for me the times we’ll be able to view this partial eclipse in Cleve, South Australia? I’m not sure I’ve got my time zones right. Thanks.

Seonie Lyon. Managing Editor. Eyre Peninsula Tribune

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Good afternoon Dave,

I am almost 70 years old and grew up in a very rural part of Wales. During that time I heard many old folk stories about many things. One of these related to Mars and its now lack of water and inhospitable nature. I was told that in time past what is now the asteroid belt there was an inhabited planet, as was Mars and, to a lesser extent Earth. The ‘asteroid’ planet was the most advanced technically but misuse of weapons of mass destruction resulted in the planet exploding. The force of this explosion had serious negative effects on Mars effectively robbing it of much of its atmosphere. Some survivors from Mars reached Earth and were responsible for the still inexplicable technologies of the ancient civilisations. I have never heard these concepts discussed and have no knowledge of the possibility that scientifically this could have occurred.

All yours! Regards, Tony J.

Hi Tony

Good to hear from you Tony and thanks for a real doozie of a question. I think I can help though. The lack of an atmosphere and magnetic field on Mars is a challenging question and one that has never been satisfactorily answered, but I think there may be a rather less dramatic interpretation of the events than you’ve been presented with. Mars once had lots of water it appears but that, along with the atmosphere, has disappeared. When the mag field subsided it would have allowed the solar wind to ‘blow away’ Mars’ atmosphere and the resultant loss of the magnetic field would have combined to reduce the atmospheric pressure allowing whatever water content was there to ‘boil off’ or sink underground. The place basically transformed itself into a wasteland, much like our worst deserts here on earth.

The asteroid belt very well could have been the result of a planet that tried to form but couldn’t due to Jupiter’s immense gravity OR did form and was broken apart by the very same gravity tug.No, this did not rob Mars of it’s atmosphere. I don’t agree that there was an advanced civilization there which self destructed, there’s just no evidence of anything like that – it’s simply a by-product of too many imaginative sci-fi authors.

The so called ‘advanced civilizations’ that inhabited earth never existed. We may have had a passing visit by some race sometime in the past but in my opinion nothing developed here such as a ’super civilization’ – Advanced tech societies wouldn’t build things out of stones, and roughly cut ones at that. They wouldn’t have made super accurate devices out of crudely shaped stones or computers from stones too – it’s just too fanciful and really, the evidence for any of it is simply not there. When you start looking for answers to a mystery it makes no sense to invoke another mystery to try and solve it. In most cases, the simple explanations usually turn out to be the right ones.

All the best

Dave

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Hi Dave,

The scope has arrived, thank you. Dave could you inform me as to the difference between solar wind & solar flares? Lesley.

Hi Lesley

Yes, this is easy. The solar wind is the ‘pressure’ of the sunlight streaming from the Sun and washing over everything in the solar system. It’s basically the radiation from the Sun that has a force because of the energy of the light – this is why we get sunburned and the reason we get aurorae at the poles. The energetic solar particles excite the atmosphere and cause it to sort of glow and fluoresce. Solar flares are the ‘explosions’ of energy you see leaping off the Sun’s surface. The are also called prominences and the ones that actually break away from the Sun are called CME’s – Coronal Mass Ejections. These are BIG solar flares. Thanks for the great question

Dave

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When a meteorite hits Earth, adding mass, does Earth’s gravity increase, too?

Yes, but unless the meteorite is really enormous (big enough to destroy life on Earth), the Earth’s gravity changes by an amount that is too small to measure.

The Earth is picking up several tons per day of dust and other stuff, not including the very uncommon meteorite. It’s like pouring a glass of water into the ocean. Does it raise the level? .. .yep, but by just a small amount.

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THIS WEEK’S TOP STORY

Hayabusa sample return capsule retrieved

Scientists from Japan were given the go-ahead to retrieve the sample return capsule from the Hayabusa spacecraft, which is hoped to contain the first piece of asteroid ever brought to Earth, perhaps providing insight into the origins of asteroids – and our universe.

The capsule was ejected three hours before reaching Earth, and the sample canister descended through Earth’s atmosphere, preceding the spacecraft which broke up in spectacular fashion over the Australian Outback.

Pic: Hayabusa’s sample return cannister and parachute on the ground in the Australian outback. Credit: JAXA

The capsule lay in the Woomera Prohibited Area until morning when Aboriginal elders deemed it had not landed in any indigenous sacred sites, giving the OK for the scientists to retrieve it. The insulated and cushioned re-entry capsule, 40 cm in diameter and 25 cm deep has a mass of about 20 kg. The capsule had a convex nose covered with a 3 cm thick ablative heat shield to protect the samples from the high velocity (~13 km/s) re-entry. Apparently, it landed right on target.

The director of the Woomera test range, Doug Gerrie, said the probe had completed a textbook landing in the South Australian desert. “They landed it exactly where they nominated they would.”

The capsule will remain sealed until it arrives at the JAXA facility near Tokyo, and may remain unopened for weeks as it undergoes testing. The mission launched in 2003, and endured a series of technical glitches over its five-billion-kilometer (three-billion-mile) journey to the asteroid Itokawa and back. A large solar flare in late 2003 “injured” the solar panels, providing less power to Hayabusa’s ion engines, delaying the rendezvous with the asteroid.

Then, as the spacecraft approached Itokawa, Hayabusa lost the use of its Y-axis reaction wheel. While it flew near the asteroid and sent back data, scientists and engineers aren’t sure if the spacecraft was successful in obtaining samples, as while it appears Hayabusa landed briefly, it is not certain the “bullets” fired to stir up dust for the container to capture.

The return to Earth was delayed by three years from more thruster and navigational failures, but the JAXA team nursed and coaxed the spacecraft back home to a spectacular return. There was concern that the parachute batteries may be been depleted due to the extra time it took to get back to Earth, but obviously they worked quite well.

Universe Today

MORE ASTRO SPACE NEWS

Japan seeks Guinness record listing for space probe

Japan’s space agency has applied for a Guinness World Records listing after its Hayabusa space probe returned from a seven-year journey to an ancient asteroid, an official said last Tuesday.

Hayabusa, “falcon” in Japanese, left Earth in 2003 and returned late Sunday, completing a five-billion-kilometre (three-billion-mile) round trip to the potato-shaped Itokawa asteroid.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, on Monday applied to the London-based Guinness World Records to list Hayabusa’s trailblazing journey, an official with the agency said.

“We are seeking its recognition as the first-ever spacecraft that landed on and returned from a celestial body other than the moon, and also for completing the longest ever (space) journey,” the official said.  JAXA is not seeking recognition of the total distance Hayabusa travelled as it is a rough estimate and not scientifically important, she said.

As planned, the spacecraft burned up on re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, creating a fireball in the night sky over the Australian desert. Before its fiery end, it released a heatproof sample canister which scientists hope contains material from the asteroid’s surface to give them clues on the origins of the solar system.

The pod, which made a textbook parachute landing in the Australian Outback, has left  for Japan for analysis.

AFP

Huge solar storms to impact Earth: NASA warns

Solar flares will cause devastation that could result in widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”, warns Dr. Richard Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics division.

The solar storms which will cause the Sun to reach temperatures of more than 10,000 F (5500C), occurr only a few times over a person’s life. Every 22 years the Sun’s magnetic energy cycle peaks while the number of sun spots and solar flares hits a maximum level every 11 years.

National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years. Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, Britain’s The Daily Telegraph reported.

In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken. Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.

Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. “It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world. Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.”

Dr Fisher added: “Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth that is rapid and like a lightning bolt. That is the solar affect.” A “space weather” conference in Washington DC last week, attended by Nasa scientists, policy-makers, researchers and government officials, was told of similar warnings. While scientists have previously told of the dangers of the storm.

Daily Galaxy

Boldly going nowhere: Nasa ends plan to put man back on Moon

Nasa has begun to wind down construction of the rockets and spacecraft that were to have taken astronauts back to the Moon — effectively dismantling the US human spaceflight programme despite a congressional ban on its doing so.

Legislators have accused President Obama’s Administration of contriving to slip the termination of the Constellation programme through the back door to avoid a battle on Capitol Hill.

Constellation aimed to build upon what was arguably America’s greatest technological achievement, the first lunar landing of 1969, by launching new expeditions to the Moon and to Mars and worlds beyond. Mr Obama proposed in February that it should be scrapped because it was “over budget, behind schedule and lacking in innovation”, but he has met opposition in Congress, which has yet to approve his plan.The head of Nasa, Major-General Charlie Bolden — an Obama appointee — has now written to aerospace contractors telling them to cut back immediately on Constellation-related projects costing almost $1 billion (£690 million), to comply with regulations requiring them to budget for possible contract termination costs.

The move has been branded a “disingenuous legal manoeuvre” and referred to Nasa’s inspector-general for investigation. “It’s bordering on arrogance by the Administration to boldly and brazenly go forward with this approach. It shows a blatant disregard for Congress,” said the Republican Congressman Rob Bishop, of Utah, whose constituency stands to lose thousands of jobs. Two weeks ago the Senate passed legislation that compels Nasa to continue work on Constellation unless Congress directs otherwise. That legislation is due to be signed into law by Mr Obama this month while Congress continues its deliberations over his proposal to cancel the current space space progamme.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican and member of the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said: “The timing of Nasa’s decision to push forward with these actions now, before this becomes law, is highly questionable.” Nasa is “willfully subverting the repeatedly expressed will of Congress”, she added.

Scott Pace, a former Nasa executive and now the Director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said: “The effect will be to stop work on Constellation and lay off or transfer people to other jobs. If Congress then says it wants to continue going ahead with Constellation, those people will be difficult to re-hire. It’s already a difficult situation, but this will introduce more instability.”

Constellation was born in 2004 from President George W. Bush’s vision for returning Americans to the Moon by 2020 and using it as a base to build the knowledge and technologies for a manned mission to Mars by 2030. Since then, more than $9 billion has been spent on designing and building the necessary space vehicles.

An independent review panel appointed by Mr Obama last year concluded, however, that without an extra $3 billion a year Constellation was on an “unsustainable trajectory”. In his proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year, unveiled in February, Mr Obama made it clear that there would be no extra money for its continuation. The proposal has yet to clear Congress.

Distinguished space veterans, including the first and last men to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, have complained that the abandonment of Constellation will set America’s space capabilities on a “downhill slide to mediocrity”. They say that, while Mr Obama has outlined a vision for Nasa that includes sending people to Mars at some point, it lacks a concise plan for developing the rockets and spacecraft to get them there.

“The Administration has no planning, no programme and no idea — they’d just have these things happen mysteriously,” Mr Bishop said. “Rockets aren’t something that Wal-Mart puts on its shelves. You have to have a plan for how you get from A to B, and Obama has just said we’ll work it as we go along and maybe some day we’ll end up on an asteroid or the Moon or somewhere. The bottom line is, those ‘maybes’ will never happen.”

Private rocket developers, to whom Mr Obama proposes outsourcing the task of carrying crews and cargo to the International Space Station after the shuttle fleet retires, are making advances. Ten days ago Elon Musk, a spaceflight entrepreneur — and founder of the online payment system PayPal — launched a near-flawless test flight of his Falcon 9 rocket, which is designed to take payloads and ultimately human beings into space.

Sunday Times

Triumphs and tragedies

Oct 4, 1958 A year after the Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the US Congress passes “an Act to provide for research into the problems of flight within and outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and for other purposes”. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) is born

Feb 20, 1962 John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth. The Russian Yuri Gagarin had made the first space flight a year earlier. Glenn returns to public adulation and later becomes a US senator

May 25, 1961 President Kennedy announces that he is setting the United States the goal of reaching the Moon by the end of the decade

January 27, 1967 Three US astronauts die in a fire during a simulated take-off, the first to die in the space programme

July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong takes man’s first step on the Moon and plants an American flag, a significant propaganda coup. The US is still the only nation to have put a man on the Moon

April 13, 1970 An oxygen tank explodes aboard Apollo 13. It becomes clear that there is not enough air in the capsule to keep the three astronauts alive. They manage to board the self-contained Lunar Module and land safely in the Pacific

April 12, 1981 The US launches Columbia, its first space shuttle and the first spacecraft to land on a runway instead of in the sea

Jan 28, 1986 The Challenger space shuttle explodes 73 seconds after take-off, killing its crew

April 24, 1990 The Hubble Space Telescope comes online after being carried into space by a US shuttle

Feb 1, 2003 Columbia breaks up over Texas returning from its 28th mission, killing the crew

Feb 1, 2010 President Obama announces plans to cancel additional funding of the programme to return US astronauts to the Moon by 2020

Sunday Times

‘You couldn’t make this up’ dept: More from NASA’s X Files

“I’ve been asked about UFO’s and I’ve said publicly I thought they were somebody else, some other civilization.”

–Commander Eugene Cernan, Commanded the Apollo 17 Mission. (LA TIMES, 1973)

“At no time, when the astronauts were in space were they alone: there was a constant surveillance by UFOs.”

–NASA astronaut, Scott Carpenter

“We have contact with alien cultures.”

–Dr. Brian O’leary an American scientist and a former NASA astronaut and the deputy team leader for NASA’s Mariner 10 Venus-Mercury television science team.

“In my official status, I cannot comment on ET contact. However, personally, I can assure you, we are not alone!

–Charles J. Camarda, an engineer and U.S. astronaut who flew his first mission into space onboard the NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-114.

Daily Galaxy

Astronomers Zoom in on Solar Systems in the making

For the first time, astronomers have observed in unprecedented detail the processes giving rise to stars and planets in nascent solar systems.

Using both Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii outfitted with a specifically engineered instrument named ASTRA (ASTrometric and phase-Referenced Astronomy), Joshua Eisner from the University of Arizona and his colleagues were able to peer deeply into protoplanetary disks – swirling clouds of gas and dust that feed the growing star in its center and eventually coalesce into planets and asteroids to form a solar system.

What they saw is providing insight into the way hydrogen gas from the protoplanetary disk is incorporated into the star. In order to obtaining the extremely fine resolution necessary to observe the processes that happen at the boundary between the star and its surrounding disk 500 light years from Earth, the team combined the light from the two Keck telescopes, which provides an angular resolution finer than Hubble’s. Eisner and his team also used a technique called spectro-astrometry to boost resolution even more. By measuring the light emanating from the protoplanetary disks at different wavelengths with both Keck telescope mirrors and manipulating it further with ASTRA, the researchers achieved the resolution needed to observe processes in the centers of the nascent solar systems.

“The angular resolution you can achieve with the Hubble Space Telescope is about 100 times too coarse to be able to see what is going on just outside of a nascent star not much bigger than our sun,” said Eisner. In other words, even a protoplanetary disk close enough to be considered in the neighborhood of our solar system would appear as a featureless blob. With this new technique, the team was able to distinguish between the distributions of gas, mostly made up of hydrogen, and dust, thereby resolving the disk’s features. ”We were able to get really, really close to the star and look right at the interface between the gas-rich protoplanetary disk and the star,” said Eisner.

Protoplanetary disks form in stellar nurseries when clouds of gas molecules and dust particles begin to collapse under the influence of gravity. Initially rotating slowly, the cloud’s growing mass and gravity cause it to become more dense and more compact. The preservation of rotational momentum speeds up the cloud as it shrinks, much like a figure skater spins faster as she tugs in her arms. The centrifugal force flattens the cloud into a spinning disk of swirling gas and dust, eventually giving rise to planets orbiting their star in roughly the same plane.

Astronomers know that stars acquire mass by incorporating some of the hydrogen gas in the disk that surrounds them, in a process called accretion, which can happen in one of two ways. In one scenario, gas is swallowed as it washes up right to the fiery surface of the star. In the second, much more violent scenario, the magnetic fields sweeping from the star push back the approaching gas and cause it to bunch up, creating a gap between the star and its surrounding disk. Rather than lapping at the star’s surface, the hydrogen atoms travel along the magnetic field lines as if on a highway, becoming super-heated and ionized in this process.

“Once trapped in the star’s magnetic field, the gas is being funneled along the field lines arching out high above and below the disk’s plane,” Eisner explained. “The material then crashes into the star’s polar regions at high velocities.” In this inferno, which releases the energy of millions of Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs every second, some of the arching gas flow is ejected from the disk and spews out far into space as interstellar wind.

“We want to understand how material accretes onto the star,” Eisner said. “This process has never been measured directly.” Eisner’s team pointed the telescopes at 15 protoplanetary disks with young stars varying in mass between one half and 10 times that of our sun. ”We could successfully discern that in most cases, the gas converts some of its kinetic energy into light very close to the stars” he said, a tell-tale sign of the more violent accretion scenario.

“In other cases, we saw evidence of winds launched into space together with material accreting on the star,” Eisner added. “We even found an example – around a very high-mass star – in which the disk may reach all the way to the stellar surface.” The solar systems the astronomers chose for this study are still young, probably a few million years old.

“These disks will be around for a few million years more,” Eisner said. “By that time, the first planets, gas giants similar to Jupiter and Saturn, may form, using up a lot of the disk material.” More solid, rocky planets like the Earth, Venus or Mars, won’t be around until much later. ”But the building blocks for those could be forming now,” he said, which is why this research is important for our understanding of how solar systems form, including those with potentially habitable planets like Earth.

“We are going to see if we can make similar measurements of organic molecules and water in protoplanetary disks,” he said. “Those would be the ones potentially giving rise to planets with the conditions to harbour life.”

Universe Today

Put your face in space

NASA’s “Face in Space” lets you submit your digital portrait for uploading to the space shuttles during their final flights. Even your friendly neighborhood blog-spinner can participate.

Want to fly aboard the space shuttle? You can get some face time in orbit, digitally speaking, through the space agency’s “Face in Space” Web project.

The concept is simple enough: Choose which shuttle mission you want your data to fly on, type your name into the online form, upload a digital image if you wish, size the picture to fit inside a virtual shuttle’s window, and click the button. Your name and picture will be added to a computerized file that will be transferred to the shuttle of your choice during the mission.

You can choose between STS-133 on Discovery, now due to fly no earlier than September; or STS-134 on Endeavour, set to launch in November or later.

The Face in Space website was unveiled to the public just today – but the idea has already generated a lot of buzz, and not all of the G-rated kind. James Hartsfield, a spokesman at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, says several thousand people uploaded files during a beta-testing period that was primarily aimed at space agency employees and contractors. Once word got out, other folks contributed as well. “We ended up with people signing up all over the world,” Hartsfield told me.

But can you upload anything you want? How about porn? The terms and conditions rule out material “describing or depicting sexually explicit conduct … or other sexually oriented materials.” And NASA reserves the right to remove anything that’s uploaded. That being said, Hartsfield told the Houston Press that “there’s not a safeguard there against what words people can type in, be it profanity or what have you.” He acknowledged that “some of that is inherent in dealing with the public.”

Another question has to do with what ultimately happens to the data file. Even if they did upload your porn-laden file to the shuttle computer (presumably after being checked for viruses), who would look at it? The data file is certainly not going to be reviewed in detail during the mission, and once the shuttle lands, all those bits (including the naughty bits) will go poof. The only proof you’ll have that your face (or what have you) has flown in space will be an auto-generated, suitable-for-printing certificate bearing the shuttle commander’s signature.

Other “fly-your-name” projects involve putting your digitized data on an artifact of some sort, whether it’s a microchip on the moon, a mini-DVD on Mars or a CD on its way to Pluto. Today you can sign up to send digital data on the Planetary Society’s Lightsail 1 solar sail or NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (a.k.a. the Curiosity rover). In both those cases, the information is put on a storage device (a mini-DVD or microchip, respectively) that will stay on the probe. Now, it’s true that the data will probably never be read off those devices. Your message could be destined for oblivion. But it’s reassuring for me to think that a trace of my identity could potentially be lying on the Martian surface or heading for the stars.

Should the “Face in Space” data be preserved for posterity, perhaps on DVDs that will be on display with their respective shuttles when they go to the museums? Or is it better to wipe the slate clean, out of respect for privacy and perhaps propriety as well? Let me know what you think in a comment below, and just maybe NASA will take your opinion into consideration.  See the webpage to sign up: NASA Face in Space

NASA / msnbc.com

SpaceX rocket achieves earth orbit – new, commercial space era

The first flight of a privately developed rocket that may eventually carry NASA astronauts to space took off Friday afternoon and reached orbit in what appeared to be a nearly flawless trip signaling what may experts believe is the start of the private. commercial space era.

The Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, SpaceX for short, launched the 154-foot, 735,000-pound Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, heading east over the Atlantic.

The nine first-stage engines ignited at 2:45 p.m. and burned for three minutes before dropping into the ocean while the second-stage engines burned about six minutes to place a dummy payload capsule almost perfectly into the target orbit 155 miles above the Earth.

“We achieved 100 percent of our objectives on the mission,” said Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive as well as electric vehicle maufactuer, Tesla Motors CEO. The two stage, 180-foot rocket left the pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at about 2:45 p.m. Eastern. It achieved earth orbit nine minutes later. The launch followed several delays earlier in the day including a sailboat that had wandered into an off limits area near the launch site and an attempt that was aborted just seconds before ignition due to an engine related issue.

Musk hopes to use the Falcon 9 to compete against United Launch Alliance — a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. SpaceX hopes to use the rocket to power Dragon, a craft that could carry cargo — and perhaps people — to the International Space Station. The Obama Administration wants to rely more heavily on private firms to supply the station. SpaceX was awarded $3.5 billion in contracts by NASA to deliver cargo to the ISS through 2016. SpaceX’s first rocket launch, the Falcon 1, occurred in 2008 after several failed first attempts. The Falcon 1 delivered a Malaysian satellite into orbit last year.

New York Times and Wired

Saturn’s newly discovered immense outer ring

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope discovered an enormous ring around Saturn — by far the largest of the giant planet’s many rings. The belt lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system, with an orbit tilted 27 degrees from the main ring plane.

The bulk of its material starts about six million kilometers (3.7 million miles) away from the planet and extends outward roughly another 12 million kilometers (7.4 million miles). One of Saturn’s farthest moons, Phoebe, circles within the newfound ring, and is likely the source of its material.

Saturn’s newest halo is thick, too — its vertical height is about 20 times the diameter of the planet. It would take about one billion Earths stacked together to fill the ring.

“This is one supersized ring,” said Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. “If you could see the ring, it would span the width of two full moons’ worth of sky, one on either side of Saturn.” The ring itself is tenuous, made up of a thin array of ice and dust particles. Spitzer’s infrared eyes were able to spot the glow of the band’s cool dust. The telescope, launched in 2003, is currently 107 million kilometers (66 million miles) from Earth in orbit around the sun.

The discovery may help solve an age-old riddle of one of Saturn’s moons. Iapetus has a strange appearance — one side is bright and the other is really dark, in a pattern that resembles the yin-yang symbol. The astronomer Giovanni Cassini first spotted the moon in 1671, and years later figured out it has a dark side, now named Cassini Regio in his honor.

Saturn’s newest addition could explain how Cassini Regio came to be. The ring is circling in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of Saturn’s moons are all going the opposite way. According to the scientists, some of the dark and dusty material from the outer ring moves inward toward Iapetus, slamming the icy moon like bugs on a windshield.

“Astronomers have long suspected that there is a connection between Saturn’s outer moon Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus,” said Hamilton. “This new ring provides convincing evidence of that relationship.” The ring would be difficult to see with visible-light telescopes. Its particles are diffuse and may even extend beyond the bulk of the ring material all the way in to Saturn and all the way out to interplanetary space. The relatively small numbers of particles in the ring wouldn’t reflect much visible light, especially out at Saturn where sunlight is weak. ”The particles are so far apart that if you were to stand in the ring, you wouldn’t even know it,” said Verbiscer.

Spitzer was able to sense the glow of the cool dust, which is only about 80 Kelvin (minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit). Cool objects shine with infrared, or thermal radiation; for example, even a cup of ice cream is blazing with infrared light. “By focusing on the glow of the ring’s cool dust, Spitzer made it easy to find,” said Verbiscer. These observations were made before Spitzer ran out of coolant in May and began its “warm” mission.

For additional images relating to the ring discovery and more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

Daily Galaxy

Galileo’s fingers in Florence museum

Two of Galileo’s fingers, removed from his corpse by admirers in the 18th century, have gone on display in a Florence museum now named after the astronomer.

The Museum of the History of Science had shut down for two years for renovations. It reopened last Tuesday, calling itself The Galileo Museum.

Last year, the museum director announced that the thumb and middle finger from Galileo’s right hand had turned up at an auction and were recognized as being the fingers of the scientist who died in 1642. The digits are now displayed in slender, glass cases.

Also on display is his tooth. A third finger was already in the museum. In 1737, admirers of Galileo Galilei removed the three fingers, plus the tooth and a vertebra, from his body as it was being moved from a storage place to a monumental tomb — opposite that of Michelangelo, in Santa Croce Basilica in Florence. The vertebra is kept at the University of Padua, where Galileo taught for many years.

The tooth and the thumb and middle finger were held in a container that was passed from generation to generation in the same family, but in the early 20th century all traces of the relics disappeared. The container turned up at auction late last year, and detailed historical documents and the family’s own records helped experts to identify them as the scientist’s, according to museum officials.

Topping the container that the relics had long been kept in was a wooden bust of Galileo. Visitors can also view what the museum says are the only surviving instruments designed and built by Galileo, including the lens of the telescope he used to discover Jupiter’s moons and two telescopes. The Vatican condemned Galileo for contradicting church teaching, which held at the time that the Earth, not the Sun, was the center of the universe. Two decades ago, Pope John Paul II rehabilitated the astronomer, saying the church had erred.

Fosters.Com

Many famous comets may be visitors from other solar systems

Most comets are thought to have originated great distances away, traveling to the inner solar system from the Oort Cloud. But new computer simulations show that many comets – including some famous ones – came from even farther: they may have been born in other solar systems.

Many of the most well known comets, including Hale-Bopp (above), Halley, and, most recently, McNaught, may have formed around other stars and then were gravitationally captured by our Sun when it was still in its birth cluster. This new finding solves the mystery of how the Oort cloud formed and why it is so heavily populated with comets.

Pic: Comet Hale-Bopp. Credit: E. Kolmhofer, H. Raab; Johannes-Kepler-Observatory, Linz, Austria

Comets are believed to be leftovers from the formation of the solar system. They are observed to come to the solar system from all directions, so astronomers have thought the comet’s origin was from the Oort Cloud, a giant sphere surrounding the solar system. Some comets travel over 100,000 AU, in a huge orbit around the sun. But comets may have formed around other stars in the cluster where the sun was born and been captured gravitationally by our sun.

Dr. Hal Levison from the Southwest Research Insitutue, along with Dr. Martin Duncan from Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada, Dr. Ramon Brasser, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, France and Dr. David Kaufmann (SwRI) used computer simulations to show that the Sun may have captured small icy bodies from its sibling stars while still in its star-forming nursery cluster.

The researchers investigated what fraction of comets might be able to travel from the outer reaches of one star to the outer reaches of another. The simulations imply that a substantial number of comets can be captured through this mechanism, and that a large number of Oort cloud comets come from other stars. The results may explain why the number of comets in the Oort cloud is larger than models predict.

While the Sun currently has no companion stars, it is believed to have formed in a cluster containing hundreds of closely packed stars that were embedded in a dense cloud of gas. During this time, each star formed a large number of small icy bodies (comets) in a disk from which planets formed. Most of these comets were gravitationally slung out of these prenatal planetary systems by the newly forming giant planets, becoming tiny, free-floating members of the cluster.

The Sun’s cluster came to a violent end, however, when its gas was blown out by the hottest young stars. These new models show that the Sun then gravitationally captured a large cloud of comets as the cluster dispersed.

“When it was young, the Sun shared a lot of spit with its siblings, and we can see that stuff today,” said Levison. ”The process of capture is surprisingly efficient and leads to the exciting possibility that the cloud contains a potpourri that samples material from a large number of stellar siblings of the Sun,” said co-author Duncan.

Evidence for the team’s scenario comes from the roughly spherical cloud of comets, known as the Oort cloud, that surrounds the Sun, extending halfway to the nearest star. It has been commonly assumed this cloud formed from the Sun’s proto-planetary disk. However, because detailed models show that comets from the solar system produce a much more anemic cloud than observed, another source is required.

“If we assume that the Sun’s observed proto-planetary disk can be used to estimate the indigenous population of the Oort cloud, we can conclude that more than 90 percent of the observed Oort cloud comets have an extra-solar origin,” Levison said. ”The formation of the Oort cloud has been a mystery for over 60 years and our work likely solves this long-standing problem,” said Brasser. ”Capture of the Sun’s Oort Cloud from Stars in its Birth Cluster,” was published in the June 10 issue of Science Express.

Universe Today

The Earth and Moon may have formed later than previously thought

The Earth and Moon were created as the result of a giant collision between two planets the size of Mars and Venus. Until now it was thought to have happened when the solar system was 30 million years old or approximately 4.5 billion years ago. But new research shows that the Earth and Moon may have formed much later – perhaps up to 150 million years after the formation of the solar system.

“We have determined the ages of the Earth and the Moon using tungsten isotopes, which can reveal whether the iron cores and their stone surfaces have been mixed together during the collision,” said Tais W. Dahl, from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with professor David J. Stevenson from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

The planets in the solar system were created by collisions between planetary embryos orbiting the newborn sun. In the collisions the small planets congealed together and formed larger and larger planets. When the gigantic collision occurred that ultimately formed the Earth and Moon, it happened at a time when both planetary bodies had a core of metal (iron) and a surrounding mantle of silicates (rock). But when did it happen and how did it happen? The collision took place in less than 24 hours and the temperature of the Earth was so high (7000º C), that both rock and metal must have melted in the turbulent collision. But were the stone mass and iron mass also mixed together?

The age of the Earth and Moon can be dated by examining the presence of certain elements in the Earth’s mantle. Hafnium-182 is a radioactive substance, which decays and is converted into the isotope tungsten-182. The two elements have markedly different chemical properties and while the tungsten isotopes prefer to bond with metal, hafnium prefers to bond to silicates, i.e. rock.

It takes 50-60 million years for all hafnium to decay and be converted into tungsten, and during the Moon forming collision nearly all the metal sank into the Earth’s core. But did all the tungsten go into the core? ”We have studied to what degree metal and rock mix together during the planet forming collisions. Using dynamic model calculations of the turbulent mixing of the liquid rock and iron masses we have found that tungsten isotopes from the Earth’s early formation remain in the rocky mantle,” said Tahl. The new studies imply that the moon forming collision occurred after all of the hafnium had decayed completely into tungsten.

“Our results show that metal core and rock are unable to emulsify in these collisions between planets that are greater than 10 kilometers in diameter and therefore that most of the Earth’s iron core (80-99 %) did not remove tungsten from the rocky material in the mantle during formation” said Dahl. The result of the research means that collision that created the Earth and the Moon may have occurred as much as 150 million years after the formation of the solar system, much later than the 30 million years that was previously thought.

Universe Today

Millionaire space tourist wants to go back

The third private citizen to fly in space, American millionaire Gregory Olsen, says he’s excited about the future of space travel — especially if it means he might have another chance to fly.

Olsen visited the International Space Station in October 2005 as a paying passenger aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. His ticket, which cost about $20 million at the time, was brokered with the Russian Federal Space Agency through the Virginia-based firm Space Adventures.

A scientist and entrepreneur, Olsen founded the Princeton, New Jersey-based optics firm Sensors Unlimited. The sale of that company in 2000 largely financed his later space trip. Olsen recounts his long road to space in a new memoir, “By Any Means Necessary,” published by his new company, GHO Ventures. ”I’d go in a heartbeat,” Olsen said of a second space visit. Of particular interest would be an orbital trip around the moon on a Soyuz spacecraft.

No space tourist has yet traveled beyond low-Earth orbit, but Space Adventures is working on offering such an excursion. ”I just have to sell another company” to afford the trip, Olsen said. And private space travel to orbit may be getting more expensive.

With private seats for orbital trips to the space station in short supply and increased production demands, the price for flights similar to Olsen’s voyage are now going for a steeper price. The seventh space tourist to fly, Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, paid a reported $35 million for his 12-day trip to space in October 2009. “It looks like I got a bargain,” Olsen said.

For now, orbital spaceflights have been the bulk of space tourism offerings, though a number of private companies are hoping to offer suborbital joy rides in the next few years at a cost of up to $200,000 or so. [10 fantasy spaceships becoming real.] If Olsen does manage to make it back to orbit, Olsen won’t be the first repeat customer for Space Adventures. The fifth-ever space tourist, American billionaire Charles Simonyi, revisited the space station on a second mission in March 2009, two years after his first flight. Both trips were booked through Space Adventures.

Simonyi paid $35 million for his second space tourist trek. His first trip in 2007 cost about $25 million. Olsen said he is eager to see how the future of U.S. human spaceflight plays out. President Barack Obama has proposed a new direction for NASA in which commercial companies take the lead in ferrying astronauts to low-Earth orbit, while the space agency focuses on going to an asteroid and to Mars.

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), a California-based company among the first tapped to provide commercial space cargo delivery services for NASA, successfully launched the first of its new private rockets – called Falcon 9 – into orbit on Friday. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets are built to launch the company’s capsule-shaped Dragon vehicles into space on unmanned cargo missions, though the company hopes to modify them to carry people as well.

“I’m really glad they’re pushing for the commercialization,” Olsen said. He could easily envision a commercial taxi service going to the International Space Station, and said he would like to see the industry take things even further. ”I’m a moon fan,” he said. “This mission that Space Adventures is planning – that’s all possible. The moon could eventually go to the private sector too.”

The spaceflyer said he reminisces about his space journey almost every day. “It’ll be five years in October and not a day goes by when I don’t think about it.” The experience was truly life-changing, he added. ”When you fly over the Earth, there’s no sign of life,” Olsen said. “There’s nothing to indicate that there’s anything going on there – occasional jet trails, but other than that it just looks serene, perfect. When I was up there I just said, ‘Wow, I’m the luckiest guy in the world to be able to see this.’”

Space.com

NASA releases first ever video of inside of space shuttle after landing

NASA has released the first-ever up close video available for the public, taken from inside a space shuttle after landing, showing the checkout procedures and the “towback” to the Orbiter Processing Facility. It was taken on May 26, 2010 following shuttle Atlantis’ landing following the STS-132 mission.

Following every shuttle landing, about 150 trained workers assist the crew out and prepare the shuttle for towing atop a large diesel-driven tractor to the OPF.

The video, which includes views of Atlantis’ hatch opening and closing from the inside, shows United Space Alliance employees inside Atlantis’ crew compartment working through an extensive checklist to ”safe” the spacecraft for towback from Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility runway to Orbiter Processing Facility-1. Inside the facility, Atlantis will be prepared for the Launch On Need mission, in the unlikely event it is needed as a rescue spacecraft for the final planned shuttle flight, Endeavour’s STS-134 mission.

Or, who knows, Atlantis might fly one more mission. We’ll see.

Universe Today

“There’s a monolith on Mars’ moon, Phobos”

U.S. astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, alluded to a monolith detected on Mars’ moon Phobos. Speaking on a U.S. cable television channel he said: “We should visit the moons of Mars. There’s a monolith there – a very unusual structure on this little potato shaped object that goes around Mars once every seven hours.

‘When people find out about that they are going to say, “Who put that there? Who put that there?” Well the universe put it there, or if you choose God put it there.” In 2007 the Canadian Space Agency funded a study for an unmanned mission to Phobos known as PRIME (Phobos Reconnaissance and International Mars Exploration).

Phobos is a vastly promising location for future exploration. The moon itself has long been an anomaly; its orbital characteristics suggest it may be hollow. More aggressive speculation suggests that Phobos may in fact be a derelict spacecraft of the “generation ark” variety described by science writers such as Isaac Asimov. Unexplained surface features such as the numerous converging grooves, together with the conspicuous monolith-like formations, pose the possibility that Phobos harbors uneroded structures deserving of close attention.

Lan Fleming a NASA imaging specialist who has interest in Mars and other solar system anomalies. Lan looked at it and upon further examination and study concluded, that the monolith was a physical anomaly on the surface of Phobos. The building-sized monolith is the main proposed landing site because scientists believe the object is a boulder exposed relatively recently in an otherwise featureless area of the asteroid-like moon. PRIME investigator Dr Alan Hildebrand said it could answer questions about the moon’s composition and history. “If we can get to that object, we likely don’t need to go anywhere else,” he told his science team.

Daily Galaxy

Morgan Freeman heading to space for Science Channel

Is there anything Morgan Freeman can’t do? He’s a great actor, producer, and can narrate the hell out of a documentary, so what’s next for the Oscar winner? According to the AP he’s headed to space!

Freeman’s been out promoting a new television series that will air on the Science Channel about space exploration. He will host and narrate the show (no surprise there) and produce it through his production company.

The series is called “Through the Wormhole” and it’s a passion project for Freeman who’s always had a fascination with astronomy and what lies beyond the stars. His partnership with the Science Channel allows him to delve into one of his favorite subjects while giving the network a much needed PR boost. They’ve been campaigning to get celebrities to come on board to take part in original programing and documentaries to heighten its exposure.

“Through the Wormhole” will ask the tough questions like, “Was there a Creator?” That’s the first topic they’ll tackle when the show airs on Wednesday that’s sure to spark plenty of discussions. Debbie Myers, the network’s general manager stated that the show will deal with some “heady stuff,” and as for Freeman spearheading the project,

“Morgan is kind of the everyman,” she said. “He has a love for science, but he’s not a scientist, and he’s a great storyteller.” I’d have to agree. Freeman has James Earl Jones syndrome. When he speaks you have no choice but to sit down and listen. It’s great that he’s taking a personal hobby of his and turning it into something that he can share with general audiences. I’m not the biggest science geek but even I’m interested in seeing what the show has to offer.

Screen Crave

Mysterious flash on Jupiter left no debris cloud

Detailed observations made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found an answer to the flash of light seen June 3 on Jupiter. It came from a giant meteor burning up high above Jupiter’s cloud tops. The space visitor did not plunge deep enough into the atmosphere to explode and leave behind any telltale cloud of debris, as seen in previous Jupiter collisions.

Astronomers around the world knew that something must have hit the giant planet to unleash a flash of energy bright enough to be seen 400 million miles away. But they didn’t know how deeply it penetrated into the atmosphere. There have been ongoing searches for the “black-eye”

pattern of a deep direct hit.

The sharp vision and ultraviolet sensitivity of Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 were brought to bear on seeking out any trace evidence of the aftermath of the cosmic collision. Images taken on June 7 — just over three days after the flash was sighted — show no sign of debris above Jupiter’s cloud tops. This means that the object didn’t descend beneath the clouds and explode as a fireball. “If it did, dark sooty blast debris would have been ejected and would have rained down onto the cloud tops, and the impact site would have appeared dark in the ultraviolet and visible images due to debris from an explosion,” says team member Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. “We see no feature that has those distinguishing characteristics in the known vicinity of the impact, suggesting there was no major explosion and fireball.”

Dark smudges marred Jupiter’s atmosphere when a series of comet fragments hit Jupiter in July 1994. A similar phenomenon occurred in July 2009 when a suspected asteroid slammed into Jupiter. The latest intruder is estimated to be only a fraction the size of these previous impactors. ”We suspected for this 2010 impact there might be no big explosion driving a giant plume, and hence no resulting debris field to be imaged. There was just the meteor, and Hubble confirmed this,” adds Hammel, a veteran Jupiter observer of the 1994 string of impacts.

Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley saw the flash at 4:31 p.m. (EDT) on June 3. He was watching a live video feed of Jupiter from his telescope. In the Philippines, amateur astronomer Chris Go confirmed that he had simultaneously recorded the transitory event on video. The two-second-long flash of light in the videos of Jupiter was created by the same physics that causes a meteor (or “shooting star”) on Earth. A shock wave generated by ram pressure as the meteor speeds into the planet’s atmosphere heats the impacting body to a very high temperature, and as the hot object streaks through the atmosphere, it leaves behind a glowing trail of superheated atmospheric gases and vaporized meteor material that rapidly cools and fades in just a few seconds.

Though astronomers are largely uncertain about the rate of large meteoroid impacts on the planets, the best guess for Jupiter is that the smallest detectable events may happen as frequently as every few weeks. “The meteor flashes are so brief they are easily missed, even in video recordings, or perhaps misidentified as detector noise or cosmic ray hits on imaging devices,” says team member Mike Wong of the University of California at Berkeley.

“It’s difficult to even know what the current impact rates are throughout the solar system. That’s partly why we are so excited by the latest impact. It illustrates a new capability that can be exploited with increased monitoring of Jupiter and the other planets,” says Amy Simon-Miller of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the principal investigator on the Jupiter observation.

As a bonus, the Hubble observations also allowed scientists to get a close-up look at changes in Jupiter’s atmosphere following the disappearance of the dark Southern Equatorial Belt (SEB) several months ago. In the Hubble view, a slightly higher altitude layer of white ammonia ice crystal clouds appears to obscure the deeper, darker belt clouds. ”Weather forecast for Jupiter’s South Equatorial Belt: cloudy with a chance of ammonia,” Hammel says.

The team predicts that these ammonia clouds should clear out in a few months, as it has done in the past. The clearing of the ammonia cloud layer should begin with a number of dark spots like that seen by Hubble along the boundary of the south tropical zone.

“The Hubble images tell us these spots are holes resulting from localized downdrafts taking place. We often see these types of holes when a change is about to occur,” Simon-Miller says. ”The SEB last faded in the early 1970s. We haven’t been able to study this at this level of detail before,” Simon-Miller adds. “The changes of the last few years are adding to an extraordinary database on dramatic cloud changes on Jupiter.”

Partial Lunar Eclipse for Australia

We’re heading for a nice full moon this week and it’s the favourite for all telescope users. In fact, it’s the first thing we want to look at when we buy our first telescope. So, are you ready for a bit of lunacy? On the evening of Saturday, June 26, Australia will be treated to a partial eclipse of the Moon. Just over 50% of the Moon goes into the Earths inner shadow. Because this is not a total eclipse, we won’t see the Moon go copper coloured, but there will be a substantial darkening of part of the Moon.

Eastern and Central Australia has the best view, with the best part of the eclipse early in the evening and that’s great for the kids. The eclipse begins at 8:16 pm with mid eclipse around 9:38 pm. It’s all over at 11 pm for eastern Australia and 9:00 pm local time in the West. The eclipse will be also be seen in New Zealand, parts of South East Asia and the Americas.

It’s really quite a captivating event to watch because the shape that you’ll see is quite often the crescent shape kids draw when they’re drawing a moon. Kinda like a circle – with a bite out of it.

“Lunar eclipses, either partial or full, are one of the most spectacular sights in astronomy and one not to be missed,’ said well known Australian astronomer, David Reneke, writer and publicist for Australasian Science magazine. Lunar eclipses occur when Earth gets between the sun and the moon, casting a shadow. The most impressive part starts when the Moon’s leading edge first enters the earth’s shadow, and the eclipse begins.

“Lunar eclipses are completely safe to watch, David said. “You don’t need any kind of protective filters. It isn’t even necessary to use a telescope, in fact you can watch with nothing more than your own two eyes. If you have a pair of binoculars, they will help magnify the view and make the event just that much easier to see.”

Remember to dress warmly and enjoy the spectacle!

Dave Reneke

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Image Of The Week

The Mysterious Beauty of a Supernova Embryo

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/GSFC

Eta Carinae is a mysterious, extremely bright and unstable star located a mere stone’s throw – astronomically speaking – from Earth at a distance of only about 7,500 light years. The star is thought to be consuming its nuclear fuel at an incredible rate, while quickly drawing closer to its ultimate explosive demise. When Eta Carinae does explode, it will be a spectacular fireworks display seen from Earth, perhaps rivaling the moon in brilliance.

Its fate has been foreshadowed by the recent discovery of SN2006gy, a supernova in a nearby galaxy that was the brightest stellar explosion ever seen. The erratic behavior of the star that later exploded as SN2006gy suggests that Eta Carinae may explode at any time. Eta Carinae, a star between 100 and 150 times more massive than the Sun, is near a point of unstable equilibrium where the star’s gravity is almost balanced by the outward pressure of the intense radiation generated in the nuclear furnace.

This means that slight perturbations of the star might cause enormous ejections of matter from its surface. In the 1840s, Eta Carinae had a massive eruption by ejecting more than 10 times the mass of the sun, to briefly become the second brightest star in the sky. This explosion would have torn most other stars to pieces but somehow Eta Carinae survived.

The latest composite image shows the remnants of that titanic event with new data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope. The blue regions show the cool optical emission, detected by Hubble, from the dust and gas thrown off the star. This debris forms a bipolar shell around the star, which lies near the brightest point of the optical emission. This bipolar shell is itself surrounded by a ragged cloud of fainter material. An unusual jet points from the star to the upper left.

Chandra’s data, depicted in orange and yellow, shows the X-ray emission produced as material thrown off Eta Carinae rams into nearby gas and dust, heating gas to temperatures in excess of a million degrees.

This hot shroud extends far beyond the cooler, optical nebula and represents the outer edge of the interaction region. The X-ray observations show that the ejected outer material is enriched by complex atoms, especially nitrogen, cooked inside the star’s nuclear furnace and dredged up onto the stellar surface. The Chandra observations also show that the inner optical nebula glows faintly due to X-ray reflection. The X-rays reflected by the optical nebula come from very close to the star itself; these X-rays are generated by the high-speed collision of wind flowing from Eta Carinae’s surface (moving at about 1 million miles per hour) with the wind of the companion star (which is about five times faster).

The companion is not directly visible in these images, but variability in X-rays in the regions close to the star signals the star’s presence. Astronomers don’t know exactly what role the companion has played in the evolution of Eta Carinae, or what role it will play in its future.

Daily Galaxy

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It’s true!

* Tree crickets are called the poor man’s thermometer because temperature directly affects their rate of activity. Count the number of chirps a cricket makes in 15 seconds, then add 37. The sum will be very close to the outside temperature in farenheit!

* The highest temperature ever recorded at the South Pole was minus 13 degrees centigrade.

* If our Sun were just inch in diameter, the nearest star would be 445 miles away.

* If the Sun were the size of a beach ball then Jupiter would be the size of a golf ball and the Earth would be as small as a pea.

* Neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoonful would weigh more than all the people on Earth!

* On average, airliners will get struck by lightning once every year.

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Northern Galactic – Southern Galactic

Members Images

Northern Galactic and Southern Galactic International was established to commemorate the United Nations International Year of Astronomy in 2009 and was officially launched in November 2008. In partnership Northern Galactic and Southern Galactic International aims to gather together research and discoveries in the areas of optical and radio astronomy, astrophotography, planetary studies, and space atmospheric sciences as a service to the interested public.

Our service is available to all astronomers and scientists throughout the world. Northern Galactic also makes available for its Members its own Research Grade 406mm/16″ RCOS Carbon Truss Telescope for a Low Annual Subscription Fee.

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IN THE SKY THIS MONTH

June 2010

Start by looking west about an hour after sunset. See that very bright star just above the horizon? That’s Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Thousands of years ago, ancient Egyptians used it to work out the length of our year. Setting early close by is Venus. The brilliant glow from it is stunning and remember, it’s a planet, not a star.

Lying near the centre of the Milky Way and rising in the east is really the only zodiac constellation that really looks like its namesake, the giant constellation of Scorpius or the ‘Scorpion.’ It’s one of the easiest constellations to pick out as It’s also one of the few that does look like what it’s supposed to represent.   It looks more like an upside down fish-hook in the sky though. Now, look for the red heart of the Scorpion, the star known as Antares. It’s a red giant star hundreds of times bigger than our Sun!

Scorpius is a fabulous part of the sky to scan with a pair of binoculars. You’ll need to keep them nice and still, and the best way I think is to lie down and put a pillow on your chest and rest your arms on that and scan the sky. As Scorpius is rising in the east, Orion (the Saucepan) is just disappearing in the western sky.

In June, the Southern Cross is placed very nicely, high in the southern sky and contains ‘The Jewel Box’ beside it.  It’s a magnificent cluster of young stars. Look for it with your binoculars or small scope.

Now, get ready for a pretty neat sight. There’s going to be a partial lunar eclipse on Saturday 26 June for most of eastern Australia. This should darken part of the Moon’s surface from about 9.30pm and yep, you can look directly at it. It won’t hurt your eyes.

Mercury can be seen to good advantage in the eastern dawn sky for the first two weeks of June. Venus blazing brilliantly in the early western sky pairs up with the 3 day old crescent Moon on the 15th – a nice sight!   Mars can still be seen in the Northern evening sky. It looks like a ‘reddish’ star and still looks good in a telescope. Jupiter rises in the eastern sky just after midnight and is one of the best telescopic objects for any amateur.

If you have an opportunity, make your way to an observatory or borrow a friend’s telescope to look at the planet Saturn high in the north. You should be able to see those magnificent rings just opening up.

THIS MONTH IN SPACE

June 3, 1965: Ed White, as part of the Gemini 4 mission, performed the first American space walk.

June 3, 1948: The 200 inch Hale telescope was dedicated at Palomar Observatory. It was the largest optical/infrared telescope in the world for decades and now ranks fourth in size.

June 8, 1959: NASA’s X-15 was flown for the first time: an unpowered gliding descent.

June 8, 1965: Launch of the USSR’s Luna 6 for a lunar flyby. It passed within 100,000 miles of the Moon.

June 16, 1963: Valentina Tereshkova aboard Vostok 6 became the first woman Now, June nights are pretty cool, so you’re going to need a blanket, a pillow or two, your binoculars and perhaps a warm glass of Milo or a fine red to keep warm while you stargaze. On a clear night depending on your age and your eyesight, you can see anywhere up to about 1,500 to 2, 000 stars. Introduce city lights and pollution, and you see less and less.

June 18, 1983: Sally Ride aboard the STS-7 space shuttle mission became the first American woman in space.

June 22, 1978: James Christy discovered Pluto’s moon, Charon.

Dave Reneke

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Vast UFO Cover-Up a ‘Cosmic Watergate,’ Says Nuclear Physicist

FOXNews
This grainy black and white image purports to show a UFO hovering over Passoria, New Jersey, in July, 1952. After half a century of investigation, …

Australia UFO: What the heck was it?
Christian Science Monitor
Despite claims of otherworldly origins, the Australia UFO was likely created by the new Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral. …

Leeds today – UFO over Beeston and cultural walks
The Guardian (blog)
report filed over at UK-UFO.co.uk following a UFO sighting on June 7. Is the truth out there? And can it be found in Beeston? …

Teardrop-shaped UFO follows in jet’s vapor trail over Virginia
Examiner.com
A Virginia witness watched a teardrop-shaped object following in the vapor trail of a jet on June 12, 2010, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO …

UFO Traffic Report: June 12, 2010
Examiner.com
The UFO Traffic Report for June 9, 2010, includes selected cases from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database. …

Physicist calls UFO cover-up a ‘cosmic Watergate’
Tehran Times
There’s nothing odd about that; many people believe in UFOs and aliens. But Friedman is not your typical tin foil-hatted UFO nut. …

Dennis Hopper Film Left Big Legacy to UFO Researchers
AOL News
(June 2) — Dennis Hopper may have passed away, but along with his many film appearances, he has left an important legacy to UFO researchers. …

UFO enthusiast Robbie Williams sells UK mansion to live with fiancee Ayda …
Daily Telegraph
Could this cloud formation spotted over Indonesia be a UFO? Moving in together … Robbie Williams has put his mansion in the UK up for sale to be with …

Incredible footage of grounded UFO at close range from Indonesia
Allnewsweb.com
The footage below has stunned Asian UFO researchers and set regional UFO forums ablaze. These one-of-a-kind images were captured by stunned witnesses …

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FEATURE STORY

Is the Universe Stranger Than We Know? What if Dark Energy Does Not Exist?

Utane Sawangwit and Tom Shanks of Durham University believe that errors on the “gold standard” cosmic microwave background results from the WMAP satellite that includes dark matter, dark energy and the exponential expansion after the big bang known as inflation may be larger than previously supposed.

It is the pattern of ripples detected by microwave background telescopes such as WMAP that underpin the idea that the Universe is composed of 22% dark exotic particles and 74% dark energy with the remaining 4% being the atoms in the ordinary material that we see around us.

This model produces a largest ripple size of about 1 degree on the microwave sky and this is well matched by the ripples seen in the WMAP data. So these WMAP ripples have a size that is roughly twice the size of the Full Moon as they appear on the sky. Models that don’t have dark energy or dark matter tend to produce CMB ripples that are smaller, only about half the standard model size and so just about the size of the Full Moon.

Sawangwit and Shanks have used point-like radio sources to test how much the WMAP telescope smoothes these CMB ripples and have found evidence that this ”beam smoothing” is much larger than suggested from WMAP’s observations of the planet Jupiter.

The radio sources have the advantage that they are much closer in brightness to the CMB ripples that are being studied than Jupiter which is ~1000 times brighter. But their faintness is also a disadvantage which means that the Durham team have had to stack hundreds of the radio sources to get their result.

If the WMAP CMB map is smoothed by as much as the radio sources appear to be then it may make it more easy for other models without dark matter (or dark energy!) to fit the CMB data. It will then be interesting to see if the new European PLANCK satellite, currently taking data, will confirm the WMAP results. The PLANCK telescope will also smooth the new CMB maps and again the radio source technique used by Sawangwit and Shanks can be used to help them judge how much.

The same Durham team were also involved with international collaborators in another recent paper which suggested that an independent CMB check on the existence of dark energy might not be as “bullet-proof “ as previously thought.

If dark energy exists it causes the expansion of the Universe to accelerate at late times. CMB photons have to pass through giant superclusters of galaxies on their way to be detected by telescopes such as WMAP. Normally a CMB photon gets gravitationally blueshifted as it enters a cluster and redshifted as it leaves and the two effects cancel.

But if the cluster galaxies accelerate away from each other as the photon passes through then the cancellation is not exact and a trace is left in that slightly higher CMB temperatures should be observed in sightlines that pass near to galaxy superclusters.

Previously claims have been made that this “ISW “ signal is seen at high significance when CMB-galaxy correlations are studied. But in a powerful new sample of ~1 million luminous red galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey no such effect is seen and when this result is included, the significances of the previous detections reduce to the point where they are as consistent with a zero detection of dark energy as with the standard model prediction.

If the same null result is seen in the Southern Hemisphere using WMAP and PLANCK CMB data coupled with millions of galaxies to be found in new Southern Surveys such as the ESO VST ATLAS (PI T. Shanks) then again there will be a significant threat to the standard cosmological model in which dark energy plays a vital role.

The odds are still that the standard model with its dark energy and dark matter will survive but there are certainly many theorists who might hope that it does not! The identification of dark matter with exotic particles as yet undetected in the laboratory and the introduction of dark vacuum energy in an amount that is minute compared to the total energy of the Universe at early-times leaves many cosmologists feeling unsure.

The dark energy problem is particularly severe – most theorists would prefer a zero cosmological constant because it might be hoped that it could be explained by some as yet unknown symmetry of nature. Indeed, if there had to be a cosmological constant then the string theorists of particle physics would actually prefer that it was negative which is the opposite to what is apparently observed in the supernova Hubble diagram. These problems frequently cause theorists to resort to the “anthropic principle” for an explanation.

The standard model also has astrophysical difficulties. For example, in galaxy formation theories, as much “feedback” energy is now being used in preventing stars from forming as in forming them under gravity, seemingly at odds with the simplest “bottom-up” picture of galaxy formation.

Even the evidence for dark matter is less strong than it was in the 1930’s when Fritz Zwicky first discovered the “missing mass” problem in the centres of rich galaxy clusters. The confirmation from X-ray satellites like Chandra and XMM-Newton that these galaxy clusters contain large amounts of hot gas as well as galaxies and stars has reduced the missing mass/dark matter discrepancy by a factor of 10-100! It remains to be seen whether the remaining factor or 4-5 merits the invoking of a cosmological density of exotic particles as required by the standard model.

The undoubted successes of the standard cosmological model therefore have to be balanced against the above problems. Much depends on the results from the “precision” Cosmic Microwave Background experiments. If these are correct then the standard model, with all its difficulties, will likely be correct. This is why tests of the CMB results such as those made by the Durham team and their collaborators are so important for cosmology.

The effect of the WMAP telescope on the CMB ripples and the search for the signature of dark energy in the CMB-galaxy correlations are crucial for the survival of the standard model. The results at the least give the CMB observational teams a chance to check whether their systematic errors are really well enough established to reject all simpler cosmological models and only accept the standard model with its mysterious dark matter and dark energy components.

The WMAP team, according to New Scientist isn’t taking the challenge lighly. They claim that the radio sources observed by WMAP coincide with spots of the sky where the temperature is slightly higher, making the calibration inaccurate. “We’re happy to defend WMAP,” says team member Gary Hinshaw of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

According to their critics, to explain away theses potentially undermining errors, standard model and WMAP supporters have invented “dark energy” and “great attractors” so as to explain why a created universe did not spread out uniformly at the same speed and in the same spoke-like directions as predicted by theory.

Predications based on the Big Bang can account for less than 20% of the mass and density of the known, observable Hubble length universe. Nor can this theory explain gravity, the discordant data on red shifts, galaxy distribution, colliding galaxies, the abundance of hydrogen and helium, the existence of elementary particles, and why the movement of distant galaxies appears to be accelerating.

Critics of the standard model say that only the addition of ad hoc hypothetical appendages and parameters which are constantly adjusted have prevented the Big Bang theory from complete collapse.

Daily Galaxy

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Take a Virtual Walk on Moon

After more than 37 years after humans last walked on the Moon, planetary scientists are inviting members of the public to return to the lunar surface as “virtual astronauts” to help answer important scientific questions. No spacesuit or rocket ship is required — all visitors need to do is go to www.moonzoo.org and be among the first to see the lunar surface in unprecedented detail. New high-resolution images, taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), offer exciting clues to unveil or reveal the history of the Moon and our solar system.

The aim of Moon Zoo is to provide detailed crater counts for as much as the Moon’s surface as possible. Unlike here on Earth where weather quickly erodes any signs of all but the most recent impacts, craters on the lunar surface stay almost until eternity. That means that the number of craters on a particular piece of the surface tells us how old it is. This technique is used all over the Solar System, but the Moon is particularly important because we have ground truth — samples brought back by the Apollo missions — which allow us to calibrate our estimates. Planetary scientists have always carried out this kind of analysis on large scales, but with your help and the fabulous LRO images then we should be able to uncover the finer details of the Moon’s history.

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