Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Get Great Astronomy Apps and Support Astronomers Without Borders

Screenshot for Android, telescope control for SkySafari3. Courtesy AWB

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Celebrate the last two weeks of Global Astronomy Month and get a great price on the very popular SkySafari 3 apps for Apple and Android mobile devices and Mac OS X. Not only will you get an app that has been called a ‘game-changer’ for astronomy software, but during a special promotion, 30% of proceeds from all SkySafari sales will be donated to Astronomers Without Borders to support their wonderful programs.

All three versions of SkySafari 3 — Basic, Plus and Pro – are now at significant discounts, and if you’ve been considering purchasing SkySafari, now is the time, especially since you can support the great work of Astronomers Without Borders at the same time.

SkySafari 3 – $1.99 (regularly $2.99). 120,000 stars and 220 star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. Solar system’s major planets and moons using NASA spacecraft imagery, 20 asteroids and comets.

SkySafari 3 Plus – $11.99 (regularly $14.99). Wired or wireless telescope control with accessories sold separately. 2.5 million stars, 31,000 deep sky objects (with entire NGC/IC catalog), over 4,000 asteroids, comets, and satellites.

SkySafari 3 Pro – $39.99 (regularly $59.99). Wired or wireless telescope control with accessories sold separately. 15 million stars (most of any astronomy app), 740,000 galaxies to 18th magnitude, over 550,000 solar system objects including every known comet and asteroid.

If you don’t need the SkySafari app, please consider donating to AWB.

Mike Simmons, who leads AWB, told Universe Today that this astronomy outreach organization really could use financial help.

“We do probably a half-million dollars in programs each year based on the hard work of passionate amateur astronomers and educators around the world,” he said, all on way less than $25,000 a year.

“This can’t be sustained, of course, and our programs — and everyone’s expectations of us — continue to grow,” Simmons wrote. “This is really, really important to us. 2012 presents many opportunities and we’re working on them. But we need to convert some of the passion we have in abundance to income to keep it going. If we can’t do it this year then I’m not sure we can do it in the future.”

Another way to help AWB is to purchase special eclipse glasses for the upcoming eclipse and the Venus transit – for which AWB has big plans for helping people around the world observe this very infrequent event.

Also, there is the a program allowing people to buy a quality small refractor and have a second one donated to a club or school in a developing country.

For more information, check out Astronomers Without Borders and the SkySafari 3 app sale, the eclipse glasses and the BOGO for a small refractor telescope for you and a needy school.

Thanks in advance for your support of a great organization!

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

JUICE to Jupiter Could Be ESA’s Next Major Science Mission

Artist concept of JUICE, a Jupiter moons orbiter mission. Credit: ESA

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The Science Programme Committee of the European Space Agency has recommended that the next major space mission for ESA be an orbiter mission to the Jupiter system named JUICE, the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer. This mission would launch in about 2020 and explore potentially habitable moon around the gas giant, Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede.

This recommendation is not the final decision, but puts JUICE as a front-runner for when representatives of all 19 ESA member states meet to discuss the various mission candidates on May 2, 2012

Other missions being considered are ATHENA , the Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics (originally called IXO) – which would be the biggest X-ray telescope ever built — even though smaller in scope than the original IXO) and study the extremes of the Universe: from black holes to large-scale structure ; and NGO, the New Gravitational wave Observatory, a smaller version of LISA, a space-borne gravitational wave detector which would place a three satellites in orbit.

“This is a big blow to space based astrophysics,” wrote European science blogger Steinn Sigurdsson, who added that rumors are floating around that the NGO science team may be disbanded immediately, even though the new report issued by the Science Programme Committee is just a recommendation.

Planetary Society blogger Emily Lakdawalla also commented on the selection — if it is accepted — “represents a big win for planetary science and a big loss for space-based astrophysics in Europe. Which is, one can’t help but notice, opposite to what the currently-proposed NASA budget represents.”

Whatever mission is chosen for the next flagship science mission, ESA knows it will likely have to do it on their own.

In March 2011, NASA informed ESA that that it was highly unlikely that they could become a major partner in an “L” (large) mission for the 2020 timeframe.

“Given the resulting impossibility to continue with the mission concepts defined in the Assessment Phase, the Executive terminated the relative activities for EJSM-Laplace, IXO, and LISA, and informed the members of the three Science Study Teams of the termination of their mandate,” the new report says. “To preserve as much as possible the investment of the scientific community and of the Member States in the study activities of the L mission candidates, the Executive implemented a recovery action in the form of a fast-track re-formulation activity. The aim has been to ascertain if and which of the science goals of the L mission candidates could be implemented in the context of a programmatically feasible European-led, or potentially European-only mission.”

With NASA no longer in the mix, ESA knew they would have to descope their proposed missions, and with costs needing to be at least 20% less than originally planned. “Needless to say, missions within these constraints must be significantly less complex than the original L mission concepts selected in 2007,” the report says.

ESA’s science goals for the front-runner JUICE mission is to visit the Jupiter system concentrating on the characterization of three possible ocean-bearing worlds, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto as planetary objects and potential habitats and on the exploration of the Jupiter system considered as an archetype for gas giants in the solar system and elsewhere. The focus of JUICE is to characterize the conditions that may have led to the emergence of habitable environments among the Jupiter’s icy satellites.

Sources: Dynamics of Cats, Planetary Society blog,

Posted on by Jason Major

The Case of the Missing Dark Matter

Artist's impression of dark matter surrounding the Milky Way. (ESO/L. Calçada)

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A survey of the galactic region around our solar system by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has turned up a surprising lack of dark matter, making its alleged existence even more of a mystery.

The 2.2m MPG-ESO telescope, used in the survey. (ESO/H.H.Heyer)

Dark matter is an invisible substance that is suspected to exist in large quantity around galaxies, lending mass but emitting no radiation. The only evidence for it comes from its gravitational effect on the material around it… up to now, dark matter itself has not been directly detected. Regardless, it has been estimated to make up 80% of all the mass in the Universe.

A team of astronomers at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has mapped the region around over 400 stars near the Sun, some of which were over 13,000 light-years distant. What they found was a quantity of material that coincided with what was observable: stars, gas, and dust… but no dark matter.

“The amount of mass that we derive matches very well with what we see — stars, dust and gas — in the region around the Sun,” said team leader Christian Moni Bidin of the Universidad de Concepción in Chile. “But this leaves no room for the extra material — dark matter — that we were expecting. Our calculations show that it should have shown up very clearly in our measurements. But it was just not there!”

Based on the team’s results, the dark matter halos thought to envelop galaxies would have to have “unusual” shapes — making their actual existence highly improbable.

Still, something is causing matter and radiation in the Universe to behave in a way that belies its visible mass. If it’s not dark matter, then what is it?

“Despite the new results, the Milky Way certainly rotates much faster than the visible matter alone can account for,” Bidin said. “So, if dark matter is not present where we expected it, a new solution for the missing mass problem must be found.

“Our results contradict the currently accepted models. The mystery of dark matter has just became even more mysterious.”

Read the release on the ESO site here.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

How to Capture a Dragon in Space

André Kuipers during training with Canadarm2 (Credit: ESA/NASA)

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With the upcoming historic launch of the SpaceX Dragon capsule to the International Space Station, astronauts in orbit have been getting ready for the first commercial spacecraft that will bring supplies to the station. Astronauts Don Pettit and André Kuipers will be manually capturing and berthing the Dragon capsule, using the ISS’s Canadarm2. Originally, current station commander Dan Burbank was to be the main arm operator, but with the delay in Dragon’s launch (it was originally scheduled for February 2012), Burbank will already be back on Earth by the time Dragon reaches the station, currently scheduled for May 3. So now, Pettit and Kuipers have had to take over the duties and learn their new jobs while in space. Without the high-tech simulators that NASA has at Johnson Space Center, how do the astronauts prepare and practice for this important event?

“We have a really neat capability here on Station,” Pettit said during a press conference last week. “I have it set up all the time, so I wake up in the morning and have a bag of coffee in my mouth and a cinnamon scone in one hand and flying the simulator with the other.”

The crew actually has two ways to practice for Dragon’s arrival.

“One is actually flying (practicing with) the Canadarm, which is the world’s best trainer,” Pettit said, “and then on station we have two space station computers which double as an Arm simulator, and it has a full set of the Arm hand controllers – the setup, which we call Robot allows us to fly track and capture trajectories just as if we were in the simulators in Houston.”

Initially Burbank would have been the main arm officer, with Pettit and Kuipers assisting. Now, Pettit and Kuipers will have to complete the task themselves, with the two of them doing all the things that the three of them were originally trained to do.

For the capture and berthing, Pettit and Kuipers will be in the Cupola, with Pettit as prime operator and Kuipers as second arm operator. “We will have arm operation in the (Destiny) lab as a ‘hot backup’ just in case of contingencies, and we can activate it there if needed.”

The two astronauts will use the Station’s Canadarm2 to first grab the spacecraft and then maneuver it into place to mate with the Harmony module’s Earth-facing docking port.

Pettit said the on-orbit training has been invaluable. “It is really good to have that type of capability,” he said.

The following animation from the Canadian Space Agency shows just how complex it is to capture a Dragon in space.

SpaceX’s launch and Dragon’s arrival will be the premiere test flight in NASA’s new strategy to resupply the ISS with privately developed rockets and cargo carriers under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) initiative. Even though it is technically a est flight, NASA isn’t about to pass up an opportunity to send supplies to the station. Dragon will carry about nearly 521 kg (1,150 pounds) of cargo, mainly food and some spare parts for the ISS. When Dragon departs, the station crew will load nearly 680 kg (1,500 pounds) of cargo to be sent back to Earth, since the Dragon capsule won’t burn up in the atmosphere like other supply ships — it will be recovered in the ocean.

Posted on by Jason Major

Is This The Last Image From Envisat?

This MERIS image of Spain and Portugal could be Envisat's last. (Chelys/EOsnap)

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The European Space Agency’s venerable Envisat satellite may have sent back its final image, according to recent news from the Agency.

On April 8, ESA lost communication with the Earth-observation satellite, preventing reception of data as it passed over the Kiruna station in Sweden. Although it’s been confirmed that the satellite is still in orbit, the recovery team has not been able to re-establish contact.

The image above, showing part of the Iberian peninsula, was from the last data to be received from Envisat before it fell silent.

Radar image of Envisat. (Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques.)

Launched in March 2002, Envisat has been helping researchers examine our planet for over ten years — five years longer than its original mission duration. It has completed more than 50,000 orbits and returned thousands of images, as well as a wealth of data about the land, oceans and atmosphere.

Envisat data was instrumental in over 4,000 projects from 70 countries.

Germany’s Tracking and Imaging Radar captured an image of the satellite, revealing that it is still intact and in a stable orbit. Still, all attempts at recovery have so far been unsuccessful.

A contingency agreement with the Canadian Space Agency on Radarsat will be activated to fulfill user requirements if Envisat cannot be brought back online.

Read the official release on the ESA site here.

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Discovery Does Dulles & DC

Landing gear extended for Discovery touchdown at Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center. Credit: Ken Kremer

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Space Shuttle Discovery took off from Florida on her final mission today atop a modified Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet, headed north and ultimately did a well earned victory lap over the US capitol before closing out her flying career and landing at nearby Dulles Airport and her permanent new museum home at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia – where untold thousands and thousands gathered to witness together.

Throngs of onlookers lined the Florida Space Coast at the Kennedy Space Center to bid Discovery a tearful farewell from her home of nearly 30 highly productive years as she took off at the appointed hour of 7.a.m. EDT

Discovery flew 39 missions and delivered the incomparable and iconic Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.

Piggybacked Discovery approaches Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center on April 17, 2012. Credit: Ken Kremer

Many here and there were overwhelmingly sad that NASA’s shuttle program was prematurely cut short – barely a third of the way into the design lifetime and at the peak of performance for lack of political willpower and a small amount of federal funding, ceding US Leadership in Space.

Space Shuttle Discovery and 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft fly over the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center on April 17, 2012. The duo buzzed the US capitol region before finally landing at Dulles Airport. Credit: Ken Kremer

Barely two hours later – and ahead of schedule – NASA’s Fleet leading orbiter arrived in the skies over Washington, DC greeted by cheering crowds numbering in the tens to hundreds of thousands who had gathered all across the Capitol region to celebrate the stunning sight of a Space Shuttle Orbiter flying piggyback on a Jumbo Jet just a few hundred feet overhead.

The flight crew put on a dazzling and extended display of impressive flying ability buzzing over historic sites like the Washington Monument and the US Capitol, the National Harbor and everyday abodes. They circled around and around far more than advertised – to everyone’s delight.

Discovery set to fly over the giant crowd of many thousands gathered to welcome her to the Udvar-Havy Center on April 17, 2012. Credit: Ken Kremer

I was thrilled to watch the glorious sky show from the grounds of the Smithsonian’s Undar Hazy Center along with thousands of enthusiastic and cheering gawkers. Luckily I arrived early. Because within an hour, the parking lot was completely full and well beyond capacity several hours before the Museum’s official opening time.

Just a smidgen of the massive crowd at the Udvar-Havy Center on hand to cheer Discovery’s arrival. Credit: Ken Kremer

We witnessed four ultra close flyovers, including one directly overhead. Everyone was whooping and hollering. It was like a fun family fair, kids playing and jumping all over the place. And it sure seemed like some parents kept their kids home from school a few hours to witness one in a lifetime history

Finally the wheels and landing gear of the NASA 905 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) were extended for final touchdown shortly after 11 a.m. – and a boisterous round of spontaneous applause erupted from the masses.

What a day of conflicting emotions – happy and sad, and absolutely not to be missed.

Discovery will next be hoisted off the SCA on Wednesday and then towed into her new abode on Thursday, April 19.

Stay tuned to Universe Today for continuing on-site coverage

Send Ken your flyover photos to post here at Universe Today.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Shuttle Discovery Flies Over Washington D.C. to New Home

Space shuttle Discovery, mounted atop a NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft flies near the U.S. Capitol, Tuesday, April 17, 2012, in Washington D.C. Photo Credit: (NASA/Rebecca Roth)

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Space Shuttle Discovery, atop its Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, NASA 905, flew over the US national capital region on April 17, 2012 on the final leg of its ferry flight from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Dulles International Airport in Virginia, on the way to its final home at the National And & Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. The image above shows the duo flying near the U.S. Capitol and the video below shows views of Discovery from various vantage points in Washington D.C.

Discovery, the first orbiter retired from NASA’s shuttle fleet, completed 39 missions, spent 365 days in space, orbited the Earth 5,830 times, and traveled 238539663.3 km (148,221,675 miles). Discovery new mission will be to “commemorate past achievements in space and to educate and inspire future generations of explorers,” NASA says.

You can see more images at NASA’s Flickr page.

Here’s a video taken by Joy Hargraves who went to the Udvar-Hazy Center today to watch the Shuttle Discovery come in to her final resting place:

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Rogue Planets Can Find Homes Around Other Stars

In this artist's conception, a rogue planet drifts through space. Credit: Christine Pulliam (CfA)
In this artist's conception, a rogue planet drifts through space. Credit: Christine Pulliam (CfA)

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As crazy as it sounds, free-floating rogue planets have been predicted to exist for quite some time and just last year, in May 2011, several orphan worlds were finally detected. Then, earlier this year, astronomers estimated that there could be 100,000 times more rogue planets in the Milky Way than stars. Now, the latest research suggests that sometimes, these rogue, nomadic worlds can find a new home by being captured into orbit around other stars. Scientists say this finding could explain the existence of some planets that orbit surprisingly far from their stars, and even the existence of a double-planet system.

“Stars trade planets just like baseball teams trade players,” said Hagai Perets of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Astronomers now understand that rogue planets are a natural consequence of both star and planetary formation. Newborn star systems often contain multiple planets, and if two planets interact, one can be ejected in a form of planetary billiards, kicked out of the star system to become an interstellar traveler.

But later, if a rogue planet encounters a different star moving in the same direction at the same speed, be captured into orbit around that star, say Perets and Thijs Kouwenhoven of Peking University, China, the authors of a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal.

A captured planet tends to end up hundreds or thousands of times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun. It’s also likely to have a, orbit that’s tilted relative to any native planets, and may even revolve around its star backward.

Perets and Kouwenhoven simulated young star clusters containing free-floating planets. They found that if the number of rogue planets equaled the number of stars, then 3 to 6 percent of the stars would grab a planet over time. The more massive a star, the more likely it is to snag a planet drifting by.

While there haven’t actually been planets found yet that are definitely a ‘captured’ world, the best bet would perhaps be a planet in a distant orbit around a low-mass star. The star’s disk wouldn’t contain enough material to form a planet that distant, Perets and Kouwenhoven said.

The best evidence of a captured planet comes from the European Southern Observatory, which announced in 2006 the discovery of two planets (weighing 14 and 7 times Jupiter) orbiting each other without a star.

“The rogue double-planet system is the closest thing we have to a ‘smoking gun’ right now,” said Perets. “To get more proof, we’ll have to build up statistics by studying a lot of planetary systems.”

As for our own solar system, there’s no evidence at this time that our Sun could have captured an alien world, which would lie far beyond Pluto.

“There’s no evidence that the Sun captured a planet,” said Perets. “We can rule out large planets. But there’s a non-zero chance that a small world might lurk on the fringes of our solar system.”

Read the team’s paper.

Source: CfA

Posted on by Christopher Crockett

Dust Shells Seen for the First Time Around Dying Stars

The Helix Nebula
The Helix Nebula - the fate of most stars including our Sun. These new results illuminate how nebulae like this are formed. Credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO).

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Stars get pretty sloppy towards the end of their lives.  As the nuclear fuels start to wane, the star pulsates – expanding and contracting like a marathon runner catching her breath.  With each pulsation, the dying star belches out globs of gas into space that eventually get recycled into a new generation of stars and planets.  But accounting for all that lost material is difficult.  Like trying to see a wisp of smoke next to a stadium spotlight, observing these tenuous sheets of stellar material swirling just over the surface of the star is considerably challenging.  However, using an innovative technique to image starlight scattering off interstellar grains, astronomers have finally succeeded in seeing ripples of dust flowing off dying stars!

The stars – W Hydra, R Doradus, and R Leonis – are all highly variable red giants, stars that are no longer fusing hydrogen in their cores but have moved on to forming heavier elements.  Each is completely enveloped by a very thin dust shell most likely made up of minerals like forsterite and enstatite.  These grains can only form once the raw ingredients have flowed some distance from the star.  At distances roughly equal to the size of the star itself, the gas has cooled enough to allow atoms to start sticking together and forming more complex compounds.  Minerals like these will go on to seed asteroids and possibly rocky planets like the Earth in the continual cycle of death and rebirth playing out in the Galaxy.

The paper describing this discovery, accepted to the journal Nature, can be found here.

The astronomers who recently reported this discovery used the eight meter wide Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert – and a suite of clever tools – to tease out the subtle reflections off these dust shells.  The trick to seeing light bouncing off interstellar dust particles involves taking advantage of one of light’s wave properties.  Imagine you had a length of rope: one end is in your hand, the other tied to a wall.  You start to wiggle your end and waves travel down the cord.  If you move your arm up and down, the waves are perpendicular to the floor; if you move your arm from side to side, they are parallel to it.  The orientation of those waves is known as their “polarization”.  If you mixed things up by constantly changing the direction in which your arm was oscillating, the orientation of the waves would be similarly confused.  The rope would bounce in all directions.  With out a preferred direction of movement, the rope waves are said to be “unpolarized”.

Light waves emitted from the surface of star are just like your chaotic rope flinging. The oscillations in the electric and magnetic fields that make up the propagating light wave have no preferred direction of motion – they are unpolarized.  However, when light bounces off a dust grain, all that confusion drops away.  The waves now oscillate in roughly the same direction, just as if you decided to only bounce the rope up and down.  Astronomers call this light “polarized”.

A polarizing filter only allows light with a specific orientation to pass through.  Hold it one way, and only “vertically polarized” light – light where the electric field is oscillating up and down – will pass. Turn the filter ninety degrees, and you’ll only transmit “horizontally polarized” light.  If you have polarizing sunglasses, you can try this yourself by rotating the glasses and watching how the the scene through the lenses gets brighter and darker.  This is also a nice demonstration of how our atmosphere polarizes incoming sunlight.

A shell of dust around a star will polarize the light that bounces off it.  Just like the sky gets brighter and dimmer as you turn your sunglasses, looking at a such star through differently oriented polarizing filters will reveal a halo of polarized light surrounding it.  The different orientations will reveal different segments of the halo.  By combining polarimetric observations with interferometry – the beating together of light waves from widely separated spots on a telescope mirror to create very high-resolution images – a thin ring of scattered light reveals itself around these three stars.

These new observations represent a milestone in our understanding of not only a star’s end game but also the production of interstellar dust that follows. Like the smokestacks of great factories, red giant stars expel a soot of minerals into space, carried aloft by stellar winds.  With meticulous observation, results such as these can help tie together the death of one generation of stars with the birth of another.  Unraveling the mysteries of grain formation in space takes us one step closer to piecing together the many steps that lead from stellar death to the creation of rocky planets like our own.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Special New Panorama Celebrates Hubble’s 22nd Anniversary

A mosaic view of 30 Doradus, assembled from Hubble Space Telescope photos, Credit: NASA, ESA, ESO,

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Happy birthday to the Hubble Space Telescope! On April 24, 1990, HST was launched into low Earth orbit. Now, nearly 22 years later, Hubble is still producing incredible, stunning images of the farthest reaches of the Universe. For this year’s anniversary, the Hubble team took a special panoramic view of 30 Doradus, a raucous stellar breeding ground, located in the heart of the Tarantula nebula. The image comprises one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble photos and consists of observations taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, combined with observations from the European Southern Observatory’s MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope that trace the location of glowing hydrogen and oxygen.

The Tarantula nebula is 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. No known star-forming region in our galaxy is as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.

The stars in this image add up to a total mass millions of times bigger than that of our Sun. The image is roughly 650 light-years across and contains some rambunctious stars, from one of the fastest rotating stars to the speediest and most massive runaway star.

The nebula is close enough to Earth that Hubble can resolve individual stars, giving astronomers important information about the stars’ birth and evolution. Many small galaxies have more spectacular starbursts, but the Large Magellanic Cloud’s 30 Doradus is one of the only star-forming regions that astronomers can study in detail. The star-birthing frenzy in 30 Doradus may be partly fueled by its close proximity to its companion galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud.

The image reveals the stages of star birth, from embryonic stars a few thousand years old still wrapped in dark cocoons of dust and gas to behemoths that die young in supernova explosions. 30 Doradus is a star-forming factory, churning out stars at a furious pace over millions of years. The Hubble image shows star clusters of various ages, from about 2 million to about 25 million years old.

The image was made from 30 separate fields, 15 from each camera. Hubble made the observations in October 2011. Both cameras were making observations at the same time.

Take an interactive tour of the Tarantula Nebula at the HubbleSite

Source: ESA’s Hubble website