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Meteorologists have a tough time predicting weather on Earth let alone knowing what the weather is like on other planets, but discoveries from spacecraft, observatories, and laboratories have revealed some of the mysteries of weather across the Solar System. A new book by Science journalist Michael Carroll, “Drifting on Alien Winds: Exploring the Skies and Weather of Other Worlds,” explores the bizarre weather found on the other worlds of our solar system. Read a guest post by Carroll on Universe Today. Sound interesting? You could win a copy of your very own! Universe Today has two copies to give away, thanks to Springer Books and Jeff Rutherford Media Relations. How to win? Just send an email to info@universetoday.com with “Alien Winds Book” in the subject line, and Fraser will randomly pick the winners. The contest ends on Friday, May 20 at 12 Noon PDT. Good luck!
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Contests, Giveaways
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 Triton Probe: Neptune's blue skies may be visited by beachball-sized methane raindrops. (painting ©Michael Carroll) Editor’s note: We all want to explore other worlds in our solar system, but perhaps you haven’t considered the bizarre weather you’d encounter — from the blistering hurricane-force winds of Venus to the gentle methane rain showers of Saturn’s giant moon Titan. Science journalist Michael Carroll has written a guest post for Universe Today which provides peek at the subject matter for his new book, “Drifting on Alien Winds: Exploring the Skies and Weather of Other Worlds.” It's been a dramatic year for weather on Earth. Blizzards have blanketed the east coast, crippling traffic and power grids. Cyclone Tasha drenched Queensland, Australia as rainfall swelled the mighty Mississippi, flooding the southern US. Eastern Europe and Asia broke high temperature records. But despite these meteorological theatrics, the Earth's conditions are a calm echo of the weather on other worlds in our solar system. (...)
Read the rest of Guest Post: Drifting on Alien Winds: Exploring the Skies and Weather of Other Worlds (678 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Book Reviews, Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Saturn, triton, Uranus, Venus
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 IC 342 - Ken and Emilie Siarkiewicz/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF Star formation is an incredible process, but also notoriously difficult to trace. The reason is that the main constituent of stars, hydrogen, looks about the same well before a gravitational collapse begins, as it does in the dense clouds where star formation happens. Sure, the temperature changes and the hydrogen glows in a different part of the spectrum, but it’s still hydrogen. It’s everywhere! So when astronomers want to search for denser regions of gas, they often turn to other atoms and molecules that can only form or be stimulated to emit under these relatively dense conditions. Common examples of this include carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. However, a study published in 2005, led by David Meier at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studied inner regions of the nearby face-on spiral by tracing eight molecules and determined that the full extent of the dense regions is not well mapped by these two common molecules. In particular, cyanoacetylene, an organic molecule with a chemical formula of HC3N, was demonstrated to correlate with the most active star forming regions, promising astronomers a peek into the heart of star forming regions and prompting a follow-up study. (...)
Read the rest of Cyanoacetylene in IC 342 (330 words)
© jvois for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: molecular clouds, star formation
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 Space Shuttle Endeavour awaits launch from Pad 39 A on May 16, 2011 on the STS-134 mission
Two access walkways leading to Endeavour.
Astronaut walkway to White Room at center. Credit: Ken Kremer.
See my photo album below while I was standing beneath the shuttle and on top of the launch pad. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER – Space Shuttle Endeavour is poised for launch as the countdown clock ticks down to a liftoff from Pad 39 A on Monday morning, May 16 at 8:56 a.m. EDT. The shuttle Mission Management Team (MMT) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) met today (May 14) and gave the green light to continue launch preparations for the STS-134 mission, which is the final flight of shuttle Endeavour. The weather forecast remains at a 70 percent favorable chance of acceptable conditions on Monday, according to Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters. The weather outlook drops to only 20 percent favorable on Tuesday in case of a one day delay. The weather rebounds to 80 percent favorable if the launch is postponed by 48 hours. (...)
Read the rest of Looking to the Heavens with Endeavour; Launch Pad Photo Special (730 words)
© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: AMS-02, international space station, ISS, Mark Kelly Gabrielle Giffords, NASA, Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle Endeavour
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 Could assessing the orbital motions of distant red dwarf binaries offer support for a branch of fringe science? Well, probably not... Credit: NASA. The Sloan Low-mass Wide Pairs of Kinematically Equivalent Stars (SLoWPoKES) catalog was recently announced, containing 1,342 common proper motion pairs (i.e. binaries) – which are all low mass stars in the mid-K and mid-M stellar classes – in other words, orange and red dwarves. These low mass pairs are all at least 500 astronomical units distance from each other – at which point the mutual gravitation between the two objects gets pretty tenuous – or so Newton would have it. Such a context provides a test-bed for something that lies in the realms of ‘fringe science’ – that is, Modified Newtonian Dynamics, or MoND. (...)
Read the rest of Astronomy Without A Telescope – SLoWPoKES (630 words)
© Steve Nerlich for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 25 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Modified Newtonian dynamics
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 Europa and Jupiter's Great Red Spot, Voyager 1, March 3, 1979. 2003 Credit: NASA; JPL/Kinetikon Pictures. Used by permission. We've featured many space images here on Universe Today that have been produced by imaging enthusiasts who take raw images from a mission or spacecraft and refine them into what many consider works of art. Michael Benson has taken this activity to a level "above and beyond" by creating exhibits, books, and movies portraying the images taken by our robotic emissaries to the solar system.
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Read the rest of Stunning Planetary Portraits and Spacescapes (463 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 365 Days of Astronomy podcast, Astrophotos
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 Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers!
I’m sure everyone has been enjoying following the morning planet show, but are you ready for something else? If you’ve got a telescope, then we’ve got some projects for you. While it’s definitely going to be a “moon light” weekend, that doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun! Let’s take a look at what the night has to offer… (...)
Read the rest of Weekend Observing Challenges – May 13-15, 2011 (525 words)
© tammy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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