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Book Review: Sun Observer’s Guide

The Sun Observer’s Guide by Pam Spence is a practical reference for how and why to view our nearest star. Though the uninitiated consider our sun to be a steady source of light and heat, nothing could be further from the truth. Using the proper equipment with appropriate safeguards, viewers can watch a seething tempest. Changes can occur in a few short minutes or, with appropriate record keeping, changes can be seen to vary over decades. This book can start you making worthwhile observations.

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Plankton’s Glow Seen from Space

Scientists have figured out how they can use special instruments on board two NASA satellites to detect the early stages of plankton “blooms”. These blooms are caused by excessive runoff of industrial fertilizer which makes marine algae grow – sometimes so thickly that water looks black. Bacteria consume the algae and use up oxygen in the water. This can kill fish in large quantities. The MODIS instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites can detect the glow in plankton’s chlorophyll from orbit, and pinpoint exactly where large blooms are forming.

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Black Hole at the Heart of a Nebula

Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found what they believe is an intermediate sized black hole at the heart of a nebula in a nearby galaxy. Since black holes themselves are invisible, they located it because a spot inside the nebula is emitting a tremendous amount of X-rays, and illuminating a 100 light-year swath. By calculating the amount of X-rays pouring out, astronomers estimate that the black hole has about 25-40 solar masses. It’s unknown how these intermediate-sized black holes form, since so few of them have ever been seen.

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Cassini’s First Detailed Look at Titan

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has delivered some early images of Saturn’s moon Titan; a mysterious world obscured by thick clouds. Some surface features only seen from Earth-based telescopes are now visible to Cassini. The spacecraft used its narrow angle camera’s spectral filters, which are designed to penetrate the thick atmosphere to create the images. Cassini’s first good opportunity to see Titan will be when the spacecraft enters orbit around Saturn in July; it’ll fly past the moon at a distance of only 350,000 km.

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New Study Finds Fundamental Force Hasn’t Changed Over Time

In order the represent the Universe mathematically, physicists use a handful of constants, such as the speed of light, or the gravitational constant. One called the “fine structure constant”, or alpha, helps describe how the forces hold atoms together and interact with light. Researchers recently revealed that alpha might have changed over the history of the Universe, but a new study from the European Southern Observatory refutes this evidence. By studying the light from a distant quasar with a high degree of precision, they found that alpha doesn’t seem to have changed over time.

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Supernova Explodes Inside a Nebula

Astronomers have measured the light from a supernova, and believe that it was inside a very unusual star system when it exploded. The team used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile to analyze the light from supernova 2002ic, and determined that it was inside a flat, dense, clumpy disk of dust and gas that was previously blown out by a companion star. It seems similar to objects known as protoplanetary nebulae, which are found in our own Milky Way.

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Ulysses is Running Out of Power

The NASA/ESA Ulysses spacecraft’s power is starting to run down, and soon it won’t have enough to keep itself warm. When the spacecraft was first launched in 1990 to study the Sun, its reactor produced 285 watts of power, but now almost 14 years later, it’s down to 207 watts. If it gets too much lower, the spacecraft won’t be able to operate the heaters that keep the fuel flowing. Without this fuel, it won’t be able to orient its main antenna towards the Earth to transfer data.

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Adaptive Optics Reveal Massive Star Formation

Astronomers at UC Berkeley took advantage of the newly installed adaptive optics system at the Lick Observatory to get clear images of a massive star forming region. The system works by using a laser to create a false star in the sky. A computer tracks the atmospheric turbulence, and warps the telescope’s mirror to compensate. The young massive stars that the team observed are usually too blurry when seen from the ground, so they made the perfect target for the adaptive optics system.

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New Kuiper Object Rivals Pluto

Astronomers from Caltech and Yale University have discovered a distant object that could be nearly as large as Pluto. The planetoid is called 2004 DW, and located in the Kuiper Belt, billions of kilometres from Earth. The team estimates that 2004 DW is 1,400 km across, but it’s difficult to tell, because the size estimate comes from its brightness. The reflected light from the Sun, which astronomers call “albedo”, depends on the darkness of the object. Other astronomers will try and help pin down the characteristics of 2004 DW.

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Wallpaper: Spitzer’s Valentine Rose

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, here’s a 1024×768 wallpaper of nebula NGC 7129 taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope – it looks like a pink rosebud. Previous images of this nebula taken by optical telescopes just look like a few stars surrounded by a haze of gas. By viewing the nebula in infrared light, astronomers are able to see which stars have swirling rings of material around them that will eventually form planets.