rosetta: living with a comet

Replay: Rosetta science experts present the key discoveries made at the comet

ASTRONOMERES FIND THREE TEMPERATE PLANETS THAT SUPPORT LIFE

Wonderful. Great! Love this story. But after citing Nature , the co-author of the paper in the Journal, Michael Gillon of the University of Liege in Belgium, and M.I.T. Researcher Julian De Wit - this "writer" then pulls quotes from sources Gizmodo(a blog from Gawker Media. Yes, them.) and The Verge -- from Vox Media. Both, imho, are questionable sources for this sort of scientific topic.

INSIDE THE EARTHS MOON!!!

COMET CONTAINS WATER!!!!!!!!!!!

New science result! Infrared scans with Rosetta's VIRTIS instrument confirm water ice on Comet 67P/C-G. Full story and images:

WHO,S VISITING WHO?

Meteorites

hubble data reveais pluto,s moons orbits wilddance

Pluto has at least five moons, and these distant satellites orbit through the collection of bodies in a highly complex manner. Now, data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) reveals surprising information about the dance of satellites around the icy dwarf planet.

- See more at: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/57692/20150603/pluto-moons-seen-wild-dance-around-dwarf-planet.htm#sthash.n1BdG96P.dpuf

Charon is the largest moon of Pluto, first seen by astronomers at the United States Naval Observatory in 1978. This body orbits so close to its icy parent body that the two are often described as a binary planet, although neither are true planets according to current standards. The term "binary planet" is an informal one, referring to a set of planetary bodies in which a satellite is of a significant size compared to its companion. Some astronomers believe the Earth and our Moon could be classified as such a system. Charon is 750 miles across, roughly half as wide as Pluto itself.

- See more at: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/57692/20150603/pluto-moons-seen-wild-dance-around-dwarf-planet.htm#sthash.n1BdG96P.dpufNix and Hydra were discovered in 2005, followed by the smallest known moons, Kerberos, found in 2011, and Styx, discovered the following year.

- See more at: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/57692/20150603/pluto-moons-seen-wild-dance-around-dwarf-planet.htm#sthash.n1BdG96P.dpuf

stars interactive visualization

100,000 Stars interactive visualization
100,000 Stars is an interactive visualization of the stellar neighborhood created for the Google Chrome web browser. It shows the location of 119,617 nearby stars derived from multiple sources, including the 1989 Hipparcos mission. Zooming in reveals 87 individually identified stars and our solar system. The galaxy view is an artist's rendition based on NGC 1232, a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way.

THE INTERIOR OF THE MOON

The interior of the moon is layered into a hard outer crust,a rigid outer mantle,a semi-rigid  inner mantle, and a core. The interior of the moon is cooler than the interior of the earth. Since the moon is so small,it loses its heat quickly into space.Since the earth and the moon formed,the moon has cooled down muchmore than the ear

CRUST: The moon,s surface is dry,dusty,and rocky. The rocky crust is about 60 Km on the side of the moon that faces earth and about 100 km thick on the opposite face.

RIGID LITHOSPHERIC MANTLE: Thisrocky layer is not hot enough to flow. This hard shell is about 1000km thick.

NON-RIGID MANTLE:  Only the deepest parts of this asthenospheric layer are hot enogh to flow

CORE: The non-fluid core may be composed of iron-rich rock.The core contains only about 2-4 percent of the moons total mass; this cover is probably about 225 miles

former Galileo director honoured with satnav awared

A panel of satnav experts at last week’s US Institute of Navigation’s annual Global Navigation Satellite System meeting has recognised ESA’s previous Director of the Galileo Programme and Navigation-related Activities for the work done to establish Galileo during his tenure.

supernova exploded twice!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most supernovae explode only once, but a newly found superluminous star did something truly bizarre: it exploded twice. A recently discovered class of supernovae called superluminous supernovae (SLSN) are brighter and longer-lasting. Only a dozen or so have been found, and using the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC), astronomers have found evidence of another, but reveals surprising behavior. It seems to have exploded not only once, but twice. The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

There are several different types of supernovae; the most well known type Ia, where a white dwarf star absorbs mass from another star or collides with another white dwarf which causes a thermonuclear explosion as its mass becomes unstable. The other types of supernovae are caused when massive stars use up all their fuel and can no longer fuse atoms together in its core. They then collapse under their own gravity causing a supernova.

The research has revealed that the supernova had an initial increase in brightness, declined for a few days, then increased again even stronger than before.

"Superluminous supernovas are up to a hundred times more energetic than type Ia supernovae because they can remain bright for up to six months before fading, rather than just a few weeks," explains Mathew Smith, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southampton, in a press release. "What we have managed to observe, which is completely new, is that before the major explosion, there is a shorter, less luminous outburst, which we can pick out because it is followed by a dip in the light curve, and which lasts just a few days."

This is the first time something like this has ever been observed in a supernova.

"From our data, we have tried to determine if this is a characteristic unique to this object, or whether it is a common feature of all superluminous supernovae, but has not been observed before, which is perfectly possible given their unpredictable nature," Smith says.

Discovered on December 21, 2014, the object was given the name DES14X3taz by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) which studies the expansion of the universe through dark energy, but occasionally detects supernovae and other transient phenomenon.

the Helix Nebula in infrared

Explanation: What makes this cosmic eye look so red? Dust. The featured image from the robotic Spitzer Space Telescope shows infrared light from the well-studied Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) a mere 700 light-years away in the constellation of the Water Carrier Aquarius. The two light-year diameter shroud of dust and gas around a central white dwarf has long been considered an excellent example of a planetary nebula, representing the final stages in the evolution of a Sun-like star. But the Spitzer data show the nebula's central star itself is immersed in a surprisingly bright infrared glow. Models suggest the glow is produced by a dust debris disk. Even though the nebular material was ejected from the star many thousands of years ago, the close-in dust could have been generated by collisions in a reservoir of objects analogous to our own solar system's Kuiper Belt or cometary Oort cloud. Had the comet-like bodies formed in the distant planetary system, they would have survived even the dramatic late stages of the star's evolution.

ANDROMEDA GALAXY

Explanation: Andromeda is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy. Our Galaxy is thought to look much like Andromeda. Together these two galaxies dominate the Local Group of galaxies. The diffuse light from Andromeda is caused by the hundreds of billions of stars that compose it. The several distinct stars that surround Andromeda's image are actually stars in our Galaxy that are well in front of the background object. Andromeda is frequently referred to as M31 since it is the 31st object on Messier's list of diffuse sky objects. M31 is so distant it takes about two million years for light to reach us from there. Although visible without aid, the above image of M31 was taken with a standard camera through a small telescope. Much about M31 remains unknown, including how it acquired its unusual double-peaked center.

the secret of black matter unrevealed

Reports suggest that scientists from the High Energy Physics Group (HEP) of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg have unfolded the greatest mysteries of Physics as they have discovered the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe's dark matter.

PHYSICS; ALPHABET BOOK PUBLISHED

Titans flooded canyons

Space Science Image of the Week: With hydrocarbon seas and methane-flooded canyons, Titan’s landforms show striking similarities to their water-filled Earth counterparts

sunspots and sunflare

SUNSPOTS: 

                The sunspots were first discovered by Galileo in 1610The existence and a cyclic variation in the number of sunspots was firmly established in the mid 19-th century Heinrich Schwabe. He calculated the sunspots cycle to be approximately 11 years. sunspots are dark as these are regions of cooler gases on the solar surface. Individual spots have a black centre, known as Umbra .The grey Penumbra outlines this area. Sunspot’s are regions of very strong magnetic fields of intensity of several thousand’s Gauss. Sunspots occure in groups of two to several.

SOLAR STROM & SOLAR FLARE :   

                 

                   

                         Sunspots are very active regions of the sun. Infact the sun is said to be quite very few sunspots are seen. The most violent phenomenon that occurs in these centers of activity involves the transformation of a considerable amount of energy, of nearly 10 32 to 10 33 ergs, probably stored in the high magnetic fields of the sunspots in a relatively short period of about half an hour. This phenomenon is called a solar strom. The most spectacular of these is the Solar Flare

THE SUNS ATMOSPHERE

               THE SUN’S ATMOSPHERE

                              The suns atmosphere consists of three layers. The lowest is the photosphere, a thin layer only 500 km thick that emits most of the suns light and that has a density of 10 ²³/m ³ .Above it lies the rare and more transperant chromospheres with a density of 10 ¹⁷/m ³  ,and the corona with a density typically of 10 ¹⁵/m ³  near the sun extending out of the earth orbit and beyond. The temperature falls to a minimum value of 4200K in the photosphere. The effective temperature of the sun is 5785K.

                                                                                                                         

                           Progressing outward into the suns atmosphere, the temperature rises slowly to the chromosphere, and then at an altitude if 2 or 3 Mm, it suddenly increases to 2*10 ⁶  k or so in the corona. This was discovered only in 1940.But that high temperature is somewhat deceptive, if ones hand were immersed in a bottle of coronal gas, its temperature would rise by only a fraction of a degree, because the low density of corona means that it contains only a minute amount of heat!!!

            There is a general magnetic field on the sun with a strength of about 1 or 2 gauss. The sun is the source of energy in the solar system and maintains life on this planet. Sun produces this energy by thermonuclear reactions taking place in the suns interior.

   

sun; Probe-3 Set the control for the verge of the sun

By converging in orbit, a pair of small satellites will open a new view on the source of the largest structure in the Solar System: the Sun’s ghostly atmosphere, extending millions of kilometres out into space.

The SUN & comparision of sun with earth

 Sun

                       

The sun is fairly an orinary star of spectral type G2V and with a madnitude of 4.8.However ,is proximity to the earth makes it of most immediate interest to us also most accessible for styudy.The vital statistics of the sun are follows;

Age=4.5*10 ⁹  year

Mass=1.99*10 ³⁰  kg

Radius=696000 km

Mean density=1.4*10 ³  kg/m ³

Mean distance from earth=150*10 ⁶  km

Surface gravity=274 m/s

Escapevelocity at surface=618 km/s

Luminosity=3.86*10 ²⁶ W

Equtorial rotation period=26  days

Mass loss rate=10 ⁹ kg/s

Effective black body temperature=5785 k

Inclination of sun’s equator to plane of earth’s orbit=7 ⁰

Composition;  Approximately 90% H, 10%  He,0.1% other elemente like C, N, O…..etc

COMPARISON OF SUN WITH EARTH:

         Inoeder to put some of these figures into perspective,we may note that the sun’s mass is 330000 times that of earth, and its radius is 109 times larger.The mean density of earth is only about 4 times that of the sun,the atmospheric density at surfece of earth is 1 kg/m ³ .which makesthe earths sea level atmospheric pressure five times the suns surface pressure.One astronomical unit (AU) is only 215 times of the radius of the sun and it takes sunlight 8 min to reach the earth.the suns emmitted radiation amounts to 1kW/m ²  at the surface of earth.the surface gravityis 27 times greater at the sun,and the suns rotation produces an equatorial velocity of 2 Km/s.

 

The sun is a massive ball of gas held together ans compressed under its own gravitational attraction.It consists primarly of H and He.Theses gases ar% of the mass of the sun and are present roughly the sameproportion s on the earh.

         

R

NASA ; Space Station images

Earth observation image of the week-Poyang lake

                           Earth observation image of the week: China's Poyang Lake in radar vision

NASA-astronamic pic of the day

Full Moon over Brno 

Explanation: After sunset this gorgeous full moon rose over Brno city in the Czech Republic on July 20, 2016. The panoramic image was made during a celebration of the 47th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. A series of exposures captures the yellow hued lunar disk against the fading colors of twilight, with the 14th century Spilberk castle illuminated in the foreground. Of course, tonight's full moon is called the Harvest Moon. The closest full moon to the northern hemisphere's autumnal equinox, its traditional name has long been celebrated in story and song. Tonight's full lunar phase also coincides with a subtle, penumbral lunar eclipse, the Moon passing only through the Earth's diffuse, outer shadow.

ESA's next astronut mission -PROXIMA

Proxima is ESA's next satalite mission.ESA's next astronaut mission will be launched in November

Cool scene for MetOp-C

Technology image of the week: A complex cryogenic structure set up in advance of testing Europe's next weather satellite

nasa; talks on pluto

Who would have thought that Pluto is a graffiti artist, spray-painting one of its moons, Charon, with a reddish stain that covers an area the size of New Mexico? Charon’s polar coloring comes from Pluto itself – methane gas that escapes from Pluto’s atmosphere becomes “trapped” by the moon’s gravity and freezes to the cold, icy surface at the moon’s pole. This is followed by chemical processing by ultraviolet light from the sun that transforms the methane into reddish organic materials called tholins. Find out more: 

NASA :space smile

The Hubble Space Telescope took this picture. It seems to show a smiling face in space. The eyes, nose and surrounding lights are all galaxies in a big cluster. 

Vega releases five satallites in complex mission

Arianespace launched a Vega rocket on a complex mission early this morning that demonstrated the flexibility of its upper stage and multisatellite carrier.

Cool space facts

Map of solar system

star map of the day september 16

• Full Moon (exact at 3:05 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). As night comes on, look for the Great Square of Pegasus to its upper left. The Square, a bit larger than a fist at arm's length, stands on one corner.

• A fairly deep penumbral (fringe) eclipse of the Moon is visible from eastern Europe, eastern Africa, Asia, and the westernmost Pacific. Map and full details.

Studying meteorites

Human spaceflight and robotic exploration image of the week: astronauts and instructors holding meteorites at ESA’s planetary geology course Pangaea

Gaias first sky map

ESA’s Gaia mission has published its first catalogue of a billion stars

a taster of Gaias sky

Media briefing replay: Gaia scientists present stellar catalogues obtained during the first year of ESA’s star surveyor

gaias billion star map

The first catalogue of more than a billion stars from ESA’s Gaia satellite was published today – the largest all-sky survey of celestial objects to date.

Madeira wildfires

The recent devastation brought by wildfires to the beautiful Portuguese island of Madeira is all too clear in these images from Sentinel-2A