Protostronomy

Interesting Lectures - Part 4

2009-03-03T02:44:00.005+00:00

Part 4 is a further continuation of Gravity and Satellites from the previous post, which is why it has come up so quickly after the last.

Click here for the video, more Physics goodness to be found within!

Ye olde rock in the sky

2009-03-01T01:46:00.006+00:00

Otherwise known as The Moon:

Needs no introduction I think!

Interesting Lectures - Part 3

2009-02-28T03:59:00.003+00:00

So this amazingly long running two part series finally continues with a third piece!

Continuing from the last part is part 10/27 from Richard A. Muller's Physics for future Presidents course at UC Berkely, and this particular one is on Gravity and Satellites. Almost all the physics here is pretty basic, but is laid out in such a way as to make it easy to understand the concepts involved. Richard Muller does it particularly well, and even if you're already aware of everything contained therein, it's still an enjoyable watch.

The Classic DSO - M42

2009-02-27T01:04:00.009+00:00

The Orion Nebula, Messier object designation M42 is one of the brightest nebulae in the sky, and under good conditions is visible even to the naked eye. It's the closest region of star formation to us at roughly 1500 lightyears distance and is an object of regular study due to playing host to stars in varying stages of stellar evolution, as well as what appear to be infant solar systems (or proplyds).

It's also a popular target for astrophotographers as it is very easy to locate, and because of the aforementioned inherent brightnes, which means that even short exposures will reveal colourful nebulosity. Thus it was one of the first things I took an image of after equipping for astrophotography, and after some experimentation out in the cold under dark skies the end result was the following:

Click on the above image to view a bigger version.

The picture was taken with an unguided William Optics Flt-98 refractor at prime focus using a Nikon D70 DSLR and is a stack of 40 minutes worth of 30s exposures taken at ISO1600. The frames were captured under a moonlit sky, so not ideal conditions admittedly, but it's always worth a try!

Unseen here in the overexposed core of the nebula is a very young open cluster known as the Trapezium because of the configuration of its four brightest stars. Above the main nebula can also be faintly seen NGC1973/5/7, The Running Man, which is a blue reflection nebula that is part of the same massive molecular cloud complex as M42.

Getting the blog breathing again

2009-02-26T06:44:00.006+00:00

After almost nine months of neglect I'm hoping to get back to regular updates on Protostronomy once again. For a multitude of reasons I ended up letting the blog fall silent back in June of last year, the least impressive perhaps being a simple case of the lazies. However, fuelled by ample amounts of coffee, and new machinery with which to provide a steady supply thereof, new articles will be appearing.

After all this time I've certainly not come across a shortage of material, so here is a brief rundown of a couple of things i'd like to get going regularly on the blog on top of the usual in the near future; Firsly I intend to continue with the Intersting Lectures series, of which only two parts were previously posted. There is so much information floating around on the inside of flash videos nowdays that I don't anticipate any huge issues in keeping this a regular thing. Secondly I'll be writing up infrequent articles on astronomical objects from the perspective of an amateur astrophotographer, and the revelations that have frequently been realised in the process of attempting to actually find and capture the blighters.

A new breath then, hopefully the first in a long line of many!

Twinkle twinkle little Star

2008-06-04T02:11:00.013+01:00

Back when people used to look up at the sky and wonder what all those lights in the sky were, back when so little was known about the processes by which the cosmos is lit, and by which almost everything we are was created... back then eh!

Nowadays we know that those lights in the sky are in fact massive balls of gas, converting hydrogen into helium at their cores though a process of nuclear fusion. Of course this is just a simplistic description of your standard main sequence star, there are many many other stages of stellar evolution, and indeed types of star.

The point is that we now know this. Through a multitude of methods we can determine the composition, size and distance of those stars that we see. They are no longer unfathomable objects in the sky.

That said, nothing beats a close up look. Most of the time stars other than our Sun are mere points of light. However, one of the better known beasties, Betelgeuse, is both large enough (absolutely freakin' huge) and close enough for surface features to be resolved.

So having read through all that, i'd like to direct you to this short article from the Cavendish Astrophysics website where you can read up on the imaging methods used to obtain the pictures of the stellar disk in question. The images don't show much detail - but you have to remember that this object is 430 lightyears away. Thats 27 million times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, so you can forgive it for not looking quite as impressive!

HiRISE is awesome.

2008-05-28T04:21:00.014+01:00

So by now I imagine everyone has seen the absolutely incredible picture of the Phoenix lander parachuting to the surface of Mars as caught by the HiRISE orbiter. Up until now I had only seen the close up, but while investigating the HiRISE site I was immediately greeted by the much larger picture.

On the left is the closeup, click on the image or the link above to see the wide view. It is thoroughly breathtaking.

Now in the blown up picture the lander looks like it's falling into the big crater named Heimdall that dominates the view, when in truth it's actually around 20 kilometers in front of it, landing on the nice flat ground!

I highly reccomend a browse of the HiRISE site if you've not been there already, it's full of the most amazing things you'll see for a while.

I can't exactly let this post go without also showing the image of the Phoenix lander on the surface too, so here you go!

Click the image for the bigger picture, also featuring the parachute, heatshield and other associated bits.

Pheonix Lander touches down on Mars

2008-05-26T01:00:00.020+01:00

Unfortunately that's about as much info as the Phoenix mission page gives at the moment, but it's certainly great to know that another probe has successfully made the trip to Mars.

Hopefully we'll see some images from the surface fairly soon!

Edit: Short article on the landing up at the Nasa site.

Double edit: Pictures are up, and the probe looks in good shape. The flat plains around it might seem slightly featureless at first, but remember that this is the surface of another planet - and thus, is awesome. Enthusiasm aside however, there is most certainly a lot to be learned here!

Swift catches a Supernova in the act

2008-05-21T20:16:00.013+01:00

In a bout of rather fantastic luck, Swift has managed to directly observe the initial x-ray flash of a supernova located in a distant galaxy . Usually by the time supernovae have been located they're already hours old, so this is one of those opportunities to get some new science done.

Bad Astronomy has a very well written page on it. Go, read, and enjoy!

Fun with Earth View

2008-05-19T17:18:00.007+01:00

There are all sorts of applets out there that simulate astronomical viewpoints, most of which manage provide a reason to keep procrastinating that little bit longer. Having stumbled across one such thing earlier today, I thought I'd share it.

Earth View allows you to input your own data to gain views of the earth from varying distances, locations and levels of detail. The default setting has a nice night/day sim, lighting up population centres when dark so that they can be seen.

Nifty!

Apod - The Origins of Gold

2008-05-18T23:42:00.000+01:00

So gold, you see it all over the place, we make ornaments out of it, use it in expensive electrical devices, and hell, sometimes we even stick it in alcohol and drink the stuff. It's pretty and fairly valuable, but that ain't the half of it... you want awesome? Look at the circumstances surrounding its creation.

Now neutron rich elements such as gold are typically thought to be created in events such as supernovae, and usually that'd be more than cool enough, but it gets better. In our solar system the abundance of gold appears to be much higher than can be explained by conventional means, meaning that likely something else happened.

The answer it would appear, is that something along the lines of two neutron stars colliding could be responsible. In order to fully demonstrate how awesome this is I'd have to jump around making exploding noises and gesticulating lots. You're spared that for now, hopefully the mental image was enough.

Visit today's Astronomy Picture of the Day for the story.

Devils on Mars

2008-05-17T02:13:00.004+01:00

Though not of the sort the title may bring to mind, these are of a somewhat less fiery and more dusty variety.

Dust devils form when hot air close to ground level rises through an area of cooler low pressure air above, and are seen all over the world wherever there are flat plains and plenty of dust lying around. Considering Mars meets all the qualifications you may expect to see them there too right?

Right!

On Earth these whirling vortexes of air and dust are typically no larger than three feet in diameter, however on Mars they can be up to fifty times that, big enough even to provide a scare for the rovers currently wandering the surface of the planet.

Here (and in the above link) you can see a fantastic panorama taken from the landing site of one of the aforementioned rovers, and it quite noticeably features quite a few of our friends. I always think images such as these are particularly great as they really help to bring Mars to life, adding real dynamics to the still pictures we usually get back from our interplanetary voyagers.

Venusian orbits

2008-05-15T15:36:00.008+01:00

A few days ago ESA's Venus express probe completed its first two years orbiting our sister planet. Since then it has been revising and updating our knowledge of the planet, having already returned to us over 1200 Gig of data.

Among the most recent discoveries is the presence of the molecule Hydroxyl in the Venusian atmosphere. The molecule was detected by the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer about the craft at an altitude of around 100km from the planet's surface.

This is significant as it is highly reactive stuff, playing many important roles in the relative abundance of substances such as Ozone in atmospheres.

Full story on the ESA site.

Nasa reveals all

2008-05-14T18:09:00.017+01:00

Turns out the discovery mentioned in a previous post was that of a supernova remnant in our galaxy a mere hundred years or so old.

Radio and X-ray composite of G1.9+03

The Supernova who's official name is G1.9+03 is located right near the galactic centre at a distance from us of about 27,000 lightyears, and is the youngest supernova remnant that has ever been observed in our galaxy.

Very cool stuff. It's a rare opportunity to get some serious observations in on a remnant at such an early stage, and in a place where they can continue for a long long time.

Just noticed Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has a fantastic rundown already up, so go there and read it!

Interesting Lectures - Part 2

2008-05-14T01:47:00.002+01:00

So this week's lecture is part 7 of a 27 part series by Richard A. Muller, on his course entitled Physics for Future Presidents. The idea is that the whole course would give any potential president the knowledge he'd need to actually make informed decisions on the physical world and essential matters in physics that may be dealt with on a regular basis in that particular line of work.

Mandatory for all world leaders. If only eh?

In any case this part is entited Nukes, and you've guessed it - it involves some fun fun nuclear physics. Contained therein is an overview of the mechanics behind the bombs and reactors.

Everyone loves some good old fashioned particle physics, of the sort that was around back when things such as quarks were but a mere glint in a young physicists eye!

Nasa plays it mysterious

2008-05-13T09:03:00.011+01:00

For the moment in any case.

NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years.

So we'll know tomorrow!

Considering the discovery involves the Chandra observatory, it's going to be something that involves X-ray wavelength related stuff, which narrows the field down somewhat.

So black holes, supernovae, neutron and white dwarf stars, active galaxies and quasars even entire galaxy clusters could be involved, and thats just off the top of my head.

Edit: Evidently the Chandra observatory has recently been concentrating on our galactic centre, which would suggest that if this discovery is recent, it is possibly related to our rather massive black hole friend in the middle of our galaxy.

Cassini tour extended

2008-05-13T02:45:00.001+01:00

The ten year old Cassini probe gets to live for another two years after a decision made by NASA means that the craft that has returned us some of the most fantastic pictures and comprehensive data on Saturn and its moons ever will be able to send us back the aforementioned awesomeness for a while longer.

Feel like seeing what the ringed giant and satellites looks like up close? Visiting the Cassini Huygens homepage will reveal all.

I have to say, my favourite image by far is this'un of the walnut shaped moon Iapetus. The way the light hits it really lets you to imagine that you're right there looking at it from a mere thirty thousand kilometers or so away.

Missing universe? it's ok, we've found some of it

2008-05-12T15:25:00.008+01:00

It is well known the the majority of the universe is not composed of baryonic matter, the kind of stuff that we and everything we experience is made of composes a mere 4.6% of the total, with dark energy and dark matter making up the next 72 and 23 percent respectively. So the 'bulk' of the universe is pretty much invisible to us, plaguing cosmologists with the responsibility of finding the damn stuff.

One real problem lay in the fact that up till now, a fair amount of the baryonic matter we know should be there was in hiding. This stuff should be easier to find, but it was still missing!

Its all comes down to light, matter needs to either emit, reflect or even absorb electromagnetic radiation in one form or another in order to be directly observed, stuff that normal matter will always tend to do. Thus, with sensitive detectors and the right places to look, we should be able to locate the missing amount.

Enter ESA’s orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton. A team of scientists used the detector to find the awol matter by targeting the areas around large galaxy clusters, and in doing so found the filaments of super hot gas in the space between galaxies, something that current cosmological models had predicted.

Gotcha!

More work remains to be done in order to map the newly discovered matter, but this is the first step towards greater understanding and further mapping of cosmological distributions.

Full story on the ESA site

Find the Mars Polar Lander

2008-05-11T17:00:00.005+01:00

So Nasa wants your help to find the failed 1999 Mars Polar Lander.

They have a huge amount of data to sift through and so have released the imaging data collected by the HiRISE satellite to the public in order to speed things up a bit. Sounds like a good way to burn some free time to me.

As I originally saw this on Bad Astronomy it seems only right to link to the original post here.

The blog still lives

2008-05-02T01:53:00.006+01:00

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last week or so, it's been a crazy few days. My computer suddenly decided it was going to get rid of a paper I had been writing mere days from the deadline, so some pretty hectic re-writing ensued. Fun!

In order to prevent boredom however, here's a quick piece of news on the Jules Verne freighter previously featured- It's being used to give the ISS an altitude boost

Artists impression of the boosting procedure being carried out by Jules Verne (ESA)

Sun takes offense to comet

2008-04-21T06:57:00.007+01:00

What does it look like when a comet and a Coronal Mass Ejection meet?

Well, the answer is something like this.

Interesting Lectures - Part 1

2008-04-19T09:11:00.011+01:00

Waking up too early is always an interesting experience, the day hasn't started yet and generally there's very little to do, so you need to find something to fill that space to stop yourself from going insane with boredom. Earlier today caught me combating this issue by browsing various interesting lectures on Google video. As there are so many of them worth watching, covering such a wide range of subjects I figure I'll make this a semi-regular thing on the blog.

So I bring you Part One of the new series, a lecture by Stephen Wolfram on the thesis of his book - A New Kind of Science.

The lecture itself is about the nature of experimental computation and the resulting implications in scientific methodology as can be applied to our understanding of the systems that govern our universe. Kapow!

It was certainly more than interesting enough to keep me going until I could grab some serious coffee with which to start the day. At around an hour and a half long be prepared to settle in for a good watch.

Scary stuff!

2008-04-16T02:58:00.004+01:00

Ever wondered what the end of the world might look like? This shows a cool simulation of one possible scenario.

The reality is we'd have to have our heads buried in the ground not to notice something of this size coming right at us without a fair bit of advance warning. The question is what to do about it!

Take a picture

2008-04-11T05:58:00.004+01:00

Imaging the cosmos is the very basis of modern astronomy, so whenever I find a site that has some good pictures, I make sure to bookmark it.

The latest discovery in this vein was this'un, which has some rather special pictures considering they're taken with a fairly small scope (6" f5 Newt) I'm impressed, and rather envious!

Seemed worth a share.

Closer to home

2008-04-10T01:37:00.003+01:00

Far too often when people consider astronomy they look to the far reaches of the universe for their spectacular sights, it's something thats always best done at night right?

Wrong! Solar astronomy doesn't happen at night (for one rather self-evident reason), and just because the Sun is such a common sight don't be fooled into thinking it isn't utterly spectacular when viewed in the right way. By observing our closest star we can glean huge amounts of information about how stellar processes that are too far away to investigate in the same sort of detail might work.

And as per the usual this is all leading to a rather cool link.

This eclipse composite is my personal favourite.