New Website

Check out my new website at Bellatrix Orionis

An updated version of my blog can now be found at www.bellatrixorionis.org/blog.

It’s still in a bit of disarray, they always say that moving house is traumatic, moving your website is almost as bad!!!

Feel free to tootle over and have a look.  As always comments and discussions welcome.

Hope to see you there soon

ESA’s Herschel and Planck

Herschel and Planck are two spacecraft which are due for launch on 14 May. Both spacecraft will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana. This is an ESA (European Space Agency) project in partnership with NASA. You can follow what is happening with both spacecraft on twitter. They are respectively @ESAHerschel and @Planck. The @EuropeanSpaceAgency twitter also provides useful updates of what is happening with both spacecraft. ESA also has tv broadcasts on the web which you may wish to have a look at. Herschel will be the most sensitive far-infrared telescope launched todate, whilst Planck’s mission is to understand the origin and evolution of our Universe.

MESSENGER and Planet Mercury

The Surface of Mercury

The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging spacecraft known as MESSENGER has revealed that Mercurys atmosphere, it’s interaction with the solar wind and it’s geological past show greater activity than originally suspected.  A large impact crater  called Rembrandt which is approx 430 miles in diameter which was previously unknown was also discovered by the probe.

On it’s second flyby (6 October 2008) it captured more than 1,200 high resolution and colour images of the planet.  The probe also showed a further 30 percent of the planets surface.  This provided further essential data for planning the remainder of the missions for the probe.

MESSENGER also detected magnesium in Mercury’s thin atmosphere.  This has shown that magnesium is an important part of Mercury’s surface, calcium and sodium were also found.  Variations were also observed in the magnetosphere and it’s thought that the day to day changes in the atmosphere of Mercury is a result of this.

Until about a year ago we only knew what half of Mercury looked like, but with the images sent back by MESSENGER scientists now know what 90 percent of the planet looks like and also have a better idea how the planet’s crust was formed.

A third flyby of Mercury is scheduled to take place on 29 September and in March of 2011 the probe will go into orbit.  During orbit MESSENGER will continually collect information on the planet and its environment for a complete year.

The MESSENGER project is the seventh in NASA’s Discovery Program of low-cost, scientifically focused missions. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory of Laurel, Md., designed, built and operates the spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science instruments were built by the Applied Physics Laboratory; Goddard; the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and the University of Colorado in Boulder. GenCorp Aerojet of Sacramento, Calif., and Composite Optics Inc. of San Diego provided the propulsion system and composite structure.

Saturn and Rings create a dramatic image

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This fantastic image from NASA is a mosiac combining 6 images, 2 each of red, green and blue spectral filters to create the natural look of this picture.  The images were taken by the Cassini spacecraft and use the wide angle camera.  The images were taken on 30 December 2008 at a distance of approximately 750,000 miles from Saturn.

The scale of the image is 42 miles per pixel

The image shows Saturn’s rings casting a dramatic shadow against the planet and also shows the difference in colour between the northern hemisphere (blues and greens) and the southern hemisphere (creamy pastels).

Fomalhaut Star and Planet

Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

The image to the right was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows the planet Fomalhaut b orbiting its parent star Fomalhaut.

The small white box in the lower right shows a composite image of the planet’s location. Fomalhaut b has carved a path along the inner edge of a vast, dusty debris ring encircling Fomalhaut that is 21.5 billion miles across. Fomalhaut b lies 1.8 billion miles inside the ring’s inner edge and orbits 10.7 billion miles from its star.

It’s been calculated that Fomalhaut b has an orbit of 872 years.  That means it takes 872 years to go round the star Fomalhaut just once.

The white dot in the centre of the image has been used to show the star’s location.  The star’s glare has been blocked out hence the dark region around the star.  This was done to enable astronomers to see the planet, as in comparison to the star Fomalbaut b is very dim.  It’s been estimated that Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than its star.

The Fomalhaut system is 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis.

Jupiter’s Moon, Europa

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft sent back this image of Jupiter’s moon Europa which shows the surface crust is made up of blocks.  It’s thought tat the blocks have broken apart and drifted into new positions. This is considered the best geological evidence so far that Europa has had a subsurface ocean at some point in it’s past history.

This data and the fact that Europa has a magnetic field has lead scientists to believe an ocean is most likely present today.

In this false color image, reddish-brown areas represent non-ice material resulting from geologic activity.  White areas are material ejected during the formation of the Pwyll impact crater.  Whilst icy plains are shown in blue tones to distinguish possibly coarse-grained ice (dark blue) from fine-grained ice (light blue).  Long, dark lines are ridges and fractures in the crust, some of which are more than 1,850 miles long.

Gamma Ray Burst Sets New Record

Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler

A team of international astronomers using NASA’s Swift satellite have found a gamma-ray burst from a star which died when the univers was just 630 million year old, which is approximately less than 5% of it’s present age.  It’s thought to be the most distant explosion ever seen and has been named GRB 090423.

Scientists have dubbed this a true blast from the past.

The Swift satellite discovered the 10 second gamma ray burst on 23 April.  A fading x-ray glow was observed but no visible light.

It’s thought that the gamma ray burst occured due to the explosion of a massive star and there is also the posibility of a black hole forming.

Gamma ray bursts are the most brilliant explosions seen in the Universe.  They usually appear when a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel and collapse in on themselves.  When this happens they become either a black hole or a neutron star.  When this happens gas jets smash through the star and shoot into space.  The gas jet the stikes any gas which was shed by the star during the explosion heating it up which then glows for a short time.

Within 3 hours of the burst astronomers at the University of Leicester had detected an infrared source at the same position using the United Kingdon Intrared Telescope (UKIT) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

The explosion is thought to be 13.035 billion light years away.  This was confirmed by observations using the European Very Large Telescope and the Galileo National Telescope.

Around the World in 80 Telescopes

Around the world in 80 telescopes has now put the archived videos on the web for your viewing pleasure.  They can be found at ESO-Special Events.  Telescopes which took part in the event include:

• Gemini North Telescope
• Subaru Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ)
• United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT)
• W M Keck Observatory
• James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT)
• Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT)
• Submillimeter Array
• Caltech Submillimeter Observatory
• MOA Telescope
• Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT)
• GEO600, the German-British Gravitational Wave Detector
• NAOJ Nobeyama, Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO)
• Gunma Astronomical Observatory
• Okayama Astrophysics Observatory
• Themis
• SolarLab
• Quijote
• ESA’s XMM-Newton Xray Observatory and Integral Gamma Ray Observatory
• Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX)
• Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)
• European VLBI Network (EVN)
• ASTRON Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT)
• LOFAR the LOW Frequency Array of ASTRON
• Virgo Gravitational Wave Detector at the European Gravitational Observatory
• The University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory
• NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
• The Very Large Array (VLA)
• SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) and TRACE (Transitional Region and Coronal Explorer)

On this day in 1920

On the 26 April 1920 a debate took place between two American astronomers, Heber Curtis and Harlow Shapley.  Curtis argued that fuzzy patches in the night sky called ’spiral nabulae’ are separate galaxies or ‘island universes’, lying far away from us.  Curtis claimed that our own galaxy was less than 30,000 lightyears wide, with the Sun located near the centre.  Shapley agued that the spiral nebulae were merely nearby gas clouds inside the Milky Way.  He also claimed the Universe was composed of only one big galaxy more than 300,000 lightyears wide, with the Sun lying far away from the galactic centre.

The debate was resolved in the mid 1920’s by Edwin Hubbles work which involved pinpointing Cephid Variables in M31 (a spiral nebula).  His work showed that the distance to M31 is much greater than Shapley had imagined as M31 is indeed an ‘island universe’ now better known as the Andromeda Galaxy.

It’s now known that Curtis was right about other galaxies existing, whilst Shapley’s idea about the location of the Sun was better.  Both astronomers were wrong about the size of the Milky Way.  Astronomers current predictions have our galaxy at approx 100,000 lightyears wide.

Cassiopeia A Expansion

Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/D.Patnaude et al.

A time lapse movie has been created from images taken by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A.

Cassiopeia A is the remains of a star thought to have exploded about 320 years ago.  Also called Cas A, it’s thought to be the youngest known supernova remnant in our galaxy (the Milky Way) and is 10,000 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.  This means that Cas A actually blew up 10,000 years before the light reached us here on earth during the late 1600s.

The fantastic colours seen in the image are from chemical elements glowing, for example the blue fragments are richest in oxygen and the red material is rich in sulpher.