Friday, March 30, 2012

Weekly SkyWatcher’s Forecast – March 19-25, 2012

Weekly SkyWatcher’s Forecast – March 19-25, 2012:

NGC 2539 - Credit: Palomar Observatory Courtesy of Caltech
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! The week starts off with new Moon and the perfect opportunity to do a Messier Marathon. The planets continue to dazzle as we not only celebrate the Vernal Equinox, but the March Geminid meteor shower as well! If that doesn’t get your pulsar racing – nothing will. It’s time to get out your binoculars and telescopes and meet me in the backyard! (...)




Astrophoto: Pulp Fiction by César Cantú

Astrophoto: Pulp Fiction by César Cantú:

The Cone and Christmas Tree Nebula. Credit: César Cantú. Click for higher resolution version.
Astrophotographer César Cantú from the Chilidog Observatory in Monterrey, Mexico calls this image “Pulp Fiction” for its violent areas of hot, deadly gases being expelled by the young stars, solar windstorms, huge accumulations of cosmic dust. But the two features show here are actually are named after things much more peaceful in nature: The Cone Nebula and the Christmas Tree Cluster. This open cluster of stars was discovered by William Herschel in 1785 and is cataloged as NGC 2264 and lies at a distance of 2,600 light years from our solar system.
“This is an H II region located in the constellation Monoceros,” César says, “a region with much stardust. The picture shows also the Hubble Variable Nebula, like a little flash at the top right. This is a vast field reached with the telescope and focal reducer FSQ106, which gives a focal length of 385mm with great resolution. The camera used was the FLI8300, with 4:30 hours of exposure.”
Click the image for access to a higher resolution version on César’s website.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group, post in our Forum or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.

Star Lab Needs Payloads!

Star Lab Needs Payloads!:

The multi-section Star Lab suborbital vehicle. (Credit: 4Frontiers Corp.)
Star Lab, the next-generation vehicle for suborbital experiments developed by the Florida-based 4Frontiers Corporation, is well on its way toward its first successful flight — and it’s looking for payloads.
(...)

SATURN Carnival of Space

Carnival of Space #241:

Carnival of Space. Credit: John Williams
This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by John Williams over at Starry Critters, fun image-filled site you should definitely check out!
Click here to read the Carnival of Space #241.
And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address.



Rare Rectangle Galaxy Discovered

Rare Rectangle Galaxy Discovered:

LEDA 074886: a dwarf galaxy with a curious rectangular shape
It’s being called the “emerald-cut galaxy” — recently discovered by an international team of astronomers with the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, LEDA 074886 is a dwarf galaxy located 70 million light-years (21 Mpc) away, within a group of about 250 other galaxies.
“It’s an exciting find,” Dr. Alister Graham, lead author and associate professor at Swinburne University Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing told Universe Today in an email. “I’ve seen thousands of galaxies, and they don’t look like this one.”


Photo Treat: Enceladus, Titan and Saturn’s Rings

Photo Treat: Enceladus, Titan and Saturn’s Rings:

Color-composite image from Cassini raw data acquired on March 12, 2012. (NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major)
Little Enceladus and enormous Titan are seen on either side of Saturn’s rings in this image, a color-composite made from raw images acquired by Cassini on March 12, 2012. The original images were taken in red, green and blue color channels, and with a little Photoshop editing I combined them into a roughly true-color view of what Cassini saw as it passed within 1,045,591 km of Enceladus.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. Edited by Jason Major.

New Data Find a Silver Lining of Cosmic Radiation

New Data Find a Silver Lining of Cosmic Radiation:

Artist's illustration of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. CRaTER is the instrument center-mounted at the bottom of LRO. Credit: Chris Meaney/NASA.
Cosmic radiation, it seems, may be a blessing and a curse. A team of scientists based at the University of New Hampshire have used data from the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to measure radiation on the Moon’s surface. They’ve found that while radiation is fatal, it can also cause the chemical changes that form the foundations of biological structures. (...)


Speca – An Intriguing Look Into The Beginning Of A Black Hole Jet

Speca – An Intriguing Look Into The Beginning Of A Black Hole Jet:

A unique galaxy, which holds clues to the evolution of galaxies billions of years ago, has now been discovered by an Indian-led international team of astronomers. The discovery, which will enable scientists to unearth new aspects about the formation of galaxies in the early universe, has been made using the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT) of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR), India. CREDIT: Hota et al., SDSS, NCRA-TIFR, NRAO/AUI/NSF.
Its name is SPECA – a Spiral-host Episodic radio galaxy tracing Cluster Accretion. That’s certainly a mouthful of words for this unusual galaxy, but there’s a lot more going on here than just its name. “This is probably the most exotic galaxy with a black hole, ever seen. It is like a ‘missing-link’ between present day and past galaxies. It has the potential to teach us new lessons about how galaxies and clusters of galaxies formed in the early Universe,” said Ananda Hota, of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), in Taiwan and who discovered this exotic galaxy. (...)
Read the rest of Speca – An Intriguing Look Into The Beginning Of A Black Hole Jet (818 words)



Orion Crew Capsule Targeted for 2014 Leap to High Orbit

Orion Crew Capsule Targeted for 2014 Leap to High Orbit:

The Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) is scheduled to launch the first unmanned Orion crew cabin into a high altitude Earth orbit in 2014 atop a Delta 4 Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Artist’s concept. Credit: NASA
See below a new NASA animation depicting the Orion EFT-1 Test Flight
NASA is on course to make the highest leap in human spaceflight in nearly 4 decades when an unmanned Orion crew capsule blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a high stakes, high altitude test flight in early 2014.
A new narrated animation (see below) released by NASA depicts the planned 2014 launch of the Orion spacecraft on the Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission to the highest altitude orbit reached by a spaceship intended for humans since the Apollo Moon landing Era. (...)


Two Moons In Passing

Two Moons In Passing:

Animation of Tethys passing in front of Dione from Cassini's point of view. (CLICK TO PLAY)
Saturn’s moon Tethys passes in front of its slightly larger sister Dione in this animation made from 25 raw images acquired by Cassini on March 14, 2012. Pretty cool! (Click the image to play.)


VISTA View Is Chock Full Of Galaxies

VISTA View Is Chock Full Of Galaxies:

Mosaic of infrared images from ESO's UltraVISTA survey reveal over 200,000 distant galaxies. (ESO/UltraVISTA team. Acknowledgement: TERAPIX/CNRS/INSU/CASU.)
See all those tiny points of light in this image? Most of them aren’t stars; they’re entire galaxies, seen by the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA survey telescope located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
This is a combination of over 6000 images taken with a total exposure time of 55 hours, and is the widest deep view of the sky ever taken in infrared light.


Clouds Get in the Way on Mars

Clouds Get in the Way on Mars:

Clouds give a fuzzy view of ice-topped dunes on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
The science team from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter wanted to take another look at a region of icy sand dunes on Mars to look for seasonal changes as spring is now arriving on the Red Planet’s northern hemisphere. But the view was obstructed by clouds, creating this unusual hazy view.
“This happens occasionally. We’ve found that weather forecasting on Mars is just as challenging — if not more — than on Earth,” said HiRISE team member Candy Hansen, who I nabbed in the hallway during the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference today, to ask about this unique image. “The clouds are likely made of water ice crystals, and the dunes have a coating of CO2 ice that is just starting to sublimate away as the Sun’s rays are getting stronger in this region.”


1st Student Selected MoonKAM Pictures Look Inspiringly Home to Earth

1st Student Selected MoonKAM Pictures Look Inspiringly Home to Earth:

Student-run MoonKAM Imager Looks Homeward - You are Here !
This image of the far side of the lunar surface, with Earth in the background, was taken by the MoonKAM system aboard the Ebb spacecraft as part of the first image set taken from lunar orbit from March 15 – 18, 2012 by NASA's GRAIL mission. The target was selected by 4th grade students at Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Montana who had the honor of choosing the first MoonKAM images after winning a nationwide contest. A little more than half-way up and on the left side of the image is the crater De Forest. Due to its proximity to the southern pole, DeForest receives sunlight at an oblique angle when it is on the illuminated half of the Moon. NASA/Caltech-JPL/MIT/SRS
See below 1st Full View of the Earth from the Moon -
taken 1966 and compare
The first student selected photos of the Moon’s surface snapped by NASA’s new pair of student named Lunar Mapping orbiters – Ebb & Flow - have just been beamed back and show an eerie view looking back to the Home Planet – and all of Humanity – barely rising above the pockmarked terrain of the mysterious far side of our nearest neighbor in space.
Congratulations to Americas’ Youth on an outstanding and inspiring choice !!
The student photo is reminiscent of one of the iconic images of Space Exploration – the first full view of the Earth from the Moon taken by NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 back in August 1966 (see below).
The images were taken in the past few days by the MoonKAM camera system aboard NASA’s twin GRAIL spacecraft currently circling overhead in polar lunar orbit, and previously known as GRAIL A and B. (...)
Read the rest of 1st Student Selected MoonKAM Pictures Look Inspiringly Home to Earth (1,003 words)



Robotics Refueling Research Scores Huge Leap at Space Station

Robotics Refueling Research Scores Huge Leap at Space Station:

Canada’s Dextre robot (highlight) and NASA’s Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) experiment jointly performed groundbreaking robotics research aboard the ISS in March 2012. Dextre used its hands to grasp specialized work tools on the RRM for first-of-its-kind precision motion experiments to demonstrate remotely controlled repair and refueling of orbiting satellites. Credit: NASA
Videos and Ops Photos below
A combined team of American and Canadian engineers has taken a major first step forward by successfully applying new, first-of-its-kind robotics research conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to the eventual repair and refueling of high value orbiting space satellites, and which has the potential to one day bring about billions of dollars in cost savings for the government and commercial space sectors.
Gleeful researchers from both nations shouted “Yeah !!!” – after successfully using the Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) experiment – bolted outside the ISS- as a technology test bed to demonstrate that a remotely controlled robot in the vacuum of space could accomplish delicate work tasks requiring extremely precise motion control. The revolutionary robotics experiment could extend the usable operating life of satellites already in Earth orbit that were never even intended to be worked upon.
“After dedicating many months of professional and personal time to RRM, it was a great emotional rush and a reassurance for me to see the first video stream from an RRM tool,” said Justin Cassidy in an exclusive in-depth interview with Universe Today. Cassidy is RRM Hardware Manager at the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.(...)


Can “Warp Speed” Planets Zoom Through Interstellar Space?

Can “Warp Speed” Planets Zoom Through Interstellar Space?:

Artist’s conception of a runaway planet zooming through interstellar space. A glowing volcano on the planet’s surface hints at active plate tectonics that may keep the planet warm.
Image Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)
Nearly ten years ago, astronomers were stunned to discover a star that had been apparently flung from its own system and travelling at over a million kilometers per hour. Over the years, a question was brought up: If stars can be ejected at a high velocity, what about planets?
Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) states, “These warp-speed planets would be some of the fastest objects in our Galaxy. If you lived on one of them, you’d be in for a wild ride from the center of the galaxy to the Universe at large.”
Idan Ginsburg (Dartmouth College) adds, “Other than subatomic particles, I don’t know of anything leaving our galaxy as fast as these runaway planets.”


Weekly SkyWatcher’s Forecast – March 26 to April 1, 2012

Weekly SkyWatcher’s Forecast – March 26 to April 1, 2012:
Supernova in M95 - Credit: Larry McNish - RASC
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Have you been following the supernova in M95 (R.A. = 10 43 53.76, Decl. = +11 40 17.9)? Who would have ever believed Mars could be considered “light pollution”? Take advantage of darker skies and catch it now! It’s another planetary showdown as the week begins with Jupiter, Venus, the Moon and the Pleiades lighting up the western twilight sky. Right now is an awesome time to study lunar features and to go asteroid hunting! Get out those telescopes and binoculars and I’ll meet you in the back yard… (...)


Rare Rain on Titan; Once Every 1,000 Years

Rare Rain on Titan; Once Every 1,000 Years:
Lakes on Titan. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI
Lakes on Titan. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI

Even though there are lakes and rivers of liquid hydrocarbons on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan, the rains that feed them may come few and far between. According to data gathered by NASA’s Cassini mission, parts of Titan might not see rain for more than 1,000 years.
And according to Dr. Ralph Lorenz, from the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUALP), a new mission to Titan is exactly what’s needed to get to the bottom of this.


You’ll Only See This Landform on Mars, Nowhere on Earth

You’ll Only See This Landform on Mars, Nowhere on Earth:
Periodic Bedrock Ridges on Mars. Image credit: University of Washington
Periodic Bedrock Ridges on Mars. Image credit: University of Washington

Geologists are often surprised to find features on Earth replicated on other worlds; ancient riverbeds on Mars, lakes on Titan, and volcanic eruptions on Io. But researchers from the University of Washington have identified a geologic feature that exists on Mars…
But not on Earth.


An Ultraviolet, Ultraviolent Supernova Shockwave

An Ultraviolet, Ultraviolent Supernova Shockwave:
The Cygnus Loop in Ultraviolet. Captured by Galex. Image credit: NASA
The Cygnus Loop in Ultraviolet. Captured by Galex. Image credit: NASA

You’re looking at an insanely beautiful image of the Cygnus Loop nebula captured by NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mission. Furthermore, this isn’t viewed in plain old visible light, this is high-energy ultraviolet light, revealing regions of hot gas remaining after a supernova detonated here 5,000 to 8,000 years ago.
In fact, the original supernova would have been bright enough to be visible with the unaided eye.


One Night, Dozens of Triple Conjunctions

One Night, Dozens of Triple Conjunctions:

Mosiac of the conjunction of Jupiter, the Moon and Venus on March 25, 2012. Credit: Rick Ellis
Last night (March 25, 2012), Jupiter, Venus and the Moon put on quite a show, and Rick Ellis from Toronto, Canada captured it — over two dozen times. This composite image was created from 31 frames taken five minutes apart, each with an exposure time of 5 seconds. Thanks to Rick for creating this image “just for the gang at UT.” Check out his earlier image of the Venus-Jupiter conjunction from March 13
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group, post in our Forum or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.



What ? Carnival of Space ?

Carnival of Space #242:

Carnival of Space. Image by Jason Major.
This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Ray Sanders at his Dear Astronomer blog.
Click here to read the Carnival of Space #242

And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address.



Psychedelics in the Sky: NASA Launches 5 Rockets in 5 Minutes

Psychedelics in the Sky: NASA Launches 5 Rockets in 5 Minutes:

Sounding rockets released chemical tracers that created strange milky, white clouds at the edge of space. Credit: NASA
After several days of delays due to weather and technical issues, NASA has now successfully launched five suborbital sounding rockets in five minutes from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia as part of a study of the upper level jet stream.
The first rocket was launched at 4:58 a.m. EDT and each subsequent rocket was launched 80 seconds apart.
Each of the rockets released a chemical tracer that created psychedelic-looking clouds at the edge of space, which were reported to be seen from as far south as Wilmington, N.C.; west to Charlestown, W. Va.; and north to Buffalo, N.Y.
The above image was taken from one of the official viewing sites by a NASA photographer; below is an image taken by John Anton from New Jersey, as well as more images from NASA, the video showing all the launches and time-lapse video from twolf1 on Vimeo.


“Snowing Microbes” On Saturn’s Moon?

“Snowing Microbes” On Saturn’s Moon?:

Cassini image of Enceladus from Dec. 2010 showing the moon's icy jets and the hazy E-ring (NASA/JPL/SSI)
Enceladus, Saturn’s 318-mile-wide moon that’s become famous for its ice-spraying southern jets, is on astronomers’ short list of places in our own solar system where extraterrestrial life could be hiding — and NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is in just the right place to try and sniff it out.

Billions of Habitable Worlds Likely in the Milky Way

Billions of Habitable Worlds Likely in the Milky Way:

Artist’s impression of sunset on the super-Earth world Gliese 667 Cc. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
Could there be ‘tens of billions’ of habitable worlds in our own galaxy? That’s the results from a new study that searched for rocky planets in the habitable zones around red dwarf stars. An international team of astronomers using ESO’s HARPS spectrograph now estimates that there are tens of billions of such planets in the Milky Way galaxy, with probably about one hundred in the Sun’s immediate neighborhood, less than 30 light years away.
“Our new observations with HARPS mean that about 40% of all red dwarf stars have a super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone where liquid water can exist on the surface of the planet,” said Xavier Bonfils, from IPAG, Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de Grenoble, France, and the leader of the team. “Because red dwarfs are so common — there are about 160 billion of them in the Milky Way — this leads us to the astonishing result that there are tens of billions of these planets in our galaxy alone.”


Astronomers Discover Ancient Planetary System

Astronomers Discover Ancient Planetary System:

Artist’s impression of HIP 11952 and its two Jupiter-like planets. Image credit: Timotheos Samartzidis
From a press release from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy:

A group of European astronomers has discovered an ancient planetary system that is likely to be a survivor from one of the earliest cosmic eras, 13 billion years ago. The system consists of the star HIP 11952 and two planets, which have orbital periods of 290 and 7 days, respectively. Whereas planets usually form within clouds that include heavier chemical elements, the star HIP 11952 contains very little other than hydrogen and helium. The system promises to shed light on planet formation in the early universe – under conditions quite different from those of later planetary systems, such as our own.


“Tidal Venuses” May Have Been Wrung Out To Dry

“Tidal Venuses” May Have Been Wrung Out To Dry:

Extreme heating from tidal stresses may render a "Tidal Venus" planet inhabitable
Earth-sized exoplanets within a distant star’s habitable zone could still be very much uninhabitable, depending on potential tidal stresses — either past or present — that could have “squeezed out” all the water, leaving behind a bone-dry ball of rock.

Apollo 11′s Rocket Engines Found on the Bottom of the Ocean

Apollo 11′s Rocket Engines Found on the Bottom of the Ocean:
Apollo 11 Launch
Apollo 11 Launch
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has located the Apollo 11 F-1 rocket engines and plans to recover them. “I’m excited to report that, using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar, the team has found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14,000 feet below the surface, and we’re making plans to attempt to raise one or more of them from the ocean floor,” Bezos wrote on the Bezos Expeditions website. “We don’t know yet what condition these engines might be in – they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they’re made of tough stuff, so we’ll see.”


Huge ‘Tornado’ on the Sun

Huge ‘Tornado’ on the Sun:

Spectacular rotation of material from solar prominences and the coronal cavities on September 25, 2011. Credit: NASA/Dr. Xing Li, Dr. Huw Morgan and Mr. Drew Leonard.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images and video of a spectacular rotation of material from the Sun in a solar prominence. The whirling, dancing prominence created a massive tornado-like feature on the Sun, five times bigger than the Earth. “This is perhaps the first time that such a huge solar tornado is filmed by an imager,” said Dr. Xing Li of Aberystwyth University, presenting his team’s work at the National Astronomy Meeting this week in the UK. “The superb spatial and temporal resolution of SDO allows us to observe the solar atmosphere in great detail.”


Hubble Gets Best Look Yet At Messier 9

Hubble Gets Best Look Yet At Messier 9:

New Hubble image of Messier 9 cluster resolves individual stars (NASA/ESA)
First discovered by Charles Messier in 1764, the globular cluster Messier 9 is a vast swarm of ancient stars located 25,000 light-years away, close to the center of the galaxy. Too distant to be seen with the naked eye, the cluster’s innermost stars have never been individually resolved… until now.


Postcards From Saturn

Postcards From Saturn:

Saturn's second-largest moon Rhea, in front of the rings and a blurred Epimetheus (or Janus) whizzing behind. Acquired March 29, 2012.
Over the past few days NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has performed flybys of several of Saturn’s moons. From the ostentatious Enceladus with its icy geysers to the rugged relief of Rhea, the sharp peaks of Dione’s frigid craters and even diminutive Janus, Cassini has once again returned a stack of stunning views from the Saturnian system, nearly 815 million miles from home.
Check out some of the images, and wish you were there!


Saturday, March 17, 2012

Twin NASA Science Probes Start Lunar Gravity Mapping

Twin NASA Science Probes Start Lunar Gravity Mapping:

Twin GRAIL Moon Probes Ebb and Flow Start Lunar Gravity Science Mission
The twin GRAIL probes have just begun their science mission and will use a precision formation-flying technique to map Lunar Gravity, as depicted in this artist's rendering. Radio signals traveling between the two spacecraft provide scientists with exact measurements which will result in the most accurate gravity map of the moon ever made. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s twin lunar orbiting GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) spacecraft christened Ebb and Flow have kicked off their science collection phase aimed at precisely mapping our Moon’s gravity field, interior composition and evolution, the science team informed Universe Today.
“GRAIL’s science mapping phase officially began Tuesday (March 6) and we are collecting science data,” said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, to Universe Today.
“It is impossible to overstate how thrilled and excited we are !”(...)


Giant Sunspot Seen Through Dusty Skies

Giant Sunspot Seen Through Dusty Skies:

Sunspot region 1429 photographed from New Mexico. © David Tremblay.
The enormous sunspot region responsible for all the recent fuss and flares was easily visible from Earth yesterday… easily visible, that is, with the help of a natural filter provided by a New Mexico dust storm!


Radar Prototype Begins Tracking Down Space Junk

Radar Prototype Begins Tracking Down Space Junk:

Simulation of how Space Fence will track orbital space debris. Image courtesy Lockheed Martin
Several times a year, the International Space Station needs to perform Debris Avoidance Maneuvers to dodge the ever-growing amount of space junk hurtling around in Earth orbit. Additionally, our increased dependence on satellites for communications and navigation is threatened by the risk of potential collisions with space debris. The existing system for finding and tracking objects, the Air Force Space Surveillance System, or VHF Fence, has been in service since the early 1960s, and is sorely out of date. But a prototype system called Space Fence has now been tested in a series of demonstrations, and successfully tracked more and smaller pieces of debris than the current system.
“The current system has the ability to track about 20,000 objects,” Lockheed Martin spokesperson Chip Eschenfelder told Universe Today, “but there millions of objects out there, many of which are not being tracked. Space Fence will find and catalog smaller objects than what are not being tracked now.”


Astrophoto: Stunning Detailed Look at the Whirlpool Galaxy by John Chumack

Astrophoto: Stunning Detailed Look at the Whirlpool Galaxy by John Chumack:

A 17.5 hour exposure of M51, The Whirlpool Spiral Galaxy also known as NGC-5194. Credit: John Chumack
Wow! Astrophotographer John Chumack has done it again with a spectacular, long exposure view of the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51. “This is my best and most detailed image of M51 to date, and now my longest exposure on a single object,” John said. “Definitely a lot of work, but I now feel it was worth all the processing time, which actually exceeded the 17.5 hours of imaging time!”
Visible are faint tidal tail structure details. “I can see several dust lane structures running through the tidal tail as well as faint background galaxies behind the tidal tail!” John said.
This long exposure image was taken over seven separate nights in early 2010, 2011 with John’s homemade 16″ F4.5 Newtonian Scope. See more details below, or on Flickr. You should also check out John’s website, Galactic Images, where you can see all his beautiful handiwork.


Active Region Is Still Active!

Active Region Is Still Active!:

Aurora over Faskrudsfjordur, Iceland on March 8, 2012. © Jónína Óskarsdóttir.
Even though the CME unleashed by active region 1429 initially hit Earth a bit softer than expected yesterday (read why here), it ended up gaining some extra “oomph” once the magnetic fields lined up right… enough to ignite some amazing displays of aurorae like the one shown above over Iceland, photographed by Jónína Óskarsdóttir!
And that wasn’t the last we’d hear from AR1429 either; at around 10:30 pm EST on March 8, the region lit up again with an M6.3 flare… although smaller than the previous X5.4-class flare, it produced a temporary radio blackout and released another Earth-directed CME, which is expected to arrive in the coming hours.


ALPHA Closes in on Antimatter

ALPHA Closes in on Antimatter:

What matter and antimatter might look like annihilating one another. Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss
We live in a universe made of matter. But at the moment of the Big Bang, matter and antimatter existed in equal amounts. That antimatter has all but disappeared suggests that nature, for some reason, has a strong preference for matter. Physicists want to know why matter has replaced its antimatter twin, and this week the ALPHA collaboration at CERN got a step closer to unraveling the mystery. (...)


Valuable Space Rock Crashes Into Oslo Cabin

Valuable Space Rock Crashes Into Oslo Cabin:

This meteorite struck the Thomassen family's cabin in Oslo. (Photo: Rune Thomassen)
A family in Oslo got a surprise when they visited their allotment garden cabin for the first time this season and found that a 585-gram (20 oz.) meteorite had ripped a hole through the roof. The space rock was discovered “lying five or six metres away,” the cabin’s owner, Rune Thomassen, told the local newspaper VG.
Such an event is rare in Norway; since 1848 the country has noted only 14 meteorite discoveries.


Does Mars Still Shake, Rattle and Roll?

Does Mars Still Shake, Rattle and Roll?:

Boulders on the floor of Cerberus Fossae. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Compared to Earth, Mars is a relatively quiet planet, geologically speaking. Actually, very quiet, as in pretty much dead. While it has volcanoes much larger than any here, they have been inactive for a very long time; the latest studies suggest however that volcanic activity may have continued until only a matter of millions of years ago. That seems like an eternity to our human sense of time, but geologically, it is quite recent.
There is also the massive canyon system Valles Marineris, much larger than the Grand Canyon here on Earth, and evidence for ancient hot springs, glaciers, etc. which also show that Mars was once much more active than it is today.
Now, there is also evidence that marsquakes (as in earthquakes here) continued to shake the planet until only a few million years ago, and may even still happen today.