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16

Black hole and fast stars in galactic center

 Posted Jan 16, 2007 at 08:13AM by Max F. Listed in: Astrophysics, Astronomy, Celestial Bodies Tags: black hole
the galactic centerOver at Astronomy Picture of the Day, they have the time-lapse movie below along with an explanation written by a professional astronomer (it's a bit technical, so we'll try to explain some things further). The movie shows stars in the central part of our galaxy. These stars have moved a lot in the past eight years. Stars don't usually move so fast, but these do.

If these stars are being moved and pulled that fast, then there must be something there that is massive (has a lot of gravity) but compact. This image shows only a small portion of the central part of our galaxy. In other words, there's something that's over one million times the mass of our Sun squished into a region less than one-fifth of a light year. That's really strong evidence for a black hole.

These stars are near a strange object that emits unique radiation. That object, called Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*, is marked with a yellow cross in the time-lapse movie below.

The radiation is consistent with theories about the energy that is released by matter when it falls at very fast speeds as it gets torn apart by a black hole. The subatomic particles get pulled at such high speeds - near the speed of light - that they scream out radio waves.

A rival theory is that there is no black hole. It could just be a very dense cluster of millions of stars. As we take better and better pictures of the center of our galaxy, it's up to professional astronomers to argue if there's still room in the picture for millions of stars.

fast stars around Sagitarrius A*


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4

Andromeda galaxy bigger than originally thought

 Posted Jan 09, 2007 at 07:38PM by Victor B. Listed in: Astronomy, Celestial Bodies Tags: heavy metal, Andromeda, galaxy

Credit: GALEX team, CalTech, NASA


It looks like CES wasn't the only big thing happening this early in the year. The 209th meeting of the Astronomical Society of America also occurred last week, and one of the big presentations of the meeting was an assertion about one of our neighboring galaxies. According to the findings, it seems as if the Andromeda galaxy is five times larger than people thought.

Without getting too scientific, first imagine that a galaxy is made up of three parts, as our source notes: "a flattened disk, a bright central bulge of densely packed stars, and an extended spherical halo where stars are more sparsely distributed." The stars in the halo are supposed to be the first stars that form in the galaxy, and current theories of galaxy formation state that the halo stars should have less heavy metal content on them compared to the stars closer to the galaxy's center.

Now, our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are supposed to have similar rates of galaxy formation. This should mean that the halo stars of Andromeda ought to have a similar amount of heavy metal content. Researchers who've previously seen Andromeda's halo stars, however, noted that they're 10 times richer in metals than our own halo stars. In astronomical terms, that's a pretty big discrepancy.

What members of the study team found were some new stars farther away from Andromeda's center. These new red giant stars weren't seen before, and may explain why the halo stars were so metal rich: because they weren't the actual edge of the Andromeda galaxy and, therefore, not actual halo stars. As the picture above shows, this means that an even larger portion of our night sky may actually be part of another galaxy.

Better still, it gives us an even better reason to look up at the night sky.


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15

Amazing UFO over Denver was a Russian rocket

 Posted Jan 05, 2007 at 12:21PM by Max F. Listed in: Astronomy Tags: meteor shower, YouTube, constellation, Digg
Look up in the sky! And make a wish! Our beloved planet Earth is going through a region of debris in space. When all that junk hits our atmosphere, they burn up when they fall very fast against the hot friction of our atmosphere. That's when they become "falling stars" or "shooting stars" or meteors. Sometimes they hit the ground as a meteorite (like the meteorite that fell on a house in Freehold Township, New Jersey, on January 2).

We enter this patch of junk every January, so you might as well enjoy the show!

Please IGNORE anything the Fox 31 weatherman says. He was misinformed (maybe his source was faulty). The Fox weatherman in the video talks about an "extinct constellation". Constellations don't become "extinct". And since he didn't say what the Quadrantids are, we'll explain:
  1. You know how railroad tracks look like they converge onto a single point on the horizon? Well meteors (if you watch all of them), look like they come from the same part of the sky. So, a meteor shower is named after the part of the sky they seem to come from. The Leonids in November look like they come from the constellation Leo (the Lion), and the Perseids look like they come from Perseus.
  2. The January meteor shower we're having right now is called the Quadrantids. They're named after Quadrans Muralis, a constellation that no longer exists because it became grouped into the constellation Bootes.



For the record, NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) reported that the lights over Denver wasn't a meteor shower after all. It was an old Russian rocket (an SL-4) that burned up when it fell back into our atmosphere.

Thanks to TheSpiritofTruth for uploading the video to YouTube. And if you want lots of laughs, check out the Digg comments.


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14

Rock that's older than the Sun, found in Canadian lake

 Posted Dec 01, 2006 at 04:08AM by Ian C. Listed in: Astronomy Tags: Columbia, Canada, Hydrogen
ImpactTaken from a frozen lake in northern Canada, a bunch of deep red chunks and lumps of rock, is set to be the oldest known object on Earth.

Taken from a meteorite that slammed into Lake Tagish in British Columbia in 2000, it has been studied by scientists, and they discover that it contains particles that predate the birth of our nearest star, the sun.

The fragments of the Tagish Lake meteorite is considered among the most pristine in the world as the fragments were protected from contamination as they were lodged into blocks of lake ice.

Using electron microscopy and isotope tests, the scientists looked at the chemical make-up of the grains of the meteorite and discovered that the  grains had unusual ratios of different forms of nitrogen and hydrogen.

Ratios of the isotope nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14 were nearly twice those on Earth, while the ratio of deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen, to normal hydrogen, was between 2.5 and nine times higher.

The experts say that the levels of the isotopes in the meteorite could only arise from chemical reactions taking place in an environment where temperatures were as low as -260C. Such low temperature conditions could only be found in remote molecular clouds before the formation of the solar system.


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10

Hubble: Two new upgrades for '08

 Posted Nov 13, 2006 at 03:43AM by Tim Y. Listed in: Astronomy, NASA, Spacecraft Tags: NASA, Popular Science, Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble Space Telescope


NASA's soon-to-be-of-drinking-age eye in the sky is set to get a new set of upgrades this 2008, and unlike the last five trips which were done just to keep it running, this new mission is set give the Hubble some cool new gear that'll vastly improve its performance. The first upgrade involves swapping out its main camera, the 13-year old Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, with a brand new Wide Field Planetary Camera 3. The new lens will carry all the functions the old camera had, only better.

The next major upgrade is a totally new tool for Hubble. It's a device called the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and according to Popular Science Correspondent Michael Moyer's interview with NASA investigator James Green, the COS is designed to track normal matter in the universe - like the gas clouds that just float along and absorb light from nearby stars and quasars.

The COS will pick up how much light these gas clouds absorb, and from there identify what these clouds are made of; very much like how your typical lab spectrum analyzer works, only...IN SPACE! Speaking of space, the COS is currently undergoing vacuum and temperature tests for two straight months to verify if it can handles the extremes (IN SPACE!) before it's launched along with the Wide Field Camera 3 to the Hubble (IN SPACE!) in May.

NASA is hoping that with these two upgrades will keep the aging (and admittedly glitchy) Hubble running until 2013, the year it's finally retired and replaced with the James Webb Space Telescope.


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10

Fun with lab accidents

 Posted Nov 01, 2006 at 12:39PM by Karl B. Listed in: Astronomy, Chemistry, Biomedical Technology Tags: superhero
Plasticman: the first superhero to get his powers in a lab accidentOkay, so you're here in the QJ Science blog. Maybe you're looking for some heavy reading, something that'll really make you think about quantum physics, string theory, and fish. Don't worry, you're on the right blog. However, this post's going to focus on "the lighter side of things", science-wise.

See, this one is all about stuff that ordinary mortals (i.e., me) don't know about laboratory accidents. It's funny, it's informative, it's even got some superhero trivia in it. Alright, some people have labeled the article we're talking about as "fluff" and crying, It's just 4 or 5 points stretched out to 20." Granted, maybe it's that, but heck, a fun read is a fun read!

Here's another guy who got his powers in a lab accidentOkay, okay, just to get you into the mood of things, here are a couple of examples:
  • After a 1992 drug trial in the Welsh mining town of Merthyr Tydfil, male subjects reported that sildenafil citrate hadn't done much for their angina, but it did have an unusual side effect on another part of their anatomy. Today the drug is sold as Viagra.
  • Why he's not the father of the electric chair: While trying to electrocute a turkey, Benjamin Franklin sent a whopping jolt from two Leyden jars into his own body. "The flash was very great and the crack as loud as a Pistol," he wrote, describing the incident as an "Experiment in Electricity that I desire never to repeat."
For more pieces of laboratory trivia, click on the 'read' link below. Oh, and watch out for facts 19 and 20. They're a pair of doozies.
Read

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7

Cydonia Face of Mars 360 vid

 Posted Oct 24, 2006 at 10:59AM by Gino D. Listed in: Astronomy Tags: Mars, NASA, ESA
The so-called face of MarsPeek-a-boo. We see you. Mr. Martian's face has gotten quite a buzz in the astronomical society, and just a month ago, the European Space Agency (ESA) had come up with some 3D images of what the face looks like from different angles. But now, we have a full, high-res video that sweeps around the mountain in one continuous motion.

This video is actually based on the combination of images that were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) and the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC). The video looks amazing (duh, it's in high-res) and it starts with the camera looking towards the east, and ends with a southerly point-of-view.

With this almost-360 vid, we see clearly how non-face-like the so-called face of Mars really is. There's no nose, the eyes are missing, the mouth seems to be gone. In fact, we can't quite understand how some people actually thought it really was a massive artificial structure of a face. As what NASA has always said (since 1976, when the face was discovered): it's just a mountain and there's no sign of alien technology that "built" it.

Download: [Cydonia "Face of Mars" 360 vid]


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14

Bill Nye: why Pluto CAN'T be a planet

 Posted Oct 20, 2006 at 09:17PM by Chris L. Listed in: Astronomy, Celestial Bodies, Interviews Tags: IAU, Bill Nye
When Bill Nye the Science Guy explains it on ABC News, it's a whole lot clearer than having the IAU issue a communique. Why CAN'T Pluto be a planet? Well, simply because - and this isn't Bill talking, but our one-sentence summary of him - Pluto is essentially a glorified comet.

Well, it's not a comet because it's too big to be classified as one, but as Bill points out, it is smaller than 1,500 kilometers, and is mostly made of ice. So, if it were orbiting in Mercury's path, instead of where it is on the fringes of our solar system, pretty soon it would become an even smaller piece of rock that once was Pluto's inner core. This is like saying you cannot call the surface of a frozen lake "real estate" to build a house on because when the summer comes, you can kiss that house goodbye.

"I mean, is that worthy [to be called a] planet, a planet that just evaporates? Pffshht! For crying out loud!"

From Bill's point of view, however, there is a bright side to Pluto losing planethood, as it shows how dynamic and changing the world of science could be. Learn someting new, something really new and really big, and it literally rocks your scientific world to the core, even of an ice dwarf like Pluto. Click Play on the YouTube clip below to hear and see ol'd Bill yourself.


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8

Colliding galaxies are making love, not war

 Posted Oct 19, 2006 at 02:17PM by Karl B. Listed in: Astronomy, Celestial Bodies Tags: Milky Way
The Antennae galaxiesThe thought of two galaxies colliding would bring images of death and destruction to anybody's mind, but would you believe that the colliding Antennae galaxies are in reality not just having a cosmic fistfight but are actually doing the intergalactic equivalent of the horizontal tango?

That's what's happening now in the great beyond, scientists say. As the Antennae galaxies smash together, billions of stars are born, mostly in groups and clusters of stars. Using the newest - and by far the sharpest - images of the Antennae galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers are hoping to be able to better distinguish between the stars and super star clusters created in the collision of the two spiral galaxies.

Not all is fine and dandy in the two galaxies' fertile marriage, though. The observations show that only about 10% of the newly formed super star clusters in the Antennae will live to see their ten millionth birthday. Most of the super star clusters formed will disperse, with the individual stars becoming part of the smooth background of the galaxy. It is believed, however, that about a hundred of the biggest and most massive clusters will survive to form regular globular clusters similar to the ones found in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

Of course, we still haven't forgotten about the sheer amount of destruction that a collision could cause to two galaxies, but isn't it amazing that such a violent phenomenon could lead to the creation of new star systems? We certainly think so. Still, though, it's a comfort to think that we'll be long gone from this world when our own Milky Way galaxy finally collides with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy about six billion years from now. Looking at it happening through a telescope is one thing, but actually being in the middle of it is another thing entirely.


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8

Leonid meteors to shower upon us next month

 Posted Oct 18, 2006 at 07:00AM by Mabie A. Listed in: News, Astronomy, Celestial Bodies Tags: Europe, Canada, constellation, North America, Li-On
leonidFrom the constellation of Leo, the Lion will spring forth a dazzling display of meteor shower, visible from Western Europe and eastern North America on November 18th. Dusty debris shed by the comet Temple-Tuttle known as Leonids (derived from the constellation Leo) will rain down the heavens, transforming the skies in a vast stage of meteor show.

The Temple-Tuttle comet is a small celestial body that orbits the Sun every 33 years. In the past, it has gained popularity for producing meteor displays by the hundreds, even thousands by the hour.

Back in 1998, the comet passed the Sun and Earth. From then up to the year 2002, the Leonids produced showers wherein meteors fell at rates of more than a thousand per hour. Now that's a whole lot of meteors. As such, scientists tagged them to be meteor storms, and not just showers.
However, as the comet has receded further into the solar system in 2003, the Leonids have been producing a bare number of 10 meteors per hour.

But enthusiasts, and just plain onlookers, might get lucky this time. According to scientists, as our planet will be nearly twice as far away from the comet, as much as 100 to 150 Leonids may come streaking through the horizons in only an hour's time.

For the audience in Europe, the sky show will start on an early Sunday morning, November 19 at 4:45 GMT. As Leo will be situated in the southeast sky, the best view is afforded just before the sun rises. As for those in eastern North America, the place to crane your necks out for would be in the eastern sky. Too bad for those in the central and western parts of the U. S. and Canada, the constellation would be out of sight at the time of the peak of the shower.


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