2011-07-02T15:48:00.000-07:00

THE ASTRONOMY

NEW

INSTRUMENTS

· Internet telescopes give

kids a chance to see the stars

Plans are afoot to create a 10 million network of more than a dozen robotic telescopes across the world which could be accessed via the Internet, enabling millions of schoolchildren all over the world to gain access to astronomy. The first telescope in the project, built by Dr John Baruch of Bradford University, UK, and sited in Yorkshire, is currently linked to the Internet and receives about 40,000 visits a week. It is controlled via computer from Bradford University and has a focal length of 2 m. The telescope points to whichever portion of the sky is most requested by users logging on to the system.

· Cheaper telescope with

the world’s largest mirror

A giant telescope, with a mirror 11 m across, has been built at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, US, at 15% of the cost of similar instruments. The Hobby Eberly Telescope (HET), costing less than $13.5 million, is simpler than other telescopes in that it cannot be raised or lowered and is permanently angled at 35°. It can rotate on its base, however, to view more than two thirds of the sky.

· Composite mirror technique

to provide first space maps

Astronomers will be able t produce maps of space following NASA’s development of a mirror that can focus high energy X-rays, instead of allowing them to pass through. The mirror, made by coating metal foil with numerous micro thin and alternating layers of up to 40,000 electronvolts.

FINDINGS

· Ultra-high-speed cosmic

rays could be neutrinos

Scientists think that the rare cosmic rays jetting though the Universe at close to the speed of light could in fact be neutrinos. They were initially thought to be protons, but as protons can only travel about 150 million light years (and the origins of these puzzling particles are probably active galaxies, such as quasars, which are further away than this) they are more likely to be neutrinos particles which become strongly interacting at high been recorded, traveling in the upper atmosphere at energies of up to 10 electornvolts.

· Black hole research

gives clue to fate of matter

Scientist at the California Institute of Technology, USA, are closer to finding out how the jets of matter emitted by black hole swallow matter from a nearby star and then emit it at close to the speed of light. Black holes are the tiny areas of space that form around the collapse of a star. They are extremely dense and have which can often suck in matter from another star before releasing it as X-rays.

· Sun’s brightness set

to increase into 21^st century

Satellite research has shown that the Sun is getting brighter and could make the Earth warmer by about 0.4°C in the 21^st century. The amount of solar energy absorbed by the earth increased by 0.036% between 1986 and 1996.

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