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#101 2004-07-12 12:06:49

Palomar
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From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

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

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/asteroid-04g.html]LONEOS discovers asteroid with smallest orbit

*Designation is "2004 JG6."  Found on May 10. 

"In addition, 2004 JG6 goes around the Sun in just six months, making it the asteroid with the shortest known orbital period. Ordinary asteroids are located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, roughly two to four times farther from the Sun than Earth, taking several years to go around the Sun.

Instead, 2004 JG6 orbits entirely within Earth's orbit, only the second object so far found to do so. 'What makes this asteroid unique is that, on average, it is the second closest solar system object orbiting the Sun,'..."

-also-

"Asteroids with orbits entirely within the Earth's orbit have been informally called 'Apoheles,' from the Hawaiian word for orbit. Apohele also has Greek roots: 'apo' for outside, and 'heli' for Sun."

(Um, yeah -- I'd say the word "apohele" definitely has Greek roots!  Does one of the native Hawaiian languages/dialects have Greek roots??  I'm puzzled...If so, more power to them of course...)  ???

Well, I'm all for the Apoheles.  Sol is God, after all. 
:;): 

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#102 2004-07-13 15:41:54

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

*Very interesting -- a binary of "baby brown dwarf" stars.  Taken from space.com's "Astronotes" (column/updated format; must copy and paste).  First paragraph especially interesting.

***
Two Stars Fail Together

A brown dwarf is a type of failed star that is not quite massive enough to trigger the thermonuclear fusion that powers our Sun. Or, it might be considered an oversized planet that glows dimly, depending on your definitions for stars and planets. Scientists struggle with this.

Most brown dwarfs have been found either alone or orbiting a normal star. But some have been spotted in tightly bound pairs, orbiting each other at less than half the distance between Pluto and the Sun.

Now a pair of brown dwarfs -- 25 and 50 times the mass of Jupiter and 540 light-years away -- has been found in a very loose orbit, separated by six times the Pluto-Sun distance and otherwise alone together in space. That provides a clue to how they formed.

One idea for brown dwarf development is that they're birthed in a chaotic and crowded region of intense star formation, then gravitationally booted out to lonelier locales before they have the chance to grab enough gas to grow to full girth. That may still be true for some. But had the newfound duo been born in such a manner, it's unlikely it would have maintained the tenuous tether. Any small perturbation by another star would have stripped them into loners. Their brightness suggests they were born just a million years ago or so.

"It is likely that these baby brown dwarfs formed … in a relatively gentle and undisturbed manner," said lead researcher Kevin L. Luhman of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The finding will be detailed in the Astrophysical Journal.

"Luhman's discovery strengthens the case for the formation mechanism of brown dwarfs being similar to that of stars like the Sun, and hence for brown dwarfs being worthy of being termed 'stars,' even if they are too low in mass to be able to undergo sustained nuclear fusion," said Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist a the Carnegie Institution.
***

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#103 2004-07-14 14:55:26

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

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14561]The hydrogen siblings

*Article based on recent report out of Los Alamos.  A study pertaining to how Jupiter and Saturn formed -- their similarities and especially their differences.  Each is approximately 70% hydrogen by mass.

Whereas most of the heavy elements are concentrated in Saturn's "massive core," those same heavy elements are "mixed throughout" Jupiter -- which has little to no central core.

The endlessly fascinating universe.  smile

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#104 2004-07-15 05:15:49

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

http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2004/1 … pg]Causing a commotion

*From spaceweather.com for Thursday, July 15.  Links provided there to actual news reports about this:

"Sea-rescuers were on alert in Finland on July 12th when reports of emergency flares poured in from the Gulf of Bothnia. They soon realized that no ship was in distress. The flares were 'meteors.' Johan Geisor was on a photo-expedition in the Gulf; he saw a bright fireball and took this picture of its smoky debris at 9:16 p.m. GMT.

News reports of the event describe a slow-moving fireball, red and sparkling, perhaps shedding fragments. This sounds remarkably like a piece of re-entering space junk--e.g., an old rocket engine or a satellite. Yet no such objects were scheduled to decay over Finland on July 12th. Likewise, no intense meteor showers were due. What was this display? Probably a small space rock disintegrating in Earth's atmosphere."

*Around 1996 I saw something similar in the northeastern sky, around 5:30 a.m.  It had an irridescence to it as well.  I figured it might be the result of a missile launch over White Sands that had drifted toward town; now I wonder if what I saw that morning wasn't akin to this.  :-\

--Cindy  smile


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#105 2004-07-16 05:57:44

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

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040715.html]Stars and Dust in Corona Australis

*A pretty -and- interesting pic.  Heavily star-studded field, tight globular cluster NGC 6723 nearby, a variable star, blue glowing nebulae ("their characteristic blue color is produced as light from hot stars is reflected by the cosmic dust") with dark dust lane behind it.  Looks sort of like a cosmic bug with blue glowing eyes.

--Cindy  smile


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#106 2004-07-16 06:42:22

Shaun Barrett
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From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia
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Posts: 2,843

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

I couldn't get Corona Australis to appear but learned something about Saturn, Jupiter and brown dwarf stars.
    Thanks, Cindy!
                                           smile


The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner

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#107 2004-07-16 06:50:47

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

I couldn't get Corona Australis to appear

*Hi again Shaun:  I had trouble with the link after initially posting it, but then was able to access it just fine.

I'll edit this post in a few minutes to include another link to the same object from a different web site.  Astropix has been unreliable lately, I don't know why.  sad

--Cindy

::EDIT::  (hopefully this one is a reliable link!)  http://www.starryscapes.com/nebula/ngc6 … ml]Another link to Stars & Dust in Corona Australis    smile  It's the same pic, but this one hosted by the web site of the astrophotographer.


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#108 2004-07-20 05:44:32

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

*From space.com's "Astronotes" for July 19 (in column/frequent update format; must copy and paste).  Glad I found it there.  "Astronotes" is terrific for being brief and to the point; I've this same story at other web sites which were long-winded and rambling.  It's hoped this technology will assist in studies/theories of stellar structure:

First Single Star Beyond Sun is Weighed

Astronomers have for the first time measured the mass of a single star other than our Sun. The dim red star is about one-tenth as massive.

The masses of stars in binary systems have been determined by the gravitational effect each has on the other. But lone stars have until now eluded being weighed. The new observations were made with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia and involved a natural trick of alignment.

A star in our galaxy slowly passed directly in front of a more distant star that's located in a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. The foreground star magnified the light of the background star by an effect called gravitational microlensing. Researchers watched the pair for a decade as the nearer one crossed the more distant one.

Each stars' distance from Earth was calculated (1,800 and 170,000 light-years). This along with knowledge of the brightening effect allowed the astronomers to figure the mass of the foreground star.

The mass estimate matched what astronomers expected based on the star's color and brightness. Future telescopes could make similar observations more routinely.

"It's possible that by getting these kinds of measurements, we will be able to test our theories of stellar structure," said Andrew Gould, professor of astronomy at Ohio State.

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#109 2004-07-24 10:06:57

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

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.as … 2300]Large Magellanic Cloudy mystery -- solved?

*Good article from Astronomy.com.  Why do some of the LMC's globular clusters contain stars 13 billion years old while yet others are a "mere" 3 billion years old?

Interesting theory as to the discrepancy.

I need to see the LMC and SMC some day (southern hemisphere). 

--Cindy  cool


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#110 2004-07-28 10:19:12

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

*Microquasar?

This thing is traveling at a rate of 17 miles per second.  It's just one of its kind, of course.  This from space.com's "Astronotes"; have to copy and paste from the column format:

***
July 28

Supernova Launched Microquasar on Space Trip

Astronomers say a supernova explosion blasted a microquasar on a whirlwind trip that carried it 130 light-years away from its star cluster home about 1.7 million years ago.

By backtracking the microquasar's 17-mile (23-kilometer) per second voyage through space, astronomers connected it to a parent star cluster some 7,500 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. One light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion kilometers).

The find is the first time researchers have been able to pin down the origins of a fast-moving microquasar, researchers said.

Microquasars are miniature versions of their bigger, brighter quasar cousins usually found at the center of galaxies. Like their larger counterparts, microquasars emit X-rays and spew jets of subatomic particles, and are thought to be fed by a black hole or neutron star stripping material away from its stellar companion.

Astronomers connected their microquasar, LSI +61 303, to the star cluster by analyzing its component parts, a normal star about 14 times as massive as the Sun and an object that is either a black hole or dense neutron star weighing about two solar masses. The characteristics of the normal star, researchers said, matched those of the parent star cluster, known as IC 1805.

"Studying this system and hopefully others like it that may be found will help us to understand both the evolution of stars before they explode as supernovae and the physics of the supernova explosions themselves," said astrophysicist Felix Mirabel, of the Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics of Argentina and French Atomic Energy Commission.

The research will appear in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
***

You go, "little" microquasar!

--Cindy  cool


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#111 2004-07-29 07:08:58

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

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040716.html]The Bubble

*It's so pretty.  10 light years in diameter. 
 
-*-

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040728.html]Cygnus Starfield

*Lavish red and studded with stars.

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#112 2004-07-30 08:57:31

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

*This item from Astronomy magazine online.  Have to copy and paste:

***Dusty Uranian ring first seen from Earth***

"The rings of Uranus are dark and slender, unlike those of other ringed planets in the solar system. Now, a team of researchers has identified a thin sheet of material in the Uranian ring system. Imke de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), Heidi Hammel (Space Science Institute), and Seran Gibbard (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, imaged the sheet using the Keck II Telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

The dust sheet begins about 21,750 miles (35,000 kilometers) from the center of Uranus and ends at a distance of 25,475 miles (41,000 km). This places the sheet inside rings 4, 5, and 6, although it is not connected to them. Planetary scientists believe the dust sheet is 1986 U 2R, a faint ring discovered by Voyager in 1986. The discovery marks its first detection by a ground-based telescope.— Jeremy McGovern"

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#113 2004-08-03 13:18:39

Palomar
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From: USA
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Re: New Discoveries *3* - ...MORE deep space, extraplanetary, etc.

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish … 382004]The color-coded images makes it look like a butterfly 

*I think so anyway.   :;):  Despite the violent processes within it.  :-\

The image compilation is a bit dated (1995), but here's some additional info:

"This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the strange twisted cloud structures at the heart of the Lagoon Nebula (M8). The nebula is being driven by the central hot star, O Herschel 36, and several others, which are ionizing the outer visible parts of the nebula - making it visible. Similar to tornadoes on Earth, temperature differences between different clouds of gas create a horizontal 'windshear', which twists the clouds into funnel shapes."

"Analogous to the phenomena of tornadoes on Earth, the large difference in temperature between the hot surface and cold interior of the clouds, combined with the pressure of starlight, may produce strong horizontal 'windshear' to twist the clouds into their tornado-like appearance."

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#114 2004-08-06 05:58:41

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

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990625.html]The Gegenschein

*Not to be confused with zodiacal light.   :;):  Really nice photo of this phenomenon.

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#115 2004-08-07 12:16:10

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

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031124.html]Flaming Star Nebula

*Tell me that -isn't- pretty.   :;):

-*-

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010724.html]Red Spider Nebula

*Kind of weird looking. 

-*-

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991129.html]Arcs & Jets in Herbig-Haro 34

*Wow, I have never seen this before.  No wonder they call a portion of it "the waterfall"; that's what it reminded me of too, immediately.  "This star, though, somehow ejects energetic 'bullets' of high-energy particles, appearing as red streaks toward the lower right of the this image."  Simply spectacular.

-*-

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991012.html]NGC 2346

*I don't think it looks like a butterfly.  It doesn't really look like anything, but is pretty...and also larger than our Solar System. 

Such variety in nebulae; that's why they're my fav deep-sky objects.

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#116 2004-08-10 02:01:24

GraemeSkinner
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From: Eden Hall, Cumbria
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Re: New Discoveries *3* - ...MORE deep space, extraplanetary, etc.


There was a young lady named Bright.
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
in a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
--Arthur Buller--

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#117 2004-08-10 05:33:03

Palomar
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From: USA
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Re: New Discoveries *3* - ...MORE deep space, extraplanetary, etc.

http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/ob … 1.asp]11th magnitude supernova

*...in Camelopardalis.  Is on the "outskirts" of galaxy NGC 2403.  Unusually bright supernova.  Discovered by a Japanese amateur astronomer on 31 July 2004.

BTW, NCG 2403 is visible in even small 'scopes and strong binoculars.  I've seen it myself.  Will check it out again with the supernova.

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#118 2004-08-10 23:32:58

GraemeSkinner
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From: Eden Hall, Cumbria
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Posts: 563
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Re: New Discoveries *3* - ...MORE deep space, extraplanetary, etc.

http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/ob … 1.asp]11th magnitude supernova
*...in Camelopardalis.  Is on the "outskirts" of galaxy NGC 2403.  Unusually bright supernova.  Discovered by a Japanese amateur astronomer on 31 July 2004.
BTW, NCG 2403 is visible in even small 'scopes and strong binoculars.  I've seen it myself.  Will check it out again with the supernova.

Let us know how you get on, I think I'm living in permanent cloud  sad

Graeme


There was a young lady named Bright.
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
in a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
--Arthur Buller--

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#119 2004-08-12 06:08:40

Palomar
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From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

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

http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/ob … 1.asp]11th magnitude supernova
*...in Camelopardalis.  Is on the "outskirts" of galaxy NGC 2403.  Unusually bright supernova.  Discovered by a Japanese amateur astronomer on 31 July 2004.
BTW, NCG 2403 is visible in even small 'scopes and strong binoculars.  I've seen it myself.  Will check it out again with the supernova.

Let us know how you get on, I think I'm living in permanent cloud  sad

Graeme

*Hi Graeme.  Will do.  :up:  I'll be trying for it maybe tonight.  (We're in our monsoon season and it's been cloudy in the evenings...)

-*-

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/m … .html]Huge Swirls of Gas Found Above Earth

"Pockets of superheated gas several times the size of Earth have been discovered swirling like bathtub drains high above the planet.

The vortices seem to suck high-energy particles from the Sun into Earth's otherwise protective magnetic shield. The finding should help solve a longstanding mystery...

'We don't know yet exactly how the vortices bring the solar wind into the boundary layer,' Hasegawa said. 'But this would be similar to what happens when cresting waves on the surface of the ocean crash: Large quantities of air are engulfed into the seawater.'

Hasegawa said it takes roughly 10 minutes for a vortex to form and collapse, and he suspects they are created continuously when conditions are favorable. Other unknown mechanisms might also contribute..."

*Includes illustration.  Interesting short article.

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#120 2004-08-14 05:51:33

Palomar
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From: USA
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Re: New Discoveries *3* - ...MORE deep space, extraplanetary, etc.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.htm … 3]Ganymede has a lumpy interior

*Data gathered from the former Galileo probe.  Irregular masses may be rock formation supported by the icy shell.

"Scientists have discovered irregular lumps beneath the icy surface of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede. These irregular masses may be rock formations, supported by Ganymede's icy shell for billions of years. This discovery comes nearly a year after the orchestrated demise of NASA's Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter's atmosphere and more than seven years after the data were collected."

"Ganymede has three main layers...and a spherical shell of mostly ice surrounding the rock shell and the core. The ice shell on the outside is very thick, maybe 800 kilometers (497 miles) thick. The surface is the very top of the ice shell. Though it is mostly ice, the ice shell might contain some rock mixed in. Scientists believe there must be a fair amount of rock in the ice near the surface. Variations in this amount of rock may be the source of these possible rock formations."

"Scientists stumbled on the results by studying Doppler measurements of Ganymede's gravity field during Galileo's second flyby of the moon in 1996. Scientists were measuring the effect of the moon's gravity on the spacecraft as it flew by. They found unexpected variations...'Believe it or not, it took us this long to straighten out the anomaly question...'"

--Cindy  :up:


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#121 2004-08-16 08:00:51

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

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap0408 … agnificent splendor

*Adjectives fail to adequately describe this lovely "strange ring galaxy." 

Photo taken by Hubble in July 2001.  Caption describes possible formation scenario. 

Spans 100,000 light years and is about 600 million l/y away.

Note at the 1 o'clock position another ring galaxy.  smile  Nice coincidence. 

I want a poster of this!

--Cindy

P.S.:  It's also my avatar.


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#122 2004-08-16 21:35:03

Palomar
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Posts: 9,734

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

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040207.html]The Little Ghost Nebula

*First catalogued in the 18th century so it's hardly "new"...but Hubble gives the best view yet.  It's one of my favorites; even the name.   :;):  Lovely teal within a gold-edged border.

"Over 2,000 light-years away, the Little Ghost Nebula offers a glimpse of the fate of our Sun, which should produce its own pretty planetary nebula only about 5 billion years from now."

-*-

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap0306 … ]Planetary Nebulae Show

*Terrific.  A "slide show" of images.  Impossible to decide which color is prettiest as nebulae go.  (Check out reference to Kitt Peak's Advanced Observing Program; I created a thread for it in the Science & Technology folder as well).  :up:

-*-

Cats]http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991207.html]Cat's Paw Nebula

*Very crimson.  Meow.

-*-

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991122.html]Crab Nebula

*Spectacular.  From VLT (not Hubble, believe it or not).  I've seen this pic before, and had it as an avatar.  Have seen lots of pics of the Crab Nebula, but this one (pardon the pun) blows the competition away. 

--Cindy

P.S.:  Hoag's Object (ringed galaxy) in post above this one.  Be sure and check it out.


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#123 2004-08-22 20:56:06

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

...and it's only 1.7 billion miles away! 

*Info courtesy spaceweather.com dated August 22 (is also hosting a sky map):

"This week Uranus and Earth are having a close encounter. Uranus will be 'at opposition' on August 27th, which means it's opposite the Sun in the sky and as near to Earth as it gets: about 1.7 billion miles.

Because close encounters with Uranus are, in fact, so distant, the planet is not easy to see. Shining like a 6th magnitude star, Uranus is barely--barely!--visible to the unaided eye from the darkest observing sites. You can try to find it in the constellation Aquarius an hour or so after sunset.

Better yet, use a telescope. Through the eyepiece Uranus looks star-like, a speck, but using a CCD camera, you can resolve the planet's disk..."

*Um, yeah...telescopes can come in handy that way.  roll  And now that monsoon season seems to be pretty much over...

--Cindy  smile

::EDIT::  Unintentionally duplicated this post below.  Danged slow internet connection had me thinking the first didn't go through.  :-/


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#124 2004-08-22 20:57:15

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

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

...and it's only 1.7 billion miles away! 

*Info courtesy spaceweather.com dated August 22 (is also hosting a sky map):

"This week Uranus and Earth are having a close encounter. Uranus will be 'at opposition' on August 27th, which means it's opposite the Sun in the sky and as near to Earth as it gets: about 1.7 billion miles.

Because close encounters with Uranus are, in fact, so distant, the planet is not easy to see. Shining like a 6th magnitude star, Uranus is barely--barely!--visible to the unaided eye from the darkest observing sites. You can try to find it in the constellation Aquarius an hour or so after sunset.

Better yet, use a telescope. Through the eyepiece Uranus looks star-like, a speck, but using a CCD camera, you can resolve the planet's disk..."

*Um, yeah...telescopes can come in handy that way.  roll  And now that monsoon season seems to be pretty much over...

--cindy  smile


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#125 2004-08-23 15:45:58

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

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

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010822.html]Pillars of gas 2000 light years high??  ???

*...and streaming away from the core at 6 MILLION kilometers per hour??  From 2001 Astropix entry.  WOW. 

I wonder how big that "immense bubble" could be (yes, I realize they're speculating).  Yipes.

Another mind-boggler from Hubble.

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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