Things haven't gone well for the student-built SSETI Express, launched last week from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on board a Russian Kosmos 3M launcher. Ground controllers haven't been able to make contact with the satellite since Friday, and a preliminary analysis points towards a failure of the satellite's electrical system. Controllers have a plan that might be able to restore power to the satellite, but it will take a few more days to know if it's going to work.
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When you're exploring new territories, all kinds of things can go wrong. When you're exploring millions of kilometres away from Earth in an environment totally hostile to human life, these risks get deadly. NASA's Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group has put together a list of top risks for human Mars explorers, including the dust and potential biohazards. But one of the biggest risks is the lack of water - it's absolutely essential for a long-duration visit to the Red Planet.
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NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope took this chilling image of the Black Widow Nebula for Halloween. In this image, there are two gigantic bubbles of gas being formed in opposite directions by the powerful outflows of newborn massive stars. These baby stars can be seen as yellow specs where the bubbles overlap.
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Workers at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory Mirror Lab have cast the first mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope. By the time they're complete, the lab will cast a total of 7 of these enormous 8.4-metre (27-foot) mirrors, giving the enormous observatory the equivalent of a 22-metre aperture. The Giant Magellan Telescope will be constructed in Northern Chile by 2016.
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Look east this weekend and you'll see a bright red star blazing in the night sky. That's not a star, it's Mars, and on the night of October 29, it'll reach its closest approach. And you don't need dark skies, a telescope, or any special knowledge. Just look East... you can't miss it. Don't worry if you're too busy this weekend, Mars will stay bold and bright for the next few weeks.
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One of the hazards of human spaceflight is the radiation damage of solar storms and cosmic rays. But it turns out the different parts of the human body are more susceptible to radiation than others. Although the best protection would be to get under cover, like in a spacecraft, future spacesuits could have extra radiation protection for specific areas of the body, like the hips (to prevent bone marrow damage).
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A preliminary investigation by the Russian Failure Investigation State Commission has determined that a flight control system in the Rockot's Breeze upper stage caused the loss of the ESA's Cryosat satellite. The failure occurred when the Breeze didn't generate the command to shut down the second stage's engines. The Commission will present its detailed findings on November 3, 2005 to Eurorockot and the European Space Agency.
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Geologists have come up with two measurements of radioactive decay to calculate when the Earth's core separated from its crust, but the problem is, these two numbers don't match. Researchers from the University of Bristol think that the giant collision that occurred early on in Earth's history - which went on to form the Moon - might have reset one of these "countdown clocks" and created the discrepancy.
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A Russian Kosmos 3M launcher blasted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome this morning carrying a satellite designed and built by European university students. The Student Space Exploration and Technology Initiative (SSETI Express) satellite is about the size of a washing machine, and contains several detectors and experiments. Students working in 23 different university groups came together through the Internet to design and build the satellite.
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This image is a mosaic of 15 photographs of Saturn's rings taken by Cassini. The strange ripples are caused by gravity from Saturn's moon Prometheus interacting with the ring particles. The ring particles closer to Prometheus move slower than the other particles, which gives the ring this ripple effect.
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The massive Large Binocular Telescope, mounted atop Mount Graham in Arizona achieved a major milestone on October 12 with its first images - known as first light. The telescope is so powerful because it combines the light from its twin 8.4 metre mirrors to act as a single 11.8 metre observatory. And its adaptive optics system, which compensates for atmospheric disturbance, makes it even more powerful.
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Eleven teams competed in two competitions over the weekend to test technologies for space elevators: beam-powered climbers and new ribbon materials. The climbers needed to scale a 61-metre (200 foot) ribbon within a time limit. Although one climber reached 12 metres (40 feet), it wasn't enough to win the $50,000 prize. In the ribbon competition, competitors needed to create a material that was 50% stronger than the house tether. One team came close, but it wasn't enough. Tougher challenges will be back next year with bigger prizes.
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Venus Express was all set to launch, but ESA engineers discovered that small particles were contaminating the spacecraft, so the liftoff was pushed back. Engineers removed the spacecraft from its upper stage booster, opened up the fairing, and discovered that insulation material from the fairing had fallen onto the spacecraft. Fortunately, the pieces of material are large enough to see and remove with tweezers and vacuum cleaners. Once removal is complete, the spacecraft and booster will be reassembled and prepped for launch - before its launch window closes on November 24.
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers... I'd once again like to express my thanks to the hundreds who took the time to write. This week we'll begin south as we have a look at the NGC 253. Mars isn't the only planet out there, but it's at its best! We'll have a look at planetary nebulae and discuss single stars - as well as try for a challenging comet and asteroid. So, head out under the stars...
Because here's what's up!
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Everyone has their own personal reason for taking up astronomy. Some want to make it a career. Others need to satisfy their curiosity. Then there are those who simply get captured by the seductive beauty of the stars. Jan DeBlieu is one of the later. In her book, Y
ear of the Comets she shares her experiences after being entranced by the night skies and at the same time being challenged by her everyday life on Earth.
Anton Nel took this star trail image of the South Celestial Pole in mid-August from Witsand ("White Sands") Nature Reserve in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. Anton used a Canon 300X and did a 60 minute exposure.
Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the
Universe Today astrophotography forum or
email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.
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My guest today is an amateur astrophotographer named Tom Davis. Those of you who subscribe to the Universe Today newsletter should be familiar with his photographs, as I've featured several of them in the last few months. Tom is an amazingly skilled astrophotographer, and he's got some decent equipment. And I'm happy to inform you that the price for this kind of technology is more affordable than it's every been, so if you've ever wanted to get into this hobby, maybe you'll get inspired. Before you start listening, please take a moment to look at his website at:
http://www.tvdavisastropics.com.
Andrzej Baran took this beautiful picture of the Northern Lights above the Skibotn Observatory, close to Tromso, Norway - the most northern astronomical observatory in the world. Andrzej used a Canon EOS 300 analog camera with ISO 200 Fuji color slides.
Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the
Universe Today astrophotography forum or
email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.
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NASA scientists have found evidence that Mars once had plate tectonics reshaping its surface. Data from Mars Global Surveyor has been stitched together to create a planetary map of magnetism. This map shows striping, where two plates were once pushed apart by new molten lava coming up from under the surface. This new lava become magnetized in the direction of Mars magnetic field at the time. Since this magnetic field flipped several times through the planet's history, the stripes provide a record of when Mars' plates were active.
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NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted what could be the early stages of planets forming around a failed star. The infrared telescope detected clumps of microscopic dust grains and tiny crystals orbiting five brown dwarfs. Similar material has been seen around other newly forming stars and in our own Solar System. Despite being colder and smaller than stars like our Sun, it appears that brown dwarfs still undergo many of the same stages, including the construction of planets.
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For the most part, Titan is an alien world with methane rain, lakes of hydrocarbons, and very little that reminds us of Earth. But Saturn's moon has strangely familiar clouds that hover above its middle latitudes. Scientists from the University of Arizona studied Cassini images of some clouds, and watched how they evolved over the course of 3 hours. The clouds rise quickly like thunderstorms here on Earth and then seem to dissipate, as if they're turning into rain.
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A Titan 4B rocket carrying a classified cargo for the National Reconnaissance Office blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base today. It's believed that the rocket was carrying a next generation reconnaissance satellite. This was the last launch of the Titan 4 class of vehicles. Future launches will use Atlas 5 and Boeing Delta 4 EELVs.
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NASA has turned the Hubble Space Telescope at our closest neighbour to help scout out potential landing sites. In addition to being incredibly powerful, Hubble is sensitive to ultraviolet light, which is reflected off of surface materials on the lunar surface. This will allow scientists to identify areas abundant in titanium and iron oxides, which would provide oxygen and metals for future lunar bases. Hubble's resolution is still only 50-100 metres, so it can't reveal Apollo spacecraft still on the Moon.
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Get your telescope ready, as the planet Mars is about to put on another fine show. The Red Planet has been getting closer, and will make its closest approach on October 29/30, 2005. Although it won't as close as two years ago, it takes a fairly powerful telescope to be able to tell the difference. Look to the eastern horizon after 8:0pm to see Mars, which will be climbing night after night during October. There's really nothing else that bright that you'd be able to confuse it with.
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Just a few days ago, Wilma was a tropical storm, but now it has exploded into a Category 5 hurricane - with the lowest pressure ever recorded in an Atlantic storm. Wilma's pressure was measured early Wednesday at just 882 millibars, breaking the previous record of 888 set in 1988 by Hurricane Gilbert. Wilma is currently off the coast Mexico's Yucatan peninsula , but it's expected to take a sharp right turn and move up through the Florida panhandle on Saturday.
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This just blew my mind.
Tom Gwilym from Renton, WA took this series of pictures of the space shuttle Atlantis (STS-112) docked to the International Space Station. The blurry pictures are the actual photos of the linkup, and the clear pictures are computer recreations to show their positions.
Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the
Universe Today astrophotography forum or
email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.
Maybe it is just a statement of our times that one person's life can span the complete maturation of a technology. As John Glenn said, 'it was hard to imagine that virtually the entire history of space travel had occurred between my first flight and my second'. With so many stunning achievements and horrific failures, the history of humanity's space program, though short, was eventful. The collection of narrations prepared by Richard Russell Lawrence and presented in the book entitled
Space Exploration and Disasters gives an emotional, often first hand account of many dramatic moments of our space program.
Researchers at the University of Arizona think that future robotic explorers should have the ability to survey their targets at many different levels: from orbit, in the air, and on the ground. These next generation missions would be able to arrive in orbit and then deploy a blimp or balloon that could create a more detailed map of a planet or moon's surface. The balloon could help coordinate ground rovers to analyze the most interesting targets. The rovers and balloons would relay their data up to the orbiter which could then give new targets to explore.
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On October 11, 2005, Cassini flew within 500 km (310 miles) of the surface of Dione; one of Saturn's moons. Like many of Saturn's moons, Dione shows a heavily cratered surface, and unusual streaks in the terrain that dominates one whole hemisphere of the moon. Cassini found evidence that Dione's surface is covered by fractures, which run in roughly parallel lines; these are interrupted by larger bright features. Scientists are working with the data to compositional maps of Dione's surface.
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Gary Hatfield took this beautiful image of NGC7000/Gamma Cygni using a Nikon FE2 camera. Gary used a 105mm f2.5 lens @ f4, Kodak Elite Chrome 200, and a Hutech IDAS LPS filter. He manually guided the exposure for 90 minutes.
Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the
Universe Today astrophotography forum or
email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.
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I'd just like to take a moment and congratulate Tammy Plotner on wrapping up a full year's worth of
What's Up This Week articles. Woohoo! She's never missed a week and never been late. Anyway, if you've appreciated her column, take a moment and drop her an
email. I'm sure she'll really appreciate it (and curse me for filling up her email box). Hah! Check out the
full archive here.
Here's to many more years of Tammy's wonderful, weekly columns.
Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today
P.S. I just did an interview with UK psychic debunker Tony Youens for the
Skepticality podcast. I figured I'd pitch in to help out Derek and Swoopy while Derek continues his recovery. Check it out. Don't worry, I'll be updating my Podcast shortly too.
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! The time for Mars is now as even small telescopes can see a wealth of details. Mid-week will offer some viewers the chance to see a very rare eclipse of a bright star by an asteroid! We'll explore bright stars, open clusters, watch occultations and welcome back the children of Comet Halley. So turn your eyes to the skies, because....
Here's what's up!
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New high-resolution images of Mars have revealed several glaciers in the planet's mid-latitudes, far away from its polar ice caps. Scientists had speculated that many of Mars' mid-latitude features looked like they had been formed by shifting ice, but there wasn't any sign of the actual glaciers. New images from Mars Odyssey show features, such as debris lines on valley floor, which are amazingly similar to Earth glaciers.
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The Japanese Subaru telescope took this high resolution image of spiral galaxy NGC 2403, located 10 million light years away. NGC 2403 is an Sc type galaxy with open spiral arms and a small nucleus. It's approximately half the mass of our own Milky Way galaxy and has large quantities of neutral hydrogen gas. Edwin Hubble used NGC 2403 as evidence to help prove that galaxies move faster away from us the further they get.
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Although NASA engineers are working on radical new kinds of propulsion, like ion engines, nuclear rockets, and even solar sails, they're still tuning up the old standby liquid-fueled rocket. Current rockets burn a small amount of fuel into preburners which power pumps that force the rest of the fuel into the combustion chamber. A new strategy will be to run all the fuel through the preburners which will create higher pressures, and should give better performance from the rocket.
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NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope took this amazing photograph of our neighbour galaxy, Andromeda. The image was made by stitching together 11,000 separate images of the galaxy taken over the course of 18 hours of observations by Spitzer. Under Spitzer's infrared gaze, Andromeda reveals an off centre ring of star formation and a spot where it looks like another galaxy punched a hole as it passed through the galactic plane.
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An Ariane 5GS rocket lifted off from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana today. On board were two satellites: a Syracuse 3A defense satellite, built by Alcatel Alenia Space and a Galaxy 15 communications satellite built by Orbital Sciences Corporation. The satellites were released into their geostationary transfer orbits about 30 minutes after launch. This was the 23rd Ariane 5 launch.
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Here's a complilation photo of last week's annular eclipse taken by
Martin Whipp. The series of images were taken using a Sony VX-2100 3CCD camcorder and Thousand Oaks solar filter from York, England.
Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the
Universe Today astrophotography forum or
email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.
NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory has released detailed new photographs of the region surrounding the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. Chandra has confirmed that there is a mysterious group of newborn stars orbiting less than a light-year away from this black hole. Previous models predict that these stars should be torn apart by tidal forces from the black hole. It's possible that there's dense enough disk of material around the black hole that it has enough gravity of its own to hold these stars together. It's also possible the stars formed somewhere else and migrated to this current location.
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Aaron Price from Slacker Astronomy has set up a
new fund to help the hurricane ravaged observatories and astronomical societies along the US Gulf Coast. If you'd like to help some fellow astronomers get back on their feet, check the site out and see how you can get involved.
Fraser Cain
Publisher, Universe Today
P.S. Aaron also wanted me to remind you to listen to Slacker Astronomy #29:
Carrying the 1?s Along Gravitational Highways. He's particularly proud of it. :-) Give it a listen!
Tom Davis delivers another amazing photograph from his backyard observatory in Idaho of the Flaming Star nebula - IC405. The photo was taken using an Astro-Physics 155EDF f/7, STL-11000M.
Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the
Universe Today astrophotography forum or
email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.
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Great scientists don't necessarily make for great people. One reportedly never took a bath in his long life. Many were so anti-social as to have their mental stability questioned. Sordid character traits often set them well apart from peers and students. Joshua Gilder and Anne-Lee Gilder explore this avenue in their book
Heavenly Intrigue. In it, they bring to life the olden times of Europe and two great astronomers, Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe. Then, step by step, they lead the reader onto a great scientific undertaking that might have its roots in a less than great murder.
A Northrop Grumman/Boeing team has unveiled new details about the successor to the space shuttle: the Crew Exploration Vehicle. This new spacecraft, reminiscent of the original Apollo capsule, is expected to carry humans to the International Space Station by 2012 and return them to the Moon by 2018. Unlike Apollo, however, the CEV will carry four astronauts to the Moon and back. It will orbit the Moon autonomously, allowing all four astronauts to descend to the surface.
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John Bunyan took this picture of the Orion Nebula at the California Star Party using an Orion Atlas GoTo mount and 80mm reflector.
Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the
Universe Today astrophotography forum or
email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! While the Moon will figure strongly in this week's observations, that won't stop us from locating Neptune, visiting a faint comet or studying a radio source. Join us as we hike along the Alpine Valley, stare into the eye of Plato, reveal the details in Clavius and set sail on the "Ocean of Storms." It's time to open your eyes to the skies...
Because here's what's up!
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ESA officials have confirmed that the Cryosat mission smashed into the Arctic ocean minutes after launch on Saturday. It was launched on board a Rockot vehicle - a converted SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile - from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. The 135m euro satellite was designed to monitor ice thickness around the planet. Another version of the satellite may be constructed.
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After 17 months of productive data collection, NASA's Gravity Probe B satellite has gathered all the data it needs to pronounce Einstein right or wrong. The probe was launched in April 2004, with four spherical gyroscopes designed to test two of Einstein's predictions about General Relativity: how the Earth's gravity warps space, and how its rotation drags space around with it. Scientists will now spend about a year analyzing the data before presenting their conclusions.
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