Stars, Planets, Galaxies 146 Astronomy 2010-09-02T20:31:07 Science Guy barry.david.adams@gmail.com Bad Astronomy 2010-09-01T21:00:16

Last week I was honored to be a guest rogue on one of the premier critical thinking podcasts in the world: The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Shockingly, we talked about "Bad Universe" but also UFOs, neutrinos, and I even tried my hand at Science or Fiction (I won’t spoil how I did, but apparently [...]

1288892b1b0c0df7390d442d69715335 Tom's Astronomy Blog 2010-09-01T20:47:45

A very nice new release from the ESO. I’ve included the press release below, but if you have the time the site has additional images. NGC 4666 is in the Constellation Virgo. It’s even viewable from the Northern Hemisphere: RA: 12h 45m 06.0s  Dec: -00°28’00″  (Epoch 2000) It’s kind of small (Size: 4.2′ x 1.4′) [...]

bd172655f0dcb0af01d1da6b0b8b4872 Slacker Astronomy 2010-08-31T23:20:48

by Doug Welch Is there anything more lost than a star in a catalogue which can no longer be found? Such errant entries have been grist for the mills of all sorts of astronomical detective stories. The missing or mis-recorded entries span the range from the sublime to the ridiculous. For instance a whole cottage [...]

4cd5fad4c0f025d856a13df56b7f0128 Tom's Astronomy Blog 2010-08-31T20:09:31

Time for some new wallpaper on this machine. This is a picture of Hurricane Earl taken by Astronaut Douglas Wheelock aboard the International Space Station will do very nicely. Earl is a Category 4 storm and is expected to come up the US east coast and have some sort if impact from the Carolinas to [...]

ad9e6e62219a9a7a789d79ce141c0130 Tom's Astronomy Blog 2010-08-29T15:13:14

Hat tip to Don — this is really good. I’ve watched this over and over focusing on one thing or another, in the beginning you can follow individual asteroids.  The orbital elements were taken from the ‘astorb.dat’ data created by Ted Bowell and associates at http://www.naic.edu/~nolan/astorb.html. Scott Manley did a nice job putting things together.

59eb0e99ad32efdb23e5faa4204323ab Tom's Astronomy Blog 2010-08-27T21:24:54

Take a look at this; from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, it’s the clearest, most detailed image of a sunspot taken in natural light: Amazing.  This is from the New Solar Telescope (NST) at the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO), using adaptive optics.  From the press release: NJIT Distinguished Professor Philip R. Goode and [...]

6c845039bbff62366ffc8ac786e2e791 Astronomy Blog From Blogspan.org 2010-08-27T06:00:28

Why sunspots are a strong source of radio emissions and what information those emissions carry will be the focus of an invited talk by NJIT Research Professor Jeongwoo Lee tomorrow at the International Astronomical Union Symposium on the Physics of Sun and Star Spots in Ventura, CA. http://www.csun.edu/physicsandastronomy/IAUS273/ The event numbers among the top gatherings in the U.S. for people studying sunspots and related phenomena........

4df2858e5d9b7487eb08b838f2fb541c Astronomy Blog From Blogspan.org 2010-08-27T06:00:28

NASA's Kepler Mission has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet transiting the same star. Today's announcement of the discovery of the two planets, Kepler 9b and 9c, is based on seven months of observations of more than 156,000 stars being monitored for subtle brightness changes as part of an ongoing search for Earth-like planets outside our solar system. Researchers designated the sun-like star Kepler-9........

b705c90985ce033be0ae60f4b7980121 Astronomy Blog From Blogspan.org 2010-08-27T06:00:28

Hundreds of thousands of vibrant blue and red stars are visible in this new image of galaxy NGC 4449 taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Hot bluish white clusters of massive stars are scattered throughout the galaxy, interspersed with numerous dustier reddish regions of current star formation. Massive dark clouds of gas and dust are silhouetted against the flaming starlight........

a1a519bb3eff23f14a2e9b74dc2566ab Astronomy Blog From Blogspan.org 2010-08-27T06:00:28

ESA's Cluster was in the right place and time to make a shocking discovery. The four spacecraft encountered a shock wave that kept breaking and reforming - predicted only in theory. On 24 January 2001, Cluster's spacecraft observed shock reformation in the Earth's magnetosphere, predicted only in theory, over 20 years ago. Cluster provided the first opportunity ever to observe such an event, the details of which have been published in a paper on 9 March this year........

19ba1fec53aced64091d1c0d0a063140 Astronomy Blog From Blogspan.org 2010-08-27T06:00:28

NASA scientists believe they have found a way to predict the color of plants on planets in other solar systems. Green, yellow or even red-dominant plants may live on extra-solar planets, according to scientists whose two scientific papers appear in the recent issue of the journal, Astrobiology. The scientists studied light absorbed and reflected by organisms on Earth, and determined that if astronomers were to look at the light given off by planets circling distant stars, they might predict that some planets have mostly non-green plants........

0665dabfae0828646301b8fffda4c008 Astronomy Blog From Blogspan.org 2010-08-27T06:00:28

Of the two luminaries that dominate our sky, it is the moon that is of particular interest to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) project. The LRO will travel to the moon in late fall 2008, mapping the surface to help pave the way for humans to return. It will help prepare us for extended surface exploration on the moon and for subsequent missions to Mars and other distant destinations. Lunar surface exploration will help us to practice living, working, and gathering science data before we venture into riskier territory........

0307dc11da11dd98dd75b12c44f67173 Astronomy Blog From Blogspan.org 2010-08-27T06:00:28

n 2002, when astronomers first detected cosmic gamma rays - the most energetic form of light known - coming from the constellation Cygnus they were surprised and perplexed. The region lacked the extreme electromagnetic fields that they thought were required to produce such energetic rays. But now a team of theoretical physicists propose a mechanism that can explain this mystery and may also help account for another type of cosmic ray, the high-energy nuclei that rain down on Earth in the billions........

c3fbc9205cc1eba03d7db35229f0abd0 Astronomy Blog From Blogspan.org 2010-08-27T06:00:28

A model of the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-InfraRed Instrument will be tested before Christmas at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, England to ensure the final instrument can see infrared light. Observing the universe in the infrared light portion of the spectrum is important because a number of objects researchers want to observe in space are far too cold to radiate at shorter wavelengths that can be seen as visible light, but they radiate strongly in infrared light........

385802766aef3f491775228deb1a8d30 Astronomy Blog From Blogspan.org 2010-08-27T06:00:28

M87, the central galaxy of the Virgo cluster in a distance of only 50 million light years, was observed by Yuri Kovalev from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronony (MPIfR) in Bonn and colleagues with the VLBA (Very Long Baseline Array) at 2 cm wavelength. The resulting image provides details down to a resolution of one milli-arcsecond, corresponding to a linear resolution of only three light months. The new image of the inner radio jet of M87 shows a highly collimated jet which appears limb-brightened, and also a faint counter-jet. It is unprecedented in its combination of sensitivity and spatial resolution........

748a34e253267902ace07eb1a61ce7c4 Tom's Astronomy Blog 2010-08-26T21:49:13

This is cool stuff,  astronomers using the ESO HARPS instrument have discovered a planetary system with at least five planets and possibly a couple more around a Sun-like star. The star is called HD10180 and is located 127 light-years away in the constellation Hydrus. Here’s the press release from the ESO: “We have found what [...]

29f74a3f81252db44d34c6dd41e16613 Astronomy Blog 2010-08-26T00:35:00

Astronomy Blog You are : in Astronomy Blog archive Astromovies An astronomy blog usually but not always based in the UK . Pondering questions such as What is in an exoplanet name Astromovies This morning , on Twitter , astronomer adam_avison started the astronomy-themed hashtag astromovies The idea was to think of astronomical versions of movie titles and it has got pretty popular . I thought I'd share some of those that I . liked Dial M for Maunder telescoper Gone With the Solar Wind scibuff Lyra Lyra allinthegutter : . N Blazar Runner jen_gupta Keck-Ass telescoper The BL-Lac of the Mohicans allinthegutter . N Scrodingers List huwmjames 20,000 lightyears under the sea ryanastron The Dark Matter Crystal astropixie Pretty in Infrared astropixie Lyman-Alpha Forrest Gump samb8s Some Like It

77cb429dce56c9acad394b11fa3f9fd4 Tom's Astronomy Blog 2010-08-24T19:45:59

Jupiter has had another impact as you can see in the video, this one on August 20th.  Hard to say what the impacting body was.  There weren’t any black plumes so it could be the density/mass wasn’t like the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet (D/1993 F2) of 1994. Then again trajectory and velocity needs to be figured [...]

c93216595fd2c62c0af4a175ee4a43e8 Cosmic Log - Cosmic Log's Column - Articles and Seeds 2010-08-24T01:48:52

Space.com: NASA to reveal big news from planet-hunting probe Slashdot: Nonprofit rocketeers get set for suborbital space shot Popular Mechanics: How will post-shuttle astronauts get into orbit? QuantumG's Blog: What will it take to go to an asteroid ... or to Mars?

43b0fff0c1d30837198edfebd31e9c14 Cosmic Log - Cosmic Log's Column - Articles and Seeds 2010-08-24T00:43:56

A "super-volcano" is erupting out in the Virgo Cluster, in the form of a supermassive black hole churning away at the center of the galaxy M87. And although it looks nothing like an earthly volcano, there's a similarity in the workings of the celestial and earthly eruptions.

29579e2db202ce94bcffdb27087853e8 WillGater.com - The blog and website of astronomy writer Will Gater 2010-08-20T18:28:43

Last Friday I visited the Salisbury Star Party, in Wiltshire, to film a report for an episode of the Sky at Night Magazine vodcast. It was a great day of filming (despite the occasional rain shower) and everyone I talked to was really friendly and enthusiastic. The video* is now online and I’ve embedded it [...]

3863660a2018c6e4247461eccce98319 Slacker Astronomy 2010-08-20T04:50:44

This month Michael (that’s me), Doug and Mike get together on Skype to discuss the Sun. If I may have a moment, the Sun is unquestionably the most important thing in our universe. Every scrap of energy we have on this planet comes from the Sun. It’s big, bright and hugely important to the evolution [...]

e6f9f0d9f43c60fd84b47447b03e655f Slacker Astronomy 2010-08-16T04:55:51

new pics from Saturn sys. –Ben Cassini Images from this Weekend’s Enceladus, Tethys and Dione Flybys! August 14, 2010 Dear Friends and Colleagues, Just down on the ground today … images from Cassini’s close flybys of Tethys, Dione and Enceladus this weekend. Go to … http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/140/Enceladus_Tethys_and_Dione_Rev_136_Raw_Preview … and see some gorgeous raw images of these [...]

0bccc3ad19858100b9f8a5aaaec4e45d Jims Orion XT10 Astronomy Blog 2010-08-15T10:38:46

Nothing, not a sausage. As I feared, it was rainy with just the odd passing gap in the clouds to peer through, but even then saw nothing, but with a Zenithal Hourly Rate predicted of 80-120, i.e. in theory a meteor every 30 to 60 seconds, we would hope to have seen something. Saturday night [...]

1c8a1a17e6203a666a537ded40257b62 Slacker Astronomy 2010-08-12T08:07:15

Nice eye candy. –Ben An “Island Universe” in the Coma Cluster A long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image shows a majestic face-on spiral galaxy located deep within the Coma Cluster of galaxies, which lies 320 million light-years away in the northern constellation Coma Berenices. The galaxy, known as NGC 4911, contains rich lanes of dust and [...]

54134e55ea649fa0e99f8caa1a6004bd Slacker Astronomy 2010-08-12T03:17:49

interesting site and tweet map. –Ben http://meteorwatch.org/ http://meteorwatch.org/meteor-map/#twitter-feed-map

a3bdd0cea82beea37a40c35b91ab7140 WillGater.com - The blog and website of astronomy writer Will Gater 2010-08-10T23:17:53

The Perseid meteor shower is currently putting on a show in the night sky, as the Earth passes through the trail of debris left by the comet Swift-Tuttle. The shower is expected to reach a peak sometime between the evening of the 12 of August and the morning of the 13 August. Even so, it’s [...]

fdc0a3f08f197cdcc19b3eb03fef5a1f Slacker Astronomy 2010-07-21T14:20:11

We have a new podcast on the feed and once again it is the extended version of our most recent contribution to The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast. Michael Koppelman interviews Dr. Luca Macri of Texas A&M University about his work on the extragalactic distance scale. You can subscribe with RSS and/or iTunes with the [...]

ed024c94d76d5857849a5a1129521011 Astronomy Blog 2010-07-21T00:36:00

Astronomy Blog You are : in Astronomy Blog archive Astronomer H-R diagram An astronomy blog usually but not always based in the UK . Pondering questions such as What is in an exoplanet name Astronomer H-R diagram Most people who've done an astronomy course will have heard of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram It was developed to show the relationships between the temperature or colour of a star and its luminosity . The other week I saw a tweet referring to someone as an astronomy media star This interesting stellar classification got me thinking about an alternative version of the H-R diagram . In my alternate reality I imagined a version classifying astronomers and so , after a little consultation with other astronomers thanks Sarah , Tess , Mike , Paul and Amanda and some free time I

8dfe9a20f72a30fe9be6ba85f2838e76 Slacker Astronomy 2010-07-20T17:06:06

more cool ring structures. –Ben ————————————- July 20, 2010 Dear Friends and Colleagues, Today, the Cassini Imaging Team is proud to release some outstanding new image mosaics and computer simulations of everyone’s favorite ring, Saturn’s F ring: the narrow, dynamic, and extraordinarily complex set of strands of ring material caught between the orbits of its [...]

08788d5a824d40b99d7a4a5e19c85b88 Slacker Astronomy 2010-07-19T18:42:07

step away from the computer and go ‘LOOK’ at something. –Ben ================================ from : Jim Cuca wglogowski@gmail.com Dear astronomy enthusiast: The Chicago Astronomical Society invites you to attend our annual star party, Astrofest, which will be held September 10-11, 2010 at Vana’s near Kankakee, Illinois. Registration forms and related information are available at http://www.chicagoastro.org/index_files/Page345.htm The [...]

d35496e32983af6121862907586a9183 WillGater.com - The blog and website of astronomy writer Will Gater 2010-07-18T01:26:56

Herschel’s garden, from where he found the planet Uranus. Credit: Will Gater Yesterday I paid a visit to the former home of one of my all time astronomy heroes. Number 19, New King Street in Bath was the home of Sir William Herschel, one of the greatest astronomers this country, and indeed the world, has [...]

017da623a6f8d91807c5f51b57a7f28e Slacker Astronomy 2010-07-15T17:53:34

another astro event in DC. WOW! –Ben OSTP to Co-Host “Astronomy Night on the National Mall” OSTP, in conjunction with Hofstra University, will co-sponsor a free, open to the public star party July 15 on the National Mall in Washington, DC. If you are near the DC area in come enjoy close-up views of the [...]

4e347db2f8bf12d44381decd0b69102a WillGater.com - The blog and website of astronomy writer Will Gater 2010-07-10T11:08:00

Around 10:30pm last night I started to see reports coming in on Twitter of a large and bright noctilucent cloud (NLC) display appearing across much of the country. Poking my head out the window I was, to my dismay, greeted with thick uniform cloud lit by light pollution. Hoping for the best, I checked on [...]

562279ca93fd9512b358dfc8ef5d6e47 WillGater.com - The blog and website of astronomy writer Will Gater 2010-07-06T19:49:15

The Milky Way over Dartmoor (click to see a bigger version). Credit: Will Gater I thought I’d  just briefly share this image with you all and give you a quick heads-up for some sights to look out for in the night sky at the moment. I took this image last weekend from one of my [...]

23a375b5c95f837f376332d27416c39c Astronomy Blog 2010-07-05T09:05:00

Astronomy Blog You are : in Astronomy Blog archive Planck All-sky An astronomy blog usually but not always based in the UK . Pondering questions such as What is in an exoplanet name Planck All-sky This morning , the European Space Agency and the Planck Consortium released the Planck satellite s first view of the entire sky . . Behold A false-colour image of the whole sky as seen by Planck . The dust throughout the Galaxy is shown in blue . In the background , the mottled yellow features are relic radiation , called the Cosmic Microwave Background , which contains information about the earliest stages of the Universe . This image is a low-resolution version of the full data set . : CREDIT ESA , Planck LFI and HFI Consortia 2010 Planck was launched on May 14th 2009 and , after three months

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