Fraser Cain, Author at Universe Today

August 1, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Astrosphere for August 1, 2007

Today’s astrophoto is brought to you by stargazer_7000. It’s an image of M27 taken with a 9″ telescope.

Darker Matter has a fascinating story about the potential development of generation spaceships that humans could use to colonize other stars.

This isn’t a space story, it’s an energy/environment story, but I really enjoyed it. Rolling Stone looks at the boondoggle that is ethanol.

First the Terrestrial Planet Finder was canceled, now it looks like Kepler might be scaled back. Chris Lintott notes on his blog that the mission has been shortened by 6 months.

Somebody out there has some guy love for the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait. No, not me, we’re just… friends.

July 31, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Endeavour Cabin is Leaking Air

Here’s another little bit of NASA bad news; let’s heap it on with the rest. Shuttle workers are trying to track down the source of an air leak on the space shuttle Endeavour that’s above acceptable limits. The problem was first discovered a few days ago, and engineers thought they’d tracked down the faulty nut. But even after tightening that nut, the cabin was still losing pressure.

This is a problem since Endeavour is supposed to blast off for the International Space Station at 7:02 pm EDT on August 7th. If they can’t trace the leak down quickly, it’ll push the mission back in an already crowded launch schedule.

If everything does go smoothly, Endeavour’s STS-118 mission will deliver cargo, spare parts and a new truss segment to the International Space Station.

July 31, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Mars Phoenix Lander Launch Delayed

NASA announced today that they’re going to be postponing the launch of the Phoenix Mars Lander for 24 hours. It has two launch windows on Saturday, August 4th: 5:26 am EDT and 6:02 am EDT.

Mission planners decided on the delay because of a severe weather forecast around the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday afternoon. This storm will delay the fueling of the Delta II rocket’s second stage, and so it pushed back the schedule for all the following activities.

Here’s more that I’ve written about the mission.

Original Source: NASA News Release

July 31, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Hubble Photo of the Veil Nebula

Now this is one of the coolest images I’ve seen captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in a long time. It’s just a portion of the Veil Nebula; all that remains from a star that exploded about 5-10,000 years ago.

The star that created this wreckage was once much larger than our own Sun. Instead of dying out to a white dwarf – the fate for our Sun – it detonated as a supernova. The explosion swept out a huge bubble in its surroundings, heating up gas and dust, and becoming visible in our telescopes.

The Veil Nebula is huge. The entire shell covers about 3 degrees of the sky. That’s the same amount as 6 full moons. So these images captured by Hubble only reveal tiny portions of it. If you follow along to the original press release, you’ll see a series of 8 images in total, each focused on a different part of the nebula.

Scientists think that the original star exploded 5-10,000 years ago, and would have been seen by ancient civilizations. Anyone fortunate enough to be alive then would have seen light from the star increase until it was as bright as a crescent moon. But all this light would be streaming from a single point source. Amazing.

If you want to see the Veil Nebula for yourself, it’s located in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. The brightest star in the region is named 52 Cygni, and can be seen with the unaided eye on a dark night. You’ll need binoculars to see a hazy bit where the nebula is, and and a nice telescope to reveal more.

Original Source:ESA Hubble News Release

July 31, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Astrosphere for July 31, 2007

Today’s astrophoto is brought to you by bloodhound31, it’s a photo of the Triffid Nebula.

Centauri Dreams is reporting on an interesting theory to explain mass extinctions in the past: the Sun’s rise and fall above the galactic plane.

The Space Review has a cool article about the potential for using space guns to access space.

Here’s a cool 6-part series of articles about how to get started in amateur astronomy from Helium. And another 8-part series on how telescopes work.

Pamela Gay is attending the American Association of Physics Teachers, and has this great article about the challenges of both doing and popularizing science.

July 30, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Prototype Blended Wing Aircraft Tested

The flying wing is an old design, but NASA aerospace engineers think it might be just what the airline industry needs. As part of their research into this concept, the agency recently tested out the X-48B flying wing prototype. If this design matches the developers’ ambitions, it could usher in a new class of aircraft which would be quieter and use less fuel.

The remotely controlled 6.4 metre (21-foot) wingspan aircraft took off from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center on July 20th, 2007. It climbed to an altitude of 2,286 metres (7,500 feet), and then landed again 31 minutes later.

Designed and built by Boeing’s Phantom Works, the X-48B was created to help engineers explore the flight dynamics of this aircraft shape. Instead of the traditional fuselage and wings, the X-48B looks just like flying wing, which blends smoothly into a wide, flat, tailless fuselage. The blend between the wing and fuselage gives the aircraft additional lift and less drag compared to a circular fuselage.

Powering the vehicle are three turbojet engines. These are 8.5% scale, which allow the aircraft to fly up to 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) altitude, and reach speeds of 220 kph (138 mph). The engines are mounted high up on the fuselage in the back, and making it both quieter inside, and on the ground.

NASA is planning 25 more test flights with the X-48B to gather data in low-speed maneuvers. Then they might use the prototype to see if it’s truly quiet and how it handles at transonic speeds.

Original Source: NASA News Release

July 30, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Imagine a View with Four Sunsets

Here in the Solar System, we’ve only got one star: the Sun. That gives us nice predictable daily and annual cycles; night and day, the seasons, that sort of thing. Astronomers have found a newly forming extrasolar planetary system that has 4 stars. The discovery, made using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, revealed a dusty disk surround a pair of stars in the quadruple-star system HD 98800.

The system itself is pretty complicated, so bear with me as I try to explain it. There are two pairs of binary stars; 2 + 2 = 4 stars in total. These two binary groupings are separated by 50 astronomical units (AU); approximately the distance between the Sun and Pluto. Around one of these binary pairs, astronomers discovered two belts of material.

The first belt sits at approximately 1.5 to 2 AU (twice the distance from the Sun to the Earth), and seems to consist of fine grains of dust. The second belts is further out at approximately 5.9 AU and is probably made up of asteroids or comets.

When astronomers see gaps in disks of material, their first instinct is to assume planets cleared them out. In this situation, however, they can’t rule out the complex interaction between the 4 stars. Collisions caused by objects in the asteroid belt should migrate inward to the inner disk; however the particles don’t evenly fill out the inner disk as expected.

Some day, future inhabitants of this world might look out their alien windows and see two bright suns, and two dimmer ones together in the sky. And every once in a while, all the suns would dip down to the horizon at roughly the same time.

The sunsets would be spectacular.

Original Source: Spitzer News Release

July 30, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Animation of a Human Mission to an Asteroid

Although NASA is gearing up to send humans back to the Moon, and eventually Mars, mission planners are also considering missions to Near Earth Objects (NEOs). These are the asteroids with orbits that cross our own, and might eventually impact the planet.

NASA completed a feasibility study to visit an asteroid in 2007, to see if its Constellation architecture would be compatible with a mission to an asteroid.

A digital animation company, DigitalSpace, has taken it upon themselves to animate a hypothetical mission to an asteroid, to demonstrate what it might look like. Keep in mind, this isn’t based on any official NASA material, it’s just a conceptual design created to stimulate discussion in the space community.

There are many benefits to visiting a near Earth object. Many have very similar orbits to the Earth, and so it would actually be surprisingly efficient for a spacecraft to journey to an asteroid – much less than to even go to the Moon. If scientists hope to predict the threat of NEOs, and develop a protective response, they need much more science. There’s nothing like human astronauts studying an asteroid from its surface, measuring it every way possible. Asteroids are also a source of easy resources. They have little gravity, so they’re easy to launch away from again.

There are numerous challenges for a mission like this as well. With the very low gravity, astronauts will need to be very careful when moving around. Asteroids can also spin quickly, making landing and takeoff hazardous.

If you want to see the potential mission, you can check out the video and animations here.

Original Source: DigitalSpace News Release

July 30, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Many Active Galaxies are Shrouded from View

As you probably know by know, there seem to be supermassive black holes lurking at the centre of probably every galaxy in the Universe. Sometimes these monsters are quiet, and other times they flare with the light of millions of stars. That’s during their active phase, when they’re busily feeding on infalling material.

Since they’re some of the brightest objects in the Universe, astronomers thought they understood all the different forms they can take: quasars, blazars, and Seyfert galaxies. An international team of astronomers have turned up a new form that had escaped detection until now.

This new class of objects was discovered using NASA’s Swift satellite and the Japanese/U.S. Suzaku X-ray observatory. They hid from observers for so long because the active nuclei are shrouded in a halo of gas and dust, so that no visible light can escape. Under Hubble’s view in the visible and ultraviolet spectra, they’re effectively invisible.

But switch to another wavelength, in this case X-rays, which can pierce this gas and dust, and the shrouded objects reveal themselves.

And here’s the big problem. Astronomers have performed surveys of active nuclei in the past, but these numbers must be heavily skewed to objects that were actually visible. If you factor in all these shrouded objects, it could change the picture of how supermassive black holes and their host galaxies have changed over time.

Original Source: NASA News Release

July 30, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Podcast: Tidal Forces

Consider the following: we’ve got tides here on Earth, the Moon only shows one face to the Earth, we’ve got volcanoes on Io, and ice geysers on Enceladus. All these phenomena originate from a common cause: the force of gravity stretching across space to tug at another world.

Click here to download the episode

Tidal Forces – Show notes and transcript

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