Andromedachild

A STUDY IN SCARLET

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 21:56:00 +0100

Star Formation Region Gum 41.

This new image from ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile reveals a cloud of hydrogen called Gum 41. In the middle of this little-known nebula, brilliant hot young stars are giving off energetic radiation that causes the surrounding hydrogen to glow with a characteristic red hue.

This area of the southern sky, in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur), is home to many bright nebulae, each associated with hot new-born stars that formed out of the clouds of hydrogen gas. The intense radiation from the stellar new-borns excites the remaining hydrogen around them, making the gas glow in the distinctive shade of red typical of star-forming regions. Another famous example of this phenomenon is the Lagoon Nebula, a vast cloud that glows in similar bright shades of scarlet.

The nebula in this picture is located some 7300 light-years from Earth. Australian astronomer Colin Gum discovered it on photographs taken at the Mount Stromlo Observatory near Canberra, and included it in his catalogue of 84 emission nebulae, published in 1955. Gum 41 is actually one small part of a bigger structure called the Lambda Centauri Nebula, also known by the more exotic name of the Running Chicken Nebula. Gum died at a tragically early age in a skiing accident in Switzerland in 1960.

Star formation region Gum 41 is located in the constellation of Centaurus.

In this picture of Gum 41, the clouds appear to be quite thick and bright, but this is actually misleading. If a hypothetical human space traveller could pass through this nebula, it is likely that they would not notice it as — even at close quarters — it would be too faint for the human eye to see. This helps to explain why this large object had to wait until the mid-twentieth century to be discovered — its light is spread very thinly and the red glow cannot be well seen visually.

This new portrait of Gum 41 — likely one of the best so far of this elusive object — has been created using data from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. It is a combination of images taken through blue, green, and red filters, along with an image using a special filter designed to pick out the red glow from hydrogen.

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ASTRONOMY 101: EARTH'S MAGNETOSPHERE

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 22:34:00 +0100

The magnetosphere is a protective field that extends thousands of miles into space. Its magnetism affects everything from global communication to weather patterns. Created by the Earth’s spinning molten core, its existence means that the charged particles of the solar wind are unable to cross the magnetic field lines and are deflected around the Earth towards the poles. This causes beautiful auroras, sometimes appearing far south of their indigenous polar regions, like the recent displays in mid latitude zones.

This life-protecting magnetic field, has decreased by fifteen per cent over the last two centuries. Some scientists think this could be an indication that the Earth’s poles are about to exhibit a long overdue flip. The Earth would be exposed to ozone layer damaging solar winds while power supplies are wiped out, the climate is changed and cancer rates rocket.

A magnetosphere is that area of space, around a planet, that is controlled by the planet's magnetic field. The shape of the Earth's magnetosphere is the direct result of being blasted by solar wind. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/Aaron Kaase

A recent Danish study concludes that the magnetosphere has far more influence on climate change than carbon dioxide levels, and says the Earth is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere.

In November three spacecraft were launched as part of the SWARM mission to uncover the threat of magnetic field change and map it more accurately. Historic evidence shows how dramatically the field has decreased and it appears that every few hundred thousand years the polarity flips so a compass would point south instead of north.

A continued decline of the field over billions of years, would see the Earth looking like Mars, a once oceanic world that has become dry and barren. However, the rate of decline is too fast for the Earth’s core to simply burn out, and it could be the Earth's poles are about to undergo another flip. If this occurs, it would cause the Earth’s magnetic shield to be weakened for thousands of years, opening up our defences and causing cosmic radiation to get through.

Scientists point out that a magnetic flip would not be a catastrophic, and not all of the effects will be bad. The much sought-after spectacle of an aurora would be visible every night all over the Earth as solar winds hit the atmosphere.

There remains, however, much work yet to be done in understanding the properties of the Earth’s core, and how it generates the magnetosphere.

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CLOSE AND COLD NEIGHBOUR OF OUR SUN DISCOVERED

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 14:39:00 +0100

This artist's conception shows the object named WISE J085510.83-071442.5, the coldest known brown dwarf. This cool star-like body is as frosty as the North Pole. It is also the fourth closest system to our sun, at 7.2 light-years from Earth. Image Credit: Penn State University/NASA/JPL-Caltech.

ByANDY FLEMING

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered what appears to be the coldest "brown dwarf" known - a dim, star-like body that, surprisingly, is as frosty as Earth's North Pole.

Images from the space telescopes also pinpointed the object's distance to 7.2 light-years away, earning it the title for fourth closest system to our sun. The closest system, a trio of stars, is Alpha Centauri, at about 4 light-years away.

"It's very exciting to discover a new neighbour of our solar system that is so close," said Kevin Luhman, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University's Centre for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, University Park.

"And given its extreme temperature, it should tell us a lot about the atmospheres of planets, which often have similarly cold temperatures."

Brown dwarfs start their lives like stars, as collapsing balls of gas, but they lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel and radiate starlight. The newfound coldest brown dwarf is named WISE J085510.83-071442.5. It has a chilly temperature between minus 48 to minus 13 degrees Celsius. Previous record holders for coldest brown dwarfs, also found by WISE and Spitzer, were about room temperature.

WISE was able to spot the rare object because it surveyed the entire sky twice in infrared light, observing some areas up to three times. Cool objects like brown dwarfs can be invisible when viewed by visible-light telescopes, but their thermal glow - even if feeble - stands out in infrared light. In addition, the closer a body, the more it appears to move in images taken months apart. Airplanes are a good example of this effect: a closer, low-flying plane will appear to fly overhead more rapidly than a high-flying one.

"This object appeared to move really fast in the WISE data," said Luhman. "That told us it was something special."

After noticing the fast motion of WISE J085510.83-071442.5 in March, 2013, Luhman spent time analysing additional images taken with Spitzer and the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachon in Chile. Spitzer's infrared observations helped determine the frosty temperature of the brown dwarf. Combined detections from WISE and Spitzer, taken from different positions around the sun, enabled the measurement of its distance through the parallax effect. This is the same principle that explains why your finger, when held out right in front of you, appears to jump from side to side when you alternate left- and right-eye views.

"It is remarkable that even after many decades of studying the sky, we still do not have a complete inventory of the sun's nearest neighbours," said Michael Werner, the project scientist for Spitzer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. JPL manages and operates Spitzer. "This exciting new result demonstrates the power of exploring the universe using new tools, such as the infrared eyes of WISE and Spitzer."

WISE J085510.83-071442.5 is estimated to be 3 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter. With such a low mass, it could be a gas giant similar to Jupiter that was ejected from its star system. But scientists estimate it is probably a brown dwarf rather than a planet since brown dwarfs are known to be fairly common. If so, it is one of the least massive brown dwarfs known.

In March of 2013, Luhman's analysis of the images from WISE uncovered a pair of much warmer brown dwarfs at a distance of 6.5 light years, making that system the third closest to the sun. His search for rapidly moving bodies also demonstrated that the outer solar system probably does not contain a large, undiscovered planet, which has been referred to as "Planet X" or "Nemesis."

Source: NASA/JPL

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SEE THE SUN'S "RING OF FIRE" ECLIPSE - LIVE!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 14:15:00 +0100

Annular solar eclipse, as seen in these time lapse images taken at the Jansky Very Large Array, west of Socorro, New Mexico on May 20, 2012.

ByANDY FLEMING

On Tuesday 29 April 2014, tomorrow, an annular solar eclipse will occur. Eclipses occur when our moon moves between the Earth and the Sun blocking the Sun's light. Tomorrow's eclipse is known as an annular eclipse and is a little different to what we might think of as a 'normal' solar eclipse where the Sun completely disappears behind the Moon.

Due to the current distance of the Moon from the Earth as it orbits, the relative size of the Moon will not appear large enough in the sky to block out all of the light from the Sun. Instead it will cause the Sun to appear as a bright ring as the outer edges of the Sun are seen shining around the Moon at the height of the eclipse. The resulting ring of light is known as the 'annulus' or 'the ring of fire'.

Sadly this amazing sight will only be visible in a few areas of the world. The total annular eclipse will in fact be visible only from a very remote and uninhabited area of Antarctica where the instant of the greatest eclipse will be at 06:03 UTC. The south of Indonesia and Australia will however get a chance to see at least a partial eclipse.

If you do happen to be lucky enough to catch a view remember that you should never look directly at the Sun when trying to view an eclipse. One of the easiest ways to safely watch it is to create a projection of it. A cheap and easy way it to create your own pinhole camera!

Watch the Annular Eclipse LIVE direct from the Slooh Telescope, Australia

The next annular solar eclipse will not occur until September 2016. Although a little bit of a while to wait the good news is that it should be easier to view. Much of Africa should this time be able to see the event as well as Antarctica, Australia and south Asia.

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WHEN IT COMES TO STARS, SIZE MATTERS!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 21:58:00 +0100

Relative sizes of the planets in the Solar System and several well-known stars:

Mercury < Mars < Venus < Earth

Earth < Neptune < Uranus < Saturn < Jupiter

Jupiter < Wolf 359 < Sun < Sirius

Sirius < Pollux < Arcturus < Aldebaran

Aldebaran < Rigel < Antares < Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse < Mu Cephei < VV Cephei A < VY Canis Majoris

ByANDY FLEMING

One of the really awesome and mind-blowing aspects of astronomy is the sheer immense scale of the distances between planets, stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters. Our everyday terrestrial notions of scale, size, and distance must be discarded, even if we just consider a transit between the Earth and Mars. Kilometres first fall as units of measurement, then astronomical units (AU)(one AU is the distance between the Earth and Sun) -- when we start to consider interstellar distances we have to look at light years as units of measurement (the distance that light travels in one year).

If distances become truly 'astronomical', then it comes as no surprise that likewise sizes and masses follow suit. We all think that the Sun is massive, and it is, with a radius of 695,990km, this is 109 times that of the Earth. With a mass of 1.989x1030 kg, the Sun has the equivalent of 333,000 Earth masses, and yet it is still just a run-of-the-mill yellow dwarf class G2 star. As the diagram above shows, although there are many considerably smaller than the Sun (very common red dwarf stars) such as our nearest neighbour Proxima Centauri, there are also stars very much more massive.

The largest and most luminous star known is VY Canis Majoris, a red hypergiant located in the constellation Canis Major. At between 1,800 and 2,100 solar radii (approximately 2,750,000,000km across), it is a single star nearly 5,000 light years away from the Earth, and quite probably the largest star in our galaxy. To gain some perspective of its size, if the Earth were to be represented by a sphere one centimetre in diameter, the Sun would be represented as a sphere with a diameter of 109 centimetres, at a distance of 117 meters. At these scales, VY Canis Majoris would have a diameter of approximately two kilometres!

Of course, this is all very interesting information, and will certainly entertain your friends, but a star's size is intrinsically involved in determining attributes such as its luminosity, colour, temperature and lifespan. Put simply, when it comes to stars, size really does matter!

Generally speaking, the larger a star the greater its mass, and hence the more its gravity. High mass stars with stronger gravity have greater pressure in their cores, greater pressure leads to higher temperatures and these lead to much faster nuclear fusion reactions, whereby the star's hydrogen fuel is converted into helium, with the release of massive amounts of energy. This energy creates a radiation pressure, and while gravity tries to contract the star, this radiation pressure simultaneously tries to expand it -- the result is a stable hydrostatic equilibrium which can last for millions, if not billions of years.

However, once a star runs out of hydrogen fuel and starts to fuse helium into even heavier elements, this equilibrium cannot continue, and it won't be long before the star is no longer what could be regarded as a normal stellar main sequence object. Because high mass stars burn their fuel much, much quicker due to the greater core pressure caused by gravity, they live relatively short lives -- they live fast and die young as supernovae -- they are the James Dean of the stellar zoo.

A star such as Rigel, in the constellation of Orion, a hot blue supergiant with a diameter sixty times that of the Sun, has a mass of seventeen times that of our star, and hence 40,000 times its luminosity. Under its massive core pressure, its nuclear fusion reactions will race away, it will quickly run out of fuel, and hence it will live for only 20 or 30 million years. Our Sun on the other hand has enough hydrogen fuel to burn at its leisurely pace for ten billion years or more -- small red dwarfs with lower pressure and lower temperatures will undergo nuclear fusion for much longer. With smaller mass and less gravity, Proxima Centauri for example will live for at least 20 to 30 billion years.

An interesting consequence of a star's size and temperature is its brightness. Generally speaking, a larger mass star main sequence star, having a higher temperature will be bluer in colour, while a smaller, cooler star will be redder -- the inverse of the colour conventions used on our devices warning of hot or cold temperatures!

So the next time you gaze at brilliant blue white Rigel, white Sirus, or yellow Arcturus with your telescope or binoculars, you're looking at stars in decreasing masses and sizes.

And remember -- when it comes to stars, size really does matter!

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CHILDREN OF THE STARS

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 22:19:00 +0100

ByANDY FLEMING

It’s the story of how we, and all of the creatures with whom we share the Earth came to be. It’s an epic tale to rival the best Shakespearean tragedy or our best works of literature. It’s the story of how we and everything we see was literally ‘made in heaven’, and it confidently predicts what our fate may be...

Stars do not live forever, and our Sun will one day die, and with it all life on Earth. Five billion years from now, when our planet has been incinerated to a crisp, our local star will have run out of the fuel that powers its nuclear fusion. Its hydrogen depleted and all consumed, it will have metamorphosed from the relatively stable yellow dwarf star that we see today into a bloated angry red giant, its outer layers and atmosphere occupying most of the inner solar system.

Indeed, the Sun is already imperceptibly increasing in temperature – it’s 20 per cent hotter now than when the Earth coalesced out of the Sun’s proto-planetary disk 4½ billion years ago, and within a couple of hundred million years the Earth will become uninhabitable. This chain of events is inevitable and, over different time periods, happens to all stars.

Stars coalesce by gravity out of clouds of interstellar gas, made up largely of the original constit-uent elements of the universe: about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium, plus trace amounts of lithium – the latter two termed ‘metals’ in the unorthodox nomenclature of astronomy.

Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram detailing stellar luminosity v surface temperature.

The force of gravity contracts the proto-star to the point where pressure and temperature dictate that nuclear fusion starts and it begins to shine. The star is then said to gain membership of the ‘main sequence’ (see below), and will spend the vast majority of its life undergoing the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. A small amount of mass is converted in the process into energy (under E = mc2, mass is equivalent to energy). A hydrostatic equilibrium is achieved whereby the gravity of the star is counterbalanced by the energy, in the form of photon and radiation pressure from the nuclear reactions within its core.

At this stage, the star gives the appearance of stability in terms of shape and size. In truth, however, it is a magnetically contorted and tortured object, erupting frequently and spewing out solar flares, charged particles such as protons, and coronal mass ejections. Stars the mass of our Sun will be in this hydrostatic equilibrium for about 10 billion years, but all the while, the concentration of helium in their cores continues to increase. As it does so, the star begins to contract to maintain hydrostatic equilibrium, and temperatures in the core gradually increase over billions of years.

Finally, when the star’s nuclear fuel is exhausted, gravity exceeds radiation pressure and the core contracts much further, until spiralling temperatures and pressures succeed in igniting helium, which is then fused and transmuted into carbon via the triple-alpha process. The loosely gravitationally bound outer layers are puffed out, and the star becomes a red giant.

Gravity has won -- the progenitor star, having had insufficient initial mass to fuse heavier elements, ends its life as a white dwarf, within which, owing to a quantum effect (the Pauli exclusion principle), the repulsive negative electric charge of tightly bound electrons in the star is sufficient to resist further collapse. These sub-atomic particles are not morally reprehensible, but this energy has the unfortunate title of ‘electron degeneracy pressure’!

A white dwarf is a truly bizarre, object – a star of diamond, a dense hot carbon star the size of the Earth, but with the mass of the Sun. It puffs off its outer layers to interstellar space as a beautiful planetary nebula, and over billions of years it will cool off to become a black dwarf.

Larger blue giant hot stars, however, with a mass range between a couple and one hundred solar masses, burn through their fuel at a much more prodigious rate. They live fast and die young: they are the James Deans of the star family, with life-spans in millions rather than billions of years. One such well-known star is Rigel in the constellation of Orion the Hunter.

Neither does the nuclear fusion process within the core of such a star terminate at the element carbon. With its high mass and thus much higher gravity, the result is a much more compact stellar core with higher temperatures and pressures, thus ensuring the nucleosynthesis of ever heavier elements.

The process only stops with the exceedingly stable atomic nucleus of element number 26, iron. Up to this point, the fusion process in all stars has been exothermic, i.e. during nuclear fusion energy has been constantly released as elements have been transmuted via E = mc2. However, the dying star is about to undergo one of the most spectacular phenomena in the cosmos.

At this point, one may ask, just as the great British astronomer and astrophysicist Fred Hoyle did, how are the remaining natural chemical elements formed – those most essential for life, from cobalt at atomic number 27, right up to uranium with atomic number 92? The answer is: with an event of gargantuan violence – a Type II supernova.

The contorted, twisted iron star collapses under its own gravity, and detonates and explodes with a shockwave and explosion of gargantuan proportions. The awesome energy released fuses the heavier elements in a final endothermic nuclear fusion reaction, and these elements are then vomited back into space, enriching the clouds of gas and dust that in the future will coalesce to form another generation of stars. In this manner, successive generations of stars become ever richer in heavier elements from nitrogen to iron, and then right up the periodic table to uranium.

The process that follows this cataclysmic event is intrinsically bound up with the mass of the progenitor star. If this was less than ten solar masses, it collapses into a neutron star, a hideous and fascinating object so dense that it resembles a giant atomic nucleus with a diameter of 20 kilometres, about the size of Greater London. Stabilised by neutron degeneracy pressure and with insufficient gravity, this neutron star can collapse no further. However, its huge angular momentum from energy produced by its gravitational collapse ensures that it spins as a pulsar, often at near-relativistic speeds (speeds approaching that of light), with intense jets of charged particles emanating from its poles due to intense magnetic fields generated in the star.

The frequency of the pulsar’s spin is constant over human timescales, and varies in value depending on the size of the neutron star and the mass of its progenitor. It can range from a few seconds to milliseconds. Pulsars are in effect Nature’s successful attempts at exquisitely accurate timepieces – outclassed only by our modern atomic clocks. When first detected by Anthony Hewish and Jocelyn Burnell at Cambridge University in 1967, the radio signature of the first pulsar stellar remnant was thought to be artificial in original... and was duly labelled on the computer print out as ‘LGM’, standing for Little Green Men! Well-known pulsars include that in the centre of the Crab Nebula (M1), resulting from a supernova witnessed by Chinese astronomers in 1054 AD, and the Vela Pulsar.

Finally, progenitor stars with masses of between 10 and 100 solar masses end their lives as probably the most bizarre object known, one that is the subject of endless speculation and folk-lore: a black hole. For a star to become a black hole, its mass, and hence gravity, must be large enough to ensure that its final contraction overcomes neutron degeneracy pressure, the stellar remnant collapsing into a singularity, a point of infinite density. Its gravity is so great that its escape velocity is more than the speed of light. This point surrounding the singularity, beyond which no light or indeed any electromagnetic radiation can escape, is termed its ‘event horizon’.

Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

One final type of important star detonation that must be mentioned is a Type Ia supernova. The mechanism for its explosion is very different from that of a Type II event. A Type Ia supernova occurs when one of the stars in a closely bound binary system is a dense white dwarf. Its immense gravity-well draws material from the atmosphere and outer layer of its companion main sequence star, and deposits it onto the surface of the white dwarf.

When the mass of the white dwarf finally equals approximately 1.4 solar masses (the so-called Chandrasekhar Limit, named after the brilliant Indian American Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (see left)), it will collapse under its own gravity and detonate as a Type Ia supernova, again spewing heavy elements into the interstellar medium.

In addition, such exploding stars are of immense importance to cosmologists – they always detonate at the same mass and have approximately the same intrinsic brightness. As such they can be used as ‘standard candles’ for measuring cosmic distances over inter-galactic scales.

It is truly astounding that some of the most awesomely powerful and destructive phenomena in the heavens are simultaneously responsible for creating a habitable universe. For if it were not for massive stars that ended their brief lives as supernovae, there would be no Milky Way, no solar system, no Earth, and no homo sapiens. Everything from which we are made, from the iron in our blood to the calcium in our bones, can all be directly traced back to the fiery cores of long-dead stars.

You see, you are a child of the stars. You were quite literally ‘made in heaven’. As the late NASA astronomer and astrobiologist Carl Sagan so eloquently stated, 'You are the cosmos with consciousness, a way for the cosmos to know itself, star stuff harvesting starlight'. There can be no more profound or spiritually uplifting a thought than that.

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EUROPE TO EXPAND COOPERATION WITH RUSSIA IN SPACE

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 13 Apr 2014 01:41:00 +0100

Europe Seeks Greater Cooperation with Russia on Space Projects. A Soyuz booster lifts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome taking a joint European and Russian crew to the International Space Station.

The European Space Agency (ESA) will not limit its space cooperation with Russia as it has

earlier been done by the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), Russian Federal Space Agency deputy head Sergey Saveliev told a teleconference at ITAR-TASS ahead of Cosmonautics Day marked in Russia on April 12, 2014.

“There will be no sanctions from European partners,” he said. “On the contrary, there are plans to expand our cooperation.”

Saveliev recalled that ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst will launch as a member of an international crew aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur cosmodrome on May 28 to begin a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

“A large delegation from the European Space Agency is expected at Baikonur,” he added.

Progress supply ship docks with ISS

Last week, the US space agency posted on its Twitter and Facebook accounts a statement announcing the suspension of cooperation with Russia in an apparent move of siding with Washington administration’s sanctions in regard to Moscow over the situation in Ukraine.

NASA’s decision to suspend the majority of space cooperation projects with Russia was accepted not only with bewilderment among Russian space experts, but also drew criticism inside the US space agency as well. A number of Russian space experts remarked that the suspension of cooperation would be to the detriment of NASA itself.

Speaking about these sanctions against Russia, the Roscosmos official said: “We depend on each other to a large extent. This (NASA sanctions) is an incautious step.

Original Source: Rianovosti

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ASTRONOMY 101: NASA'S APOLLO PROGRAM

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 23:47:00 +0100

In 1961 President John F. Kennedy promised that the United States would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The sheer audacity and scale of Kennedy’s vision is now hard to comprehend. It would cost $120 billion, employ 400,000 people at its peak, use rockets and computers not yet even imagined, let alone designed, and new alloys yet to be discovered.

Before the Apollo project began NASA's Mercury and Gemini programs put astronauts into Earth orbit and tested docking procedures necessary for a lunar landing. Launched by the largest rocket built, the mighty Saturn V, the Apollo spacecraft was made up of three parts.

It's Christmas Day, 1968 and the crew of NASA's Apollo
8 take a photograph that would become the iconic image
of the sixties. It would also become the most profound
environmental photograph of all time.
They called it 'Earthrise'.

These were the command module where the astronauts lived on the journey and the only part that returned to Earth; the service module that provided the power and consumables; and the lunar module that would allow the astronauts to descend to the lunar surface.

The first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon was Apollo 8 on Christmas Day, 1968, famous for the iconic ‘Earthrise’ photograph that showed the fragility of our planet along with Commander Jim Lovell’s beautiful Genesis narrative. On July 16, 1969 Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins on board. On July 20, 1969 the lunar module "Eagle", with Armstrong and Aldrin aboard descended to the Sea of Tranquillity on the lunar surface, an event watched by millions worldwide on television. Armstrong lowered a ladder and stepped down on the moon's surface. It was "one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind." It was the first step by mankind on another world.

The NASA Apollo 11 mission in 1969 took the first humans to the surface of the moon. Millions of Earthlings watched with bated breath as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (pictured) alighted from the lunar module. Image Credit: NASA.

The astronauts spent about two and a half hours on the lunar surface, raising the American flag, collecting rocks and setting up instruments. After lifting off they flew back to the command module and successfully joined Michael Collins. Four days later Apollo 11 successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.

In the years that followed there were five more lunar landings, with Apollos 15, 16 and 17 even including a lunar rover that allowed the astronauts to travel tens of kilometres from their spacecraft. The landing sites had romantic sounding names such as Hadley Rille, the Taurus-Littrow valley and the Fra Mauro crater just above the Sea of Storms. All of the sites have since been stunningly imaged by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the photos on NASA’s website even show the astronauts rovers and footprints!

The Apollo program was a stunning success and for those who were around for those all too brief years between 1969 and 1972 it will never be forgotten. Sadly Apollos 18 to 20 were cancelled as a budget cutting measure by President Richard Nixon even as Armstrong undertook the first moon walk. The program was a product of the Cold War space race with the USSR and once this military goal had been achieved the solar system could be explored more economically, safely and efficiently by unmanned robotic missions.

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SHARING THE P, B AND J

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 4 Apr 2014 00:50:00 +0100

BBC2's Stargazing Live presenters: Brian Cox and Dara O Briain. Photograph courtesy of the BBC.

byANDY FLEMING

The late NASA astronomer and science populariser Dr Carl Sagan once wrote about his passion for science stating that when you’re in love with someone or something, you want to tell the world. And he was in love with science and astronomy.

To socialise is a strong human trait, we are after all perhaps the most social of animals; hence the popularity of internet social media such as Facebook and Twitter. And such media are a potent tool when it comes to inspiring others to become involved with our own interests and hobbies. It’s what the Chief Executive Officer of the Pasadena, California-based Planetary Society, the Science and Planetary Guy Bill Nye calls sharing the P, B and J; the Passion, Beauty and Joy of astronomy and space exploration.

So who inspired you into the subject of astronomy, space exploration and science? Was it one

The late Sir Partrick Moore, presenter of BBC1's Sky at
Night programme for over fifty years.

of the pioneering popularisers of the twentieth century using broadcast media to convey their interest and passion and to help inspire you into the hobby or perhaps scientific career?

Perhaps it was Jacob Bronowski, David Attenborough, Carl Sagan or Sir Patrick Moore. Or perhaps it was one of the contemporary popularisers of science such as Dr Brian Cox or Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson. It could have been reading up on the lives and thoughts of the early Ancient Greek natural philosophers or indeed perhaps discovering the paradigm-shifting discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Einstein or Hubble. Or it could have been a friend or family member who shared and inspired you into their passion, perhaps even throwing in some optical equipment such as a pair of binoculars or a telescope!

Whoever it was, why not give something back to the subject and spread the word of science? If you’re enthralled by astronomy and have experienced the spiritual uplift of realising your place in space and time you quite possibly have a yearning to share your interest and lobby to support initiatives in science and space exploration.

You may be a member of your local astronomical society, but you’re possibly wondering what else can you do to promote your passion and hobby? In the twenty first century there’s much you can do without even leaving the comfort of your own home. For starters, why not join an astronomy forum, or even better, join the blogosphere. You’ll soon be publishing by registering free for a service such as Google Blogger, or start a traditional website at one of the free web hosts such as http://www.webs.com/. If you can find objects in the night sky through a telescope and know how to switch a computer “on”, you’ll find publishing on the internet easier than A, B, C!

If you’re into astro-imaging then this is a great place to upload and showcase your images

, videos or sketches. Alternatively you can publish your own astronomy posts on subjects of your choice. These may include your observing notes, articles and news from the world of astronomy and cosmology that you may wish to publicise. In addition to your own articles, guest bloggers can be engaged and of course press releases and photographs can be reproduced without royalties from organisations such as NASA, JPL, ESA, the European Southern Observatory, the W M Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii and indeed virtually every other astronomical research establishment in the world! Publicising your posts for free on social media and bookmarking sites such as Reddit, Stumbleupon, Facebook or Twitter will mean your blog will soon be attracting thousands of readers and subscribers, along with all of their comments (which you can moderate!).

M31, the stunning Andromeda Galaxy

M27 the Dumbbell Nebula in Vulpecula.

In addition to the internet there’s also astronomy society member magazines where you can share your experiences with other astro-folk. Or perhaps you could share your passion by producing an astronomy society meeting presentation on a subject of your choice.

Of course, there’s also helping at a star party, perhaps at a planetarium or, as I have done recently in connection with BBC2’s Stargazing LIVE at another venue altogether.

In the UK, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds takes the inter-relationship between birds, other wildlife and the natural environment, including the night sky and I had great fun helping out at a star party with members of the general public, who were thrilled to view the night sky through a large 200mm Newtonian Reflector. The staff too at the superb RSPB field centre at Saltholme near Port Clarence, were also thoroughly enthralled!

If you have connections with the media then network and utilise your contacts and skills. Local newspaper editors particularly like ready made articles about astronomy, cosmology and science in general. This is particularly the case now as competition from the internet and new media means many newspaper groups no longer have the funds to employ dedicated science correspondents. Well-written press releases with succinct information and contact details are much appreciated. An example of what can be achieved is illustrated by a recent interview I had with Stuart Arnold at the Northern Echo. My input was part of a story that again was being published to celebrate BBC2‟s Stargazing LIVE entitled Fresh Focus on the Night Sky.

Astronomy Live and On Air direct from the presenter on
local FM radio.

Of course if one’s work and passion for astronomy can be included in the free-to-air broadcast media then a real sense of fulfilment can be achieved and you can literally have the attention of thousands of viewers or listeners for maximum impact! Perhaps eventually your astro-photography will be featured on the BBC1’s very popular Sky at Night programme. Now that would be an inspiration indeed for all budding astro-imagers!

I managed to dovetail my lifelong interest in radio, music and astronomy into a weekly five minute slot on my programme on a local radio station that and was well aware of the popularity of astronomy due in part to the success of Dr Brian Cox’s numerous BBC television series. Recordings of the weekly segment were edited and stored as a podcast download on iTunes.

And then there is the possibility of narrating and publishing your own podcast or presenting a strand on a pre-existing podcast or web radio show, such as the segment I present on Podcast-UFO.

Don’t forget to tailor the broadcast to the general public. Of course one is always open to the accusation of ‘dumbing down’ the subject, but since April, 2012 I’ve managed to cover subjects in an interesting and inspirational style as diverse as black holes, exoplanets orbiting Alpha Centauri B, astrophysics, numerous constellations, SETI, along with a monthly ‘What’s Up?’ segment. It’s amazing what you can communicate in a few minutes on the radio, and hopefully through my sound bites, the seeds are being sown in the minds of some of our listeners to explore the subject further.

Popularising astronomy either via star parties and outreach work or via the media is a very rewarding past time and one I can certainly recommend to anyone. Carl Sagan said many times that it is the birth-rite of every child to know their true co-ordinates in space and time, and by now you may think you can help in and enjoy the task of enlightening the public.

Your involvement will also bring one further massive benefit for astronomy and science that I haven’t mentioned: the public are the ones who pay the bill via their taxes for much astronomical research and exploration either solely in the UK or as collaborative efforts with other countries via projects such as the European Space Agency or the Large Hadron Collider.

It’s vitally important that amateur astronomers get as many members of the public interested in science as possible to bring pressure to bear on elected politicians to save funding for science. When politicians and the electorate are confronted by cost-saving measures, it’s another field that’s cut, rather than the scientific seed corn upon which our future technology, economy and ultimately the UK‟s future success will be built.

Who knows, something may even be done about light pollution… now that would be a real result!!

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ASTRONOMY 101: JUPITER

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 3 Apr 2014 22:38:00 +0100

What’s that really, really bright star slightly south west of overhead (or zenith) at the moment that you can see from all over the Northern Hemisphere at dusk? Well actually, it’s not a star it’s the solar system gargantuan gas giant planet Jupiter, which is making its presence felt in no uncertain terms at the moment. Jupiter is nearly large enough to be regarded as a failed star. It has a similar composition to the Sun that is mainly hydrogen and helium and emits large quantities of radiation.

It’s easy to tell it’s not a star as planets don’t twinkle. Planets are very close to the Earth in astronomical terms and hence unlike stars aren’t point sources of light, but show proper discs. If you look at Jupiter with binoculars you'll probably see on either side of it some of its entourage of moons. With a telescope you should be able to make out a couple of dark belts crossing its disc.

These are the planet’s spectacular cloud bands composed mainly of methane and ammonia, impurities in the planet’s immense atmosphere. Look closely and you’ll see a gigantic red spot, a huge storm that has raged for over four hundred years!

Jupiter as is appears through my Celestron 102SLT refracting telescope. Even at modest magnifications cloud bands in the planet's atmosphere can be clearly seen and sometimes the Great Red Spot too. Also visible even with binoculars are the planet's entourage of Galilean Moons, named after their discoverer Galileo Galilei in 1609.

For the past few years Jupiter has been rather low in the sky, but over the winter in the northern hemisphere we've been treated to some great views on clear nights, but the planet is starting to set earlier now and the hours of darkness are decreasing, so it's your last chance to get some stunning views of this gargantuan planet. Jupiter is the third brightest object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus.

Last year a brief bright flash was seen and videoed on Jupiter. This was probably the impact of an asteroid or comet, similar to the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994 which created giant bruises in Jupiter's atmosphere which lasted for months.

But this time, no scars or disturbances were seen. Many astronomers now regard the planet as the solar system’s gigantic hoover, protecting the innermost planets from killer asteroid and comets, and allowing time for life on Earth to evolve. Sometimes however, these huge rocks from space get through and impact the Earth, such as the one that killed off the dinosaurs!

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ASTRONOMY 101: BINOCULARS

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 3 Apr 2014 00:50:00 +0100

Despite having a couple of sizable telescopes my favourite piece of astronomical equipment is still a humble pair of binoculars that I bought at a car boot sale for under 5GBP! They are portable, light and easy to use on cold, damp but clear nights!

My 10 x 50 Super Zenith binoculars bought for 5GBP second hand.
With a Field of View (FOV) of 5.5 degrees they make for fantastic
views of open star clusters and some of the brighter deep sky
objects such as M31 The Andromeda Galaxy and M42, the Great
Nebula in Orion.

And they are all you need to get the ‘wow’ factor from a selection of objects that are annoyingly just beneath naked eye visibility in this month’s night sky. From a reasonably dark location in the Northern Hemisphere binoculars will bring the Andromeda Galaxy into view, along with the star forming nebula in the hunter’s sword in the constellation of Orion after dusk.

The moons of Jupiter will magically appear, as will a multitude of star clusters. Paradoxically, some objects actually appear more spectacular through binoculars than through a telescope, due to their large field of view. The Seven Sisters or Pleiades is an example of this, and binoculars show that there are many more stars in the cluster than just seven! The Moon is stunning at any time with its craters such as the magnificent Tycho and Copernicus. Binoculars will give you great views of the lunar Mare or Seas such as the Sea of Tranquility where men first landed in July 1969!

For illustration purposes only, this is a mock-up using Stellarium planetarium software of what Orion's Sword and M42, the Orion Nebula look like through 10x50 binoculars.

The most suitable binoculars for astronomy are those with the specification of ‘ten by fifty’. The ‘ten’ refers to the magnification while the ‘fifty’ refers to the size of the aperture or the lens that lets the light in. Binoculars that are larger are too heavy leading to shaking hands, while those under seven by forty simply don’t allow enough light in for relatively dim night sky objects.

For a reasonable pair of new binoculars expect to pay the equivalent of around 30 to 50GBP, but the real bargains are to be had at boot sales and on eBay where a good second hand pair can go for as little as a couple of pounds. Ensure they include a case and check the lenses for scratches.

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PARALLEL WORLDS: THE SCIENCE OF ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSES AND OUR FUTURE IN THE COSMOS by MICHIO KAKU

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 22:42:00 +0100

A Book Review byANDY FLEMING

The remit of this book is staggering – it is no less than the coverage of the development of cosmology from its beginnings in antiquity right up to the theory of the multiverse, and the fact that our universe may be just one of an infinite number, each possessing physical forces and constants with different strengths to ours. The fact that the publication is targeted at the lay person (who may have little knowledge of cosmology and astronomy), makes the remit even more remarkable.

Kaku is one of the co-founders of a branch of String Theory and as such, one may start to read the book with the misconception that its contents will be biased towards the perspective of this particular theory. However, this is not the case, and the reader is firstly treated to a commendably objective history of astronomy, classical physics and the Copernican/Galilean Revolution, relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, and the discovery of dark energy and dark matter, along with some extremely well written explanations and diagrams.

The overriding power of modern cosmology in explaining the universe – the marriage of the study of large scale objects such as galaxies groups, with that of very small scale subatomic particles is a growing theme throughout the book, and includes a superb explanation of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, and culminates in a discussion of the Standard Model, Inflation, and the five eras of the development of our universe.

Dr Michio Kaku.

Kaku gives an elegant account of the breaking of symmetry of the physical forces a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, and how String Theory can reconcile gravity with the electro-weak and strong nuclear forces, hence providing a theory of everything. Like many other physicists, he is hopeful that the evidence for super symmetry and many of the sub-atomic particles predicted by String Theory may be forthcoming at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. He certainly hopes so - the discovery of the graviton, for example will mean many physicists have not been traversing a blind alley for the past forty years! Of course, an integral part of String Theory are extra spatial dimensions and Kaku develops and speculates on whether it will be possible to detect these.

The book puts our everyday notions of time and reality to the test, and examines the fate of the universe as it expands exponentially, speculating that after trillions of years of such expansion and subsequent cooling, conditions will be unable to sustain intelligent life. Kaku also speculates on the possibility of whether given enough time, and if we don’t destroy ourselves first, we can ascend through the types of advanced civilisation to reach a point where we can harness the power of stars and galaxies and enter another universe where conditions are once again favourable for life.

Perhaps the most startling revelation is that the Copernican Theory of Mediocrity may apply to our universe. The values of the universal constants and forces may, after all, be arbitrary, and a random result of symmetry breaking in a certain way at the time of the Big Bang. For example, Kaku shows how if one decreases the general strength of gravity by an infinitesimally small amount clouds of hydrogen will not coalesce into stars, planets and galaxies and life would not exist. Increase gravity and stars will burn and die too quickly, never allowing the time for planets and life to evolve.

Kaku documents a stark choice facing physicists, either our universe has been created in a way conducive to the development of complexity and ultimately life itself (the anthropogenic principle), or we live in a multiverse of universes – by an infinitesimally small chance we just happen to live in one of the few habitable universes. Kaku eloquently shows how astrophysics, philosophy and even religion are drawn together at this point.

In conclusion, Parallel Worlds is a fascinating insight into current cosmological theory and models, and sheds light on many of the dilemmas and discoveries with which astrophysicists and cosmologists are now grappling. By its very nature, any book involving cosmology will become dated rapidly, and this book will probably be no exception.

However Dr Kaku should be complemented in a superb attempt to portray contemporary cosmological and physical theories in a highly interesting and readily understandable way. The book contains an excellent glossary of cosmological and physical terms, and there is little mathematics.

For me anyway, it’s the sort of book which, once started, you simply can’t put down.

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STRENGTH OF GRAVITY HAS REMAINED CONSTANT FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:40:00 GMT

Remains of a Type Ia supernovae (G299.2-2.9). Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Texas/S. Park et al, ROSAT; Infrared: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF.

byANDY FLEMING

Australian astronomers have combined all observations of supernovae ever made to determine that the strength of gravity has remained unchanged over the last nine billion years.

Newton's gravitational constant, known as G, describes the attractive force between two objects, together with the separation between them and their masses. It has been previously suggested that G could have been slowly changing over the 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang.

If G has been decreasing over time, this would mean that Earth's distance to the Sun was slightly larger in the past, meaning that we would experience longer seasons now compared to much earlier points in Earth's history.

But researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne have now analysed the light given off by 580 supernova explosions in the nearby and far Universe and have shown that the strength of gravity has not changed.

"Looking back in cosmic time to find out how the laws of physics may have changed is not new" Swinburne Professor Jeremy Mould said. "But supernova cosmology now allows us to do this with gravity."

A Type 1a supernova marks the violent death of a star called a white dwarf, which is as massive as our Sun but packed into a ball the size of our Earth.

Our telescopes can detect the light from this explosion and use its brightness as a 'standard candle' to measure distances in the Universe, a tool that helped Australian astronomer Professor Brian Schmidt in his 2011 Nobel Prize winning work, discovering the mysterious force Dark Energy.

Professor Mould and his PhD student Syed Uddin at the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing and the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) assumed that these supernova explosions happen when a white dwarf reaches a critical mass or after colliding with other stars to 'tip it over the edge'.

"This critical mass depends on Newton's gravitational constant G and allows us to monitor it over billions of years of cosmic time -instead of only decades, as was the case in previous studies," Professor Mould said.

Despite these vastly different time spans, their results agree with findings from the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment that has been measuring the distance between Earth and the Moon since NASA's Apollo missions in the 1960s and has been able to monitor possible variations in G at very high precision.

"Our cosmological analysis complements experimental efforts to describe and constrain the laws of physics in a new way and over cosmic time." Mr Uddin said.

In their current publication, the Swinburne researchers were able to set an upper limit on the change in Newton's gravitational constant of 1 part in 10 billion per year over the past nine billion years.

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FLIPPING MAGNETIC ATTRACTION: DMR NETWORK, 00:00hrs THURSDAY

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 23:59:00 GMT

Graphic depicting the Earth's magnetosphere and the profound effect it has on protecting the biosphere from the Sun's charged particles.

byANDY FLEMING

It's another one of our planet's amazing attributes that makes life possible here.

It's called the magnetosphere and it is generated by the Earth's spinning molten core.

It is a gigantic magnetic field extending tens of thousands of miles in to space and it diverts solar radiation and atomic particles such as protons towards the planet's poles, in the process creating stunning auroral displays.

More importantly the magnetosphere is responsible for protecting all life on the Earth from deadly solar radiation. It also prevents our planet from ending up like Mars, a dry, dessicated world that once was oceanic and wet, but whose molten core froze leading to the loss of its magnetosphere that in turn allowed the solar wind to destroy the Red Planet's atmosphere.

However, scientists have discovered that the Earth's magnetosphere has weakened by up to fifteen per cent in the last two centuries and the whole magnetic field may be about to 'flip', in effect the magnetic North Pole becoming the South Pole and vice versa. While this happens, the planet may be more exposed to deadly solar radiation.

To find out what this may mean for us all, listen to the next Podcast-UFO to be broadcast on ArtBell’s Dark Matter Radio Network at 00:00hrs UTC/GMT on Thursday March 27, 2014, when I talk astronomy. Click the links or logo to listen LIVE!

Don't worry if you miss the programme as you can catch it on catch up via podcast at Podcast-UFO

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ASTRONOMY 101: THE MOON

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 23:46:00 GMT

Our Moon is far more important to all life on Earth than most people realise. Simply illuminating the night sky or being responsible for ocean tides is of relatively little significance when one realises its true effect on the Earth and us. It has been intrinsic to the very evolution of life itself, and by definition the appearance of homo sapiens! And it's not hard to see why it is so important.

The Moon with labelled 'seas' and craters.

To start with it is the only Moon of a major planet in the solar system that is so large relative to its parent planet, indeed many astronomers consider the Earth/Moon system to be a double or binary planetary system. At 385,000 kilometres distant it is the closest celestial body to the Earth.

The Moon was created from the Earth itself, confirmed by the geological experiments undertaken during the NASA Apollo program. Unlike the Earth, there is very little iron on its surface and it consists of terrestrial mantle material.

About 4.6 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars struck the Earth. This early planet, which has been named Theia, was partially absorbed into the Earth, but a large amount of debris was also sprayed out into space. Gravity pulled the debris into orbit around our planet and, as the numerous fragments collided, they began to clump together. The Moon was formed as these clumps grew larger and larger.

The Moon was created by a Mars-sized impactor striking the young Earth about four billion years ago. The Earth was nearly completely destroyed by the collision, and the ejecta from the Earth's mantle and the material from the impactor itself eventually came together to form the Moon.

At that point the Moon orbited the young Earth at only a fraction of its current distance, and would have looked enormous in the sky. The Earth's day was about eight hours in duration, but over four billion years the friction of the lunar gravity has slowed this down to twenty four hours. Eventually, the velocity of the Moon orbiting the Earth matched that of its rotational speed so that now the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth: the same side of the Moon is visible to the Earth at all times and until the unmanned Soviet and NASA probes of the early 1960s, no human being had ever seen the far side. Notice it is called the 'far side' and not the 'dark side', a serious misnomer as it receives the same attention from the Sun as the Earth-facing side.

Most importantly, the Moon has prevented the Earth wobbling uncontrollably on its axis and hence over billions of years has provided the climatic stability essential for the evolution of complex life forms.

Apollo 11 Mission Highlights. It's July 16, 1969 and with their Saturn V booster on the launchpad at Cape Kennedy, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are about to embark on the most momentous journey in the history of mankind. Ultimately they will successfully land their lunar module Eagle on the Moon and be the first humans to set foot on another world.

Precision experiments left on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts confirm that the Moon is receding from the Earth by a couple of centimetres per year.

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ENJOY THE PASSION, BEAUTY AND JOY OF THE SEVEN SISTERS

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 23:43:00 GMT

The beautiful Seven Sisters or Pleiades star cluster in the constellation of Taurus, complete with labels marking the main stars visible to the naked eye. Credit: Anglo-Australian Observatory/Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.

byANDY FLEMING

There are certain objects in the night sky that paradoxically and almost counter-intuitively appear much better with the naked eyes or with ordinary common or garden binoculars rather than expensive telescopes. One such object still visible in the early March evening sky after dusk that also defies even the most appalling city and urban light pollution is the Seven Sisters or Pleiades open star cluster. With a prominent place in ancient mythology, it's perhaps one of the most popular astronomical targets for the beginner... after all most youngsters are either taught about this beautiful cluster of stars at home or at school. Some may also be familiar with the constellation from its appearance on the badge on the bonnet of Japanese Subaru cars: the manufacturer was named after the constellation.

Infact, The Pleiades cluster, otherwise known as Messier 45 far from containing the six or seven stars seen with the unaided eye actually contains hundreds, with many more becoming visible through binoculars. For those in the northern hemisphere, the cluster is above and to the right of Orion the Hunter as one faces south in the constellation of Taurus the Bull.

Location of The Pleiades, M45. Look for the constellation of Orion the Hunter with his distinctive belt, and in the Northern Hemisphere, M45 is to the right and above.

The stars in the Pleiades are thought to have formed together around 100 million years ago, making them one fiftieth the age of our sun, and they are also close in astronomical terms to the Earth, they are just 425 light years away. They're very hot and hence blue in colour and indeed from a dark site strands and wisps of the star forming nebula of hydrogen gas from which the stars originated can still be seen.

The main stars have delightful names too emanating from Greek mythology, and being the seven daughters of Atlas and of Pleione, the daughter of Oceanus. Their names were Electra, Maia, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope. According to some versions of the myth, they committed suicide from grief at the fate of their father, Atlas, or at the death of their sisters, the Hyades. Other versions made them the attendants of Artemis, goddess of wildlife and of hunting, who were pursued by the giant hunter Orion, but were rescued by the gods and changed into doves. After their death, or metamorphosis, they were transformed into stars, but are still pursued across the sky by the constellation Orion to this day.

Finally, you may still be wondering why I recommended the naked eye or especially binoculars when looking at the Pleiades. The reason is quite simple: to gain the full effect of observing this beautiful 'open' star cluster you need to be able to see it all in the same field of view. The onus is on the word 'open', as M45 covers quite a large area of sky. The typical 4.5 or 5 degree field of view provided by 10x50 binoculars is just perfect. The limited field of view provided by a telescope is disappointing as you won't see the beauty of the group in its entirety. You will however see more stars of course, and from a dark site, possible nebulosity.

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A DISCOVERY WITH PROFOUND GRAVITY

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 12:17:00 GMT

The 10-meter South Pole Telescope and the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation) Telescope are shown against the Milky Way. BICEP2 recently detected gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background, a discovery that supports the cosmic inflation theory of how the universe began. (Image credit: Keith Vanderlinde, National Science Foundation)

Approximately fourteen billion years ago, our universe burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In an infinitesimally small fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially to a truly gargantuan size, inflating far in excess of the views of our most powerful telescopes. All this, of course, was just a theory.

Astronomers from the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation (BICEP2) radio telescope at the South Pole have announced the first direct evidence for this cosmic inflation. Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time, a major prediction of Einstein’s 1915 Theory of General Relativity, in effect his theory of gravity. They have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang." Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between the (until now) irreconcilable pillars of modern physics: quantum mechanics and general relativity itself.

"Detecting this signal is one of the most important goals in cosmology today. A lot of work by a lot of people has led up to this point," said John Kovac (Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics), leader of the BICEP2 collaboration.

These ground-breaking results came from observations by the BICEP2 telescope of the cosmic microwave background - a faint glow left over from the Big Bang. Tiny fluctuations in this afterglow provide clues to conditions in the early universe. For example, small differences in temperature across the sky show where parts of the universe were denser, eventually condensing into became polarized too.

Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe all-sky Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) image.

"Our team hunted for a special type of polarization called 'B-modes,' which represents a twisting or 'curl' pattern in the polarized orientations of the ancient light," said co-leader Jamie Bock of Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Gravitational waves trigger ripples in space, seen in this illustration.
Image courtesy of NASA

Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a "handedness," much like light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations.

"The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their handedness. This is the first direct image of gravitational waves across the primordial sky," said co-leader Chao-Lin Kuo at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

The team examined spatial scales on the sky spanning about one to five degrees (two to ten times the width of the full Moon). To do this, they travelled to the South Pole to take advantage of its cold, dry, stable air.

"The South Pole is the closest you can get to space and still be on the ground," said Kovac. "It's one of the driest and clearest locations on Earth, perfect for observing the faint microwaves from the Big Bang."

The signature of primordial gravitational waves, as seen in the cosmic microwave background in the image, are twisting patterns known as B-mode polarization. Graphic courtesy of the BICEP Project.

They were surprised to detect a B-mode polarization signal considerably stronger than many cosmologists expected. The team analysed their data for more than three years in an effort to rule out any errors. They also considered whether dust in our galaxy could produce the observed pattern, but the data suggest this is highly unlikely.

"This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar," said co-leader Clem Pryke of the University of Minnesota.

When asked to comment on the implications of this discovery, Harvard University theorist Avi Loeb said, "This work offers new insights into some of our most basic questions: Why do we exist? How did the universe begin? These results are not only a smoking gun for inflation, they also tell us when inflation took place and how powerful the process was."

Technical details and journal papers can be found on the BICEP2 release website:

http://bicepkeck.org

Original source: Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics

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RELATIVELY SPEAKING, THE TIME FOR RELATIVITY IS 01:00hrs UTC THURSDAY!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 11:06:00 GMT

Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein displaying his relativistic tongue later in life!

E=mc². It's the name of the world’s most famous equation.

Everyone’s heard of it, and yet virtually no one has the faintest clue what it's about, or of its paramount importance to our civilisation, and come to think of it our existence at all.

I’m either very foolish or brave, but at 01:00hrs UTC/GMT on Thursday March 20 (tomorrow)/ 8.00pm Eastern, I’m going to endeavour to give a 101 crash course on Einstein’s (1905) scientific paper entitled On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, more popularly known as his Theory of Special Relativity. It was derived from the equations of electromagnetism developed by James Clerk Maxwell in the nineteenth century.

On a positive note, Special Relativity is magnitudes easier than Einstein’s theory of gravity, or General Relativity!

Add caption

In the forthcoming programme I try to condense the essence of relativistic speeds as required for interstellar space travel down to just five minutes! And all in plain English lay person’s terms too, without the need for time dilation or Lorentz length contractions!

To learn how it may be possible to travel to the stars in no time at all using mass converted to pure energy with perhaps warp drives thrown in too listen to the next Podcast-UFO to be broadcast on ArtBell’s Dark Matter Radio Network at 01:00hrs UTC/GMT on Thursday March 20. Click the links or logo to listen! Wish me luck!

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ASTRONOMY 101: THE SUN

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 00:03:00 GMT

The Sun is an ordinary star and is the brightest object in our sky. As such you should certainly never look at the Sun directly and certainly never through binoculars or a telescope.

It’s one of more than one hundred billion stars that populate our Milky Way galaxy. It’s a gigantic ball of hydrogen 870,000 miles wide. The Sun has a diameter 109 times that of the Earth and is one third of a million times its mass.

The Sun collapsed from a cloud of hydrogen gas approximately 4.5 billion years ago. The pressure and temperature of the hydrogen in its centre became so great that nuclear fusion chain reactions started where 600,000,000 tons of hydrogen are converted into helium each second. In the process, under Einstein’s famous equation E equals M C squared, a small amount of mass is lost as energy including light.

This energy is what we and all living things depend on for our existence. The visible light we see from the Sun takes eight minutes to travel the 93 million miles before it reaches our eyes and is only a small part of the energy released from our star. Its nuclear reactions also produce vast quantities of ultra violet light along with deadly x-rays and gamma ray radiation. Indeed if it wasn’t for the Earth’s protective magnetic field this radiation would strip off our life-giving atmosphere and all life on Earth would be burnt to a crisp.

Temperatures at the core of our star Sun reach a staggering 10 million degrees Celsius, but it’s surface is less hot at about 5,000 degrees Celsius.

The Sun consists of approximately 75% hydrogen and 25% helium and is halfway through its life. In 4.5 billion years it will run out of its hydrogen fuel and will start to fuse helium into even heavier elements. In the process it will become a bloated Red Giant star that will engulf the orbit of the inner planets. Finally it will puff off its outer layers as a planetary nebula before contracting to the size of the Earth. It will have become a white dwarf star made of pure carbon diamond… a cosmic ember. I don’t think however we’ll be around to see it!

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THE MAGIC FURNACE: THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGIN OF ATOMS by MARCUS CHOWN

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 00:07:00 GMT

Nuclear fusion has long been the holy grail of energy production. It is the process going on inside the sun, but importantly has created most of the heavier elements in the universe. Image credit:SOHO-EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA.

A Book Review byANDY FLEMING

'If the atoms that make up the world around us could tell their stories, each and every one of them would sing a tale to dwarf the greatest epics of literature', Chown proclaims in the prologue of this book. The work is his attempt to chronicle humankind’s efforts, commencing with Democritus in Ancient Greece over two millennia ago, to discover what the smallest constituents of matter are, and from where they came.

It’s an enthralling, comprehensive history lesson in the development of astronomy and atomic physics, encapsulating key moments and discoveries in the search to answer the question of why 98% of the mass of visible matter in the universe is composed of hydrogen and helium, and where the remaining two per cent of ‘metals’ came from.

Marcus Chown, author of The Magic Furnace.

In one of the greatest all-time detective stories featuring an all-star cast, the research of such notable scientists as Lavoisier, Hooke, Boyle, Dalton, Mendeleev, Davy, Faraday, Avogadro, Thomson, Curie, Rutherford, Chadwick, Einstein and Hoyle is all beautifully woven together to arrive at one inescapable conclusion: that all of the chemical elements from beryllium and boron to iron in the periodic table were exothermically cooked up in the cores of dying red giant stars and vomited into the interstellar gas once those stars died.

The jigsaw puzzle was finally completed when the endothermic origin of the elements heavier than iron was identified as supernovae, the result of the detonations of high-mass stars, at the end of their short lives. It turns out that we, and everything we see were literally ‘made in heaven’.

From the synthesis of hydrogen and helium in the Big Bang to the discovery of such helium in the chromosphere of the Sun, from star-forming regions of interstellar gas to white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes, from Newton’s prism to the development of spectroscopy and spectrometry, from the discovery of electrons, protons and neutrons to electromagnetism and the nuclear forces, from Becquerel’s discovery of radioactivity to the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium and beyond, each step towards our contemporary understanding of astrophysics and atomic synthesis is both logically conveyed and clearly explained.

Chown’s writing style is both inspiring and captivating, and you will have difficulty putting this book down. Indeed, on a re-reading I found it just as captivating.

It is essential background reading for anyone wanting to learn about the lives of stars, astrophysics and the reasons behind the abundances of the chemical elements.

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SPACE, SANITY, PREJUDICE AND UFOs

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 22:07:00 GMT

Graphical representation of one of the ubiquitous black triangle UFO sightings, this time near Amsterdam, Holland and during daylight hours, Black triangles feature in a large number of reported sightings.

ByANDY FLEMING

Immediately your friends, acquaintances and colleagues discover that your hobby is amateur astronomy, you can prepare for the two main predictable questions: what do you think about black holes, and have you ever witnessed a UFO? Well here’s what I think: I love black holes though I’ve never directly witnessed such a beast, and yes, I’ve seen a UFO that may or may not have originated on another world. Oh, and I believe in them both despite never observing the former with my own eyeballs. There you are, a sceptical amateur astronomer who is prepared to place his lack of professional reputation and total lack of funding on the line and lose nothing apart from any meagre credibility in the astronomical community.

My friends’ former question about black holes is, of course a perfectly commendable scientific query about an actual astronomical entity, although still the subject of much speculation rather than fact. On the other hand, the enquiry about UFOs raises another subject altogether. It’s commonly referred to, often in a derogatory fashion as ‘ufology’ and involves a whole battery of educational disciplines including, physics, astronomy, biology, sociology, psychology, history and religion, not to mention some aeronautical engineering, just thrown in for some good measure. Just like religion on its own, it may well be that astronomers, whether amateur or professional are not necessarily the best qualified individuals to comment and encroach on another field of research.

Granted, ufology generally conjures up a whole smorgasbord of fact, fiction, wild speculation, the paranormal, the super-natural, hearsay, conspiracy theories, vivid imaginings, plain old charlatanry and sheer profiteering by certain so-called ‘experts’, but these are not the exclusive domains of ‘ufology’. It may well turn out that what we think of as our current scientific grasp on reality (whatever that word means) may not be so firm after all. There is, of course the whole cosmos set out before us. But there is also a whole cosmos set out within. As Carl Sagan (1980) noted we are the Cosmos with consciousness. In defining reality, we really need to establish which reality we’re talking about as the cosmos has surprises and characteristics that look increasingly beyond our measure.

On the subject of black holes, astronomers are qualified to make valid professional comments as their field of study has gathered overwhelming (albeit indirect) observational proof of the existence of them, and Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, one of the foundations of modern physics, has predicted their existence since 1915. Indeed, most astronomers now believe that there is a black hole of super-massive proportions at the centre of each galaxy, including our very own Milky Way. The enormous velocities of stars at its centre as they rotate around something with a gargantuan mass is indirect evidence from mathematical calculations that this object, known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced ‘A-star') must be something with the density of a black hole.

Leaving astronomy to one side for now, my thoughts, views and beliefs about UFOs, unlike my studies of black holes go one step further. I’ve actually seen one, in the flesh, perhaps not up close and personal, but a “Close Encounter of the First Kind” in the night sky nonetheless. So what did it look like, this object over my home area of Teesside in north east England? Well, I’ve made a graphical representation for illustration purposes using free Stellarium Planetarium software, a favourite tool for amateur astronomers. In the true spirit of astronomy and science one has to be sceptical before making extraordinary claims. Such claims do after all, require extraordinary evidence.

Before I go further, I’d better repeat the commonly held definition of the acronym 'UFO': a guided spacecraft of non-human origin, emanating from either beneath the Earth, its oceans or an alien world. The proper definition of 'natural or unnatural unidentified aerial phenomena' is somewhat more useful. As I mentioned earlier, it is probable that what I saw may very much have been of terrestrial origin, but as an amateur astronomer I can certainly discount what I know it wasn't.

Teesside Night Sky on April 27, 2009 with
superimposed UFO, as witnessed at 11.30pm local
time. Image courtesy of Stellarium Free Planetarium Software.

It was about 11.30pm local time on April 25th, 2009. The weather was coming in cold, and I’d just packed up my large Newtonian reflecting telescope and deposited it, along with its eyepieces in the garden shed. The ‘seeing’ in fact had been excellent, a wonderfully clear night with few clouds. I was finishing my astronomical observations and sketching early as I was at work the next day. In politically correct fashion before I retired into the house, I stood in the back porch doorway enjoying a late cigarette (smokers, astronomers and dog walkers do provide the field of ufology with some excellent observers if they are bold enough to put their heads above the parapets and endure the crossfire).

All of a sudden above the apex of next door’s roof I noticed a large V-shaped formation of five orange-red lights evenly spaced slightly east of zenith and moving extremely slowly in a north west-south east direction. Mesmerised, I began to realise that the lights were actually attached to a single object as they moved in an unchanging and even distance from one another. With no noise the object crept at low velocity across the rest of the sky finally disappearing over the south eastern horizon in ten to fifteen minutes.

The lights were fixed on the object’s periphery, which was black and solid, eclipsing background stars, so it couldn’t have been a high flying formation of RAF aircraft. Judging altitude and spatial characteristics in the atmosphere at any time is very difficult with the naked eye, especially at night but I would estimate height in thousands rather than hundreds of feet and size in a couple of football field dimensions.

People always ask witnesses why they don’t take photos with digital or phone cameras. The problem is that even really bright planets like Venus hardly show up. Even fainter objects with low surface brightness stand no chance on cheap CCD devices. Long exposure DSLR cameras with large CCDs chips for high resolution, and tracking motors if necessary are required. Only a lucky small minority of the population possess such sensitive equipment. The other problem is psychological. You’re quite simply stunned and shocked at seeing something that most scientists will say doesn’t exist. Finally, if these two things don’t stop you publicising your sighting then usually the public ridicule factor will. After that, well, you just ‘double think’ your sighting away. You actually start to believe it didn’t happen.

Artist's impression of the much-rumoured TR-3A 'Black Manta' US spyplane, and a possible candidate for my own sighting.

There were anonymous sightings of this object from Durham City down to Middlesbrough in the south according to the internet (about thirty miles), and to this day I cannot confirm what the object was. Some have suggested a stealth blimp, the mystical stealth ‘Black Manta’ TR-3A black ops aircraft or similar… or even an alien spacecraft. The fact is I really don’t know.

Another mock-up of a black triangle
seen worldwide.

The only person I told the next day was my wife and it would be three years before I told anyone else. I toyed with the idea of blogging it for a while but my site was trolled and it wasn’t worth the hassle. At that point I wanted my identity keeping anonymous anyway. Providing witness testimony of UFO sightings, you put yourself in the court of public and scientific opinion, cross examined by debunkers instead of lawyers (like I used to be, and there is a major difference between debunkers and sceptics).

So let’s rule out from an informed astronomical perspective what it definitely wasn’t. My blog readers were most generous in totting out the usual post replies: the lights were planets, swamp gas, satellites, meteors, aircraft, blimps etc., all from the point of view of this amateur astronomer, demonstrably untrue.

One of the most stunning phenomena commonly misinterpreted as a UFO is when the manned International Space Station (ISS) passes overhead, especially when Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft have been docked to this orbiting space outpost (or the NASA Space Shuttle before America decided to utilise tax dollars to fund and subsidise the banks and the greedy rather than something useful to humanity such as the manned space programme). Its appearances can be researched and predicted, as can those of most satellites, via a little work and the use of websites such as Heavens Above where the celestial position of particular satellites is exquisitely and accurately portrayed for any location on Earth. The ISS is so bright, is so huge and has such a high velocity that it would be so easy for the uninformed occasional visitor to the night sky to regard it as a guided alien spacecraft.

Although of no relevance whatsoever to my sighting bearing in mind time of day and the object's shape, this isn't a UFO it's just Venus being its normal brlliant self. The planet so much bigger than the rest of the stars because it's so much brighter. Its nearest rival, Sirius, shines fifteen times fainter.

And then of course there are the planets, two of which are so bright that when literally hanging in the sky above the horizon they can transfix and mesmerise the observer. This is especially true of the Earth’s sister planet Venus, which is only about 30 million miles distant, with a stifling atmosphere of carbon dioxide and a high albedo due to highly reflective lemon-coloured sulphur dioxide clouds. It shines as the third brightest object (after the Moon and Sun) in terrestrial skies at magnitude –4.3. Jupiter, although not quite so bright, can have a similar effect on the observer. When Venus and Jupiter join together in the night or twilight sky at conjunction, then even I have been startled as they both hover above the trees at the bottom of our garden.

Could my sighting have been one of the gargantuan stealth blimps?

Other easily explained reports of UFOs include comets, such as the appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, C/2006 P1 Comet McNaught in 2006, and Comet 17P/Holmes in October 2007. To the uninitiated, they could all have been mistaken as being of alien origin – which indeed they are, of course, although strictly natural in formation.

Then there are meteor showers such as the Perseids in August each year. The apparent point of origin (or radiant) of this shower lies in the constellation of Perseus and, with a peak rate of over one hundred meteors per hour, it can resemble a squadron of attacking Mosquito aircraft. They are caused by grains of sand-sized debris (normally from the tails of comets through which the Earth has passed during its orbit around the Sun) entering the atmosphere at immense velocities. Friction with the atmosphere causes them to melt and glow white-hot.

Again, a small amount of research in one of the summer editions of the popular astronomy magazines such as Astronomy, Astronomy Now or the BBC’s Sky at Night Magazine soon enables the reader to predict the appearance of such meteors. Fireballs are less common, but once again are (larger) cosmic debris entering the Earth’s atmosphere at high velocity, causing their outer layers to melt and glow white-hot. When they fall to Earth over the planet’s polar ice caps, they stand out easily against the white snow and ice, and can be discovered by scientists and collectors as meteorites, ranging from pebble size to the size of a television set.

Despite the fact that the majority of sightings can be explained away as either astronomical or terrestrial phenomena, even the most ardent sceptic must admit that there is a minority of reports that defy scientific explanation. As an informed astronomer at home with and knowledgeable about most aerial phenomena and the night sky, I would have to place my own sighting in this, what UFO researcher Stanton T Friedman calls his “grey basket”.

So what do I think the object was? Well, before I even mentioned the alien hypothesis someone had already written “well they can’t get from there to here because of the distances” as though both ourselves and other speculative intelligent species will be limited to human 2014 propulsion technology forever. I was even told by one informed debunker that serious astronomers do not see UFOs. That’s because in true Orwellian fashion they don’t want to lose their credibility, funding or in the last resort witness black helicopters outside their bedroom windows. Double thinking is so much easier on one’s bank account. But what a corrupt and anthropocentric view of reality. Have we not learned, even now that mankind and its technology is not the centre of the cosmos?

My intuition is that the craft was probably some sort of “black operations” aerial vehicle developed in one of the well-known, well-publicised and admitted-to locations (even observable on Google Earth, albeit with a very old image) where new kinds of military aircraft are developed by the US Air Force, probably Area 51/S4 etc. Now before debunkers charge me with being a lunatic conspiracy theorist consider this: through lucrative aerospace contracts with hundreds of companies including well-known names such as Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems Limited and Boeing the US military spends the equivalent annually of the GDP of a small developed country on funding secret military programmes that show up on no publicly available accounts.

Rumours abound of stealth aircraft currently under development including the famous TR-3A or “Black Manta”; if other reports are to be believed it’s huge and triangular. Now debunkers will tell you straight away that governments can’t keep secrets because they are so inefficient. Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at Mountain View, Pasadena, California’s Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute and someone for whom I usually have high regard when it comes to his expert subject astronomy, always trots out the line in debates that the US government being accused of keeping secrets is the same government that makes such an inefficient mess of running the US Postal Service. This however is totally irrelevant, the Department of Defense has nothing to do with the US Postal Service, and even if it did the fact remains that sometimes for decades top secret aircraft such as the U2 spy plane and the Stealth Bomber were kept hidden. When it comes to military intelligence and the CIA the US government does operate at a quite unbelievable efficiency level. If it wasn’t a secret ‘black ops’ military aircraft then having exhausted all other options and employing Occam's Razor, I would have to conclude that what I saw was indeed from another world.

Seth is also disappointed that there are no nuts, bolts, boosters or ash trays from alien spacecraft in the Smithsonian Institute, on show to the general public, and yes it is a shame. But that is always assuming rather narrow mindedly that aliens are present only in what may be prove to be our very small sub-set of reality or realities. In any case, if they exist in our four dimensional space-time and are as solid as the table in front of me, some scientific humility is required. Remember that for the whole of human history and for hundreds of millions of years before we crawled from the slime, a fish called the Coelacanth was thought to have become extinct in the late Cretaceous. Until one showed up in 1938, alive and well with some healthy brethren in the Western Indian Ocean.

Some or all of this may seem and sound shocking from an amateur astronomer. And it is. But scepticism does not mean that you can’t speculate ‘out of the box’. Albert Einstein and Nils Bohr were the science geniuses of their day in their work in the areas of relativity and quantum mechanics. As ‘out of the box’ thinkers did they honestly ever think that theirs was the last word in physics? I doubt it. Certainly Einstein suffered the same ridicule amongst the scientific establishment of the day as ‘out of the box’ thinkers today. Whether it’s UFOs or questioning anthropogenic global warming going ‘anti-contemporary paradigm’ is a career-buster. And yet science moves huge leaps forward only when practitioners remove their self-imposed strait-jackets and prejudices (often linked to funding constraints and credibility) and take us all to fresh paradigms. Without funded free thinking we will always be stuck, relativity-speaking in 1915. Clearly, debunking is not the same as true scientific scepticism that should be the cornerstone of the scientific enterprise.

Debunking is close-mindedness, prejudicial and in its most extreme form represents institutionalised professional bullying whether the subject is string theory, UFOs or religion. It is proffered as a response by individuals who believe that our current level of understanding of the cosmos is somehow complete. Just like the physicists of the late nineteenth century they think we now know everything there is to know and that we are at the peak of the evolutionary pyramid. In mitigation they do have careers, funding, and credibility from years of what may turn out to be meaningless work to protect. You’ve heard of String Theory? Well it has been on the go for half a century and decade after decade has promised a Theory of Everything that includes the Holy Grail of a unification of gravity and the electro-weak and strong nuclear forces. Despite any real progress apart from an ever increasing number of hypothetical dimensions and mind-boggling mathematics there is not one jot of evidence to verify it. Yes, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has led to Peter Higgs being awarded a Nobel Prize for predicting the Higgs Boson, the force carrier of mass, and fair play to him, but the challenge to String Theorists is simply “Where are the Gravitons” that as the force carriers of gravity their theory predicts. Infact it’s not a theory, it’s just a hypothesis, no more valid than the hypothesis that aliens are or have visited Terra Firma. And yet funding the careers of research scientists and maintaining the credibility of their associated institutions is not a problem.

Ultimately this whole narrow-minded shebang is an extremely arrogant view of the universe, and you may have heard it before somewhere. It’s that good old anthropogenic bias again, the same pre-Copernican disposition that had us believe we were at the centre of the universe for millennia. And no other intelligent life on any of the billions of other worlds that, thanks to NASA’s Kepler mission and an army of exoplanet hunting astronomers, we now know actually know exist. Surely when it comes to UFOs and terrestrial alien visitations, the most rational place to be (as in any arena where we have low or controversial levels of evidence) is in the agnostic position.

By the end of the first century AD, the Ancient Romans probably though they were at the top of mankind’s technological game, they were after all superb engineers and physicians. However, what would they have thought of one of our Stealth aircraft flying over the Colosseum whilst watching gladiator fights or Christians being butchered? They would probably have been told by the priests that it was magic or down to the gods. Or they were imagining it. Likewise, who on planet Earth right now can state categorically that our scientific knowledge is perfect and that races that haven’t destroyed themselves with greed and corruption cannot travel the vast gulf of interstellar or intergalactic space as easily as we can walk into the next room? In a universe containing billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars and a magnitude greater number of planets can anyone seriously believe that there won’t be a vast number of technological civilisations that may have been on the go for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. And just look at how far our puny technology has developed in only four centuries since the time of Galileo. Who really believes that our (albeit powerful) theories are the pinnacles of knowledge? They are all, including Einstein’s ground and paradigm breaking work, still only incomplete theories. And is it really so outrageous to think that some of the millions of UFO sightings aren’t ‘real’ (whatever that means if we extend the conversation to include multiple dimensions, relativity, warps in the space-time continuum or quantum physics).

Physics (including its sub branches of cosmology, astrophysics and astronomy) is often referred to as the ‘queen of the sciences’. And there is no doubt that in society generally scientific subjects have much more kudos than the humanities. A firm proponent of science and science literacy and having science qualifications, I am in the fairly rare position of also being a Sociology graduate. As hinted earlier in the post, can science and physics explain everything about the cosmos of which we are part? It could just be that scientists possess notions of a little too much self-importance when it comes to their views on all aspects of the unexplained and indeed the cosmos generally. Astronomy may be a character building and uplifting subject but I don’t believe it explains everything. I for one wouldn’t use it to describe the economic, social or psychological worlds.

Finally, in a court of law, corroborated multiple witness testimonies are enough to convict an individual of homicide. The expression is that the defendant committed the crime “beyond reasonable doubt”. Why is the same legal gold standard not used by science and society when it comes to the witnessing of UFOs? MUFON, a US-based organisation propounding the scientific study of UFOs states that there are more than 70,000 UFO sightings each year. They also state that this represents only ten per cent of the total number of sightings (the rest go largely unrelated due to a variety of reasons most notable of which is the ridicule factor).

Are just under one million individuals per annum simply deluded, habitual liars, attention and publicity seekers or out to make a quick buck? I can only speak for my own sighting and myself. And the answer is, in my case, ‘no’.

You can listen to my weekly astronomy segment LIVE on Podcast UFO on Art Bell's Dark Matter Radio Network each Wednesday at 8.00pm Eastern or 0100 UTC/GMT Thursday.

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KEPLER'S 715 EXOPLANET BONANZA

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 13:28:00 GMT

This image from NASA's Kepler mission shows the field of view possessed by the space telescope. In particular, an expansive star-rich patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra stretching across 100 square degrees, or the equivalent of two side-by-side dips of Ursa Major, the Plough or Big Dipper.

A cluster of stars, called NGC 6791, and a star with a known planet, called TrES-2, are outlined. The cluster is eight billion years old, and located 13,000 light-years from Earth. It is called an open cluster because its stars are loosely bound and have started to spread out. TrES-2 is a hot Jupiter-like planet known to cross in front of, or transit, its star every 2.5 days. Kepler has spent four years hunting for transiting planets that are as small as Earth. (Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech).

The important news in the exoplanet hunting community at the moment is that NASA has recently announced that its Kepler space telescope mission has discovered no fewer than 715 new planets in multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system.

Most of them are smaller than Neptune, which is almost four times the size of Earth. This

discovery marks a significant increase in the number of known small-sized planets more akin to the Earth. John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate said, "That these new planets and solar systems look somewhat like our own, and portend to a great future when we have the James Webb Space Telescope in space to characterize the new worlds.”

Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system roughly two decades ago, verification has been a laborious planet-by-planet process. Now, scientists have a statistical technique called multiplicity that can be applied to many planets at once, when they are found in systems that harbour more than one planet around the same star. It relies in part on the logic of probability, it is a process that ultimately verifies multiple planet candidates in bulk and is unveiling a veritable bonanza of new worlds." These multiple-planet systems are fertile grounds for studying individual planets and the configuration of planetary neighbourhoods. This provides clues to planet formation.

This artist's concept depicts the smallest habitable zone planet discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. Seen in the foreground is Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle/AFP/Getty Images)

Four of these new planets are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's

habitable zone, defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for life-giving liquid water. One of these new habitable zone planets, called Kepler-296f, orbits a star half the size and 5 percent as bright as our sun. Kepler-296f is twice the size of Earth, but scientists do not know whether the planet is a gaseous world, with a thick hydrogen-helium envelope, or it is a water world surrounded by a deep ocean.

"From this study we learn planets in these multi-systems are small and their orbits are flat and circular - resembling pancakes - not your classical view of an atom," said Jason Rowe, research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and co-leader of the research. "The more we explore the more we find familiar traces of ourselves amongst the stars that remind us of home."

This latest discovery brings the confirmed count of planets outside our solar system to nearly 1,700. As we continue to reach toward the stars, each discovery brings us one step closer to a more accurate understanding of our place in the galaxy.

Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets. Discoveries include more than 3,600 planet candidates, of which 961 have been verified as bona-fide worlds.

For more information about the Kepler space telescope, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

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A BIRTH RIGHT RECLAIMED: THE P,B and J UNDER A VELVET DARK SKY

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 9 Mar 2014 01:07:00 GMT

The Triangulum Galaxy (Messier Object 33, or M33). In a dark sky location under excellent seeing conditions you may just be able to see this galaxy which has very low surface luninousity with the naked eye. Image Credit: NASA, Robert Gendler, Subaru Telescope (NAOJ)

ByANDY and DAVID FLEMING

It is one of life’s subtle ironies that thanks to our industry and high technology that in some ways brings so many benefits to our everyday lives, one of the greatest of all natural wonders, has been lost to the majority of our planet’s human population. We’re talking, of course about a velvet-black night sky dotted with countless stars, nebulae, and galaxies. It's the key to sharing the P,B and J (the Passion, Beauty and Joy) that typifies the emotions felt when identifying our place in space and time (thanks to Bill Nye the Science and Planetary Guy for inventing this apt phrase).

Truth be told, it is not our technology that denies us this most beautiful of natural spectacles, but our shameful and profligate waste of our natural resources and energy. Namely, of course, it is light pollution, coupled with industrial pollutants, vehicle emissions and particulates.

It is a severe problem here in the River Tees Valley in north east England where I'm based. The industry at Teesmouth illuminates our horizons with the glare of a thousand artificial sodium vapour suns. If you’re lucky, and located in a dark, secluded corner of this conurbation of one million inhabitants, you can just about succeed with the “Ursa Minor test” and pick out all of the stars in that constellation down to Magnitude 5 with the naked eye (albeit with averted vision). We won’t be unduly negative about our abode however – there are still wonders aplenty to be seen from our back garden including double stars, the planets, galaxies and planetary nebulae and of course the stunning and lovely Great Nebula in the Sword of Orion.

But they are washed out, shadows of themselves even through a telescope, reminiscent of a television set with the contrast dramatically reduced. They are awe-inspiring, but we have doubtless been robbed of much of the awe. An initial tour of the gorgeous black skies of a location such as the North Yorkshire Moors National Park therefore creates a soaring sense of wonder and awe – an uplifting surge of sheer excitement that will never be forgotten. Of course, an enjoyable tour of anything requires a good and learned tour guide with a well-planned itinerary, and in this respect we were lucky enough to share this memorable late October evening with one of local astronomy group's most astronomically literate members, Rob.

The Veil Nebula (NGC6960) is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus, 1,470 light years from the Earth. It constitutes the visible portions of the Cygnus Loop, a large but relatively faint supernova remnant.

Our rendezvous with Rob was to be Snilesworth Moor, close to Osmotherly, just off the A19 trunk road in north east England, where the ancient Drover’s road south to Sutton Bank parts company with the metalled road to Ryedale and Helmsley. Sure enough, Rob was already at our destination at the appointed meeting time of 8.00pm. We were beneath the mighty Black Hambledon Moor bang in the centre of the beautiful North Yorkshire Moors National Park , one of the most picturesque areas of the UK during daytime, and one with little light pollution on a night.

Rob’s superb 12” Dobsonian was already in position and online to the heavens. We had chosen the coldest night so far of the autumn for our tour of the local Cosmos – a chilling

minus three degrees according to the car’s external thermometer. Of course, it was so cold precisely because the sky was totally cloudless, and the seeing exceptional.

We shook hands with Rob, and within seconds, as our eyes started to adapt to the pitch blackness, untold celestial wonders aplenty started to encroach on our naked eye view. The total blackness was punctuated only by very distant lights in the northern part of the Vale of York, and a couple of red aircraft warning beacons on the one thousand feet high Bilsdale West Moor main television and FM radio transmitting tower, one of the most exposed structures in the land, and about eight miles distant to the north east.

As we looked skywards with our naked eyes, just as promised in countless astronomy textbooks, was the stupendously stunning Milky Way, our home galaxy, it’s disk full of a myriad of stars traversing their way east-west right through the hearts of the constellations of Lacerta, Cygnus, Perseus and Cassiopeia.

So what is the furthest the unaided human eye can see on a clear day (or night)? Can you really see over two million light years to the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) with our eyes alone? And if so would it be spectacular? At home, it’s so easy (due to other stars being bleached out by light pollution) to find our old friend, the orange/yellow Magnitude 2 guide star Mirach (beta Andromedae), we first used to track down M31 over a decade ago. But under these superb skies there were just so many stars that Mirach was lost. However, once beta Andromedae was found, amazingly, we didn’t need mu and nu Andromedae , because intrusively visible above Mirach, and offset to the right a little was an elongated smudge of beautiful pale light, perhaps half a degree or more in diameter. Here was M31, not a point, but the central bulge of our sister spiral galaxy, amazingly seen looking like a galaxy, with the

naked eye.

If this wasn’t enough, even more unbelievably, virtually equidistant below and slightly to the left of beta Andromedae near alpha Triangulum was another much fainter smudge. With goosebumps and a lump in our throats, and a quick confirmation from Rob, we realised that remarkably we were viewing the diffuse Triangulum Galaxy (M33/NGC598). We hurriedly looked at these two magnificent galaxies through binoculars – M31 being elongated by well over the width of a couple of degrees and M33, virtually face on looking absolutely stunning.

It was time to assemble our telescope, an 8.5 inch f5 Newtonian reflector: a light bucket! Our equipment also included a 9mm Orthoscopic eyepiece, a 28mm Plossl and a x2 Barlow, which

combined give a decent portfolio of viewing. As previous to this amazing night out in our closest National Park, we had been graced with several reasonably clear evenings, and as this wonderful telescope had seen frequent use at home, I was concerned that wind-blown dirt and particulates had entered the instrument and been deposited on the primary mirror from our trusty Silver Birch, and Apple Tree at the rear of our garden. Indeed there was considerable dirt on the mirror, and to rectify this problem I had painstakingly removed and cleaned the mirror with de-ionised water and cotton wool. We would soon discover that this work, subsequent re-collimation and eyepiece cleaning had paid dividends.

We first visited a couple of stunning planetary nebulae - the Dumbbell (M27) that we had so proudly found at home after Rob’s clear and concise instructions. Then it was off to the Ring Nebula in Lyra (M57), and the Blue Snowball. We took a peek at the beautiful double star Albireo in Cygnus – wonderfully resolved into its striking blue and yellow constituents.

Next, Rob set us a challenge, using his instructions, we were to locate successfully the faint Ghost of Mirach Galaxy. Our next port-of-call was the beautiful face-on spiral galaxy M33 in Triangulum that we had earlier seen with our unaided eyes and then our binoculars. It’s beautiful spiral structure was well apparent – so too were it’s bring star forming regions in its outer spiral arms. Not too far away we viewed M110/NGC205 – one of M31’s satellite galaxies. Next it was off to Bode’s Nebulae, incorrect nomenclature of course – they are the

beautiful Magnitude 6.9 spiral galaxy M81/NGC3031 and of course the Magnitude 8.4 virtually edge on “Cigar Galaxy” M82/NGC3034. These two gems are relatively easy to locate, even though they were fairly low down in the north by star-hopping using Dubhe (alpha Ursa Majoris) and Polaris and then from Rob’s “The Cheese” asterism of three stars slightly to the left and down from these galaxies in your field of view.

It was time for a personal detour to the lovely Double Cluster NGC869 in Perseus, visible from our location with the unaided eye, beautiful through binoculars and jaw-dropping through our telescope. A myriad of stars to inebriate one’s retina.

Other splendours we observed included Globular Clusters M15/NGC7078, M103/NGC581 near Ruchbah in Cassiopeia, the Crab Nebula (M1/NGC1952) the remnant of the supernova witnessed by ancient Chinese astronomers in 1054AD, and easy to locate in a dark sky near zeta Tauri. As we observed it’s structure one thought about the rapidly rotating tiny neutron star at its centre whose almost artificial atomic-clock-regular spinning jets of radiation were first discovered at Cambridge University in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell and labelled LGM (Little Green Men) on her print-out. It was, of course the first pulsar to be identified.

As time passed we saw bloated red Betelgeuse and Meissa rise, followed by the whole enchilada of the winter constellation of Orion the Hunter, always reminding one of approaching Christmas. It was difficult to restrain our impatience at waiting to observe the beauty in the hunter’s sword, but of course, it was well worth the wait. The Great Nebula M42, was awesome, that huge reflection nebula of gas and dust reminding us all of how every star and planet, including the Sun, the Earth and indeed all living things, including ourselves for that matter, came to be. Indeed this whole area of the sky from Alnilam, Alnitak and Mintaka through to M42 and M43 is a wondrous sight to behold with nebulosity galore – hot, young stars, such as those in the Trapezium –illuminating and exciting the atoms, molecules and clouds of gas and dust from which they were born.

We saw many more objects that wonderful evening, but for brevity’s sake we will end on an even higher note for ourselves – three objects that had previously eluded us at our stage of observing, but to which we were effectively guided by Rob. Firstly, the beautifully intricate filaments of the supernova remnant, the Veil Nebula (NGC 6960). Bearing witness to the final collapse and obliteration of a massive star, far larger than our Sun, this beautiful stellar death shroud bears witness to the fact that out of one of the Cosmos’s most destructive events outstanding beauty arises. Of course, much more than visual beauty has been created. The progenitor star of NGC 6960 expelled into the Cosmos the ingredients to make new stars when it detonated. It also expelled heavier elements that one day, millions of years from now will create planets and rocky worlds, and possibly sentient beings, who like us have imagination, intelligence and consciousness and who can observe and endeavour to understand the Cosmos from which they were made.

Our last two targets were very much in our nearby cosmic vicinity – the two mighty gas giant worlds of Uranus and Neptune. Under such conditions, and with a superb guide, Uranus was an easy target to find, it’s beautiful blue/green orb being an easy giveaway. Blue Neptune with its oceans of methane and hydrogen was considerably more difficult to find due to it’s low declination in the south west as it was not long from setting. Rob made a considerable attempt to find the large satellite of this last outpost of the Sun’s entourage of planets, the pink-snow covered Triton, but to no avail. Hardly a disappointment considering

the plethora of other wonders we enjoyed that evening, which also included several meteors emanating from their radiant in Taurus.

At just after midnight, despite multiple layers of clothing, but with the thermometer still falling and it becoming intensely cold, it was with heavy hearts that we disassembled our telescopes and headed back to Teesside.

In conclusion, in all of our serious observing it was our best ever evening under the stars, and a thoroughly awe inspired 12 year old and his dad would like to say a big “thank you” to Rob. It would not have been possible without his superb knowledge of the skies and his dedication to astronomy.

To those readers who have never experienced a truly dark sky, and who are sceptical of the difference it makes to observing the heavens, forget a Sunday day out to your local national park, wrap up warm and treat yourself to a night out with the stars instead. With naked eyes, binoculars, or a telescope, literally – there’s nothing on the Earth that can beat it!!!

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THE LOST WORLD OF BARNARD'S STAR

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 3 Mar 2014 01:45:00 GMT

Fomalhaut b is a confirmed, directly-imaged extrasolar object and candidate planet orbiting the A-type main-sequence star Fomalhaut, approximately 25 light-years away in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus. The object was initially announced in 2008 and confirmed as real in 2012 from images taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the Hubble Space Telescope. It has a 2,000-year highly elliptical orbit and as of May 25, 2013 it is approximately 110 Astronomical Units (AU – Sun-Earth distances) from its parent star.

byANDY FLEMING

These days, it is accepted as a scientific fact that we live in a universe teeming with planets orbiting other stars. Indeed, as of 24 September, there are 490 worlds that we know of orbiting stars other than our Sun. Detecting these planets has become a routine voyage of discovery engaging well-tested and accepted methods.

The primary methods include radial velocity (Doppler displacement of spectral lines in the star's light due to the star 'wobbling' as it orbits the common centre of mass of the star and its planetary companion), and the transit method (a dip in starlight as an exoplanet moves across the disc of the star, thus reducing the amount of starlight). Other successful methods include astrometry, where there are minuscule changes over time in a star's precise co-ordinates in the night sky because of its orbit around the stellar system's centre of mass, and microlensing (a bending of light from a distant star due to the gravity of the foreground star and its associated planet – see below).

Finally, of course, there's the most spectacular method, one that will become more important as detectors improve -- that of direct imaging, as in the cases of Fomalhaut b and Beta Pictoris b and associated stellar debris discs, as observed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

However, it has always been this way. Speculation has always run wild about whether planets orbit other stars, and by implication about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Indeed, the Roman Catholic monk Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake in 1600 by the Inquisition for the trouble he caused by publicising the then heretical view that the universe was teeming with other worlds and with life.

Throughout the nineteenth century, theories ebbed and flowed about the formation of planets and the circumstellar discs from which they arise. One particularly popular anthropocentric theory suggested that our star was unique in the Milky Way in possessing a solar system. It had hypothesised that this had come about through a ridiculously improbable event -- a close pass of another star had ripped material out of our Sun, which eventually coalesced to form planets.

However, in order for the question to be resolved, the whole issue of exoplanets would have to await better technology and observations, not better theories. After all, other stars are at gargantuan distances from the Earth; the nearest, Proxima Centauri, is part of the Alpha Centauri triple system and is nearly 40 trillion kilometres distant. Whatever detection methods are employed, the effect of planetary companions will turn out to be almost infinitesimally small.

Proxima Centauri is a dim red dwarf -- its larger Sun-like siblings Alpha Centauri a and b are so bright that the pale reflected light from the parent star of any planetary companions would be completely emasculated by the star itself. Even a Jovian mass giant would be a billion times fainter than the central star. As an analogy to illustrate the immense technical difficulties involved with direct imaging, think of a dim candle placed a couple of metres from a floodlight viewed via a telescope from a vantage point a thousand kilometres distant. What would be your chances of viewing the dim candlelight?

Peter van de Kamp

It's not surprising then, that the first 'discovery' of an exoplanet, on this occasion via the technique of astrometry, turned out to be a false alarm. The whole field of extra-solar planet detection commenced in earnest thanks to one man -- Peter van de Kamp (see left). Van de Kamp had been a professor at the University of Virginia for several years before going to Swarthmore College in 1937 and becoming director of its Sproul Observatory.

The next year, he began a long-term search for very low-mass companions to stars. One of the first stars he put on the search programme was Barnard's Star. This is the second-closest star system to our own, at six light years distance. Unfortunately, it's an M-type dwarf, so it can't be seen by the naked eye, but it can easily be seen with a small telescope.

Van de Kamp started collecting data on Barnard's Star in 1938, and continued taking data for roughly 25 years. In 1963, he finally felt confident enough to present his first excruciatingly difficult astronometrical measurements. He and his colleagues were looking for variations of plus or minus 1 micron in the position of the star on a photographic plate! In other words, they were endeavouring to measure the photographic centre of these little blurry dots on the photographic emulsions to a staggering 1 part in 100. They would have 10 people measure the same plates independently, and then try to average over whatever individual systematic errors they would introduce, to find the true photographic centre of the positions.

After looking at some 2400 plates, van de Kamp found evidence that there was a small 'wobble' in Barnard's Star, which fitted with the curve that would result if it were being orbited by a planet about 1.6 times the mass of Jupiter at a distance of 4.4 AU. The peculiar attribute of the star movement, though, was that it didn't fit into a neat sine curve, which would indicate a roughly circular orbit like our own Jupiter's. Instead, it had a little bit of a cusp to it.

However, most astronomers could live with a planet with a quite elliptical orbit, and Barnard's Star's planetary companion soon became the textbook example of an extra-solar planet. However, all was not well with the data that lay behind van de Kamp's momentous discovery, and ten years later in 1973 the astronomer George Gatewood would reveal major flaws in van de Kamp's observations.

Gatewood had been undertaking his Ph.D. in astrometry at the University of Pittsburgh and, although he was reluctant at first, his professors were extremely keen that he study Barnard's Star. And so, unbeknown to him, Gatewood was to become reluctantly involved with a profound cosmic controversy. While studying Barnard's Star, he undertook his own observations and measurements, using different telescopes: the Allegheny Observatory's Thaw Refractor, and some plates taken from the Van Vleck Observatory.

In total, Gatewood produced 240 plates, and for his thesis project he set about reducing the data from them. Instead of their being reduced by individuals sitting at a plate-measuring machine, they were automatically reduced by a new, state-of-the-art plate-measuring machine produced by the U.S. Naval Observatory. Of equal importance, the data was reduced using a different technique from that used before. Gatewood's thesis adviser, Heinrich Eichhorn, was one of the fathers of analytical astrometry, and it was Eichhorn's technique that was invoked for the data analysis.

Their results on Barnard's Star were published in 1973, and were bad news for van de Kamp – some of the data points in which they had the most confidence did not fit van de Kamp's curve. Without confrontation, they quietly stated that they had found no evidence whatsoever for Peter van de Kamp's planet. And it got worse -- that same year, another paper was published in the Astronomical Journal by John Hershey, who was also working at the Swarthmore College Observatory.

Hershey had studied a star called Gliese 793, another low-mass M-type dwarf star, and found that, if he plotted the astrometric wobbles of Barnard's Star and Gliese 793 together, both of them took a jump in one direction in 1949, and in 1957 took another jump in the opposite direction. The implications of Heshey's data were devastating for van de Kamp's 'discovery': either both stars had exactly the same planet orbiting them, or else there were major systematic errors in the latter's observations.

It turned out that van de Kamp's observations were riddled with major systematic inaccuracies. In 1949, there had been a major change in the telescope; they put in a new cast-iron cell to hold the Swarthmore College refracting lens. They also changed the photographic emulsions they were using, which made an enormous difference when measuring objects in size down to one-hundredth the size of a star's blur. In 1957, they made another change – a lens adjustment.

And so it was, that after a lifetime's work, much of it studying Barnard's Star, van de Kamp discarded forty years' worth of data. Still continuing to believe that the star should possess a planet, he started anew with more observations. However, by the autumn of 1973, following his discredited observations, most astronomers were no longer prepared to give his work much credence and the field of exoplanet research fell into a deep sleep for two decades.

Roll the clock forward 22 years: and on 6 October 1995 Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz announced the verified discovery of the first genuine exoplanet, orbiting a Sun-like star located 50.9 light years (15.6 parsecs) away in the constellation of Pegasus. The discovery, via the radial velocity method, of 'Belleraphon' (as the planet became known) orbiting 51 Pegasi was made in France at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence, using the ELODIE spectrograph.

It turned out that this planet from hell was a gas giant, approximately half the mass of Jupiter, but with an orbital period of just over four days -- a fraction of that of Mercury around our star. In the intervening years, a host of such 'hot Jupiters' have been discovered, and they're unlike anything in our solar system. They're located so close to their stars that they have atmospheric temperatures nearing 1000 °C, they're tidally locked to their stars, and hence must have turbulence and winds to dwarf anything in our solar system. The smart money is placed on a theory that suggests that such planets have migrated from original positions in their solar systems similar to that of our own Jupiter.

And what of Barnard's Star? The HST's fine-guidance sensor team, led by Fritz Benedict of the University of Texas, has been following the star to ascertain whether it has planetary companions, but has so far drawn a blank. Instead, Barnard's Star is more useful for debugging mechanical problems on the HST, because when the star seems to wobble, it usually means that there's something wrong with the space telescope!

For now though, the jury's still out on whether our very closest stellar neighbours possess Earth-mass planets. Astronomers are fairly certain that these stars do not possess gas giants, and speculate that Earth-mass planets may be orbiting any of the stars in the Alpha Centauri triple star system, for example. The habitable zones of these stars lie at a distance similar to that of our Sun's, and are close enough to the stars to ensure that gravity from their stellar companions would not eject terrestrial-sized rocky worlds from the triple system. There may indeed even be Earth-mass planets orbiting Barnard's Star. And a final resolution to these questions won't be long in coming, either -- a Planetary Society project is underway called FINDS Exo-Earths (an acronym for Fibre-optic Improved Next generation Doppler Search for Exo-Earths). This new high-end optical system has been installed on the 3-metre telescope at the Lick Observatory, dramatically increasing discoveries of smaller exoplanets and playing a crucial role in verifying Earth-sized planet candidates from the Kepler planet-hunter mission. Peter van de Kamp believed in another world orbiting Barnard's Star, but his observations and data were not repeatable or verifiable -- a situation that ultimately is not worth much in science. With only the relatively primitive technology of the early twentieth century, he believed too much.

Ironically, however, the next generation of telescopes may yet prove his beliefs to be correct

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UK TREATED TO RARE DISPLAY OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 18:31:00 GMT

The Northern Lights, seen over St Mary's Island, Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear.

ByANDY FLEMING

The UK was treated to a rare glimpse of the Northern Lights after the natural display lit up skies across the country. One of nature’s true wonders, the Aurora Borealis could be seen as consisting of spectacular “curtains” of red and green lights, and was visible as far south as Gloucestershire, Essex and Norfolk last night (February 28).

But those in Scotland and northern England got the clearest view, with many taking to Twitter to share their experiences. Daisymay wrote: ‘You could see the Aurora Borealis in the Isle of Skye. So damn perdy.’

Richard Wilson, from Guildford, Surrey, who saw it from the air, added: ‘Great view of the Northern Lights from 30,000 feet over Scotland tonight. Awesome sight!’

The Light formations are usually only visible in the more northern parts of the UK so Alex Green, who works for the National Trust in Norfolk, was surprised when he saw them further south.

Aurora Borealis, Embleton Bay, Northumberland, February 28, 2014.

‘Wow, a life tick! Northern Lights over the north Norfolk Coast and visible with the naked eye! Just amazing!’ he said.

1. The Northern Lights are caused by the interaction of the solar wind - a stream of charged particles escaping the Sun - and our planet's magnetic field and atmosphere.

2. As the solar wind approaches, it distorts the Earth's magnetic field and allows some charged particles from the Sun to enter the Earth's atmosphere at the magnetic north pole and the magnetic South Pole. Then, as these charged particles "excite" gases in our atmosphere, they make them glow - just like gas in a fluorescent tube.

3. The solar wind can cause the Earth's magnetic field lines to disconnect from our planet. When these field lines "snap back" into position, charged particles from the solar wind are again pushed into the Earth's atmosphere, causing aurora. The more magnetic field lines that disconnect and snap back, the further south the Northern Lights can be seen.

Image courtesy of NOAA.

To increase the chance of seeing the Aurora Borealis, scientists advise viewers to sign up to an alert service such as Aurora Watch UK, and head outside at "magnetic midnight" - between 8pm and 12am in the UK - to find a dark place with no light pollution.

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