Universe Today

NASA's Swift spacecraft is designed to hunt for gamma-ray bursts. But in the time between these almost-daily cosmic explosions, Swift's Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) scans the sky, performing an ongoing X-ray survey. Some of the first results of that survey were shared at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, California. The BAT is revealing differences between nearby active galaxies and those located about halfway across the universe. Understanding these differences will help clarify the relationship between a galaxy and its central black hole. But unlike most telescopes, the BAT observations are not done with mirrors, optics or direct focusing. Instead, images are made by analyzing the shadows cast by 52,000 randomly placed lead tiles on 32,000 hard X-ray detectors. And BAT is becoming a workhorse: The survey is now the largest and most sensitive census of the high-energy X-ray sky.
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Filed under: Black Holes, galaxies | 2 Comments »

The debate of whether or not a supermassive black hole (SMBH) was kicked out of the centre of a galaxy continues in the Black Holes I session at the AAS. According to Stefanie Komossa and her team at the Max Plank Institute for extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) back in May 2008, spectroscopic data of a galactic core appeared to show a collision event between two SMBHs. In this case, the smaller SMBH was propelled out of its host galaxy by an intense and focused "superkick" by gravitational waves.

However, the delegates attending Session 328 have other ideas…
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We did a wildly popular three part series about the center, size and shape of the Universe. But every good trilogy needs a 4th episode. This week we look at age of the Universe. How old is the Universe, and how do we know? And how has this number changed over time as astronomers have gotten better tools and techniques?

Click here to download the episode.

Or subscribe to: astronomycast.com/podcast.xml with your podcatching software.

How Old is the Universe? - Transcript and show notes.

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We've talked about brown dwarfs here on Universe Today for years and years. These are the "failed stars"; objects with too little mass to fully ignite nuclear fusion in their cores. Instead of blazing with red, yellow or the white light of our own stars, they're heated by the gravitational collapse of material. They're called brown dwarfs, but you might be surprised to know that they aren't actually brown. In fact, it's impossible to have brown light. So what color are they?
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Filed under: Astronomy | 5 Comments »

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has found 12 previously unknown gamma-ray only pulsars, as well as identifying gamma-ray emissions from 18 known or suspected radio pulsars. And what the telescope is finding is changing the way we think of these stellar cinders. The old analogy for pulsars was a lighthouse: gamma-rays were thought to pulse out in a narrow beam from the neutron star's magnetic poles. But this new research shows that cannot be the case. A new class of gamma-ray-only pulsars shows that the gamma rays must form in a broader region than the lighthouse-like radio beam. "We used to think the gamma rays emerged near the neutron star's surface from the polar cap, where the radio beams form," says Alice Harding of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "The new gamma-ray-only pulsars put that idea to rest." She and Roger Romani from Stanford University in California spoke today at the American Astronomical Society meeting.
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Filed under: Astronomy | 5 Comments »

Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most brilliant events, and now astronomers have been able to shed light on the composition of these spectacular phenomena, providing insight into star formation when the universe was about one-sixth its present age. Combining data from NASA's Swift satellite, the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and other facilities astronomers have, for the first time, identified gas molecules in the host galaxy of a gamma-ray burst. "We clearly see absorption from two molecular gases: hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Those are gases we associate with star-forming regions in our own galaxy," said Xavier Prochaska, from the University of California Santa Cruz. He and his team believe that the burst exploded behind a thick molecular cloud similar to those that spawn stars in our galaxy today.
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Filed under: Astronomy | 12 Comments »

After a day of crazy traveling through a Vancouver blizzard I'm now having my first full day down at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Long Beach, California. As you've probably read, Ian's here with me and Nancy's supporting us back at Atkinson HQ.

My last AAS meeting was a year ago. It was fun but a really frustrating experience. I spent the whole conference sitting in the press room, pounding out stories based on press releases released at the conference. I was writing 10-12 stories a day, but there was a terrible irony. I was doing work I could have done from home, without even attending the convention. In fact, I got so busy working on articles that I didn't even bother going to the press conferences at all. And the whole point of attending a convention like this is to meet with people, to find the news that you just can't find anywhere else.
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Filed under: Blog | 3 Comments »

The Hubble Space Telescope serendipitously captured a mysterious burst of light on February 21, 2006. Over the next 100 days, the object, cataloged as SCP 06F6, brightened and then slowly faded. Astronomers do not know the object's distance, so it can either be in our Milky Way galaxy or at a great astronomical distance, and the light-signature of this event does not match the behavior of a supernova or any previously observed astronomical transient phenomenon in the universe. It might represent an entirely new class of stellar phenomena that has previously gone undetected in the universe, said Kyle Barbary of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, Calif.y researchers. "No one has been able to come up with a good explanation for this object" he said at a press conference at today's American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, California. (Read on for an outlandish explanation one scientist proposed!)
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Filed under: Hubble | 10 Comments »

Want to know what it's like to fly through a supernova remnant? Then, THIS, you have to see. You'll be able to experience SNR Cassiopeia A (Cas A) as never before, and see it across both time and space. Another time lapse animation shows the remnant's expansion and changes over time, and still another provides a 3-D model of Cas A. Almost ten years ago, Chandra's "First Light" image of Cas A revealed previously unseen structures and detail, and now, after eight years of observation, scientists have been able to construct these incredible animations which were presented at today's American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, California.
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Filed under: Chandra | 4 Comments »

Things are a-changing over at the Kennedy Space Center launch complex. The first lightning tower for the Ares rockets has been completed, dwarfing all the other structures on pad 39B. The tower is for the new lightning protection system for the Constellation Program. Other towers are being constructed at left and behind the service structures on the pad. Each of the three new lightning towers will be 152 meters (500 feet) tall with an additional 30 meter (100-foot) fiberglass mast atop supporting a catenary, or overhead wire system. This compares to the height of the shuttle Fixed Service Structure at 105.7 meters (347ft) to the top of the lightning mast. The new and improved lightning protection system allows for the taller height of the Ares I rocket compared to the space shuttle. Pad 39B will be the site of the first Ares vehicle launch, including the Ares I-X test flight that is targeted for July 2009. See image below for what the completed system will look like.
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Filed under: Constellation | 7 Comments »

Once again our sister site Astronomy Cast LIVE will be providing live video coverage of press events at the 213th AAS meeting being held in Long Beach CA. The video streams can be found at Astronomy Cast's UStream Channel. You can join the chat to suggestion questions to ask at the news conference or report any issues with the feed.

If for some reason this link does not work try searching for Astronomy Cast on at www.ustream.tv

Here is the tentative schedule for tomorrow, Tuesday January 6. We'll try to keep you updated if there are any changes, or check back with Astronomy Cast Live for updates. All times are Pacific Standard Time so please adjust accordingly. These recordings may or may not be available for viewing later.

9:00 AM - Cassiopeia A

10:30 AM - Star News

11:30 AM - Bright Flashes in the Universe

1:00 PM - News from Fermi and SWIFT

3:00 PM - History Mysteries

More might be added to the list tomorrow morning. Remember to join the chat room to suggest questions, and report issues. We will do our best to accommodate. Scott Miller from Astronomy Cast is manning the camera and the UStream Chat (and wowing the UStream and AAS world, I might add!)

Filed under: Astronomy | 2 Comments »

For many of us, looking closely in the mirror and stepping on the bathroom scale just after the holidays can reveal a substantial surprise. Likewise, astronomers looking closely at the Milky Way have found our galaxy is more massive than previously thought. High-precision measurements of the Milky Way disclose our galaxy is rotating about 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously understood. That increase in speed, said Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, increases the Milky Way’s mass by 50 percent. The larger mass, in turn, means a greater gravitational pull that increases the likelihood of collisions with the Andromeda galaxy or smaller nearby galaxies. So even though we're faster, we're also heavier and more likely to be annihilated. Bummer!
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Filed under: milky way | 26 Comments »

Two of the biggest space telescopes have combined forces to create a HUGE panorama of the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This sweeping, composite color panorama is the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core. Revealed in the image are a new population of massive stars and new details of complex structures in the hot gas and dust swirling around, created by solar winds and supernova explosions. The image shows an area about 300 light-years across. Click here for options in seeing this image in small, medium or super-sized extra large resolution! Click here for a stunning movie showing the location and more detail of this image in visible light. Astronomers at the American Astronomical Society meeting pointed out the actual galactic center is in the large white region near the lower right side of the image. If you need something to keep you occupied for awhile, try counting the number of stars in this image!

More about this image…
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Filed under: Hubble, Spitzer, galaxies | 15 Comments »

Astronomers studying white dwarfs have found the remains of "shredded" asteroids around some of these dead stars. This finding suggests that the same materials that make up Earth and our solar system's other rocky bodies could be common in the universe. If the materials are common, then rocky planets could be, too. "If you ground up our asteroids and rocky planets, you would get the same type of dust we are seeing in these star systems," said Michael Jura of the University of California, Los Angeles, who presented the results today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif. "This tells us that the stars have asteroids like ours — and therefore could also have rocky planets." But most surprising, astronomers have been able to use the rocky debris to study the evolution of planets.
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Filed under: Astronomy | 10 Comments »

After examining the 5-million-year old star cluster NGC 2362, astronomers say that planets like Jupiter must form quickly because the material that form giant gas planets disappears in just few million years in young protoplanetary (planet forming) systems. Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers from the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found that all stars in this cluster with the mass of the Sun or greater have lost their protoplanetary disks, and only a few stars less massive than the Sun retain their protoplanetary disks. These disks provide the raw material for forming gas giants like Jupiter. Therefore, gas giant planets have to form in less than 5 million years or they probably won't form at all. However, the material to form rocky terrestrial planets like Earth appears to stick around much longer.
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Filed under: Extrasolar Planets | 4 Comments »

Just as young children need safe, nurturing environments to develop and grow, young stars, too need just the right environment to get their start in life. Or do they? At the center of our galaxy is a 4 million solar-mass black hole. If molecular clouds that form stellar nurseries were nearby, they should be ripped apart by powerful, black-hole-induced gravitational tides. But yet, astronomers have found two young protostars located just a few light-years from the galactic center. Using the Very Large Array of radio telescopes, astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy made this discovery, showing that stars indeed can form close to a black hole. “We literally caught these stars in the act of forming,” said Smithsonian astronomer Elizabeth Humphreys, who presented the finding today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California.
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Filed under: Astronomy, Black Holes | 16 Comments »

This just in from Scott Miller at Astronomy Cast LIVE. Once again we will be providing live video coverage of press events at the 213th AAS meeting being held in Long Beach CA Jan 5-8th. The video streams can be found here.

If for some reason this link does not work try searching for Astronomy Cast on at www.ustream.tv

Here is our tentative schedule for today, Monday January 5, 2009. Please check back with Astronomy Cast LIVE for updates. All times are Pacific Standard Time so please adjust accordingly. These recordings may or may not be available for viewing later.

9:30 AM - Exoplanets and Exoplanetary Systems

11:00 AM - Brown Drawfs

12:30 PM - Milky Way

3:00 PM - International Year of Astronomy 2009 Begins in USA

More will be added to the list tomorrow morning. Remember to join the chat room to suggest questions, and report issues. We will do our best to accommodate.

Filed under: Astronomy | No Comments »

Prepare for a week of breaking astronomical news as the American Astronomical Society (AAS) is holding its 213th meeting all this week in Long Beach, California. Thousands of astronomers will be coming together to share their research and report their recent findings. Universe Today's Fraser Cain and Ian O'Neill will be in attendance to provide on-site coverage, as well as tracking down the inside scoops and behind the scenes news. In addition, at our sister site Astronomy Cast LIVE, Fraser and Ian will be joining the team of Pamela Gay, Chris Lintott, Michael Koppelmann, Jordan Raddick, Georgia Bracey, and Scott Miller to post articles, do live-blogging and provide U-Stream live video from press conferences and other events. I'll be manning the trenches from the 'home office,' reporting on AAS press releases and keeping track of the rest of news going on this week.

So get ready for a ridiculous amount of coverage and some very interesting discoveries that will be announced this week.

If you live near Long Beach or are there for the meeting, meet Fraser, Ian and the Astronomy Cast LIVE team at a "Blogger Meet-up" on Wed. January 7 at the Rock Bottom Brewery from 6pm - 9pm.

And if you are in the area, Tuesday night is the International Year of Astronomy opening ceremony at the Long Beach conference center. Observing sponsored by Celestron will take place outside before the 7:45pm ceremony.

For quick news you can follow on Twitter:
Astronomy Cast
Nancy Atkinson
Ian O'Neill
Star Stryder
Georgia Bracey

So, stay tuned for our coverage on Universe Today, and super-sized coverage on Astronomy Cast LIVE.

Filed under: Astronomy | 11 Comments »

What were you doing five years ago today? I remember trying to watch NASA TV on my computer in an effort to monitor the status of the Spirit rover that was on its way to land in Gusev Crater on Mars. The feed kept cutting out, and I know it was way behind what was happening in real time at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The scientists and engineers there were certainly more anxious than I, but even I had butterflies in my stomach. During the entry and landing, the spacecraft with Spirit aboard maintained radio contact with flight controllers at JPL through a series of tones designed to transmit the status of the lander. The flight team was even able to detect that the lander was bouncing on the surface of Mars, secure in the inflated airbags. But the tones suddenly stopped and there was no signal from the lander for several minutes. The flight control room erupted when the spacecraft sent the signal that it was sitting safely on the Red Planet.

“There was a lot of jumping, hugging and even a few tears of relief here at JPL,” said Chris Potts, who was the MER Deputy Navigation Team Chief back in 2004. “There were definitely some tense moments when we lost the signal after confirmation of bouncing on the surface. Mars just wanted us to wait a bit longer." The wait was definitely worth it, and now five years later, Spirit and her twin rover Opportunity are still working hard on Mars' surface. That fact is truly cause for celebration, and there are a few ways you can join in celebrating…
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Filed under: Mars, Missions | 10 Comments »

The first stars to light the early universe may have been powered by dark matter, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor call these very first stars "Dark Stars," and propose that dark matter heating provided the energy for these stars instead of fusion. The researchers propose that with a high concentration of dark matter in the early Universe, the theoretical particles called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles(WIMPs), collected inside the first stars and annihilated themselves to produce a heat source to power the stars. "We studied the behavior of WIMPs in the first stars," said Katherine Freese and her team in their paper, "and found that they can radically alter the stellar evolution. The annihilation products of the dark matter inside the star can be trapped and deposit enough energy to heat the star and prevent it from further collapse."
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Filed under: Cosmology, Dark Matter | 31 Comments »

The nominations are in, the votes have been counted and the Universe Today writers have been consulted; the Top 10 Scientific Endeavours of 2008 are decided! After much consideration by the readers of the Universe Today, it became quickly apparent what the popular choice would be, and some of the Top 10 may not come as a surprise. However, there are some nominations we weren't expecting, and certainly cannot be found on any other "Top 10" list. Therefore, I believe the Universe Today's Top 10 Scientific Endeavours of 2008 is the most comprehensive list out there, combining the votes of our readers, nominating a huge variety of articles available through one of the biggest space news websites on the Web.

For more information about the motivation behind the Universe Today's Top 10, be sure to check out the nominations page…

Without further ado, here is the Universe Today's definitive Top 10 Scientific Endeavours of 2008…
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Filed under: Astronomy, Blog, Science | 10 Comments »

The HiRISE Camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is keeping an eye on the Phoenix lander, and took the above image of the landing site on Dec. 21, 2008. Phoenix, its heatshield, parachute and backshell are still visible on the Martian arctic plains, providing evidence that the spacecraft hasn't been covered with ice as of yet. Via the HiRISE Blog, scientists say the conditions are hazy and dark because northern winter summer is turning to autumn on Mars. They will keep imaging the site as long as there is enough light to see the lander. Compare this image to previous photos of the Phoenix site, below.
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Filed under: Mars, Missions | 14 Comments »

Don't forget to check how you did in this week's Where In The Universe Challenge. The answer is now posted.

Filed under: Where In the Universe? | 1 Comment »

Just wanted to wish all the Universe Today readers a happy 2009, and invite all of you to listen to the first episode of the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast. The first voice you'll hear will be … me! (well, after Pamela Gay's introduction and George Hrab's incredibly rockin' theme song!) I'm part of the group of folks working behind the scenes, "making sure audio makes it from our community to your computer everyday of 2009" — to quote Pamela's part of the podcast. The 365 Days of Astronomy podcast will publish one podcast per day, for all 365 days of 2009. The podcast episodes are written, recorded and produced by people around the world. There are still dates open if you'd like to participate. Check out the website! If you've never done a podcast before, don't worry — everything you need to know on how to get started is on the website. But if you choose to participate by just listening, that's OK, because we need listeners, too! If you need a reminder to listen every day of 2009, you can follow the podcast's Twitter, which will send out a tweet each day of the day's topic, inviting you to listen in. And make sure you check out all the other International Year of Astronomy events, too. If you can't find any near you, consider organizing an event, whether it be a star party or an informational event. The sky is the limit!

Want to subscribe? Links for iTunes or RSS

Listen in and enjoy!

Filed under: Podcasts | 5 Comments »

Some urban legends just won't die, and sometimes, unfortunately, they are given new life. We've already discussed and dismissed the rock on Mars that looks like a Bigfoot – a teeny, tiny little Bigfoot (Jan. 25, 2008). And now it's back. And it's completely ridiculous. Amazingly, this guy thinks a publication like National Geographic will take him seriously. Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"A lawyer in the United States has written the National Geographic Society, asking it to publish in National Geographic his discovery that a photograph taken and beamed back to Earth by NASA's Mars Rover Spirit contains evidence of life on Mars. In his letter, Andrew D. Basiago, 47, wrote that his analysis of the NASA photograph of the Red Planet captioned PIA10214 has revealed images of human and animal life forms, as well as statues and other structures built by advanced, intelligent beings. "This image is the most significant photograph ever taken by human beings from Earth," Basiago wrote.

If you take the time to download and look at this "expose" you'll see what Basiago does is take a large panoramic image from the Spirit rover (the original large panorama can be found here) which is a very high resolution image, and crop out small portions and zoom in so incredibly close that the images become blurry. He then claims these blurry images of rocks on Mars are things like humanoids, animals, statues and other objects.
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Filed under: Mars | 43 Comments »