SkyWatch
http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/skywatch/
It's a big sky -- someone has to watch it. Tune into SkyWatch, a weekly podcast that delivers the latest astronomy buzz about planets, stars, black holes and more.
Copyright: WPYR
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The Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) launched on June 11. This observatory will scan the universe for the most powerful form of radiation known, possibly shedding light on dark matter, microscopic black holes and other cosmic mysteries. Gamma rays have the most energy of any type of light, and are created by some of the most violent events in universe.
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Astronauts who have visited the Moon quickly discovered that they would get covered with Moon dust whenever they left their spacecraft. NASA is putting together a team to look at the dust and figure out how it could affect a return to the Moon. NASA is concerned that the dust could pose health problems or clog machinery.
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A Russian institute is selecting macaques that may eventually fly to Mars before humans do. Twelve monkeys have flown in Russian and Soviet spaceflights, some for around two weeks. The monkey experiment is happening at same time as one simulating conditions of interplanetary flight for humans here on the ground.
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A third red spot has appeared on the surface of Jupiter, heralding the creation of a new, violent storm. Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a storm that's been whirling away through the planet's atmosphere for perhaps hundreds of years. These new storms may indicate changing weather on the gas giant. A white dwarf star is missing from the center of the nebula that should house it, according to a Hubble scientist working with a team on ground-based telescopes.
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Could microbes have developed and survived in the frigid below-ground region of Mars or other solar system bodies? New results from a team developing drilling and sampling of subsurface soil in Spain found a startling result. Very tough microbes can indeed survive underneath the ground if the conditions are right, and the Mars Astrobiology Research and Technology Experiment (MARTE) team may have found the right environment.
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NASA's SWIFT telescope monitors the sky for emission from powerful outbursts. On March 19, 2008, it glimpsed an explosion so bright it could be seen with the naked eye for 30 seconds despite being 7.5 billion light years away — the farthest object ever seen with human eyes. It was a gamma ray burst, one of the incredible explosions credited to the explosions of tremendously massive stars.
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And you think losing your car keys is a pain. Scientists have known since the 1960s that about half of the ordinary matter is missing from the universe. Now they've found some of it in an unusual location. A rare black hole may be nestled in the center of a cluster of stars. And astronomers are recalculating the Hubble Constant — the rate at which the universe is expanding.
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New radar observations from NASA's latest mission to Mars indicate that the red planet's crust and upper mantle are stiffer and colder than previously thought, which suggests any liquid water existing below surface and any organisms living in that water would have to exist deeper than suspected.
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The first footage of a solar “tsunami” has been captured by NASA's Stereo spacecraft. This tsunami, obviously, has nothing to do with water — it's a wave of pressure traveling extremely fast across the surface of the Sun. The shock wave hurtled through Sun's atmosphere at more than 620,000 mph.
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A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is speeding toward a collision with our Milky Way galaxy. When it hits, it may set off spectacular display of stellar fireworks in a tremendous burst of star formation. But not to worry, it will be 20-40 million years before its core smashes into our galaxy.
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On March 19, the most intense explosion ever recorded appeared in the night sky. It shone dimly for less than a minute, then vanished.
It was a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, but so bright it could be seen — though faintly — by the naked eye. Astronomers estimate that the burst was as bright as 10 million galaxies combined. Such bursts are thought to be caused by hypernovae, the explosion of a star much more massive than our Sun.
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Brown dwarfs are not quite stars and not quite planets. They are the missing links between the lowest mass stars and the highest mass planets possible. Scientists recently discovered the coolest brown dwarf known — an important discovery that may shed light on the development of planets beyond our solar system.
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A distant, dim flash in the sky marks the location of the biggest explosion ever recorded, as astronomers monitor a gamma ray burst brighter than 10 million galaxies combined. And astronomers have found tiny, early galaxies so thick with stars that they might never experience night as we do.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found evidence of material orbiting Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon, which means Rhea could have rings. This is the first time rings have potentially been found around any moon. Astronomers speculate that a collision in the moon's distant past led to the rings' formation.
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The Cassini space probe was launched in 1997 and flew by Earth, Venus and Jupiter. It entered orbit around Saturn in 2004. One of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, is believed to have liquid water below its crusty surface. A daring flyby of Cassini into geyser plume of Enceladus has bolstered the idea.
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Astronomers know that complex molecules are required building blocks for life, and can indicate that biological activity is present on distant worlds. Methane, which can come from volcanic eruptions, among other sources, is a key ingredient for the formation of life and also a by-product of microbial activity.
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Saturn's moon, Titan, may have a deep, hidden ocean. The second largest moon in the solar system, Titan has long been thought to have an environment similar to that of early Earth, before life began putting oxygen into atmosphere. If the ocean prediction is true, Titan will join three other solar system moons suspected of hiding underground oceans.
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For the first time, an organic molecule has been located in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our solar system. The planet itself can't sustain life, but could the molecule's presence is good news for life elsewhere.
Back on Earth, art and science merge as the Walter's Art Museum in Baltimore, Md., displays Hubble images on its walls. The special exhibit is the brainchild of a group of curating students at Johns Hopkins University, who worked with astrophysicists to create the display.
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Mars was too salty to sustain life for much of its history, new evidence from the Opportunity rover on the Martian surface indicates. Minerals deposited in sedimentary rocks suggest they formed in extremely salty water -- even saltier than oceans on Earth. Such conditions would have made it inhospitable to even the toughest micro-organisms.
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Venus is much like planet Earth its composition, but also very different in other ways -- it's bone-dry with little sign of water, experiences temperatures hot enough to melt lead, is enshrouded in a thick poisonous atmosphere of CO2 and sulfuric acid, and even rotates "backwards." Now we may have an explanation for this weirdness -- a tremendous head-on collision of two bodies may have formed our planetary neighbor.
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Gravitational lenses are like giant magnifying glasses in the sky. They occur where huge accumulations of matter, like galaxy clusters, create enough gravity to warp and magnify the light of objects beyond them. This enables us to see objects normally too far away to be viewed by even the most powerful telescopes.Gravitational lenses were once thought to be rare. But astronomers using Hubble have found several, and new sky surveys found more. Scientists are now training a "digital robot" to find additional lenses.
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A mission to the Moon will search for water. Scientists would like to know if the Moon does have residual water, as hinted at by earlier missions.The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite will send an impactor into a dark crater at the Moon's south pole. Instruments will measure the plume produced by the impact to see what materials are present, looking particularly for water. LCROSS will launch in October 2008 and the impact will take place early in 2009.
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For the first time, an organic molecule has been located in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our solar system. The planet itself can't sustain life, but could the molecule's presence is good news for life elsewhere.Back on Earth, art and science merge as the Walter's Art Museum in Baltimore, Md., displays Hubble images on its walls. The special exhibit is the brainchild of a group of curating students at Johns Hopkins University, who worked with astrophysicists to create the display.
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Gravitational lensing is highly useful quirk of the universe. When vast amounts of matter accumulate -- as in enormous clusters of galaxies -- the intense gravity created distorts and magnifies the light of objects behind the cluster. The effect is like creating a giant magnifying glass in space. Astronomers recently used the effect to find one of the youngest galaxies ever seen, and track the placement of dark matter.
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Stars were recently found forming in a long tail of gas trailing away from a galaxy. We normally would not expect to see stars being born so far from their parent galaxy. Scientists believe the pressure of the galaxy's motion through space as it plummeted toward the center of a huge cluster of galaxies stripped away the gas that formed these "orphan stars."
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NASA has a full launch schedule coming up, with something being launched nearly every month. Astronauts will make four shuttle flights to the International Space Station, as well as a critical trip to Hubble to make repairs and add new instruments to the telescope. NASA will also provide the vehicle for lifting new science spacecraft into orbit, in addition to a few military launches. Finally, in 2009, NASA will launch the Kepler mission, meant to find Earth-sized planets around other stars.
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Get ready for a total eclipse of the Moon on Feb. 20. Eclipses of the Moon only happen when the full Moon passes through the shadow cast by our planet. This eclipse is visible for most of North America, all of South America, western Europe and western Africa.
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Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, is hard to observe from Earth. We know a little about it from the Mariner 10 spacecraft that flew by Mercury in 1974, but a large part of the planet was never mapped. Messenger, launched in 2004, recently reached Mercury, taking color pictures and probing the planet's mysterious magnetic field.
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Cosmic rays consist of high-energy particles that streak through space, crashing into the Earth's atmosphere and leaving a tell-tale trail. But where do these rays come from? Experiments have turned up different results. One shows the rays originate from somewhere in the nearby universe, while another suggests the rays are left over from the Big Bang. A new experiment may help answer the question.
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In 1908, a tremendous explosion rocked a sparsely populated region of Siberia, destroying hundreds of square miles of forest. The destruction was likely caused by an asteroid colliding with Earth. Now new computer simulations point toward a smaller asteroid than was previously thought. That smaller asteroids could cause such devastation is an eye-opener for astronomers who look to protect Earth from inevitable future collisions.
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What a headache! New findings from examination of mammoth tusks and bison skull remains suggest that 30,000 to 40,000 years ago a meteorite shower peppered the Alaska region with pellets. Amazingly some of the animals may have survived this event, although they were probably severely injured.The individual who found these tusks, Allen West, later searched through over 15,000 artifacts to find the micrometeorites imbedded in some of the tusks and bones. With help from Lawrence Berkeley Lab, they were able to determine when the event happened. Is this one of the explanation for other large animal extinctions?
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An asteroid 164 feet wide could be on a collision course with Mars. The asteroid is expected to cross Mars' orbit later this month and may come as close as 30,000 miles to Mars. Astronomers calculate a one-in-20 chance of the asteroid actually striking the red planet.
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Show 138: Orion Nebula Closer Than Thought[Duration 4:28, 3.1 MB]Thu, 03 Jan 2008 10:00:00 -0500
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The Orion Nebula is 300 light-years closer to Earth than previously thought. Radio telescopes have obtained the most precise
