Astronomy Folk | Planets, Meteors, Comets, Telescopes: September 2009

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

World?s most sensitive astronomical camera

A team of Universit� de Montr�al researchers, led by physics PhD student Olivier Daigle, has developed the world’s most sensitive astronomical camera. Marketed by Photon etc., a young Quebec firm, the camera will be used by the Mont-M�gantic Observatory and NASA, which purchased the first unit.
The camera is made up of a CCD controller for [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/30/worlds-most-sensitive-astronomical-camera/

Arecibo Observatory ?uniquely powerful? for detecting near-Earth objects

The Arecibo Observatory provides “unmatched precision and accuracy” in detecting asteroids or comets that could hit the Earth, says a report by the National Academy of Sciences. That statement could help secure the observatory’s future.
The world-famous, Cornell-run radio telescope’s unsurpassed capabilities for taking precise, clear pictures of these near-earth objects (NEOs) are laid out plainly [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/30/arecibo-observatory-uniquely-powerful-for-detecting-near-earth-objects/

New Space Station Crew Launches; In-Orbit News Conference Set

The next residents of the International Space Station launched into orbit aboard a Soyuz spacecraft Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, Russian cosmonaut Max Suraev and spaceflight participant Guy Laliberte lifted off at 2:14 a.m. CDT.
Future Expedition 22 Commander Williams, Soyuz Commander Suraev and Laliberte are scheduled to dock with [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/30/new-space-station-crew-launches-in-orbit-news-conference-set/

Two Hubble STUNNERS!

If you thought the Lagoon yesterday was pretty, then reset your awe-meter. Check. This. Out.

D’ya like that? Huh? Do ya? Had enough? No? Then check THIS out!

Jeebus. Click either to brobdingnangate. In fact, you can get massively huge versions here and here. We’re talking 30 and 40 Mb each, so be ye fairly warned, says I.

Those magnificent images are of the galaxies NGC 4402 and NGC 4522, respectively, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (from before the recent repair mission). They’re both spiral galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, the nearest large collection of galaxies to us, roughly 60 million light years from Earth.

If they look funny to you, then good! The Virgo Cluster is massive, and has a lot of gravity. The galaxies bound to it are moving like bees surrounding a hive, each in its own orbit going every which way. These galaxies are screaming through the cluster at speeds of 10 million kilometers per hour, a truly terrifying velocity.

There is an ethereal gas distributed between the galaxies called the intercluster medium. It’s incredibly thin, but over the size of a galaxy — especially when said galaxy is barreling through it at such tremendous speed — the gas can exert significant pressure, called ram pressure. The pressure is actually blowing the galaxies’ internal gas clouds out into the cluster itself, making them look a little bit like pickup trucks driving down a highway with dirt copiously pouring out the beds^*. This is especially obvious in NGC 4522 (the lower one), where you can see bright blue splotches, which are regions of intense star formation, along with dark lanes of dust actually above the galactic plane.

In NGC 4022, you can see how the ram pressure is roiling up the dust in the galaxy, and also blowing it back, though apparently not as briskly as in the other galaxy.

These pictures are incredible. Poke around them; you can see amazing detail in the galaxies themselves, as well as hundreds, maybe thousands of background galaxies.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen deep, glorious pictures of spiral galaxies from Hubble. Now that ACS is working again, and it’s being joined by the equally powerful Wide Field Camera 3, we’ll be seeing lots more of these. Get used to it.

Image credits: NASA and ESA.

^*Or possibly more like wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men.

Full story at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/09/30/two-hubble-stunners/

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

LCROSS Team Changes Target Crater for Impact

Written by Nancy Atkinson
Based on new analysis of the latest lunar data, the science team for NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission (LCROSS) decided to change the target crater for impact from Cabeus A to Cabeus (proper). (...)Read the rest of LCROSS Team Changes Target Crater for Impact (336 words)

� Matt for International [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/28/lcross-team-changes-target-crater-for-impact/

MESSENGER?S Neutron Spectrometer Zeros in on Mercury?s Crust

“You bet, I’m really excited about this flyby,” said William C. Feldman, a Senior Scientist at the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute and Cognizant Co-Investigator for the Neutron Spectrometer flying aboard the MESSENGER spacecraft.
MESSENGER will make its third and final pass around Mercury tomorrow before returning in March 2011 to go into orbit around the solar [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/28/messengers-neutron-spectrometer-zeros-in-on-mercurys-crust/

Floundering El Ninos Make for Fickle Forecasts

Since May 2009, the tropical Pacific Ocean has switched from a cool pattern of ocean circulation known as La Ni�a to her warmer sibling, El Ni�o. This cyclical warming of the ocean waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific generally occurs every three to seven years, and is linked with changes in the strength [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/29/floundering-el-ninos-make-for-fickle-forecasts/

Change of address for LCROSS

LCROSS I know I said that NASA’s LCROSS impactor was going to smack into the crater Cabeus-A on October 9th, but NASA changed their minds: the new target is the crater Cabeus proper. New analysis of data from other probes indicates that Cabeus has more hydrogen locked up in the regolith than Cabeus-A, and in fact has the highest hydrogen concentration in the south polar region. As an added bonus, the topography of the crater is such that a valley will let sunlight hit the plume of ejected dust sooner than it would have had they stayed with Cabeus-A as a target. That gives scientists more time to look at the ejecta, and earlier is better because the plume will be denser too.

I hope this is the right choice for NASA, but I have to say I’m impressed they can change their plans this late in the game. Let’s hope they see some water!

Full story at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/09/29/change-of-address-for-lcross/

Monday, September 28, 2009

Part Four ? Anousheh Ansari and Her $10 Million Purse

Anousheh Ansari and Her $10 Million Purse
Ever since I was a young girl in Iran, I have had a deep curiosity and active imagination which peak whenever I look up at the night sky. I?m fascinated to think about how we got to this place and time, what will come after us and what else [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/26/part-four-anousheh-ansari-and-her-10-million-purse/

Picture of the Day ? To Fly Free in Space

At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was further out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured above, was floating free in space.
McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/27/picture-of-the-day-to-fly-free-in-space/

Astronomy Question of the Week: What is dark energy?

(DLR) – Exactly what is dark energy? Astrophysicists would also like to know the answer to this question ? it determines how the Universe will develop. Cosmologists are fairly sure that it has been expanding since the Big Bang.
What is still uncertain is whether this expansion will continue forever or whether the Universe will [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/28/astronomy-question-of-the-week-what-is-dark-energy/

MESSENGER: Three days out from Mercury

The spacecraft MESSENGER is just three days away from its third encounter with Mercury. The past two have been nothing short of frakkin’ amazing, so I’m really looking forward to this final pass. Even though it was 1.3 million kilometers away from the tiny planet on the 25th, it snapped this serene shot:

I love moody astronomical pictures. Here, a crescent Mercury sits in the inky black as MESSENGER screams down on it at 3.3 km/sec (2 miles per second). ON this final pass, the spacecraft will slow enough that it will be able to enter orbit around Mercury in March 2011. The nominal lifespan of the mission will be for one solid (Earth) year of observations, and will map the planet with 18 meter resolution. That’s the size of a house.

That is so going to rock. But that’s 1.5 years away, and we’re still waiting on this third pass. I hope to be able to post pix when they come in, but I’m traveling to the UK for TAM London not long after, so we’ll see. But you can always keep an eye on the MESSENGER website, as well as Emily Lakdawalla’s blog. They’ll be up-to-date… especially, if I know her, Emily, who will be spending the flyby looming over her keyboard and hitting "refresh" every 30 seconds or so.

Full story at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/09/27/messenger-three-days-out-from-mercury/

Sunday, September 27, 2009

A Prototype Detector for Dark Matter in the Milky Way

Written by Brian Ventrudo
It doesn’t emit electromagnetic radiation and no one really knows what it is, but that hasn’t stopped a team of European researchers from developing a device which scientists will use to detect and determine the nature of the dark matter that makes up 1/4 of the mass of our universe.(...)Read the rest [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/26/a-prototype-detector-for-dark-matter-in-the-milky-way/

Picture of the Day ? Largest Moon in the Solar System

What does the largest moon in the Solar System look like? Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has a surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges.
Like Earth’s Moon, Ganymede keeps the same face towards its central planet, in this case [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/26/picture-of-the-day-largest-moon-in-the-solar-system/

Part Four ? Anousheh Ansari and Her $10 Million Purse

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/2009/09/26/part-four-anousheh-ansari-and-her-10-million-purse/

Image of future LCROSS lunar impact site

The spot where NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft will impact the Moon on October 9 has been released by astronomers with the European Space Agency:

The impact site is the crater Cabeus-A, the largish crater to the left of center. The resolution of the image is about 50 meters/pixel, and the field of view is about 50 km (30 miles) across. The crater is near the Moon’s south pole, and the bottom is permanently in shadow. See the shadow across the crater? As the Moon spins and orbits the Earth, that shadow never lifts, but instead moves around the crater floor like the hand of a celestial clock.

We know there is water all over the Moon in small quantities, but is there a lake of frozen water under the crater’s dusty floor? When LCROSS impacts, we may find out.

This image was taken by SMART-1, an ambitious ESA spacecraft that orbited the Moon for nearly two years. Its ultimate fate? It too impacted the lunar surface in September 2006. While that impact wasn’t meant to hunt for water, it did kick up some dust, and made a flash bright enough to be detected from Earth. Its mission was a big success, and its demise was a harbinger for things to come on October 9.

Image credit: B.Grieger, B.H. Foing & ESA/SMART-1/ AMIE team

Full story at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/09/26/image-of-future-lcross-lunar-impact-site/

SMART-1 Releases Image of LCROSS Impact Site

ESA's SMART-1 team has released an image of the future impact site of NASA?s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). The SMART-1 team searched through their database to find images of Cabeus A, where LCROSS will search for water ice by making two impacts into this crater at the lunar south pole. The impacts are scheduled for 11:30 and 11:34 am UT on 9 October 2009. This image was taken four years ago by SMART-1, a spacecraft that ended its mission in 2006 by deliberately crashing to the Moon, similar to what LCROSS will do, hoping to exhume materials buried under the lunar surface, particularly water ice. "This is like gathering evidence for a Crash Scene Investigation, but before the action takes place,? said Bernard Foing, SMART-1 project scientist.

(...)
Read the rest of SMART-1 Releases Image of LCROSS Impact Site (244 words)

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Full story at http://www.universetoday.com/2009/09/25/smart-1-releases-image-of-lcross-impact-site/

Weekend SkyWatcher's Forecast ? September 25-27, 2009

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! We're back and recovered from a star party – and what an awesome time! (I felt like Dorothy in the "Land of Oz"… Comets and meteors and galaxies… oh, my!) I am sure that many of you also enjoyed a great time and although the Moon is back on this weekend scene, why not celebrate it? Just how long has it been since you've kicked back and relaxed with a little lunacy in your scope? Pick up a sketchbook, or get creative with a camera! Lunatic fringe? I know you're out there. And I'll see you inside… (...)
Read the rest of Weekend SkyWatcher's Forecast – September 25-27, 2009 (768 words)