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Light Echoes Allow Astronomers To Watch ‘Great Eruption’ Replay

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:37:51 GMT

Astronomers recently got a rare opportunity to view a cosmic event that took place from 1837 to 1858 known as the “Great Eruption.”The outburst temporarily made Eta Carinae the second brightest star in the sky during that period.

Today’s astronomers are able to view the event because some of the light from the eruption took an indirect path to Earth and is just now arriving.

The light was heading in a different direction, away from our planet, when it bounced off dust lingering far from the turbulent stars, and was rerouted towards Earth. This effect, called a “light echo”, delayed the light 170 years from reaching Earth, compared to the light that arrived directly.

The team recorded the explosion after this time delay and compared it to eyewitness reports of the brightness of the star from the 1800′s to determine that the light echo was from the “Great Eruption.”

“You are at the stadium, watching the game, and your team scores,” Federica Bianco, a postdoctoral researcher at University of California – Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), said in a statement. “But you are too far away to get the details of the action, or in the case of Eta Carinae’s great eruption, you do not have modern instruments, detectors, and spectrographs to study it.”

“Now we are getting a replay –– an up-close, detailed view of our cosmic eruption. And just like with the replay, we get to see the outburst from a different point of view, as the light that we see now was originally traveling in a different direction than the light seen in the 1840′s.”

The observations are providing new insight into the behavior of powerful massive stars on the brink of detonation. Very massive stars are rare, and little is known about how they lose mass as they die. The views of the nearby erupting star revealed some unexpected results, which will force astronomers to modify physical models of the outburst.

“It just blows my mind that we can go back in time and watch one of astronomy’s greatest hits, and greatest mysteries, with a cosmic instant replay,” Andy Howell, a staff scientist at LCOGT and adjunct faculty member at UCSB, said.

The team’s observations are the first time astronomers have used spectroscopy to analyze a light echo from a star undergoing powerful recurring eruptions. Spectroscopy captures a star’s “fingerprints,” which helps provide details about its behavior, such as temperature and speed of ejected material.

The replay of the “Great Eruption” is giving astronomers a unique look at the outburst, and turning up some surprises as well. The star does not behave like other stars of its class, and Eta Carinae is a member of a stellar class called Luminous Blue Variables. This class of star is extremely bright and prone to periodic outbursts.

The temperature of the outflow from Eta Carinae’s central region is about 8,500 degrees Fahrenheit, which is cooler than other eruption stars of its class.

The team first spotted the light echo while comparing visible-light observations they took of the star in 2010 and 2011 with the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s Blanco 13-feet telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. They said they will continue monitoring Eta Carinae because light from the outburst is still hitting Earth.

“We should see brightening again in six months from another increase in light that was seen in 1844,” Rest said in a statement. “We hope to capture light from the outburst coming from different directions so that we can get a complete picture of the eruption.”The research was published in a February 16 letter to the journal Nature.

New comet discovered by amateur astronomer

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:41:09 GMT

Here’s how he did it: Using custom-written software to operate a 14″ Meade LX200GPS telescope in his self-built observatory in Warrensburg, Missouri, Fred set his system up to capture images of the sky on that cold evening, not allowing himself to be chased inside by the low temperatures or the bright, rising moon. After some technical difficulties with his dSLR, Fred managed to acquire some quality images. While making a cursory look through the blink data, Fred was surprised to spot a faint burry object visible moving across three frames. A check of online databases of known objects brought up no positive hits — this was something that hadn’t been seen before.

Fred describes the “eureka” moment on his blog:
A check of known objects in the region had a lot of results in the area, but all were moving eastward while my fuzzy was moving westward. Rocks don’t make U-turns. This was really getting exciting. I had Jen, my better half, an accomplished astro imager, take a look at the images and before I could point out the faint smudge she exclaimed “That’s a comet!”

Still, Fred notes, “it wasn’t a slam-dunk.” The images were faint and there could have been other causes of blurry spots in digital images. But a check of the raw color data revealed a greenish coloration to the object’s glow, which is indicative of cyanogen and carbon emission — typical hallmarks of comets. “Very encouraging,” Fred added.

Another night’s observation was needed. If it was a comet, it would appear again along its expected trajectory. Of course, with an unidentified comet there would be no known orbit, so Fred had to manually extrapolate its position. When he trained his telescope onto his calculated coordinates the following evening and began taking images, there it was… the same faint, fuzzy green blur from the previous night, slowly appearing in the darkening sky right where it should be.

“Oh. Wow. It was dead nuts at where it was supposed to be,” Fred writes. “Wow. This thing is for real! It’s at about this time that it begins to sink in that a lifelong quest has just been fulfilled. I just crossed another thing off the bucket list!”

Fred spent the next hour gathering images to send in to the IAU’s Minor Planet Center, in the hopes of having the object cataloged so that others could locate and observe it. He didn’t have to wait long; within five minutes the object was listed on the Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page, and dubbed C/2012 C2 (Bruenjes), in honor of its discoverer.

Now that’s just got to feel good.
Comet Bruenjes is an NEO currently about 0.555 AU away from Earth. Its exact size and orbital period isn’t known, and it may even be a returning comet or piece from a larger one… the official report isn’t out yet. It appears to have a fairly inclined orbit relative to the ecliptic, based on the current diagram created by
JPL’s Small-Body Database.

The comet’s total magnitude is 16.6, so it is dim and not visible to the naked eye. Fred told Universe Today in an email: “it’s in the constellation Aries, about six degrees north of Jupiter. Just after sunset in the Northern hemisphere it’s high in the southwest, nearly overhead.”
Stay tuned for more updated information on this newly-discovered member of our solar system. And congratulations to Fred Bruenjes, comet-hunter extraordinaire!

Amateur astronomers love sharing passion for heavens with others

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:14:44 GMT

Joe Gonzalez can look at stars 10,000 light years away from the observatory he built in his backyard near Clarksburg, W.Va. That's about 58 quadrillion miles, said Gonzalez, who thinks there's a good chance that some life form out there is looking back at him. "I believe there's life all over the universe," he said. "I'd hate to think we're it."

Backyard observatories are popping up at the homes of more amateur astronomers as their costs decline and interest in the hobby grows, experts say. Several companies produce inexpensive domes; amateur astronomers can buy more telescope for less money and computers with off-the-shelf software can operate just about everything, said Dennis di Cicco, senior editor at Sky and Telescope magazine in Cambridge, Mass.

For Gonzalez, a kid who grew up on "the poor side" of the tracks, astronomy is a way to give something back. A retired fire chief who serves as director of the medical communication division of West Virginia's Office of Emergency Medical Services, he put in the observatory 11 years ago at the house he built facing true north. "We get dozens of Scouts, science groups from high school and junior high," he said. "We probably get 400, 500 kids go through in a year."

Among his visitors: astronaut Alan Bean, who walked on the moon in 1969, and four of the five "Rocket Boys" from Homer Hickam's story. Hickam, a West Virginian, and a group of friends built rockets. He wrote a book that inspired the movie "October Sky."

Gonzalez, president of the Central Appalachian Astronomy Club, "loves to share his passion with other people," said his son, Stas Edel, 23, an astrophysics major at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, who spent "every clear night of the year until 3 or 4 in the morning" looking at the stars from their backyard.

The dome for Gonzalez's observatory came from St. Francis High School in Morgantown. The priest who spearheaded the science program died and no one used the observatory. Gonzalez got approval from the Catholic Diocese of Wheeling to take the dome, which he removed in 2001.

He spent about $20,000 on his 16-inch telescope and $5,000 to construct the cement block building surrounding it. Many backyard observatories go unnoticed because they look like garden sheds.

"They have roll-off roofs. ... People don't even notice them," said di Cicco, who built his first observatory at his parents' house in the 1960s. Still, the hobby can be expensive. "You can drop $50,000 (or) $60,000 on a commercial telescope," he said.

Three amateur astronomers in Western Pennsylvania spent almost $150,000 combined on backyard observatories. Tony Orzechowski, president of The Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh, which counts about 450 members, built and equipped his observatory last year for about $90,000.

"It has a warm room and a 12-foot dome," said Orzechowski, 52, of Monessen. Mark Schomer, 56, of Connellsville built his from a kit for about $3,000. His 14-inch telescope with global positioning system cost him about $8,000. "I love it," Schomer said. "It works fine for me."

In fact, the day Schomer's dome was delivered, another Connellsville resident, Bill Snyder, took delivery of his dome just over the hill from Schomer. "Mark's visual; I'm an imager," said Snyder, 53, who photographs the heavens and figures his dome and equipment cost him about $40,000.

For Gonzalez, his reward is to watch the faces of young visitors light up when they see Jupiter or the rings of Saturn through the telescope. "This opens doors," he said.

Astronomy team that includes UCLA finance professor discovers nearby dwarf galaxy

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:50:11 GMT

A team led by UCLA research astronomer Michael Rich has used a unique telescope to discover a previously unknown companion to the nearby galaxy NGC 4449, which is some 12.5 million light years from Earth. The newly discovered dwarf galaxy had escaped even the prying eyes of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The research is published Feb. 9 in the journal Nature. The larger, host galaxy, NGC 4449, may be "something of a living fossil," representing what most galaxies probably looked like shortly after the Big Bang, Rich said. The galaxy is forming stars "so furiously" that it has giant clusters of young stars and even appears bluish — a sign of a young galaxy — to the eye in large amateur telescopes, he said.

NGC 4449 has a nucleus that may someday host a black hole and an irregular structure, lacking the spiral arms characteristic of many galaxies, he said. It is surrounded by a huge complex of hydrogen gas that spans approximately 300,000 light years, which may be fueling its burst of star formation.

Rich collaborated with Francis Longstaff, a professor of finance at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and an amateur astronomer, in acquiring and using a specialized telescope designed to take images of wide fields of the sky. Known as the Centurion 28 (the diameter of the mirror is 28 inches), the telescope, and the observatory the astronomers used, are located at the Polaris Observatory Association near Frazier Park, in Kern County, Calif.

With the C28 telescope, the astronomers discovered the companion dwarf galaxy, which has "evidently experienced a close encounter with the nucleus of NGC 4449," Rich said. Dubbed NGC 4449B, the dwarf galaxy has been stretched into a comet-like shape by this gravitational encounter.

NGC 4449B had remained undetected because it is more than 10 times fainter than the natural brightness of the night sky and some 1,000 times fainter than our own Milky Way galaxy. The dwarf galaxy is in a "transient stage," Rich said, and will soon — by astronomical standards — be dissolved.

The Milky Way has a similar companion, known as the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy, which has been wrapped around our galaxy as it orbits and which loses its stars to the Milky Way's gravitational tug.

With the help of the wide field of the C28 telescope and special image processing conducted by Christine Black, a UCLA research assistant, and David Reitzel of the Griffith Observatory, the astronomers were able to subtract the light of the sky and that of the outer parts of NGC 4449 to reveal the new galaxy.

NGC 4449B is stretched into a gigantic "S" so large that if one end were placed at the center of the Milky Way, the other end would reach all the way to the sun's position. In fact, NGC 4449B is the largest dwarf galaxy known in the "local group" that also includes the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy.

The deep images of the larger NGC 4449 revealed other surprises as well: a strange arc of stars that might be an ingested galaxy, and a "remarkable halo" of old stars that appears to consist of two parts; the outermost part of this "halo" population was unexpected, and makes NGC 4449 equivalent in size to the Milky Way. The origin of these old stars is not known, but they may have been acquired when galaxies similar to NGC 4449B fell into NGC 4449 and were shredded, Rich said.

Andrew Benson, a co-author and a senior research fellow in theoretical cosmology at the California Institute of Technology, said, "Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has a host of smaller galaxies which orbit around it. On much larger scales, we see groups and clusters of galaxies which orbit under the pull of their mutual gravitational attraction. Gravity has no preferred length scale, so we'd expect that dark matter (which interacts only through gravity) should behave in more or less the same way on all scales. For a galaxy like NGC4449, that means it should have its own system of small dark-matter satellites orbiting around it — assuming that dark matter works the way we think it does."

The C28 telescope used for the discovery places the CCD camera at what is known as the "prime" focus, in front of the light-collecting mirror. The telescope is produced by the Astro Works Corp. of Arizona, led by James Riffle. Longstaff and Rich expect to have the telescope ready for remote control later this year, perhaps this summer. Longstaff led the observatory and telescope project.

The dwarf galaxy was also independently discovered by a team of scientists led by David Martinez-Delgado of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. This team included Aaron Romanowsky of UC Santa Cruz and amateur astronomer R. Jay Gabany. Their study, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, shows the dwarf resolved into individual stars by the 8.2-meter Subaru telescope.

UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

Great Ellingham Recreational Centre, Norwich

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:16:04 GMT

Dr. John Rogers of the BAA (Jupiter Section) will be giving a talk on Jupiter and the Juno Mission. Launched in August 2011 it will arrive at Jupiter in 2016. The primary science goal is to significantly improve our understanding of the formation and structure of Jupiter. It will also advance our understanding of the origins and early evolution of our own solar system at a fundamental level. After the talk, weather permitting, the observatory will be open for viewing the night sky, Members will be on hand to guide round the sky and explain what you can see.

Astrology Decides Your Career In Microbiology!

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:24:04 GMT

Microbiology, an extensive subject dedicated to the study of micro organisms, is one of the highly researched areas of science, which has also resulted in several great contributions to the over-all development of science.

The term “microorganism” is applicable to viruses, bacteria, specific algae etc while the microbiologists cover the several branches like Virology, Parasitology, Mycology and many others. Many of the individuals, who have genuine interest in the subject, might be eager to pursue a career in Microbiology.

But is it suitable for you?
Although many opportunities exist in various sub-fields such as Bacteriology, Food Microbiology, Genetics, Environmental Microbiology etc, one should know that which career field is more suitable for him or her. This is where Astrology plays a major role.

How Astrology Decides Your Career In Microbiology?
Astrology helps us to analyze the planetary positions and combinations in one’s natal chart to assess the chances for a career in pure Microbiology or its related choices.

With respect to Microbiology, the planet Jupiter (represents living organisms) is assessed along with technical planets. Similarly, since all branches of Microbiology utilises microscopic analysis as well as chemical techniques, Lord Rahu and Ketu also have a great significance.

Horoscopes and Microbiology
In some horoscopes, exalted Mars and Rahu would be present in the 5th house (describes your creative talent and imaginative powers) along with aspects by its own Lord. Moreover, if Lord Jupiter and Saturn are combined with exalted (strong) Moon, edification in the field of Microbiology is confirmed.

Alexander Fleming’s Horoscope
Alexander Fleming, one of the most famous biologists and pharmacologists, will always be remembered for discoveries like Penicillin isolation and lysozyme enzyme. Do you know that in his horoscope, harmed Moon and Rahu are present in the 5th house? Also they are aspected by Lord Jupiter and Mars. Moreover, there is a conjunction between Mars, the 5th house Lord, Jupiter and Ketu in the 11th house, which all clearly specifies his interest and passion in Microbiology.

What are you waiting for when you can also make use of Astrology to determine your career ahead with 2012 career report?

By analyzing your planetary positions in the 2nd, 6th and 10th houses, our Vedic astrologers can give you an intelligent insight into what the impending 12 months has in store for your career. The planetary positioning of Lord Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury and Sun in specific houses can strongly determine the destiny of your career. So get your detailed month to month career forecast on what to expect for the next 12 months.

Astronomers discover fourth planet that could potentially sustain life

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:59:23 GMT

WASHINGTON — International astronomers said on Thursday they have found the fourth potentially habitable planet outside our solar system with temperatures that could support water and life about 22 light-years from Earth.

The team analyzed data from the European Southern Observatory about a star known as GJ 667C, which is known as an M-class dwarf star and puts out much less heat than our Sun.

However, at least three planets are orbiting close to the star, and one of them appears to be close enough that it likely absorbs about as much incoming light and energy as Earth, has similar surface temperatures and perhaps water.

The new rocky planet, GJ 667C, orbits its star every 28.15 days — meaning its year equals about one Earth month — and has a mass at least 4.5 times that of Earth, according to the research published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“This planet is the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it,” said Guillem Anglada-Escudi who was with the Carnegie Institution for Science when he conducted the research but has since moved on to the University of Gottingen in Germany.

The theory about water, however, cannot be confirmed until astronomers learn more about the planet’s atmosphere. Other planets circling the same star — which is part of a three-star system — could include a gas-giant and an additional super-Earth with an orbital period of 75 days, but more observations are needed to confirm that.

Some experts have been skeptical that M-class dwarf stars could have planets that support life because they are too dim and tend to have lots of solar flare activity which could send off lethal radiation to nearby planets.

And even though this star, GJ 667C, has a much lower abundance of elements heavier than helium, such as iron, carbon, and silicon — the building blocks of terrestrial planets — than our Sun, astronomers are intrigued by the possibilities.

“This was expected to be a rather unlikely star to host planets. Yet there they are, around a very nearby, metal-poor example of the most common type of star in our galaxy,” said co-author Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California Santa Cruz.

“The detection of this planet, this nearby and this soon, implies that our galaxy must be teeming with billions of potentially habitable rocky planets.”French astronomers in May last year confirmed the first exoplanet, Gliese 581d, to meet key requirements for sustaining life. It is a rocky planet about 20 light-years away.

Swiss astronomers reported in August that another planet, HD 85512 b, about 36 light-years away seemed to be in the habitable zone of its star. NASA confirmed its first such planet late last year, Kepler 22b, about 600 light-years away.

Astronomy: we've all got stars in our eyes

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:19:27 GMT

When did astronomy become so mainstream? A few years ago, it was thought of as the stuff of introverted hobbyists in suburban attics, telescope trained through a skylight while their spouse watched television downstairs. Now it’s taking over the small screen – astronomy is the poster child for the new pop-science culture, in which the word “geek” is a compliment and people show off their knowledge of particle physics in the way they used to name-drop obscure indie bands.

If that sounds hyperbolic, it’s not. In recent years, the BBC series Wonders of the Universe made
Professor Brian Cox, the ever-smiling Mancunian physicist, one of the biggest names on British TV, with its combination of extraordinary visuals and Cox’s boyish zeal. As a result of his latest show, BBC Two’s Stargazing Live, sales of astronomical telescopes have gone up sixfold. The revamped version of The Sky at Night, this newspaper’s long-running stargazing column (which appears on the first Monday of every month), has excited great interest. And the new must-see West End play is not an adaptation of Chekhov, or a broad musical comedy featuring a sitcom actor, but Constellations, a drama by Nick Payne which has astronomy as its central theme. Yesterday, our own Charles Spencer gave it a glowing five-star review, praising the way it addresses relativity and quantum mechanics, the twin theories of physics which cover the astronomically large and infinitesimally small respectively, but stubbornly fail to meet in the middle.

Where has this newfound enthusiasm come from? Dr Stuart Clark, an astronomer who has done his own part in getting his field into popular culture by writing The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth, a novel about the lives of the great astronomical pioneers Galileo and Kepler, has a theory. “I think the reason is that, despite the stereotype of the coldly objective scientist, astronomy stirs us at our deepest emotional level. Images of the planets and the wider universe are works of art in their own right – more beautiful than anything science fiction artists could imagine – and it fills us with wonder.”

Colin Stuart, an astronomer who presents planetarium shows at Greenwich’s Royal Observatory, agrees. “One of the appeals of astronomy is that it taps into our primitive side. A beautiful picture from a space telescope gives you that same sense of awe that you get when seeing a spectacular sunset or great view from a hilltop,” he says. “That’s something the other sciences don’t have as much of – the Higgs boson, for example, is a crucial part of our understanding of the universe, but you can’t put a pretty poster of it on your wall.”

And as well as the sheer visual splendour, there is a deeper beauty to astronomy, in that it provides a window to our own origins, and that of the universe. “It tackles the big questions we all ask, such as where did we come from and why are we here,” says Stuart. During the 20th century, it was the astronomer Edwin Hubble who noticed that distant stars were redder than nearer ones. He realised that this meant that they were flying away from us faster, and that this in turn meant that the universe was expanding – which implied that, at some point in the past, it had expanded from a single point. So the universe had not existed forever: it had a beginning, the Big Bang. Now it is through the work of other astronomers and cosmologists that we know, with reasonable confidence, when that beginning was – 13.7 billion years ago.

As well as the natural beauty and wonder of the subject, the history of astronomy is littered with fascinating characters. Galileo, the subject of Dr Clark’s book, was placed under house arrest by the Church for saying that the Earth revolved around the sun, and not the other way around; Tycho Brahe, a contemporary of Galileo, had a golden prosthetic nose fitted after he lost his in a duel, and kept a clairvoyant dwarf in his entourage. Even the great Sir Isaac Newton, discoverer of gravity and the laws of motion, was also an alchemist and occultist, and believed in his own, bizarrely heretical version of Christianity.

These facts, however, have always been true. So why has astronomy taken off now? Well, the “Cox Effect” is certainly a factor – it has been credited with pushing up the numbers taking A-level physics and chemistry by almost 20 per cent, and maths by a whopping 40 per cent, although any scientist would warn you about the risks of confusing correlation with causation. After Prof Cox’s latest venture, the Stargazing Live show he co-hosts with the comedian (and theoretical physics BSc) Dara O’Briain, Amazon.co.uk reported that sales of telescopes leapt nearly 500 per cent.

It’s all part of a wider interest in science and scepticism, says Dr Adam Rutherford, a geneticist and science TV presenter. “Science shows like Robin Ince’s Uncaged Monkeys are selling out medium-sized rock venues with particle physics and comedy. That just didn’t happen a decade ago.” But he acknowledges that Cox’s success is also a factor: “There is an appetite for science, and science on telly can be the gateway drug. It makes people go out and buy telescopes, or do physics at university. Long may it continue, because when countries invest in science, everyone benefits.”

The overall effect has been to bring astronomy, previously seen as arcane and impenetrable, out into the sunlight – or the starlight. “Loads of us love astronomy as kids, but it seems to fade as we get older,” says Stuart. “For some reason it’s not cool to be into science after the age of 12 – or at least that used to be the case. Recently it’s become socially acceptable to be a geek.” Dr Clark concurs: “It’s now cool to be nerdy. Anyone from any walk of life can admit to liking astronomy.”

There have been mutterings that this pop-astronomy bandwagon has run its course. But as Helen Arney, part of the science-comedy Festival of the Spoken Nerd, which sold out the Bloomsbury Theatre earlier this month, points out, the interest is only an upsurge, not a new thing altogether: “Every few years, the media goes 'Oh my goodness! Science is popular and interesting and fun!’ as if it hasn’t been any of those things before.”

Her colleague Steve Mould agrees: “This isn’t a fad, like yo-yos or whatever.” They’re right: Sir Patrick Moore’s original Sky At Night has been running for 55 years. Stargazing Live, as much as it has caught the eye, is just part of a long-standing British public fascination with the cosmos. Even the stage smash Constellations has a predecessor: Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play Arcadia, which arose from a chance meeting between Stoppard and the then-head of the Royal Society, Lord May, at a Telegraph event, dabbles in entropy and Newtonian physics.

But the interest is definitely at a high point. And it’s deserved. “Astronomy is the ultimate escapism,” says Mr Stuart. “With a bit of imagination you can transport yourself to the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn or to the stars beyond. It’s like fiction; it can transport you to another world – except astronomy is better, because it’s real.”

Astrologers try to change their stars

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:41:21 GMT

AT the start of each year, many people look to their horoscope to gain insight into what to expect. But what astrology buffs never expected was that their star signs may have changed. Astronomers with the Minnesota Planetarium Society last year dropped a bomb on the zodiac.

They established that the millennia-long effect of the moon's gravitational pull on earth had caused a one-month bump in the alignment of the stars. The controversial announcement meant people's star signs should change. They also recommended a new 13th star sign - Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer.

But don't try to argue any of those points with Goodna astrologist Jana. "The star signs have been around for thousands of years and they will remain the same," Jana, who has devoted 40 years to astrology, said. "But people are welcome to have their own opinions about them."Jana said the beginning of the year was always a particularly busy time for astrologists, with people interested in knowing what the year held.

Astronomers aim to take first picture of black hole

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 11:38:09 GMT

Taking a picture of a black hole, an object so gravitationally bound that not even photons of light can escape, sounds like an oxymoron, but astronomers this week will attempt to do just that. What they're hoping to glimpse is something called the "event horizon" -- the swirl of matter and energy that are visible around the rim of the black hole just before it falls into the abyss.

SCIENCE CHANNEL: Take the Black Hole Quiz!

"Even five years ago, such a proposal would not have seemed credible," Sheperd Doeleman, assistant director of the Haystack Observatory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the lead researcher on the project, called the Event Horizon Telescope, said in a press release. "Now we have the technological means to take a stab at it," he added.

The target for the shoot is the supermassive black hole that lives in the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It's about 4 million times as massive as the sun, but it's extremely compressed and far away, nearly 26,000 light-years. To astronomers, it's like looking at a grapefruit on the moon.

ANALYSIS: Our Galaxy's Black Hole Has the 'Munchies'

To see something that small and that far away, you need a very big telescope -- something Earth-sized ought to do it. To that end, astronomers will attempt to link up to 50 radio telescopes scattered around the globe, including the Submillimeter Telescope on Mt. Graham in Arizona, telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii and the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy in California. The global array will include several radio telescopes in Europe, a 10-meter dish at the South Pole and potentially a 15-meter antenna atop a 15,000-foot peak in Mexico.

"In essence, we are making a virtual telescope with a mirror that is as big as the Earth," Doeleman said.

Black holes were first suggested by Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Decades of research and observations have provided evidence of their existence, but it has never been possible to directly observe and image one.

"We will be able to actually see what happens very close to the horizon of a black hole, which is the strongest gravitational field you can find in the universe," said Dimitrios Psaltis, an associate professor of astrophysics at the Steward Observatory.

ANALYSIS: Coming Face to Face With Our Galaxy's Black Hole

General relativity predicts that the bright outline defining the black hole's shadow must be a perfect circle.

"If we find the black hole's shadow to be oblate instead of circular,it means Einstein's General Theory of Relativity must be flawed," Psaltis said. "But even if we find no deviation from general relativity, all these processes will help us understand the fundamental aspects of the theory much better."I'd just like to see what one looks like.