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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 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

 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.

Dear Mr.  Reneke,

Re: With the knowledge of Google's new plans with this new program they have.  It has definitely made me eager to achieve more.  I do find myself processing new ideas and thoughts on the topic, and has inspired me to do better.That would be absolutely exceptional!  It has been a true honor running my ideas by you, and will be for time to come. Thanks for everything, Dominc L.

Hi Dominic

No worries, you keep going at it and don't let ANYONE tell you that you are crazy, silly, or a dreamer because one day you will hit the jackpot AND then they will listen to you.  Keep the ideas coming and never let go of your dreams Dominic ok?  Keep in touch whenever you want to and I'll be there for you. 

Dave

Hi Dave

My mother in-law has told me that tonight you will be able to see the Space station and space shuttle together?  Would you please advise me when this will happen or where I can find out some information about this topic.  She was listening to ABC radio and only heard Heavens above/?She lives near Leonora which is about 230 kilometers from Kalgoorlie W.A.

Kind Regards, Alison

Hi Alison

I was on ABC Kalgoorlie this morning with Rebecca and she had info that the station will be passing over your area tonight.  I didn't catch the time but if you ring they will tell you I guess. Now, the website I mentioned is Heavens-Above …you must have the – between the words.  Go to it via Google… fill in the details on where you are in the world and it will produce a simple map of your area and the time to catch the space station.  Hope this helps.

Regards Dave

Hi Dave

Thank you for the info.  It did help.

Regards Alison

Hi David.

Things sure got muddled up. I was just trying to reply to an email you or yours sent me asking me to confirm that I had registered to receive your newsletters. I had difficulty getting back to you to confirm it. If it is an age thing Blame me I'm 80 ! 25 yrs ago I was a Senior Electronic T/o at the {Spy Base J.D.S.C.S } Nurrunga at Woomera for 8 years. I love to hear you on the ABC in the morning It's always interesting.

Cheers, Norman.

Hi Norm

How delightful it was for me to receive your email and thank you very much indeed for the kind comments contained.  I'm glad you got the email problem sorted.  I still get stuck from time to time. You've certainly led an interesting life with those connections at Woomera.  I'll be t you have a good story or two to tell.  Thanks for listening to my segment on the ABC and I hope you continue to do so for many more years to come.  All the best.

Regards Dave

Submitted to website 20/10/02: Thank you. 

Still one more fantastic picture, that is the key reason why My spouse and I returned to your blog time and again!

'Hydrolyze' 

Submitted to website: ABC NEW ENGLAND NORTH - Comments:

I was a little dissappointed in Dave's explanation of how to find south using the southern cross.  The correct method is as follows.  Locate the southern cross (der !) Adjacent to one side of the cross there are two bright stars, referred to as the pointers.  Draw a line through the "long" side of the cross and extend it below the cross.  Draw a line between the pointers and bisect this line at right angles and extend the bisecting line towards the bottom of the cross.  This line will intersect with the line drawn through the long side of the cross.  The point where these lines intersect is south.

Posted by: Phil Girle | 09/02/2010

Dave Reneke's reply:

I disagree with this listener's description of his method being the 'correct' one.  The method I described on radio was the easier of the two to understand in a medium that doesn't have the benefit of visual representation.  Of course I know of both methods of finding 'South' but in reality, and for all practical purposes, they both achieve the same result…  only one does it more simply than the other – and radio listeners, I believe, would find it difficult if not impossible to follow complex instructions like those given above.    

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THIS WEEK'S TOP STORY 

Aussie Meteorite May Hold the Key to Life on Planet Earth

New analysis of the famous Murchison meteorite that crash-landed in Australia over 40 years ago has turned up a surprise for astronomers.The space rock, which is over 4.65 billion old, contains millions of previously unseen organic compounds. 

Maybe the seeds that started off life right here on planet Earth.  The results of the meteorite study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

PIC: A Murchison meteorite specimen at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.

Researchers in Germany have examined the carbon-rich meteorite using 21st century technology and found signals representing more than 14,000 different elementary compositions, including dozens of amino acids, the building blocks of life, in a sample of the rock. 

"We are really excited.  When I first studied it and saw the complexity I was so amazed," said Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin, lead researcher on the study from the Institute for Ecological Chemistry in Neuherberg, Germany.

The Murchison meteorite landed near a town in Victoria of the same name in 1969.  Startled residents reported seeing a bright fireball explode into three separate fragments over the town before fading from view in a thick cloud of smoke.  About 30 seconds later, a loud tremor was heard.

Many specimens were found over an area of 13 square kilometres, with some pieces weighing up to 7 kilograms!  One smaller fragment broke through a barn roof and fell in some hay.  In all, about 100 kilograms of the fractured meteorite was eventually located by searchers.

This is arguably the most famous meteorites ever found.  Earlier analysis of the space rock revealed the presence of a complex mixture of differing sized organic chemicals including the amino acids, probably collected during its journey around our early solar system. Is this the Genesis rock?  It's very possible!  Amino acids build protein, protein builds tissue – and that makes people, like you and I.  Now you know where you probably came from.

Dave Reneke
  

       MORE ASTRO-SPACE NEWS   

  The Death Star?  Not Quite. 

It's Saturn's Mimas & One of the Solar System's Most Massive Impact Craters On Feb.  13, 2010, NASA's Cassini spacecraft returned the highest-resolution images yet of Saturn's battered moon Mimas.

Mimas eye-ball-like crater is the scar of a violent, giant impact from the past – the 140-kilometer-wide (88-mile-wide) Herschel Crater.  The diameter of the crater is about one-third that of the entire moon.  The walls of the crater are about 5 kilometers (3 miles) high, and parts of the floor are approximately 10 kilometers (6 miles) deep.  That's DEEP!

 NASA scientists hope the encounter will help them explain why the moon was not blown to bits when the impact happened.  They will also be trying to count smaller dings inside the basin of Herschel Crater so they can better estimate its age.

The impact is similar (but smaller) to the mysterious object that pounded Jupiter this past summer.  In further evidence that space itself is an action movie, an explosion the size of the Pacific ocean scarred Jupiter.  Yes, the entire ocean.  The explosion occurred on July 19, 2009 when an asteroid slammed into the planet, and although Jupiter has no solid ground the gas can still get thick enough for things like "impacts" and "KABOOM" to happen. 

The Jupiter impact event is another big red line underscoring Stephen Hawking's theory that one of the major factors in the possible scarcity of intelligent life in our galaxy is the high probability of an asteroid or comet colliding with inhabited planets.  We have observed, Hawking pointed out in his lecture Life in the Universe, the collision of a comet, Schumacher-Levi, with Jupiter (below), which produced a series of enormous fireballs, plumes many thousands of kilometers high, hot "bubbles" of gas in the atmosphere, and large dark "scars" on the atmosphere which had lifetimes on the order of weeks.  The July 19th event is a weak second place, but still totally awesome (and awesome if projected to a planet called Earth).

As Stephen Hawking says, the general consensus is that any comet or asteroid greater than 20 kilometers in diameter that strikes the Earth will result in the complete annihilation of complex life – animals and higher plants.  (The asteroid Vesta, for example, one of the destinations of the Dawn Mission, is the size of Arizona). How many times in our galaxy alone has life finally evolved to the equivalent of our planets and animals on some far distant planet, only to be utterly destroyed by an impact?  Galactic history suggests it might be a common occurrence.  Our cold comfort comes from the adjective "galactic" -that's a hugely different time perspective that our biblical three score and ten.

So back to Mimas -another object lesson in the hazards to life in the universe.  The Mimas flyby will involve a significant amount of skill because the spacecraft will be passing through a dusty region to get there.  Mission managers have planned for the Cassini spacecraft to lead with its high-gain antenna to provide a barrier of protection.  At closest approach, the spacecraft will be flying about 9,500 kilome above the moon.  Cassini will start taking images and measurements shortly after closest approach.

Daily Galaxy

  Storms In Space Disrupt Travel On Earth
Airlines are paying extra attention to the weather these days: the weather in space. That's because more commercial flights are using shortcuts that take them near the North Pole or the South Pole.  And in polar regions, flights are vulnerable to cosmic storms that can interfere with communication and navigation systems, or even expose travelers to worrisome doses of radiation.

It starts With The Sun.Last year, there were more than 7,000 polar flights, compared with just a dozen a decade earlier. Space weather events usually start on the sun, where eruptions or explosions can send a stream of energy and particles hurtling toward Earth. It can take minutes or days for these solar events to affect the Earth.

When solar particles and radiation arrive they are most likely to cause problems at the poles, where the Earth's atmosphere provides less protection.  The so-called Northern Lights are a visible sign that particles from the sun are reaching the upper atmosphere. When the weather in space is bad, you don't want to be in a plane taking a polar route, says Bill Murtagh of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo. "The air traffic controller could be talking to the pilot one minute and really, literally within a minute or so, that signal can go from quite clear to scratchy noise," Murtagh says.

Radio interference is just one problem caused by space weather.  A burst of energy from a solar flare can knock out GPS navigation systems, Murtagh says.  A radiation storm could expose people on a polar flight to the equivalent of a dozen chest X-rays. Despite the risks, airlines have pursued polar flights aggressively because they let planes fly the shortest path between North America and Asia, or Argentina and New Zealand. "You're shaving off a couple of hours of flight time, which everyone appreciates," Murtagh says.  Passengers reach their destinations sooner and the airlines can save thousands of gallons of fuel.

Most of the growth in transpolar flights has taken place during a period of relatively quiet space weather because the sun has been in an inactive part of its 11-year cycle, Murtagh says. Right now, the sun is near what's known as the solar minimum, he says.  "We're just turning the corner and we'll continue to see an increase in solar activity over the next few years."

With more polar flights each year and the weather in space likely to get worse, it's increasingly likely that air traffic controllers will have to divert flights that are already in the air, says Steven Albersheim, a meteorologist with the Federal Aviation Administration. The planes won't have enough fuel to complete their trips without an extra stop, Albersheim says.  So controllers will have to quickly arrange for them to land at Northern airports in places like Anchorage, Alaska.

Last-minute diversions could be avoided if space weather forecasts were as accurate as their earthbound counterparts, Murtagh says.  But they're not. Terrestrial forecasters have had time to develop good models to predict weather days ahead of time.  "We are not there yet with the space models," Murtagh says.  "Although we are getting there."

One promising model is being developed by researchers at the Space Weather Prediction Centre. They've developed a model that can predict many solar flares two or three days ahead of time by detecting changes in swirls of plasma beneath the surface of the sun.  The swirls twist in a distinctive way before a flare sends a burst of energy toward Earth. "We can pick up about half depending on how big the flares are," says Alysha Reinard, a member of the research team.That falls well short of what terrestrial forecasters can do, Reinard says.  But she says it's a big step toward protecting planes at the poles from bad space weather. 

Extracted: National Public Radio 2010.  To see more, visit http://www.npr.org
 

Solar Dynamics Observatory: Will It Be Able to Predict Massive Solar Tsunamis?

The Atlas V roared to life last Thursday morning to send the Solar Dynamics Observatory into space on its mission to evaluate the complex mechanisms of the sun.

This past November, NASA's orbiting STEREO satellites confirmed the existence of solar mega-tsunamis when they captured height data after a sunspot erupted.  The scale of this tsunami literally dwarfs the Earth's diameter — it was 62,000 miles high and raced across the surface at 560,000 mph! 

STEREO A and B orbit 90 degrees apart and luckily, one was overhead while the other saw the eruption on the limb.  This gave NASA scientists enough data to confirm the tsunami wasn't a shadow, solving a modern solar mystery

The new SDO spacecraft is in a circularized geosynchronous orbit at about 22,300 miles.  From that altitude, the spacecraft will relay the readings instantly to a ground station in New Mexico.  The research is expected to reveal the sun's inner workings by constantly taking high resolution images, collecting readings from inside the sun and measuring its magnetic field activity.

 This data is expected to give researchers the insight they need to eventually predict solar storms and other activity on the sun that can affect spacecraft in orbit, astronauts on the International Space Station and electronic and other systems on Earth.

 Solar flares rise and fall on an 11-year cycle, and last year marked what scientists thought was the solar minimum.  Through the beginning of  2009, the sun stayed unusually quiet, but all that changed, when a major sunspot appeared on the backside of the sun, where it was captured by NASA’s STEREO instrument.  Just as earthquakes can set off huge tsunami waves on the surface of our oceans, a coronal mass ejection or flare can cause a tsunami on the Sun's surface—and it did on May 19, 2007.

The waves generated by the explosions can travel at over a million kilometers per hour.  The event was captured by NASA's twin Stereo spacecraft and was observed by a team at Trinity College, Dublin.  The event lasted for about 35 minutes and ultimately covered almost the full disk of the Sun. The energy released in these explosions is phenomenal, about two billion times the annual world energy consumption in just a fraction of a second.  A previous observation of a solar tsunami was recorded by the SOHO spacecraft almost a decade ago but these images were misleading to scientists. 

 Daily Galaxy3D Sun for the iPhone

Imagine holding the entire sun in the palm of your hand.  Now you can.  A new iPhone app developed by NASA-supported programmers delivers a live global view of the sun directly to your cell phone.  Users can fly around the star, zoom in on active regions, and monitor solar activity. "This is more than cool," says Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division in Washington DC.  "It's transformative.  For the first time ever, we can monitor the sun as a living, breathing 3-dimensional sphere."

The name of the app is "3D Sun" and it may be downloaded free of charge at Apple's app store.  Just enter "3D Sun" in the Store's search box or visit http://3dsun.org for a direct link.

Left;: 3D Sun on the iPhone.  You can spin the sphere by flicking it and zoom in by pinching the screen. 

Realtime images used to construct the 3-dimensional sphere are beamed to Earth by the Solar-Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), a pair of spacecraft with a combined view of 87% of the solar surface.  STEREO-A is stationed over the western side of the sun, while STEREO-B is stationed over the east.  Together, they rarely miss a thing.

Telescopes onboard the two spacecraft monitor the sun in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.  "That's why the 3D sun looks false-color green," explains Lika Guhathakurta, STEREO program scientist at NASA Headquarters.  "These are not white-light images."

That's okay because EUV is where the action is.  Solar flares and new sunspots shine brightly at these wavelengths.  EUV images also reveal "coronal holes," vast dark openings in the sun's atmosphere that spew streams of solar wind into the solar system.  Solar wind streams that hit Earth can spark intense displays of Northern Lights.

"Using this app, you can spin the sun, zoom in on sunspots, inspect coronal holes–and when a solar flare erupts, your phone plays a little jingle to alert you!" says Guhathakurta. Indeed, many users say that's their favorite part—the alerts.  The app comes alive on its own when the sun grows active or when interesting events are afoot.  For example, a recent alert notified users that a comet just discovered by STEREO-A was approaching the sun.  When the comet was destroyed by solar heating, the app played a movie of Comet STEREO's last hours.

Another remarkable aspect of the app is that it shows the far side of the sun—the side invisible from Earth.  "This means sunspots cannot take us by surprise," Guhathakurta points out. Recently, STEREO-B was monitoring a far side sunspot (AR1041) when the sunspot's magnetic field erupted.  For the first time in almost two years, an active region on the sun produced a strong M-class1 solar flare.  The unexpected interruption of the sun's deep solar minimum was invisible from Earth, but anyone with the 3D Sun had a ringside seat for the blast.

3D Sun was created by a team of programmers led by Dr.  Tony Phillips, editor of Science@NASA.  He says that version 1 of the app is just the beginning.  Soon-to-be released 3D Sun 2.0 will offer higher-resolution images and multiple extreme ultraviolet wavelengths (preview).  These additions will reveal even more solar activity than before.

Stay tuned for updates. 
  NASA

Martian Settlers May Need Chickens To Conquer The Red Planet

If humanity ever intends upon on settling Mars (by settling I mean a one way trip with no plans on returning back to Earth), they are going to need a whole lot of chickens if they want to survive–let alone thrive–upon the red planet.

Aside from providing an excellent source of protein, chickens could help future settlers raise not only crops (such as wheat, barely, etc.) upon the barren Martian soil, but also help colonists keep the lights on through a very useful by-product (aka chicken dung).

Unlike Earth, Martian dirt is very hostile towards plant life.  Unless we can genetically alter plants to grow upon the red planets soil, future settlers will have to heavily rely upon the home world for their daily bread.

Future scientists could help reduce or (even better) eliminate that need by using chicken manure, which (as far as animal dung goes) has one of the highest concentration of nutrients available, making it a perfect choice for raising plants on Mars.

But providing food for plants isn't the only reason why future Martian colonists will probably choose these ugly (yet useful) creatures, as chicken dung can also be used for energy as well. Using an old scientific process called pyrolysis (which is cooking biomass like manure without the presence of oxygen), future settlers could turn this smelly chicken manure into biochar (which is a charcoal like product).

Just like many farmers on Earth, future colonists could turn biochar into bio-fuel, helping to power their future space settlements along with Martian solar panels (or an underground nuclear reactor). While other types of animals manure could also be used for raising crop or keeping the lights on, it would be much easier (not to mention cheaper) transporting chickens en mass than larger animals.

This is mainly due to the fact than an egg (averaging about 57 grams), weigh much less than say, a baby calf (which would weigh 32 kilograms at birth), making chickens the logical choice as far as future space animals go. Although humans may eventually import other animals to Mars (whether for food or as pets), it may not be surprising to see chickens accompany future explorers in their quest to conquer the red planet. (Image Credit: Andrei Niemimäki via Flickr)

Universe Today

South Korea to Send Its Cuisine Into Space

Astronauts could soon be eating seaweed soup and spicy, garlic-laden meat dishes after South Korea won approval to send several national dishes into space.

The science and technology ministry said a prestigious Russian laboratory has approved ready-to-eat bulgogi, bibimbap, seaweed soup and mulberry juice as suitable fare for astronauts.

Bulgogi is a flavoured beef dish and bibimbap is a mixture of rice, meat and vegetables, infused with chilli and garlic. The ministry said the approval came this month from the Institute of Biomedical Problems, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, following tests.

"The tests showed the foods helped improved digestion and allowed the growth of beneficial micro-organisms in the intestines," a statement said. The move to send the dishes into space is the latest step in a campaign to promote South Korean food around the world.

South Korea has already sent its iconic national dish kimchi — pickled cabbage soaked in chilli and garlic — into orbit along with its first astronaut, aboard a Russian launch vehicle in April 2008.  She shared the potent mixture with the crew of the International Space Station.

 SpaceTravel

 Astronomers Say Presence Of Water On Moon Will Lead To More Missions

The inset of this image shows the plume of lunar debris that was kicked up by the impact of the rocket.  NASA was able to detect the presence of water on the moon and must now research further to discover how that water is distributed. 

The inset of this image shows the plume of lunar debris that was kicked up by the impact of the rocket.  NASA was able to detect the presence of water on the moon and must now research further to discover how that water is distributed.  (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Through a collaborative effort that involved researchers around the world, NASA has learned that water does indeed exist on the moon – but don't crack out the bathing suits for a refreshing lunar dip just yet.  Scientists still have to determine just how much water the moon holds and how we can utilize it.

"The big picture here that we are all starting to understand is that the moon is not as dry as we thought," said Nancy Chanover, an assistant professor at New Mexico State University.  "However, whether there is enough water concentrated in specific locations that we can identify for potential use in a manned program – that remains to be seen."

Astronomers at NMSU were stationed at Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, N.M., and at Tortugas Mountain Observatory in Las Cruces, to observe the moment of impact on Oct.  9, 2009, when a rocket crashed in a shadowy crater near the south pole of the moon as part of NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission.

"There was a pretty small plume of dust from the impact," Chanover said.  "The plume was so small, it wasn't big enough for it to have risen over the rim of the crater such that it would have been visible from Earth." But that does not mean there was nothing to be seen from the observatories. In December, NMSU astronomers presented their observations from Apache Point and Tortugas observatories to the thousands of attendees at the American Geophysical Conference in San Francisco, Calif.

Ryan Hamilton, an NMSU graduate student involved in the project, said that the shepherding spacecraft that was part of the LCROSS mission observed about 24 gallons of water in the plume of dirt kicked up by the rocket, but there might be more in the crater. Chas Miller, an NMSU graduate student, said that this detection of water tells us only about one small area at the point of the LCROSS impact and that it remains unclear how much water is stored elsewhere on the moon.  This leaves the door open for further research on the distribution of water on the moon.

Chanover said NMSU's role now is to provide NASA with upper limits on how high the plume rose as well as to archive their data in NASA's Planetary Data System to ensure that it will be accessible to future investigators. The NMSU researchers agreed that this was an exciting project to be a part of. "Everyone successfully collected exactly the data they were supposed to about the impact," said Miller.

"This is one of the few times that NASA has tried to bring ground-based observers on board as real collaborators for a mission," Chanover said. "I thought it was really exciting." Full results of the LCROSS mission will be made available to the public later this year.  NMSU astronomers also plan to publish their findings.

  Moon Daily

In Praise of Pluto, Identified 80 Years Ago

"Inhospitable" doesn't do it justice: the temperature on Pluto, even during its summer (which comes around only every 248 years) is -230°C. Sheathed in layers of frozen nitrogen and methane, its average distance from the sun is 3.6 billion miles. 

A contrarian among the spheres, it rotates in the opposite direction to the earth.  Yet it's hard not to feel some affection for this unluckiest of heavenly bodies, identified 80 years ago last week by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. 

The first planetary discovery of the mass-media age excited worldwide interest, much of it focused on the search for a name.  Venetia Burnley was the lucky Oxford schoolgirl whose grandfather passed her breakfast-table suggestion on to astronomers. 

She later claimed to have chosen the Roman god of the underworld because it had not already been used, though the bleak associations could hardly have been more apt.  Despite having been demoted to a "dwarf planet" at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union in 2006, Pluto continues to generate attention out of proportion to its size (just one-fifth that of the Earth). 

Pictures from the Hubble telescope, released earlier this month, showed a quickly-changing, mottled surface, like the coat of a dapple-grey horse.  Scientists look forward to seeing it in much greater detail when the New Horizons probe, launched in 2006, reaches its destination in five years.  In the meantime, Pluto remains mysterious, serene and frigid, secure in its status as celestial underdog.

Guardian U.K.

  Russia Nabs Meteorite Smuggling Ring
 Amid a huge bounty of contraband goods seized recently at a Russian airport, one far-out find floored customs officials: chunks of meteorite.

"On the customs declaration, the smugglers identified it as granite for construction and decoration of office space," Larisa Ledovskikh, a spokeswoman for customs at Moscow's Domodedovo airport said. "But our officials could see it was clearly not granite!" 

The two smugglers — who also tried to ship out silver antiques, fossils, semi-precious stones, microscopes and old books in the suspect cargo
– were initially charged with making a false declaration on their customs form.

Only after a three-month investigation did officials discover that the mystery lumps were fragments from outer space and the men part of a larger crime ring including experts and scientists, Ledovskikh said. "They were part of an organized criminal gang.  They had worked out a plan in advance to smuggle out of Russian territory and to the Czech Republic…  two meteorite chunks, each weighing 100 grams," she said. The two men were arrested on Sunday and charged with contraband, a sentence that carries a maximum of 12 years in prison in Russia.

  SpaceDaily

 Astronomers release stunning view of Orion Nebula

European astronomers showed off their newest telescope last Wednesday, releasing stunning views of young stars in a stellar nursery.

The European Southern Observatory consortium's Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) in Paranal, Chile released the view of young stars in the Orion Nebula to demonstrate the compatibilities of the new telescope's 13.5-foot-wide mirror.

Most telescopes can't penetrate the nebula's dust, but, "observing in the infrared allows VISTA to reveal many other young stars in this central region that cannot be seen in visible light," says an ESO statement.

Located in the belt of the constellation Orion, the Orion nebula is about 1350 light years away (one light year is about 5.9 trillion miles).

The young stars observable in the VISTA image eject gas streamers at 435,000 miles-per-hour, which collide with gas clouds within the nebula.
Compression of the gas clouds contributes to the formation of more stars, making the Orion Nebula a much-studied center of star formation for astronomers, who suspect our own sun was born in a similar nebula some 4.6 billion years ago.

Science Fair

"WOW!" The Famous 1977 'ET Signal' -A Look Back

The night before Elvis Presley died, at 11:16 p.m.  an Ohio radio telescope called the Big Ear recorded a single pulse of radiation that seemed to come from somewhere in the constellation of Sagittarius at the 1420 MHz hydrogen line, the vibration frequency of hydrogen, the most common molecule in the universe -exactly the signal ET-hunters had been instructed to look out for. 

The signal was so strong that it pushed the Big Ear's recording device off the chart.Jerry Ehman, the young Columbus, Ohio volunteer man who spotted it in the computer printout, scrawled the now infamous "WOW!" in the margin. 

  The Big Ear team explored every possibility: military transmissions, reflections of Earth signals off asteroids or satellites, natural emissions from stars, but nothing fit.  And most odd of all, the signal came from a blank patch of sky totally devoid of stars.  The young engineer's only thought was that it could have been beamed from a spaceship traveling through the universe in search of some sign of life.

Ohio State University researchers wondered if it was man's first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.  They trained the massive scope on that part of the sky for the next month, and have returned periodically since, with no repeat of the signal. And although many point to it as a possible extraterrestrial intelligence sighting, Ehman, now 54, says "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. "If it were intelligent beings sending a signal, they'd do it far more than once," Ehman, now 54, says.  "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times.  Something suggests it was an Earth-bound signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris."

If those civilizations are out there – and we don't know that they are – those that inhabit star systems that lie close to the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun will be the most motivated to send communications signals toward Earth, because those civilizations will surely have detected our annual transit across the face of the sun, telling them that Earth lies in a habitable zone, where liquid water is stable.  Through spectroscopic analysis of our atmosphere, they will know that Earth likely bears life.  Knowing where to look tremendously reduces the amount of radio telescope time we will need to conduct the search.

 Astronomers think that we limit our search for extra-terrestrial intelligence to the ecliptic plane in which our solar system's planets orbit.  This ecliptic band comprises only about 3 percent of the sky, which could make it easier for scientists to effectively narrow their search for intelligent ET. The logic behind it postulates that if there is another, perhaps more advanced alien civilization in our galaxy out there; they may be trying to contact us, as well.  If this is the case, Henry says a search focused on the ecliptic "should lead rapidly to the detection of other civilizations".

Exoplanets in the ecliptic should be able to see Earth passing in front of the Sun.  These transits are what Earth astronomers rely on to identify a variety of information about the transiting planets, such as radius, density and composition.  Transits also reveal the secret’s of a planet's atmosphere, therefore any potential alien astronomers studying the Earth's spectrum would theoretically find the indicators of life in our atmospheric oxygen, letting them know—just as we long to know—that they are not alone.

Researchers plan to search the ecliptic for these advanced alien civilizations with the Allen Telescope Array, a set of dozens of antennae in Hat Creek, California, US. According to Greg Laughlin, an astronomer and extrasolar planet hunter at the University of California, Santa Cruz, if there is a stargazing civilization trying to make contact with us within 50 light years, its inhabitants would see the Earth as a bluish dot.  All they would need is an 8- metre space-based telescope with a good coronagraph along with a set of space-based infrared telescopes, which would enable them to detect ozone and water vapor in our atmosphere.

Most of the 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy are located in the galactic plane, forming another great circle around the sky.  The two great circles intersect near Taurus and Sagittarius, two constellations opposite each other in the Earth's sky – areas where the search will initially concentrate.

"We have no idea how many – if any – other civilizations there are in our galaxy,” Henry noted.  “One critical factor is how long a civilization – for example, our own – remains in existence.  If, as we dearly hope, the answer is many millions of years, then even if civilizations are fairly rare, those in our ecliptic plane will have learned of our existence.  They will know that life exists on Earth and they will have the patience to beam easily detectable radio (or optical) signals in our direction, if necessary, for millions of years in the hope, now realized, that a technological civilization will appear on Earth."

Daily Galaxy/ Johns Hopkins University    

IN THE SKY THIS MONTH

February 2010

 Well, already well into 2010 and the night sky is starting to get really interesting.  So much so you won't even need a telescope to see some of the celestial goodies… your eyes, and maybe a pair of binoculars, will do just fine!

There's a new Moon on February 14 (Valentine's Day) and that's a great time to not only propose, but look for planets as well.  It's also Chinese New Year!  The Moon's glare can sometimes block them out.  Mercury is just starting to make an appearance low above the Eastern horizon during morning twilight.  Look for a small yellowish star-like object.
Mars appears as a bright orange 'star' in the early north-eastern evening sky.  With a reasonably powerful telescope you can see the orange disc, surface markings and possibly the polar caps.

Ever heard of the giant planet?  That's Jupiter, 1300 times bigger than the Earth.  In fact, all the planets in the solar system could fit inside this huge world, still with plenty of room left over to park your car!  You can spot Jupiter setting low in the West and even with a good pair of binoculars it's stunning – the disc is clearly visible with four of its moons spinning around the outside.

The lord of the rings is next.  Saturn is visible earlier in the evening above the Eastern horizon as a pale yellow star.  It's the one planet with the 'Wow' factor but keep in mind the rings are turned mostly side on at the moment, so don't expect a lot OK?

Two welcome signposts for the Australian evening summer sky are the familiar constellations of Orion, (or 'saucepan') and the Southern Cross. Look at the middle star in the handle of Orion with your scope.  It's not a star, it's a beautiful gas cloud called a nebula where stars are being born.  The reddish star below it is one of the few stars in the sky that you can actually recognize its colour.  Betelgeuse is truly a giant, almost 600 times wider than our own Sun.

If you remember holding sparklers as a kid on cracker night you'll love the Alpha-Centaurids.  They're a meteor shower happening best on February 8 with long lasting streaky tails and possibly a rare fireball or two!  What time to watch did you say?  Sorry, it's an early morning treat.  Get up sometime between midnight and dawn and just look eastward.  Nope, you won't need anything, just your eyes will do.    

 Dave Reneke   

FEATURE STORY

The Eerie Silence: Should We Be Sending Messages Into Space?

If we should pick up signals from alien civilizations, Stephen Hawking, our century's Einstein, warns: "we should have be wary of answering back, until we have evolved" a bit further.  Meeting a more advanced civilization, at our present stage,' Hawking says "might be a bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus.  I don't think they were better off for it."

Mankind has always been driven by contradictory drives.  The relentless curiosity that pushes us forward and is directly responsible for our progress from caves to cities.  The fear of change that tells us "hang on, these caves/cities are really nice, we don't want to risk losing them." 
There isn't any greater potential threat to the status quo than the discovery of extraterrestrial life, which is why some people would prefer we didn't try.

After a half-century of scanning the skies for intelligent extraterrestrial life, astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence, eerie because many scientists are convinced that the universe is teeming with life.  The problem could be that we've been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong way.  Recently, Paul Davies, astrophysicist and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University, discussed a new roadmap for the future of SETI, arguing that we need to be far more expansive in our efforts, by questioning existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if we ever do make contact.

There has also been controversy recently over attempts to contact intelligent aliens, where instead of hiding in the corner and listening real hard, some astronomers beamed intense directional messages up up and away.  Critics decried these actions as dangerous, though their fears reveal more about us than any eventual ETs.  They assume that they would be similar to humanity, so their first response to finding a more primitive culture would be to exploit the hell out of it.  While such a fate might be pleasingly ironic (for anyone who isn't human, at least), others contend that any species that can make the journey here has advanced to a point where their goals are rather higher-minded than "Shoot us".

Dr Alexander Zaitzev, of the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, doesn't think much of these worries either way.  A proponent of METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), in a recent paper he shows that the odds of one of the METI messages being detected is a millionth of that due to powerful radar pulses regularly used in astronomical investigation.  An important point is that METI represents an intentional will to make contact, rather than the accidental alien interception of some random radiation from Earth – the difference between saying "Hello!" and just being a suspicious strange noise late at night.

Most of the objections to contacting aliens are weak under close examination.  We can't suddenly decide to hide after fifty years of pumping electromagnetic radiation into space without rhyme or reason – in fact, we'd better hope that an advanced civilization doesn't catch an episode of "American Idol" and just vaporize us outright.

Then there's the assumption that aliens would have the same kind of technology we do – despite the extremely obvious fact that our technology can't actually get to other exo planets.  Any attempt to mask radio emissions will likely look like cavemen closing their eyes to hide from satellite imaging.

The simple fact is that certain people have always opposed progress while other, better people have driven it.  "Experts" decried boiled water as unhealthy compared the vital stuff straight from the river, cursed antibiotics as a temporary placebo, and confidently declared that computers were nothing but expensive toys.  As an intelligent species we must make every effort to contact anyone (or thing) we can.

Daily Galaxy 
 

    ASTRO PIC OF THE WEEK 

  The image shows the main body of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), which is comprised of the "bar" on the left and a "wing" extending to the right.  The bar contains both old stars (in blue) and young stars lighting up their natal dust (green/red).  The wing mainly contains young stars.  In addition, the image contains a galactic globular cluster in the lower left (blue cluster of stars) and emission from dust in our own galaxy (green in the upper right and lower right corners).

 The data in this image are being used by astronomers to study the lifecycle of dust in the entire galaxy: from the formation in stellar atmospheres, to the reservoir containing the present day interstellar medium, and the dust consumed in forming new stars.  The dust being formed in old, evolved stars (blue stars with a red tinge) is measured using mid-infrared wavelengths.  The present day interstellar dust is weighed by measuring the intensity and color of emission at longer infrared wavelengths. 

The rate at which the raw material is being consumed is determined by studying ionized gas regions and the younger stars (yellow/red extended regions).  The SMC is one of very few galaxies where this type of study is possible, and the research could not be done without Spitzer.

 This image was captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera and multiband imaging photometer (blue is 3.6-micron light; green is 8.0 microns; and red is combination of 24-, 70- and 160-micron light).  The blue color mainly traces old stars.  The green color traces emission from organic dust grains (mainly polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons).  The red traces emission from larger, cooler dust grains.

 The image was taken as part of the Spitzer Legacy program known as SAGE-SMC: Surveying the Agents of Galaxy Evolution in the Tidally- Stripped, Low Metallicity Small Magellanic Cloud.

Spitzer/Universe Today

 Did You Know?

  Why is the Earth's core so hot?  Was the Earth once a star, before it became a planet?

Earth's core temperature is about 6,000° C.  By coincidence, this is about the same as the Sun's surface temperature (but much cooler than the Sun's core temperature, which is about 15,600,000° C).  The Earth's core is cooling, but at a very slow rate.  Over the past three billion years it has probably cooled by a few hundred degrees.  Currently, the Earth's core temperature is not changing much because, through radioactive decay (nuclear fission – the breakup of the nuclei of heavy elements, like uranium), it is generating about as much heat as it is losing.

To answer the second part of this question, some definitions are in order.  A star is a self-luminous body that shines by generating energy internally through nuclear fusion (the combining of nuclei of light elements like hydrogen and helium).  The Sun is a star.  A planet shines by reflected light from the Sun.  The solar system has nine "major" planets (of which Earth is one) and innumerable "minor" planets (asteroids and comets of various kinds).Star masses range from about 0.04 times, to 150 times, the mass of the Sun.  The mass of the Earth is 0.000003 times that of the Sun (and the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, is 0.001 times that of the Sun).

Although stars lose mass as they evolve, none lose enough to wind up anywhere near the mass of even the most massive planet.  So, the bottom line is: Stars do not evolve into planets. 

 Did You Know?

 What Keeps Us On the Earth?

What keeps us on the planet?  If the Earth stopped spinning, would we all fall off?  Are there any planets that do not spin?
We do not stay on the Earth because it is spinning, but because of the force of gravity.
I am not aware of any planets that do not spin.   

 Ever Wondered???  

  Why does the position of the sunrise change along the eastern horizon during the year?

The reason is that the axis of the Earth's rotation is tilted relative to the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun.  So the circle on the Earth where the Sun is directly overhead moves north and south over the year, from the equator to the Tropic of Cancer, back to the equator, then to the Tropic of Capricorn and back to the equator.  This causes sunrise and sunset to move north and south over the year as well.  This effect also causes the seasons and the shortening and lengthening of the day.  

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 Events

Global Astronomy Month

Global Astronomy MonthProfessional and amateur astronomers, educators and all astronomy enthusiasts worldwide are invited to celebrate the Universe in April 2010, during Global Astronomy Month – an international project that builds on the achievements of The International Year of Astronomy 2009, by combining a wide array of activities with the possibility of sharing experiences in real-time!

Taking place during April 2010, Global Astronomy Month (GAM2010) is a community-based effort aiming to achieve international collaboration and more interaction between participants than ever before. The primary idea of GAM2010 is to share ideas, experiences and successes, allowing communities that organize their own events to carry their ideas and inspiration forward.

Please look at organising events throughout Australia to share the Universe with as many people out ther as you can – let me know what you areplanning so we can publicise it and share it with the world.

Some ideas?

GAM2010 includes the most popular events for both astronomers and the public: telescopes will be available for the viewing of the Moon, Saturn and other objects, not only at observatories and planetariums, but also in public locations; dark sky observing of distant objects, Messier marathon, Lyrid Meteor Shower observing parties and events for the annual celebration of Astronomy Day (April, 24) are just some of the activities planned; special events by IYA2009-created global programs, observing with telescopes controlled over the Internet, webcasts and podcasts of special presentations, exhibitions, public competitions, astrophotography contests and workshops and much more will ensure that there is something for everyone.

Check out the website http://www.gam-awb.org and blogs – http://gam-awb.org/gam-project-blog.html for more info.

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 NACAA 2010 – National Australian Convention for Amateur Astronomers  

Workshop. Start Time: Friday, April 2 at 7:25pm Sunday, April 4 at 10:25pm. Where: Rydges Capitol Hill Hotel, Forrest, Canberra, ACT To see more details and RSVP, follow the link:  OR email me here at the newsletter for more help.

http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=258264943077&mid=1d04ba3G20ce0a77G55b1fd6G7

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