Astronomers from MIT and Williams College have teamed up to capture an event seen only once, 25 years ago. On the night of July 10/11, Pluto's moon Charon briefly passed in front of a distant star - this is called an occultation. By studying how the light from this star dimmed and then brightened again, the astronomers will be able to determine if Charon has an atmosphere. Charon is small, so it doesn't have much gravity to hold an atmosphere, but it's so cold that some gasses could be held in place.
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Observations with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory have given astronomers some clues about what causes millisecond pulsars - extremely dense stars which can spin many times a second. Several of these pulsars were discovered in a stellar cluster called 47 Tucanae, where the stars are less than .1 light years apart. Astronomers think these pulsars started as regular neutron stars, but tightly joined with stellar companions they picked up in the cluster. Eventually they get so close they start drawing material off the companion, which causes them to speed up.
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On December 27, 2004, a neutron star flared up so brightly, it temporarily blinded all the X-ray satellites in space for an instant, and lit up the Earth's upper atmosphere. This tremendous blast of energy was from a giant flare created by the neutron star's twisting magnetic field. Objects like this are called magnetars, and they produce magnetic fields trillions of time more powerful than those here on Earth. These fields are so strong they can actually buckle the surface of the neutron star causing these powerful star quakes.
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Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found a dusty disk around a star which is 25 million years old. Planetary disks like this have been seen before, but never around a star which is so old; it's possible it'll never form planets. Most planetary disks make the transition within just a few million years, and the previous record was 10 million years. The disk still has a lot of gas in it, so researchers think it's still possible that it could form gas giants.
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Scientists can tell us what our climate on Earth was like in past by examining ice cores taken from glaciers. Tiny bubbles of air are trapped in the ice and maintain a historical record of ancient atmospheres. The effects of life make their mark in these ice samples as well. What if you examined the icecaps on Mars, or the layers of ice on Europa? NASA is considering a proposal for a small spacecraft that would land on Mars or Europa and melt its way throught the ice, collecting data as it descended, searching for clues about the presence of life.
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When humans first step onto the surface of Mars in the coming decades, they'll be like kids in a candy store; so many rocks to turn over or chip away at. Is that discoloured patch algae? A team of Spanish engineers are working on a Cyborg Astrobiologist that could help observe the landscape with a video camera, see what the astronauts see, and suggest places that might be interesting for further study. Larry Klaes reports on this interesting new technology, but he thinks robots could use a system like this even sooner.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this picture of Saturn with its moon Tethys in the foreground. Tethys is 1,071 (665 miles) across. Cassini took this image on June 10, 2005 when it was approximately 1.4 million km (900,000 miles) away from Saturn.
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Space Shuttle managers have announced that Discovery won't be lifting off until late next week, at the earliest. Engineers and managers are still trying to troubleshoot exactly what caused a problem with the external tank's fuel gauge. It's possible that one of the new safety improvements, implemented as part of the Return to Flight effort might be causing the glitch. If the shuttle doesn't launch by July 31, it will need to wait again until September before there's another opportunity.
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One of the more productive telescopes in space is the tiny Canadian MOST satellite (Microvariability and Oscillations of Stars). Developed and maintained on a shoestring - $7 million USD - MOST is only the size of a suitcase, but it has a very sensitive instrument which can detect the variations in star brightness. MOST has been used to analyze recently discovered extrasolar planets as they pass in front of their parent stars, and even get some information about their atmospheres.
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! We'll begin this week by watching the dance of Venus and viewing beautiful star system Omicron Cygni. Although the Moon goes full this week, we can still take pleasure in exploring its bright ray systems. Need more? Then let's have a look at Epsilon Lyrae and 61 Cygni. Simply stargazing during the warm summer nights can bring its own rewards, for the Aquarid meteor shower is highly active. So turn your eyes to the skies, because...
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Some children do grow up and become space travellers. Along the way a series of powerful experiences may act as propellants, advancing them into the future. Winston Scott in his book Reflections from Earth Orbit warmly expresses his memories, from watching Saturday morning cartoons with his brother to undertaking EVA's with NASA colleagues. This sharing of his experiences and personal highlights allows an inside look into one person's advancement into space travel.
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In this nearly side-view of Saturn's rings, it's possible to see the two ring shepherd moons: Pandora (right) and Prometheus (left). Saturn's F ring extends out to the far right, and contains a large amount of fine, icy material that is probably the size of dust, unlike the B ring which has boulder-sized objects in it. This picture was taken when Cassini was 1.85 million km (1.15 million miles) away from Saturn.
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During a recent flyby of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, NASA's Cassini spacecraft got a good look at the bright Xanadu region - where the Huygens probe landed earlier this year. One unusual feature is the strange bright line, which scientists are calling the "smile". This 560 km (345 mile) long feature is quite bright in several of Cassini's instruments; in both visible and infrared wavelengths. It's exact nature is still unknown, so scientists will continue to gather evidence from future flybys.
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The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) achieved a new milestone this week when it made its first observations. APEX consists of a 12-metre telescope designed to view the Universe at submillimeter wavelengths: a part of the radio spectrum especially useful for viewing colder objects. APEX is the same instrument that will eventually go into the much larger ALMA project, which will consist of at least 64 of these telescopes, arrayed to function as a single instrument.
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The European Space Agency's Mars Express has taken an new photograph of Nicholson Crater, located at the southern edge of Amazonis Planitia on Mars. This crater is 100 km (62 km) across and has a very large raised central mount. Large craters often have this kind of central peak, which forms when material rebounds after a meteor impact, but Nicholson Crater's peak is heavily eroded by wind and water.
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When the first astronauts set foot on Mars, they'll need to keep a nervous eye out for the many dust devils that crisscross the surface of the Red Planet. In fact, if you were standing next to NASA's Spirit rover in the middle of the Martian day, you might see 6 dust devils zipping across the landscape. While they wouldn't be dangerous, these devils are electrified, and could disrupt communications, damage electrical devices, and clog up spacesuits with statically clingy Martian dust that would be very difficult to remove.
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NASA has announced that the space shuttle Discovery's earliest launch window will be on Sunday, July 17 at 1914 UTC (2:14 pm EDT); although, it could be much later. A problem with a fuel gauge on the shuttle's external tank halted the countdown on Wednesday. Engineers have so far been unable to find the source of the problem. The shuttle's launch window will last until the end of the July, and then opens up in September again.
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The analysis software that NASA uses to inspect photographs of the Earth is starting to recognize changing events on our planet's surface, like Spring thaws, snowfalls and volcanic eruptions. In fact, the software is now giving orders back to NASA's Earth Observing-1 satellite on where it should be pointing its camera. The software has taken more than 1,500 photographs of frozen lakes and can recognize when the ice has melted. Software like this could be used to track changing events on other planets, like dust storms on Mars or search for ice volcanoes on Europa.
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A backdrop in many science fiction stories is to have multiple suns in the sky. Astronomers have now found such a world, called HD 188753 Ab. Our heroes couldn't set foot on this planet, though, since it's a "hot jupiter"; roughly the mass of Jupiter, but orbiting its parent star every 3.3 days. The other two stars in the system take 25.7 years to orbit the main star (about the distance from the Sun to Saturn), and spin around each other every 156 days,
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Astronomers have discovered a massive explosion in a galaxy 11.5 billion light years away. This explosion is producing streams of high speed material called "superwinds" which are nearly tearing the galaxy apart. These explosions are thought to put a limit on the amount of star formation that can happen in any galaxy, since these superwinds will blow excess gas and dust out into intergalactic space. This helps explain why key elements needed for the formation of planets and life were well distributed in galaxies so early on in the history of the Universe.
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The return to flight launch of the space shuttle Discovery was delayed Wednesday when a faulty fuel gage failed a prelaunch check. The shuttle actually has four of these sensors for redundancy, but they all need to be working for the shuttle to get cleared for launch. The launch window has been pushed back to Saturday, July 16 at 1940 UTC (2:40 pm EDT). When it finally gets off the ground, Discovery will deliver supplies to the International Space Station and test new safety procedures developed for the Return to Flight.
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The European Space Agency's fleet of 4 Cluster spacecraft put a little more distance between each other, during a difficult repositioning maneuver completed this week. Three of the spacecraft were separated to 10,000 km from each other, with the fourth moving 1,000 km away from the third. By shifting the distance of the spacecraft, from 100 km to 5,000 km, and now 10,000 km, scientists are able to study the Earth's magnetic field at different scales. This maneuver also marks the fleet's fifth year of operation.
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As techniques and equipment for finding extrasolar planets improve, astronomers are finding planets with smaller masses. First it was Jupiter-sized planets and larger, then Saturn-sized planets, and now Neptunians. But could these Neptune-mass planets actually be terrestrial planets, made of rock instead of gas and ice? Unlike Neptune and Uranus, these planets orbit very close to their host star. Astronomers will need to find one that transits in front of its host star to they can determine its density, to know if it's rock, ice or gas.
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An international team of astronomers have discovered a hidden neutron star using three different space observatories: Integral, Swift and Rossi. The object, called IGR J16283-4838, is part of a binary system which is shrouded in thick layers of dust that obscure our view from Earth. Astronomers were able to detect it because it released a blast of gamma and X-rays that penetrated this shroud of dust. It took all three observatories to pin down the source of this blast of radiation as a neutron star.
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In this beautiful image, Saturn's shepherd moon Prometheus hovers above the planet's A and F rings. It's also possible to see bright clouds on the surface of Saturn, passing through the ring shadows. This photograph was taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on June 3, 2005, when it was approximately 2.1 million km (1.3 million miles) away from Saturn.
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A new supercomputer has been installed at the Rochester Institute of Technology to simulate the interactions between black holes and the evolution of galaxies. Known as the gravitySimulator, this computer will run simulations that calculate the gravitational interactions between thousands of individual stars. It can achieve a top speed of 4 Teraflops (4 trillion floating point instructions a second), making it one of the top 100 supercomputers in the world.
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The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is a comprehensive view of the night sky gathered by a dedicated 2.5 m telescope in New Mexico. Astronomers have used this vast database to make many discoveries about our Universe. And now it's going to have a sequel. SDSS II will be a new survey beginning in 2008, and consisting of three parts: a continued mapping of deep space to image distant galaxies and quasars; a detailed survey of our own Milky Way galaxy; and a study of supernovae, to try and help pin down the mysterious dark energy accelerating our Universe.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has gotten a good look at Saturn's unusually shaped moon Hyperion. It has many fresh craters, giving it a spongy looking appearance. Scientists estimate that the moon is only 60% as dense as water, which means that much of its interior must be completely empty space. The images were gathered during a recent Hyperion flyby, when Cassini came within 168,000 km (104,000) of the moon.
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During the Apollo era of spaceflight, many US spacecraft and vehicles were left on the Moon when the astronauts returned home. For the first time in more than 30 years, we'll get a chance to see them again when NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at the Moon in 2008. It will be equipped with a camera capable of resolving the surface of the Moon down to half a metre (1.6 feet). Some of the larger structures on the Moon are 9 metres (30 feet) across, so they should be easy to spot by the orbiter.
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When Deep Impact's impactor slammed into Comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005, it released a tremendous cloud of fine powdery material from the comet's nucleus. Scientists are still studying the volumes of data acquired by Deep Impact, but it appears this plume was much brighter than anyone had expected; its surface was more like talcum powder than sand. The crater was probably on the large side of what was being predicted: 50 - 250 metres (165 - 820 feet).
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! It will be busy skies this week as the Moon goes through a series of occultations for viewers around the world - be it a star, Jupiter or even a comet! We'll begin by exploring the "Butterfly Cluster" and work our way through some new lunar features as the week progresses. The dance of Venus and Mercury continues, so open your eyes to the skies, because...
Here's what's up!
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Hacking sounds crass. It manifests images of short cuts, jobs poorly done and people most interested in just finishing, no matter what. In the computer industry, sometimes this perfectly portrays hackers. However, for an expert, a hack is the complete opposite. It's a beautiful, well thought resolution that uses minimal effort. Often only those in the know truly appreciate it. Robert and Barbara Thompson in their book, Astronomy Hacks compile tips and techniques for observing the night sky. Their methods seem simple, yet they include detail to show they are experts who are presenting hacks derived from years worth of knowledge.
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The Japanese space agency JAXA announced the successful launch of the ASTRO-E2 X-ray satellite on Sunday. A Japanese-built M-5 rocket blasted off from the Uchinoura Space Center carrying the Astro-E2 into orbit. This satellite, renamed Suzuka, is a replacement for the Astro-E satellite, which was destroyed because of a launch failure in 2000. Once it's operational, Suzuka will help astronomers understand the evolution of galaxies and the supermassive black holes at their centres.
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One of the instruments tuned into Deep Impact is NASA's Swift satellite, normally designed to detect and analyze gamma ray bursts. Swift has been watching the expanding debris cloud, and detected increasing numbers of X-rays every day. This has enabled scientists to accurately measure the total amount of material released. So far, it appears that several tens of thousands of tonnes of debris were blasted off the comet into space; enough to bury a football field under 9 metres (30 feet) of dust.
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Of the 130 extrasolar planets discovered to date, most have been found using the radial velocity method, where a planet causes tiny changes to a star's velocity compared to the Earth. This back and forth motion changes the wavelength of the light from our perspective. Another method, the transit method, has turned up 6 planets so far, and should find many more in the coming years. It works by watching for a star to dim slightly on a regular basis as a planet passes in between us and the star.
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There's a new rumour going around the Internet. Maybe an excited friend has sent an email about a once in a lifetime chance to see Mars. Mars is going to make its closest approach on October 30th, 2005, and look bigger and brighter than it has in two years. Unfortunately, the closest approach actually happened two years ago, in August 2003, when the Earth and Mars were closer than they had been for 50,000 years.
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A new study by NASA and the Naval Research Institute has found that exhaust from the space shuttle can create high altitude clouds over Antarctica, just a few days after launch. Exhaust released at an altitude of 110 km (69 miles) can form Antarctic polar clouds in the mesosphere (the second highest layer of the atmosphere). Scientists originally discovered the connection when they noticed iron particles in clouds above Antarctica, and couldn't imagine a natural process that could put them into the high atmosphere.
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An international team of astronomers have discovered a strange source of high energy gamma rays. The object is called LS5039, and it's known as a microquasar because of the kinds of radiation it generates. Microquasars are binary systems, where a regular star orbits a dead star, like a neutron star or black hole. Material streams from the regular star to the neutron star in such quantity that it starts to back up, like too much water going down a drain. What's unusual about LS5039 is that it's producing more high energy gamma rays than should be possible.
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NASA has taken detailed measurements of global sea levels, and confirmed that they're rising. Not only that, the rate is increasing. During the last 50 years sea levels have risen .18 cm (.07 inches) a year, but during the last 12 years, that rate is .3 cm (.12 inches) a year. Part of this rise is due to the expansion of water as it warms up, and part of it is from increased ice cap and glacier melt. It's estimated that 100 million people around the world will be affected by a one-metre (3.3 foot) rise in sea levels.
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With the safety concerns resolved, NASA has announced that they will begin the official countdown for STS-114; the space shuttle return to flight. The countdown begins on July 10 at 2200 UTC (6:00 pm EDT), which is 43 hours before liftoff. If all goes well, Discovery and its seven-member crew of astronauts will lift off at approximately 1951 UTC (3:51 pm EDT) on July 13. They will visit the International Space Station to deliver some supplies, and then test out a series of new procedures designed to improve the safety of the shuttle.
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Bigger is better. When you're making a telescope, you want to construct the biggest mirror you can. The European consortium building the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) - a monster observatory with a main mirror that will be between 50-100 metres - moved a step closer to building their telescope today by releasing the scientific case. If development moves forward, the ELT could begin construction within a few years, and be complete by 2015. Where Hubble can resolve objects 95 m (311 feet) apart on the Moon, the ELT could resolve objects 2 m (6.5 feet) apart.
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As Deep Impact's impactor probe smashed into Comet Tempel 1 this week, every available observatory, on land and in space was watching to help gather as much science as possible from this $333 million mission. The Gemini North telescope, located on Hawaii's Mauna Kea successfully captured images, before and after the collision that clearly show the debris cloud moving off the comet. They also found evidence that rocky materials were exposed on the comet's surface.
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From space and even on the surface, Mars just looks dry, reddish and rocky as far as the camera can see. But there's actually a pretty complex world of minerals under that surface layer of basalt. By studying the surface of Mars with Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey, NASA scientists have turned up very interesting surface features which hint at the hidden minerals underneath. This research is published in the latest edition of the Journal Nature.
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Scientists monitoring NASA's Swift satellite had a good view of Deep Impact's collision with Comet Tempel 1. Although the space-based observatory was designed to watch for gamma ray bursts, its instruments were handy for this observation since it can see in several wavelengths at the same time. One of its most important observations from the impact is a quick rise in ultraviolet light. This means that the impactor struck a hard surface, as opposed to something soft and snowy.
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The European Space Agency is helping Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard construct a solar powered airplane that will fly around the world in 2010. Piccard made the first non-stop flight around the world in a balloon in 1999 with Brian Jones from Britain. When they make their attempt, the Solar Impulse will be flown by three pilots in shifts, and travel along the equator to maximize the Sun's energy.
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NASA/ESA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, the most successful comet hunter in history, is expected to discover its 1,000th comet this summer. In fact, half of all comets ever discovered can be attributed to SOHO. This is because many comets close to the Sun were once part of an enormous comet that was broken up. SOHO can resolve chunks as small as the size of a house as they blaze up near the surface of the Sun. Many of SOHO's comets have been discovered by observers through the Internet.
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Scientists at the University of Maryland think that large quantities of artificial meat could be produced to supply the world with animal-free meat products, like chickenless nuggets. This is based on experiments for NASA, that created small amounts of muscle fibre cultured from single cells. According to the researchers, larger quantities could be grown in thin sheets and then stacked up to create thickness. Of course, they need to figure out a way to exercise it to make it taste like regular meat.
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