Recap Sept 8: String Theory, Cosmic Spirals, and Chris Hadfield

Another week, another set of astronomy news.  Thanks to all for the great discussion this week.  Here is what we talked about:

Two asteroids have come within the 0.5 lunar distances from Earth.  Luckily they won't be hitting us!

NASA has chosen the proposals made for the new solar probe to be launched by 2018.  Solar Probe Plus will be sent closer to the sun than we have ever been.

String theorists say that they can predict the properties of quantum entanglement using their theory.  Perhaps the first possible way to test string theory.  Look for this experiment in the coming years.

Herschel has found a dying red giant that has water vapor near the surface of the star.   An odd place to find it, but the principal investigator thinks they know why.

Chris Hadfield has been named the ISS commander for Expedition 35 in 2012.  He'll go up on a Soyuz before taking over.

A cosmic spiral that is not a galaxy.  Yes, take a look at THIS image.  Hubble GOTCHU.

thanks again to everyone for coming, NOTE:  next week's meeting is cancelled.   See you all in two weeks!

Patterns

0.2, 0.6, 1.0, 1.9, ..... , 29.4, 84.3, 164.8

what number is missing?

ANSWER: 11.9 ... the sequence is the orbital period in Earth years from Mercury to Neptune

Recap Sept. 1: Kepler,Massive Magnetars, and Exoplanet Spectrum

Another week, another journal club.  Here is a list of the news topics covered by Jesse Rogerson:

A cool time lapse video of all the asteroids we've discovered since 1980 has been put together, scary how many things are out there!

Check out this video of Titan occulting a binary star system.  Using the data, the researchers were able to determine Titan has high velocity high altitude clouds!

India/Russia plan to send a second Chandrayaan to the moon, here are the specs of the instruments to be onboard the rover and orbiter.

The new Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer that will be going up on the last shuttle mission has arrive at cape canaveral!

A weird crater on mars has scientists stumped.  Check it out and see what you think.  How could a crater of this shape be made?

Kepler astounds us once again by finding a star with a possible 3 planets orbiting it.  All found through the transit method.  Interesting enough, one planet is moving inward, and one is moving outward at non-negligible amounts!  Check out the article.

KeckII has taken a spectrum of an exosolar planet!  Wow, that's pretty awesome.  Check out the press release here to find out the temperature on a world outside our solar system.

How do you form powerful radio galaxies?  Gemini has a press release blaming galaxy-galaxy interactions.

The VLT has found evidence of a Magnetar who's progenitor star topped the scales at 40 solar masses (or more).  How is it not a black hole?

To cap things off, enjoy this time lapse video of earth from space.  

thanks everyone, see you next week!

Strange Stars and the ISS: Recap Aug 11

hey everyone!

here's a list of the talking points from the august 11th meeting

The perseids ramped up august 12th and 13th to their peek.  hopefully you caught them, you could watch the action here.

We know of neutron stars, but what about quark stars?  Theoretically there is a sweet spot of mass will push a star into a configuration where the neutrons dissemble into an up, down, and strange quark.

The future ESA/NASA joint mission to mars has chosen its instruments, check out the list here.

Chandra has taken some new images of the Antennae collision galaxy and mixed it up with some spitzer and hubble data.  Interact here!

When the ISS funding is cut short in 2020 what will happen to it?  There have been a few ideas put forth at the ExploreNOW workshop in DC.

The infamous bucky ball, or Carbon-60 molecule has now been directly observed around a white dwarf. Check out the NASA article.

The WISE space station is on its last legs.  The coolant is running out, and most likely will kill the observing capabilities within the next 6 months.

The ISS coolant system broke down sparking a few new EVAs.

Decadal Survey 2010

Here are links to last week's Decadal Survey 2010 report in the US:

PDF of report

AAS information, including slideshow

Aurora, Tweeting Robots, and losing Spirit

Thanks to all for coming to this week's AJC meeting!

Random Astronomy Fact of the Week:  CCDs have been the corner stone of modern astronomy, ever wonder what the FIRST astronomical object was to be imaged by a CCD?  the answer: the moon.  In 1974 Fairchild Imaging used a 20cm telescope and its recently developed 100x100 pix CCD to image the moon.  

The Near-Infrared Coronograph and Imager (NICI) on Gemini South has been busy!  It's found a brown dwarf orbiting a sun-type star, determined ages of stars in other galaxies, and found companions to other stars.

The sun is waking up!  4 individual Coronal Mass Ejections happened whithin the last week, prompting some good aurora forecasts.  check out some cool SDO footage of the events here.

Don't lose spirit yet!  The mars rover Spirit has been permanently trapped in sand for the better part of a year now, and was unable to properly position itself for the martian winter.  Prepare for the worst as NASA pings it over the next couple months.

Staying on mars,  a REALLY interesting crater has been imaged, showing what looks like a double impact.  Check out the image, determine for yourself!

UofT has hired a new director for its Dunlap Institute.  Welcome to Canada James Graham!  Graham has been involved in the discovery of Formalhaut B, an exoplanet.  Also is one of the people behind the Thirty Meter Telescope project.

Lopsided Comsic Rays in the allsky image from IceCube, the antarctic neutrino obsevatory.

Robonaut2, or R2 to his friends now has a twitter feed!  Wanna ask him a question?  go for it, it should answer eventually.  I'm still waiting for my response.

that's all for this week, see you at the next meeting!

Recap: 28 July 2010

This week the news stories were brought by Jesse Rogerson. Be sure to check out all the links this time there were a few really cool videos!

Top of the list is the recent media surge on the kepler data. The local media reported a 'leak' of new kepler data, based on a TED talk by Dimitar Sasselov. In the talk Dimitar discussed that we have many good candidates for earth-size planets. Good work Kepler!

Asteroid 1999 RQ36 might have a close encounter with earth in 2182, and there's a roughly 1 in 1000 chance it could hit us. While that probably isn't true, near-earth objects and flybys provide a good opportunity for sample return missions. Check the universetoday article.

The H-R diagram OF Astronomers. (keyword here is 'of'......you know you want to click that)

Check out this video of Curiosity Mars Rover taking its first test drive.

The Mars Odyssey spacecraft has dropped into safe-mode due to a glitch in the electronic encoder. Back to full operations soon.

Saturn's moon Prometheus has been wreaking havoc on the F ring of the planet. Check out this article and video of trails being left behind.

Having a little fun at the expense of 'moon hoax enthusiasts.' Why the moon landings weren't faked.

The second reading of the bill 'put AJC on hiatus' occurred and the democratic decision from last week was overruled by another democratic decision. AJC will continue to operate throughout the month of august! see you all next week!