Dave Reneke's

 'WORLD of SPACE and ASTRONOMY'

Weird, Wild & Breaking News Stories in Space and Astronomy from around the World 24/7 delivered free every week with regular updates as they happen – It's FREE, It's Safe - Subscribe Now!

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

For The Media

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

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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. Australasian Science boasts Australia’s most experienced team of science journalists, including Australia's only two international Science Journalism Laureates.

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

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

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LETTERS

G'day Dave

I am an overnight listener on ABC radio and enjoy your segments.  I want to buy my sisters kids a telescope for Xmas who are total novices, as I am ,but I want to get them something different to toys and games that they may play with for a while, but get them something where it hopefully excites their brain as well…I will be buying myself one too.I read your article on your website recommending 70mm Tasco Skywatcher, So my question is ,National Geographic have a special for a 70az celestron telescope for $190..yes or no?  I know you will be busy so a very short answer would be very appreciated.Thanks Dave and look forward to your next spot on Trevor and Pavs show Regards, Phil

Hi Phil Thanks for the email and having faith in me to recommend a scope purchase.  Thanks too for your kind words on my segments on the ABC. We're on the road so I'll be brief for you.  Yep, I do recommend the 70mm Skywatcher BUT there are other brands out there comparable in price and quality.  I see no problem with the Celestron scope you mention in your email and would say go ahead and buy it.  It isn't a big out lay so if the 'bug' wears off you aren't out a lot of money.  The name is a good one and should give you good views of the sky …and some whale watching as well.

 Dave

Hi Dave,

I heard you on ABC local radio last week talking about the upcoming Leonids meteor shower on the 17th.  I will be in Torquay, Victoria that night and wondering when the best time will be to see them.  I heard you mention that they will be in the eastern sky.  Hoping for a good clear night. Fingers crossed hey!  Just to confirm I have the date right, it will be Tuesday night going into Wednesday morning correct? Cheers Dave, Tony

G'Day Tony

Thanks for your email, much appreciated.  I'm on the road at the moment so I'll be brief mate.  Yep, best nights are Tuesday 17th and in the morning (Wed) and best time would be anywhere between 1am – 4am….  I'd go for the 2-3am slot so give it a go and fingers crossed. All the best for now 

Dave

 THIS WEEK'S TOP STORIES

 Lone Aussie sailor Jessica Watson – Avid Skywatcher!

Now who do you reckon would have the best view of the night skies??? Yep, our brave young Aussie sailor Jessica Watson who's just crossed the equator!  I got a surprise email from Jess's parents this week, I'm sure they wouldn't mind me sharing it with you: 

Hello David

We listen to your radio interviews on the Sunshine Coast regularly.  Last week, you mentioned that there were to be some meteor showers over the weekend.  Just wanted you to know that our daughter, Jessica, is currently on her solo circumnavigation, attempting to be the youngest to sail around the world, and she watched some from out in the Pacific as she explains in her blog. At the time she was near the equator North East of Samoa heading to Kiribati. She has been taking a keen interest in the skies and has enjoyed some amazing sights.  Thanks for your weekly information

Regards: Julie and Roger Watson

 I've replied letting Julie and Roger know how much I appreciate their support and have conveyed my suppport to them and Jessica as well.  We need to back this brave little Aussie. What an achievement she's heading for. How proud are we to have someone like this young lady to call an Australian. The youngest person ever to attempt to sail around the world! Check her blog here and get in touch with her OK. She needs our support guys! http://www.youngestround.blogspot.com/

 Here's a part of her blog about the recent meteor shower:

I'm not much of an Astronomer but with all this talk of meteor showers last night, I was keeping an extra good eye out and did see the most amazing shooting star.  It was so bright and big that I was actually a bit spooked before realizing what it was.  But I can't tell you what I wished for though!

Read the latest news on Jess's voyage here: http://www.jessicawatson.com.au/the-latest-news

    

Rocket lab primed to launch New Zealand's first rocket into space

Private New Zealand aerospace company Rocket Lab completed its final ground-based test today and is now ready to launch New Zealand into the space race with its Atea-1 launch vehicle The first high altitude launch of Atea-1 is scheduled for the end of November this year.  Once Atea-1 has successfully concluded the development phase it will:

1.  Be the first privately built rocket launched from the Southern Hemisphere to enter space o Launch the Southern Hemisphere's first commercial space programme.

2. Be the first commercial sounding rocket to use hybrid fuel technology .

3. Give the global scientific community the first practical alternative to conventional rockets – at significantly lower cost Rocket Lab Ltd has today completed the final ground-based test on the company's unique rocket motor in Air New Zealand Gas Turbines' engine test cell.  "We're ready to go," says the company's founder and Technical Director Peter Beck.

For the past four months the test programme for the full-scale motor has been carried out in Air New Zealand's Auckland engineering base with the rocket motor secured to a test rig in the airline's jet engine test cell.  "It's an ideal facility, which has allowed us to control a lot of the variables and push ahead fast," says Peter.  The first launch is on track to take place from Great Mercury Island.

Air New Zealand Gas Turbines manager Richard Ison says Air New Zealand is happy to help the Rocket Lab pioneers.  "We can obviously identify with what they are doing – a small Kiwi company taking on the big established players, and having a fresh approach that simply blows right through the barriers of conventional thinking.  And we're very happy to support a genuine environmental breakthrough.  The emissions from this engine are non-toxic as opposed to the traditional launch platforms, so it would be great to see Rocket Lab winning a big share of this market."

The Atea-1 is designed specifically for scientific sub-orbital 'sounding' missions.  It will travel to an altitude of 120 kilometres – space starts at 100 kilometres – then return to earth in a sub-orbital ballistic curve, to be recovered from a splashdown at sea.  It has a payload of just two kilograms, but that is more than enough for modern miniaturised scientific instruments.
The Atea-1 is almost entirely constructed from lightweight carbon fibre composites.  Components such as the rocket nozzle and combustion chamber are all manufactured from Rocket Lab- developed composite materials which are a fraction of the weight of traditional metal components.

The rocket generates the equivalent of 3200 horsepower from a rocket engine weighing just 13kg."The rocket looks quite small for something designed to reach space, but that indicates its efficiency," Peter says.  "Small is beautiful in the rocket world."
He explains that research scientists are currently captive to existing suppliers launching ex-military rockets from just a couple of sites.  They often have to share payload space to cut costs, and wait years for the privilege.

The ability to launch in the Southern Hemisphere will redress a major imbalance in climate data as most launches to date have been in the Northern Hemisphere.  There's currently a big gap in high-altitude or near space data recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. Rocket Lab has also experienced interest from the commercial sector and is talking to New Zealand companies about launching their products and brands into space for commercial payloads and marketing.

Rocket Lab's key development is its unique fuel formulation that took two years to develop.  The fuel is polymer based and suspended in a solid form.  It only burns in the presence of an oxidiser – liquid nitrous oxide – which has vastly lowered the environmental impact over conventional solid fuel rockets.The launch in November will be the culmination of a 15-year quest for Peter Beck and three years' effort from the Rocket Lab team.

Watch on You-Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0ypbpibS6g Rocket Lab is a privately owned rocket science company, which intends to be at the hub of a vibrant private space industry in the Southern Hemisphere.

Space Fellowship
 

    MORE ASTRO-SPACE NEWS   

Solar Collectors in Space Could Finally Solve Earth's Energy Problem

The Japan Space Agency, along with Mitsubishi Electric Corp.  and IHI Corp., are getting even closer to next big thing: harnessing the power of the sun with a solar collector in geostationary orbit.  Now there's cold hard cash involved. 

The plan is to drop $21 billion into a solar power generator that beams electricity to Earth via microwaves.  The 1-gigawatt solar station will gather sunlight with a gigantic array of solar panels that is 4 square kilometers big.

While such an idea might be ahead of its time, Japan confidently predicts this first solar power space station will be online within three decades.  Leave it to Japan to take our entire civilization ever closer to the day when we'll finally be a Type 1 civilization on the Kardashev scale. 

By the way, a type I civilization is able to harness all the power available on a single planet.

Actually, these Japanese innovators will be moving us closer to being a Type 2 civilization, which is able to harness all the power available in a single star.  We would probably need to surround the Sun with solar panels to do such a thing, but Japan is off to a good start.  Meanwhile, those innovators need to calm down the fearmongers, chattering about how those death rays of from space could kill us all.

DVICE

Dawn Enters Asteroid Belt — For Good

NASA's Dawn spacecraft re-entered our solar system's asteroid belt today, Nov.  13, and this time it will stay there.

Dawn first entered the belt (whose lower boundary may be defined as the greatest distance Mars gets from the sun (249,230,000 kilometers, or 154,864,000 miles) in June 2008.  It remained within the belt for 40 days before its carefully planned orbital path brought it below the asteroid belt's lower boundary.

This time around, Dawn's flight path will remain above this hypothetical lower boundary for the rest of the mission and for the foreseeable future – Dawn will become the first human-made object to take up permanent residence in the asteroid belt.

The mission of the 1,098-kilogram (2,421-pound) Dawn spacecraft is to reconnoiter Vesta and Ceres, the asteroid belt's two most massive inhabitants — the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres. 

The goal of this eight-year, 4.9-billion-kilometer (3-billion-mile) mission is to answer basic questions about the formation of planets in our solar system.  NASA's unmanned Dawn spacecraft will be the first ever to orbit two planetary bodies on a single voyage.  Dawn is 619 days away from arrival at its first celestial objective, asteroid Vesta.

Provided by NASA

The Dark Attractor: What's Pulling the Milky Way Towards It at 14-Million MPH?

Astronomers have known for years that something unknown apears to be pulling our Milky Way and tens of thousands of other galaxies toward itself at a breakneck 22 million kilometers per hour.  But they couldn't pinpoint exactly what, or where it is.

A huge volume of space that includes the Milky Way and super-clusters of galaxies is flowing towards a mysterious, gigantic unseen mass named mass astronomers have dubbed "The Great Attractor," some 250 million light years from our Solar System.

The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are the dominant structures in a galaxy cluster called the Local Group which is, in turn, an outlying member of the Virgo supercluster.  Andromeda–about 2.2 million light-years from the Milky Way–is speeding toward our galaxy at 300,000 kilometres per hour.

This motion can only be accounted for by gravitational attraction, even though the mass that we can observe is not nearly great enough to exert that kind of pull.  The only thing that could explain the movement of Andromeda is the gravitational pull of a lot of unseen mass–perhaps the equivalent of 10 Milky Way-size galaxies–lying between the two galaxies.Meanwhile, our entire Local Group is hurtling toward the center of the Virgo Cluster (image above)  at 1.6 million kilometres per hour.

The Milky Way and its neighboring Andromeda galaxy, along with some 30 smaller ones, form what is known as the Local Group, which lies on the outskirts of a "super cluster"-a grouping of thousands of galaxies-known as Virgo, which is also pulled toward the Great Attractor.  Based on the velocities at these scales, the unseen mass inhabiting the voids between the galaxies and clusters of galaxies amounts to perhaps 10 times more than the visible matter.

Even so, adding this invisible material to luminous matter brings the average mass density of the universe still to within only 10-30 percent of the critical density needed to "close" the universe.  This phenomena suggests that the universe be "open." Cosmologists continue to debate this question, just as they are also trying to figure out the nature of the missing mass, or "dark matter."

It is believed that this dark matter dictates the structure of the Universe on the grandest of scales.  Dark matter gravitationally attracts normal matter. Recent measurements with telescopes and space probes led to the recognition that galaxies are filled with dark matter and have shown that a mysterious force-a dark energy- fills the vacuum of empty space, accelerating the universe's expansion.

Astronomers now recognize that the eventual fate of the universe is inextricably tied to the presence of dark energy and dark matter.The current standard model for cosmology describes a universe that is 70 percent dark energy, 25 percent dark matter, and only 5 percent normal matter.

We don't know what dark energy is, or why it exists but a naïve calculation of the dark energy generated from the vacuum yields a value 10120 times larger than the amount we observe.  Some unknown physical process is required to eliminate most, but not all, of the vacuum energy, leaving enough left to drive the accelerating expansion of the universe.

A new theory of particle physics is required to explain this physical process. The universe as we see it contains only the stable relics and leftovers of the big bang: unstable particles have decayed away with time, and the perfect symmetries have been broken as the universe has cooled, but the structure of space remembers all the particles and forces we can no longer see around us.

Discovering what it is that makes up the heart of the Great Attractor — will surely rank as one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science. Recent findings suggest these motions are the result of gravitational forces from not one, but two things: the Great Attractor, and a conglomerate of galaxies far beyond it. The location of the Great Attractor was finally determined in 1986 and lies at a distance of 250 million light years from the Milky Way, in the direction of the Hydra and Centaurus constellations. 

That region of space is dominated by the Norma cluster, a massive cluster of galaxies, and contains a preponderance of large, old galaxies, many of which are colliding with their neighbors, and or radiating large amounts of radio waves. Major concentration of galaxies lies beyond the Great Attractor, near the so-called Shapley Supercluster, 500 million light-years away-the most massive known super-cluster.  Mapping X-ray luminous galaxy clusters in the Great Attractor region has shown that the pull our galaxy is experiencing is most likely due to both the nearby Great Attractor and these more distant structures.

In the 1987, a group of astronomers known as the "Seven Samurai," at Cal Tech uncovered this coordinated motion of the Milky Way and our several million nearest galactic neighbors.  They found that galaxies are very unevenly distributed in space, with galactic super-clusters separated by incredibly huge voids of visible ordinary matter.  The place towards which we all appear headed was originally called the New Supergalactic Center or the Very Massive Object until one of the discoverers, Alan Dressler, decided they needed a more evocative name and came up with "The Great Attractor."

The motion of local galaxies indicated there was something massive out there that are pulling the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, and other nearby galaxies towards it.  For a while, nobody could see what it was, because it lies behind the plane of our Galaxy — that means the gas and dust in our Galaxy obscures the light from the Great Attractor, and it is outshone by the stars and other objects in our Galaxy.

The Great Attractor is a diffuse concentration of matter some 400 million light-years in size located around 250 million light-years away within the so-called "Centaurus Wall" of galaxies , about seven degrees off the plane of the Milky Way.  X-ray observations with the ROSAT satellite then revealed that Abell 3627 is at the center of the Great Attractor.  It lies in the so-called Zone of Avoidance, where the dust and stars of the Milky Way's disk obscures as much as a quarter of the Earth's visible sky.

Daily Galaxy

US, China Agree to Discuss Cooperation in Space

The United States and China have agreed to discuss expanded cooperation in space exploration and science.  According to a joint statement released in Beijing on Tuesday, the two counties will start a "dialogue" on human space flight and exploration, and both nations looked forward to reciprocal visits by the NASA administrator and appropriate Chinese space leaders in 2010. 

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, currently in Japan, said cooperation on the high frontier could pay dividends for both countries.

"I am perfectly willing, if that's the direction that comes to me, to engage the Chinese in trying to make them a partner in any space endeavor," Bolden said, according to AFP.  "I think they're a very capable nation.

"They have demonstrated their capability to do something that only two other nations that have done, that is, to put humans in space.  And I think that is an achievement you cannot ignore." He said China is a nation "that is trying to really lead" and that if the two space powers cooperate, "we would probably be better off than if we would not."

From the joint statement:

The United States and China look forward to expanding discussions on space science cooperation and starting a dialogue on human space flight and space exploration, based on the principles of transparency, reciprocity and mutual benefit.  Both sides welcome reciprocal visits of the NASA Administrator and the appropriate Chinese counterpart in 2010.

The statement also said the two countries applaud the rich achievements in scientific and technological cooperation and exchanges between the two countries over the past 30 years, and agreed to further upgrade the level of exchanges and cooperation in scientific and technological innovation through the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Science and Technology Cooperation.

 Universe Today

Romanian Group Attempts Moon Mission With Giant Balloon

The first attempt to send a rocket to the Moon via balloon hit a snag on Monday.  The first test of the Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association's (ARCA) balloon-launched rocket (or "rockoon") ended in failure when the "inflation arms" used to fill the balloon became entangled in the balloon itself. 

The arms had to be cut, and the operation – which required the use of a large naval frigate – was curtailed.  ARCA hopes to compete in the Google Lunar X PRIZE, and intends on using their unusual rocket system to send an equally unique spherical lunar lander to win a $30 million prize.

Rockoons were tried and then abandoned by the US in the 1950s because they blew off course in windy conditions. ARCA's European Lunar Explorer (ELE) is a simple design.  The super-huge balloon carrying a system of three rockets will soar to about 11 miles (18 km) up.  Then the first two rocket stages will fire and boost the system into low Earth orbit, and use the final stage to boost it to the Moon. 

The ELE will then travel to the moon and deploy its Lunar Lander, which resembles a knobby rubber ball that uses its own rocket engine to ensure a soft landing.  Watch their video of how it all will work below: (If nothing else, watch it for the great music!)

On Monday, the Romanians loaded their prototype moon-balloon rocket onto the a large Romanian naval frigate, the Constanta, which took the entire crew out to the launch site in the Black Sea. But as the balloon started to inflate, the inflation mechanism arms got tangled, and the entire operation had to be abandoned.  The giant black balloon collects heat from the sun instead of using burners like hot-air balloons normally use, so it needs to launch during the day.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE challenges participants to construct a delivery system that will get a rover to the Moon, where the robot has to drive for about 500 meters, take high-resolution pictures of its surroundings, and then send them back home.
Undoubtedly, the ARCA team will try again.

See the images from Monday's launch attempt.

Google Lunar X PRIZE

Universe Today

Space shuttle Atlantis: Launch Sparks Kids' Interest in Science 

After watching last week's launch and discussing space exploration, the following websites offer educational games and fun for kids to learn even more about space.

• NASA’s Space Place is the official NASA website for kids and offers word puzzles, scrambled pictures, crazy quizzes, and even a board game. There are many games graded by level where children can build their own rocket from a blueprint and watch it take off, dance on the moon, play logic or math games, or visit the space image galley.

• Kaboose is a great resource for free space games and activities, including a Space Activity Center, Planet Pursuit and Alien Armada.

• Kids Astronomy lets kids play exciting astronomy games developed for children. These interactive games range from educational, to just plain fun.

• Learn 4 Good features a brand new space game for kids called “Space Escape.”

• Arty Astronaut is a great space exploration portal, and features great activities, like “Travel the Solar System,” “Space-pedia” and a close-up look at the space shuttle.

 Butterfly Experiment Goes Into Space

Monarch and painted lady butterfly larvae rode into space Monday aboard space shuttle Atlantis in an experiment to be monitored by thousands of U.S.  students.

The University of Colorado at Boulder butterfly larvae educational payload was designed and built by BioServe Space Technologies, a NASA- funded center located in the university's aerospace engineering department.

CU-Boulder, with the help of the K-12 students, will compare the growth and development of butterfly larvae in the weightless environment of the International Space Station with butterfly larvae being raised simultaneously in participating classrooms on Earth.

The project is the fourth educational experiment to be flown by CU-Boulder aboard the space station.

"One of the most exciting things about this project is that we can use the International Space Station to bring spaceflight experiments into classrooms around the country," BioServe Director Louis Stodieck said.  "Our continuing goal is to inspire K-12 students around the country in science, technology, engineering and math." About 100 elementary and middle schools across the nation are to officially participate in the project, with hundreds of other schools monitoring the experiment.

Space Daily 

Send A Message to Venus

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is enhancing people's interest in space and the Earth by holding a message campaign.  People are invited to send messages that will be printed in fine letters on an aluminium plate and placed aboard the Venus Climate Orbiter AKATSUKI.

Messages are being accepted from Japan and overseas, so the feelings and thoughts of everybody in the world can be combined in a single place and injected into the orbit of Venus. 

Through this campaign JAXA aims to boost the public's knowledge about space science research activities in Japan as well as abroad.  This project is in cooperation with the IYA2009 Japan Committee.

The Venus Climate Orbiter AKATSUKI is the world's first planetary meteorological observation satellite to unveil the mysteries of wind on Venus.

It will explore the atmospheric movement and cloud formation process.  Ultimately, this mission aims to deepen our understanding of the formation process of the Earth's environment and its future by comparing Venus and the Earth.  Its planned launch date is May 2010, to arrive at Venus in December 2010.

To register your message, please visit: http://www.jaxa.jp/event/akatsuki/index_e.html

IYA Newsletter

 Great Fireball Over The Western USA Nov.  18, 2009

As forecasters predicted, the Leonid meteor shower peaked during the late hours of Nov.  17th, favoring sky watchers in Asia with an outburst of 100+ meteors per hour.  Just as the outburst was dying down, an even bigger event took place over the western USA. 

Something hit Earth's atmosphere and exploded with an energy equivalent of 0.5 to 1 kiloton of TNT.  Witnesses in Colorado, Utah, Idaho and elsewhere say the fireball "turned night into day" and "shook the ground" when it exploded just after midnight Mountain Standard Time. 

Researchers who are analyzing infrasound recordings of the blast say the fireball was not a Leonid.  It was probably a small asteroid, now scattered in fragments across the countryside. 

Efforts are underway to measure the trajectory of the asteroid and guide meteorite recovery efforts. 

What Are 'Shooting Stars'

The best-known meteor showers are the Perseids (around 12 August – dust from comet Swift-Tuttle), the Leonids (around 17 November – dust from comet Tempel-Tuttle) and the Geminids (around 13 December – dust from the object '3200 Phaethon', though to be an extinct comet). A bright line of light appears across the night sky – and popular wisdom would have us believe that any person witnessing a shooting star is entitled to make a wish.  With eyes closed, that person must then make their wish, but not tell anyone else what it is.

Science also takes an interest in these optical phenomena in the atmosphere, and calls them meteors.  These arise whenever minute particles – known as meteoroids – collide with Earth's atmosphere and burn up in the friction and heat resulting from that high-speed collision. In the process, molecules from the meteoroid are ionised along its flight path, causing them to glow – so, for a short time, a luminous trail is visible across the sky.  This phenomenon usually takes place at altitudes of between 80 and 120 kilometres.

These meteoroids, usually no more than a millimetre in diameter, originate from asteroids and comets.  Most commonly, meteors occur sporadically and in isolation.  Sometimes, though, meteor showers occur, when more than 100 shooting stars per hour can often be observed.  What causes this to happen? For the most part, meteor showers are caused by comets that move close to the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun (the 'ecliptic' plane). Whenever these comets approach the Sun, their surface ice starts to evaporate, ejecting particles of dust in the process.

These particles then distance themselves from the core of the comet and commonly arrange themselves in a tube-shaped cloud.  Whenever the Earth approaches one of these clouds of particles, a large number of the particles collide with Earth's atmosphere and burn up to create 'shooting stars' or, more accurately, to form meteors.A meteoroid can give rise to a meteor, which then falls to Earth as a meteorite.

Due to the fact that the orbits of comets around the Sun virtually never alter, encounters of this nature occur at regular intervals at certain times of year. The best-known meteor showers are the Perseids (around 12 August – dust from comet Swift-Tuttle), the Leonids (around 17 November – dust from comet Tempel-Tuttle) and the Geminids (around 13 December – dust from the object '3200 Phaethon', though to be an extinct comet).  If a larger meteoroid fails to burn up completely in the atmosphere, and then reaches the surface of Earth as a solid body, this is referred to as a meteorite. "ite' means small.

Space Daily 

Impact Near India May Have Doomed Dinosaurs

 A mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater the world has ever seen.  And if a new study is right, it may have been responsible for killing the dinosaurs off 65 million years ago.

Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University and a team of researchers took a close look at the massive Shiva basin, a submerged depression west of India that is intensely mined for its oil and gas resources.  Some complex craters are among the most productive hydrocarbon sites on the planet.  Chatterjee will present his research at this month's Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon.

"If we are right, this is the largest crater known on our planet," Chatterjee said.  "A bolide of this size, perhaps 40 kilometers (25 miles) in diameter creates its own tectonics." By contrast, the object that struck the Yucatan Peninsula, and is commonly thought to have killed the dinosaurs was between 8 and 10 kilometers (5 and 6.2 miles) wide.

It's hard to imagine such a cataclysm.  But if the team is right, the Shiva impact vaporized Earth's crust at the point of collision, leaving nothing but ultra-hot mantle material to well up in its place.  It is likely that the impact enhanced the nearby Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions that covered much of western India.  What's more, the impact broke the Seychelles islands off of the Indian tectonic plate, and sent them drifting toward Africa.

The geological evidence is dramatic.  Shiva's outer rim forms a rough, faulted ring some 500 kilometers in diameter, encircling the central peak, known as the Bombay High, which would be 3 miles tall from the ocean floor (about the height of Mount McKinley).  Most of the crater lies submerged on India's continental shelf, but where it does come ashore it is marked by tall cliffs, active faults and hot springs.  The impact appears to have sheared or destroyed much of the 30-mile-thick granite layer in the western coast of India.

The team hopes to go India later this year to examine rocks drill from the center of the putative crater for clues that would prove the strange basin was formed by a gigantic impact.

"Rocks from the bottom of the crater will tell us the telltale sign of the impact event from shattered and melted target rocks.  And we want to see if there are breccias, shocked quartz, and an iridium anomaly," Chatterjee said.  Asteroids are rich in iridium, and such anomalies are thought of as the fingerprint of an impact.

Texas Tech University:

 Government-Sponsored SETI  - In The 1920's

Here's a 1924 telegram from then Chief of U.S.  Naval Operations, Edward W.  Eberle, instructing all Naval stations to monitor the airwaves for any unusual transmissions due to anticipated contact from Martians. 

August 22nd of that year was witness to the closest Mars opposition since 1804 (a mere 55,777,566 km), and as such provided desirable conditions in which to receive radio signals from the Red Planet. 

The man tasked with clearing the airwaves – a Professor David Todd – somehow managed to persuade both the Army and Navy to report any findings for a three day period, but failed to silence the country's private radio broadcasters for even two days. Needless to say, the three day exercise produced nothing but static.

On Orbit

 NEWS SNIPPETS  

 Close-up movie shows hidden details in the birth of super-suns (w/ Video) 

 Camera Network Spies Anomalous Meteorite

Just Released! Video of Tranquility Base via LRO  

LRO's Closer Look at Apollo 11 Landing Site  

 $900k Prize Awarded For 'Space Elevator' Games

Is Doomsday Coming? Perhaps, but Not in 2012

Rebirth of the LHC: The Search the God Particle Resumes  

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   FEATURE STORY

  Mars – A Tale of Planetary Woe 

 Once upon a time — roughly four billion years ago — Mars was warm and wet, much like Earth.  Liquid water flowed on the Martian surface in long rivers that emptied into shallow seas.  A thick atmosphere blanketed the planet and kept it warm.  Living microbes might have even arisen, some scientists believe, starting Mars down the path toward becoming a second life-filled planet next door to our own.

But that's not how things turned out.  Mars today is bitter cold and bone dry.  The rivers and seas are long gone.  Its atmosphere is thin and wispy, and if Martian microbes still exist, they're probably eking out a meager existence somewhere beneath the dusty Martian soil.

What happened?  Why did Mars dry up and freeze over?  These haunting questions have long puzzled scientists.  A few years from now we might finally know the answer, thanks to a new orbiter NASA will send to Mars called MAVEN (short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution).

"The goal of MAVEN is to figure out what processes were responsible for those changes in the climate," says Bruce Jakosky, Principal Investigator for MAVEN at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

One way or another, scientists believe, Mars must have lost its most precious asset: its thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide.  CO2 in Mars's atmosphere is a greenhouse gas, just as it is in our own atmosphere.  A thick blanket of CO2 and other greenhouse gases would have provided the warmer temperatures and greater atmospheric pressure required to keep liquid water from freezing solid or boiling away.

Over the last four billion years, Mars somehow lost most of that blanket.  Scientists have proposed various theories for how that loss happened.

Perhaps an asteroid impact blew most of the atmosphere into space in one catastrophic event.  Or maybe erosion by the solar wind — a stream of charged particles emanating from the sun — could have slowly stripped the atmosphere away over eons.  The planet's surface might also have absorbed the CO2 and locked it up in minerals such as carbonate.

Ultimately, nobody knows for sure where all the missing CO2 went.  MAVEN will be the first mission to Mars specifically designed to help scientists understand the ongoing escape of CO2 and other gases into space.  The probe will orbit Mars for at least one Earth-year.  At the elliptical orbit's low point, MAVEN will be 125 km above the surface; its high point will take it more than 6000 km out into space. 

This wide range of altitudes will enable MAVEN to sample Mars's atmosphere more thoroughly than ever before.
As it orbits, MAVEN's instruments will track ions and molecules in this broad cross-section of the Martian atmosphere, thoroughly documenting the flow of CO2 and other molecules into space for the first time.

Once Jakosky and his colleagues know how quickly Mars is losing CO2 right now, they can extrapolate backward in time to estimate the total amount lost to space during the last four billion years.  "MAVEN will determine if [loss to space] was the most important player," Jakosky says.

But just as important as "how much?" is the question of "how?" Conventional wisdom holds that Mars's atmosphere is vulnerable because the planet lacks a global magnetic field.  Earth's magnetic field stretches far out into space and envelopes the whole planet in a protective bubble that deflects the solar wind. 

Mars has only regional, patchy magnetic fields that cover relatively small areas of the planet, mostly in the southern hemisphere.  The rest of the atmosphere is fully exposed to the solar wind.  So the loss could be caused by the slow erosion of the atmosphere in these exposed areas Planetary scientists believe that waterfalls may have once cascaded down these steep cliffs at Echus Chasma on Mars.  Mars has many desiccated landscapes like this one, thought to have been sculpted by abundant water in the distant past.  Photo credit: Mars Express/ESA.

David Brain of UC Berkeley has proposed another, seemingly contrary possibility.  These small magnetic fields might actually hasten the loss of Mars's atmosphere, Brain suggests.

The solar wind might buffet those magnetic field lines, occasionally pinching off a "bubble" of field lines that then drifts off into space — carrying a large chunk of the atmosphere with it.  If so, having a partial magnetic field might be worse than having none at all.  This possibility was described in "Solar Wind Rips Up Martian Atmosphere."

Some evidence from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft supports Brain's theory, but decisive measurements will have to wait for MAVEN, currently scheduled to launch in 2013. The mission will be a big step toward understanding what happened to Mars — how it ended up so cold and dry after such a warm and watery beginning.  After all these years, MAVEN could write the final chapter in a haunting tale of planetary woe.
Physorg
 

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ASTRO PIC OF THE WEEK

 Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive as the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are not likely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides.  Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants.  Known collectively as Arp…

Daily Galaxy

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  == In The Sky This Week == 

 The first quarter Moon is Wednesday November 25.  In the morning, bright red Mars is readily visible in the eastern sky.  Saturn is low in the morning sky this week, but is now readily visible before twilight sets in.  Mars, Saturn and the bright star Regulus form a straight line in the morning skies.  Jupiter is easily seen as the brightest object in the western evening sky. 

The waxing Moon is near Jupiter on Tuesday November 24.  Jupiter is big enough to be appreciated in even the smallest telescope and its moons are readily visible in binoculars or a small telescope.  The variable star Mira has peaked in brightness and is slowly fading.  It may be seen above the eastern horizon around 10pm AEDT above a loop of stars just above Taurus. 

This week we have a chance to see the classical eclipsing variable star Algol dim and brighten under reasonable circumstances.  On Wednesday November 25 from 10pm AEDT you can watch Algol fade rapidly until it disappears around midnight.

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