New Discoveries *3* - ...MORE deep space, extraplanetary, etc.

Shaun Barrett · 2004-05-08 08:23:37

The Iris Nebula - fabulous shades of what I sometimes think of as my favourite colour!
I don't believe I've seen it before. Thanks, Cindy!

Palomar · 2004-05-09 19:42:24

The Iris Nebula - fabulous shades of what I sometimes think of as my favourite colour!
I don't believe I've seen it before. Thanks, Cindy!

*No need for thanks, the pleasure's mine Mr. Barrett. I'm glad you enjoyed the pic...IIRC, you are a bit color blind? But you're able to see blues?

http://science.nasa.gov/spaceweather/sw … pg]**Comet NEAT** -- big pic here!

*I'm taking my 'scope out tonight. Hopefully the smattering of clouds will go away. Can check it out with binoculars or 'scope -- NEAT is "just to the left" of Procyon.

Need "directions" to find Procyon? Check out spaceweather.com for today's date.

They're describing NEAT as a "faint fuzzball with a stubby tail." [Hmmmmm....sounds a bit like a fancy dwarf hamster I used to keep as a pet]. -grin-

--Cindy

dicktice · 2004-05-10 08:15:00

Shaun: I caught the ABC (Australian Broacasting Corporation) Innovations radio program last Sat/Sun (I'm never sure which day) regarding Rotary Club sponsorship of a "water purifier" the size of a suitcase. You put in contaminated, even seawater, and expose it to sunlight UV (to purify) and IR (to distill). It uses pockets (vacuum formed, for cheapness, but would preferably be injection moulded) which turned out to be a bunch of "heat pipes" behind special glass. Would you please investigate this and take the time to present it for me/us? Could be extremely important development for use on Mars, as well.

Rxke · 2004-05-10 12:52:48

Not a new discovery,

X-15 Astronaut Pete Knight dead at 74...

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-0 … llectspace

"Knight set a world speed record by piloting the X-15 to Mach 6.7 - 4520 miles per hour - on October 3, 1967. Two weeks later, on October 17, he climbed to an altitude of 280,500 feet, over 53 miles above the Earth, earning his astronaut wings from the Air Force.
On an earlier flight in June 1967, while climbing through 107,000 feet at Mach 4.17, he suffered a total electrical failure and all on-board systems shut down. After arching over at 173,000 feet, he calmly set up a visual approach and, resorting to old-fashioned "seat-of-the-pants" flying, he glided down to a safe emergency landing at Mud Lake, Nevada. For his display of airmanship that day, he earned a Distinguished Flying Cross."

Men of steel.

Josh Cryer · 2004-05-10 13:06:32

RIP

Palomar · 2004-05-11 07:01:50

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970116.html]In the Trapezium

*From 1997, but considering how slowly things evolve, it may as well be from yesterday's Astropix.

A bit "off-beat" but interesting. This "little teardrop" of gas and dust -- about the size of our Solar System -- "is racing against time to condense and form planets." It exists in a very hostile environment...they doubt the super-Jupiter class of planets will form, much less planets comparable to our inner Solar System family.

It's like looking at a snapshot back in time of our embryonic Solar System, I suppose.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-05-11 07:17:01

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/h … .html]What is the Secret of the "Red Rectangle"?

*Hubble figured it out.

Orbit time is 10.5 months...one of them is running out of fuel.

I love this stuff.

--Cindy

dicktice · 2004-05-11 08:02:33

A lot of water is available from the ground and when this water comes out of the ground as bore water, very often is has a lot of salt in it and the device which I’ve invented is ideal for removing the dissolved salts – commonly they are things like magnesium sulphate, calcium carbonate which makes water hard, and sodium chloride – these are commonly occurring things in bore water. But one of its main things and this is very, very important I think on a world scale is, it can process sea-water. And this device enables you to remove virtually all of the solids, there are roughly 35,000 parts per million of totally dissolved solids in sea water – that’s 3.5 per cent by weight, and this device changes that solid content down to 1 or 2 parts per million, which is equal to double distilled water. And in such form, you can mix it directly with blood plasma and inject it straight into people – it is as pure as that.
The Solar Water Purifier weighs 8 kilograms and is the size of a suitcase, so what volume of pure water does your device produce daily and from how many litres of impure water?
The answer to that question is a variable because sunlight is a variable, but on a hot day when the temperature is around about 25-30oC with the sun shining nice and clearly through a blue sky, it produces between about 2.5 and 3 litres per day. The panels at the moment are about a third of a square metre in area, so per square metre -- we’re talking between about 6 or 7 and 9 litres of pure water, per square metre, per day. Now, most people can survive on 1 to 2 litres per day, so under difficult conditions, if you were to dilute the water which was impure to start with, with the pure water which you’re producing, then a whole family could live off one of these devices.
Well, you’ve recently been in Sweden where you presented your Solar Water Purifier, how does your result compare with other systems presented at the conference?
The fellow before me was a professor of hydrology from Mexico City and he proved conclusively that the maximum yield you can get from a square metre with sunlight at around about 30oC ambient, was about 5 litres per square metre per day. I was the next speaker and I announced that we were getting consistently, under the same conditions, 9 litres per square metre per day. I think you might realise what that means if someone was to double your salary, you’d probably be very pleased with yourself and, I was quite pleased that we were able to almost double what anyone else in the world has ever done. And the reason for this is quite unusual. Instead of acting as a normal conventional still in which you have a cold surface to condense liquids on, you need a hot surface to condense liquids in my device and, if you cool it too much, the whole process stops and we discovered this quite serendipitously, really, and it was pretty exciting at the time. We didn’t understand it, but now we do.
Well, your Solar Water Purifier has no filters, has no electronics, has no moving parts and uses no chemicals, so more on how it works.
We have a box which is about a metre long and half a metre wide and 0.1 of a metre deep with a glass lid on it. Around the edge of the box is an aluminium frame to hold everything together and inside the box is a piece of black plastic, which is divided up into little square pockets. The water comes in at the top of this box when the box is inclined at 10-12 degrees to the horizontal. It flows down in series through 32 of these little pockets and, when they’re finally all full, you stop the water flowing and the sun shines through the glass window. Now the sun’s got all sorts of different radiations in it – one we’re very familiar with is the ultra-violet light--that’s the one which makes it all brown and red when we go out into the sun, and also, it’s very good at killing germs. And if there are any bacteria or viruses present in the water, prolonged exposure for 2 or 3 hours to the high intensity ultra-violet light in sunlight, is a very good killer of nearly all germs. And what we find is, we can break the DNA bond, destroy the living matter and the water, of course, has not been heated and the infra-red light from the sun heats the water. So the two different radiation bands – One, the ultra-violet light for killing the germs and Two, the infra-red light for heating the water are combined with this special glass window reflects both these regions of radiation come through it and the end product is hot water. The hot water effectively condenses in this square little tray – there are 32 of these in a typical tray – condenses onto the glass surface where eventually a sheet of water is formed and this whole sheet of water then flows down the inside of the glass and the whole process is called sheeting. And sheeting can only take place, if the mechanism which drives this process is called a heat pipe. So each of these 32 trays consist of a heat pipe and what we have created, (we didn’t know we were doing it,) was an array of square section, short-length heat pipes and because of this totally new principle involved, effectively we’ve been able to double, nearly double what anyone else in the world has produced hithertoward. So we’re quite excited about it, we now understand it.

How about engineering details, Shaun, to see if a Martian adaptation might work on brine, e.g., under a transparent dome.

~Eternal~ · 2004-05-11 15:09:30

http://space.com/scienceastronomy/myste … 40510.html
First possible photo of an extrasolar planet.

Palomar · 2004-05-12 07:35:35

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004 … tm]Jupiter & ISS: Eclipse over U.S.A.

*The International Space Station will be eclipsing Jupiter on May 13. Article details the "path of totality" -- they're saying it's going to be a beautiful site. Will occur around 9:30 EDT, so I'll likely miss even seeing ISS in the sky (I'm not in the path of totality), as 7:30 p.m. my time won't be dark enough.

If anyone sees it, let us know.

ISS also making other passes over U.S. this week. Towards the bottom of the article, check out the video of the ISS which a man named Beinert in Germany caught.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-05-13 07:49:01

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/h … tml]Cosmic "Garden Sprinkler"

*I don't know how I missed this article. High-speed jets of material from this thing, at roughly 2.5 million mph (!) -- fastest yet known -- flowing out from it "like a garden sprinkler." The jet flows are episodic; about "once every 100 years or so clumps of gas shoot out for unknown reasons."

"The result is like an enormous, slowly rotating garden sprinkler, they say." Imagine that.

Astronomers haven't yet figured out what exactly is driving this thing, and "even Hubble can't resolve the central scene with enough detail to solve the mystery."

Wow.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-05-16 10:13:47

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004 … tm]Jupiter & ISS: Eclipse over U.S.A.
*The International Space Station will be eclipsing Jupiter on May 13. Article details the "path of totality" -- they're saying it's going to be a beautiful site. Will occur around 9:30 EDT, so I'll likely miss even seeing ISS in the sky (I'm not in the path of totality), as 7:30 p.m. my time won't be dark enough.
If anyone sees it, let us know.
ISS also making other passes over U.S. this week. Towards the bottom of the article, check out the video of the ISS which a man named Beinert in Germany caught.
--Cindy

*Well...the guy (Mr. George Varros of Maryland) who caught this on video didn't see an actual eclipse of Jupiter by the ISS, but came pretty close:

[I dunno...everytime I see things of this nature, "Ride of the Valkyrie" by Wagner starts playing in my brain... :laugh: ]

***

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040514.html]The Moon in red

*Very cool pic. Note the bright stars behind it, especially the brighter one's name. When I was a kid, my family sometimes razzed me about the unusual names I often gave to pets. I told them if they didn't quit making fun, I'd name the next pet Zubenelgenubi or Zubeneschamali (latter not seen in the pic).

***

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040515.html]Tadpole Galaxy

*Another great image from Hubble. Interesting bits of speculation about this galaxy (besides it being pretty!). [:edit:] Check out short paragraph regarding its "tidal tail."

--Cindy

::EDIT:: I posted about the "Red Rectangle" towards the bottom of page 4 of this thread. Here's a larger pic of it:

Red]http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040513.html]"Red Rectangle" pic

Isn't that simply marvelous?

Palomar · 2004-05-17 17:11:06

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/m … ml]Stellar glutton :laugh:

*Courtesy space.com's "Mystery Monday." Discusses how the heaviest stars "gain their girth"...perhaps via accretion through its gas/dust disk rather than via collisions.

They're studying one particular star which is gobbling all the time. "The huge star -- whose mass is more than twice what should signal satiation -- never stops eating, Chini explained in an e-mail interview. It pulls gas and dust in at its equator, swallowing some and spitting the rest out in a pair of jets that flow along the axis of rotation, perpendicular to the dinner plate."

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-05-19 13:56:24

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/a … ]Asteroids change color with age

*Fascinating. Chondrites ("the most common type of meteroite"), after being cut in labs, have bluish interiors. Asteroids are reddish. They say the asteroid surfaces are reddened via space-weathering effects and admit they don't know what causes space weathering.

"The researchers are currently searching for a space-weathering effect on other types of asteroids in the solar system."

Includes companion articles related to asteroids.

***

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040517.html]Great Nebula in Carina

Gorgeous.

Also, check out information regarding Keyhole Nebula ("houses several of the most massive stars known...") and Eta Carina.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-05-21 11:09:08

http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2004/2 … .jpg]Venus Phases

*Not "new" of course, but perhaps some folks here have never looked at Venus through a telescope.

Reminds me of an article in Sky & Telescope, in the 1970s; a guy named George (I forgot his last name...) wrote a commentary column for each month's Star Chart. One very early morning in the 1950s, when he was a teenager still at home, his father paused to look into George's telescope before rushing off to work. George's dad thought it was the half-full Moon (since when is the Moon ever so far away you can only see its phases through a telescope?!). George said, no -- it's Venus. They argued a few minutes, then dad took off in a huff, still insisting it was the Moon. :laugh: It was really humorous, the way he related that anecdote.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-05-22 05:38:34

http://science.nasa.gov/spaceweather/sw … jpg]Sci-Fi artscape come true

*Venus and the Moon. Looks like a science fiction otherworldly fantasy illustration, huh?

Found it at spaceweather.com, with this caption:

"On May 21st, sky watchers across Europe saw a rare daytime eclipse of Venus by the crescent Moon. Near Stirling, Scotland, Douglas Cooper took this picture of the pair--two crescents winking in and out among the clouds."

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-05-23 22:42:35

*Luna eclipses Venus -- in the daytime:

From spaceweather.com: "On May 21st, sky watchers across Europe saw a rare daytime eclipse of Venus by the crescent Moon. In Hungary, Zsolt Kereszty made this movie of Venus, a thin crescent, splitting in two then disappearing behind the Moon's dark limb."

Looks like a dream in blue and white. :;):

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-05-24 10:08:53

Its]http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html]It's a big old universe we live in

*They're estimating at least 156 billion light-years wide!

Check out speculation on "Hall of Mirrors."

--Cindy

P.S.: Check out Moon eclipsing Venus video in the post above this one.

Palomar · 2004-05-25 07:12:19

*"Starburst galaxy" -- M82 -- cosmic]http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14266]"cosmic hurricane" with winds up to 1 million mph!

It's called a "starburst galaxy" because of the clusters of intense and young stars at its "heart."

Discusses M81's effect on M82.

"...massive jets of hot gas -- tens of thousands of light years long -- that blast into intergalactic space perpendicular to the starry plane of the galaxy."

The million mph wind isn't a "single entity" -- is "made up of multiple gas streams that expand at different rates to form a 'cosmic shower' of hot gas expelled from the starburst."

Hubble and WIYN 'scope at Kitt Peak (AZ) studying M82.

***

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040511.html]Great Cluster in Hercules

*Easy to see with even a small 'scope or powerful binoculars. Hercules is nearly overhead around 9:30 p.m. local time. I will put my Barlow lens to work on it.

--Cindy

REB · 2004-05-25 07:24:30

I like the Venus eclipse movie. I wished I could have seen it.

Palomar · 2004-05-28 07:05:25

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14304]WR 20a: Stellar Sumo Wrestlers

*Binary system of stars believed to be of the Wolf-Rayet type (likely involved with gamma-ray bursts). Both are giant stars, 80 times more massive than Sol -- are described as "the heaviest stars ever." 20,000 light years from us; they orbit one another every 3.7 days. "Nearly touching" one another.

Speculation that when one (the more massive of the pair) eventually blows, the other will survive.

Fascinating article.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-05-31 07:38:23

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040529.html]The Cone Nebula

*Another terrific (although not entirely "new") image from Hubble. The dusty darkness outlined in glowing red and those huge jeweled stars in the foreground are nothing short of spectacular, huh?

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-06-02 08:32:49

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/b … ]Universal "primal scream"

"DENVER - An astronomer has turned observations of the early universe into a sound clip that represents a primal scream from the first million years after the Big Bang.

Mark Whittle, an astronomer at the University of Virginia, based the work on a 'wonderful gift from Nature,' the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that was unleashed when the universe was about 380,000 years old."

*I listened, but for some reason can't get it to play again. Yes, does sound like a jet going overhead; wonderful.

"Whittle said that most people think the theoretical Big Bang starts out with a huge explosion, then it gets quieter with time.

'In fact, the Big Bang starts out completely silent,' Whittle said. 'The expansion…is purely radial – there’s no sideways motion. There are no pressure waves. What they are, are density variations on all scales, everywhere.'"

*Article also includes sound clips from our Solar System (I'll check 'em out a bit later today).

---

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap0406 … ergalactic winds from Starburst Galaxy M82

*Fantastic pic posted at Astropix. I recently posted an article about M82 a few posts above this one (May 25). Winds up to 1 million mph!

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-06-03 07:06:05

*Hubble's Fine Guidance Sensors helped astronomers ascertain distance. Interesting little article.

http://www.space.com/imageoftheday/imag … l]Pleiades 440 light years away

-*-

*I love nebulae; this is the best pic yet I've seen of this one:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap0404 … ]Jellyfish Nebula

--Cindy

::EDIT:: Having computer troubles. Here's a *close-up* of Rho Ophiuchi (I shared a different pic a week or so ago):

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040602.html]Colorful Clouds That is soooooo pretty.

-*-

Palomar · 2004-06-03 11:29:58

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14321]We are "star stuff"

*Galaxy M33 -- aka "The Pinwheel Galaxy" -- being observed by Spitzer Space Telescope (M33 is 3 million light years from us, a part of the Local Group of galaxies; it has a diameter half of our Milky Way). Astronomers poring over incoming data, observing warm and cool dust areas; novae, supernovae; dust distribution via "winds of giant stars," etc.

One of the astronomers sums up M33 this way: "'M33 is a gigantic laboratory where you can watch dust being created in novae and supernovae, being distributed in the winds of giant stars, and being reborn in new stars,' said University of Minnesota researcher and lead author Elisha Polomski. By studying M33, 'you can see the Universe in a nutshell.'"

Cycles of creation and destruction discussed.

Correlations with our Earth: "Observations of M33's cool components are expected to reveal much about the 'metabolism' of galaxies. A galaxy is akin to a living body, in which food substances are broken down to build the body, and the waste and decomposition products of a body are recycled to feed new life. For example, the iron in Earth's core was forged in the bellies of large, luminous stars, and the heavier elements-all the way to uranium, the heaviest naturally occurring element-were created in supernova explosions. The deaths of those stars sprayed interstellar space with dust and gas, some of which clumped together in a disk that coalesced to form the sun and its planets."

--Cindy

P.S.: Lovely photos in post above this one (nebulae).

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