Fraser Cain, Author at Universe Today

July 11, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

European Space Robot Tested Underwater

Normally I wouldn’t bring this kind of thing to your attention, but this is just the craziest thing: meet Eurobot. The photo attached to this story really doesn’t do it justice. You’ve got to check out the original ESA news release, with a video of Eurobot crawling around a mockup of a space station. It’s hypnotic.

All right, I’m getting ahead of myself. Time for details.

Eurobot is a multi-jointed, three-armed robot being developed by ESA. At some point down the road, it’ll be lofted to the International Space Station, where it’ll crawl around the exterior of the station performing various fix-it jobs; the dangerous and mundane stuff currently done by humans.

Although astronauts will still be needed to complete extravehicular spacewalks, an assistant like Eurobot could do the initial preparatory work, transfer tools and equipment, and help clean up when the work’s done. There’s a shortage of astronaut time, so any way to make the job run more efficiently would be greatly appreciated.

So this week, a prototype robotic assistant was tested out in a weightless environment. Not space, but a gigantic pool where astronauts train to perform tasks in weightlessness. Eurobot crawled around a mockup of the space station, and engineers were able to put it through its paces. It even interacted with a human astronaut, passing him tools and helping out.

Like I said, though, you’ve really got to see the video.

Original Source:ESA

July 11, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Dawn Mission Pushed Back to September

One of my favourite upcoming missions is NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, set to go into orbit around two different asteroids. It was originally supposed to blast off this month, but mission planners have decided to push the launch back to September to minimize any potential disruptions to NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander mission, due for launch in early August.

I actually did an article on Dawn about a year ago. So instead of repeating that here, I’ll just link you to the article.

Original Source:NASA

July 11, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Endeavour is Back on the Pad

It seemed like only yesterday that Atlantis wrapped up mission STS-117, and already, the next shuttle is sitting on pad, ready to return to the International Space Station. Okay, so Atlantis actually landed last month, but still, NASA is clearly making its way through the schedule with a sense of urgency.

Next up, the space shuttle Endeavour, which made its journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building out to Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. It started the journey at 8:10pm EDT July 11, mounted atop the slow-moving crawler-transporter, and arrived at its final destination (5.4 km) 3.4 miles away at the launch pad 6 hours later.

If all goes well, Endeavour will blast off on August 7th, carrying the S5 truss, SPACEHAB module and stowage platform 3 to the International Space Station.

Original Source: NASA Shuttle Site

July 11, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Supernova Remnant May Actually Have a Partner

When a star with at least 8 times the mass of our Sun detonates as a supernova, it leaves behind a neutron star. This tiny object has the mass of a star, but it’s compressed down to a ball only 10 km (6 miles) across – its protons and electrons have been compressed together to form neutrons. One of these objects has puzzled astronomers for years, but now researchers think they’ve found the solution: it’s got a friend.

New data gathered by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory is helping to explain the mystery in RCW 103. This supernova remnant, located 10,000 light-years away, detonated about 2,000 years ago (I know, that means it really exploded 12,000 years ago). The bright blue dot at the centre of the image is the neutron star, blasting out X-ray radiation.

The problem with this neutron star is that only rotates once every 6.7 hours. That sounds fast, but there are neutron stars out there that can rotate many times a second. It should be turning much faster.

One possible answer for the mystery is that the original star that detonated, leaving this remnant wasn’t alone. It might have had a much lower-mass companion which still remains. It was the magnetic field interaction between the neutron star and the low-mass companion slowed down its rotation.

Original Source:Chandra

July 11, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

The Sun Isn’t Responsible for Climate Change

I recently wrote an article for Wired Science about how there doesn’t appear to be a link between cosmic rays and global warming. Now another argument against human-created global warming has fallen to the wayside: increasing temperatures from the Sun.

It turns out energy output from the Sun has actually been decreasing over the last two decades. And during this period, temperatures across the planet have been steadily rising.

The research was published in the Royal Society’s journal Proceedings A, entitled Recent oppositely directed trends in solar
climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature. The report covers not only trends in solar output, but also deals with decreasing trends in cosmic rays as well.

The Sun varies on an 11-year cycle between periods of high and low activity. But above this, there’s a longer term trend. For most of the 20th century, output from the Sun was slowly and steadily rising. But in 1985, that trend reversed, with solar output slowly declining. Global temperatures here on Earth continued climbing, unaffected.

If it’s not the Sun, and it’s not cosmic rays, what’s left? Oh right… humans.

Original Source: Royal Society journal Proceedings A

July 11, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

The Whole Sky Seen in Infrared

Okay, shift your eyes into the infrared, and then look up into the night sky. What? You can’t see in infrared? Ah well, you’ll have to just enjoy this photograph of the entire sky, seen by the Japanese AKARI probe.

Launched back in February 2006, AKARI has been working away to map the entire sky in various wavelengths of infrared light. Just in the last year, it completed these all-sky observations in six different wavelength bands, and has now imaged 90 of the entire sky. It has also performed detailed observations on about 3,500 specific targets.

The picture attached to this story is the infrared sky at nine micrometres. The bright stripe extending across the middle of the image is disc of our own Milky Way galaxy. The bright regions in the disc are sites of newly born stars.

This sky map will give astronomers a much better understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars, and planetary systems.

Original Source: ESA News Release

July 11, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Most Distant Galaxies Ever Seen

Astronomers announced today that they’ve located the most distant galaxies ever seen, 13.2 billion light-years away, formed when the Universe was only 500 million years old.

Galaxies that far away can’t easily be seen directly with current telescopes. Instead, the researchers turned massive clusters of galaxies into natural telescopes, using a technique called gravitational lensing. As the light from the more distant galaxies passed the galaxy clusters, it was bent by gravity towards the Earth.

This allowed the (already powerful) 10-metre Keck II telescope to capture additional photons, and measure these distant galaxies. The researchers were able to locate 6 faint star forming galaxies, thanks to the assistance of the gravitational lens, which boosted the signal by about 20 times.

When the Universe was only 300,000 years old, it entered a period called the Dark Ages when no stars were shining. Astronomers have been trying to pinpoint the moment when it came out of this opaque period, and the first stars formed. The combined radiation of these galaxies should be strong enough to break apart the hydrogen atoms around them, ending the Dark Ages. So astronomers could be seeing these galaxies at the moment the Dark Ages ended.

Original Source:Caltech

July 11, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Astrosphere for July 11, 2007

One of my favourite astrophotographers, Tom Davis, captured this image of a less photographed region of Cygnus. Capturing the image and processing it turned out to be surprisingly difficult.

Colony Worlds reports on an interesting idea of solar balloons, and considers how they’d work on Mars.

Celestial Journeys has another cool hand drawn sketch. This time it’s Comet C/2006 VZ13 seen through 20×80 binoculars.

It’s not exactly jumping in the transporter, but Daily Galaxy is reporting that physicists have figured out a way beam atoms.

July 11, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Set Your Calendar for the 2007 Perseids: August 12th

My absolute favourite meteor shower every year is the Perseids. They’re not the most spectacular meteors of the year, but the weather’s nice and warm here in Canada. We always head back home to Hornby Island to visit the family at Perseid time to enjoy them with nice dark skies. We keep the kids awake as long as possible, and then lay back on a mattress, enjoying the sky show.

And this year’s going to be a great one: no moon.

That’s right, there’s going to be a new moon on Sunday, August 12th, the exact same time that the Perseid shower is peaking. Without the glare of the Moon, the meteors will be at their brightest. But to really enjoy the show, you’ll want to head outside your city, away from the glare.

Like all meteor showers, the Perseids get their name from the constellation the meteors originate from. The constellation is in the northeast. As soon as it starts to get dark, you should start seeing meteors streaking across overhead. It’ll probably just be a couple every minute, but by early morning, when the shower is peaking, you could even see a few dozen a minute.

And as a special bonus, Mars is going to be in the sky as well. It’ll appear to be a bright red star also in the northeast.

I want you to organize something for the Perseids this year. Gather together some great friends, head somewhere dark, and plan to enjoy a great show. Put it on your calendar right now.

Promise?

Original Source: NASA

July 10, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Podcast: Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

If you remember way back to Episode 9, we covered Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity. Well, that’s only half of the relativity picture. The great scientist made an even more profound impact on physics with his theory of general relativity, replacing Newton with a better model for gravity.

Click here to download the episode

Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity – Show notes and transcript

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