Black holes might be invisible, but the superheated matter piling up around them shines brightly in the gamma ray spectrum. Most of these black holes are so far away, their gamma rays look like a diffuse background radiation that covers the sky. ESA’s Integral spacecraft recently calibrated the level of this background radiation by watching a point of sky, and let the Earth pass in front of it, to slowly block it out. Using these calculations, astronomers will be better able to distinguish point sources of gamma rays from the wash of background radiation.
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Atlantis Launch Delayed to Saturday
The delays to STS-115 – the Space Shuttle Atlantis mission to the space station – continue to mount. The latest issue is a malfunctioning fuel cut-off sensor designed to protect the shuttle’s main engines if they unexpectedly run out of fuel. NASA’s rules require that the shuttle tank be completely drained to test the fuel sensors before it can be filled up again. This has pushed the launch back to 1515 GMT (11:15 am EDT) on Saturday.
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Giant Planet or Failed Star?
The Hubble Space Telescope has helped astronomers uncover an object right at the dividing line between stars and planets. The object, known as CHXR 73 B, weighs in at about 12 times the mass of Jupiter, and orbits a larger red dwarf star. The two objects are separated by 200 times the distance of the Earth to the Sun, so astronomers don’t think they both formed out of the same disk of gas and dust.
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Opportunity Nears Victoria Crater
After traveling for more than 930 days on the surface of Mars, NASA’s Opportunity rover is nearly at the rim of Victoria crater. This crater is larger than anything the rover has explored before, spanning 750 metres (half a mile) across, and 70 metres (230 feet) deep. Once Opportunity does reach the rim and look inside, it will be like looking back in time, analyzing stacks of rock layers. The rover will first search the crater rim looking for a potential path down that it can safely maneuver.
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SMART-1 Ends in a Flash and Puff of Dust
When SMART-1 ended its mission by crashing into the Moon on Semptember 3, telescopes around the world were watching. A newly released series of images comes from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, which shows the crash site before and after impact. The telescope captured images every 15 seconds, and detected the flash of impact, and the following dust cloud that lasted about 75 seconds.
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Prometheus Twists Saturn’s Rings
This photograph of Saturn’s rings shows the effect of a moon’s gravity. The leftmost ring is Saturn’s F ring, which is very bright in appearance, and is constantly changing. This is because Saturn’s moon Prometheus makes its way through the ring, distorting the ice particles with its gravity. Cassini took this photo on July 26, 2006 when it was 1.5 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Saturn.
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Fuel Cell Problem Delays Atlantis Launch
NASA postponed today’s launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis after problems emerged during the activation of one its electricity-producing fuel cells. During preparations for launch, controllers detected a voltage spike in the fuel cell’s cooling pump, and decided it posed enough of a risk to push back the launch. Managers will be meeting on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the issue, and determine when the shuttle will be ready for launch again.
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New Horizons’ Telescope Sees First Light
Although New Horizons is still more than 9 years away from reaching Pluto, it’s ready to do some science along the way. The spacecraft passed an important milestone this week when it opened the protective cover on its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and took a photograph of the Messier 7 star cluster. Stars were visible in this cluster down to 12th magnitude, which matches the instrument’s pre-launch calibration. New Horizons will start imaging Jupiter with LORRI as it approaches a Feb. 28, 2007 flyby.
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Hubble Sees a Rare Transit on Uranus
The Hubble Space Telescope recently captured a very rare event: the transit of its moon Ariel across the surface of Uranus. On Earth we call this an eclipse, when the Moon’s shadow falls upon the surface of our planet. This situation is rare on Uranus; however, because the blue-green planet is tilted over on its side. The Sun, the moons and Uranus only line up once every 42 years. The last time a transit like this could have been seen was 1965, but Earth-based telescopes weren’t powerful enough to image the event at the time.
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Spitzer’s View of the Large Magellanic Cloud
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope recently captured this image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of a handful of dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. This single image, containing about a third of the entire galaxy, is actually made up of 300,000 individual frames captured by Spitzer, and then stitched together on computer to create a gigantic mosaic. Because Spitzer’s infrared view allows it to pierce through obscuring dust and gas, this new research has revealed nearly a million never-before-seen objects – mostly stars.
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