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SOLAR FILAMENT: A giant solar filament is changing today into a prominence. This picture taken by John Stetson of Falmouth, Maine, shows the metamorphosis.

Solar filaments and prominences are actually the same thing: magnetic tubes filled with dense gas suspended above the surface of the sun. When we see one of these tubes in front of the sun, it looks dark because it's cooler than the hot sun behind it. This is a called a filament. When a filament juts out from the sun's limb, we call it a prominence. The prominence pictured above should remain visible all weekend long.

http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2005/26feb05/stetson1.jpg
 
NACREOUS CLOUDS: At the crack on dawn on Feb. 18th, Gudrun Sverrisdottir of Reykjavík, Iceland, was leaving home for work--just like any other day. Then he looked up ... and saw this:

http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2005/27feb05/Sverrisdottir1.jpg

"These beautiful colours decorated the sky," says Sverrisdottir, amazed. "A few minutes later they disappeared."

Were they auroras? No. Rainbows? No. Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley has the answer: "They are nacreous clouds."

"Nacreous clouds are eerie. Their slowly changing colors blaze silently in the twilight sky as though powered by electric discharges," says Cowley. "9-16 miles high in the stratosphere and well above other clouds, sunrays catch them for 1 to 2 hours after sunset or before dawn. They are immensely cold, -85o C, and composed of tiny, similar sized ice particles that diffract light to form the iridescent colors. These clouds are very rare except at high latitudes, but once seen they are never forgotten."
 
This upcoming weekend I plan on seeing the rings of Saturn for the first time in my young life. Apparently the viewing won't be this clear for another 29 years (from my point on the planet anyway).

Let's hope the clouds stay away from the observatory, there's no pollution haze and they sky is as transparent as the water in Antigua.

I just might tear up after seeing something like that. But I am a geek. Represent.
 
Lawler said:
This upcoming weekend I plan on seeing the rings of Saturn for the first time in my young life. Apparently the viewing won't be this clear for another 29 years (from my point on the planet anyway).

Let's hope the clouds stay away from the observatory, there's no pollution haze and they sky is as transparent as the water in Antigua.

I just might tear up after seeing something like that. But I am a geek. Represent.
Click to expand...

cool! Any chance you may be able to get some picts?
 
Workers Attach Solid Rocket Boosters to External Tank

NASA continues preparations for the Space Shuttle fleet's Return to Flight. The first Shuttle slated to fly is Discovery on STS-114. Its targeted launch window opens May 15 and runs through June 3. The new window accommodates daylight launch attempts and ensures the most detailed and clear photography of the External Tank.

Workers at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., attached Discovery's Solid Rocket Boosters to its External Tank on Monday inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. The External Tank and Boosters will be mated to the orbiter in mid-March. The orbiter is in the Orbiter Processing Facility. Workers have completed 96 percent of system testing on the orbiter.

Meanwhile, the seven-member STS-114 crew is training at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/images/medium/05pd0352-m.jpg
 
deathbypickle said:
oh did you help find that invisible galaxy?
Click to expand...
lol ... we flushed it out with superior firepower. :)

Like hiding at 11 billion light years would help it.
 
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Scientists: Telescope spots hidden galaxies

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- NASA scientists said an infrared telescope peered deep into stardust and spotted hidden galaxies more than 11 billion light-years from Earth.

In a journal article this week, the scientists describe how the Spitzer Space Telescope was used to find the galaxies, the most luminous in the universe. The galaxies shine with light equivalent to 10 trillion suns but are too far away and too drenched in cosmic dust to be seen -- until now.

"We are seeing galaxies that are essentially invisible," said Dan Weedman of Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, who co-authored an article on the discovery in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

By studying these galaxies, we'll get a better idea of our own galaxy's history," said lead author James Houck, also of Cornell.

The Spitzer infrared telescope, a $670 million mission launched in August 2003, is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

"Past infrared missions hinted at the presence of similarly dusty galaxies over 20 years ago, but those galaxies were closer. We had to wait for Spitzer to peer far enough into the distant universe to find these," said Weedman.
 
linuxgeek said:
lol ... we flushed it out with superior firepower. :)

Like hiding at 11 billion light years would help it.
Click to expand...

if they were invisible, how did they know they were there.

i smell a conspiracy
 
deathbypickle said:
if they were invisible, how did they know they were there.

i smell a conspiracy
Click to expand...

Light is easily dispersed or blocked since it is such a small range of frequencies. Often learn alot more from radio astronomy than direct visual observations.
 
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Earliest Massive Cluster Of Known Galaxies Discovered

Combining observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope and ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, astronomers have discovered the most distant, very massive structure in the Universe known so far.

It is a remote cluster of galaxies that is found to weigh as much as several thousand galaxies like our own Milky Way and is located no less than 9,000 million light-years away.

The VLT images reveal that it contains reddish and elliptical, i.e. old, galaxies. Interestingly, the cluster itself appears to be in a very advanced state of development. It must therefore have formed when the Universe was less than one third of its present age.

The discovery of such a complex and mature structure so early in the history of the Universe is highly surprising. Indeed, until recently it would even have been deemed impossible.

Serendipitous discovery

Clusters of galaxies are gigantic structures containing hundreds to thousands of galaxies. They are the fundamental building blocks of the Universe and their study thus provides unique information about the underlying architecture of the Universe as a whole.

About one-fifth of the optically invisible mass of a cluster is in the form of a diffuse, very hot gas with a temperature of several tens of millions of degrees. This gas emits powerful X-ray radiation and clusters of galaxies are therefore best discovered by means of X-ray satellites (cf. ESO PR 18/03 and 15/04).

It is for this reason that a team of astronomers [1] has initiated a search for distant, X-ray luminous clusters "lying dormant" in archive data from ESA's XMM-Newton satellite observatory.

Studying XMM-Newton observations targeted at the nearby active galaxy NGC 7314, the astronomers found evidence of a galaxy cluster in the background, far out in space.

This source, now named XMMU J2235.3-2557, appeared extended and very faint: no more than 280 X-ray photons were detected over the entire 12 hour-long observations.

A Mature Cluster at Redshift 1.4

Knowing where to look, the astronomers then used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal (Chile) to obtain images in the visible wavelength region. They confirmed the nature of this cluster and it was possible to identify 12 comparatively bright member galaxies on the images (see ESO PR Photo 05b/05).

The galaxies appear reddish and are of the elliptical type. They are full of old, red stars. All of this indicates that these galaxies are already several thousand million years old. Moreover, the cluster itself has a largely spherical shape, also a sign that it is already a very mature structure.

In order to determine the distance of the cluster - and hence its age - Christopher Mullis, former European Southern Observatory post-doctoral fellow and now at the University of Michigan in the USA, and his colleagues used again the VLT, now in the spectroscopic mode.

By means of one of the FORS multi-mode instruments, the astronomers zoomed-in on the individual galaxies in the field, taking spectral measurements that reveal their overall characteristics, in particular their redshift and hence, distance.

The FORS instruments are among the most efficient and versatile available anywhere for this delicate work, obtaining on the average quite detailed spectra of 30 or more galaxies at a time.

The VLT data measured the redshift of this cluster as 1.4, indicating a distance of 9,000 million light-years, 500 million light years farther out than the previous record holding cluster.

This means that the present cluster must have formed when the Universe was less than one third of its present age. The Universe is now believed to be 13,700 million years old.

"We are quite surprised to see that a fully-fledged structure like this could exist at such an early epoch," says Christopher Mullis. "We see an entire network of stars and galaxies in place, just a few thousand million years after the Big Bang".

"We seem to have underestimated how quickly the early Universe matured into its present-day state," adds Piero Rosati of ESO, another member of the team. "The Universe did grow up fast!"

Towards a Larger Sample

This discovery was relative easy to make, once the space-based XMM and the ground-based VLT observations were combined. As an impressive result of the present pilot programme that is specifically focused on the identification of very distant galaxy clusters, it makes the astronomers very optimistic about their future searches.

The team is now carrying out detailed follow-up observations both from ground- and space-based observatories. They hope to find many more exceedingly distant clusters, which would then allow them to test competing theories of the formation and evolution of such large structures.

"This discovery encourages us to search for additional distant clusters by means of this very efficient technique," says Axel Schwope, team leader at the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam (Germany) and responsible for the source detection from the XMM-Newton archival data.

Hans Boehringer of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, another member of the team, adds: "Our result also confirms the great promise inherent in other facilities to come, such as APEX (Atacama Pathfinder Experiment) at Chajnantor, the site of the future Atacama Large Millimeter Array. These intense searches will ultimately place strong constraints on some of the most fundamental properties of the Universe."

More information This finding is presented today by Christopher Mullis at a scientific meeting in Kona, Hawaii, entitled "The Future of Cosmology with Clusters of Galaxies".

It will also soon appear in The Astrophysical Journal ("Discovery of an X-ray Luminous Galaxy Cluster at z=1.4", by C. R. Mullis et al.). More images and information is available on Christopher Mullis' dedicated web page at http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/~cmullis/research/xmmuj2235/.
 
AURORA WATCH: The Iditarod is just underway in Alaska and--good news--a solar wind stream is blowing past Earth. This means sporadic auroras are likely along the 1112-mile trail from Anchorage to Nome. Mushers, look up!
 
linuxgeek said:
NACREOUS CLOUDS: At the crack on dawn on Feb. 18th, Gudrun Sverrisdottir of Reykjavík, Iceland, was leaving home for work--just like any other day. Then he looked up ... and saw this:

"Nacreous clouds are eerie. Their slowly changing colors blaze silently in the twilight sky as though powered by electric discharges," says Cowley. "9-16 miles high in the stratosphere and well above other clouds, sunrays catch them for 1 to 2 hours after sunset or before dawn. They are immensely cold, -85o C, and composed of tiny, similar sized ice particles that diffract light to form the iridescent colors. These clouds are very rare except at high latitudes, but once seen they are never forgotten."
Click to expand...

what a trip :cool:
 
src
Hybrid Solar Eclipse of 2005 April 08

On Friday, 2005 April 08, a hybrid1 eclipse of the Sun will be visible from within a narrow corridor which traverses the far Southern Hemisphere. The path of the Moon's shadow begins southeast of New Zealand and stretches across the Pacific Ocean to Panama, Colombia and Venezuela. A partial eclipse will be seen within the much broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes New Zealand, much of the South Pacific, South and North America.

The path of this event begins as an annular eclipse but it changes to total about 2200 km south of Tahiti. At maximum eclipse (UT), the duration of totality is 45 seconds. Unfortunately, the total portion of the track never crosses land. The path becomes annular again about 800 km west of Costa Rica. By the time the shadow reaches the coast of Costa Rica, the annular phase will already be 12 seconds and growing. After crossing Panama and Colombia, the central path ends in Venezuela where a 33 second annular eclipse will occur at sunset.

The article Eclipses During 2005 (from RASC Observer's Handbook 2005) has a more detailed description of the eclipse path.



This web site has been established for the purpose of providing detailed predictions, maps, figures and information about this important event. Additional and supplemental material for the 2005 hybrid eclipse will be published here in the coming months.


1A hybrid eclipse is a unique type of central eclipse where parts of the path are annular while other parts are total. This duality comes about when the vertex of the Moon's umbral shadow pierces Earth's surface at some points, but falls short of the planet along other portions of the eclipse path. The curvature of Earth's surface brings some geographic locations along the path into the umbra while other positions are more distant and enter the antumbral rather than umbral shadow. In most cases (like in 2005), the hybrid eclipse begins annular, changes to total for the central portion of the path, and then converts back to annular towards the end of the path. However, some hybrid eclipses may be annular only at the beginning (e.g. - 2013 Nov 03) or at the end (e.g. - 2386 Apr 29) of the path.
 
SUNSPOT ARCHIPELAGO: Sunspot 742 looks a lot like a South Pacific island-chain--except that each island is the size of a small planet! Pictured right in a movie from SOHO, this active region has been growing rapidly for the past three days. If the expansion continues, sunspot 742 could soon pose a threat for strong solar flares.

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2005/10mar05/742_med.gif
 
MERCURY TONIGHT: Go outside this evening around 6:30 pm; look low and to the west. Can you see a "star" shining through the rosy glow of sunset? That's the planet Mercury. Normally hidden, Mercury will be easy to see every night this week. Pay special attention on Friday, March 11th, when Mercury appears beautifully close to the crescent moon.


http://www.spaceweather.com/images2005/11mar05/skymap_north.gif
 
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Senator Calls on NASA to Service Hubble

WASHINGTON – In a sternly worded letter to acting NASA Administrator Frederick D. Gregory, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said she expects the U.S. space agency to heed the will of the Congress and keep preparations for a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission on track.

Congress, in passing an omnibus spending bill late last year, directed NASA to set aside $291 million of its 2005 budget to spend planning and preparing for a servicing mission to Hubble by 2008. When NASA informed Congress just weeks later that it intended to spend only $175 million of that amount on the Hubble repair effort, some saw the move as an indication that the agency was preparing to abandon plans to service Hubble robotically and rely instead on a space shuttle crew to fix the telescope.

Many Hubble backers, including Mikulski, were shocked and angered when NASA announced in early February that it would not make any effort to service the telescope beyond attaching a propulsion module that can be used to drop Hubble into the ocean once it goes dark.

Mikulski, an influential member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told Gregory in her March 2 letter that Congress will consider this year including money in NASA’s 2006 budget for a Hubble servicing mission. In the meantime, she said, she expects NASA to spend every penny of the $291 million included in the 2005 budget for Hubble servicing.

“I expect NASA to carry out Congress’ intent and spend the entire amount appropriated this year so there will be no interruption in the planning, preparation and engineering work that will be necessary for a servicing mission to Hubble,” she wrote. “The funding that I included in the Omnibus Appropriations Act is to ensure that the workforce at Goddard, the Space Telescope Science Institute and their associated contractors remain fully engaged in all aspects of a servicing mission. Any attempt to cancel, terminate or suspend servicing activity would be a violation of the law unless it has the approval of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.”

Government agencies are required to seek permission from congressional appropriators before using money for purposes other than which it was originally approved. Although the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2005 gives NASA “unrestrained transfer authority” to move money between accounts, it also says that the authority should be used primarily to help the agency complete its transition to full-cost accounting.

NASA has not canceled contracts it awarded to Lockheed Martin and Canada’s MDA Robotics last year to help engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., design a robotic servicing mission. NASA officials have said the agency intends to let that work continue at least until a preliminary design review planned this month.
 
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Space Tourism Group Picks Florida Launch Site

A private space tourism firm with plans to launch civilians on suborbital joyrides has pinned down its launch pad with a little help from the U.S. Air Force (USAF).

The firm, Temecula, New Mexico’s AERA Corp., has signed an agreement with the USAF to use launch complexes at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Base for future passenger space shots.

“It was essential to put [it] in place very early in our process,” said Lewis Reynolds, AERA president and chief operating officer, of the launch site during a telephone interview. “And the facilities there are essentially the best available the world.”

AERA’s agreement with USAF, renewable after five years, allows the company access to the Air Force Station’ launch facilities and support facilities as a base for Altairis, six-passenger spacecraft currently slated to begin test flights – and possibly a commercial spaceflight - in the fall of 2006.

But even with a launch site in hand, AERA Corp. still faces major challenges ahead to make its spaceflight goals. While the company has funding from venture capitalists, plans for a spacecraft production facility are still being finalized. Commercial spaceflight regulation hurdles and hiring needs are also a challenge.

“We know it’s a bold goal, but we believe it to be obtainable and we are going to keep pressing forward,” Reynolds said. “Our survival and long-term goals depend on our ability to do this safely and cost-efficiently.”

Preparing for Altairis

Reynolds said the Altairis spacecraft is an evolved version of a vehicle designed by Bill Sprague – AERA founder and CEO – while he led his American Astronautics team during the Ansari X Prize competition.

The current design calls for a vertical launch spacecraft that would then make a horizontal landing. AERA plans to unveil its Altairis design in spring 2005 during an event in New York City, company officials said.

Passenger launches would include pre-flight training and a 40-minute ride, according to AERA’s website.

“We’ll initially enter the market with five spacecraft, and then follow in the first year with another six,” Reynolds said of AERA’s current plans.

Since the spacecraft itself is designed to be computer-controlled, a series of unmanned spaceflights are planned before the first passenger launch, he added.

The $10 million X Prize contest – won last year after two successful flights by the privately-developed spacecraft SpaceShipOne - challenged civilians to build and launch a reusable sub-orbital vehicle capable of carrying the mass of three people to the edge of space and back.

A growing market

AERA’s launch site announcement is the latest in series of private space efforts aimed at providing spaceflights for paying civilians.

However, to date only one private effort – SpaceShipOne designed by aerospace veteran Burt Rutan and financed by millionaire Paul Allen – has managed to not only to produce a working spaceship, but successfully fly manned sub-orbital spaceflights three separate times, two of them within two weeks of each other to nab the X Prize.

Following last year’s successful – and very public – launches of SpaceShipOne, British billionaire Richard Branson pledged to license the spacecraft’s technology for commercial spaceflights at $200,000 a ride aboard Virgin Galactic flights beginning in 2007.

The aerospace firm SpaceDev, of Poway, California, is also making a bid for manned spaceflights with its Dream Chaser sub-orbital spacecraft – which is part of a joint project with NASA’s Ames Research Center to study hybrid propulsion-based hypersonic testbeds for human spaceflight. SpaceDev officials hope to make their first test flights by 2008 if full funding is secured.

Meanwhile, the Oklahoma-based firm Rocketplane, Limited has announced its intentions to rollout its sub-orbital spacecraft Rocketplane XP from Burns Flat – possibly in mid-2006 – with the first passenger flights following a year later at around $150,000 a ride. XCOR Aerospace has set the passenger ticket price for its Xerus spacecraft at about $98,000.

Still other homegrown commercial spaceflight efforts, including Canada’s separate Canadian Arrow and da Vinci projects, as well as U.S. efforts by firms like Armadillo Aerospace and Space Transport Corp. among others, are working to build their own human-carrying spacecraft. In 2006, X Prize officials are preparing to hold the X Prize Cup in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

A 2002 report by the market research group Futron Corp. reported that by 2021, 15,000 space tourists could be seeking sub-orbital flight tickets.

“Not everyone is going to pay $100,000 or $200,000 for a rocket flight,” Reynolds said. “[But] there’s tremendous, pent-up and unfulfilled demand out there.”
 
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