Astronomical News

[محمدرضا صادقیان]

Hello.
I want to put this post to talk about latest news around astronomy, Its a new astronomical news page......
I'll appreciate if u help me with this post........

Thank u All

[رخساره روشنی]

Asteroid Belts of Just the Right Size are Friendly to Life

Solar systems with life-bearing planets may be rare if they are dependent on the presence of asteroid belts of just the right mass, according to a study by Rebecca Martin, a NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and astronomer Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.
They suggest that the size and location of an asteroid belt, shaped by the evolution of the sun's protoplanetary disk and by the gravitational influence of a nearby giant Jupiter-like planet, may determine whether complex life will evolve on an Earth-like planet.

This might sound surprising because asteroids are considered a nuisance due to their potential to impact Earth and trigger mass extinctions. But an emerging view proposes that asteroid collisions with planets may provide a boost to the birth and evolution of complex life.
For read more go this link : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hu...zed-belts.html

[yperseusy]

British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore has died, aged 89, his friends and colleagues have said.

He "passed away peacefully at 12:25 this afternoon" at his home in Selsey, West Sussex, they said in a statement.

Sir Patrick presented the BBC programme The Sky At Night for over 50 years, making him the longest-running host of the same television show ever.

He wrote dozens of books on astronomy and his research was used by the US and the Russians in their space programmes.

Described by one of his close friends as "fearlessly eccentric", Sir Patrick was notable for his habit of wearing a monocle on screen and his idiosyncratic style.

Sir Patrick presented the first edition of The Sky at Night on 24 April 1957. He last appeared in an episode broadcast on Monday.

A statement by his friends and staff said: "After a short spell in hospital last week, it was determined that no further treatment would benefit him, and it was his wish to spend his last days in his own home, Farthings, where he today passed on, in the company of close friends and carers and his cat Ptolemy.

"Over the past few years, Patrick, an inspiration to generations of astronomers, fought his way back from many serious spells of illness and continued to work and write at a great rate, but this time his body was too weak to overcome the infection which set in, a few weeks ago



"He was able to perform on his world record-holding TV programme The Sky at Night right up until the most recent episode .

"His executors and close friends plan to fulfil his wishes for a quiet ceremony of interment, but a farewell event is planned for what would have been Patrick's 90th birthday in March 2013."
'Father figure'

Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore was born at Pinner, Middlesex on 4 Mar 1923.

Heart problems meant he spent much of his childhood being educated at home and he became an avid reader. His mother gave him a copy of GF Chambers' book, The Story of the Solar System, and this sparked his lifelong passion for astronomy.

When war came he turned down a place at Cambridge and lied about his age to join the RAF, serving as a navigator with Bomber Command and rising to the rank of Flight Lieutenant.

But the war brought him a personal tragedy after his fiancee, Lorna, was killed when an ambulance she was driving was hit by a bomb. He never married.

Sir Patrick, who had a pacemaker fitted in 2006 and received a knighthood in 2001, won a Bafta for services to television and was a honorary fellow of the Royal Society.

He was a member of the UK Independence party and, briefly, the finance minister for the Monster Raving Loony Party, and attracted some controversy for his outspoken views on Europe and immigration.

BBC science correspondent Pallab Ghosh said Sir Patrick's appearance sometimes aroused as much comment as his astronomy: "He was six-foot-three, and was once described as having 'an air of donnish dishevelment', with his raised eyebrow, scarcely-brushed hair and poorly-fitting suits.

"His enthusiasm was unstoppable, and on occasions he would talk at 300 words a minute."

Queen guitarist Brian May, who published a book on astronomy written with Sir Patrick, described him as a "dear friend, and a kind of father figure to me".

He said: "Patrick will be mourned by the many to whom he was a caring uncle, and by all who loved the delightful wit and clarity of his writings, or enjoyed his fearlessly eccentric persona in public life.

"Patrick is irreplaceable. There will never be another Patrick Moore. But we were lucky enough to get one."

'Charming and hospitable'

Television presenter and physicist Professor Brian Cox posted a message on Twitter saying: "Very sad news about Sir Patrick. Helped inspire my love of astronomy. I will miss him!"

And Dr Marek Kakula, public astronomer at Royal Observatory in Greenwich, described him as a "very charming and hospitable man".

"When you came to his home he would always make sure you had enough to eat and drink. He was full of really entertaining and amusing stories.

"There are many many professional astronomers like me who can actually date their interest in astronomy to watching Patrick on TV, so his impact on the world of professional astronomy as well as amateur is hard to overstate."

[stargazer]

Really?!!!!

He was an honorable man especially for astronomers all over the world

Many people (kids, children and adults) who were interested in astronomy, learned many things about this science from him, his writings & books.

he leaved a good trace from himself on all sky lovers' minds & memories, and passed away

.......

Just we can say: Thank You Sir Patrick Moore & May Rest in Peace

[محمد مهدی عسگری]

A giant asteroid will make a flyby of Earth over the next few days, and armchair astronomers can watch the action live on their computers.

The near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis, which is about 3 miles (5 kilometers) wide, will zoom within 4.3 million miles (7 million kilometers) of Earth during its closest approach early Wednesday morning (Dec. 12). That's too far away to pose any impact threat on this pass, but close enough to put on a pretty good show through top-notch telescopes, researchers say.

And some of those scopes will be tracking Toutatis' movements for the benefit of skywatchers around the world. The online Slooh Space Camera and Virtual Telescope Project, for example, will both stream live, free footage of the asteroid from professional-quality observatories.


Slooh will webcast Toutatis views from a scope in the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa beginning at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) today (Dec. 11). Another show will follow at 10 p.m. EST tonight (0300 GMT Wednesday), with footage from an instrument in Arizona. You can watch them at Slooh's website: http://www.slooh.com.

Both shows will feature commentary from Slooh president Patrick Paolucci and Astronomy Magazine columnist Bob Berman. [Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space]

"Slooh technical staff will let the public follow this fast-moving asteroid in two different ways. In one view, the background stars will be tracked at their own rate and the asteroid will appear as an obvious streak or a moving time-lapse dot across the starry field," Berman said in a statement.

"In a second view, Toutatis itself will be tracked and held steady as a tiny pointlike object, while Earth's spin makes the background stars whiz by as streaks," Berman added. "Both methods will make the asteroid's speedy orbital motion obvious as it passes us in space."

Meanwhile, the Virtual Telescope Project — which is run by Gianluca Masi of Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy — will offer its own free webcast Thursday (Dec. 13) at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT), complete with commentary from astrophysicists.

You can see that video stream here: http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/webtv/


Asteroid Toutatis was first viewed in 1934, then officially discovered in 1989. It makes one trip around the sun every four years.

The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., lists Toutatis as a potentially hazardous object, meaning that it could pose a threat to our planet at some point in the future. The current flyby is no cause for concern, however. At its closest approach, which comes at 1:40 a.m. (0640 GMT) Wednesday, Toutatis will still be 18 times farther away from Earth than the moon is.

Toutatis would cause catastrophic damage if it ever did slam into Earth. In general, scientists think a strike by anything at least 0.6 miles (1 km) wide could have global consequences, most likely by altering the world's climate for many years to come.

For comparison, the asteroid thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was an estimated 6 miles (10 km) across.

Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

منبع: Yahoo News

[گلناز]

Solar storms, like this coronal mass ejection on Aug. 31, 2012, can propel a billion tons of charged particles and radiation into space. Occasionally, these eruptions are directed towards Earth, prompting special protective measures for astronauts aboard the International Space Station, as well as aircraft crew on transpolar flights where risk to exposure is greatest. (NASA SDO)
View video

Radi-N2 bubble detectors are filled with a gel, inside which are liquid droplets that help quantify neutron radiation inside the International Space Station. (Canadian Space Agency)
View large image Space can be a potentially hazardous environment to live and work in, especially when it comes to radiation. Originating from violent storms on the sun and galactic cosmic rays produced in distant supernovae explosions, this natural radiation can pose a serious health risk for astronauts on long-duration space missions like those on the International Space Station.

Like a protective bubble, Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere shields life on our planet from this never-ending bombardment of high-energy particles. However, in low-Earth orbit where the space station flies, astronauts are regularly exposed to high doses of radiation, including charged particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field, as well as cosmic rays and solar radiation.

To prepare for future missions that may last for months or years, the Canadian Space Agency, or CSA, along with other space agencies around the world, have been stepping up research into radiation biology in recent years, recognizing that it deserves the highest priority.

During CSA astronaut Chris Hadfield's mission to the space station, he will carry a new set of instruments into orbit to measure one of the most serious types of radiation -- caused by high-energy neutron particles -- and monitor the dose an astronaut absorbs during space flight.

What is Neutron Radiation?

Neutron radiation is considered to be one of the most severe of all types of radiation experienced in space as it can cause biological damage. It represents approximately 30 percent of the total exposure for those aboard the station. In space, neutrons are produced when charged particles collide with physical matter, such as the walls and equipment on the space station. Just like medical X-rays, these high-energy particles can shoot through delicate body tissues, and through long-term exposure, they can damage DNA and potentially cause cataracts, bone marrow damage or even cancer.

It's all in the bubbles -- Bubbles and Radiation Trouble

Radi-N2 is Canada's second generation of neutron radiation monitoring aboard the station and continues on where fellow Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk and the original Radi-N experiment left off in 2009.

A collaborative effort between the CSA and Russia's RSC-Energia and State Research Center of Russia Institute of Biomedical Problems, or IBMP, Russian Academy of Sciences, the Radi-N2 study will have Hadfield and fellow crew member Roman Romanenko measure the neutron radiation levels on the station while onboard the station for Expedition 34/35.

Radi-N2 uses bubble detectors produced by a Canadian company, Bubble Technology Industries of Chalk River, Ontario, designed to focus on detecting neutrons while ignoring other types of radiation. Bubble detectors have been used in space for more than two decades on space shuttle missions and the MIR space station, and have become popular because of their accuracy and convenience.

Eight of these finger-sized instruments are going to be placed by Hadfield and Romanenko around various space station modules. Each detector is filled with a clear polymer gel, inside which are liquid droplets. When a neutron strikes the test tube, a droplet may be vaporized. This creates a visible gas bubble in the polymer. Each bubble, which represents neutron radiation, is then placed within an automatic reader and counted.

Radi-N2 will provide critical information for potential future human missions to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars.

CSA's support of radiation research will not only lead to major advancements for future human exploration of space but also in our knowledge of the health risks of radiation, such as cancer, neurological damage and degenerative tissue disease.

[Saeed Jafari]

Billions and Billions of Planets
01.03.2013

This artist's concept shows the Kepler spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Look up at the night sky and you'll see stars, sure. But the sky is also filled with planets -- billions and billions of them at least.

That's the conclusion of a new study by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, which provides yet more evidence that planetary systems are the cosmic norm. The team made their estimate while analyzing planets orbiting a star called Kepler-32 -- planets that are representative, they say, of the vast majority of planets in our galaxy and thus serve as a perfect case study for understanding how most of these worlds form.

"There are at least 100 billion planets in the galaxy, just our galaxy," says John Johnson, assistant professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech and coauthor of the study, which was recently accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. "That's mind-boggling."

"It's a staggering number, if you think about it," adds Jonathan Swift, a postdoctoral student at Caltech and lead author of the paper. "Basically, there's one of these planets per star."

One of the fundamental questions regarding the origin of planets is how many of them there are. Like the Caltech group, other teams of astronomers have estimated that there is roughly one planet per star, but this is the first time researchers have made such an estimate by studying M-dwarf systems, the most numerous population of planets known.

The planetary system in question, which was detected by NASA's Kepler space telescope, contains five planets. Two of the planets orbiting Kepler-32 had previously been discovered by other astronomers. The Caltech team confirmed the remaining three, then analyzed the five-planet system and compared it to other systems found by Kepler




http://www.nasa.gov

[گلناز]

This artist's illustration shows a planetary disk (left) that weighs the equivalent of 50 Jupiter-mass planets. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech › Full image and caption

This artist's concept illustrates the planet-forming disk around TW Hydrae, located about 175 light-years away in the Hydra, or Sea Serpent, constellation. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption

PASADENA, Calif. -- A star thought to have passed the age at which it can form planets may, in fact, be creating new worlds. The disk of material surrounding the surprising star called TW Hydrae may be massive enough to make even more planets than we have in our own solar system.
The findings were made using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Telescope, a mission in which NASA is a participant.
At roughly 10 million years old and 176 light years away, TW Hydrae is relatively close to Earth by astronomical standards. Its planet-forming disk has been well studied. TW Hydrae is relatively young but, in theory, it is past the age at which giant planets already may have formed.
"We didn't expect to see so much gas around this star," said Edwin Bergin of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Bergin led the new study appearing in the journal Nature. "Typically stars of this age have cleared out their surrounding material, but this star still has enough mass to make the equivalent of 50 Jupiters," Bergin said.
In addition to revealing the peculiar state of the star, the findings also demonstrate a new, more precise method for weighing planet-forming disks. Previous techniques for assessing the mass were indirect and uncertain. The new method can directly probe the gas that typically goes into making planets.
Planets are born out of material swirling around young stars, and the mass of this material is a key factor controlling their formation. Astronomers did not know before the new study whether the disk around TW Hydrae contained enough material to form new planets similar to our own.
"Before, we had to use a proxy to guess the gas quantity in the planet-forming disks," said Paul Goldsmith, the NASA project scientist for Herschel at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is another example of Herschel's versatility and sensitivity yielding important new results about star and planet formation."
Using Herschel, scientists were able to take a fresh look at the disk with the space telescope to analyze light coming from TW Hydrae and pick out the spectral signature of a gas called hydrogen deuteride. Simple hydrogen molecules are the main gas component of planets, but they emit light at wavelengths too short to be detected by Herschel. Gas molecules containing deuterium, a heavier version of hydrogen, emit light at longer, far-infrared wavelengths that Herschel is equipped to see. This enabled astronomers to measure the levels of hydrogen deuteride and obtain the weight of the disk with the highest precision yet.
"Knowing the mass of a planet-forming disk is crucial to understanding how and when planets take shape around other stars," said Glenn Wahlgren, Herschel program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Whether TW Hydrae's large disk will lead to an exotic planetary system with larger and more numerous planets than ours remains to be seen, but the new information helps define the range of possible planet scenarios.
"The new results are another important step in understanding the diversity of planetary systems in our universe," said Bergin. "We are now observing systems with massive Jupiters, super-Earths, and many Neptune-like worlds. By weighing systems at their birth, we gain insight into how our own solar system formed with just one of many possible planetary configurations."
Herschel is a European Space Agency (ESA) cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by a consortium of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at JPL, which contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. NASA's Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu , http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel .

[گلناز]

The percussion drill in the turret of tools at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been positioned in contact with the rock surface in this image from the rover's front Hazard-Avoidance Camera (Hazcam). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech › Full image and caption

Mission status report

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has placed its drill onto a series of four locations on a Martian rock and pressed down on it with the rover's arm, in preparation for using the drill in coming days.

The rover carried out this "pre-load" testing on Mars yesterday (Jan. 27). The tests enable engineers to check whether the amount of force applied to the hardware matches predictions for what would result from the commanded motions.

The next step is an overnight pre-load test, to gain assurance that the large temperature change from day to night at the rover's location does not add excessively to stress on the arm while it is pressing on the drill. At Curiosity's work site in Gale Crater, air temperature plunges from about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero degrees Celsius) in the afternoon to minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 65 degrees Celsius) overnight. Over this temperature swing, this large rover's arm, chassis and mobility system grow and shrink by about a tenth of an inch (about 2.4 millimeters), a little more than the thickness of a U.S. quarter-dollar coin.

The rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., sent the rover commands yesterday to begin the overnight pre-load test today (Monday).

"We don't plan on leaving the drill in a rock overnight once we start drilling, but in case that happens, it is important to know what to expect in terms of stress on the hardware," said JPL's Daniel Limonadi, the lead systems engineer for Curiosity's surface sampling and science system. "This test is done at lower pre-load values than we plan to use during drilling, to let us learn about the temperature effects without putting the hardware at risk."

Remaining preparatory steps will take at least the rest of this week. Some of these steps are hardware checks. Others will evaluate characteristics of the rock material at the selected drilling site on a patch of flat, veined rock called "John Klein."

Limonadi said, "We are proceeding with caution in the approach to Curiosity's first drilling. This is challenging. It will be the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars."

An activity called the "drill-on-rock checkout" will use the hammering action of Curiosity's drill briefly, without rotation of the drill bit, for assurance that the back-and-forth percussion mechanism and associated control system are properly tuned for hitting a rock.

A subsequent activity called "mini-drill" is designed to produce a small ring of tailings -- powder resulting from drilling -- on the surface of the rock while penetrating less than eight-tenths of an inch (2 centimeters). This activity will not go deep enough to push rock powder into the drill's sample-gathering chamber. Limonadi said, "The purpose is to see whether the tailings are behaving the way we expect. Do they look like dry powder? That's what we want to confirm."

The rover team's activities this week are affected by the difference between Mars time and Earth time. To compensate for this, the team develops commands based on rover activities from two sols earlier. So, for example, the mini-drill activity cannot occur sooner than two sols after the drill-on-rock checkout.

Each Martian sol lasts about 40 minutes longer than a 24-hour Earth day. By mid-February, the afternoon at Gale Crater, when Curiosity transmits information about results from the sol, will again be falling early enough in the California day for the rover team to plan each sol based on the previous sol's results.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess whether areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ . You can follow the mission on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

[yperseusy]

Korea’s Kompsat-2 satellite captured this image over the sand seas of the Namib Desert on 7 January 2012.

The Namib is the oldest desert in the world, stretching over 2000 km along Africa’s southwestern coast from Angola, through Namibia to South Africa. Sand dunes dominate the desert – some reaching over 300 m in height.

The blue and white area is the dry river bed of the Tsauchab – which only sees water following rare rainfall in the Naukluft Mountains to the east. Black dots of vegetation are concentrated close to the river’s main route, while salt deposits appear bright white.

This flattened area ends about 15 km to the east at the Sossusvlei salt and clay pan (not shown).

Running through the river valley, a road connects Sossusvlei to the Sesriem settlement. At the road’s 45th kilometre, seen at the lower-central part of the image, a white path shoots off and ends at a circular parking area at the base of a dune. This is Dune 45, a popular tourist stop on the way to and from Sossusvlei.

The 170 m-high dune is often photographed early in the morning or late in the day when one side is completely in shadow. In this image, there appears to be some shadow on the western side. From this we can deduce that the image was acquired during the late morning.

ESA supports Kompsat as a Third Party Mission, meaning it uses its ground infrastructure and expertise to acquire, process and distribute data to users.

http://www.esa.int

[حامد پورخرسندی]

Surprise! Earth Passing Asteroid 1998 QE2 Has a Moon


http://www.universetoday.com/102532/...e2-has-a-moon/