Astronomy

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Synopsis: Physics & astronomy: Astronomy:

Alpha centauri and the new astronomy Lee Billings Centauri Dreams 16 october 2012 The discovery of a new planet outside our solar system is a fascinating development,

opening the way to a New Astronomy that focuses not on the edge of space and the beginning of time,

IBEX team, M. Paternostro (The Adler Planetarium), Dr. P. Frisch (University of Chicago), Dr. S. Redfield (Wesleyan University) First The Interstellar Cloud That Physics

As part of the program, local astronomy clubs, who serve as the caretakers for the telescopes,

#Seed Library STEM Programs for Youth include Science Saturdays, astronomy programs, and LEGO Robotics programs for youth.

#Big bang to Civilization: 10 Amazing Origin Events<p></p><p><em>Roger Briggs is the author of &quot;</

With new discoveries in astrophysics evolutionary biology molecular genetics geology and paleoanthropology a continuous story has emerged starting from the Big bang. This is both a new cosmology that humanity is embedded in and a grand tour of science.

</p><p>George Gamow had predicted that a Big bang should produce just such a background radiation and the CMB became one of the first pieces of evidence supporting the Big bang theory.

Since then the study of the CMB with space-based instruments like COBE WMAP and now the Planck Spacecraft continues to be a rich source of information about the early universe and it s deepest structure.</

</p><p></p><p>After about 400 million years of expansion following the Big bang the universe was cool enough for gravity to begin coalescing clouds of hydrogen into stars igniting nuclear fusion for the first time.

and contain all 92 naturally occurring elements like our sun. Astronomers now have strong evidence from exoplanet research that virtually all stars form planetary systems as a natural part of their own formation

Astronomers have yet to see a solar system that is neatly ordered like our own with a nice rocky planet located in the sweet spot for liquid water and life.</

<a href=http://www. livescience. com/39159-time-travel-with-wormhole. html target=blank>Wormhole Is Best Bet for Time machine Astrophysicist Says</a p></p><p>Crocodiles

astronomy. A laser isotope ratio-meter was developed to search for methane gas on Mars according to Wired UK.

and co-author of the study citing Galileo galilei and Johannes Kepler as two of the luminaries mystified by the problem.

There have been some incredible esoteric even bizarre explanations; some people believed the bees had an uncanny ability to measure angles.

></p><p>Just two decades after first spotting planets orbiting a star other than our own sun astronomers have notched a big milestone the 1000th alien planet.</

along with observations of dust grains change our understanding of planet formation astronomers said. Observations of the system revealed a dust trap of millimeter-size grains on one side of the star with smaller micrometer-size particles spread evenly throughout the disc.

The particles astronomers said could eventually clump into a comet factory producing kilometer-size rocks such as those found in the Kuiper Belt outside Neptune's orbit.

So far however astronomers can see only the object's effects on the system; there's no direct evidence that it physically exists.

however that has persisted among astronomers for a generation. Within the disc surrounding the star there is higher pressure closer to the star

In the case of Oph IRS 48 the astronomers think that an object with a mass 10 times that of Jupiter is forming vortices at the edge of the system creating an area of high pressure that balances out the high pressure near the star.

-and-egg problem that is bothering some astronomers: How did that massive mysterious object in Oph IRS 48 form?

and could potentially have created the massive planet that is partially responsible now for creating this other trap said Phil Armitage a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Colorado in Boulder who wrote an analysis of the paper in the journal Science.

but few astronomers suspected it would be so obvious in an image. To be so large that you can directly observe that is quite a surprise Armitage said.

</p><p>As far back as Archimedes philosophers have wondered how many tiny particles could fit in<a href=http://www. space. com/52-the-expanding-universe-from-the-big-bang-to-today. html>the universe</a>.Archimedes

and was essential for agriculture astronomy and prophecy. oeby keeping records of the rainy and dry seasons the Maya could determine the best times to plant

A light-year is the distance light will travel in a year or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers.

><p>The idea that our universe may be just one among many out there has intrigued modern cosmologists for some time.

along with information they want to appear on the home screen including an astronomy screen that will zoom in on that day's moon and even show the entire solar system.

#Humanity's Journey, from the Big bang to the Present (Op-Ed) Roger Briggs is the author of Journey to Civilization:

With new discoveries in astrophysics evolutionary biology molecular genetics geology and paleoanthropology a continuous story has emerged starting from the Big bang. Soon after that penultimate origin event

After about 400 million years of expansion following the Big bang the universe was cool enough for gravity to begin coalescing clouds of hydrogen into stars igniting nuclear fusion for the first time The birth of the first stars marked a turning point in the life of the universe from that point forward the universe

Astronomers have yet to see a solar system that is neatly ordered like our own with a nice rocky planet located in the sweet spot for liquid water and life.

For a more complete exploration of this journey see the slideshow Big bang to Civilization: 10 Amazing Origin Events. for more see Journey to Civilization:

and the 365 days known by Greek astronomy. Ten days were added to the year to form a regular Julian year of 365 days.

#Capturing a Comet-Galaxy Conjunction Victor Rogus is an amateur astronomer and this is the eighth in his series of exclusive Space. com posts about amateur astronomy.

He contributed this article to Space. com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. I was prepared well in advance for a most exciting event to occur on the night of April 4 and the morning of April 5 2013:

My wife has been keen to point out that in the field of astronomy once-in-a-lifetime events seem to occur regularly.

and some amateur astronomers suggested that the celestial pair in conjunction could not be seen from there as they would be too low on either horizon.

and how astrophysics and the philosophical thinking get a little bit intertwined. The project that I'm currently doing

and Caltech talking to astrophysicists and engineers and just trying to get some ideas about our human perspective

When I was discussing the idea with an astrophysicist at JPL he upped the ante

I'm just starting to learn about too that an astrophysicist or an engineer might know about

During these wars Seleucid ruler Antiochus III the Great fought against Ptolemy IV Philopator the fourth ruler of the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt

but Ptolemy didn't. Instead he set up outposts in what is now modern-day Eritrea to get African elephants.

Ptolemy however was able to recover due to missteps by Antiochus and eventually won the battle.

African elephants In reality Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants so some historians speculated that perhaps the Ptolemies were using African forest elephants

#Most Interesting Science News articles of the Week<p>From echos of the Big bang to the breathing of the Amazon forest we found some super cool stories in Science this week!</

</p><p>Astronomers have found the first direct evidence of cosmic inflation the theorized dramatic expansion of the universe that put the bang in the Big bang 13.8 billion years ago new research suggests.</

which also confirms the existence of hypothesized ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves would give researchers a much better understanding of the Big bang and its immediate aftermath.</

'Smoking Gun'for Universe's Incredible Big bang Expansion Found</a p><p>There's never been a shortage of doomsday scenarios.

Humans Can Smell More than 1 Trillion Scents</a p><p>The first direct evidence of cosmic inflation a period of rapid expansion that occurred a fraction of a second after the Big bang also supports the idea that our universe is just

If the results are confirmed they would provide smoking-gun evidence that space-time expanded at many times the speed of light just after the Big bang 13.8 billion years ago.</

#My Time With Comet Lovejoy (Op-Ed) Victor Rogus is an amateur astronomer and this is the sixth in his series of exclusive Space. com posts about amateur astronomy.

He contributed this article to Space. com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. On September 7 2013 Australian Terry Lovejoy using an 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope discovered

and noticed a recurring theme in comments made by amateur astronomers. Observers stated that they had seen a strange sparking in and around the comet's tail.

Astronomers have struggled to fully account for the carbon shortfall in Earth's mantle and in meteorites.

Satellites smash debris threatens Hubble An active communications satellite owned by Iridium Satellite of Bethesda, Maryland, slammed into a defunct Russian military communications satellite 800 kilometres above Siberia on 10 february 2009.

The collision sent hundreds of pieces of debris flying at high speed across low-Earth orbit, threatening other satellites and increasing the risk to a NASA shuttle mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope

(see'Kaputnik chaos could kill Hubble'and'Collision debris increases risk to Earth-observing satellites'.

'In the end, the Hubble mission went off without a hitch, and other satellites have yet to be influenced by the shrapnel from the collision.

a proposed planet near a star some 6 Â parsecs from Earth may not exist after all.

The finding is also a strike against a planet-seeking strategy called astrometry, which measures the side-to-side motion of a star on the sky to see

Ground-based astrometry has been used for more than a century, but none of the extrasolar planets it has detected has been verified in subsequent studies.

Unfortunately, astrometry is a very difficult business, counters Bean, explaining that Earth's atmosphere can introduce distortions that affect the measurements.

says Alessandro Sozzetti, an astrometry expert at the Turin Observatory in Italy. Even if we think we have selected a good set of reference stars,

when Dutch astronomer Piet van de Kamp used astrometry to claim that two planets were orbiting Barnard's Star a finding disproved a decade later.

is another example of how hard it is to detect extrasolar planets using astrometry from the ground.

Astronomers expect astrometry to work much better above the distorting effects of the atmosphere. Two space missions in the works the European space agency's GAIA, due to launch in 2012,

More significantly, astrometry can yield the mass of a planet, whereas radial velocity only puts a lower limit on it.

Bean admits that astronomers might one day find a planet around VB10 if they scrutinize the star long and hard enough The main lesson from VB10,

Astronomers witness biggest star explosion: Nature Newsastronomers have watched the violent death of what was probably the most massive star ever detected.

One supernova in particular was very unusual, recalls Avishay Gal-Yam, an astronomer at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel

Some astronomers have suggested that stars might not be able to grow larger than about 150 solar masses,

but none has been seen until now, says Norbert Langer, an astrophysicist at the University of Bonn in Germany.

Astronomers think that the Universe was composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium shortly after the Big bang. Those elements are thought to have formed giant stars that burned briefly and brightly before exploding,

creating heavier elements that eventually went on to form planets and people. There's a long interest in how these first stars evolved

The week ahead 24 april The Hubble Space Telescope was launched 20 years ago on this day.

slideshow and stories from our archive. www. nature. com/hubble 24-28 april About 13,000 scientists are expected at Experimental Biology 2010 in Anaheim, California.

Eye in the sky The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy has made its first airborne observations

The astronomy prizewinners, announced on 27 may, are Charles Bennett of Johns hopkins university in Baltimore, Maryland, and Lyman Page and David Spergel of Princeton university in New jersey.

which maps fluctuations in the microwave background radiation left over from the Big bang. David Julius, a physiologist at the University of California,

the biennial prizes consist of US$1 million each for nanoscience, neuroscience and astrophysics. http://www. kavliprize. no/7-11 june Governments meet in Busan, South korea,

US astronomy survey: The US National Academy of Science has released its decadal survey, a much-anticipated report recommending the astronomy

and astrophysics research projects that US agencies should fund over the next ten years. The report, published on 13 august,

says that a space telescope that could search for clues to dark energy and for exoplanets should be top priority for large space activities (projects exceeding US$1 billion).

a team of astronomers declared last week that they had discovered two gargantuan'bubbles'of ray-emitting particles extending north and south of our Galaxy's centre (M. Su et al.

which measure 15,625 parsecs (50,000 light years) from end to end, formed from a single relatively rapid release of energy equivalent to that from 100,000 supernovae.

if the field of science in question was cosmology, say, or paleontology, or some other area without any actual impact on people's lives.

Satellite sacking The chief executive of a leading German space company has been suspended as from 17 january for allegedly criticizing the European satellite navigation system Galileo,

and publicized in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, claim that Smutny said the Galileo project is a stupid idea and a waste of money.

The deal 墉 subject to parliamentary ratification 墉 gives Brazilian astronomers access to telescopes at three sites in Chile operated by ESO,

and includes the latest results from the Kepler mission's hunt for exoplanets. aas. org/meetings/aas217 10 14 january Researchers meet in Paris to discuss the status of the Planck mission,

borrowing a concept from US astronomers and astrophysicists, who survey their field once a decade to identify scientific priorities and rank potential projects.

Although the decadal surveys of the astronomers take years to pull together, Stacey and organizers at the American Society of Plant Biologists hope to issue a report by early 2012,

California. sites. agu. org/fallmeeting5-9 december The first conference on the scientific results from the Kepler exoplanet mission takes place at the NASA Ames Research Park, Moffett Field,

astronomers geared up this week for a fantastic view of an asteroid called 2005 YU55.

NASA science head John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist and astronaut who carried out repairs on the Hubble Space Telescope

A twin Earth NASA's Kepler telescope has reached one of its major mission milestones: discovering another Earth-sized planet.

which is about 290 parsecs (946 light years) away from us, researchers reported on 20 december at a press conference and in Nature (F. Fressin et al.

(which astronomers can measure by looking at the absorption features of the light from distant stars).

Such a cloud might also prevent any remnants of the proposed supernova being seen by modern astronomers.

an astronomer at Chicago's Adler Planetarium in Illinois, who has used the Anglo-saxon Chronicle to investigate past astronomical events,

says Donald Olson, a physicist with an interest in historical astronomy at Texas State university in San marcos,

Plenty of supernovae now known to astronomers are simply missing in the historical record, says Gyuk.

The low-cost mission is one of only a few available to X-ray astronomers. See go. nature. com/dcye8k for more.

D. PARKER/SPLBERNARD Lovell dies Physicist and radio astronomer Bernard Lovell who founded the Jodrell Bank Observatory at the University of Manchester,

which is around 5, 000 parsecs from Earth. See go. nature. com/ya5y2p for more.

including microbiologist Sarkis Mazmanian, astronomer Olivier Guyon and marine ecologist Nancy Rabalais. The awards, popularly known as genius grants, come with no strings attached as to how the money is spent. see go. nature. com/ru2vgy for more.

Telescope array One of the world's most powerful radio-telescope arrays, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, was opened officially on 5 october at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western australia.

and from the Kepler mission searching for extrasolar planets, are announced at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in Reno, Nevada. www. psi. edu/dps12

Willy Benz of the University of Bern, chair of ESA s Space science Advisory Committee, says that this could force the agency to delay a future large mission;

and three deformable mirrors, allowing astronomers to correct for atmospheric distortions over an exceptionally large field of view.

On 9 Â January, at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long beach, California, astronomers unveiled the telescope s ultra-sharp portrait of the bullets of gas seen in the Orion Nebula.

according to researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They presented their study on 7 Â January at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long beach,

they would have annihilated almost entirely one another during the first few seconds of the Big bang, leaving little but radiation behind.

Astronomers have hailed the legacy of the observatory, which over three years has helped them to revise theories about the birth

Skeletons show rickets struck the Medici familyas the wealthy rulers of Tuscany and patrons of Leonardo Da vinci and Galileo,

NASA/ESA/M. Kornmessertrue blue planet Using the Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have discovered the deep blue hue of exoplanet HD Â 189733 Â b (pictured in an artist s impression) the first planet beyond the Solar system to have its colour directly measured.

Discovered in 2005, the planet orbits a star about 19 Â parsecs away in the Vulpecula,

or Fox, constellation. At Hubble s optical resolution, light from the planet and its star typically blend together.

But researchers found that the amount of blue light decreased when HD Â 189733 Â b ducked behind its star.

S. Wiessinger/NASA Goddard Space Flight Centerastronomers image pink exoplanet A magenta exoplanet 17.5 parsecs from Earth is the lowest-mass planet that has ever been imaged directly orbiting a Sun-like star

NASA ponders Kepler s futurenasa just can t quit Kepler. On 15  August, the agency ann  ounced that it would stop trying to revive the failed reaction wheels that gave the planet-hunting telescope its precise pointing ability.

two weeks earlier, it had asked astronomers to submit ideas by 3 Â September on how the hobbled spacecraft might still perform good science.

Kepler scientists will sort through the proposals and decide by 1 Â November which ones,

To secure funding from the space agency, the Kepler team will have to show that the studies could not be done by other telescopes.

This will be no easy task especially given that engineers are not sure how well Kepler can perform with just two of its four spinning reaction wheels,

"We re in a real quandary, says Kepler principal investigator Bill Borucki at NASA s Ames Research center in Moffett Field, California."

"We just don t know what Kepler can do. With three working wheels (a fourth was a spare),

Kepler was able to exactly counter  balance the persistent push of sunlight, locking on to targets with such precision that light from a particular star always fell on the same tiny fraction of an individual pixel.

a different telescope, says Kepler scientist William Welsh of San diego State university in California. Kepler s drift could be minimized by keeping it pointed in the same plane in which the craft orbits the Sun. But that presents a complication.

Some of the best science is expected to come from follow-up observations of the field of about 150,000 stars that Kepler has been focused on,

and that star field does not lie in the plane. In one proposal offered up by Welsh and his colleagues,

when they pass in front of their parent star they produce a dip in light that can be detected by Kepler even in its compromised state.

which Kepler has recorded only a few transits those that take more than a year to orbit their star.

but Welsh suggests that it might also be possible for Kepler to add statistical significance to Earth-sized candidates for

And David Hogg, an astronomer at New york University, believes that, over the course of many months,

Kepler s drift could be used to map out the different light responses of the pixels. That calibration,

if detailed enough, could be enough for Kepler to resume its hunt for Earth analogues,

We just don t know what Kepler can do. Daniel Fabrycky, an astronomer at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has an alternative follow-up study in mind.

He and his colleagues have proposed looking at planetary systems in which densely packed planets are affected by one another s gravitational pulls creating periodic cycles in

Like Welsh, Fabrycky wants Kepler to zero in on planetary systems with long orbits, for which the full cycle of these transit-timing variations has not yet been seen.

But Andrew Gould, an astronomer at Ohio State university in Columbus, says that he is sceptical about using the craft to simply follow up on its original tasks

putting Kepler to work not as a planet hunter, but as a sentinel for near-Earth objects, including asteroids several hundred metres in diameter that might be on a collision course with Earth.

A survey of space rocks would take advantage of Kepler s large field of view. And at least part of the study could be completed with Kepler looking for targets within its orbital plane,

so as to optimize its pointing. Gould has proposed another scheme, in which Kepler would survey stars towards the Milky way s central bulge for signs of planets,

using a technique known as microlensing. Microlensing relies on a prediction of Einstein s theory of general relativity:

By observing microlens planets using Kepler and ground-based telescopes at the same time, differences in transit duration and brightness emerge that can yield the planets mass.

If any of the proposals recommended by the Kepler team seems worthwhile to NASA, they will be examined early next year by a review panel of external scientists.

At that stage, a repurposed Kepler would face its biggest hurdle a competition for the limited pot of funds against nine other astrophysics missions,

including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. On receiving recommendations from the review panel

Not everyone is rooting for Kepler. Doug Finkbeiner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wants NASA to support missions that are still healthy.

He has used Fermi to discover two galaxy-sized bubbles of ionized gas blowing from the centre of the Milky way,

I hope we let Kepler die, he says

Forest management plans in a tanglein the middle of metropolitan San francisco stands an army and many Bay Area residents want it to stay garrisoned there.

Adam Block/Mount Lemmon Skycenter/Univ. Arizonasupernova seen in nearby galaxy Astronomers have spotted one of the closest supernovae in years in the galaxy M82, about 3. 5 Â megaparsecs

(11.4 Â million light years) away. Students and staff at the University of London Observatory discovered the exploding star in the Ursa major constellation during a telescope lesson on 21 Â January.

Other astronomers quickly combed through archive data, unearthing earlier, fainter images of the event. Designated SN Â 2014j

NASA/ESA/J. Lotz, M. Mountain, A. Koekemoer & the HFF Team (STSCI) Super-distant galaxies glimpsed Astronomers unveiled pictures of the deepest galaxy cluster ever imaged at the annual meeting

The images from NASA s Hubble Space Telescope are part of the Frontier Fields programme which harnesses the phenomenon of gravitational lensing (see Nature 497,554-556;

Satnav success Europe s fledgling satellite navigation system, Galileo, is working well, the European space agency announced on 10 Â February.

Inflation evidence A telescope at the South pole has revealed strong evidence that the Universe went through a period of rapid inflation just after the Big bang. To great excitement,

a collaboration led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced that the telescope had spotted the influence of gravitational waves (ripples in space that inflation would have caused) on the cosmic microwave background,

the radiation released after the Big bang. See page  281 and go. nature. com/lruz8e for more.

C Â rdova confirmed The US Senate confirmed astrophysicist France C Â rdova as head of the National Science Foundation (NSF) on 12 Â March.

at the European space agency s European Space Astronomy Centre near Madrid. The mission plans to land a rover on the red planet in 2018. go. nature. com/i5n5r2

and Oman The results of the study which has also been published in US scientific journal Geology lend support to a controversial theory published a decade ago by Danish astrophysicist Henrik Svensmark who claimed the climate was influenced highly by galactic cosmic ray (GCR

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