Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Astronomers Find New Evidence for Dark Energy

Dark Energy's stretching effect. Credit: U of Hawaii

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A team of astronomers has found what they say is the clearest detection to date of dark energy in the universe. Scientists at the University of Hawaii compared an existing database of galaxies with a map of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), and were able to detect dark energy’s effect on vast cosmic structures such as superclusters of galaxies, where there is a high concentration of galaxies, and supervoids, areas in space with a small number of galaxies. “We were able to image dark energy in action, as it stretches huge supervoids and superclusters of galaxies,” said Dr. István Szapudi said, from U of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy.

The discovery in 1998 that the universe was actually speeding up in its expansion was a surprise to astronomers. Dark energy refers to the fact that something must fill the vast reaches of mostly empty space in the Universe in order to be able to make space accelerate in its expansion. Dark energy works against the tendency of gravity to pull galaxies together and so causes the universe’s expansion to speed up.But the nature of dark energy and why it exists is one of the biggest puzzles of modern science.

The team from the University of Hawaii made the discovery by measuring the subtle imprints that superclusters and supervoids leave in microwaves that pass through them. Superclusters and supervoids are the largest structures in the universe.

“When a microwave enters a supercluster, it gains some gravitational energy, and therefore vibrates slightly faster,” explained Szapudi. “Later, as it leaves the supercluster, it should lose exactly the same amount of energy. But if dark energy causes the universe to stretch out at a faster rate, the supercluster flattens out in the half-billion years it takes the microwave to cross it. Thus, the wave gets to keep some of the energy it gained as it entered the supercluster.”

“Dark energy sort of gives microwaves a memory of where they’ve been recently,” postdoctoral scientist Mark Neyrinck said.

Comparing superclusters (red circles) and supervoids (blue circles) with the CMB. Credit: U of Hawaii
Comparing superclusters (red circles) and supervoids (blue circles) with the CMB. Credit: U of Hawaii

When the team compared galaxies against the CMB, they found that the microwaves were a bit stronger if they had passed through a supercluster, and a bit weaker if they had passed through a supervoid.

“With this method, for the first time we can actually see what supervoids and superclusters do to microwaves passing through them,” said graduate student Benjamin Granett.

The signal is difficult to detect, since ripples in the primordial CMB are larger than the imprints of individual superclusters and supervoids. To extract a signal, the team averaged together patches of the CMB map around the 50 largest supervoids and the 50 largest superclusters that they detected in extremely bright galaxies drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project that mapped the distribution of galaxies over a quarter of the sky.

The astronomers say there is only a one in 200,000 chance that the evidence they detected would occur by chance.

Original News Source: U of Hawaii press release

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Area Beneath Phoenix Lander Is Changing

Snow Queen is changing! Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/U of Arizona

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The bright, hard surface feature beneath the Phoenix Mars Lander has visibly changed from when it was first imaged shortly after the lander touched down on the Red Planet. Scientists believe the area, called “Snow Queen” could possibly be ice. Thruster exhaust blew away surface soil covering Snow Queen as Phoenix landed, exposing a hard layer with several smooth, rounded cavities. Phoenix’s Robotic Arm Camera (RAC) took its first close-up image of the area under the lander on May 31, the sixth sol of the mission. Now, more than 60 days since landing, cracks as long as 10 centimeters, or about four inches, have appeared in Snow Queen. A seven-millimeter (less than one-third inch) pebble or clod not seen there before has popped up on the surface, and some smooth texture has subtly roughened. These changes have been occurring slowly. “Images taken since landing showed these fractures didn’t form in the first 20 sols of the mission,” Phoenix co-investigator Mike Mellon of the University of Colorado, Boulder, said. “We might expect to see additional changes in the next 20 sols.”

Mellon said long-term monitoring of Snow Queen and other icy soil cleared by Phoenix landing and trenching operations is unprecedented for science. It’s the first chance to see visible changes in Martian ice at a place where temperatures are cold enough that the ice doesn’t immediately sublimate, or vaporize, away. Phoenix scientists discovered that centimeter-sized chunks of ice scraped up in the Dodo-Goldilocks trench lasted several days before vanishing.

“I’ve made a list of hypotheses about what could be forming cracks in Snow Queen, and there are difficulties with all of them,” Mellon said.

One possibility is that temperature changes over many sols, or Martian days, have expanded and contracted the surface enough to create stress cracks. It would take a fairly rapid temperature change to form fractures like this in ice, Mellon said.

Another possibility is the exposed layer has undergone a phase change that has caused it to shrink. An example of a phase change could be a hydrated salt losing its water after days of surface exposure, causing the hard layer to shrink and crack. “I don’t think that’s the best explanation because dehydration of salt would first form a thin rind and finer cracks,” Mellon said.

May 31 image of ice under Phoenix. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/U of Arizone
May 31 image of ice under Phoenix. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/U of Arizone

“Another possibility is that these fractures were already there, and they appeared because ice sublimed off the surface and revealed them,” he said.

As for the small pebble that popped up on Snow Queen after 21 sols — it might be a piece that broke free from the original surface or it might be a piece that fell down from somewhere else. “We have to study the shadows a little more to understand what’s happening,” Mellon said.

Meanwhile, scientists and engineers for the mission are studying the icy soil on Mars, examining how it interacts with the scoop on the lander’s robotic arm, trying different techniques to deliver a sample to the TEGA or Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer instrument.

“It has really been a science experiment just learning how to interact with the icy soil on Mars — how it reacts with the scoop, its stickiness, whether it’s better to have it in the shade or the sunlight,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona.

Last weekend, the team tried two different methods to pick up and deliver a sample of icy soil to one of the ovens in TEGA. In both cases, most of the sample stuck inside the lander’s scoop, with only a small amount of soil getting into the oven. All the data received from the lander – both images and other data — indicated that not enough soil had been funneled into the oven to prompt the oven to close and begins its analysis.

The team plans to keep gaining experience in handling the icy soil while continuing with other Phoenix studies of the soil and the atmosphere.

Smith said, “While we continue with determining the best way to get an icy sample, we intend to proceed with analyzing dry samples that we already know how to deliver. We are going to move forward with a dry soil sample.”

Original News Source: Phoenix News site

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Two Galaxies Walk Into a Bar…

COSMOS Survey. Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Sheth, P. Capak and N. Scoville

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Two galaxies walk into a bar. The young, regular spiral galaxy and the mature, barred spiral both order a drink. But the bartender only gives a drink to the barred spiral galaxy. The regular spiral galaxy says, “Hey, why didn’t I get my drink?” The bartender replies, “You’re too young, plus we don’t serve your type.”

Extremely lame joke, I know. But now that I have your attention, one of the latest studies conducted by the Hubble Space Telescope show that barred spiral galaxies were less plentiful 7 billion years ago than they are today. This confirms the idea that bars are a sign of galaxies getting older and reaching full maturity; they are no longer in their “formative years.” Using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, astronomers say this study of the history of bar formation provides clues to understanding when and how spiral galaxies form and evolve over time.

And if anyone can come up with a better “two galaxies walk into a bar” joke, post it in the comments below. The winner gets a free subscription to Universe Today.

Hubble looked at more than 2,000 spiral galaxies in the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS). A team led by Kartik Sheth of the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology discovered that only 20 percent of the spiral galaxies in the distant past possessed bars, compared with nearly 70 percent of their modern counterparts.

Bars have been forming steadily over the last 7 billion years, more than tripling in number. “The recently forming bars are not uniformly distributed across galaxy masses, however, and this is a key finding from our investigation,” said Sheth. “They are forming mostly in the small, low-mass galaxies, whereas among the most massive galaxies, the fraction of bars was the same in the past as it is today.”

The findings have important implications for galaxy evolution. “We know that evolution is generally faster for more massive galaxies: They form their stars early and fast and then fade into red disks. Low-mass galaxies are known to form stars at a slower pace, but now we see that they also made their bars slowly over time,” he said.

Artist's illustration of the Milky Way. Credit; NASA
Artist's illustration of the Milky Way. Credit; NASA

Our own Milky Way Galaxy was recently determined to have a central bar. Our galaxy is another massive barred spiral, and its central bar probably formed somewhat early, like the bars in other large galaxies in the Hubble survey. “Understanding how bars formed in the most distant galaxies will eventually shed light on how it occurred here, in our own backyard,” Sheth said.

COSMOS covers an area of sky nine times larger than the full Moon, surveying 10 times more spiral galaxies than previous observations. In support of the Hubble galaxy images, the team derived distances to the galaxies in the COSMOS field using data from Hubble and an assortment of ground-based telescopes.

Astronomers believe bars form when stellar orbits in a spiral galaxy become unstable and deviate from a circular path. “The tiny elongations in the stars’ orbits grow and they get locked into place, making a bar,” explained team member Bruce Elmegreen of IBM’s research Division in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. “The bar becomes even stronger as it locks more and more of these elongated orbits into place. Eventually a high fraction of the stars in the galaxy’s inner region join the bar.”

Bars are perhaps one of the most important catalysts for changing a galaxy. They force a large amount of gas towards the galactic center, fueling new star formation, building central bulges of stars, and feeding massive black holes.

“The formation of a bar may be the final important act in the evolution of a spiral galaxy,” Sheth said. “Galaxies are thought to build themselves up through mergers with other galaxies. After settling down, the only other dramatic way for galaxies to evolve is through the action of bars.”

Yes, there’s always lots of action in bars. Especially when two galaxies walk in.

Original News Source: HubbleSite

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Behind the Power and Beauty of Northern Lights

Northern Lights. Credit: NASA

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The Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights are stunningly beautiful. But they can also disrupt radio communications and GPS signals, and even cause power outages. What’s behind the ethereal Northern Lights that causes them to shimmer and dance with colorful lights while sometimes wreaking havoc with electrical systems here on Earth? Using a fleet of five satellites, NASA researchers have discovered that explosions of magnetic energy a third of the way to the moon power substorms that cause sudden brightenings and rapid movements of the aurora borealis, called the Northern Lights. “We discovered what makes the Northern Lights dance,” said Dr. Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles. Angelopoulos is the principal investigator for the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission, or THEMIS.

The cause of the shimmering in Northern Lights is magnetic reconnection, a common process that occurs throughout the universe when stressed magnetic field lines suddenly snap to a new shape, like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far.

“As they capture and store energy from the solar wind, the Earth’s magnetic field lines stretch far out into space. Magnetic reconnection releases the energy stored within these stretched magnetic field lines, flinging charged particles back toward the Earth’s atmosphere,” said David Sibeck, THEMIS project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “They create halos of shimmering aurora circling the northern and southern poles.”

An explosion of energy increases in the brightness and movement of Northern Lights. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
An explosion of energy increases in the brightness and movement of Northern Lights. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

The data was gathered by five strategically positioned Themis satellites, combined with information from 20 ground-based observatories located throughout Canada and Alaska. Launched in February 2007, the five identical satellites line up once every four days along the equator and take observations synchronized with the ground observatories. Each ground station uses a magnetometer and a camera pointed upward to determine where and when an auroral substorm will begin. Instruments measure the auroral light from particles flowing along Earth’s magnetic field and the electrical currents these particles generate.

See animation of magnetic reconnection.

During each alignment, the satellites capture data that allow scientists to precisely pinpoint where, when, and how substorms measured on the ground develop in space. On Feb. 26, 2008, during one such THEMIS lineup, the satellites observed an isolated substorm begin in space, while the ground-based observatories recorded the intense auroral brightening and space currents over North America.

These observations confirm for the first time that magnetic reconnection triggers the onset of substorms. The discovery supports the reconnection model of substorms, which asserts a substorm starting to occur follows a particular pattern. This pattern consists of a period of reconnection, followed by rapid auroral brightening and rapid expansion of the aurora toward the poles. This culminates in a redistribution of the electrical currents flowing in space around Earth.

Solving the mystery of where, when, and how substorms occur will allow scientists to construct more realistic substorm models and better predict a magnetic storm’s intensity and effects.

More about Themis.

Original News Source: NASA press release

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Unusual Exoplanet Dances in Sync With Its Sun-Like Star

Artist's impression of COROT. Credit: ESA

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The European Space Agency’s COROT spacecraft has discovered an unusual exoplanet orbiting a star slightly more massive than our Sun. The planet, currently called COROT-exo-4b, is about the same size as Jupiter, and it takes 9.2 days to orbit its star. Most peculiar however, is that the planet and the star are in sync: the star rotates at the same pace as the planet’s period of revolution. Astronomers feel the planet is too low in mass and too distant from the star for the star to have any major influence on the planet’s rotation. But they are trying to understand the special interaction between this star and planet.

COROT stands for Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits. Launched in 2006, the mission has now observed more than 50,000 stars. The spacecraft is designed to detect rocky exoplanets almost as small as Earth. The satellite uses transits, the tiny dips in the light output from a star when a planet passes in front of it, to detect and study planets. This is followed up by extensive ground-based observations.

COROT-exo-4b is the fifth exoplanet found by the COROT spacecraft. Monitoring continuously over several months, the team tracked variations in its brightness between transits. They derived its period of rotation by monitoring dark spots on its surface that rotated in and out of view. It takes 9.2 days for the planet to orbit its star, which so far, is the longest period for any transiting exoplanet ever found.

It is not known whether COROT-exo-4b and its star have always been rotating in sync since their formation about 1000 million years ago, or if the star’s rotation synchronized later. Studying such systems with COROT will help scientists gain valuable insight into star-planet interactions.

This is the first transiting exoplanet found with such a peculiar combination of mass and period of rotation. Astronomers believe there must be something unique about how it formed and evolved.

Original News Source: ESA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Mars’ Sticky Soil Strikes Again

Phoenix's scoop hovers over TEGA. Credit: NASA/JPL/Uof Arizona

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NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander scraped up some icy soil with its robotic arm and scoop and then attempted to quickly deliver the sample to the oven on board. But not enough soil made it to the oven; the icy soil stuck to the scoop. Engineers determined the rasping and scraping activity collected a total of 3 cubic centimeters of icy soil, more than enough to fill the tiny oven cell of the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. However, images returned from the lander Saturday showed that much of the soil remained lodged in the robotic arm’s scoop after the delivery attempt. “Very little of the icy sample made it into the oven,” said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager. “We believe that the material that was intended for the targeted cell is the material that adhered to the back of the scoop.”


Once the sample had been collected, the robotic arm tilted its scoop and ran the rasp motor several times in an attempt to sprinkle the sample into the oven whose doors were wide open. The scoop was then inverted directly over the doors. A screened opening over the oven measures about 10 centimeters (4 inches) long by 3 centimeters (1.5 inches) wide. The oven itself is roughly the size of an ink cartridge in a ballpoint pen.

But TEGA’s sensors didn’t detect enough soil in the oven for the oven doors to close. Commands were also sent to vibrate the screen on TEGA several times. The good news there is that the vibrating did not cause the oven to short circuit, a problem that occurred earlier and engineers have been worried that vibrating could possibly short out the entire instrument. But TEGA lives on for the team to try again to quickly deliver the icy soil to the oven before the ice sublimates away in Mars thin atmosphere. The ice can exist just under Mars surface, protected by the soil.

Goldstein said the team will adjust their sample drop-off strategy and try again.

Original News Source: Phoenix News

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Apollo Astronaut Mitchell Says Aliens Have Visited Earth

Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell. Credit: NASA

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This story has been spreading like wildfire across the internet, as well as other news sources, which is not surprising given the topic. In a radio interview in the UK, and in a subsequent article in the Daily Register, former Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell said he believes there is life on other planets. OK, that’s not much of a bombshell. But then he went on to say that aliens have visited Earth, and our governments have been covering it up. That was the shocker. Mitchell said he was “privileged enough to be in on the fact that we’ve been visited on this planet and the U.F.O. phenomena is real.” While he didn’t offer any real facts or say that he has actually seen aliens, he said big organizations will soon be offering full disclosure. NASA officials responded to Mitchell’s comments fairly politely with this comment: “NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe. Dr. Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue.”

Mitchell was a member of Apollo 14, and was the sixth man to walk on the moon. While he didn’t offer any real proof of his claims, he does seemingly have credentials. However, he alone among the Apollo astronauts makes these types of claims, and has been saying things like this for quite some time. He said on the way home from the moon he had a “transformational, transcendental experience.” After his flight he started the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which “conducts and sponsors leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness.”

There was another interesting statement by Mitchell during this interview: “There’s more nonsense out there about this than there is real knowledge.”

Of course, the UFO folks have glommed onto these latest statements by Mitchell, but here’s what some of the more reputable news sites have been saying:

New York Times Blog: “While Mr. Mitchell, 77, is certainly entitled to his own views on the issue, the rest of us may need to wait for something more convincing.”

Huffington Post: “Mitchell, a member of the Apollo 14 team, has long held these beliefs despite the fact that he himself has never seen neither an alien or a U.F.O.”

NASA Watch’s Keith Cowing: “I assume you have proof to back up your extraterrestrial conspiracy mongering, Ed.”

Robert Pearlman, the editor of CollectSpace, wrote the following on an online forum:

Based on the nine minute call, it (a) doesn’t seem to be anything tremendously different from prior comments and writings by Dr. Mitchell, and (b) he isn’t actually claiming first-hand knowledge but rather repeating what he was told by others. It is no secret that Dr. Mitchell’s Noetic Science Institute attracts those that believe in extraterrestrials and that he has attended numerous conferences where they have been on the agenda for discussion, thus what he says here is of little surprise (and some might argue, consequence).

Irene Klotz from Discovery interviewed Mitchell after his UK radio interview and here’s an excerpt:

Irene Klotz: I wanted to ask you if there was anything about the radio interview you did that was different from what you’ve said in the past.

Edgar Mitchell: No, there’s nothing different. Several of (the reports of the interview) that I’ve seen come around have some flaws in them. Some of the reports pushed it or spun it incorrectly. NASA had nothing to do with anything I’ve done. I wasn’t briefed by NASA. There haven’t been any sightings as a result of my flight service there, so if that part of it comes out on anything you’ve seen it is just totally wrong.

In this Discovery interview, and in previous interviews, Mitchell has not offered any definite proof of his claims, and said he’s only been “told by people who were utterly sworn to secrecy” about alien visits to Earth. Mitchell grew up in Roswell, New Mexico.

All in all, unless Mitchell can offer definitive proof, his claims will have to be put in the same class as anyone else that makes similar claims, despite his background. Even with the prevalence of cameras and video cameras among the general public and with an abundance of investigative news reporters out there (all wanting to break the news story of the millennium) still, no one has been able to produce credible proof of aliens visiting Earth.

As the Bad Astronomer Phil Plait has said repeatedly, the people constantly looking at the skies, professional and amateur astronomers, have made no claims of UFO’s or aliens visiting Earth. They know what they are looking at in the sky.

For a dose of reality, please see Phil’s take on UFO’s.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Phoenix in the Land of Mars’ Midnight Sun

Mars' Midnight Sun. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/U of Arizona/Texas A&M University

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This panorama mosaic of images was taken by the Surface Stereo Imager on board NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander. This mosaic documents the midnight sun during several days of the mission, from Sol 46, or the 46th day of the mission to Sol 56 (that would be to July 12 – 22, 2008 here on Earth.) The foreground and sky images were taken on Sol 54, when the lander pulled an all-nighter to coordinate work with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The solar images were taken between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., local solar time, on the different nights of the 11 sol period. During this period, the sun’s path got slightly lower over the northern horizon, causing the lack of smoothness to the curve. This pan captures the polar nature of the Phoenix mission in its similarity to time lapse pictures taken above the Arctic Circle on Earth.

The latest activities of the lander has brought it closer to analyzing a sample of icy soil in the TEGA oven.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Phoenix used its robotic arm to scrape the top of the hard layer in the trench called “Snow White.”

“We are monitoring changes between the scrapes,” said Doug Ming of NASA Johnson Space Center. “It appears that there is fairly rapid sublimation of some of the ice after scraping exposes fresh material, leaving a thin layer of soil particles that had been mixed with the ice. There’s a color change from darker to bluer to redder. We want to characterize that on Sol 58 to know what to expect when we scrape just before collecting the next sample.”

The science team is preparing to quickly collect a sample from the hard layer of Snow White and deliver it to one of the eight ovens of Phoenix’s Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA). Doors to the oven have been opened to receive the sample. TEGA will “bake and sniff” the samples to analyze the composition of the soil and ice.

On Wednesday the team also checked out the heater on TEGA is working properly, to verify that pressure sensors can be warmed enough to operate properly early in the Mars morning.

“For the next sample, we will be operating the instrument earlier in the morning than we have before,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for TEGA. “It will be almost the coldest part of the day, because we want to collect the sample cold and deliver it cold.”

On the day when Phoenix will deliver the next sample to TEGA, the team plans to have lander activities begin about three hours earlier than the usual start time of about 9 a.m. local solar time.

On Thursday, one set of imaging commands will check a northwestern portion of the horizon repeatedly during early afternoon to see whether any dust devils can be seen. This will be the first systematic check by Phoenix for dust devils. The Mars Rover Spirit was able to image sequences of dust devils in its location, south of Mars’ equator.

Original News Source: Phoenix News

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

What Are YOU Doing for the International Year of Astronomy?

In 1609, Galileo Galilei looked at the heavens through a telescope for the first time, and things on Earth haven’t been the same since. To celebrate the 400th anniversary of this advent of scientific discovery and thought, people and organizations from around the globe are coordinating a world-wide, year-long program called the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). Some of the goals of IYA are to stimulate worldwide interest in astronomy and science, especially among young people, to provide as many people as possible with an “astronomy experience,” and to support science education in both formal and informal settings. Currently, 118 countries are going to be part of IYA. The program has the support of the United Nations, the International Astronomical Union, the US’s National Science Foundation and all the space agencies around the world. Recently, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution supporting IYA. Right now IYA is in the planning and coordination stage. But for IYA to be a success, says Doug Isbell, one of the co-chairs for the US IYA program, it’s going to take a coordinated effort from volunteers around the world who want to share their love of space and astronomy. So, it’s time to start thinking about what YOU are going to do for IYA. And even though we’ve posted the IYA trailer on UT before, here it is again to help get you in the mood:



So, what’s in it for you? Plenty. There are a myriad of ways for everyone to get involved in IYA, whether its just attending a star party, or helping to coordinate a local event, or making a financial contribution.

One of the goals of IYA is to provide as many people as possible with the experience of looking through a telescope. Currently, IYA is designing a telescope kit, called the Galileoscope, to distribute to schools and science centers around the world. “We have a goal of approximately 1 million Galileoscopes world wide” said Isbell. “We want everyone to have a high quality, aha! experience. From networking and experience, we know that experience is something like being able to see Saturn’s rings. That drives you to a 40 or 45 power telescope, which is more ambitious than we originally thought.” The telescope kit will come with a educational curriculum, and is designed to be to be a science experience in either a classroom or an informal science center.

IYA would like to offer these scopes free to people around the world, and is looking for funding. “This is a big funding challenge,” said Isbell. “We’re getting close to the design, but we’re still looking for the chunk of money that will get us to the production phase.”

The overall US goal, said Isbell, is to offer an engaging astronomy experience to every person in the country in some fashion, whether it is in person or virtual, and to build partnerships for the future in educational outreach.

“Within the US, we have plans to foster star parties around the country, in coordination with local astronomy groups,” said Isbell. “There will be national and international efforts to observe particular objects, like Jupiter that will be in a good alignment in August of 2009. Also, we’re promoting the dark skies concept of preserving the night sky for observers, and we’re trying to foster a more formal research project to observe the variable binary star Epsilon Aurigae. It’s going through an eclipse that comes around every few decades, and this is a chance for the more dedicated observers and teacher/student researchers to study this star.”

One of the exciting events happening in conjunction with IYA is the production of a PBS special called “400 Years of the Telescope,” produced by Interstellar Studios, headed by Kris Koenig. Not only will there be a television special, but planetarium shows and interactive educational activities are being coordinated for as well for IYA. The 400 Years of the Telescope website has a newsletter available, which is also where you can find info on the US IYA effort. Subscribe to the newsletter here. UT will provide more information on “400 Years of the Telescope” as the air date gets closer.

Check out IYA’s website, which provides a centralized outlet for people to publicize and learn about events, activities and materials available online. Here’s the US IYA site. See how you can get involved. You can also find IYA on several of the social networking sites, like MySpace, and Facebook.

Universe Today will provide updated information about IYA, as well as details about the different facets of IYA in upcoming articles.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

This Week’s “Where In The Universe” Challenge

It’s Wednesday, so that means its time for another “Where In The Universe” challenge to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. Guess the location of this image, and give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the photo. Remember, you have 8 planets, 169 known moons, a handful of dwarf planets (there’s a new one!) and lots of asteroids in our solar system to choose from. We’re also up to over 300 known exoplanets now; however we don’t have the capability to image them quite yet, so you can cross them off your potential answer list. Don’t cheat – make your guess before you look below!


On October 13, 2000, the Expedition 3 crew of the International Space Station, took this interesting photo of the Brahmaputra River in Tibet. This river carves a narrow west-east valley between the Tibetan Plateau to the north and the Himalaya Mountains to the south, as it rushes eastward for more than 1,500 km in southwestern China. The 15-km stretch shown here is about 35 km south of the ancient Tibetan capital of Lhasa. As you can see the river flow becomes intricately braided as it works and reworks its way through extensive deposits of erosional material. This pattern indicates a combination heavy sediment discharge from tributaries and reduction of the river’s flow from either a change in gradient or perhaps even climate conditions over the watershed. The area is also known for strong, persistent westerly winds which also shapes the region.

Photos such as this one bring immediate visual understanding and appreciation of natural processes in some of the most remote locations on Earth.

How did you do?

More info on this image.