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#401 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » ESA: Move an Asteroid - ...Sancho & Hidalgo/"Don Quijote" » 2005-09-26 10:07:34
#402 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Visible HUBBLE Hst, Europe's ESO, Keck Mauna Kea Hawaii » 2005-09-26 09:51:26
large population of galaxies
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 … 03979.html
more info on the 100-metre Overwhelmingly Large [OWL] telescope.
http://www.pparc.ac.uk/nw/press/accession.asp
possible OWL
http://www.gemini.edu/science/maxat/future/future.html
watch out for others the improved-VLT, CELT, JWST, OWL, Euro50 - however JWST is not in the visible
Astronomers from ESA's Member States are taking part in a French led mission to be the first to search for rocky planets around other stars. The mission, COROT, is an important stepping stone in the European effort to find habitable, Earth-like planets around other stars.
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMO6C1A6BD_index_0.html
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object … ctid=31709
Corot will be the first mission capable of detecting rocky planets, several times larger than Earth, around nearby stars (planets outside our Solar System are referred to as ‘exoplanets’). It consists of a 30-centimetre space telescope. It will be launched in early 2006. Corot will use its telescope to monitor closely the changes in a star’s brightness that comes from a planet crossing in front of it. While it is looking at a star, Corot will also be able to detect ‘starquakes’ that send ripples across a star’s surface, altering its brightness. The exact nature of the ripples allows astronomers to calculate the star's precise mass, age and chemical composition.
#403 Re: Unmanned probes » SMART-1 - ESA lunar orbiter » 2005-09-26 09:44:49
SMART-1 set for more lunar science
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMTM88X9DE_index_0.html
"This mission has given ESA a valuable experience about electric propulsion operations and navigation that can be exploited in future missions," says Octavio Camino-Ramos, SMART-1 Spacecraft Operations Manager at ESOC.
From now on SMART-1 will be left in a natural orbit determined by lunar gravity, but also by perturbations by Earth and the Sun. Analyses show that SMART-1 will end its life naturally, through impact with the Moon surface, around mid August 2006.
Bernard Foing, ESA’s SMART-1 Project Scientist, said, "The first scientific phase of the mission, from March to July 2005, was essentially dedicated to simple observations of the Moon and the study of the behaviour of spacecraft and instruments in the difficult thermal conditions of the lunar environment. From early October, with the extended scientific phase, SMART-1 will perform more complex science operations."
#404 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Views from Radio telescopes - USA's VLA, European, Australia » 2005-09-25 18:03:24
radio is the electromagnetic radiation which has the lowest frequency, the longest wavelength, and is produced by charged particles moving back and forth; the atmosphere of the Earth is transparent to radio waves with wavelengths from a few millimeters to about twenty meters, Earth's atmosphere hides most electromagnetic radiation from space except visible light, certain infrared frequencies and some radio (wavelengths greater than 0.3 metres) waves, radio waveleght can be near the 10^4 and 10^5 cm about the size of buildings - long wavelenght radio waves are blocked. A number of the most massive galaxies were found to be extremely powerful sources of radio waves. The radio specturm runs through many ranges 3Hz, 300 Hz, 30 kHz, 3MHz, 300 MHz, 3GHz and 300 GHz, Radio astronomy led to the discovery of pulsars which pulse regular radio emissions.
APEX, the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment, is a collaboration between Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in collaboration with Astronomisches Institut Ruhr-Universität Bochum (AIRUB) at 50%, Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) at 23%, and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at 27% to construct and operate a modified ALMA prototype antenna as a single dish on the high altitude site of Llano Chajnantor. The telescope was supplied by VERTEX Antennentechnik in Duisburg, Germany.
http://www.apex-telescope.org/
PaST located in Ulastai, China.
http://web.phys.cmu.edu/~past/images.html
70,000 Square-Meter Telesope area - PaST will generate a detailed, high-resolution image of a five-degree portion of the sky for radio frequencies from fifty to two-hundred Mega-Hertz. This image will contain a timeline that details how ionized the universe was during its early stages of development: from about 200 million years to one-billion years after the Big Bang. This means that PaST will allow cosmologists to see as much as five times closer to the start of the Big Bang than is possible with current optical or radio telescopes so that we can witness such events as the birth of the first stars in the universe.
Tracking Europe's visitor to Venus
http://www.noticias.info/asp/aspComunic … 7807&src=0
The Cebreros site hosted a former NASA station built during 1960-1962, and was primarily used in the sixties and seventies. But in the record time of less than two years, ESA has built its brand new Cebreros deep space ground station.
The Site Infrastructure Manager, Valeriano Claros, likes taking visitors to a nearby hilltop from which one gets the measure of this imposing and elegant white structure pointing skywards, niched in the parched countryside.
"When Spain proposed to provide a site for ESA's second deep space ground station, we decided to leave the region around Madrid for the countryside. Here there is no electrical interference from transmitters or factories. This requirement is paramount when one has to track and control spacecraft travelling hundreds of millions of kilometres away."
The Cebreros facility is a near-identical twin of ESA's New Norcia ground station near Perth. The Australian site, operational in November 2002, has since been regularly used by, for instance, the Mars Express, Smart-1 and Rosetta missions.
#405 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Space Microwave - Cosmic microwave, Planck & NASA's COBE » 2005-09-25 11:07:05
#406 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Heliopolis *2* - ...Sun, Solar Science Cont'd... » 2005-09-24 13:16:21
Two future missions
ESA's Solar Orbiter
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMTWG1A6BD_index_0.html
The Solar Orbiter describes exactly what the spacecraft will do - it will orbit the Sun.
NASA's STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory)
http://www.stereo.jhuapl.edu/mission/st … tatus.html
The NASA-sponsored STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) project is currently in its integration and test phase at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., during which the twin observatories are being assembled and tested prior to launch.
#407 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » New Discoveries #5 - Deep space, galactic, solar system, etc. » 2005-09-24 13:08:22
*Supernova champ makes his 40th find.
Way to go!
http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1580_1.asp
--Cindy
40, that's a massive number
#408 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » The power of X-ray - XMM-Newton and Chandra sights » 2005-09-24 13:04:40
Chandra View of Tycho's Remnant
http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish … ml?2292005
XMM-Newton probes formation of galaxy clusters
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMDW5A5QCE_index_0.html
#409 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Infrared Telescopes - the USA's Spitzer & future ESA scope » 2005-09-24 13:02:40
The primary source of infrared radiation is heat. The higher the temperature, the faster the atoms and molecules in an object move and the more infrared radiation. The infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum covers the range from roughly 300 GHz (1 mm) to 400 THz (750 nm). It can be divided into three parts: Far-infrared, Mid-infrared, and the Near-infrared. The first infrared space mission was IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite) which detected about 350 000 infrared sources. Later, ESA's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) made important studies of the dusty regions of the Universe. Infrared can be seen around a frequency of 10^13 where Hz = 1/s and wavelengths in nm = 10-9 m. from 300 GHz (1 mm) to 30 THz (10 μm). Infrared wavelenght can be about 10^-2 cm about the size of a pin head. The far infrared and lower part of this range may also be called microwaves. This radiation is typically absorbed by so-called rotational modes in gas-phase molecules, by molecular motions in liquids, and by phonons in solids. The water in the Earth's atmosphere absorbs so strongly in this range that it renders the atmosphere effectively opaque. However, there are certain wavelength ranges ("windows") within the opaque range which allow partial transmission, and can be used for astronomy. The wavelength range from approximately 200 μm up to a few mm is often referred to as "sub-millimeter" in astronomy, reserving far infrared for wavelengths below 200 μm, the Near-infrared, from 120 to 400 THz (2,500 to 750 nm). Physical processes that are relevant for this range are similar to those for visible light.
Herschel telescope assembled
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMM848X9DE_index_0.html
The largest telescope mirror ever built for space, due to be launched on board ESA’s Herschel spacecraft in 2007, has completed its assembly and first testing phase.
#410 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Infrared Telescopes - the USA's Spitzer & future ESA scope » 2005-09-24 13:01:10
Spitzer Space Telescope and Deep Impact
http://www.blackanthem.com/scitech/mili … 90816.html
Spitzer Studies Planet X
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/ha … /20050915/
#411 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Cosmic radiation - Compton's Gamma-rays and Integral views » 2005-09-24 12:59:54
Gamma rays at around 10^20 - from space are blocked by the Earth’s atmosphere – fortunately for us, because this powerful radiation is lethal. Gamma-ray (wavelengths less than 0.01 nanometres) telescopes in space give evidence for the processes that made the Universe habitable, where Hz = 1/s and wavelengths in nm = 10-9 m.. They are useful to astronomers in the study of high-energy objects or regions and find a use with physicists thanks to their penetrative ability and their production from radioisotopes. X-rays in cm are down to about the size of an atom while Gamma rays are very small with a wavelength down to about 10^-12 cm or about the size of an atomic nuclei. The wavelength of gamma rays can be measured with high accuracy by means of Compton scattering. Some scientists have begun to study the most energetic of this energy, cosmic rays of very high energy ( about 10 eV ), cosmic rays can lie in the 10^22 frequency, ESA's Integral spacecraft is now studying the phenomenon known as 'gamma-ray bursts'.
Galactic Centre Region
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object … ctid=37890
The task of INTEGRAL, ESA's International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, is to gather some of the most energetic radiation that comes from space.
#412 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Space Microwave - Cosmic microwave, Planck & NASA's COBE » 2005-09-24 12:57:50
NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft already has detected radiation left over from the birth of the universe and Hubble can explore the universe back to when it was about 1 billion years old. Many images were already compiled from data taken between December 1989 and September 1990 by the Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) on board NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). They illustrate the steps scientists used to find the cosmic infrared background, which is a radiative fossil containing cumulative starlight which now appears in the infrared due to the cosmic red shift and by absorption and re-emission by dust in the universe since the Big Bang.The Planck mission will collect and characterise radiation from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) using sensitive radio receivers operating at extremely low temperatures. Planck's objective is to analyse, with the highest accuracy ever achieved, the remnants of the radiation that filled the Universe immediately after the Big Bang, which we observe today as the Cosmic Microwave Background.
#413 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Infrared Telescopes - the USA's Spitzer & future ESA scope » 2005-09-24 12:49:56
ESA's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) is an astronomical satellite that was operational between November 1995 and May 1998. It operated at wavelengths from 2.5 to 240 microns, in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Astronomers unveiled the deepest images from NASA's new Spitzer Space Telescope and announced the detection of distant objects -- including several supermassive black holes -- that are nearly invisible in even the deepest images from telescopes operating at other wavelengths. Spitzer Space Telescope (SST) (formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF)) is an infrared space observatory, the fourth and final of NASA's Great Observatories. The largest telescope mirror ever built for space, due to be launched on board ESA’s Herschel spacecraft in 2007, has completed its assembly and first testing phase. Herschel will be the largest space telescope of its kind when launched. Herschel’s 3.5-metre diameter mirror will collect long-wavelength infrared radiation from some of the coolest and most distant objects in the Universe. Herschel will be the only space observatory to cover the spectral range from far-infrared to sub-millimetre wavelengths.
#414 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Cosmic radiation - Compton's Gamma-rays and Integral views » 2005-09-24 12:42:22
Every three days INTEGRAL orbits the Earth once. The spacecraft spends most of its time at the furthest parts of its orbit, at an altitude higher than 40 000 kilometres, well outside the Earth's radiation belts, to avoid background radiation effects. From here ESA's gamma-ray observatory sends back to Earth new information about the most exciting phenomena in the universe. It reports on violent explosions, the formation of elements, black holes and other exotic objects in our Milky Way, the cosmic neighbourhood and much further, in distant galaxies at the edge of the observable universe. NASA built a "great observatory" for gamma-ray astronomy. The Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) was designed to take advantage of the major advances in detector technology during the 1980s, and was launched in 1991. The satellite carried four major instruments which have greatly improved the spatial and temporal resolution of gamma-ray observations. The CGRO provided large amounts of data which are being used to improve our understanding of the high-energy processes in our Universe. Today's main space-based gamma ray observatory is the INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, (INTEGRAL). INTEGRAL is an ESA mission with contributions from Czech, Poland, USA and Russia.
#415 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Visible HUBBLE Hst, Europe's ESO, Keck Mauna Kea Hawaii » 2005-09-24 12:35:07
The Hubble Space Telescope one of the greatest NASA/ESA missions has "caught" the Boomerang Nebula in these new images taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys. This reflecting cloud of dust and gas has two nearly symmetric lobes (or cones) of matter that are being ejected from a central star. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope entered a new era of science operations this week, when engineers shut down one of the three operational gyroscopes aboard the observatory. The two-gyro mode is expected to preserve the operating life of the third gyro and extend Hubble's science observations through mid-2008, an eight-month extension, in that sense Hubble doesn't have any successor, which is very bad thing. Hubble is also an UV telescope, and no Earth-based telescope can replace it.
However we are now seeing new ideas for great ground based scopes in the visible spectrum and perhaps space-based IR scopes looking at infrared, things like Euro50, improved-VLT, CELT, JWST, OWL may replace Hubble
http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercur … imate.html
http://www.eso.org/projects/owl/Gallery.html
#416 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Views from Radio telescopes - USA's VLA, European, Australia » 2005-09-24 12:24:17
I'' put some info in this thread about the RATAN-600 (Russia), Green Bank Telescope and Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and Chinese scientists told us that FAST is going to be built in Karst depression in Guizhou and will greatly help raise China's status in world's astronomy research.
The European Space Agency is set to open a deep space communication antenna in Spain to help track its soon-to-be-launched craft to Venus.
The space agency will inaugurate the 35-metre-diameter radio antenna in Cebreros, Spain, on 28 September, just in time for the October launch of its Venus Express spacecraft.
ESA opened its first 35-metre antenna in New Norcia, Australia, in 2002. It has been dedicated to tracking the Mars Express spacecraft, currently in orbit around the Red Planet.
#417 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » The power of X-ray - XMM-Newton and Chandra sights » 2005-09-24 12:12:53
Chandra X-ray Observatory, supports theoretical arguments that shock waves from stellar explosions may be a primary source of cosmic rays. Chandra X-ray Observatory is a satellite launched on STS-93 by NASA on July 23, 1999.
XMM-Newton observed the comet 9P/Tempel 1 during the impact caused by Deep Impact. ESA's X-ray space observatory is unique. It is the biggest scientific satellite ever built in Europe, its telescope mirrors were amongst the most powerful ever developed in the world, and with its sensitive cameras it will see much more than any previous X-ray satellite. XMM-Newton is detecting more X-ray sources than any previous satellite and is helping to solve many cosmic mysteries of the violent Universe, from what happens in and around black holes to the formation of galaxies in the early Universe.
#418 Re: Unmanned probes » New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt » 2005-09-23 15:57:35
Well done everyone
this thread has some great links
#419 Re: Unmanned probes » Cassini-Huygens - NASA/ESA Saturn orbiter & Titan lander » 2005-09-23 15:56:05
*...for a shoreline on Titan. They're calling it "dramatic." Area measures 1,060 by 106 miles. This is from Cassini radar, obtained during the latest flyby. Speculation continues regarding seepage of liquid from the ground and/or ground springs and/or rainfall.
--Cindy
great story,
you can also read some more shoreline info here
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huy … 9DE_0.html
#420 Re: Human missions » Europe goes to the moon and Mars! - Human space flight.... » 2005-09-22 15:37:08
There are also reports that the Kliper is to be launched from either of Russia's two space centers Baikonur in Kazakhstan and Plesetsk in northern Russia as well as from the Kourou site, which is in French Guiana.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Launchers_A … ESD_0.html
http://uplink.space.com/attachments//12 … erview.JPG
Ariane-M would be the European Very Heavy Launcher, ArianeM would lift 120 tonnes in Leo.
#421 Re: Human missions » Will Europe and Russia Keep the ISS going » 2005-09-22 14:49:59
they will keep it moving, Japanese, Euros, Brazil, and Russians have many plans
#422 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Express (MEX) - ESA orbiter » 2005-09-22 11:57:22
Mars Express mission extended
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMUB08X9DE_index_0.html
ESA’s Mars Express mission has been extended by one Martian year, or about 23 months, from the beginning of December 2005.
Further to providing an impressive wealth of scientific results on its own, Mars Express has also successfully co-operated with NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers, in terms of co-ordinated scientific observations and to test Mars Express in relaying the rover data to Earth. Further scientific collaboration between Mars Express and both rovers and Mars Odyssey is expected during the remainder of the nominal mission and the extended mission, and with NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission during the extended mission.
#423 Re: Not So Free Chat » A380 airbus - monster of the skies » 2005-09-20 12:29:48
Korean Air has ordered 5 Airbus A380 aircraft, Qantas has placed an order for 12 Airbus A380, 27 freighter versions of the A-380 were sold, ILFC has ordered 5 passenger Airbus A380 aircraft and 5 freighter versions Thai Airways International has ordered 6 Airbus A380 aircraft. India might soon buy an alternative version of the A380 which would transport almost 900 people
#424 Re: Unmanned probes » Some of the best un-manned projects of the near future » 2005-09-19 09:35:09
Chandrayana India
http://www.hindu.com/2004/01/23/stories … 910300.htm
BepiColombo ESA
http://home.cwru.edu/~sjr16/advanced/near_esa.html
#425 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Express (MEX) - ESA orbiter » 2005-09-15 06:43:58
*Planetary Fourier Spectrometer. They're wondering if it's due to vibrational effects ensuing from spacecraft activities. The troubles began a few months ago. All other instruments are okay. ESA is conducting a technical investigation.
--Cindy
Let's hope they are ok, it would be sad to see Mars Express develop problems now