Deep trench dug by Phoenix. Credit:NASA/JPL/Caltech/U of AZ
The next sample of Martian soil being grabbed for analysis is coming from a trench about three times deeper than any other trench NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has dug. On Tuesday, August 26, the scoop on the lander's robotic arm will pick up a sample of soil from the bottom of a trench called "Stone Soup" which is about 18 centimeters, or 7 inches deep. Tuesday will be the 90th Martian day or sol that the lander has been on the Red Planet, which was the original amount of time set for Phoenix's primary mission. NASA has extended the mission through September, but the clock is ticking for the plucky little lander and the oncoming winter at Mars' north polar region.
I'm often asked about what I'd recommend as a very basic book for beginner's to help them learn their way around the constellations and how to put their binoculars or small telescopes to good use. Needless to say, there's an endless array of books for the beginning stargazer and no one particular volume is going to excel by a wide margin over another. However, I after taking a look around, I started asking questions at what could be had for about $20 and what I think would work well for the novice as a complete package. This time my choice was well-bound and colorful volume called "Celestron Sky Maps and Luminous Star Finder." Here's why…
Remember a competition we reported on back in April called "Move An Asteroid"? It was an international technical paper competition looking for unique and innovative concepts for how to deflect an asteroid or comet that might be on a collision course for Earth. The winners have been announced and first prize went to Australian PhD student Mary D'Souza who came up with quite a novel concept: wrap the asteroid with reflective sheeting. Such a coating may increase the asteroid's reflectivity, enabling deflection by solar radiation pressure.
Asteroid Steins imaged by Rosetta's OSIRIS camera in two locations.
ESA's Rosetta spacecraft will make an historic encounter with asteroid (2867) Steins on September 5, 2008 at 20:58 CEST (Central European Summer Time), 2:58 pm EDT (US Eastern Daylight Time.) A few days ago, Rosetta conducted a successful trajectory correction maneuver using images from the spacecraft's cameras to calculate the asteroid's location, to optimize its trajectory for the fly-by. Rosetta will rendezvous with the asteroid while one its way to its primary mission, to visit comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. At its closest approach to the asteroid, the spacecraft will be just 800 km from Steins.
The bright blue blob is an ancient galaxy cluster. Credits: ESA XMM-Newton/EPIC, LBT/LBC, AIP (J. Kohnert)
A massive cluster of galaxies seen in the distant universe by ESA's orbiting XMM-Newton x-ray observatory is so big that astronomers believe there can only be a few of them that far away in space and time. "Such massive galaxy clusters are thought to be rare objects in the distant Universe," said Georg Lamer, Astrophysikalisches Institut in Potsdam, Germany. "They can be used to test cosmological theories. Indeed, the very presence of this cluster confirms the existence of a mysterious component of the Universe called dark energy." The astronomers compared the rare find to a cosmic 'needle in a haystack.'
We have security cameras watching our daily habits, we watch voyeuristic TV shows of social misfits trapped in a house, we use webcams to transmit our musings on Youtube and we are constantly being monitored by hi-res satellite cameras. What can we possibly survey now? Surely every inch of the planet is under someone's watchful eye? This planet maybe. By a stroke of luck, ESA scientists have just realised that a surplus camera on board the Mars Express orbiter could be switched back on and used as an interplanetary webcam. Big Brother is now keeping a watchful eye on the Red Planet too…
I thought this year would be different and finally I could make it through the month of August without receiving a forwarded email from an excited acquaintance, wondering if I knew about this incredible news that will happen only once in a lifetime. The email claims Mars is coming closer to Earth and will look as big as the full moon! Please, this is a complete falsehood and entirely not true. The email about this "once in a lifetime event" has been circulating like clockwork every August for the past five years and is full of errors. If you don't believe me, here are Universe Today articles dubunking this erroneous email in 2007, 2006, and 2005. If you don't believe Fraser, Phil Plait the Bad Astronomer debunks the email here, here , here, and here's the original one back in 2003. I don't know if the general public really is so uneducated/gullible/in the dark to fall for this every year, or if the folks who start circulating this email every year are trying to determine how uneducated/gullible/in the dark the world actually is.
NASA launch officials were forced to hit the "destruct" button on an experimental rocket that launched early Friday morning. The launch and subsequent explosion was captured on both amateur and NASA video, and shows the pieces falling back to Earth.
The countdown and initial takeoff Friday morning from a NASA launch facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, went smoothly, said former astronaut Kent Rominger, a vice president in ATK's (Alliant Tech Systems) launch systems division. "Then (the rocket) appeared to veer south," he said. To the naked eye the flight didn't appear to be in trouble, he said, but it was moving off course.
The rocket was a little more than 2 miles high when it was destroyed. A team of officials from NASA and ATK are investigating the incident.
Generations of stars amid a gas cavity. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals generations of stars amid a cavity carved from a colorful cosmic cloud. The striking infrared picture shows a region, called W5, which is similar to N44F, or the "Celestial Geode" that was discussed in a Universe Today article last week. The gas cavity, which looks similar to a geode-like cavity found in some rocks, is carved by the stellar wind and intense ultraviolet radiation from hot stars. W5 is studded with stars of various ages, and provides new evidence that massive stars – through their brute winds and radiation – can trigger the birth of new stars.
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Are you ready for a relatively Moon-less weekend? For telescope observers, we'll travel south and capture the cosmic firefly - the "Bug Nebula". If you have binoculars, take them out as we journey back 2000 years in time to look at the magnificent M25. For those who like a challenge? Try your luck at being a "Snake" charmer. Even if you just relax in a lawn chair and stare at the stars, you're in luck because the Northern Iota Aquarid meteor shower is in town for a visit, too! Step out the back door, face south, and let's journey into the night…
If glancing at this image takes your attention immediately, it should. Not only is it ethereally beautiful and aesthetically pleasing - but it's shrouded in bizarre cosmological coincidences. Not only do we see a dazzling array of multi-colored stars, but within this single area of space is a hidden an ancient planetary nebula, a reflection nebula, a dark dust cloud, a Bok globule, a peculiar low-mass protostar, the edges of a massive X-ray bubble and the fringes of a supernova remnant. Hold on to the light of the Cepheus Flare and let's step inside Wolf's Cave…
You seem to like a nice series, so here's a new one Fraser and Pamela have been thinking about. Over the course of the next 4 weeks, they're going to cover each of the basic forces in the Universe. And this week, they're going to start with gravity; the force you're most familiar with. Gravity happens when masses attract one another, and we can calculate its effect with exquisite precision. But you might be surprised to know that scientists have no idea why gravity happens
This ATK rocket exploded shortly after liftoff on Friday. Credit: Jacob Owen | NASA Wallops Flight Facility
Update: NASA said at a press conference this morning that launch officials were forced to destroy the rocket less than 30 seconds after it's 5:10 a.m. launch. The rocket had veered off-course, although they couldn't say how far, and they had to terminate the flight at about 12,000 feet.
A suborbital rocket carrying experiments conducted by NASA exploded early Friday morning 27 seconds after launch on Wallops Island in Virginia. The ATK (Alliant Tech Systems) rocket lifted off with no apparent problems at 5:10 a.m. NASA said no property damage or injuries have occurred, but there were conflicting reports as to whether debris had been sighted on land. NASA said it believes that most of the debris landed in the Atlantic Ocean.
Ares V: Heavy lift capability comes with a price (NASA)
There's a big problem with Kennedy Space Center playing host to the Constellation Program: The heavy-lift rocket, Ares V, may be too heavy for the infrastructure to cope with. The crawlerway is a 40 year old road designed for the Saturn V (Apollo Program) crawler-transporters and is currently used to carry the Shuttle up to 6.8km (4.2 miles) from assembly building to launch pad. The crawlerway may be unable to withstand the weight of the fully-laden Ares V, transporter and mobile launch pad; a combined weight 33% heavier than anything the Kennedy crawlerway has ever supported. With the Constellation budget getting tighter every day that passes, the possibility of a multi-billion dollar crawlerway upgrade will only create more problems for NASA…
Space Spa on Galactic Suite Hotel. Credit: Galactic Suite
The space tourism company Galactic Suite already has 38 reservations made by tourists who, the company says, in 2012 will travel on board a magnetically levitated spacecraft to an orbiting luxury hotel, complete with a floating spa, pictured here. The trip, which costs 3 million Euros, will provide four days in orbit 450 kilometers above the earth and includes 18 weeks of training on a Caribbean island for the tourists to prepare for their spaceflight. The Galactic Suite Spaceport is being built on the island and features the first maglev rocket where the spacecraft will accelerate to speeds up to 1,000 km/h (620 mph) in 10 seconds and lift off from a vertical runway.
Amateur astronomers have observed the first sunspots to appear on the solar surface for weeks. This period of extreme magnetic calm has made some scientists believe that Solar Cycle 23 might be a quiet affair. This comes in stark contrast to NASA's 2006 forecast that this cycle would be a "doozy." Whether or not the slow start of solar activity is indicative of things to come, we're not sure, but it sure is great to see activity starting to churn on the solar surface once more…
A NASA image of asteroid Eros (left) and Robert Gaskell's shape model of the asteroid (right). Credit: PSI
Thinking about trekking across Titan or meandering around Mercury? Along with your backpack and towel, you'll also want to pack one of Robert Gaskell's maps. Gaskell, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, is working on creating real hitchhiking guides to the various bodies in our solar system. He's been equated to the final frontier what Lewis and Clark were to the American West - the guy producing the most accurate and detailed maps available. And thanks to current space missions sending back loads of data, Gaskell is beginning to work on creating precise maps of Mercury, the asteroid Eros, and eight moons of Saturn including Enceladus. Gaskell has created sophisticated software that combines hundreds of spacecraft images of varying resolution to create the maps. He's been developing the software for nearly 25 years, and if you want to map a planet, moon, or asteroid, he's the guy to ask.
Recently we've had articles on Universe Today that have discussed the outer Milky Way Galaxy, dark matter, and the discovery of a new minor planet. These articles have a common thread: The discoveries all come from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). If you aren't familiar with SDSS, it encompasses a comprehensive survey lasting more than eight years, which has so far covered more than one-quarter of the sky. Using a dedicated 2.5 meter telescope equipped with a 125- megapixel digital camera and spectrographs that can observe 640 stars and galaxies at a time, the SDSS has created terabytes of data that include thousands of deep, multi-color images. It's also measured the distances to nearly one million galaxies and over 100,000 quasars to create the largest ever three-dimensional maps of cosmic structure. The SDSS archive represents a thousand-fold increase in the total amount of data that astronomers have collected to date. But almost equally impressive is the easy-to-use interface that allows anyone in the world to access the SDSS data online. Whether you are a research astronomer looking for information to help solve a cosmological puzzle or an armchair astronomy enthusiast who just likes looking at pretty pictures of the universe, SDSS is at your disposal.
This mosaic of images shows the Phoenix worksite. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/U of Arizona
Scientists and engineers from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander continue with digging operations around the lander with the spacecraft's robotic arm. They are looking for new materials to analyze and are examining the soil and ice subsurface structure. "We expect to use the robotic arm heavily over the next several weeks, delivering samples to our instruments and examining trench floors and walls to continue to search for evidence of lateral and vertical variations in soil and ice structures," said Ray Arvidson, Phoenix's "dig czar," from Washington University in St. Louis. New trenches opened recently and shown in the image here include the "Burn Alive 3" trench in the eastern portion of the arm's reachable workspace.
If you're into telescopy, then you know the name Televue needs little or no introduction at all. The name is absolutely synonymous with the most outstanding quality and high performance optics in the business and every product is backed by uncompromising standards. Of course, if you're like me, the moment I see the name Televue little dollar signs start swimming around in front of my eyes. Would you like me to shoo them away for you?
On August 16th, Iran triumphantly announced that they had sent a rocket into space, transporting a "dummy" satellite into orbit. According to Iranian state TV, the night-time launch of the two-stage Safir-e Omid (or Ambassador of Peace) rocket was a resounding success, transmitting video of the launch amid cheers of delight. The nation has never hidden its space ambitions, and in 2005 Iran launched its first commercial satellite on board a Russian rocket. This confirmed concerns of Russia's co-operation with the Iranian government to bolster the country's space-faring ability. However, US officials have spoken out against Iranian claims that Saturday's launch went as planned; according to one official, Iran's launch was a "dramatic failure." Regardless, Iran appears to be upbeat about it's future in space, and today the Iranian Space Organization Chief has announced that Iran will launch a man into space within a decade…
The Orion parachute test drop didn't go so well... (NASA)
As previously reported on the Universe Today, recent parachute test-drops for the Constellation Project have brought mixed results. The Ares I drogue parachute test appeared to perform flawlessly on July 24th, but the July 31st Orion test drop was a different story. Very early on in the parachute test, the "programmer parachute" (the first small parachute to be deployed, righting the descending crew module, setting Orion up for drogue deployment) failed after not inflating in the turbulent wake of the vehicle. This event set in motion complete parachute failure, ultimately forcing a hard-landing (crash) into the Arizona desert. Now NASA has released a video and pictures of the test…
Can Medium Sized Black Holes be Found in Globular Clusters? Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ NOAO/AURA/NSF
Black holes are sometimes huge – supermassive as they are called, billions of times the mass of our sun. Other times they are petite with just a few times the sun's mass. But do black holes also come in size medium? A new study suggests that, most likely, the answer is no. Astronomers have long suspected that the best place to find a medium-mass black hole would be at the core of a miniature galaxy-like object called a globular cluster. Yet nobody has been able to find one conclusively. And now, a team of astronomers has thoroughly examined a globular cluster called RZ2109 and determined that it cannot possess a medium black hole, leading researchers to believe that black holes don't come in medium, or at most are very rare.
Complete with tentacles, a supermassive black hole and x-ray emitting gas, a monster of a galaxy has been found by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and is helping astronomers answer a long-standing puzzle. The very active galaxy NGC 1275 has giant but beautiful and delicate filaments influenced and shaped by a beastly-strong extragalactic magnetic field. But how the delicate structures such as those found in this galaxy can withstand the hostile, high-energy environment has been a mystery. But researchers say the beauty and the beast co-exist and are dependent on each other for survival.
It's Wednesday, so it's time for another "Where In The Universe" Challenge. Take a look at the image above and try to determine where in the universe this image was taken. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for taking this image. As always, no peeking below for the before you make your guess. Our readers have been having a blast with this challenge, and we hope this one will evoke more eruptions of cheers and enjoyment.
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