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Saturday, 3 November 2012
Sky Guide Africa South 2013
The book also presents a wealth of information in a clear and accessible way about the Sun, Moon, planets, comets, meteors and bright stars, with many supporting diagrams, charts, illustrations and images.
An annual publication, Sky Guide Africa South is an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in the night skies of southern Africa; ‘… an absolute must for first-time star-gazers and professional astronomers alike’.
Monday, 29 October 2012
ASSA Symposium 2012 - Videos on YouTube
Several talks given recently at the ASSA Symposium in Cape Town can now be watched on YouTube, and more are being added.
- The MeerKAT radio telescope - the path to the SKA mid-frequency array, presented by Justin Jonas
- Radio astronomy: SKA-era interferometry and other challenges, presented by Jasper Horrell
- Galaxy Clusters, presented by Maciej Soltynski
- Astrophotography from a backyard observatory, presented by Dale Liebenberg
- Some open clusters I didn’t discover, presented by Auke Slotegraaf
- A pictorial history of SAAO Sutherland, presented by Willie Koorts
- Doing astrophotography with a DSLR on a tripod, presented by Barbara Cunow
- The shaping and testing of two 20-inch optical telescope mirrors, presented by Johann Swanepoel
More to come
SpaceX capsule completes successful first mission
The capsule parachuted into the water at 1922 GMT after an 18-day mission to resupply the station and was now being recovered by a team of divers, US-based SpaceX said in a brief statement on its website.
More....
Sunday, 21 October 2012
Milky Way Galaxy is Embedded Immersed Swimming in a 1 to 2.5 Million Degree PLASMA Gas Cloud Coronal Bubble
Click to enlarge Image.
Source: Holographic Fractal Filamentary Universe of Electricity, Magnetism, Superfluids and Dusty Galaxies
A humongous gaseous plasma coronal cloud bubble surrounding and engulfing the milky way galaxy, far better describes the new discovery, that is being purportedly called just a "superheated gas cloud or gas pool." CORONAL GALAXY CLOUD : Wikiversity.org.
The galactic corona was first predicted and theorized by nobel prize winning astrophysicist Haanes Alfven. Conventionally accepted dogmatic big-bang gravity theorists are still purporting phony cosmology theories, and trying to explain all the missing gravity for galaxies as dark matter. They are just calling this a "hot intergalactic cloud of gas."
Gaseous filaments at these extreme high temperatures are scientifically proven to be in the realm for plasma astrophysicists, not gravity cosmologists. Small amounts of moving charges are intrinsic to plasmas, and far more responsible for shaping and ruling the universe by the fundamental force of electromagnetism. New findings by the trio of Chandra X-ray satellites shows that the enormous sized superheated gas cloud is between 1 to 2.5 million degrees kelvin, and entirely surrounding our milky way galaxy.
Charged oxygen atoms were detected absorbing X-ray light at this temperature range around the galaxy in the outer galaxy halo. All galaxies, especially those similar to our milky way, can be presumed to also be embedded and swimming inside gigantic hot plasma gas pools. The outer galaxy halo is several hundred times hotter than our sun's surface, and between 10 to 60 billion solar masses. Astronomer Smita Mathur of Ohio State University says "the outer, hotter gas halo may extend for a few thousand light years around our milky way galaxy, or it may extend farther out into the surrounding local group of galaxies."
The new findings show the newly discovered "outer, hotter gas halo" is much larger than the previously discovered warm hot intergalactic medium or WHIM filaments. The WHIM is between 100,000 - 1 million degrees kelvin, and far smaller in size. Stars have been shown to form inside the spiral arms of galaxies by condensation of the cooler gaseous intergalactic filaments.
The estimated density of this gas halo is so low that similar halos around other galaxies evade current detection methods. All the talk about finding and solving the mystery of the missing baryons of the universe by this new discovery, are foolish theory conjectures.
Unmeasurable by detection methods, plasmas are known to have moving charges by electromagnetic forces far stronger in strength over vast distances than the gravitational mass of the gas. This produces cosmic-scale electric and magnetic fields requiring further complex plasma mathematics, but correctly mimics and replaces the phony devised relativity interpretation having numerous problems.
This is what should really matter in any cosmology of the universe. The new findings strongly support plasma cosmology.
Famed British soprano Sarah Brightman is planning a concert in space.
Famed British soprano Sarah Brightman is planning a concert in space.
The "Phantom of the Opera" star announced her unusual booking in a press conference in Moscow this week, stating that she will be part of a three-person crew destined for the International Space Station (ISS) sometime in the next two to three years, reports Playbill.
Brightman plans to hitch a ride to the ISS aboard a Soyuz rocket powered by the Russian Federal Space Agency and orbit the earth for an estimated 10 days. The trip will be coordinated by Space Adventures, Ltd., a commercial space travel company created to satisfy the needs of daring (and moneyed) private citizens.
But orbiting isn't all the former disco queen intends to do. The 52-year-old singer also plans to become the first professional musician to sing from space...that is, if those ambitious Muse boys don't beat her to it.
According to a statement in an NBC News report, the UNESCO Artist for Peace Ambassador hopes to use her trip to "promote peace and sustainable development on Earth and from space."
"I am determined that this journey can reach out to be a force for good, a catalyst for some of the dreams and aims of others that resonate with me," she added.
The singer will have to wait until the release of her new album, "Dreamchase," until she can begin the training necessary to become a cosmonaut though. That gives us plenty of time to contemplate which single she will perform in space first. We vote she bring Andrea Boccelli beyond the exosphere and do "Time to Say Goodbye."
Astronomers discover 'diamond planet' twice the size of Earth
Source: Metro
A planet made largely of diamond and twice the size of Earth has been discovered by astronomers who have decided to call it '55 Cancri E'.
By Chris Wickham
LONDON (Reuters) - Forget the diamond as big as the Ritz. This one's bigger than planet Earth.
Orbiting a star that is visible to the naked eye, astronomers have discovered a planet twice the size of our own made largely out of diamond.
The rocky planet, called '55 Cancri e', orbits a sun-like star in the constellation of Cancer and is moving so fast that a year there lasts a mere 18 hours.
Discovered by a U.S.-Franco research team, its radius is twice that of Earth's with a mass eight times greater. That would give it the same density as Earth, although previously observed diamond planets are reckoned to be a lot more dense. It is also incredibly hot, with temperatures on its surface reaching 3,900 degrees Fahrenheit (1,648 Celsius).
"The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite," said Nikku Madhusudhan, the Yale researcher whose findings are due to be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The study - with Olivier Mousis at the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie in Toulouse, France - estimates that at least a third of the planet's mass, the equivalent of about three Earth masses, could be diamond.
Diamond planets have been spotted before but this is the first time one has been seen orbiting a sun-like star and studied in such detail.
"This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth," Madhusudhan said, adding that the discovery of the carbon-rich planet meant distant rocky planets could no longer be assumed to have chemical constituents, interiors, atmospheres, or biologies similar to Earth.
David Spergel, an astronomer at Princeton University, said it was relatively simple to work out the basic structure and history of a star once you know its mass and age.
"Planets are much more complex. This 'diamond-rich super-Earth' is likely just one example of the rich sets of discoveries that await us as we begin to explore planets around nearby stars."
"Nearby" is a relative concept in astronomy. Any fortune-hunter not dissuaded by "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz", F.Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age morality tale of thwarted greed, will find Cancri e about 40 light years, or 230 trillion miles, from Park Avenue.
Saturday, 20 October 2012
Hubble Goes to the eXtreme to Assemble Farthest Ever View of the Universe
Source: HubbleSite
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is an image of a small area of space in the constellation Fornax, created using Hubble Space Telescope data from 2003 and 2004. By collecting faint light over many hours of observation, it revealed thousands of galaxies, both nearby and very distant, making it the deepest image of the universe ever taken at that time. The new full-color XDF image reaches much fainter galaxies and includes very deep exposures in red light from Hubble's new infrared camera, enabling new studies of the earliest galaxies in the universe. The XDF contains about 5,500 galaxies even within its smaller field of view. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.
Astronomers continue studying this area of sky with Hubble. Extensive ongoing observing programs, led by Harry Teplitz and Richard Ellis at the California Institute of Technology, will allow astronomers to study the deep-field galaxies with Hubble to even greater depths in ultraviolet and infrared light prior to the launch of JWST. These new results will provide even more extraordinary views of this region of the sky and will be shared with the public in the coming months.
Thursday, 18 October 2012
A Problem with Pluto's Moons
This artist’s concept shows NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its 2015 encounter with Pluto and its moon, Charon. CREDIT: Southwest Research Institute
Article sourced from Sky and Telescope magazine
The discovery of two tiny moons circling the most famous "dwarf planet" has raised concerns that the New Horizons spacecraft might be endangered when it flies by in July 2015.Ordinarily the discovery of a new addition to the Sun's ever-growing family is cause for celebration. That was the case when astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to spot a tiny, fourth moon around Pluto in 2011 — and then a fifth one earlier this year.
But Alan Stern (Southwest Research Institute) has a love-hate relationship with "P4" and "P5," as they're known colloquially. Stern is the principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which will fly past Pluto on July 14, 2015 — 999 days from now.
On one hand, the extra moonlets provide a richer assortment of objects to image and study when the spacecraft arrives. Stern likes to point out that when New Horizons was being assembled, Charon was the only satellite known to orbit Pluto. Now there are five (including Nix and Hydra, found in 2005). "We're getting six objects for the price of two," he notes.
P4 and P5 are known officially as S/2011 (134340) 1 and S/2012 (134340) 1 — following the International Astronomical Union's convoluted designation scheme, in which "134340" is the minor-planet number assigned to Pluto. According to a recent analysis by Marc Buie (also at SWRI) and others, P4 is no more than 25 miles (40 km) across and P5 a little more than half that — so small that New Horizons might overlook them completely unless it's targeted right at them.
Orbits of Pluto's moons
The orbits of Pluto's five known moons. As now planned, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will pass just 6,200 miles (10,000 km) in July 2015.
Source: NASA / ESA / A. Feild (STScI)
But what concerns Stern is not P4 and P5 themselves, or even other as-yet-unseen moonlets in Pluto's family, but rather what might be happening to them. As he explained during this week's meeting of the the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences, interlopers from the Kuiper Belt should be chipping away at these little bodies, which have too little gravity to clean up their own impact-generated mess. There's a real possibility that extended doughnuts of debris could be cluttering the space inside Charon's orbit — a dangerous gauntlet for the approaching spacecraft.
"I'm a little bit worried," Stern admits. "Even being struck by a BB would be bad at 14 km per second."
The mission team won't know if it's safe to use New Horizon's planned target point, just 6,200 miles (10,000 km) from Pluto, until just a few weeks before the encounter. "We won't have 7 minutes of terror," he says, referring to what the Curiosity flight team endured in August. "We'll have 7 weeks of suspense."
If there's danger ahead, ground controllers will have to redirect the spacecraft onto a new flyby path that's farther away. That go/no-go decision can be made as late as 10 days prior to the encounter. But by then there'll be too little time to develop a revised sequence of imaging and other observations for the craft's seven experiments. So Stern has already started planning one or more alternative pathways that he's dubbed "safe haven bailout trajectories." Nine of these are under consideration, but only the one or two best candidates are likely to be fleshed out over the next two years.
Meanwhile, the teams of astronomers who discovered P4 and P5, which include Stern, will be thinking up names for their little finds. Nothing's been decided yet, but word is that both will be christened well before the flyby.
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Planet Found in Nearest Star System to Earth
Source: European Southern Observatory (ESO)
ESO’s HARPS instrument finds Earth-mass exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B
16 October 2012
European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012.
Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the southern skies and is the nearest stellar system to our Solar System — only 4.3 light-years away. It is actually a triple star — a system consisting of two stars similar to the Sun orbiting close to each other, designated Alpha Centauri A and B, and a more distant and faint red component known as Proxima Centauri [1]. Since the nineteenth century astronomers have speculated about planets orbiting these bodies, the closest possible abodes for life beyond the Solar System, but searches of increasing precision had revealed nothing. Until now.
“Our observations extended over more than four years using the HARPS instrument and have revealed a tiny, but real, signal from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B every 3.2 days,” says Xavier Dumusque (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland and Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto, Portugal), lead author of the paper. “It’s an extraordinary discovery and it has pushed our technique to the limit!”
The European team detected the planet by picking up the tiny wobbles in the motion of the star Alpha Centauri B created by the gravitational pull of the orbiting planet [2]. The effect is minute — it causes the star to move back and forth by no more than 51 centimetres per second (1.8 km/hour), about the speed of a baby crawling. This is the highest precision ever achieved using this method.
Alpha Centauri B is very similar to the Sun but slightly smaller and less bright. The newly discovered planet, with a mass of a little more than that of the Earth [3], is orbiting about six million kilometres away from the star, much closer than Mercury is to the Sun in the Solar System. The orbit of the other bright component of the double star, Alpha Centauri A, keeps it hundreds of times further away, but it would still be a very brilliant object in the planet’s skies.
Complete article...
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