Mars Garden Wins at a Flower Show

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I just think this is the coolest thing. But then, maybe I’ve gone a little crazy for gardening recently. A garden designed to simulate a future habitation on Mars won a Gold Medal at the Chelsea Flower Show, operated by the UK’s Royal Horticultural Society. Finally, space exploration is getting a little respect.

The exhibit is called “600 Days with Bradstone”, and it’s a simulated garden that Martian astronauts might construct to help them cope with a long journey on the Red Planet. The designer consulted with the European Space Agency to understand the physical constraints for a domed garden on Mars. Rocks were quarried from Scotland that look realistically like Martian rocks.

After a hard day’s work on the dusty surface of Mars, astronauts could enjoy a lush green garden, surrounded by plants with multiple beneficial properties, like coffee, olives, wheat and calendula. The garden also includes familiar plants that help remind the astronauts of their home.

ESA believes that future missions to Mars will require regenerative systems that can adapt and evolve over time, instead of traditional life support systems which can’t operate at peak efficiency for the long durations required for a Mars mission.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Deathwatch on a Red Giant Star

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When a star like our Sun reaches the end of its life – a fate we’ll face in 5 billion years – it swells up immensely, becoming a red giant star. Its size expands until it engulfs everything within the Earth’s orbit, and begins to pulsate, expending and contracting in regular intervals. Then it settles down, to live out the rest of its years as a slowly cooling white dwarf.

We’ve got 5 billion years to wait, but astronomers have found a relatively nearby star going through this very process: S Orionis, located in the constellation of Orion, and belongs to a class of Mira-type variable stars.

S Orionis pulsates with a period of 420 days. During this cycle, it changes in brightness by a factor of 500%, and changes its diameter by 20%. This ranges from 1.9 to 2.3 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Another way to measure this is between 400 and 500 solar radii.

During these pulsations, the star releases a tremendous amount of dust, which form into concentric rings around the star and expand outward at a speed of 10 km/s (6 miles/s). During the star’s minimum size, there’s more dust production and coronal mass ejections, and then the shell expands, releasing the material into space.

Astronomers studied S Orionis with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer at Paranal Observatory, Chile, using its four 8.2-metre telescopes and four 1.8-metre scopes.

Original Source: ESO News Release

Recent Landslide on Mars

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With more advanced optics in orbit around Mars, we’re getting better and better pictures showing how the planet is more active than scientists ever imagined. Here’s a cool photograph of a recent landslide in a region of Mars called Zunil Crater. It was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Zunil Crater is a well-preserved impact crater approximately 10 km (6 miles) across. Because it’s so well preserved, scientists think the crater was carved out by a meteor impact less than 10 million years ago – that’s young, considering some of the craters on Mars are billions of years old.

The false colour on the image shows that the landslide occurred very recently. Unlike the surrounding terrain, it hasn’t be covered by the dust that coats everything on Mars. This makes the reflectiveness, or albedo, different from the regions around it. Scientists think a recent Marsquake or another tiny meteor impact could have triggered the slide.

Original Source: HiRISE News Release

Two Spacecraft will Image Venus Together

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NASA’s MESSENGER and ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft are going to be at Venus together on June 6, giving scientists an opportunity to see our “evil” twin planet from two vantage points.

Of course, Venus Express has been orbiting its namesake planet since April 11, 2006, but Messenger is passing through, enroute to Mercury. And that’s not all. Several ground-based observatories will be joining in on the party as well, taking images and gathering data during the MESSENGER flyby.

During its closest approach, MESSENGER will pass just 337 kilometres (210 miles) above the surface of Venus. And during this time, Venus Express will be behind Venus, but will be able to view many of the same regions imaged by MESSENGER. Scientists will then be able to compare the data gathered by the two spacecraft.

After 30 hours of observations, MESSENGER will be finished with Venus, and focused again on its final target. It’ll finally reach Mercury in March, 2011.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Astrosphere for June 4, 2007

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Before I reveal the new stories I discovered on the astro-blogo-sphere, I wanted to remind you about the “The Universe”, on the The History Channel. The second episode, Mars: The Red Planet airs on Tuesday at 9:00pm. Check your local listings. You can find out more at history.com/universe

Now, let’s see what’s happening out there… way out there.

Vern’s Weblog has some suggestions for what to see in the night sky this week.

Centauri Dreams puts Alpha Centauri in context.

Personal Spaceflight has some information about Armadillo Aerospace’s plans to win the Lunar Lander Challenge.

Becky Ramotowski wants you to mark your calendars, to capture images of the Moon, Venus and Saturn all together.

Now this is hilarious. The Bad Astronomer is reporting that Lisa Nowak (you know… diapers… astronaut) is getting a NASA Spaceflight Medal.

Take a virtual trip to the Moon. Alan Boyle has the story.

Learn about Arcturus, a star totally unlike our Sun. Thanks to the Astroprof.

Astrosphere for June 1, 2007

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Here’s what’s happening in the astrosphere…

Alan Boyle has some stories of harrowing space scares. Space madness for real?

astropixie explains why some people had a blue moon yesterday, others will have one in June, and still others will have one in July.

The Space Elevator Reference describes Liftport’s difficult attempts to stay in business.

Space Prizes points the way towards a new lunarpedia, a place for all things lunar.

A Babe in the Universe talks about some new rides; a space shuttle simulator and a forthcoming Harry Potter ride.

Oh… and Happy Birthday Dad.

Atlantis is Go for Launch, June 8

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NASA announced today that it has decided on June 8 as the official launch date for the space shuttle Atlantis, for mission STS-117. Barring any weather or technical delays, the shuttle will blast off at 2338 UTC (7:38 pm EDT), beginning its journey to the International Space Station.

Atlantis was originally supposed to launch back in March, but a hailstorm hammered the shuttle’s external fuel tank, requiring repairs. The shuttle was returned to its hanger and the foam insulation was repaired, pushing the launch back several months. This repair time made the tight launch schedule even tighter.

The shuttle will deliver a new set of solar powered wings to the station, increasing its electrical generating capacity. It will also deliver astronaut Clayton Anderson to the station for an extended stay, and return Sunita Williams back to Earth. Williams has been on board the station since December.

Original Source: NASA News Release

Spitzer Locates a Binary Pair of Black Holes

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A clever trick has enabled NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to calculate the distance to a distant object, confirming that it’s part of our Milky Way. An even more intriguing finding is that the object is probably a binary pair of black holes, orbiting one another – an extremely rare thing to see.

The Spitzer Space Telescope is the only space telescope that orbits the Sun behind the Earth. It’s already 70 million km (40 million miles), and it’s drifting further away every year. This distance between Spitzer and the Earth allows astronomers to look at an object from two different perspectives. Just like our two eyes give us depth perception, two telescopes can measure the distance to an object.

Astronomers noticed that something was causing a star to brighten. The speed and intensity of this brightening matched a gravitational lensing event, where a foreground object’s gravity focuses the light from a more distant star. They imaged the lensing event from here on Earth, but they also called Spitzer into duty to watch as well. Data from the two sources were combined together to determine that the lensing object is inside our galactic halo, and therefore part of its mass.

The light curve of the gravitational lens has led the researchers to believe that they’re looking at two compact objects orbiting one another, quite possibly a binary pair of black holes. It’s also possible that it’s just a pair of regular stars in a neighbouring, satellite galaxy.

Original Source: Spitzer News Release

XMM-Newton Analyzes a Huge Collection of Newly Forming Stars

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After surveying more than 200 stars in various stages of formation, ESA’s XMM-Newton X-Ray Observatory has revealed a dramatically different picture than what astronomers were predicting. Specifically, the observatory helped show how streams of matter fall down onto the stars’ magnetic atmosphere, cooling the atmosphere, and absorbing X-rays.

XMM-Newton targeted new star formation in the Taurus Molecular Cloud; a vast star formation region located only 400 light-years from Earth. Many of these stars are still accumulating new material through a process called accretion. As new matter strikes the star, it heats up, blasting out ultraviolet radiation.

Astronomers expected that the infalling material would heat the stellar envelop so much that it should produce an excess of X-rays as well. But that wasn’t happening. Instead, it appears that the streams of material are so dense, they actually cool the outer atmosphere, and absorb most of the X-rays being emitted.

There should also be large quantities of dust falling into the star that should obscure it from our view, but the stars are seen burning brightly. It must be that the star’s radiation is actually vapourizing the dust before it can reach the star, giving us a clear view.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Amateurs Help Discover a Planet that Might be a Brown Dwarf

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Another new planet has been announced this week that crosses the line between planet and brown dwarf. This time, the planet is called XO-3b, and it was discovered through a collaboration between amateur and professional astronomers.

XO-3b contains 13 times the mass of Jupiter, and orbits its parent star every 4 days. It was first discovered using a low budget telescope, part of the XO project, located on the Haleakala summit on Maui, Hawaii. The telescope is actually made up of two commercially available 200-millimetre telephoto lenses which watch stars for the characteristic dimming as a planet passes in front. When a suspected transit is seen, larger telescopes are brought in to confirm the findings.

Brown dwarfs are failed stars, lacking the mass to ignite fusion, but they do have enough mass to fuse deuterium. Astronomers categorized them as any object between 13 and 80 times the mass of Jupiter. With 13-Jupiter masses, XO-3b sits right at the dividing line between planet and brown dwarf.

Original Source: Rice University News Release