Article on KBO TX300 Published in Nature

The paper on 2002 TX300 or KBO 55636 was (finally) published in Nature magazine.  It’s exciting for me, because even though I was one of many researchers involved in the project, it was a first in science and a first for me, though I hope it won’t be the last. Jim Elliot and his team were able to deploy 21 observing stations across the globe in an unprecedented attempt to measure the size, and perhaps more, of an object that’s about 4 billion miles from the sun. To put this into a scale that we can understand, it’s somewhat like taking a photograph of a silver dollar from 800 miles away.

I’ve written about my personal KBO55636 adventure before – capturing the object eclipsing a star using the 1.5 meter telescope belonging to the Observatorio Astronomica Nacional’s San Pedro Mountain Observatory in North Baja California state n Mexico. Although I did not observe the actual occultation, it was observed from 2 points in the state of Hawaii, and my observation of a non-event was important because it helped define the size of the object.

Another important discovery is the apparent brightness, or albedo, of 55636. Scientists would expect that the object, though composed mainly of ice, would have scooped up so much space dust in the billion years since it’s creation that it would be kind of dull. But the paper presents data that the object is one of the brightest in the solar system Noted occultation specialist Bruno Sicardi speculates that if the object is as reflective as reported then scientists may need to redefine their theories on the evolution of KBOs.

For those interested in the technical details, here’s a link to the full text article. For those that may prefer a more simplified explanation of the significance of this important discovery, here are some external links from around the world.

SKY & TELESCOPE – Kelly BeattyBBCPHYSORG.COMMIT PRESS RELEASEGOOGLE NEWSABC SCIENCE (AUSTRALIA)SBS (AUSTRALIA)MSNBCGERMANYGERMANYRUSSIANETHERLANDS Filed under: Astronomy, Occultations Comment (1) Article tags: 55636, MIT, occultation, Raul Michel, San Pedro Martir, UNAM One Response to “”

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First Team To Study A Kuiper Belt Object During A Stellar Occultation

Until now, astronomers have used telescopes to find Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), moon-sized bodies, and obtain their spectra to determine what types of ices are on their surface. They have also used thermal-imaging techniques to get a rough idea of the size of KBOs, but other details have been difficult to glean.

While astronomers think there are about 70,000 KBOs that are larger than 100 kilometers in diameter, the objects' relatively small size and location make it hard to study them in detail.

One method that has been has been proposed for studying KBOs is to observe one as it passes briefly in front of a bright star; such events, known as stellar occultations, have yielded useful information about other planets in the solar system.

Read the entire article:
http://www.spacedaily.com/...

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10333601.stm

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Hundreds of Possible Alien Planets Discovered By NASA Spacecraft

NASA's Kepler spacecraft hunting for Earth-like planets around other stars has found 706 candidates for potential alien worlds while gazing at more than 156,000 stars packed into a single patch of the sky.

If all 706 of these objects pass the stringent follow-up tests to determine if they are actually planets, and not false alarms, they could nearly triple the current number of known extrasolar planets. They were announced as part of a huge release of data from the mission's first 43 days by NASA's Kepler science team this week.

The Kepler space observatory monitors stars for subtle changes in their brightness, which could indicate the presence of alien planets passing in front of them as seen from Earth. Astronomers will use the newly-released data from Kepler to determine if orbiting planets are responsible for the variation in brightness of several hundred stars.

Read the entire article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/hundredsofpossiblealienplanetsdiscoveredbynasaspacecraft

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New Astronomy Gadgets for iGoogle

We have released some new widgets that display our latest news and the astronomy picture of the day (APOD). We are offering new widgets that display our own feeds and that of space.com

Example widget:

To obtain the widgets click here.

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Strange Discovery on Titan Leads to Speculation of Alien Life

New findings have roused a great deal of hoopla over the possibility of life on Saturn's moon Titan, which some news reports have further hyped up as hints of extraterrestrials. However, scientists also caution that aliens might have nothing to do with these findings.

All this excitement is rooted in analyses of chemical data returned by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. One study suggested that hydrogen was flowing down through Titan's atmosphere and disappearing at the surface. Astrobiologist Chris McKay at NASA Ames Research Center speculated this could be a tantalizing hint that hydrogen is getting consumed by life.

"It's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth," McKay said.

Another study investigating hydrocarbons on Titan's surface found a lack of acetylene, a compound that could be consumed as food by life that relies on liquid methane instead of liquid water to live.

"If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth," McKay said.

However, NASA scientists caution that aliens might not be involved at all.

Read the entire article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100607/sc_space/strangediscoveryontitanleadstospeculationofalienlife

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New Comet Visible in Early Morning Sky

A recently discovered comet is surprising skywatchers by becoming brighter than predictions had first suggested and can now be seen with the unaided eye during the next few weeks.


Comet McNaught, officially catalogued as C/2009 R1, was discovered by Australian astronomer Robert McNaught last September using the using the 0.5-meter Uppsala Schmidt telescope and a CCD camera. It's the 51st comet that bears McNaught's name.

Although initially an extremely faint object, enough observations of the newfound comet were made to allow Brian Marsden of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., to calculate an orbit.

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Huge seas 'once existed on Mars'

US scientists have found further evidence that huge seas existed long ago on Mars.

A geological mapping project found sedimentary deposits in a region called Hellas Planitia which suggest a large sea once stood there. The 2,000 km-wide, 8km-deep Hellas basin is a giant impact crater - the largest such structure on Mars.
The researchers say their data support a lake between 4.5 and 3.5 billion years ago.

Some scientists believe that conditions on Mars were more favourable for the evolution of life at this time than they were on Earth.

"This mapping makes geologic interpretations consistent with previous studies, and constrains the timing of these putative lakes to the early-middle Noachian period on Mars," said Dr Leslie Bleamaster, research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson.

The researchers say that fine-layered outcrops around the eastern rim of Hellas are likely to be sedimentary deposits.

Read the entire article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10264182.stm

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Mini Magnetic Shield Found on the Moon

For the first time, scientists have observed a mini magnetosphere on the moon—a magnetic field "bubble" that protects part of the lunar surface from punishing solar radiation.

This mini magnetosphere lies near the moon's equator, where sunlight reaches only half the time. This would limit the power available to charge solar arrays, should humans ever return to the moon.

But there's evidence other magnetospheres might lie in more favorable landing sites, offering some radiation protection for astronauts.

Read the entire article:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100414-moon-magnetosphere-solar-wind/

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Thousands of Distant Galaxies Revealed in New Photo

Thousands of galaxies crowding an area on the sky roughly the size of the full moon have been captured in a new photo released today.

The new cosmic photo, a wide-field view from the European Southern Observatory, reveals many thousands of distant galaxies, including a large group belonging to the massive galaxy cluster known as Abell 315.

Yet, as crowded as it may appear, this assembly of galaxies – like most galaxy clusters – is dominated by dark matter that remains unseen. And while the actual existence of dark matter remains largely unexplained, this mysterious stuff has helped scientists piece together other parts of the cosmic puzzle. For instance, dark matter's gravitational pull on galaxy clusters helped researchers calculate the mass of Abell 315.

When stargazers scan the night sky with the unaided eye, they mostly see only stars within our own Milky Way galaxy and some of its closest neighbors. More distant galaxies tend to be too faint to be perceived by the human eye, but if they could be seen, they would literally cover the entire sky.

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http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/galaxy-cluster-abell315-dark-matter-100505.html

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NASA team cites new evidence that meteorites from Mars contain ancient fossils

LEAGUE CITY, TEX. -- NASA's Mars Meteorite Research Team reopened a 14-year-old controversy on extraterrestrial life last week, reaffirming and offering support for its widely challenged assertion that a 4-billion-year-old meteorite that landed thousands of years ago on Antarctica shows evidence of microscopic life on Mars.

In addition to presenting research that they said disproved some of their critics, the scientists reported that additional Martian meteorites appear to house distinct and identifiable microbial fossils that point even more strongly to the existence of life.

"We feel more confident than ever that Mars probably once was, and maybe still is, home to life," team leader David McKay said at a NASA-sponsored conference on astrobiology.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043002000.html

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Strange shapes in space

The shapes of bubbles and clouds in outer space demonstrate that physics can do some pretty bizarre things on a giant scale.

Take RCW 120, for example. The star-forming bubble, about 4,200 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius, is the subject of a European Space Agency picture celebrating the first anniversary of the Herschel space telescope's launch.


Radiation from a hot, massive star at the bubble's center is blasting gas and dust outward, and that's what has cleared out the space around the star. The central star doesn't show up well in Herschel's infrared image, but you can see it easily in this submillimeter-wavelength view from the European Southern Observatory's APEX telescope in Chile.

The shock wave from the central star compresses the material on the bubble's edge so much that still more stars are being squeezed into existence. In the Herschel image, you can see a particularly bright spot on the right edge of the bubble. That's an embryonic star that appears destined to turn into one of the brightest lights in our ga

Read the entire article:
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/05/07/2297402.aspx

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Astronomers Find Black Holes Do Not Absorb Dark Matter

There's the common notion that black holes suck in everything in the nearby vicinity by exerting a strong gravitational influence on the matter, energy, and space surrounding them. But astronomers have found that the dark matter around black holes might be a different story. Somehow dark matter resists 'assimilation' into a black hole.


About 23% of the Universe is made up of mysterious dark matter, invisible material only detected through its gravitational influence on its surroundings. In the early Universe clumps of dark matter are thought to have attracted gas, which then coalesced into stars that eventually assembled the galaxies we see today. In their efforts to understand galaxy formation and evolution, astronomers have spent a good deal of time attempting to simulate the build up of dark matter in these objects.

Dr. Xavier Hernandez and Dr. William Lee from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) calculated the way in which the black holes found at the center of galaxies absorb dark matter. These black holes have anything between millions and billions of times the mass of the Sun and draw in material at a high rate.

Read the entire article:
http://www.universetoday.com/2010/03/22/astronomers-find-black-holes-do-not-absorb-dark-matter/

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Herschel telescope finds 'impossible' star so massive it would dwarf our sun

Astronomers at the Herschel telescope in Europe have spotted an 'impossible' star that will turn into one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galaxy.


New cosmic observations from the European-built Herschel infrared space observatory have revealed previously hidden details of star form tucked away in distant galaxies. One snapshot reveals what researchers called an 'impossible' star caught in the act of forming.

The new images show thousands of these galaxies and beautiful star-forming clouds draped across the Milky Way.

These images were part of the presentation of the first results from Herschel, which was launched on May 14 of last year, today during a major scientific symposium held at the European Space Agency (ESA), which runs the observatory, in Noordwijk, Netherlands. These results challenge old ideas of star birth, and open new roads for future research.

Read entire article:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0508/Herschel-telescope-finds-impossible-star-so-massive-it-would-dwarf-our-sun

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Zombie Satellite Causes Astronomical Buzz

Don't be alarmed. High above your heads, a zombie satellite is on the loose. OK, actually, it won't really be a bother to us earthlings. Or at least to most of us. (More on that later.) But the rogue communications satellite is wreaking havoc in Earth's orbit and does threaten to interfere with signals coming from other satellites. Here's the backstory...


The communications satellite named Galaxy 15 lost contact with ground control after a solar flare probably fried its brain. As a story from the Christian Science Monitor reports, attempts from Earth to contact the satellite have been unsuccessful. But instead of just dying and drifting off, the satellite has continued to orbit the Earth, even though it refuses to receive instructions from its owner, Intelsat.

For the science nerds out there: The satellite is still on, with its "C-band telecommunications payload still functioning even as it has left its assigned orbital slot of 133 degrees west longitude 36,000 kilometers over the equator." Translation: Not good.

Read the entire article:
http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93656?fp

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Obama 'Poorly Advised' on Space: Armstrong

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, said that President Barack Obama is "poorly advised" on space matters, renewing criticism of a plan to abandon a project to return astronauts to the moon.


Appearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Armstrong said the Obama plan to end the Constellation program and cut other space efforts appeared to be made without input from NASA or the president's science adviser.

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http://news.discovery.com/space/neil-armstrong-space-program.html

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Planet Triple Play: Saturn, Mars and Venus Appear Together

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Astronomers find 9 new planets and upset the theory of planetary formation

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The discovery of nine new planets challenges the reigning theory of the formation of planets, according to new observations by astronomers. Two of the astronomers involved in the discoveries are based at the UC Santa Barbara-affiliated Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), based in Goleta, Calif., near UCSB.

Unlike the planets in our solar system, two of the newly discovered planets are orbiting in the opposite direction to the rotation of their host star. This, along with a recent study of other exoplanets, upsets the primary theory of how planets are formed. There is a preponderance of these planets with their orbital spin going opposite to that of their parent star. They are called exoplanets because they are located outside of our solar system.

These and other related discoveries are being presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, this week. This is the first public mention of the new planets and the research will be described in upcoming scientific journal articles.

Read entire article:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/uoc--afn041310.php

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Rogue Brown Dwarf Lurks in Our Cosmic Neighborhood

Brown dwarf-hunting astronomers have reported the discovery of a "failed star" located within 10 light-years from Earth. This makes it the nearest brown dwarf and one of ten nearest stellar objects to our solar system. Although its location isn't entirely unexpected (it is thought that the galaxy is stuffed full of these objects), the chemical composition of its atmosphere is a bit of a conundrum.

UGPSJ0722-05 is all by itself, floating through interstellar space, possibly having formed there on its lonesome, or kicked out of its host star system by an ancient gravitational game of stellar pinball. How it got there may not ever be known, but its close proximity allows astronomers to carry out detailed analysis of the object.

And what they found was a surprise.

Read the entire:
http://news.discovery.com/space/rogue-brown-dwarf-lurks-in-our-cosmic-neighborhood.html

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Pluto joined by up to 50 more dwarf planets

SYDNEY: The status of former planet Pluto has taken another blow, with new research suggesting up to 50 known objects may also meet the criteria to be dwarf planets.

To be labelled as a dwarf planet, an object must meet two criteria, as determined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU): they must be 'nearly round' and they must orbit the Sun.

Until now, however, the point at which 'potato-shaped' planets become 'nearly round' has not been formally defined, said astronomer Charley Lineweaver from Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra.

Read the entire article:
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3399/pluto-joined-50-more-dwarf-planets

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Time waits for no quasar – even though it should

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Amateur Astronomer Films ISS from his Garage

This is truly amazing footage. The detail is rather impressive considering this was an amateur. If at first the image is blurred just wait a minute and watch the ISS turn.

Watch the video:
http://www.space.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef

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Hubble's Birthday Gift to Us: Mystic Mountain

Happy 20th Birthday to the Hubble Space Telescope! While we should be showering HST with gifts, instead the telescope provides this present to us: an amazing view of what has been nicknamed "Mystic Mountain. " It is just a small portion of one of the largest known star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Three light-year-tall towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula.

The scene is reminiscent of Hubble’s classic “Pillars of Creation” photo from 1995, but even more striking. "Mystic Mountain has clouds of gas and dust, that have not only baby stars, but also baby solar systems," said John Grunsfeld, Hubble-hugger, repairman and now the Deputry Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "4.5 billion years ago, this may be what our solar system looked like."

Read the entire article:
http://www.universetoday.com/2010/04/23/hubbles-birthday-gift-to-us-mystic-mountian/

Also be sure to check out the Hubble gallery:
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/

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Discovery that quasars don't show time dilation mystifies astronomers

The phenomenon of time dilation is a strange yet experimentally confirmed effect of relativity theory. One of its implications is that events occurring in distant parts of the universe should appear to occur more slowly than events located closer to us. For example, when observing supernovae, scientists have found that distant explosions seem to fade more slowly than the quickly-fading nearby supernovae.


The effect can be explained because (1) the speed of light is a constant (independent of how fast a light source is moving toward or away from an observer) and (2) the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, which causes light from distant objects to redshift (i.e. the wavelengths to become longer) in relation to how far away the objects are from observers on Earth. In other words, as space expands, the interval between light pulses also lengthens. Since expansion occurs throughout the universe, it seems that time dilation should be a property of the universe that holds true everywhere, regardless of the specific object or event being observed. However, a new study has found that this doesn’t seem to be the case - quasars, it seems, give off light pulses at the same rate no matter their distance from the Earth, without a hint of time dilation.

Read the entire article:
http://www.physorg.com/news190027752.html

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Jupiter loses one of its stripes and scientists are stumped as to why

Jupiter has lost one of its iconic red stripes and scientists are baffled as to why. The largest planet in our solar system is usually dominated by two dark bands in its atmosphere, with one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere.

However, the most recent images taken by amateur astronomers have revealed the lower stripe known as the Southern Equatorial Belt has disappeared leaving the southern half of the planet looking unusually bare.


Journalist and amateur astronomer Bob King, also known as Astro_Bob, was one of the first to note the strange phenomenon.

He said: 'Jupiter with only one belt is almost like seeing Saturn when its rings are edge-on and invisible for a time - it just doesn't look right.'

It is not the first time this unusual phenomenon has been noticed. Jupiter loses or regains one of its belts every ten of 15 years, although exactly why this happens is a mystery.
Enlarge Jupiter has a complex belt system

Jupiter has a complex belt system

The planet is a giant ball of gas and liquid around 500million miles from the Sun. It's surface is composed of dense red, brown, yellow, and white clouds arranged in light-coloured areas called zones and darker regions called belts.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1277734/Jupiter-loses-stripes-scientists-idea-why.html

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Two giant black holes surprise scientists with unexpected behavior

Some strange behavior from two huge black holes at the center of two different galaxies has been noticed by astronomers.

One supermassive black hole, at the heart of a galaxy neighboring the Milky Way, has been mysteriously brightening in recent years, and scientists aren't sure why. Another of these matter-gobbling behemoths isn't where astronomers thought it was located.

Two new studies on these black holes, the results of which were presented here today at the 216th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, have turned up some surprising results and could help astronomers understand more about the evolution of galaxies and how supermassive black holes work.

Read the entire article:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0525/Two-giant-black-holes-surprise-scientists-with-unexpected-behavior

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Space so full of junk that a satellite collision could destroy communications on Earth

Space is so littered with debris that a collision between satellites could set off an “uncontrolled chain reaction” capable of destroying the communications network on Earth, a Pentagon report has warned.

The volume of abandoned rockets, shattered satellites and missile shrapnel in the Earth’s orbit is reaching a “tipping point” and is now threatening the $250 billion (£174bn) space services industry, scientists said.

A single collision between two satellites or large pieces of “space junk” could send thousands of pieces of debris spinning into orbit, each capable of destroying further satellites.

Read the entire article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7766894/Space-so-full-of-junk-that-a-satellite-collision-could-destroy-communications-on-Earth.html

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Pandora plus Endor: Multi hab-moon motherworld discovered

Top astro boffins have announced the discovery of the first planet which could be the real-life parent world of fictional habitable moons Pandora and Endor. According to Blighty's top exomoonologist, there might even be more than one inhabited moon circling the newly discovered gas giant.


Corot-9b orbits a G3 star not unlike our own sun, lying some 460 parsecs off in the constellation Serpens Cauda. The new world is reckoned to be very similar in size and makeup to the biggest planets in our star system, Jupiter and Saturn. Scanning it in detail is possible because its orbit takes it in front of its sun as viewed from Earth, making it easy to learn things about it.

Investigating boffins have been probing the far-flung giant planet since April 2008 using the COROT (COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits) space telescope in orbit above Earth. They believe that, like Jupiter and Saturn, it is a gas giant planet made up largely of hydrogen and helium.

Read the entire article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/22/pandora_endor_corot_9b/

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Asteroid 2010 KQ: Probably a Rocket Body

A small asteroid-like object has been discovered in an orbit about the Sun that is so similar to the Earth's orbit that scientists strongly suspect it to be a rocket stage that escaped years ago from the Earth-Moon system.


The object was discovered on May 16, 2010 by Richard Kowalski at the Catalina Sky Survey, and has subsequently been observed by many observers, including Bill Ryan (Magdalena Ridge Observatory) and Peter Birtwhistle (England). It was given the asteroid designation 2010 KQ by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge Massachusetts, who identified its orbit as being very similar to that of the Earth. Orbit refinements by JPL's Paul Chodas and amateur astronomer Bill Gray have shown that this object was very close to the Earth in early 1975, but the trajectory is not known with enough accuracy to associate the object with any particular launch. Nevertheless, scientists do not expect that a natural object could remain in this type of orbit for very long because of its relatively high impact probability with the Earth. In fact, an analysis carried out by Paul Chodas suggests that 2010 KQ has a 6% chance of impacting the Earth over a 30-year period starting in 2036.

Read the entire article:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news168.html

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Our Universe at Home Within a Larger Universe? So Suggests Physicist's Wormhole Research

Could our universe be located within the interior of a wormhole which itself is part of a black hole that lies within a much larger universe? ScienceDaily

Such a scenario in which the universe is born from inside a wormhole (also called an Einstein-Rosen Bridge) is suggested in a paper from Indiana University theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski in Physics Letters B. The final version of the paper was available online March 29 and will be published in the journal edition April 12.

Read the entire article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100406172648.htm

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Mystery Object Defies Astronomical Classification

A mysterious object discovered near a brown dwarf doesn’t fit into any known astronomical category. The newly discovered mystery companion forms a binary system with the brown dwarf, located 460 light-years away in the Taurus star-forming system. The object is too light to be another brown dwarf, but it’s too young to have formed by accretion, the way a typical planet does.

“Although this small companion appears to have a mass that is comparable to the mass of planets around stars, we don’t think it formed like a planet,” said astronomer Kevin Luhman of Penn State University, co-author of the study April 5 in The Astrophysical Journal. “This seems to indicate that there are two different ways for nature to make small companions.”

Read the entire article:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/mystery-space-object/#ixzz0kW9Syd2o

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