LHC poised for key milestone

Two beams accelerated at 3.5 TeV in the LHC

Energy record for the LHC

The bars of Geneva may well be bustling with excited physicists tonight, as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is now on the brink achieving a key milestone - collisions at 7 TeV.

At 5:20 a.m., two 3.5 TeV proton beams were successfully circulated in the LHC, the highest energy yet achieved in a particle accelerator.

CERN says that the first attempt to collide these beams will follow on a date to be announced in the near future. This will mark the beginning of the full LHC research programme.

Experiments will then continue at this energy until its detectors have accumulated one "inverse femtobarn" of data - roughly 10 trillion proton-proton collisions - with the run ending after two years at the latest.

If all goes to plan, CERN will then shut the LHC down in 2012 for a year or more to prepare it to go straight to maximum-energy 14 TeV collisions in 2013.

“Getting the beams to 3.5 TeV is testimony to the soundness of the LHC’s overall design, and the improvements we’ve made since the breakdown in September 2008,” says CERN’s

International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research - Imaging the Interstellar Medium

With an average density of less than 1 proton per cubic centimetre, the matter that exists between stars might seem unimportant. But in actual fact, our galaxy the Milky Way and the stars, planets and people it contains wouldn’t be here without it.
Comprised mostly of gas (~99%) and dust (< 1%), the Interstellar Medium (ISM) is described by astronomers and astrophysicists as ‘clumpy’, meaning the material has a tendency to coalesce through gravitational forces and collisions.
Throughout the ISM, massive stars, planetary nebulae and supernova explosions drive strong winds and shock waves through the medium. These mechanisms deposit energy, sustain the highly inhomogeneous state of the ISM and enrich it with heavy elements from which the next generation of stars and planets will eventually form.

                              The result of isolating the unique radiation "signatures" for each individual   pair of interfering speckles. Credit: J-P Macquart.


In recent years evidence has accumulated pointing to the existence of ultra-compact structures within the ISM, the properties of which require explanations well beyond the scope of current models. As these incredibly dense objects pass through our line of sight to a quasar or other compact radio source, they trigger Extreme Scattering Events (ESEs) resulting in large increases in the radiation received from sources beyond the object.
Most current explanations posed to explain the dense object responsible for ESEs are problematic or controversial. Several require increasing the known density of objects a thousand times for structures 0.3-1 AU in size, and dictate that they should be so over-pressured that they would simply explode. But if this were the case, these objects would be quite rare; whereas astronomical observations have shown them to be fairly common.
Until now the major obstacle to resolving these shortcomings has stemmed from a lack of observations, but recent progress made by radio astronomers has led to the first ever image of ‘speckles’ in the Interstellar Medium.
Shine a laser along a rough surface, and a circle- shaped speckle pattern will appear around the beam, corresponding to points of constructive interference between the reflected wavefronts. In the laboratory environment, information about this speckle pattern can be used to measure the properties of a reflecting surface down to scales approaching 1μm. But to apply this technique on an astronomical scale a naturally occurring cosmic laser is called for, which is where a class of objects known as ‘pulsars’ comes to the rescue.
Pulsars are highly magnetised, rotating neutron stars that emit a highly coherent beam of electromagnetic radiation. These objects are so compact that the radio-wavelength radiation emitted behaves much like an interstellar laser. But when it comes to imaging and making sense of a source heavily scattered by the turbulence of the ISM, the task is not for the fainted hearted.

                         The speckle image of Pulsar PSR B0834+06, produced using this new technique. Credit J-P Macquart.


The breakthrough to achieving this scientific feat was in realising that it is possible to isolate the radiation pattern for each individual pair of interfering speckles, or "sub-images" of the pulsar. Each pair of interfering sub-images creates an unique “signature” that changes over time and encodes information relating to the exact location of the speckles. By recording the intensity fluctuations, in both time and frequency, as the pulsar moves relative to the Interstellar Medium it is possible to generate a secondary spectrum like the one shown below.
However, this in itself is not enough to form an image.
Having isolated the radiation from each interfering pair, the next step is to determine which part of the scattering disk the radiation has come from. This is achieved by performing Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), to observe the fluctuations in the scintillation pattern, using a number of radio telescopes separated by several thousand kilometres.
So far this ground-breaking technique has been pioneered by a collaboration of radio astronomers from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the University of California, the University of Massachusetts and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Western Australia. Using the Green Bank Telescope and the Arecibo Observatory, the largest steerable and non- steerable radio dishes in the world respectively, the results of these early efforts has revealed for the first time the turbulent nature of interstellar space over a large range of scales, from 1.6 billion km down to 4.5 million km (0.03 of the distance between the Earth and the Sun).
Armed with this new technique for imaging the turbulent Interstellar Medium on tiny scales, well below 1011m, the prospects for understanding the strange nature of interstellar structures is bright.

Sources:International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research

Green Laser - something to know

Many of us use the green laser as a very useful tool in star parties and in teaching newbies to learn the constellations. But there are certain things one should know about the dangers involved with this useful "toy". Here is a link which tells us how much dangerous it can be.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/observingblog/99956999.html

Let us take care to use this useful instrument safely!

Identifying Exoplanets by Their Dust Tails

Are we losing the Sahara to space? No, is the simple answer to that. The Earth has a trail of dust behind it but the dust is interstellar dust which is already present in the solar system. This interplanetary dust comes from the fragments of comets and asteroids that have collided. As the Earth travels through this dust the dust is disturbed and leaves what looks like a trail are behind it.

There is another way of looking at the formation of the dust tail. The Earth leaves behind it an area of almost suction like quality that sucks the dust in from the edges giving the appearance of a dust tail. The dust tail is pulled along by gravity and leaves a trail around the sun.

The Spitzer telescope found the dust tail a few months ago as it went straight through it. This has allowed the dust tail to be mapped and shows how the tail can give an indication of a planet. Distant exoplanets around stars many light years from our own can be indicated by strange features drawn in the dust tail by these planets. These features can be bumps, warps, rings and offsets.

The dust has already been followed in other planetary systems other than our own. About 20 dust discs have been seen and have led to a few planets already being found. One of these was found around a star called Formalhaut.

These dust tails will help the future James Webb space telescope to hunt for extra solar planets and hopefully find them quicker.

Shedding 'Bent' Light on Dark Matter

This is one of the most detailed maps of dark matter in our universe ever created. The location of the dark matter (tinted blue) was inferred through observations of magnified and distorted distant galaxies seen in this picture. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, University of Basque Country/JHU

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took advantage of a giant cosmic magnifying glass to create one of the sharpest and most detailed maps of dark matter in the universe. Dark matter is an invisible and unknown substance that makes up the bulk of the universe's mass. Astronomer Dan Coe led the research while working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.; he is currently with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

The astronomers used Hubble to chart the invisible matter in the massive galaxy cluster Abell 1689, located 2.2 billion light-years away. The cluster's gravity, the majority of which comes from dark matter, acts like a cosmic magnifying glass, bending and amplifying the light from distant galaxies behind it. This effect, called gravitational lensing, produces multiple, warped, and greatly magnified images of those galaxies, like the view in a funhouse mirror. By studying the distorted images, astronomers estimated the amount of dark matter within the cluster.

The new dark matter observations may yield new insights into the role of dark energy in the universe's early formative years. A mysterious property of space, dark energy fights against the gravitational pull of dark matter. The new results suggest that galaxy clusters may have formed earlier than expected, before the push of dark energy inhibited their growth. Dark energy pushes galaxies apart from one another by stretching the space between them, suppressing the formation of giant structures called galaxy clusters. One way astronomers can probe this primeval tug-of-war is by mapping the distribution of dark matter in clusters.

Read the full story at http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/37/full/ .

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Status Update: Cassini to Resume Nominal Operations

Artist's concept of NASA's Cassini spacecraft at Saturn. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 

November 09, 2010

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., expect the Cassini spacecraft will resume normal operations on Nov. 24. They have traced the steps taken by an onboard computer before Cassini put itself in precautionary "safe mode" last week.

Mission managers determined that the spacecraft went into safe mode because of a flip of a bit in the command and data system computer. The bit flip prevented the computer from registering an important instruction, and the spacecraft, as programmed, went into the standby mode. Engineers are still working to understand why the bit flipped.

Since the spacecraft went into safe mode on Nov. 2, the onboard computer with the bit flip has been reset and one of the science instruments has been turned back on to keep it warm. Over the next week or so, engineers will bring the rest of the science instruments back online.

Playback from the computer's memory is enabling engineers to extract science data collected before the spacecraft entered safe mode. The flow of science data is expected to resume when the instruments are powered back on next week.

"The bit flip happened in exactly the wrong location -- almost any place else would have merely resulted in a rejected command -- but the spacecraft responded exactly as programmed," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager at JPL. "Cassini is in excellent shape, and we are looking forward to the next seven years of this mission."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.

More Cassini information is available at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Cassini's CIRS Reveals Saturn Is on a Cosmic Dimmer Switch

Heat emitted from the interior of Saturn (red) shows up in this false-color image of Saturn, made from data taken in 2008 by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer. Credit:NASA/JPL/ASI/University of Arizona


Like a cosmic light bulb on a dimmer switch, Saturn emitted gradually less energy each year from 2005 to 2009, according to observations by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. But unlike an ordinary bulb, Saturn's southern hemisphere consistently emitted more energy than its northern one. On top of that, energy levels changed with the seasons and differed from the last time a spacecraft visited in the early 1980s. These never-before-seen trends came from an analysis of comprehensive data from the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), an instrument built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., as well as a comparison with earlier data from NASA's Voyager spacecraft. When combined with information about the energy coming to Saturn from the sun, the results could help scientists understand the nature of Saturn's internal heat source.

The findings were reported November 9 in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets by Liming Li of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. (now at the University of Houston), and colleagues from several institutions, including Goddard and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena Calif., which manages the Cassini mission. "The Cassini CIRS data are very valuable because they give us a nearly complete picture of Saturn," says Li. "This is the only single data set that provides so much information about this planet, and it's the first time that anybody has been able to study the power emitted by one of the giant planets in such detail."

The planets in our solar system lose energy in the form of heat radiation in wavelengths that are invisible to the human eye. The CIRS instrument picks up wavelengths in the thermal infrared region, which is beyond red light, where the wavelengths correspond to heat emission.

"In planetary science, we tend to think of planets as losing power evenly in all directions and at a steady rate," says Li. "Now we know Saturn is not doing that." (Power is the amount of energy emitted per unit of time.)

Instead, Saturn's flow of outgoing energy was lopsided, with its southern hemisphere giving off about one-sixth more energy than the northern one, Li explains. This effect matched Saturn's seasons: during those five Earth years, it was summer in the southern hemisphere and winter in the northern one. (A season on Saturn lasts about seven Earth years.) Like Earth, Saturn has these seasons because the planet is tilted on its axis, so one hemisphere receives more energy from the sun and experiences summer while the other receives less energy and is shrouded in winter. Saturn’s equinox, when the sun was directly over the equator, occurred in August 2009.

In the study, Saturn's seasons looked Earth-like in another way: in each hemisphere, its effective temperature, which characterizes its thermal emission to space, started to warm up or cool down as a change of season approached. Because Saturn's weather is variable and the atmosphere tends to retain heat (called heat inertia), the temperature changes in complicated ways throughout the atmosphere. "The effective temperature provides us a simple way to track the response of Saturn's atmosphere, as a system, to the seasonal changes," says Li. Cassini's observations in the northern hemisphere revealed that the effective temperature gradually dropped from 2005 to 2008 and then started to warm up again by 2009. In Saturn's southern hemisphere, the effective temperature cooled from 2005 to 2009, as the equinox started to approach.

The emitted energy for each hemisphere rose and fell along with the effective temperature. Even so, during this five-year period, the planet as a whole seemed to be slowly cooling down and emitting less energy.

To find out if similar changes were happening one Saturn year ago, the researchers looked at data collected by Voyager in 1980 and 1981. Like Cassini CIRS, Voyager recorded fluctuations in the energy emitted by the planet and in the effective temperature. But Voyager did not see the imbalance between the southern and northern hemispheres; instead, the two regions were much more consistent with each other.

Why wouldn't Voyager have seen the same summer-versus-winter difference between the two hemispheres? The amount of energy coming from the sun (called solar radiance), which drives weather and atmospheric temperatures, could have fluctuated from one Saturn year to the next. The patterns in Saturn's cloud cover and haze could have, too.

"It's reasonable to think that the changes in Saturn's emitted power are related to cloud cover," says Amy Simon-Miller, who heads the Planetary Systems Laboratory at Goddard and is a co-author on the paper. "As the amount of cloud cover changes, the amount of radiation escaping into space also changes. This might vary during a single season and from one Saturn year to another. But to fully understand what is happening on Saturn, we will need the other half of the picture: the amount of power being absorbed by the planet."

Li is finishing an analysis of the solar energy that came to Saturn, based on data sets collected by two other Cassini instruments, the imaging science subsystem and the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer. He agrees that this information is crucial because Saturn, like its fellow giant planets Jupiter and Neptune, is thought to have its own source of internal energy. (The fourth giant planet, Uranus, does not seem to have an internal source.) By studying the changes in Saturn's outgoing energy along with the changes in incoming solar energy, scientists can learn about the nature of the planet's internal energy source and whether it, too, changes over time.

"The differences between Saturn's northern and southern hemisphere and that fact that Voyager did not see the same asymmetry raise a very important question: does Saturn's internal heat vary with time?" says Li. "The answer will significantly deepen our understanding of the weather, internal structure and evolution of Saturn and the other giant planets."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The composite infrared spectrometer team is based at NASA Goddard, where the instrument was built.

More Cassini information is available at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Elizabeth Zubritsky
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

ω Centauri’s Red Giants Confirm Stellar Evolution Models

As the get older, Sun-like stars become red giants and shed mass. Image Credit: ESO/S. Steinhofel

While science education often focuses on teaching the scientific method (or at least tries to), the real process of science is often far less linear. Theories tie together so many points of data, that making singular predictions that confirm or refute a proposition is often challenging. Such is the case for stellar evolution. The understanding is woven together from so many independent pieces, that the process is more of a roaring sea than a directed river.

Realizing this, I’ve been keen on instances in which necessary predictions are observationally confirmed later. A new study, led by Mariela Vieytes from the University of Buenos Aires and accepted in an upcoming publication of Astronomy & Astrophysics, does just that by demonstrating one of the necessary conditions for predictions of post main sequenceevolution. Specifically, astronomers need to establish that stars undergo significant amounts of mass loss (~0.1-0.3 M_☉) during their red giant branch evolution. This requirement was set forth as part of the expected behavior necessary to explain: “i) the very existence of the horizontal branch (HB) and its morphology, ii) the pulsational properties of RR Lyrae stars, iii) the absence of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars brighter than the red giant branch (RGB) tip, and the chemistry and characteristics in the AGB, post-AGB and planetary nebulaevolutionary phases, iv) the mass of white dwarf (WD) stars.”

Astronomers expected to find confirmation of this mass loss by detecting gas congregating in the cores of globular clusters after being shed by stars evolving along the RGB. Yet searches for this gas came up mostly empty. Eventually astronomers realized that gas would be stripped relatively quickly as globular clusters plunged through the galactic plane. But this left them with the need to confirm the prediction in some other manner.

One way to do this is to look at the stars themselves. If they show velocities in their photospheres greater than the escape velocity, they will lose mass. Just how much higher will determine the amount of mass lost. By analyzing the Doppler shift of specific absorption lines of several stars in the cluster ω Centauri, the team was able to match the amount of mass being lost to predictions from evolutionary models. From this, the team concluded that their target stars were losing between the rates of mass loss are estimated as a few 10^-9 and 10^-10M_☉ yr^-1. This is in general agreement with the predictions set forth by evolutionary models.

Cool Star is a Gem of a Find

That green dot in the middle of this image might look like an emerald amidst glittering diamonds, but it is actually a dim star belonging to a class called brown dwarfs. This particular object is the first ultra-cool brown dwarf discovered by WISE. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA 

November 09, 2010

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has eyed its first cool brown dwarf: a tiny, ultra-cold star floating all alone in space.

WISE is scanning the whole sky in infrared light, picking up the glow of not just brown dwarfs but also asteroids, stars and galaxies. It has sent millions of images down to Earth, in which infrared light of different wavelengths is color-coded in the images.

"The brown dwarfs jump out at you like big, fat, green emeralds," said Amy Mainzer, the deputy project scientist of WISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Mainzer, who makes jewelry in her spare time, explained that the brown dwarfs appear like green gems in WISE images because the methane in their atmospheres absorbs the infrared light that has been coded blue, and because they are too faint to give off the infrared light that is color-coded red. The only color left is green.

Like Jupiter, brown dwarfs are made up of gas -- a lot of it in the form of methane, hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia. These gases would be deadly to humans at the concentrations found around brown dwarfs. And they wouldn't exactly smell pretty.

"If you could bottle up a gallon of this object's atmosphere and bring it back to Earth, smelling it wouldn't kill you, but it would stink pretty badly -- like rotten eggs with a hint of ammonia," said Mainzer.

Mainzer and other members of the WISE team are already accumulating a quarry of brown dwarf candidates similar to this one. Brown dwarfs have masses somewhere between those of a star and a planet. They start out like stars as collapsing balls of gas, but they lack the mass to fuse atoms together at their core and shine with starlight. As time goes on, these lightweights cool off, until they can only be seen in infrared light. There could be many such objects lurking in the neighborhood of our sun, but astronomers know of only a handful so far. WISE is expected to find hundreds, including the coolest and closest of all.

To scientists, brown dwarfs represent the perfect laboratories for studying planet-like atmospheres.

"They're a great test of our understanding of atmospheric physics of planets, since they don't have solid surfaces, and there's no big, bright sun to get in the way," said co-author Michael Cushing, a postdoctoral fellow at JPL.

WISE's new brown dwarf is named WISEPC J045853.90+643451.9 for its location in the sky. It is estimated to be 18 to 30 light-years away and is one of the coolest brown dwarfs known, with a temperature of about 600 Kelvin, or 620 degrees Fahrenheit. That's downright chilly as far as stars go. The fact that this brown dwarf jumped out of the data so easily and so quickly -- it was spotted 57 days into the survey mission -- indicates that WISE will discover many, many more. The discovery was confirmed by follow-up observations at the University of Virginia's Fan Mountain telescope, the Large Binocular Telescope in southeastern Arizona, and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The results are in press at the Astrophysical Journal.

Read more about how NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and WISE are hunting down the coldest brown dwarfs.

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu.

How Afraid of Asteroids Should You Be?

"Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise." -Ayn Rand
We're all aware that one of the ways that human life on Earth could end, conceivably, is the same way that the dinosaurs went down.

And asteroid tracking and deflection technology is fast becoming one of the hot issues of the day. It appears so often in the news that you'd think we are at a high risk, any day, of being hit by a catastrophic asteroid.

But -- and my opinion here definitely runs against the mainstream -- I think this hysteria is absolutely ridiculous. One of the things you almost never hear about are the frequency and the odds of an asteroid strike harming you. If large asteroid strikes happened every few decades, we'd have something legitimate to prepare for and worry about. But if you've only got a one-in-a-million chance of an asteroid harming you over your lifetime -- meaning you are over 100 times more likely to be struck by lightning than harmed by an asteroid -- perhaps there are better ways to spend your resources.

Read more-www.portal to the universe.com

"Speaking of Hubble..." Phantom Planet

Hundreds of planets have been found beyond our solar system. Of these “extrasolar planets,” or “exoplanets” for short, one has remained perplexing and infamous 12 years after its purported discovery.
The object’s formal designation is TMR-1c. It lies about 450 light-years away in the Taurus molecular cloud. Back in 1998, astronomer Susan Tereby announced that this could [...]
TMR-1C appears to lie at the end of a strange filament of light.Hundreds of planets have been found beyond our solar system. Of these “extrasolar planets,” or “exoplanets” for short, one has remained perplexing and infamous 12 years after its purported discovery.The object’s formal designation is TMR-1c. It lies about 450 light-years away in the Taurus molecular cloud. Back in 1998, astronomer Susan Tereby announced that this could be the first exoplanet directly photographed. At the time, Tereby cautiously called it a “candidate planet.”Hubble’s infrared image was compellingly believable. A very red — and therefore cool — pinpoint object was at the end of a ghostly finger of illuminated dust stretching 135 billion miles from a young binary star system. The telltale finger was interpreted as being formed after the planet was gravitationally ejected from the binary system.But it was not clear ...
http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/blogs/posts/view/79933/

DIffuse Aurora Mystery Solved

New space research published this week (Thursday 21 October) in the journal Nature, has settled decades of scientific debate. Researchers from the University of California (UCLA) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have found the final link between electrons trapped in space and the glow of light from the upper atmosphere known as the diffuse aurora. The research will help us understand 'space weather', with benefits for the satellite, power grid and aviation industries, and how space storms affect the Earth's atmosphere from the top down.
http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/blogs/posts/view/79919/

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory images solar eclipse

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded its first lunar transit when the moon passed directly between the spacecraft and the sun.

In this newly released image, the dark edge of the moon forms a partial eclipse of the sun. This sharp edge can be used to help calculate the effects of light diffraction on the telescope’s optics, allowing operators to correct for this effect.

Onboard the SDO is the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager instrument. This measures magnetic fields, as well as visible ripples on the surface of the sun caused by the sun’s convection zone. This data helps researchers understand our star’s influence on Earth and near-Earth space.

Read more at: NewScientist.com.

NASA Spacecraft Hurtles Toward Active Comet Hartley 2

October 15, 2010:  NASA's Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft is hurtling toward Comet Hartley 2 for a breathtaking 435-mile flyby on Nov. 4th. Mission scientists say all systems are go for a close encounter with one of the smallest yet most active comets they've seen.

Artist's concept of the spacecraft's previous encounter with Comet Tempel 1. [more]

"There are billions of comets in the solar system, but this will be only the fifth time a spacecraft has flown close enough to one to snap pictures of its nucleus," says Lori Feaga of the EPOXI science team. "This one should put on quite a show!"
Cometary orbits tend to be highly elongated; they travel far from the sun and then swing much closer. At encounter time, Hartley 2 will be nearing the sun and warming up after its cold, deep space sojourn. The ices in its nucleus will be vaporizing furiously – spitting dust and spouting gaseous jets.
"Hartley 2's nucleus is small, less than a mile in diameter," says Feaga. "But its surface offgasses at a higher rate than nuclei we've seen before. We expect more jets and outbursts from this one."
EPOXI will swoop down into the comet's bright coma – the sparkling aura of debris, illuminated by the sun – shrouding the nucleus. The spacecraft's cameras, taking high-resolution (7 meters per pixel at closest approach) pictures all the while, will reveal this new world in all its fizzy glory.
"We hope to see features of the comet's scarred face: craters, fractures, vents," says Sebastien Besse of the science team. "We may even be able to tell which features are spewing jets!"
The spacecraft's instruments are already trained on their speeding target.
"We're still pretty far out, so we don't yet see a nucleus," explains Besse. "But our daily observations with the spectrometer and cameras are already helping us identify the species and amounts of gases in the coma and learn how they evolve over time as we approach."

Comet Hartley 2, photographed on Oct. 13 by Science@NASA reader Nick Howes using the 2-meter Faulkes North Telescope in Hawaii.

The aim of the mission is to gather details about what the nucleus is made of and compare it to other comets. Because comets spend much of their time far from the sun, the cold preserves their composition – and that composition tells a great story.
"Comets are left-overs from the 'construction' of our solar system," explains Besse. "When the planets formed out of the 'stuff' in the solar nebula spinning around the sun, comets weren't drawn in."
Researchers study these pristine specimens of the primal solar system to learn something about how it formed, and how it birthed a life-bearing planet like Earth.

Click on the EPOXI logo to visit the mission home page.

"These flybys help us figure out what happened 4 1/2 billion years ago," says Feaga. "So far we've only seen four nucleii. We need to study more comets to learn how they differ and how they are the same. This visit will help, especially since Hartley 2 is in many ways unlike the others we've seen."
EPOXI will provide not only a birds-eye view of a new world but the best extended view of a comet in history.
"This spacecraft is built for close encounters. Its instruments and our planned observations are optimized for this kind of mission. When, as Deep Impact, it flew by Tempel 1, it turned its instruments away from the nucleus to protect them from debris blasted up by the impactor. This time we won't turn away."
The EPOXI team will be waiting at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"We'll start diving into the data as soon as we receive it," says Feaga. "We'll work round the clock, on our toes the whole time, waiting for the next thing to come down."
Sounds like it could be intense.
"It's already intense," says Besse. "We're getting more and more data, but at encounter we'll be flooded!"
And that will be only the beginning.

Thirty Meter Telescope: Project Update

TMT has made a commitment to develop a comprehensive community benefit package as part of its pledge to be an engaged corporate entity on Hawaii Island.

One of the key components of this community benefit package is the development of scholarships and other educational opportunities for Hawaii Island students and teachers, particularly in the core areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) across grades K-12, secondary and post-secondary education.

The Hawaii Island New Knowledge (THINK) Fund is the first of many steps

in the journey toward educational excellence.

TMT will give $1 million per year to the THINK Fund over the life of the TMT lease on Mauna Kea. Funding will commence with the issuance of the project's Conservation District Use Permit by Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources in conjunction with the start of construction.

THINK's vision is to raise STEM education as a core community value. In doing so, THINK initiatives will pave the way for the academic, physical, emotional and social success for Hawaii Island students so they may become self-directed, lifelong learners who think critically and creatively, and function as responsible productive members of society.

Engineering students engage with TMT architects

THINK projections include direct, long-term positive impacts on:

* Graduation rates

* College acceptance rates

* Scholarship award rates, secondary and post

* Academic achievement, including GPA

* High School completion

* Teacher instruction, including curriculum that increases relevance and rigor

THINK will be administered by community volunteers on a yet-to-be-formed Board of Advisors from Hawaii Island. Collectively, the advisors will be representative of the various segments of the Hawaii Island community with the goal of achieving geographical, gender, private/public,and experiential diversity. 

Generating Much-needed Jobs

Construction is anticipated to begin in late 2011 and will take approximately eight to ten years to complete. Plans also include building the TMT headquarters within the UH Hilo Science and Technology Park.

Building the Thirty Meter Telescope will create more than 300 local construction industry jobs. During certain phases of construction, crews of more than 100 would be working at the site. Construction will be scheduled six days a week. Of course, winter weather conditions at the TMT Observatory site could interrupt construction at times.

Once the telescope is built, the operations of the observatory will require approximately 120 full-time jobs and TMT is committed to hiring as many members of the local workforce as possible. The project team has been meeting with groups on Hawaii Island to plan for a Workforce Pipeline Program to achieve this goal.

It is anticipated that a collaborative partnership with the Department of Education, independent and charter schools, Hawaii Community College and UH Hilo would initiate development of education and training programs that will get our local workforce ready for these jobs in 2018.

Need A Group Presentation?

Contact Laura Aquino (326-7820 laquino@current-events.com) if your group or community organization would like to schedule a presentation by Sandra Dawson, Site Manager, Thirty Meter Telescope to discuss the progress of TMT, project updates and upcoming milestones.

“SHERATONS”, THE ASTRONOMY CLUB, SBMJC, V V PURAM, BANGALORE

                            

                             Astronomy has always been a fascinating subject for all, because of its many unsolved mysteries. A single life time entirely devoted to sky would not be enough for the investigation of a vast subject like Astronomy. Astronomy reserves the discoveries for the ages still to come. Our universe has been a big affair for the reason that, it has something for every age to investigate. Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all. India has a great history in the field of astronomy, Right from the times of Aryabhata to Chandrasekhar. Currently India is achieving great success in the field of rocket Science. But in the space research India is not up to the mark.

               We the students of India can change this and make India a leader in the field of Astronomy. Keeping this in mind we the students of Sri Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain College,   V V puram have formed an astronomy club for the first time in the Pre-University level, in India.

                     This club is aiming in promoting and popularizing Astronomy as a Science and also as a hobby. This club also serves as a networking base for likeminded individuals interested in various topics of Astronomy. The club acts as a base for allAmateur Astronomy related activities. Here we exchange information and spread general awareness about various Astronomical events.

All of us here are crazy about astronomy! Its mysteries enthrall the professional and the Amateur Astronomers. Observations and research in this field has drastically changed the way we understand nature. 'Amateur Astronomy' offers a great opportunity to learn the basic fundamentals of this science along with enjoying the way in which nature presents itself.

                               

Our aims are:

·TO LEARN AND DO HARDCORE ASTRONOMY

·PROMOTE AND POPULARIZE ASTRONOMY

·PROMOTE INDIAN ASTRONOMY

·CONTRIBUTE TO THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY

·MAKE INDIA A LEADER IN THE FIELD OF ASTRONOMY

              

             Some of our activities are as follows: 

               

            1. Astro-theory Sessions: These sessions are held on every Wednesdays and they provide a perfect platform for the students to learn deeper aspects of Astronomy. During these sessions students give seminars on various topics of Astronomy.

              

            2. Monthly Guest lectures.

              

            3. Conducting events (Contests) on Astronomy, Where students can exhibit their imagination about the Universe.

               One such event was "CREATIVE COSMOS", which we conducted on 11^th of august in our college where students exhibited their talent in sketching and painting. The theme was “REVEAL YOUR UNIVERSE”.

            4. Conducting Outreach programsto colleges where we give a presentation on 'Astronomy' and organize Sky show for the students.

          

            5. Organize Expeditions to view special events such as Eclipses, Occultation and Meteor showers.

OBSERVATION SESSIONS

                                We also go out for Star parties where will travel about 40 km away from Bangalore to our huge Jain Global campus ( bangalore south ) for dark skies which are free from light pollution and then do observations through our telescopes.

                                We are planning to have a sophisticated observatory with all scientific devices, i.e. An Amateur Observatory for the first time in India and do basic research under the guidance of Professional Astronomers.

               

      We also publish  Astronomy magazines. The contents of the magazine are:

                               

·A theoretical aspect clearly explained,

·Article on any one of the celestial objects,

·Quiz,

· Amazing facts,

·Crosswords,

·An article on one of the Indian Astronomers,

·Updates on our club activities,

·Astro-activities going on in the city,

·Sky updates, in which we give information about the night, like what we can observe with naked eyes and with a simple binocular or a telescope, we also update about events such as occultation, meteor showers etc. and we also give sky charts.

*As one of our main aims is to make India leader in the field of Astronomy, we are having a huge project starting this december (2010) till next december (2011), which basically is aiming to promote and popularize Astronomy.

As a part of this project we are trying to inspire young minds and develop interests about Astronomy in them. So we will be going to 40 to 50 colleges and some schools which have agreed to be a part of our project and give seminars on astronomy and organize a sky show.