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The Bareket Observatory in Israel just did something really remarkable – they celebrated the International Year of Astronomy with a live webcast for the entire world! During the event one could listen to live explanations by a U.S. astronomer and enjoying a special musical representation to those who are blind. I had very much been enjoying my conversations with Ido Bareket and had every intention of reminding our readers when the date was going to happen so you could join in… Then the storms hit Ohio. (...)
Read the rest of Bareket Observatory Celebrates International Year Of Astronomy (376 words)
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 Image of the Chinese Kunlun base, near "Ridge A" The search for the best observatory site in the world has lead to the discovery of what is thought to be the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth. No human is thought to have ever been there, but it's expected to yield images of the heavens three times sharper than any ever taken from the ground. (...)
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This week's Astro Art was submitted by Assi Süer, a 20 year-old amateur astronomer and astrophysics student from Sweden. She has been sketching and painting since she was young. Since space shuttle Discovery is now docked at the International Space Station for the STS-128 mission, Assi's sketches seemed fitting for this week, especially since her fellow Swede, Christer Fugelsang, is on board. "He has inspired me, and many more, to never give up," Assi said. "Even a Swede can become an astronaut, but only if we work hard for it. It is, of course, nothing wrong with Swedes, but it's hard for us because we're such a small part of the European Space Agency."
"'Failure is not an option' is my favorite quote," Assi said, "because failure definitely isn't an option for me, if I'm going to one day work for ESA, which is my dream. So I'm going to do everything to not fail." Below is another of her sketches of space shuttles.
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 Wildfires threaten Mt. Wilson. Via Plutokiller's Twitpic Wildfires burning in southern California are threatening the historic Mt. Wilson Observatory and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Overnight, the fire size more than doubled, and as of this writing over 85,000 acres have burned. The situation looks better this morning for JPL, but Mt. Wilson, which also is home to several communication towers, is still in danger. Firefighters have vowed to do everything they can to save it. The fires have been fueled by hot, dry weather, but one resident who had to evacuate his home shared with me that the fire has spread with minimal winds, and the situation would be even worse with windy conditions. Good news this morning is that two Super Scoopers – large water-dropping airplanes – have arrived from Canada and are expected to join the fire fight, officials said. For the latest info on the fire, there is a live webcam from the KTLA television station showing Mt. Wilson, the LA Times is providing updated coverage on their website, you can listen live to radio station KNX. Mt. Wilson Observatory's website is also posting updates, and the latest news there is that fire crews were instructed to withdraw from Mount Wilson. It appears the fire is under control there, but officials are worried what could happen if no firefighters are at the location. We'll post an update when it becomes available. UPDATE (11:30 pm PDT): The LA Times Blog is now saying it is too dangerous for firefighters on Mt. Wilson because the fire is on both sides of Mt. Wilson Road, the only way off the mountain. Ian O'Neill, who lives in the LA area is posting information on Astroengine, as well as Emily Lakdawalla from the Planetary Society blog. For quick updates on Twitter, follow Emily, Ian, or Mike Brown. Stay safe, everyone.
© nancy for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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India's lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 lost contact with ISRO's ground station early on August 29. "We are not able to establish contact with the spacecraft. We are not getting the data, we are not able to send commands," an ISRO official told the Press Trust of India. "In simple terms, the spacecraft has become dumb. It can't speak." The 11 scientific payloads onboard the orbiter had been operating normally, and the spacecraft was sending data during a planned sequence to its ground station when contact was lost. Officials are now analyzing data obtained, hoping to find any indications of what could have happened.
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Read the rest of Radio Contact Lost With Chandrayaan-1 (175 words)
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 Discovery lift off. Credit: flyingjenny on Twitpic. Click image for more of flyingjenny's images The third launch attempt was a charm for space shuttle Discovery and her crew. The STS-128 mission is now underway with a successful liftoff one minute before midnight, local time, from Kennedy Space Center. Discovery is carrying the Leonardo supply module to the International Space Station, and tucked away inside is the COLBERT treadmill, along with several refrigerator-sized racks of science equipment, a freezer to store research samples, a new sleeping compartment, an air purification system, and other supplies, plus another unusual object packed in Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang's belongings: a theoretical particle called a neutralino. (...) Read the rest of COLBERT, Leonardo and a Neutralino Heading for Space Station (264 words)
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As only a British tabloid (and Fox News) could, reports came out this week of the Loch Ness Monster being spotted on Google Earth. "This amazing image on Google Earth could be the elusive proof that the Loch Ness Monster exists," The Sun reported. Well, for one thing, this doesn't look *anything* like Nessie. Doesn't he have a long black neck? And another thing about this: it looks surprisingly like a …. boat. Imagine that, a boat on a lake captured by Google Earth! Astounding!
 Look closely and you'll see the squared off back end of the boat (the stern), the rounded stern bow in front, and the tentacle-looking things are just the boat's wake. This looks very much like another image of a boat on Loch Ness on Bing (below). Click on the picture to get to the image on Bing and zoom out for the full effect.
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© nancy for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 26 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cryptozoology, Debunking, google earth, lock ness monster
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Now THIS is what I'm talking about! Every year Electrolux holds a competition for students to design concepts for future appliances, and they've just announced the eight finalists. My favs: a robotic greenhouse for Mars and a teleporting refrigerator. Le Petit Prince (Little Prince) is a robotic greenhouse concept that is specially designed to help the future exploration and expanding population when we colonize Mars. This intelligent robot carries and cares for a plant inside its glass container, which is functionally mounted on a four-legged self-transporting pod. Not only does it search for the optimum place to receive enough sunlight and other nutrients, it also send reports of its movements and developments to its fellow greenhouse robots through wireless communication. It was designed by Martin Miklica, from the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic. He said he was inspired by the book The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov and R2-D2 from Star Wars (and surely Wall-E had something to do with this, too.)
See video of Le Petit Prince, below, and of the teleporting fridge.
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Read the rest of Future Designs: Robotic Mars Greenhouse, Teleporting Fridge (122 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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 Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Are you ready for a little lunacy this weekend? Yes, it's back – but there is no other distant world whose features we can study quite so clearly and as well as the Earth's companion – the Moon. If it's been awhile since you turned a telescope or binoculars its way, why not spend an evening or two enjoying some of its features before it becomes overwhelmingly bright? There are other bright objects we often take for granted as well, too… Such as colorful and challenging double stars. If that's not enough for you – then keep your eyes wide open – because some very cool things are about to happen with Jupiter's moons! Time to dust off your optics and I'll see you in the backyard… (...)
Read the rest of Weekend SkyWatcher's Forecast: August 28-30, 2009 (1,073 words)
© tammy for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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An international team of astronomers has debunked a long-held belief about how stars are formed. Since the 1950's, astronomers believed groups of new-born stars obeyed the same rules of star formation, which meant the ratio of massive stars to lighter stars was pretty much the same from galaxy to galaxy. For every star 20 times more massive than the Sun or larger, for example, there'd be 500 stars equal to or less than the mass of the Sun. "This was a really useful idea. Unfortunately it seems not to be true," said team research leader Dr. Gerhardt Meurer of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. (...)
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© Brian Ventrudo for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 20 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: star birth, star formation, stars
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Titan is the only place in the solar system other than the earth that appears to have large quantities of liquid sitting on the surface. Granted, conditions on Titan are quite different than on Earth. For one thing, it's a lot colder on Titan and the liquids there are various types of hydrocarbons. "Methane is to Titan what water is to the earth," says astronomer Mike Brown (yes, that guy, of Pluto, Eris and Makemake fame.) But now Brown and his colleagues have discovered another similarity. Titan has fog. "All of those bright sparkly reddish white patches (shown in the image here) are fog banks hanging out at the surface in Titan's late southern summer," Brown wrote in his blog.
Wow.
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Read the rest of Fog on Titan? Help Review Mike Brown's Paper (459 words)
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Post tags: mike brown, Saturn, Titan
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If the energy from the sun varies by only 0.1 percent during the 11-year solar cycle, could such a small variation drive major changes in weather patterns on Earth? Yes, say researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) who used more than a century of weather observations and three powerful computer models in their study. They found subtle connections between solar cycle, the stratosphere, and the tropical Pacific Ocean that work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe. Scientists say this will help in predicting the intensity of certain climate phenomena, such as the Indian monsoon and tropical Pacific rainfall, years in advance.
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In case you haven't heard, Season 4 of the History Channel's "The Universe" has begun. To help celebrate, they've generously offered to give away two sweet prizes related to the show. One person will get "The Universe Collector's Set", which contains Season 1, Season 2, and the 2 specials. And another person will get to choose between Season 1 on Bluray, or Season 2 on DVD.
To enter the giveaway, just email info@universetoday.com with the Subject Line: "Universe DVD Giveaway". I'll collect all the entries and pick two randomly as winners. Then I'll delete all the emails. The deadline to enter is Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 12:00 noon (Pacific Time). And if you want to check out The Universe now, you can buy full episodes on iTunes, order DVDs from the History Channel, and even watch it on the television. The next episode, "It Fell From Space" airs on September 1, 2009
© Fraser for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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If you're wondering why the first launch attempt for space shuttle Discovery was scrubbed early Tuesday morning, here's your answer. Yikes! But what a gorgeous picture! And of course, the second launch attempt early Wednesday morning was called off when instrumentation for an 8-inch fill and drain valve on the shuttle's external tank indicated the valve had failed to close. But yesterday, the valve functioned correctly five times during launch pad tests, NASA said. That means NASA will likely go ahead with a launch attempt at 04:22 GMT (12:22 a.m. ET) on Friday. But the anomaly remains unexplained, so it will be up to the mission management team to decide if the shuttle can fly as is, or if engineers need to know more about the issue. The decision won't be made, however until the MMT meets Thursday afternoon, just hours before the scheduled liftoff time. As the saying goes, there's a million parts on the shuttle and if only one is not working….
UPDATE: Launch now is targeted for no earlier than 11:59 p.m. Friday, Aug. 28, to allow engineers more time to develop plans for resolving the issue with the valve. See below for a close-up of the lightning shot, to see how close it actually came to the shuttle.
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Read the rest of How Close Was That Lightning to the Shuttle? (101 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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The Spirit rover has been stuck in loose soil on Mars for several months now, and just as the rover team is preparing to execute maneuvers to attempt to free Spirit, a dust storm hits. Is Mars an unforgiving planet or what? The amount of electricity generated by the solar panels on Spirit has been declining for the past several Martian days, or sols, because of the storm, and Spirit's daily activities have been trimmed. Those watching over the rover are keeping an eye on weather reports from observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. While the rover team at JPL are keeping their "spirits" up, a recent image from the rover indicates Spirit herself might be getting frustrated with her string of bad luck:
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Read the rest of Mars Kicking Spirit When She's Down (309 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Here's this week's image for the WITU Challenge, to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. You know what to do: take a look at this image and see if you can determine where in the universe this image is from; give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. We'll provide the image today, but won't reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.
UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below.
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Read the rest of Where In The Universe #68 (160 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 25 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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 The Trifid Nebula. Credit: ESO You'll have no trouble at all enjoying these stunning new images of the Trifid Nebula. This massive star factory is so named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, and is a rare combination of three nebula types: reflection, emission and dark nebulae. With these new images from ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile, astronomers are learning more about the early stages of stellar life, from gestation to first light. (...) Read the rest of New Images Reveal Details of the Trifid Nebula (416 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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 This has nothing to do with space or astronomy, but is perhaps one of the juiciest pieces of new I have ever read. Could we one day be driving cars fueled by watermelons? Researchers say that watermelon juice can be a valuable source of biofuel, as it can be efficiently fermented into ethanol. But have no fear, using watermelons for biofuel wouldn't cut into the amount of watermelons available for the public to eat. This research evaluated the biofuel potential of juice from 'cull' watermelons – those not sold due to cosmetic imperfections, and currently ploughed back into the field. Wayne Fish from the US Department of Agriculture said, "About 20% of each annual watermelon crop is left in the field because of surface blemishes or because they are misshapen. We've shown that the juice of these melons is a source of readily fermentable sugars, representing a heretofore untapped feedstock for ethanol biofuel production."
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Read the rest of Watermelons: The Newest Renewable Energy Source (95 words)
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 Discovery on the launchpad. Credit: NASA TV NASA officially scrubbed the second attempt for launching the STS-128 mission. "The last half an hour or so, a problem cropped up with a fill-and-drain valve in the bottom part of the shuttle, the aft part of the shuttle, related to the liquid hydrogen," said NASA TV launch commentator Allard Beutel. "This particular valve … gave indications it did not close when it was commanded to." No word yet on what might be needed to replace the valve or restore it to normal operation. NASA is currently targeting the next launch attempt for Friday at 4:22 GMT (12:22 am ET) pending a review analysis on the valve issue. NASA only has until August 30 to launch Discovery or the flight will be delayed to mid October because of upcoming Japanese and Russian space station missions and a conflict with the Air Force Eastern Range. We'll keep you posted.
© nancy for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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