Thursday, January 13, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
New planets are a gas!
The final frontier: Gas worker Peter Jalowiczor is credited with discovering four planets
Published Date: 27 December 2010
PETER Jalowiczor is not sure if he believes in extra-terrestrial life.
Which is strange because Peter Jalowiczor has just helped discover a planet around which it may exist.
Quite a claim for a Rotherham gas worker who has never owned a telescope in his life - but a claim which has been confirmed by a team of astronomical experts from the University of California.
For Peter, of Masbrough, has been named by the centre's Lick-Carnegie Planet Search Team as a co-discoverer of four planets known as HD 31253b, HD 218566b, HD177830c and HD 99492c.
It was the hours he spent analysing thousands of figures of space data - all in his spare time, all on his two home PCs - which provided the clues for scientists to establish the existence of the huge gaseous orbs.
"It overwhelms me when I think about it," he says. "I've always been interested in astronomy and I have two science degrees but to be one of the officially recognised finders of these planets is just...I get lost for words."
Here's the science bit: in 2005, astronomers at the university released millions of space measurements collected over several decades and asked enthusiasts to make of them what they would.
Quirks in the data could signify the existence of exoplanets - that is, planets in other solar systems which cannot be seen with even the most powerful telescope because they are so far away.
From March 2007 Peter, 45, spent entire nights reading the data, working the figures, creating graphs.
THE PLANETS IN NUMBERS
HD 31253b - 466 days in its year - 172 light years away
HD 218566b - 225.7 days in its year - 98 light years away
HD177830c - 110.6 days in its year - 190 light years away
HD 99492c - 4,697 days in its year - 58 light years away
"Essentially you're looking for measurements which show a star, which is millions of miles across and light years away, to be oscillating by about 50 metres or less," the father of one explains.
"The measurements are so tiny, it puts many people off looking - even professional astronomers - but I find it fascinating."
He then sent discrepancies he discovered back to the scientists in California where they were further analysed to see if the quirks were caused by the existence of an exoplanet.
Quite a claim for a Rotherham gas worker who has never owned a telescope in his life - but a claim which has been confirmed by a team of astronomical experts from the University of California.
For Peter, of Masbrough, has been named by the centre's Lick-Carnegie Planet Search Team as a co-discoverer of four planets known as HD 31253b, HD 218566b, HD177830c and HD 99492c.
It was the hours he spent analysing thousands of figures of space data - all in his spare time, all on his two home PCs - which provided the clues for scientists to establish the existence of the huge gaseous orbs.
"It overwhelms me when I think about it," he says. "I've always been interested in astronomy and I have two science degrees but to be one of the officially recognised finders of these planets is just...I get lost for words."
Here's the science bit: in 2005, astronomers at the university released millions of space measurements collected over several decades and asked enthusiasts to make of them what they would.
Quirks in the data could signify the existence of exoplanets - that is, planets in other solar systems which cannot be seen with even the most powerful telescope because they are so far away.
From March 2007 Peter, 45, spent entire nights reading the data, working the figures, creating graphs.
THE PLANETS IN NUMBERS
HD 31253b - 466 days in its year - 172 light years away
HD 218566b - 225.7 days in its year - 98 light years away
HD177830c - 110.6 days in its year - 190 light years away
HD 99492c - 4,697 days in its year - 58 light years away
"Essentially you're looking for measurements which show a star, which is millions of miles across and light years away, to be oscillating by about 50 metres or less," the father of one explains.
"The measurements are so tiny, it puts many people off looking - even professional astronomers - but I find it fascinating."
He then sent discrepancies he discovered back to the scientists in California where they were further analysed to see if the quirks were caused by the existence of an exoplanet.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
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Thursday, January 6, 2011
Seven years on Mars… on Mars… on Mars…
Around this time seven years ago today I was doing a very good impression of a zombie, having stayed up all night to watch the heart stopping landing of the rover “Spirit” on Mars.
I had followed the whole thing live, via NASA TV, on a small RealPlayer box that kept freezing and breaking-up into a shattered kaleidescope flurry of pixels as my dial-up (yes, dial-up!!!) connection struggled to keep up with the data stream. I can’t remember how many cups of coffee I guzzled, how many packets of Maltesers I munched, how many bags of spicy Nik Naks I noshed, but they saw me through the night, and I didn’t miss a thing, not one moment. I sat there, in my criminally-uncomfortable chair, gazing at my flickering PC screen, for hours… HOURS… following the tense countdown to EDL. I remember my heart was in my mouth as the control room at JPL fell silent, a sign that EDL had started… I watched everyone’s faces for flickers and traces of emotion that might be hints that something, good or bad, had happened…
I remember tears of joy and utter, utter relief filling my eyes as the engineers and scientists and techs .
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Astronomy Without A Telescope – Secular Evolution
NASA-HSTA traditional galaxy evolution model has it that you start with spiral galaxies – which might grow in size through digesting smaller dwarf galaxies – but otherwise retain their spiral form relatively undisturbed. It is only when these galaxies collide with another of similar size that you first get an irregular ‘train-wreck’ form, which eventually.
M51 - the Whirlpool Galaxy. Like most spiral galaxies, the spiral arms are really density waves. Drag forces produced by these density waves could drive the 'secular' evolution of galaxies. Credit: NASA-HST.
A traditional galaxy evolution model has it that you start with spiral galaxies – which might grow in size through digesting smaller dwarf galaxies – but otherwise retain their spiral form relatively undisturbed. It is only when these galaxies collide with another of similar size that you first get an irregular ‘train-wreck’ form, which eventually settles into a featureless elliptical form – full of stars following random orbital paths rather than moving in the same narrow orbital plane that we see in the flattened galactic disk of a spiral galaxy.
The concept of secular galaxy evolution challenges this notion – where ‘secular’ means separate or isolated. Theories of secular evolution propose that .
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