Venus, Jupiter and Mercury — the brightest planets visible on Earth — will move into a triangle only three degrees wide.

The triple conjunction of planets is fairly rare. The last time the three bright planets aligned in that formation was on May 9, 2011.

According to NASA, the best time to see the planetary dance is half an hour to an hour after the sun sets in the western sky.

The planets, NASA says, will be hugging the horizon and visible through the light of the sunset. They will even be visible in densely populated areas as urban light pollution is said not to deter their brilliance.

Once the triangle is formed, the dance will begin to disperse on Monday and will not be visible within the viewing field of ordinary binoculars on Tuesday.

The phenomenon won’t happen again until Oct. 17, 2015.

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/05/24/sci-planet-dance.html

When a massive star runs out of fuel, its core collapses to form a neutron star, an ultradense object about 10 to 15 miles (16 to 24 kilometers) wide. The gravitational energy released in this process blows the outer layers away in a supernova explosion and leaves the neutron star behind.

Most neutron stars are spinning rapidly — a few times a second — but a small fraction have a relatively low spin rate of once every few seconds while generating occasional large blasts of X-rays. Because the only plausible source for the energy emitted in these outbursts is the magnetic energy stored in the star, these objects are called “magnetars.”

Most magnetars have extremely high magnetic fields on their surface that are 10 to 1000 times stronger than for the average neutron star. New observations show that the magnetar known as SGR 0418+5729 (SGR 0418) doesn’t fit that pattern. It has a surface magnetic field similar to that of mainstream neutron stars.

“We have found that SGR 0418 has a much lower surface magnetic field than any other magnetar,” said Nanda Rea of the Institute of Space Science in Barcelona, Spain. “This has important consequences for how we think neutron stars evolve in time and for our understanding of supernova explosions.”

The researchers monitored SGR 0418 for over three years using Chandra, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton, and NASA’s Swift and RXTE satellites. They were able to make an accurate estimate of the strength of the external magnetic field by measuring how its rotation speed changes during an X-ray outburst. These outbursts are likely caused by fractures in the crust of the neutron star precipitated by the buildup of stress in a relatively strong wound-up magnetic field lurking just beneath the surface.

“This low surface magnetic field makes this object an anomaly among anomalies,” said GianLuca Israel of the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome. “A magnetar is different from typical neutron stars, but SGR 0418 is different from other magnetars, as well.”

By modeling the evolution of the cooling of the neutron star and its crust, as well as the gradual decay of its magnetic field, the researchers estimated that SGR 0418 is about 550,000 years old. This makes SGR 0418 older than most other magnetars, and this extended lifetime has probably allowed the surface magnetic field strength to decline over time. Because the crust weakened and the interior magnetic field is relatively strong, outbursts could still occur.

The case of SGR 0418 may mean that there are many more elderly magnetars with strong magnetic fields hidden under the surface, implying that their birth rate is five to 10 times higher than previously thought.

“We think that about once a year in every galaxy, a quiet neutron star should turn on with magnetar-like outbursts, according to our model for SGR 0418,” said Josè Pons of the University of Alacant in Spain. “We hope to find many more of these objects.”

Another implication of the model is that the surface magnetic field of SGR 0418 should have once been very strong at its birth half a million years ago. This, plus a possibly large population of similar objects, could mean that the massive progenitor stars already had strong magnetic fields, or these fields were created by rapidly rotating neutron stars in the core collapse that was part of the supernova event.

If large numbers of neutron stars are born with strong magnetic fields, then a significant fraction of gamma-ray bursts might be caused by the formation of magnetars rather than black holes. Also, the contribution of magnetar births to gravitational wave signals — ripples in space-time — would be larger than previously thought.

The possibility of a relatively low surface magnetic field for SGR 0418 was first announced in 2010 by a team with some of the same members. However, the scientists at that time could only determine an upper limit for the magnetic field and not an actual estimate because not enough data had been collected.

Article source: http://www.astronomy.com/~/link.aspx?_id=114d5fcb-3229-447b-8eba-3903320005e0

School districts are adjusting lesson plans to bring up those scores. And in the Northeast Kingdom, there’s an unusual hands-on approach to learning about astronomy.

A setting sun cast a warm glow through scattered clouds on Northern Skies Observatory recently, as a couple of young astronomers walked through the door of the silo-like building next to Peacham Elementary School.  Barnet science teacher Cindy Mosedale was giving an astronomy lesson to two middle schoolers. They sat in front of laptops at a long table. Only steps away, a $300,000 telescope awaited their instructions.

The night was too cloudy, so the kids weren’t able to look through the lens. Instead, they searched a poster on the wall for heavenly bodies that they wanted the robotic telescope to find and photograph for them, when the skies cleared up.

Mosedale showed them a photo gallery of pictures already taken from this building.

“When we take the images and when we get them – and I will show you with some we already have – they come out as little objects in the center,” she explained.

The students were learning to use software that writes code for the telescope to follow, hours after they’d gone home.

For Sydney Wanzer, one of the co-founders of the Northeast Kingdom Astronomy Foundation, which raised the money for this telescope, this is what science education should be all about – putting students’ hands on technology that spurs them to ask questions.

“They use our equipment, they image various objects in the sky, they study them, they make measurements of one sort or another, and thereby learn,” Wanzer said.

Wanzer is an amateur astronomer. A doctor by training, he teamed up with his neighbor, David Magnus, to start the Foundation, which now works with about a dozen schools, mostly in the Northeast Kingdom, to bring astronomy into lesson plans. On this drizzly night, the students got to see the telescope, but not in action. Magnus lead them up a few stairs.

“We have to make sure the last person closes the door, because this is ice cold and that’s warm and we don’t want warm air to come in here – why?” he asked the students.

“Because warm air would steam up the glass and mirrors in the telescope,” one replied.

On clearer nights a panel opens wide for the lens to survey the skies. That’s a “wow moment,” teachers say. The Northeast Kingdom is especially ideal for the project, because there is almost no light pollution from cities and because this is a cash-strapped part of Vermont where schools often have to make do with less. Brad Vietje is a volunteer consultant for the observatory.

“The original goal was to provide a facility that would give students in rural areas that don’t have access to the kind of things they might have in Philadelphia or New York or Chicago, access to equipment and a research facility that would give them a leg up when they go to apply to college and interact with the wider world,” Vietje said.

And the world can’t get much wider than this galaxy on display here in the middle of a pasture. The observatory has been open for only two years, so it’s too soon to see if science scores improve.  But stargazing will not take a vacation. This summer the Foundation will partner with the Fairbanks Museum and Dartmouth College to offer a space camp for teenagers interested in astronomy.

Article source: http://digital.vpr.net/post/peacham-observatory-gives-students-hands-astronomy-lessons

Griffith Observatory is a Los Angeles-based facility that bills itself as the most-visited observatory in the world.

While many professional facilities are solely used by astronomers, Griffith has free public telescopes that are open each evening that the observatory and skies are clear. The telescopes are available until 9:45 p.m., while the building is open until 10 p.m.

In 2006, the Griffith Park observatory got a much-needed facelift after nearly 70 years of serving the public. A $93 million renovation saw many exhibits removed and replaced with more modern ones. Additionally, the facility installed a brand-new planetarium complete with digital laser projectors.

Moving experience

Griffith Observatory came to be through a gift of a wealthy benefactor — Griffith J. Griffith, a businessman who got rich through the Mexican silver mine business and also real estate in southern California.

In the early 1900s, Griffith visited the then-new telescope at Mount Wilson, where he got a chance to look through the 60-inch telescope.

“The experience moved him profoundly — a distant, heavenly body suddenly being brought so close and made so real,” wrote John Anson Ford, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, in text quoted by the observatory.

Ford, the observatory added, quoted Griffith as saying “Man’s sense of values ought to be revised. If all mankind could look through that telescope, it would change the world.”

In 1912, Griffith worked to bring the experience to Los Angeles. He expressed his willingness to donate $100,000 (worth roughly $2.3 million today) for an observatory that would include an open-access telescope, a theater capable of showing “motion pictures” (then very state-of-the-art) and a science hall with exhibits.

Griffith died in 1919, but provided for the observatory in his will as he grew ill. Serious planning for construction began in 1930, with the dedication for the new observatory taking place on May 14, 1935. One major change took place to Griffith’s vision: a planetarium, a technology that wasn’t available when Griffith was alive.

A new four-year mission

Griffith had its share of changes and renovations over the years, but by far the largest one took place starting in 2002. Organizers took an unprecedented step in the observatory’s 67 years of operations: they shut down the facility for four years to change it inside and out.

The public-private partnership had four main goals: refurbishing the entire building, putting in a state-of-the-art planetarium, expanding public space and rejuvenating the exhibit program.

“This has involved taking the time, spending the money, and getting the people necessary to do the job right, so that the result is something the people of Los Angeles can celebrate with justified pride,” the observatory stated at the time of the renovation.

When the observatory re-opened in November 2006, its changes drew awe in Larry Evans, a National Space Society official who wrote of his experience of seeing it in SPACE.com.

“Old favorites such as the Foucault Pendulum that demonstrates Earth’s rotation, art deco wall panels and ceiling fresco, or the giant moon globe, remain intact,” he wrote. “New exhibits on meteorites, the solar system, and the universe beyond, are all state-of-the-art.”

Griffith Observatory has also seen its share of fires over the years, including one that came a little close to the facility in May 2007, just six months after re-opening.

One of the observatory’s more unusual attractions received mention in a New York Times account of the fire: “Tourists flock for views of the city and to see the bust of James Dean that commemorates the movie ‘Rebel Without a Cause,’ which was filmed there,” the newspaper wrote.

— Elizabeth Howell, SPACE.com Contributor

Article source: http://www.space.com/21312-griffith-observatory-astronomy-for-the-public.html

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-puts-shuttle-launch-pad-florida-lease-212600361.html

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May 24, 2013

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A new NASA and university analysis of ocean data collected more than 135 years ago by the crew of the HMS Challenger oceanographic expedition provides further confirmation that human activities have warmed our planet over the past century.

Researchers from the University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay, Australia; and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., combined the ship’s measurements of ocean temperatures with modern observations from the international Argo array of ocean profiling floats. They used both as inputs to state-of-the-art climate models, to get a picture of how the world’s oceans have changed since the Challenger’s voyage.

The Challenger expedition, from 1872 to 1876, was the world’s first global scientific survey of life beneath the ocean surface. Along the way, scientists measured ocean temperatures, lowering thermometers hundreds of meters deep on ropes.

“The key to this research was to determine the range of uncertainty for the measurements taken by the crew of the Challenger,” said Josh Willis, a JPL climate scientist and NASA project scientist for the upcoming U.S./European Jason-3 oceanography satellite, scheduled to launch in 2015. “After we had taken all these uncertainties into account, it became apparent that the rate of warming we saw across the oceans far exceeded the degree of uncertainty around the measurements. So, while the uncertainty was large, the warming signal detected was far greater.”

Uncertainties around the Challenger’s measurements were caused by the limited areas measured during the voyage; the actual depths the thermometers descended to; and the likely natural variation in temperature that could occur in each region during the voyage.

“Our research revealed warming of the planet can be clearly detected since 1873 and that our oceans continue to absorb the great majority of this heat,” said researcher and lead author Will Hobbs of the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. “Currently, scientists estimate the oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases, and we attribute the global warming to anthropogenic (human-produced) causes.”

The Challenger expedition measurements also revealed that thermal expansion of sea water caused by global warming contributed about 40 percent of the total sea level rise seen in tide gauges from 1873 to 1955. The remaining 60 percent was likely to have come from the melting of ice sheets and glaciers. Prior to this research, climate models offered the only way to estimate the change before the 1950s.

Results of the study are published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

For more on the study, visit: http://www.imas.utas.edu.au/right-column-content/whats-new3/news/century-old-science-helps-confirm-global-warming .

Alan Buis 818-354-0474
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov

Sam East 011-03-6226-6683
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Sandy Bay, Tasmania, Australia
Sam.east@utas.edu.au

2013-175

Article source: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-175

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Corporate researchers may be living on the moon by the time NASA astronauts head off to visit an asteroid in the 2020s, a study of future human missions unveiled on Thursday shows.

The study by Bigelow Aerospace, commissioned by NASA, shows “a lot of excitement and interest from various companies” for such ventures, said Robert Bigelow, founder and president of the Las Vegas-based firm.

The projects range from pharmaceutical research aboard Earth-orbiting habitats, to missions to the moon’s surface, he said on Thursday, citing a draft of the report due to be released in a few weeks.

NASA intends to follow the International Space Station program with astronaut visits to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars about a decade later.

President Barack Obama‘s proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1 requests $105 million for the U.S. space agency to begin work on a mission to find a small asteroid and reposition it around the moon for a future visit by astronauts.

But private companies, including Bigelow Aerospace, have more interest in the moon itself, Bigelow told reporters on a conference call on Thursday.

William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s head of space operations, said on the call “it’s important for us to know that there’s some interest in moon activity and lunar surface activity.”

“We can take advantage of what the private sector is doing” in areas such as space transportation, life support systems and other technologies needed for travel beyond the space station‘s 250 mile high orbit, he noted.

NASA typically completes its mission planning before looking at what partnerships and collaborations may be possible, Gerstenmaier added.

“We thought that this time we would kind of turn that around a little bit, that we would ask industry first what they’re interested in … where they see human presence that makes sense, where they see potential commercial markets.”

Bigelow Aerospace surveyed about 20 companies as well as foreign space agencies and research organizations for the NASA study, which the company undertook at its own expense. Bigelow has made no secret of its ambition to own, lease and operate inflatable space habitats in Earth orbit and on the moon.

Bigelow handed a draft of the first part of the report to Gerstenmaier on Thursday, 40 days ahead of schedule. The second section, which probes mission planning and other aspects of potential public-private partnerships, is due this fall.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Richard Chang)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/commercial-human-ventures-planned-moon-nasa-study-004509682.html

Article source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/j125013.html