Clipmarks | Honoradele's 'astronomy' clips

Exoplanet Reflected Light Detected For The First Time

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:01:59 GMT

clipped by: dorine

An artistic view of the HD189733 star-planet system near a half-moon phase when polarization of the light reflected by the planet reaches the maximum. (Credit: ETH Zurich, S.V. Berdyugina)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 28, 2007) — An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Svetlana Berdyugina of ETH Zurich's Institute of Astronomy, has for the first time ever been able to detect and monitor the visible light that is scattered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.

Employing techniques similar to how Polaroid sunglasses filter away reflected sunlight to reduce glare, the team of scientists were able to extract polarized light to enhance the faint reflected starlight 'glare' from an exoplanet.

As a result, the scientists could infer the size of its swollen atmosphere.

They also directly traced the orbit of the planet, a feat of visualization not possible using indirect methods.

Hot Jupiter

Two half-moon phases

Tags: astronomy, space, discovery, light

Our Solar System formed 4568 million years ago

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 10:41:41 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: www.news.ucdavis.edu

Earliest Stage of Planet Formation Dated

UC Davis researchers have dated the earliest step in the formation of the solar system -- when microscopic interstellar dust coalesced into mountain-sized chunks of rock -- to 4,568 million years ago, within a range of about 2,080,000 years.

In the second stage, mountain-sized masses grew quickly into about 20 Mars-sized planets and, in the third and final stage, these small planets smashed into each other in a series of giant collisions that left the planets we know today. The dates of those stages are well established.

Tags: astronomy, science, solar system, space, sun

ET too bored by Earth transmissions to respond

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:36:15 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: space.newscientist.com

Messages sent into space directed at extraterrestrials may have been too boring to earn a reply, say two astrophysicists trying to improve on their previous alien chat lines.

Humans have so far sent four messages into space intended for alien listeners. But they have largely been made up of mathematically coded descriptions of some physics and chemistry, with some basic biology and descriptions of humans thrown in.

Those topics will not prove gripping reading to other civilisations, says Canadian astrophysicist Yvan Dutil. If a civilisation is advanced enough to understand the message, they will already know most of its contents, he says: "After reading it, they will be none the wiser about us humans and our achievements. In some ways, we may have been wasting our telescope time."

In 1999 and 2003, Dutil and fellow researcher Stephane Dumas beamed messages in a language of their own design into space. Now, they are working to compose more interesting messages.

Tags: astronomy, science, et, space, messages

Shock Discovery of Ancient Space Invader

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:44:12 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead
clipper's remarks: This rock sample contains fragments of the first asteroid ever discovered intact. The brown 'nuggets' in the sample once orbited the Sun, and are probably older than the planets in our Solar System.

Clip Source: www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

Deep in a huge crater, scientists have unearthed an astonishing find - the only preserved fragments of an asteroid ever discovered. We've always thought asteroids vaporised when they hit Earth head-on.

In South Africa an asteroid crater wider than London has surrendered some amazing space secrets - the first fragments of a large asteroid ever found. The impact crater, called Morokweng, formed when a huge asteroid slammed into our planet 145 million years ago.

Until now, scientists thought a large asteroid's energy turned into heat when it hit, vaporising the asteroid and melting the ground to form a so-called melt sheet. But drilling deep into Morokweng's melt sheet has revealed a beach-ball-sized lump of asteroid, along with lots of smaller fragments.

How the asteroid fragments came to be embedded in the melt sheet is a big question; they just should not be there.

Somehow chunks of this asteroid survived the impact.

Meteorites that hit in Antarctica are preserved by the extreme cold

Tags: astronomy, asteroid, geology, history, space

Saurn, the Sun, and Us

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:11:08 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead

Clip Source: slightlywarped.com

The Cassini Probe sent us this mesmerizing and very rare picture of the planet Saturn backlit by the sun. Light diffuses through the rings and dust clouds that orbit the giant ringed planet showing us that it's ringed beauty is only a fraction of what the planet really has to offer.

While the beauty of this picture is a sight to behold in of itself, the true uniqueness of this image only shows itself on closer inspection. You see that pale blue dot visible through the rings? To paraphrase Carl Sagan: Everyone you've ever known, every belief you have, every nation at war, every point of view you've ever experienced, every hope, every dream, every good, and every evil resides on that small ordinary mote. Say hello to Earth seen from 930 million miles away.

the sun's harsh light could destroy Cassini's camera. However, in this instance when the sun was eclipsed by Saturn, NASA jumped on the opportunity to deliver this breathtaking shot.

Tags: astronomy, science, earth

A strange moon

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:47:24 GMT

clipped by: Solar Child

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Mystery of Saturn's Two-Faced Moon Solved

Saturn's moon Iapetus has virtually no gray. Rather, its features are all stark black and white. The appearance has long puzzled astronomers.

New detailed images suggest sunlight is melting ice on one side of Iapetus, leaving the moon's dark surface exposed, while the opposite half retains its reflective ice-mixed shell.

"Dusty material spiraling in from outer moons hits Iapetus head-on and causes the forward-facing side of Iapetus to look different than the rest of the moon," said Tilmann Denk, Cassini imaging scientist at the Free University in Germany.

Tags: science, astronomy, saturn iapetus, dust

Google's new astronomical search tool: 'Sky'

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12:45:04 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: To get Sky, users will have to download the latest version of Google Earth here.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

After turning millions of Internet users into virtual explorers of the world with Google Earth, the Internet search giant is now hoping to turn many of them into virtual stargazers.

Google is unveiling within Google Earth today a new service called Sky that will allow users to view the skies as seen from Earth. Like Google Earth, Sky will let users fly around and zoom in, exposing increasingly detailed imagery of some 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies.

While other programs allow users to explore the skies, they typically combine a mix of representations of stars and galaxies that are overlaid with photographs, Ms. Christian said. “These are really the images of the sky. Everything is real.”

Microsoft has a research project called the World Wide Telescope that offers similar capabilities to Sky. The project was once headed by Jim Gray, the veteran Microsoft researcher who disappeared this year after a sailing trip off San Francisco Bay.

Tags: google, google earth, sky, astronomy, virtual, technology

Crater Could Solve 1908 Tunguska Meteor Mystery

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 04:17:18 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

In late June of 1908, a fireball exploded above the remote Russian forests of Tunguska, Siberia, flattening more than 800 square miles of trees. Researchers think a meteor was responsible for the devastation, but neither its fragments nor any impact craters have been discovered.

Astronomers have been left to guess whether the object was an asteroid or a comet, and figuring out what it was would allow better modeling of potential future calamities.

Italian researchers now think they've found a smoking gun: The 164-foot-deep Lake Cheko, located just 5 miles northwest of the epicenter of destruction.

Tags: space, siberia, meteor, astronomy, russia, mystery, science

One more creationist claim brought down

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:52:22 GMT

clipped by: Oortcloud
clipper's remarks: "As Bender in Futurama (kindof) said: Creationism:0 , regular theories: a billion!"

Clip Source: www.badastronomy.com

Creationists who bang the pulpit about the Universe being young tend to use old, outdated, and long-debunked arguments.

One argument has to do with angular momentum. This is a tendency for a rotating object to stay spinning unless acted upon by a force of some kind

Since angular momentum depends on mass, you’d expect, upon doing the math, that the Sun would have most of the angmom (as we scientist-types call it when we’re lazy) in the solar system, since it has something like 98% of the total mass. But that’s not the case: Jupiter has more!

The creationists would say, "Aha! It’s because the solar system did not form that way, astronomers are stellar evilutionists, and are lying to you!"

It’s been theorized for a long time that when a star is born, it spins rapidly, and has strong magnetic fields. These fields spin through the disk of material around the star, and accelerate the disk. At the same time, it slows the star’s spin

This was theoretical… until now. It’s been observed.

Tags: astronomy, debunk, stars, creation, religion, sun, planets, solar system

Sir Isaac Newton Predicts world will end after 2060

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 02:33:52 GMT

clipped by: Honoradele
clipper's remarks: (article cont.)
It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner," Newton wrote. However, he added, "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."

In another document, Newton interpreted biblical prophecies to mean that the Jews would return to the Holy Land before the world ends. The end of days will see "the ruin of the wicked nations, the end of weeping and of all troubles, the return of the Jews captivity and their setting up a flourishing and everlasting Kingdom," he posited.

Clip Source: www.christianpost.com

Three-century-old manuscripts by Isaac Newton calculating the exact date of the apocalypse, detailing the precise dimensions of the ancient temple in Jerusalem and interpreting passages of the Bible – exhibited this week for the first time – lay bare the little-known religious intensity of a man many consider history's greatest scientist.

Newton, who died 280 years ago, is known for laying much of the groundwork for modern physics, astronomy, math and optics. But in a new Jerusalem exhibit, he appears as a scholar of deep faith who also found time to write on Jewish law – even penning a few phrases in careful Hebrew letters – and combing the Old Testament's Book of Daniel for clues about the world's end.

In one manuscript from the early 1700s, Newton used the cryptic Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the apocalypse, reaching the conclusion that the world would end no earlier than 2060.

Tags: newton, bible, prediction, end of world

Astronomy Picture of the Day - The Rosette Nebula

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:50:03 GMT

clipped by: dorine
clipper's remarks: Red for Valentine's

Clip Source: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

The Rosette Nebula

Tags: astronomy, space, photo, photography

Scientists find way to test String Theory

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 20:14:33 GMT

clipped by: Honoradele

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Science Daily — For decades, many scientists have criticized string theory, pointing out that it does not make predictions by which it can be tested. Now, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University; the University of California, San Diego; and The University of Texas at Austin have developed a test of string theory. Their test, described in the Jan. 26 Physical Review Letters, involves measurements of how elusive high-energy particles scatter during particle collisions. Most physicists believe that collisions will be observable at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is set to turn on later this year at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, commonly known as CERN.

"Our work shows that, in principle, string theory can be tested in a nontrivial way," explained Ira Rothstein, co-author of the paper and professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon.

When the LHC turns on later this year, scientists will begin to investigate the scattering of W bosons, which has not been possible with other particle accelerators. Because the new test follows from a measurement of W boson scattering, it could eventually be performed at the LHC, according to the authors.

Tags: science, string theory, astronomy

Do Galaxies follow Darwinian Evolution

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:41:10 GMT

clipped by: Honoradele

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Part of one of the four regions of the sky in the direction of the Galactic Bulge in which the astronomers measured the iron and oxygen abundances in stars. This particular field is in the vicinity of the so-called 'Baade's Window', a region with relatively low amounts of interstellar "dust" that could block the sight, allowing astronomers to peer into the central parts of the Milky Way galactic centre and beyond. The globular cluster NGC 6528 is visible in the lower left corner. The image is a colour composite, based on images obtained in the B-, V-, and I-filters with the FORS instrument on the ESO VLT. The images were extracted from the ESO Science Archive and processed by Henri Boffin (ESO). North is to the right and East on top. Credit: ESO
Using VIMOS on ESO's Very Large Telescope, a team of French and Italian astronomers have shown the strong influence the environment exerts on the way galaxies form and evolve. The scientists have for the first time charted remote parts of the Universe, showing that the distribution of galaxies has considerably evolved with time, depending on the galaxies' immediate surroundings. This surprising discovery poses new challenges for theories of the formation and evolution of galaxies.

Tags: science, astronomy

Stellar vampires unmasked

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 04:33:12 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

Stellar vampires unmasked

Astronomers have found possible proofs of stellar vampirism in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, they found that some hot, bright, and apparently young stars in the cluster present less carbon and oxygen than the majority of their sisters. This indicates that these few stars likely formed by taking their material from another star.

"This is the first detection of a chemical signature clearly pointing to a specific scenario to form so-called 'Blue straggler stars' in a globular cluster", said Francesco Ferraro, from the Astronomy Department of Bologna University (Italy) and lead-author of the paper presenting the results.

Blue stragglers are unexpectedly young-looking stars found in stellar aggregates, such as globular clusters, which are known to be made up of old stars. These enigmatic objects are thought to be created in either direct stellar collisions or through the evolution and coalescence of a binary star system in which one star 'sucks' material off the other, rejuvenating itself. As such, they provide interesting constraints on both binary stellar evolution and star cluster dynamics. To date, the unambiguous signatures of either stellar traffic accidents or stellar vampirism have not been observed, and the formation mechanisms of Blue stragglers are still a mystery.

Tags: astronomy, globular clusters, young stars, stellar vampires, science