Clipmarks | invictus's Astronomy collection

Distant object found orbiting Sun backwards

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 01:40:05 GMT

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An object in the icy Kuiper belt has been found orbiting the Sun backwards, compared to most other objects in the solar system. It may help explain the origin of an enigmatic family of comets typified by Comet Halley.

The new object, called 2008 KV42, lies in the Kuiper belt, a ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune. Its orbit is inclined 103.5° to the plane of the Earth's orbit, or ecliptic. That means that as it orbits the Sun, it actually travels in the opposite direction to the planets.

Researchers led by Brett Gladman of the University of British Columbia first spotted the maverick object in May. Observations suggest it is about 50 kilometres across and travels on a path that takes it from the distance of Uranus to more than twice that of Neptune (or between 20 and 70 astronomical units from the Sun, with 1 AU being the Earth-Sun distance).

ts orbit appears to have been stable for hundreds of millions of years, but astronomers say it may have been born elsewhere.

Tags: astronomy, space, kuiper belt, comets, asteroids, solar system, science

Martian Life: Where Fire Meets Ice?

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 01:31:34 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

"It's possible that volcanic activity on Mars is much more widespread and recent than people on the whole thought," Hovius said. "This is a flood bigger than anything we've seen on Earth."

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Sept. 5, 2008 -- If life on Mars exists, it may dwell in a violent home.

The Red Planet is no stranger to fiery volcanic eruptions: It is home to the solar system's largest volcano, Olympus Mons. The planet is also well-endowed with ice, which has collected in large sheets near its north and south poles. Yet a key ingredient for life as we know it -- liquid water -- remains elusive.

But what if fire met ice in the Martian north? On Earth, volcanoes sometimes erupt beneath glaciers, melting huge quantities of water and spawning massive floods. Lakes of meltwater are sometimes pinned at the bottoms of glaciers.

Could the same happen on Mars? If so, it might be one of the best places to look for alien life. Now a new study published this month in the planetary science journal Icarus claims to have found evidence of just such an event in the Abalos region, at the edge of the northern ice cap.

Tags: mars, life, glaciers, volcanoes, science

Astronomers see 'youngest planet'

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:25:07 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

An embryonic planet detected in a far off galaxy could be less than 2,000 years old, astronomers say.

The ball of dust and gas, which is in the process of turning into a Jupiter-like giant, was detected around the star HL Tau by a UK team.

Research leader Dr Jane Greaves said the planet's growth may have been kickstarted when another young star passed the system 1,600 years ago.

Details were presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast.

The scientists studied a disc of gas and rocky particles around HL Tau, which is 520 light-years away and thought to be less than 100,000 years old.

But there is an intriguing suggestion that the gas giant, which is some 14 times the size of Jupiter, could be even younger.

Tags: planets, universe, astronomy, cosmology, science

'Hundreds of worlds' in Milky Way

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:52:48 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Scientists say there may be many more worlds in our solar system

Rocky planets, possibly with conditions suitable for life, may be more common than previously thought in our galaxy, a study has found.

New evidence suggests more than half the Sun-like stars in the Milky Way could have similar planetary systems.

There may also be hundreds of undiscovered worlds in outer parts of our Solar System, astronomers believe.

Future studies of such worlds will radically alter our understanding of how planets are formed, they say.

New findings about planets were presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston.

Tags: astronomy, space, milky way, galaxies, life, science

Asteroid flyby today - no impact risk

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:27:52 GMT

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Clip Source: www.spaceweather.com

Asteroid 2007 TU24 is flying past Earth today. There's no danger of a collision, but the 250m-wide space rock is close enough (1.4 lunar distances) to photograph through backyard telescopes as it speeds through the constellation Cassiopeia glowing like a 10th magnitude star. NASA radars are monitoring the flyby and may produce new images of the rock by week's end. [ephemeris] [3D orbit]

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

Earth at threat from rogue black holes

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 21:10:46 GMT

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Clip Source: www.cosmosmagazine.com

NEW YORK: Hundreds of undetected black holes, each with a mass thousands of times greater than the Sun, might be stealthily roving our galaxy, ready to devour anything that crosses their paths.

These 'rogue' black holes would be very difficult to spot, said Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, an astronomer at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, USA.

"Unless it's swallowing a lot of gas, about the only way to detect the approach of such a black hole would be to observe the way in which its super-strength gravitational field bends the light that passes nearby," she added.

The model predicted the behaviour of a hypothetical class of so-called intermediate-mass black holes, whose origins are still mysterious. These black hole 'middleweights' are thought to have masses mid-way between that of the two classes of most well-known black holes.

Tags: astrophysics, black holes, galaxy, science

Moon is younger and more Earth-like than thought

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 00:29:42 GMT

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Clip Source: space.newscientist.com

It's a good thing the Moon doesn't have any feelings to hurt. New research suggests it is actually 30 million years younger than anyone had thought, and that it is merely a 'chip off the old block' of Earth rather than being made up of the remnants of a Mars-sized body that slammed into Earth billions of years ago.

That violent impact was thought to have taken place 30 million years after the solar system began to condense from a disc of gas and dust 4.567 billion years ago. The event was thought to have melted the Earth, generating a magma ocean that covered the planet and allowed iron and other metals to sink to its centre, forming a core.

At the same time, the Moon was thought to have coalesced from a disc of molten debris blasted off the Earth and the Mars-sized interloper.

But new research led by Mathieu Touboul of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich suggests that picture is not so simple.

Tags: moon, earth, space, science

Close Encounter with Mars

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:56:56 GMT

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Clip Source: spaceweather.com

Ready your telescopes! On Tuesday evening, Dec. 18th, Mars makes its closest approach to Earth until the year 2016. At a distance of only 55 million miles, Mars outshines every star in the night sky (it is slightly brighter than Sirius) and draws attention to itself with its distinctive red color. Plus, it looks great through a backyard telescope:

Tags: astronomy, planets, backyard astronomy, mars, science

"Exploding Comet" Photo Gallery

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:20:07 GMT

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clipper's remarks: Many good shots of Comet 17P/Holmes, taken by backyard astronomers around the world.

Clip Source: spaceweather.com

Summary: Comet 17P/Holmes shocked astronomers on Oct. 24, 2007, with a spectacular eruption. In less than 24 hours, the 17th magnitude comet brightened by a factor of nearly a million becoming a naked-eye object in the evening sky. Look for a golden 2.5th magnitude fuzzball in the constellation Perseus after sunset.

Tags: astronomy, comets, comet holmes, images, photography

Exploding Comet update - New images

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:55:08 GMT

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Clip Source: spaceweather.com

Exploding Comet 17P/Holmes is now larger than Jupiter. Astronomer Eric Allen of Quebec's Observatoire du Cégep de Trois-Rivières combined images he captured on three consecutive nights (Oct. 25, 26 and 27) and placed them beside a picture of Jupiter scaled to the same distance as the comet:

The diaphanous and curiously spherical cloud surrounding the comet's core is now large enough to physically swallow the King of Planets!

And that's just for starters. The growing comet subtends an angle (4 arcminutes) as large as the Moon's Sea of Tranquillity. Last night in Higham Ferrers, England, Dave Eagle photographed "the Moon and Comet Holmes with the same setup to show how big this strange comet is."

Although the comet is not as bright as Jupiter or a lunar mare, it is visible to the unaided eye. Look north after sunset for a magnitude +2.5 fuzzball in the constellation Perseus: sky map.

Tags: astronomy, comets, exploding comet, images, science

Erupting comet brightens up the sky

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:36:07 GMT

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clipper's remarks: Astronomers in Japan and Europe report that Comet 17P/Holmes is undergoing a spectacular eruption. The 17th-magnitude comet has brightened by a factor of five hundred thousand or more during the past 24 hours becoming a naked eye object in the evening sky.

Clip Source: www.astro.uni-bonn.de

A most amazing eruption is occuring on comet 17P/Holmes which was at 17 mag. at best but on October 24 suddenly began to brighten like crazy: Now (afternoon UTC) it has already reached 3rd magnitude and is easily visible to the naked eye, as reports from Japan indicate: "Perseus does not look 'Perseus' familiar to us due to the bright stellar object now."

The comet looks like a bright, yellow star, and only magnification reveals a fuzzy coma around the dusty core. Holmes was discovered in 1892 thanks to a similar outburst, and hope is that the further development will be similar now: the coma should expand over time but stay bright for a week or more.

Tags: astronomy, comets, science

Radio burst from space mystifies astronomers

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:08:42 GMT

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Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Astronomers who stumbled upon a powerful burst of radio waves said on Thursday they had never seen anything like it before, and it could offer a new way to search for colliding stars or dying black holes.

They were searching for pulsars -- a type of rotating compacted neutron star that sends out rhythmic pulses of radiation -- when they spotted the giant radio signal.

It was extremely brief but very strong, and appears to have come from about 3 billion light-years away -- a light-year being the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.

"This burst appears to have originated from the distant universe and may have been produced by an exotic event such as the collision of two neutron stars or the death throes of an evaporating black hole," said Duncan Lorimer of West Virginia University and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Tags: astronomy, pulsars, radio signals, science

Star catalogue revised & refined

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:04:00 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Hipparcos' data underpins the system of cosmic measurement

The most accurate catalogue of the distances to more than 100,000 stars has just been released.

Cambridge astronomer Dr Floor van Leeuwen has spent the past 10 years checking and recalculating data gathered by the Hipparcos satellite.

It collected the information in the 1990s, but questions were raised about apparent errors in the results.

Dr van Leeuwen, who saw a flaw in the way Hipparcos worked, has now corrected the star distances.

The catalogue (Hipparcos - The New Reduction of the Raw Data) will allow astronomers to probe more deeply into the properties of stars and galaxies.

Astronomers can only determine the physical properties of stars by comparing their luminosity with their distance from Earth. Without an accurate measurement of distance, the star's true luminosity or size cannot be known.

Tags: astronomy, stars, hipparcos, stars catalogue, science

Rare dead star found near Earth

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:22:55 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Neutron stars form when massive stars exhaust their fuel

Astronomers have spotted a space oddity in Earth's neighbourhood - a dead star with some unusual characteristics.

The object, known as a neutron star, was studied using space telescopes and ground-based observatories.

But this one, located in the constellation Ursa Minor, seems to lack some key characteristics found in other neutron stars.

Details of the study, by a team of American and Canadian researchers, will appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

If confirmed, it would be only the eighth known "isolated neutron star" - meaning a neutron star that does not have an associated supernova remnant, binary companion, or radio pulsations.

Either Calvera is an unusual example of a known type of neutron star, or it is some new type of neutron star, the first of its kind

Robert Rutledge, McGill University

The object has been nicknamed Calvera, after the villain in the 1960s western film The Magnificent Seven.

Tags: space, neutron star, calvera, science

Colossal tail trails dying star

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 22:49:59 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

"The fact that Mira's tail only glows with ultraviolet light might explain why other telescopes have missed it."

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A distant star that hurtles through space at extraordinary speeds has a huge, comet-like tail trailing in its wake, astronomers say.

The appendage, which measures a colossal 13 light years in length, was spotted by Nasa's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (Galex) space telescope.

The researchers said that nothing like it had ever been spotted around a star.

They believe the star, known as Mira, will help them to study what happens as stars meet their demise.

Mira (also called Mira A) has captivated astronomers for more than 400 years.

It sits about 350 light-years from Earth in a constellation known as Cetus, and is accompanied in orbit by a smaller secondary star, called Mira B, forming a binary system.

Billions of years ago, Mira would have been much like our Sun, but as it now enters its death-throes it has swollen into a type of star known as a red giant.

Yet despite centuries of study, its spectacular tail had remained undetected.

Tags: astronomy, space, mira, cetus, binary stars, science