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Bad Astronomy
1 Jun 2010, 21:43 UTC
I was going to wait to write about this, but I’m getting a lot of emails about it, so I’ll say something now, and followup when I get more information. The story: BABloggee Alereon (and many others) sent me to an interesting site: Life After the Oil Crash Forum — a forum that apparently has a lot of doomsday-type scuttlebutt posted to it. An anonymous poster there says he has heard that the star Betelgeuse is about to go supernova, maybe as soon as a few weeks: I was talking to my son last week (he works on Mauna Kea), and he mentioned some new observations (that will no doubt get published eventually) of “Beetlejuice”; it’s no longer round. This is a huge star, and when it goes, it will be at least as bright as that 1054 supernova…except that this one is 520 light years away, not 6,300 [...] When it collapses, it will be at least as bright as the full moon, and maybe as bright as the sun. For six weeks. So the really lucky folks (for whom Betelgeuse is only visible at night) will get 24 hour days, everybody else will get at least some time ...
Is Betelgeuse about to blow?
1 Jun 2010, 21:43 UTC
I was going to wait to write about this, but I’m getting a lot of emails about it, so I’ll say something now, and followup when I get more information. The story: BABloggee Alereon (and many others) sent me to an interesting site: Life After the Oil Crash Forum — a forum that apparently has a lot of doomsday-type scuttlebutt posted to it. An anonymous poster there says he has heard that the star Betelgeuse is about to go supernova, maybe as soon as a few weeks: I was talking to my son last week (he works on Mauna Kea), and he mentioned some new observations (that will no doubt get published eventually) of “Beetlejuice”; it’s no longer round. This is a huge star, and when it goes, it will be at least as bright as that 1054 supernova…except that this one is 520 light years away, not 6,300 [...] When it collapses, it will be at least as bright as the full moon, and maybe as bright as the sun. For six weeks. So the really lucky folks (for whom Betelgeuse is only visible at night) will get 24 hour days, everybody else will get at least some time ...
The Flame Trench
1 Jun 2010, 21:30 UTC
Two astronauts and a cosmonaut are getting ready to end a more than five-month stay aboard the International Space Station. Expedition 23 crew members T.J. Creamer of the United States, Oleg Kotov of Russia, and Soichi Noguchi of Japan this afternoon dressed in Sokol spacesuits, climbed into a Soyuz spacecraft and closed the hatch at 4:54 p.m. EDT. They are scheduled to undock from the outpost at 8:04 p.m. to begin a roughly three-trip back to Earth. A landing in Kazakhstan more than 200 miles below the station is planned at 11:24 p.m., less than an hour after spacecraft thrusters fire to initiate a plunge through the atmosphere. You can watch live coverage of the undocking and landing here starting at 7:45 p.m. and 10:15 p.m., respectively. Just click on the NASA TV box at right to launch a viewer. Staying behind on the station are Expedition 24 crew members Tracy Caldwell Dyson of the U.S. and Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko of Russia. Skvortsov took over command of the station from Kotov on Monday. Expedition 24 will grow to six people June 17, two days after the next crew -- Americans Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker and Russian Fyodor ...
Soyuz hatch closed for space station departure
1 Jun 2010, 21:30 UTC
Two astronauts and a cosmonaut are getting ready to end a more than five-month stay aboard the International Space Station. Expedition 23 crew members T.J. Creamer of the United States, Oleg Kotov of Russia, and Soichi Noguchi of Japan this afternoon dressed in Sokol spacesuits, climbed into a Soyuz spacecraft and closed the hatch at 4:54 p.m. EDT. They are scheduled to undock from the outpost at 8:04 p.m. to begin a roughly three-trip back to Earth. A landing in Kazakhstan more than 200 miles below the station is planned at 11:24 p.m., less than an hour after spacecraft thrusters fire to initiate a plunge through the atmosphere. You can watch live coverage of the undocking and landing here starting at 7:45 p.m. and 10:15 p.m., respectively. Just click on the NASA TV box at right to launch a viewer. Staying behind on the station are Expedition 24 crew members Tracy Caldwell Dyson of the U.S. and Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko of Russia. Skvortsov took over command of the station from Kotov on Monday. Expedition 24 will grow to six people June 17, two days after the next crew -- Americans Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker and Russian Fyodor ...
TheSpaceWriter's Ramblings
1 Jun 2010, 19:32 UTC
With Dale Frail The latest episode of The Astronomer’s Universe is up live on Astrocast.TV and it’s all about those powerful flashes of light in the cosmos called gamma-ray bursts. These outbursts mystified astronomers for more than four decades until they figured out some plausible mechanisms for what causes them. For this segment, I interviewed Dr. Dale [...] With Dale Frail Artist's concept of a powerful beam of gamma rays. The latest episode of The Astronomer’s Universe is up live on Astrocast.TV and it’s all about those powerful flashes of light in the cosmos called gamma-ray bursts. These outbursts mystified astronomers for more than four decades until they figured out some plausible mechanisms for what causes them. For this segment, I interviewed Dr. Dale Frail of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array radio telescope installation in New Mexico. He and a group of colleagues have been observing these monster explosions, particularly in radio wavelengths and have recently made great strides in deducing the engines that power gamma-ray bursts. Essentially there are two mechanisms: massive supernova explosions that collapse matter into a black hole and/or the merger of two really massive objects such as neutron stars. Each gives off ...
Exploring Gamma-ray Bursts
1 Jun 2010, 19:32 UTC
With Dale Frail The latest episode of The Astronomer’s Universe is up live on Astrocast.TV and it’s all about those powerful flashes of light in the cosmos called gamma-ray bursts. These outbursts mystified astronomers for more than four decades until they figured out some plausible mechanisms for what causes them. For this segment, I interviewed Dr. Dale [...] With Dale Frail Artist's concept of a powerful beam of gamma rays. The latest episode of The Astronomer’s Universe is up live on Astrocast.TV and it’s all about those powerful flashes of light in the cosmos called gamma-ray bursts. These outbursts mystified astronomers for more than four decades until they figured out some plausible mechanisms for what causes them. For this segment, I interviewed Dr. Dale Frail of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array radio telescope installation in New Mexico. He and a group of colleagues have been observing these monster explosions, particularly in radio wavelengths and have recently made great strides in deducing the engines that power gamma-ray bursts. Essentially there are two mechanisms: massive supernova explosions that collapse matter into a black hole and/or the merger of two really massive objects such as neutron stars. Each gives off ...
AstronomyQuest
1 Jun 2010, 15:55 UTC
The Galactic bubble RCW 120 (Credit: ESA)The first scientific results from ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory are revealing previously hidden details of star formation. New images show thousands of distant galaxies furiously building stars and beautiful star-forming clouds draped across the Milky Way. One picture even catches an ‘impossible’ star in the act of formation. The results challenge old ideas of star birth, and open new roads for future research. Herschel’s observation of the star-forming cloud RCW 120 has revealed an embryonic star which looks set to turn into one of the biggest and brightest stars in our Galaxy within the next few hundred thousand years. It already contains eight to ten times the mass of the Sun and is still surrounded by an additional 2000 solar masses of gas and dust from which it can feed further. “This star can only grow bigger,” says Annie Zavagno, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille. Massive stars are rare and short-lived. To catch one during formation presents a golden opportunity to solve a long-standing paradox in astronomy. “According to our current understanding, you should not be able to form stars larger than eight solar masses,” says Dr Zavagno. This is because the fierce light ...
Herschel reveals the Hidden Side of Star Birth
1 Jun 2010, 15:55 UTC
The Galactic bubble RCW 120 (Credit: ESA)The first scientific results from ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory are revealing previously hidden details of star formation. New images show thousands of distant galaxies furiously building stars and beautiful star-forming clouds draped across the Milky Way. One picture even catches an ‘impossible’ star in the act of formation. The results challenge old ideas of star birth, and open new roads for future research. Herschel’s observation of the star-forming cloud RCW 120 has revealed an embryonic star which looks set to turn into one of the biggest and brightest stars in our Galaxy within the next few hundred thousand years. It already contains eight to ten times the mass of the Sun and is still surrounded by an additional 2000 solar masses of gas and dust from which it can feed further. “This star can only grow bigger,” says Annie Zavagno, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille. Massive stars are rare and short-lived. To catch one during formation presents a golden opportunity to solve a long-standing paradox in astronomy. “According to our current understanding, you should not be able to form stars larger than eight solar masses,” says Dr Zavagno. This is because the fierce light ...
Tom's Astronomy Blog
1 Jun 2010, 15:21 UTC
Some interesting information on the black hole at the center of the Andromeda Galaxy. The Chandra press release: The large image here shows an optical view, with the Digitized Sky Survey, of the Andromeda Galaxy, otherwise known as M31. The inset shows Chandra X-ray Observatory images of a small region in the center of Andromeda. The image [...] Another look at Chandra's black hole. Click for a larger version ~73 k. Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/SAO/Li et al.), Optical (DSS) Some interesting information on the black hole at the center of the Andromeda Galaxy. The Chandra press release: The large image here shows an optical view, with the Digitized Sky Survey, of the Andromeda Galaxy, otherwise known as M31. The inset shows Chandra X-ray Observatory images of a small region in the center of Andromeda. The image on the left shows the sum of 23 images taken with Chandra’s High Resolution Camera (HRC) before January 2006 and the image on the right shows the sum of 17 HRC images taken after January 2006. Before 2006, three X-ray sources are clearly visible in the Chandra image, including one faint source close to the center of the image. After 2006, a fourth source, called ...
The Black Hole in Andromeda
1 Jun 2010, 15:21 UTC
Some interesting information on the black hole at the center of the Andromeda Galaxy. The Chandra press release: The large image here shows an optical view, with the Digitized Sky Survey, of the Andromeda Galaxy, otherwise known as M31. The inset shows Chandra X-ray Observatory images of a small region in the center of Andromeda. The image [...] Another look at Chandra's black hole. Click for a larger version ~73 k. Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/SAO/Li et al.), Optical (DSS) Some interesting information on the black hole at the center of the Andromeda Galaxy. The Chandra press release: The large image here shows an optical view, with the Digitized Sky Survey, of the Andromeda Galaxy, otherwise known as M31. The inset shows Chandra X-ray Observatory images of a small region in the center of Andromeda. The image on the left shows the sum of 23 images taken with Chandra’s High Resolution Camera (HRC) before January 2006 and the image on the right shows the sum of 17 HRC images taken after January 2006. Before 2006, three X-ray sources are clearly visible in the Chandra image, including one faint source close to the center of the image. After 2006, a fourth source, called ...
EAAE News
1 Jun 2010, 14:26 UTC
Source: ESO Astronomers often turn their telescopes to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the closest galaxies to our own Milky Way, in their quest to understand the Universe. In this spectacular new image from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, a celestial menagerie of different objects and phenomena [...]
A Cosmic Zoo in the Large Magellanic Cloud
1 Jun 2010, 14:26 UTC
Source: ESO Astronomers often turn their telescopes to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the closest galaxies to our own Milky Way, in their quest to understand the Universe. In this spectacular new image from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, a celestial menagerie of different objects and phenomena [...]
Sky and Telescope
1 Jun 2010, 14:08 UTC
Last week marked the debut of an impressive addition to astronomers' means of seeing the universe. On May 26th the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, made its first in-flight observations at night. The nearly 8-hour flight carried a crew of researchers and engineers to an altitude of 35,000 feet (10.7 km) to see how well this flying observatory would perform using deep-space targets. All I can say is, "It's about time!"
"First Light" for a Flying Telescope
1 Jun 2010, 14:08 UTC
Last week marked the debut of an impressive addition to astronomers' means of seeing the universe. On May 26th the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, made its first in-flight observations at night. The nearly 8-hour flight carried a crew of researchers and engineers to an altitude of 35,000 feet (10.7 km) to see how well this flying observatory would perform using deep-space targets. All I can say is, "It's about time!"
13.7
1 Jun 2010, 14:06 UTC
Experiments in Italy crack yet another of the many mysteries surrounding the elusive neutrinos and point the way to new physics, beyond current knowledge of particles and their interactions. by Marcelo Gleiser The most elusive of particles, the ghostly neutrinos, are again making the headlines. Yesterday, physicists from the OPERA experiment at Gran Sasso mountain in Italy announced that they witnessed a remarkable metamorphosis; a muon neutrino morphing into a tau neutrino. This apparently mysterious statement may hold the key to a whole new window into the universe. Neutrinos have always been shrouded in mystery. They were predicted to exist by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli in 1930 in a somewhat desperate attempt to save the most sacred of all laws in physics, the conservation of energy. Experiments at the time had noticed that certain kinds of radioactive decays involving electrons seem to have some energy missing. As some of the big names of the time, including Niels Bohr, were ready to give up on energy conservation, Pauli came up with this strange new particle that had no mass or electric charge: the piccolo neutron or “neutrino,” as Enrico Fermi called it. Their existence was confirmed only in 1956. No one ...
