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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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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.
Mr. Reneke Did I read correctly that you believe the birthday of Christ is 17 June 2 B.C.E?
Jack H.
Hi Jack
No. What I said was we found evidence for what might have been the fabled 'Xmas Star – it was not a validation of anyone's birthday. Some press reports though misread my release claiming it verified Christ's birthday. I have an E-Book on the entire research go to www.davidreneke.com
Dave
Hi Dave,
Not sure if you remember me, I sent a thank you email a few months ago as I find your site and your emails so interesting. Because you have stirred so much interest for me, my wonderful wife decided that for Christmas she would buy me my first telescope (at 50 years young this year). So I am now the proud owner of a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ. I have done some initial feeble viewing of the moon…….that was reasonably easy to find being the biggest whitish grayish thing in the sky at night. Am I correct that the eyepieces are interchangeable for more powerful one's?, I spent an hour or so working though the calculations to establish the overall power of the telescope and wondered if the 20 X eyepiece can be easily interchanged with more powerful ones to enable me to get a small sighting of say Saturn (at the right time of year of course). The software that came with the telescope is very good, it provides a clever preview of what one might be able to see on a clear night.
Hope you don't mind me seeking your advice.
Regards, Gary P.
Hi Gary
Yep I remember you and I don't mind at all you asking questions. Glad you got a scope, now let's get you using it mate. I really believe you should also join your local astronomical club. You will learn so much!!! Then eyepieces DO change the magnification power… not the telescope mirror or lens. To find the X-power (magnification) you are using with any given eyepiece simply divide the size of the eyepiece (printed on the side or on top in mm… something like 12mm) by the focal length of the scope. Usually a small plate attached to the scope that will have a large figure on it called 'focal length: 900mm… or 1000mm. etc.
Dave
Hi Mr. Reneke:
We find your talks on ABC Radio or local Adelaide radio 5AA (?) to be quite good PLUS You admit to the existence of UFO's which we find extraordinary. Some astronomers witnessing a UFO will perhaps admit it for a few moments afterwards, but in days weeks years following the event will carefully omit it in their salary concious career concious conversations. UFOSA
We should thank you for creating such a informative weblog. Your website happens to be not only useful but also very inventive too. There are only few bloggers who can think to write technical content that creatively. All of us look for content with regard to this topic. We ourselves searched in several websites to build up on information with regard to this.I will check back often !! metafever.com
Dave
Hi there. Been reading your blog since way back than when there's still updates regularly but never once dropped a comment before. 
May you have a pleasant 2010!
Hi David,
My friend who doesn't believe as I do is curious about when the planets were named as Saturn, Jupiter etc & given their meanings 'protector of the Jews & planet of kings'. Could u please explain this to me as he is quite a skeptic & an intellectual who seems to be able to pick holes in anything to do with creation & Christianity in general though he has recently shown interest in archaeology concerning the Bible. I will also have a look at your website mentioned in the newspaper article where I read about the Christmas star.
Thanks & God bless you.Janice
Hi Janice The planet names are derived from Roman and Greek mythology, except for the name Earth which is Germanic and Old English in origin. The five planets easily visible with the unaided eye (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) have been observed for all human history as far as we can tell, and they were called different things by different cultures. The Romans named these planets according to their movements and appearance. For example, Venus, the planet that appears the brightest, was named after the Roman goddess of beauty, while the reddish Mars was named after the god of war. These Roman names were adopted by European languages and culture and became standard in science. When Uranus and Neptune were discovered, there was not an established tradition in place so a few names were considered and used for each planet, until one name became standard. William Herschel, who discovered Uranus, wanted to name it "Georgium Sidus" after King George III. Other astronomers called it "Herschel" after the discoverer. The astronomer Johann Bode suggested that it would be more appropriate to use the mythological name Uranus, which would match with the five planets that were named in antiquity. Despite the suggestion, the name Uranus was not commonly used until 1850. Although the Roman names for the planets are standard in science, other languages do have different names for planets. A good list is at this SEDS website. The name Pluto was given because it's appropriate for the most distant world to be named after the god of the underworld. Now, the Biblical association is nothing to do with astronomers or astronomy. Each religion sees the planets according to their own beliefs and so names thema accordinglt. Hope this helps.
Regards: Dave
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Our Marks left On Another World!
The Opportunity Mars rover has been sitting by a rock called Marquette Island since early November 2009. The stay has given the rover a bit of a respite from the "pedal to the metal" driving regimen in its attempt to get to faraway Endeavour Crater.
But Oppy hasn't been just soaking in the rays, or kicking back doing nothing. She's been conducting a thorough examination of the rock, and on Sol 2110 (Dec. 24, 2009), Oppy's Rock Abrasion Tool dug in and left a mark on Marquette Island, a 1.5 millimeters (0.06 inch) hole.
Then subsequent observations of the hole were made by the microscopic imager, to create a close-up mosaic of the innards of the rock, and the Mössbauer spectrometer was positioned on a different rock target for a long integration.
Stu Atkinson created this colorized version of Oppy's latest look at Marquette. After the rover hits the dusty trail again, will humans ever see Marquette Island again?
Caption: Opportunity leaves a mark on the Marquette Island rock on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL/U of AZ, colorization by Stuart Atkinson
"In a hundred years this rock will be on display in the Museum of Mars – just down the hall from the "MER Gallery" where Spirit and Oppy are displayed in all their restored glory," Stu said, "and there'll be an attendant on duty beside it all the time, to stop tall, pale-skinned martian kids on school trips from leaning over the barrier and poking their dirty, sticky fingers into the hole Oppy ratted in it."
The plan ahead for Oppy is to collect an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) spectrum and a MB spectrum from the RAT hole, before resuming the drive toward Endeavour crater. Obviously, the science team must find Marquette Island quite interesting to spend so much time there, and it will be interesting to hear the results of the observations.
As of Sol 2110 (Dec. 24, 2009), Opportunity's solar-array energy production was 315 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (tau) of 0.491 and a dust factor of 0.509. Total odometry was 18,927.56 meters (11.76 miles).
Universe Today
MORE ASTRO-SPACE NEWS
Astro – Dave FIRST WEEK DOING ASTRONOMY ON THE 'SOUTHERN SPIRIT'
I
My wife Robin and I were flown to Melbourne last week to join up with the tour and had an absolutely amazing time. This train is fabulous, the service is second to none and the onboard food probably better than I've experiernced in any overseas top class restaurant.
The best views of the night sky are found in the
We watched several first class astro movies, a presenter had a special 30 min talk all about the Dish telling us what did and didn;t really happen at Parkes on that special Moon landing day. I got big crowd outside after that and ran a laser guided sky tour that seemed to be very well received indeed.
We traced out some of the better constellations and I showed them how to tell the difference between stars and planets. I explained how the early explorers navigated by the patterns in the night sky. I also demonstrated an easy way to locate the south pole using the Southern Cross.
Pics (left: )The Southern Spirit's spacious dining car where I unfortunately sampled a little too much Merlot and (above) Dave with GSR Boss Ewald at Parkes Visitor Centre. This pic was taken before I headed off to the counter to pay for a few 'astro goodies I couldn't resist.!!
Robin and I are joing the tour again this week for the return journey from Queensland. I'll be talking to a whole new group of passengers. I can highly recommend this trip.
One of the best train journeys in the world. I guess it gets even better for us as all expenses have been covered … and I get paid to do the tours!! More next week.
The Biggest Black Hole in the Universe (It's BIG!)
S
cientists have determined the mass of the largest things that could possibly exist in our universe. New results have placed an upper limit on the current size of black holes – and at fifty billion suns it's pretty damn big. That's a hundred thousand tredagrams, and you'll never get the chance to use that word in relation to anything else.Black holes are regions of space where matter is so dense that regular physics just breaks down.
You might think physical laws are immutable – you can't get out of gravitational attraction the same way you can get out of a speeding ticket – but beyond a certain level laws which determine how matter is regulated are simply overloaded and material is crushed down into something that's less an object and more a region of altered space.
While there's theoretically no upper limit on how big a black hole can be, there are hard limits on how big they could have become by now. The universe has only existed for a finite amount of time, and even the most voracious black hole can only suck in matter at a certain rate. The bigger the black hole, the bigger the gravitational field and the faster it can pull in matter – but that same huge gravitational gradient means that the same matter can release huge amounts of radiation as it falls, blasting other matter further away.
Based on this self-regulating maximum rate, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Massachusetts, and the European Southern Observatory, Chile, have calculated an upper limit for these mega-mammoth masses. Fifty billion suns, that's 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg, otherwise known as "ridiculously stupidly big" and triple the size of the largest observed black hole, OJ 287.
There are potential problems with this calculation. Based as it is on the radiation outflow from a black hole, new discoveries could change this estimate – though only from "insanely massive" to "ridiculously ginormous."
Universe Today
For Sale Cheap: Used Space Shuttles
NASA has made a bargain basement offer to sell at least two slightly used but in good shape space shuttles for a price that seems—what should I say?—out of this world!
The U.S. space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, doesn’t want the space shuttles to lie around taking up space and getting dusty. So they’re up for sale at $28.8 million each, which is down drastically from $42 million offered originally.
The remaining U.S. space shuttles are Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour, and Enterprise (although it has never flown in space). The space shuttle Discovery is already headed to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, but the other two (Endeavour and Atlantis) are definitely up for sale.
Since it hasn't flown in space, only partially through Earth's atmosphere, the space shuttle Enterprise may also be put on the auction block— maybe at an even cheaper price?
The current mission schedule for the Space Transportation System (STS) program, commonly called the Space Shuttle program, will end in September 2010 with the last mission of the space shuttles now scheduled for September 16.
The space shuttle Discovery is the last space shuttle scheduled to fly into space, on its STS-133 mission to the International Space Station for a delivery of the (1) MPLM Leonardo, which is a modified Pressurized Multipurpose Module (PMM), or a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) and (2) ExPRESS Logistics Carrier 4 (ELC4).
The STS-133 mission will be the 134th and final flight of the STS program, which began in 1981.The lower price for the space shuttles is based on the cost of transporting them from the NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida to major airports in the United States and, then, setting them up inside climate-controlled buildings for display.
Different locations of airports may necessitate a slight difference in costs for the transportation of them by NASA. Currently, people or organizations interested in purchasing a space shuttle have until February 19, 2010 to make an offer. About twenty such entities have shown interest. If one is purchased, NASA states that they can hand over the keys to the space shuttles by the last half of 2011.
According to the January 16, 2010 New York Times article “Deep Discount on Space Shuttles,” if you buy a space shuttle you may get free stuff with the deal. It states, “As for the space shuttle main engines, those are now free. NASA advertised them in December 2008 for $400,000 to $800,000 each, but no one expressed interest. So now the engines are available, along with other shuttle artifacts, for the cost of transportation and handling.”
So, go ahead and buy two. They would make great looking bookends, maybe to hold up a series of defunked satellites, unused rockets, and various other castoff space stuff.
IT Wire
At Home With Luke Skywalker: The Planetary Promise Of Double Stars
So it's Sunday afternoon. Time to pause in our consideration of deep philosophical issues like the nature of truth, the fate of culture and the always weighty question of if the fridge light really does go out when you close the door. Time to just think about a little chunk of science.
In his famous short story Nightfall Isaac Asimov imagines the fate of the planet Lagash that orbits a multiple star system (6 stars in all). The inhabitants of Lagash are always surrounded by their stars and so live in perpetual day. They have no conception of night or knowledge of stars beyond those that light up their sky.
Only a few scientists have begun to recognize the truth as they probe both the astronomy and archeology of their world (there is evidence of a great collapse of civilization every few milleninia). Their investigations come too late however as the once every 2049 years arrangement of orbital motion brings spreading darkness to the planet.
The story ends as panic and terror erupt and the civilization once again plunges into a self-created chaos.
It's a great tale and one that raised a relevant scientific point about life on multiple star systems. Astronomers know that only half the stars in the galaxy are loners like our sun. Most stars are born with at least one sibling. The distance between the two stars in these binaries can vary from close companions with orbital periods of days to distant relatives with orbits that take centuries. The creation and fate of planets in these systems has been a topic of hot debate in the last few years as astronomers accumulate a growing census of worlds orbiting other single stars.
Now it appears that these multiple star systems may be prodigious in the creation of planets. In addition ongoing studies by some groups show that planets can find stable orbits within some types of multiple star systems. For many years it was assumed that planets that formed in multiple stars systems would live on highly fragile orbits. After a few million (or billion) years the orbits would go "unstable" and the planets would be tossed into the frigid depths of space. Taken together these studies show that astronomers may be building a case that binarity and habitability might not be mutually exclusive.
So perhaps that scene in star wars where Luke Skywalker stares into the twin suns of Tatooine and contemplates his destiny ("Luke I am your podiatrist") might not seem so far fetched.
NPR
Russia Offers a Hand With Toilet Clog in Space
Russia has offered its astronauts’ help in unclogging a high-tech toilet on the International Space Station that is reportedly backed up because of excess calcium in astronauts’ urine.
Aleksandr Vorobyov, a spokesman for Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said a Russian crew member had helped repair a toilet in the American sector of the space station six months ago, so “they have some experience in this line of work.”
The comments came in response to an article in the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, which quoted the station’s flight director, David Korth, as saying, “We’ve learned a lot more about urine than we ever needed or wanted to know.” The problematic toilet was designed to purify urine into drinkable water.
Scientists do not yet know if the high calcium concentration is due to bone loss, a consequence of living in a zero-gravity environment, or other factors."We've learned a lot more about urine than we ever needed or wanted to know — some of us anyway," said station flight director David Korth.The $100 billion space station project involving 16 nations has been under construction 220 miles above the Earth for more than a decade.
Before the urine recycler was started up in November 2008, it was fully tested by NASA. "Folks had good knowledge of the content of the urine going in, but the chemistry changes as it works through the processor are not always understood," said program scientist Julie Robinson. "There are a lot of parameters including urine calcium and pH (acidity) that everyone is looking at."
Engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, are hoping to come up with a fix in time to fly replacement parts out on the shuttle Endeavour, which is scheduled for launch on February 7 on a construction mission.
NY Times et al
A Cannon for Shooting Supplies into Space
John Hunter wants to shoot stuff into space with a 3,600-foot gun. And he’s dead serious—he’s done the math. Making deliveries to an orbital outpost on a rocket costs $5,000 per pound, but using a space gun would cost just $250 per pound.
Building colossal guns has been Hunter’s pet project since 1992, when, while a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he first fired a 425-foot gun he built to test-launch hypersonic engines. Its methane-driven piston compressed hydrogen gas, which then expanded up the barrel to shoot a projectile.
Mechanical firing can fail, however, so when Hunter’s company, Quicklaunch, released its plans last fall, it swapped the piston for a combustor that burns natural gas. Heat the hydrogen in a confined space and it should build up enough pressure to send a half-ton payload into the sky at 13,000 mph.
Hunter wants to operate the gun, the “Quicklauncher,” in the ocean near the equator, where the Earth’s fast rotation will help slingshot objects into space. A floating cannon—dipping 1,600 feet below sea level and steadied by a ballast system—would let operators swivel it for different orbits. Next month, Hunter will test a functional, 10-foot prototype in a water tank. He says a full-size launcher could be ready in seven years, provided the company can round up the $500 million.
Despite the upfront cost, Hunter says he has drawn interest from investors because his reusable gun saves so much cash in the long haul. Just don’t ever expect a ride in the thing: The gun produces 5,000 Gs, so it’s only for fuel tanks and ruggedized satellites. “A person shot out of it would probably get compressed to half their size,” Hunter says. “It’d be over real quick.”
How to Shoot Stuff into Space
STEP 1: HEAT IT The gun combusts natural gas in a heat exchanger within a chamber of hydrogen gas, heating the hydrogen to 2,600°F and causing a 500 percent increase in pressure.
STEP 2: LET THE HYDROGEN LOOSE
Operators open the valve, and the hot, pressurized hydrogen quickly expands down the tube, pushing the payload forward.
STEP 3: TO INFINITY AND BEYOND
After speeding down the 3,300-foot-long barrel, the projectile shoots out of the gun at 13,000 mph. An iris at the end of the gun closes, capturing the hydrogen gas to use again. Simple huh? Wanna ride?
PoPSci
Celestial Rarity: 2 'Blue Moons' in 2010
We will have two full moons for the month of January, with the first coming in on Jan. 1 and another on Jan. 30, the latter being the “blue moon.” For the benefit of my complaining Victorian Astro group member who makes a point of watching everything I do, we will see it in Australia too.
For February, there will be no full moon because the month will have 28 days. A full moon has a 29-day cycle. But March will again have two full moons, the first on March 1 and the other, considered the blue moon, on March 30.These events happening in the same year are very rare. This makes a rare lunar year in astronomical terms for 2010.
A blue moon is defined as a second full moon to occur in a month, usually coming at the end of the month. However, the name has nothing to do with the color of the celestial body closest to the Earth.
A full moon is defined as the alignment of the sun, moon and earth in a straight line with the earth in between the two heavenly bodies.
A blue moon on New Year's Eve universal time is rarer and happens every 19 years. The last time this happened was in 1990. The next New Year’s Eve blue moon is set to occur in 2028. Usually, a blue moon in January would mean a double blue moon for 2010. Hence, double blue moons in universal time occur approximately every 19 years.
Inquirer.Net
Was Our Universe Created By a Collision With a Parallel Universe?
String theorists Neil Turok of Cambridge University and Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton believe that the cosmos we see as the Big Bang was actually created by the cyclical trillion-year collision of two universes that were attracted toward each other by the leaking of gravity out of one of the universes.
In their view of the universe the complexities of an inflating universe after a Big Bang are replaced by a universe that was already large. flat, and uniform with dark energy as the effect of the other universe constantly leaking gravity into our own and driving its acceleration.
According to this theory, the Big Bang was not the beginning of time but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of evolution, each accompanied by the creation of new matter and the formation of new galaxies, stars, and planets.
Turok and Steinhardt were inspired by a lecture given by Burt Ovrut who imagined two branes, universes like ours, separated by a tiny gap as tiny as 10-32 meters. There would be no communictaion between the two universes except for our parallel sister universe's gravitational pull, which could cross the tiny gap.
Orvut's theory could explain the effect of dark matter where areas of the universe are heavier than they should be given everything that's present. With their theory, the nagging problems surrounding the Big Bang (beginning from what, and caused how?) are replaced by an eternal cosmic cycle where dark energy is no longer a mysterious unknown quantity, but rather the very extra gravitational force that drives the universe to universe (brane-brane) interaction.
Daily Galaxy
"Are Black Holes Actually White?" Hawking says "Yes"
Stephen Hawkings great discovery was that the mysterious regions in space we call black holes radiate heat through quantum effects. Hawking has said that "black holes are not really black after all: they glow like a hot body, and the smaller they are, the more they glow." Hawking's famous theory says that the temperature of a black hole varies inversely to its mass.
The mathematician Louis Crane proposed a scifi-like scenario back in 1994 that billions of years in the future, after all the stars have burned out, that small black holes could be created to generate heat and guarantee survival of the species.
Meanwhile, up in Hanover, New Hampshire a bold team of researchers at Dartmouth College propose a new way of creating a reproduction black hole in the laboratory on a much-tinier scale than their celestial counterparts. The new method to create a tiny quantum sized black hole would allow researchers to better understand what physicist Stephen Hawking proposed more than 35 years ago: black holes are not totally void of activity; they emit photons, which is now known as Hawking radiation.
"Hawking famously showed that black holes radiate energy according to a thermal spectrum," said Paul Nation, an author on the paper and a graduate student at Dartmouth. "His calculations relied on assumptions about the physics of ultra-high energies and quantum gravity. Because we can't yet take measurements from real black holes, we need a way to recreate this phenomenon in the lab in order to study it, to validate it."
The researchers showed that a magnetic field-pulsed microwave transmission line containing an array of superconducting quantum interference devices, or SQUIDs, not only reproduces physics analogous to that of a radiating black hole, but does so in a system where the high energy and quantum mechanical properties are well understood and can be directly controlled in the laboratory.
"We can also manipulate the strength of the applied magnetic field so that the SQUID array can be used to probe black hole radiation beyond what was considered by Hawking," said Miles Blencowe, another author on the paper and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth. "In addition to being able to study analogue quantum gravity effects, the new, SQUID-based proposal may be a more straightforward method to detect the Hawking radiation," says Blencowe.
Daily Galaxy
Time Travel – Myth or Realty?
Time travel has been one of the fascniating subjects that you'll ever come to know . When you think of Time Travel the first thing that comes to my mind is probably Terminator 1, the very first movie that made you familiar with the concept of time itself.
Time Travel is a concept in which one moves between different moments in time i.e. traveling to ones future or past. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had a chance to go back in time and correct all the mistakes we did? Or go into the future to see how our world looks? Yeah yeah, I got inspired by “Heroes”, so what? Time Travel is not a reality yet but it is proven that it is possible at least on paper. Time Dilation is a concept that explains that time travel is indeed possible and it is derived from Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
Now, nobody has ever known how did the time originate? Or is there an end to time? What do we understand by Present, Past and Future? What we call our present is not even lasting for a moment. Each letter I am typing in this blog entry is continuously converted into my Past. Time itself is a very hard subject for most people to understand.
We know time as something that we measure in seconds, minutes or hour. But there is another face to the concept of ‘Time’. It’s also defined as the fourth dimension of our universe. The other three dimensions are of space, the usual stuff that we learned in our 10th grade, the XYZ axes. Time cannot exist without space and vice versa. This relationship of time and space is defined as ‘Spacetime Continuum’. What it essentially means is that any event in the universe involves both space and time.
Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity states that time slows as an object approaches the speed of light. This leads to the conclusion that traveling faster than the speed of light could open up the possibility of time travel to the past as well as to the future. Now here is the problem. Speed of light is believed to be the highest speed at which something can travel and as an object nears the speed of light, its relativistic mass increases until, at the speed of light, it becomes infinite. Accelerating an infinite mass any faster than that is impossible, or at least it seems to be right now.
That’s not the end of it ! Time Travel is supposed to happen in a very natural way as Hiro Nakamora does it elegantly in the hit series Heroes. Scientists believe that the existance of Black Holes is the key to Time Travel. When stars more than four times the mass of our sun reach the end of their life, they would have burned up all of their fuel and they would collapse under the pressure of their own weight. This implosion creates “Black Holes,” which have gravitational fields so strong that even light cannot escape it’s gravity. Anything that comes in contact with a black hole’s event horizon will be sucked in.
If ‘Black Holes’ exists it might be possible to pass through them and come out of a ‘White Hole’. A ‘White Hole’ would have the reverse action of a black hole i.e. instead of pulling everything into its gravitational force, it’ll push everything out and away from it. These white holes would be the way to enter other times or other worlds. This is just one theory. There are two more, the Wormholes and the Cosmic Strings.
B7ackth0rN
Mysterious Death of First Man in Space Solved?
A study by Russian investigators claims to have pinpointed the circumstances around the mysterious 1968 death of Yuri Gagarin, the first man to go into space. The investigation concludes that the first Soviet cosmonaut was flying a Mig-15 fighter jet on a training mission in 1968 when he realized an air vent was open in the cockpit which was supposed to be hermetically sealed.
Gagarin quickly put the plane into a dive, plunging the plane from 13,000 feet to 6,500 feet as he had been instructed to do. Plummeting towards the earth, Gagarin and his trainer blacked out and crashed into the forest below.
The Telegraph newspaper first reported the theory put forward by former Soviet Air Force Colonel Igor Kuznetsov. He was on the original panel that investigated the crash and in years since has continued to try to unravel the mystery surrounding the flight that killed Gagarin and trainer Vladimir Seryogin.
"Nobody knows what really happened except us," Kuznetsov told the paper. "We need to tell our people and the international community the real reason why the world's first cosmonaut died.”
The official post-accident investigation was never released, causing a range of conspiracy theories to flourish ranging from the pilots being drunk, to Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev ordering Gagarin killed because he was jealous of his fame, to alien abduction.
In 2005, the Kremlin turned down a request to open up the archives of the crash. Kuznetsov emphasized to ABC News that in 1968 it wasn’t known that descending too quickly could cause blackouts, he insists that Gagargin and Seryogin followed their training to the letter. Gagarin became a global celebrity in 1961 when he became the first person to go into space and orbit the earth.
ABC News
He's Everywhere!!! Astro-Dave Number One Story on US TV!
My story on the Xmas Star has certainly been circulated world-wide and has also provoked quite a bit of controversy. I knew it would – that's I wrote it. Funny, it got no criticism from my dopey Victorian critic who likes to goad me. Anyway, I'm chuffed to think it turned out to be the number one story for one night on a major American TV News network. They even got my name right! See the Vid.
Astro-Photo Winner from Northern Galactic
Some members were rather busy during the month of December doing what they do best..astrophotography that is. And there are some NG Members that often manage to squeeze the very best out of their systems and setups.
Many members here at NG use very high quality mounts and optical systems and although we often see superb work from these units, we often keep an eye out for members that do great things without such setups and Decembers winning entry shows just what can be done with skill and patience.
So our December winner is one of our newer members, Louie Atalasidis with a wonderful capture of The Rosette. "Well,a weekend away to a dark site and an image of the Rosette on the one clear night out of three. Location: Yalbraith,N.S.W,Australia.
Congratulations Louie…A Great Image Check out Northern Galactic and Southern Galactic website: www.northerngalactic.com
Will Phoenix Rise Again?
Despite longshot odds, NASA will begin listening for radio signals from the Phoenix lander on Mars next week as a sheet of dry ice recedes with the onset of Martian spring. The HiRISE high-resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this enhanced color image of the Phoenix landing site on Jan. 6, 2010. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Ground teams last heard from Phoenix in November 2008, when the sun began dipping below the horizon at the spacecraft's landing site on Mars' northern polar plains. Phoenix's solar panels could no longer produce enough electricity to power its communications systems.
For the last 14 months, Phoenix has succumbed to a sheet of dry ice, bone-chilling temperatures and months of darkness in the depths of the Martian winter. If Phoenix survived the extreme conditions, the lander should now be receiving enough sunlight to generate power for limited operations. If that is the case, NASA's Odyssey orbiter should be able to hear Phoenix dutifully attempting to call home.
"During these listening campaigns, we will turn on the Odyssey radio as we overfly the Phoenix site and listen for any signal being transmitted by the Phoenix lander," said Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer for Mars programs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
NASA says if Phoenix is trying to communicate, Odyssey will hear it. "If Phoenix were alive and transmitting, we would get a very direct detection, based on the orbiter radio's telemetry, that it's seeing signal power in the UHF band that Phoenix would be transmitting at," Edwards said. Odyssey will first try to listen for Phoenix for three days beginning Jan. 18. The orbiter will fly over Phoenix 30 times next week, monitoring communications frequencies for signals during each pass.
Two more extensive listening campaigns are planned for the middle of February and late March, according to NASA. But NASA officials caution the chances are slim that Phoenix is still able to function. "We think it's very unlikely that we're going to hear from Phoenix. It was certainly not designed to survive the environment that it's experienced over the winter," Edwards said. "At the same time, we want to have a careful look to see if it survived."
Sunlight is currently reaching Phoenix for 17 hours during each 24.7-hour Martian day, or sol. "We're coming out of the winter and we're in the spring," Edwards said. "We have roughly the same illumination conditions that we did when we lost the lander. This is the first time that it really made sense to have a look." Assuming the cold and ice did not damage the lander, Phoenix would automatically wake up when its solar panels generate enough electricity to charge its batteries.
"It would wake up in a mode where it would try to communicate with any assets overhead on a periodic basis," Edwards said. Phoenix would wake up and transmit for two hours each day with the lander's two radios and two antennas, according to Edwards.
Odyssey flies over Phoenix every two hours and is in range of the lander for about 10 minutes during each pass. "Assuming that the thing's there and Odyssey is able to lock on to it, we would also recover the telemetry stream that the lander would be communicating, and we would return that information to Earth," Edwards said.
Engineers may be able to determine what capabilities Phoenix still has after its winter slumber.Phoenix landed on Mars in May 2008, beginning five months of operations that included the confirmation of the existence of water ice just below the surface. By April, Phoenix will be in constant sunlight as summer begins. Edwards said the spacecraft would "certainly" be energy positive by then, if it is alive.
"We think the odds are very low that Phoenix has survived the winter environment," Edwards said. "But if it has, the available energy to it will be increasing over the next few months."
Spaceflight Now
Obama Under Pressure to Reveal UFO and ET Secrets
Paradigm Research Group, a leading UFO truth advocacy group, announced today a renewed international effort to convince Barack Obama to end the 62-year truth embargo preventing formal government acknowledgement of extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race. Also Renewed is pressure on the White House press corps to start asking appropriate questions and demand appropriate answers about connections between key members of the Democratic Party – Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, John Podesta, Leon Panetta and Bill Richardson – and theUFO and ET issue.
Since June 1, 2009 letters, faxes and emails from around the world have been sent to the White House Correspondents’ Association insisting that the reporters in the White House press corps begin asking politically related UFO and ET questions and receive appropriate answers. Samples of this correspondence can be viewed at: http://tinyurl.com/yb4wvay and http://tinyurl.com/62748k
On the July 24, 2009 White Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about this correspondence which he declined to acknowledge. Subsequent queries to the WHCA from reporters such as Billy Cox of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune have also been ignored. In similar fashion thousands of letters, faxes and emails to the President Elect and the President since November 4, 2008 demanding Barack Obama end the truth embargo and call for congressional hearings on the UFO and ET issue have not been acknowledged by the White House.
In similar fashion thousands of letters, faxes and emails to the President Elect and the President since November 4, 2008 demanding Barack Obama end the truth embargo and call for congressional hearings on the UFO/ET issue have not been acknowledged by the White House – no response. Furthermore, the Citizen’s Briefing Book generated during the transition by the Change.gov website was stripped of all UFO/ET related input to the Book prior to submission to the President.
PRG executive director Stephen Bassett stated, “This is not acceptable. France, Denmark, Canada, Australia,Sweden, Brazil, Russia, the United Kingdom and other countries have recently released tens of thousands of UFO/ET related files into the public domain. The message to the U.S. is clear, ‘If you do not end this truth embargo, one of us will.’” “Either Russia or China would benefit enormously by acting first on this issue,” added Bassett.
Allnewsweb.com
UFOs: Science Fiction or Reality?
Look at the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… something out of the ordinary. The earthly skies become more surreal when UFOs fly into the blue yonder. UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) are definitely out of this world, but may be not out of this universe.
These strange flying objects have inspired pop culture, especially films such as “District 9” and “Independence Day,” and have inspired people and governments into further exploration of the weird and bizarre.
UFOs have frightened, flabbergasted, and amazed humans for centuries. But questions about their existence still remain: are UFOs light-years away from scientific reality or just hype? Sightings of strange metallic disks may be odd, but believe it or not, sightings and reports of UFOs are common throughout human history.
Ancient civilizations have observed strange flying objects in the heavens. For instance, the ancient Egyptians recorded tales of strange aerial vessels flying through the clouds. In the year 218 B.C., a plethora of sightings had been observed and recorded by ancient Romans.
Religious texts have illustrated a bizarre portrait of UFOs as well. According to some UFO enthusiasts, the Bible, particularly in the Book of Ezekiel, illustrates a mysterious flying object flying and landing on Chaldea, a place in modern-day Kuwait. In addition, some religions actually praised and welcomed UFOs; religious groups treated UFOs as supernatural beings, angels, prophecies or religious omens.
After the eras of ancient civilizations, UFO observations become more apparent around the world; people in European countries like Germany noticed strange flying objects during the fifteenth century. UFO sightings even appeared during times of war. In World War II, Allies and Axis pilots photographed and witnessed metallic spheres, enlightened balls, and strange shapes following them. Pilots from both sides establish the term “Foo Fighters” to describe the strange phenomena or UFO surrounding their planes (from which the popular rock band took its name).
If witnessing a UFO isn’t bizarre enough, some people claim to be abducted by these weird flying saucers. Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, explained that one night 20 years ago, her soul had been abducted by a UFO and travelled to Venus (after which her soul returned).
Are these UFO sightings and claims logical and scientific? Studies conclude that most of the UFO reports involve a real but conventional object, such as an airplane, weather balloon or astronomical body. The UFO controversy calls the term “science fiction” into question. Who knows? Maybe these UFOs are signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The truth is out there … somewhere.
New University Online
Bulgarian Television Reports UFO Seen By Hundreds
Bulgarian National Television is reporting the sighting of a UFO by hundreds of New Year revellers in Sofia in the first few minutes of 2010, The sighting took place in the capital city Sofia.
The diamond shaped object moved erratically in the sky before disappearing. A number of witnesses noted that they felt the UFO was not of this world. One witness managed to film the UFO.
Bulgaria recently made headlines when it's national space agency made the shock announcement that well-meaning aliens are contacting earth and communicating with humans through a series of crop circles. This finding was the result of a far-reaching study of thousands of crop circles around the world by the space agency. Sightings of UFOs are common in Bulgaria.
All News Web
Brit UFO Reports Triple in 2009
The last ever UFO files have been released by the MoD and they show that sightings of mysterious objects in the sky have almost TRIPLED in a year.In 2009 there were 643 reports of bizarre lights, strange spheres and curious orbs in our skies — a figure only beaten in 1978.
UFO expert Nick Pope said 31 years ago there were 750 reports from panicked members of the public. But this is the last time the Ministry of Defence will release these figures. The government closed their UFO hotline just before the end of last year, after it had been running for almost 60 years.
The files contain sightings from military personnel, police officers and air traffic controllers. Mr Pope, who used to run the MoD's UFO project, said last night: "This is incredible. Britain is being inundated with UFO sightings.
"I'm sure the record would have been smashed had the MoD not terminated the UFO project late last year."These sensational figures just show how wrong that decision was. "There are sightings here from military personnel, police officers and air traffic controllers."
The Sun
* NASA Has Released a Freebie Calendar
Our friends over at SCP Forum have alerted me to this.But WARNING! Large file size (10.2MB)
Download at: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/402659main_2010%20ISScalendar.pdf
TIP: JPL Wallpaper - Our Space Meets Yours
Visit jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper to snag your view of space and read instructions on how to apply your JPL Wallpaper.
FEATURE STORY
Private space stations edge closer to reality
With two prototype modules for a commercial space station already circling the Earth, Bigelow Aerospace is gearing up for a full-scale assault on space.
For the upstart firm, it's about volume — and not entirely in the sense of quantity or number of items sold. The company's expandable module designs are designed to offer low-cost commercial volume in space — for rent or lease — not only to private-sector interests, but also to national space agencies.
Entrepreneur Robert Bigelow founded Bigelow Aerospace in 1999. Over the years, the space businessman has invested some $180 million in his vision, drawing from a bank account built on construction and real estate deals, along with money gleaned from his hotel chain, Budget Suites of America.
As "Mr. B" explains, space is no longer viewed as largely the exclusive domain of large governments and satellite telecommunications companies. Emerging as a key ingredient of the future is the rise of the private sector, hungry to spur a new business case for space. An element of that entrepreneurial zeal is the establishment of commercial space habitats and complexes.
A visitor to Bigelow Aerospace's headquarters in North Las Vegas will find it guarded by a no-nonsense security team, a welcoming force that's part of the gated and sprawling complex.
As I strolled across the floor of the main Bigelow Aerospace construction building, I noticed the place is packed with test structures and fabrication tooling. But the true eye-catchers are full-scale, walk-in mockups of the firm's three-person Sundancer module and the larger BA-330, a unit that offers 330 cubic meters of internal volume for a crew of six. "I think you can only go so far on a computer design and on paper," Bigelow told Space.com.
As we walked through the modules, Bigelow added, "When you have three-dimensional structures you start to recognize things … from a user- friendly standpoint. It's more satisfying to actually see things take shape." Astronaut visitors to the module mockups "are flabbergasted by the volume…they are really taken aback by how large these are," Bigelow said.
"We are actually looking for a couple of astronauts now to join our marketing program."
One key item on tap for Bigelow Aerospace this year is constructing the A-3 building, Bigelow noted, a structure that will offer 265,000 square feet and is destined to be an assembly-line facility for the company's spacecraft.
Beyond puffery To demonstrate that the era of expandable space structures has arrived and was beyond puffery, Bigelow Aerospace lofted in July 2006 and in June 2007, respectively, its Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 trial space modules, forerunners to the larger, human-rated Sundancer and BA-330 modules. The Genesis spacecraft were launched into orbit atop Russian Dnepr boosters — converted SS-18 ICBMs — from the Yasny Launch Base in Siberia.
Bigelow is now eyeing 2015 as the year when the larger human-rated habitats will be in Earth orbit, ready for boarding. All that is predicated, however, on launch availability — be it on an Atlas 5 or the yet-to-fly Falcon 9 rocket under development by private booster builder Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). It will take seven rocket flights, he said, to hurl the elements for the first Bigelow Aerospace complex into space.
Back up even more, Bigelow said, and 2015 is predicated on what is going to happen this year with NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) initiative. In September of last year, Boeing and Bigelow Aerospace teamed up to submit a proposal to NASA, as did other groups, for the space agency's Commercial Crew Transport System. NASA has yet to make a decision in regard to CCDev selections.
"We remain very optimistic in regard to our partnership with Boeing and have been particularly pleased with the way the relationship has developed," said Mike Gold, director of Washington operations and business growth for Bigelow Aerospace in Chevy Chase, Md. "The positive interaction demonstrates that commercial crew is not exclusively limited to small or new entities, and that larger, more experienced companies such as Boeing have a vital role to play," he told Space.com via email.
Build the buildings Meanwhile, Bigelow Aerospace is ramping up its outreach to prospective clients. "For the last year our focus and concentration has been on contacting countries," Bigelow said, and he looks forward to developing agreements to serve their needs. "We haven't contacted the corporate world at all yet … there hasn't been time."
Bigelow said that there are iterations of different kinds of space modules that can be made available for rent or lease depending on client needs. "We can supply them with as much volume as they want to have." The first complex is designed to be leased, with one module housing Bigelow Aerospace-supplied astronauts that will maintain the Earth orbiting facility for clientele.
"Our astronauts will take care of housekeeping chores," Bigelow said. "They'll make sure everything is totally sanitary and very accommodating. That's a big job in itself." The mission of Bigelow Aerospace "is to build the buildings … to be occupied by geniuses that can do really interesting things in those buildings…and these buildings just happen to be in space," Bigelow explained. "We want to facilitate what the dreams of people are, whether they are national dreams or corporate ambitions."
Bigelow Aerospace-built modules could well serve the Hiltons or the Marriotts of the world if they wish to establish space hotels. "It's not our business, but we'll lease our spacecraft to them…same goes with, say, a movie studio," Bigelow said.
Instant moon base Given NASA's plans to build a heavy-lift, Ares V-class booster, Bigelow said he's got "Big Bertha" spacecraft in mind that could fit such a beefy rocket. One expandable module on the drawing board provides 2,100 cubic meters of volume — that's twice the volume of the International Space Station.
Beyond low-Earth orbit, Bigelow Aerospace also has its sights on expandable space habitats for Lagrangian Point L1, partway between the moon and the Earth. Lagrangian points are where all the gravitational forces acting between two objects cancel each other out and therefore can be used by spacecraft to "hover" in one spot.
"If we can deploy and gang together modules in low-Earth orbit, you can do it in L1 … and you are 85 percent of the way to the moon," Bigelow said. In fact, one scenario Bigelow Aerospace has already blueprinted is the soft landing of a trio of attached BA-330 modules — including astronauts — on the moon.
The result: instant moon base, something the size of the International Space Station, Bigelow advised. The self-propelled base could even blast itself into lunar orbit, or move from spot to spot on the moon, he said. "We would lease those lunar facilities to our clients. That keeps the price down. If we sell something instead of lease something, the price really jumps," Bigelow said.
Space.Com
IN THE SKY THIS WEEK
The first quarter Moon is Saturday January 23. In the early evening of Monday January 25 the Moon passes in front of the Pleiades from around 9pm AEDT in northern and eastern Australia. In the morning, Mars is readily visible in the northern sky. Mars is a distinct nearly full disc in a small telescope, and becomes bigger and brighter during the week in the lead up to opposition on January 30. In the evening Mars can be seen from around 10pm AEDT low in the north-eastern sky.
Saturn is visible in the morning sky between the bright stars Regulus and Spica. Mercury is low in the morning twilight, and passes close to some of the brighter stars of Sagittarius. Jupiter is the brightest object low in the western evening twilight sky. Jupiter's proximity to the horizon makes telescopic observation very difficult, and will get progressively more difficult this week with less than an hour between twilight and when Jupiter sets.
http://abcmail.net.au/t/768963/682450/11560/0/
ASTRO PIC OF THE WEEK
The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), a planetary nebula in the constellation of Draco, is one of the most complex nebulae ever observed, dominated by a bright and hot star at it's center, which around 1000 years ago lost its outer envelope creating the object. The Cat's Eye has been observed across the full electromagnetic spectrum, from far-infrared to X-rays, which uncovered several unsolved mysteries. The complexity of the nebula may be caused in part by material ejected from a binary central star, but to date, there is no direct evidence of a companion. The Hubble Telescope observations have revealed a number of faint rings around the Eye, which are spherical shells ejected by the central star in the distant past, but the mechanism of those ejections remains a puzzle.
Credit: NASA Hubble
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Did You Know?
Where did the name 'Earth' come from?
A student asked me this question: "Who named the Earth 'Earth'? When? Why? Does this answer apply to the origins of the French word Terre?"
Unfortunately, I think it's pretty impossible to say exactly who first named the planet 'Earth'. Actually, I really doubt one person really named it intentionally; rather it developed over time as part of the English language. Earth is Old English and German in origin, related to the Old Saxon 'ertha', the Dutch 'aerde', and the German 'erda'. Terra is a French and Latin word, and so isn't part of the 'Earth' etymology.
It seems likely that people used Earth to mean 'land' and then it was the natural thing to refer to all the land and the planet. I tried to look up more specific details about the specific usage of the word over time, but even the Oxford English Dictionary (online) admits:"Men's notions of the shape and position of the earth have so greatly changed since Old Teutonic times, while the language of the older notions has long outlived them, that it is very difficult to arrange the senses and applications of the word in any historical order."
So, as with the names of the other planets that have been known throughout human history (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), it's difficult to say who first thought of the planet as Earth. The names were part of culture even before we really understood the significance of what planets are and where they are in space. Note (KLM) The name of the Sun has a similar origin to that of the Earth.
Where does the name "Milky Way" come from?
Where does the naming Milky Way for our Galaxy come from? Do you know who introduced this wording and why? The name Milky Way refers to the milky patch of sky which rings the Earth. You may have seen it if you live outside of a big city, it looks almost like very tenuous clouds to the naked eye.
It was named in prehistory before anyone really knew what it was, so just called the "Milky Way" for its appearance. It wasn't until Gallileo looked at an area of it with his telescope in the 1600s that it was realised that the Milky Way was made up of thousands of individual stars, and it was even later that it was realised that what we are looking at is an edge on view of our own galaxy, one of billions in the universe.
An interesting fact related to this is that the word galaxy actually comes from the Greek word, galactos for milk! The Latin version of Milky Way is Via Lactea, with "Via" meaning "Way" or "Road" and "Lactea" meaning "Milk".
One More Thought:
1. You never know where to look when eating a banana.
2. You always feel a bit scared when stroking horses.
3. The smaller the monkey the more it looks like it would kill you at the first given opportunity.
Story Opportunities from Australasian Science, January 2010
The Birth of Our Solar System (and Life as We Know It)
When the Sun was born, the radioactivity pervading the material around it may have helped to create conditions for life in the rocks that formed the planets. Understanding the origin of this radioactivity could tell us how likely it is that life could exist elsewhere in the Universe.
Black Holes: The Missing Link
Evidence for the existence of small and very large black holes is quite convincing, and now there is strong evidence for one in the “medium” range.
The Myopia Epidemic
The prevalence of myopia is increasing in children and adolescents, but pharmaceutical intervention is on the horizon.
Humpback Love Songs
New insights into the context of when humpback whales sing and with whom suggest that a function of the song could be as a courtship display to females.
Food Security in a Changing World
Increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 will change the nutritional value of food for both people and livestock – and even lead to higher levels of toxic cyanide in some staple foods and pastures.
A Sticky Lunar Problem
A dusty problem for the Apollo astronauts has ta
Switches for the Gene Machine
We share the same number of genes as simple roundworms. Newly discovered systems of gene control explain why.
Quantum Memory
New models of human cognition inspired by quantum theory could underpin information technologies that are better aligned with howwe recall information.
The Light Fantastic
By controlling how individual wavelengths of light diffract, researchers are harnessing the power of white light lasers that open up the visible spectrum in optical chips.
Message from a Refugee
One of the least recognised issues faced by refugees is access to technologies enabling them to keep in touch with their families.
Left for Dead
The discovery that a man who had been in a coma for 23 years was still conscious has raised questions over the treatment of people who are in a permanent vegetative state.
Curbing Population Growth Limits Global Warming
Few can have any doubt that halting population growth in developed and developing countries is the greatest challenge now facing our world.
Please cite AUSTRALASIAN SCIENCE MAGAZINE as the source of these stories
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Southern Galactic and Northern Galactic International
Northern Galactic and Southern Galactic are an International Astronomy Community. A global membership of professional and advanced astronomers, scientists, astrophotographers and science writers. I am proud to be one of their members.
This organisation was established to commemorate the United Nations International Year of Astronomy in 2009 and was officially launched in November 2008.
In partnership with scientists, professional and advanced astronomers and science writers from many countries, Southern Galactic and Northern 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. We achieve this by providing a globally themed internet presence with data storage and logistical support to astronomers both professional and amateur working in either hemispheres.
Founder and administrator Bert Candusio (right) said their service is available to all astronomers and scientists throughout the world so they may freely share their findings, news, images and discoveries in all areas of astronomy and their related sciences. Southern Galactic and Northern Galactic International also supports and contributes to the general understanding and appreciation of astronomy by initiating and participating in public education and outreach programs. This may include live broadcasts or video feeds of special or unusual astronomical events, or interactive live conferences between high profile members and the general public.
Both sites contain up-to-date weather data pertaining to either hemisphere as a service to Members and Users as well as other helpful astronomy based content.
News RSS Feeds from numerous Official Government sources on all aspects of astronomy are also made available to both NG and SG sites and are updated 4 times per day. This assists the reader in keeping up to date with the latest Astronomy News and Developments all from the one internet location.
Winners for For each Month Have Been Announced
Northern Galactic is now the home to many of the worlds most capable astrophotographers and this can be clearly seen in the quality of the imaging projects submitted each day.
What is Amateur Astronomy Magazine About?
Amateur Astronomy Magazine is a printed forum of the activities relating to Amateur Astronomers around the world. Our magazine is written by amateur astronomers, for amateur astronomers.
Over the course of the past 15 years, we have covered telescopes, large and small, amateur telescope making, mirror grinding, collimating tips, observing techniques, astronomical equipment reviews, home observatories, professional observatories, observing lists, profiles of amateur astronomers, star parties, dark sites, imaging tips and techniques, observing logs, astronomical travel logs, astronomy businesses and their owners, DIY astronomical projects, cosmology, science and astronomy outreach. In short,we are about all the things and people that make this hobby special. www.amateurastronomy.com/
Southern Cross Observatory – Tasmania, Australia.
If you are interested in Astro-Photography, at any level, then this is the site for you. Take note and learn from the experts!
Shevill Mathers is recognized as one of the world’se leading amateur astronomers and is a specialist in his field. His regular columns and newspaper articles are now augmented by a wide range of articles including ATM articles, Astro News items and Activities from Tasmania as well as reviewing a wide range of astronomical equipment.
Shevill is a regular contributor to many various magazines including the Tasmania 40 Degrees South magazine, Leatherwood On-Line, Discover Tasmania, Quasar Publishing ‘Astronomy Yearbook’, Universe Today and various overseas scientific forums. He is a local media source for TV, radio and the print media.
Shevill Mathers has been a keen amateur astronomer / telescope and camera builder in the UK since the early 60’s, with a special interest in astrophotography. A member of the BAA, London (Lunar Section), his photographic expertise was greatly encouraged by Patrick Moore, with whom he has maintained a lasting friendship. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1968. During the IYA 2009, in recognition of his contributions to Astronomy; public outreach, teaching & research, Shevill was appointed an Honorary Associate, Dept. Maths & Physics UTAS – (University of Tasmania), with all rights & privileges of full time academic staff. Congratulations Shevill!!
Southern Cross Observatory – IYA – Two special sites have been established at the International ’Macedon Ranges Observatory’, in Victoria, to coordinate and share images, experiences and events around the world, the links are:http://www.southerngalactic.com/andhttp://www.northerngalactic.com/
Contact details:shevill.mathers@southernphone.com.au Shevillm@gmail.com Web:www.shevillmathers.id.au
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