This week in space

Sorry for not doing one of these in a while folks.

SpaceX private rocket blasts off for space station

I've been waiting for this launch for quite some time. I'm glad it finally launched, once it reaches the ISS in a few days new history will be made, private space exploration (well ok not exploring anything but it is a step in the right direction).

The SpaceX company made history as its Falcon 9 rocket rose from its seaside launch pad and pierced the pre-dawn sky, aiming for a rendezvous later this week with the space station. The rocket carried into orbit a capsule named Dragon that is packed with 1,000 pounds of space station provisions.

It is the first time a private company has launched a vessel to the space station. That's something only major governments have done - until the present test flight. Launch controllers applauded when the Dragon reached orbit 9 minutes into the flight.

Read more HERE

Three-telescope interferometry allows astrophysicists to observe how black holes are fueled

I don't really see any practical use for this, understanding black holes isn't really something we need to know right now but something cool might be discovered with this instrument.

By combining the light of three powerful infrared telescopes, an international research team has observed the active accretion phase of a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy tens of millions of light years away, a method that has yielded an unprecedented amount of data for such observations. The resolution at which they were able to observe this highly luminescent active galactic nucleus (AGN) has given them direct confirmation of how mass accretes onto black holes in centers of galaxies.

Read more HERE

Kepler satellite telescope reveals hundreds of superflares on distant stars

A BILLION times as powerful as those are sun produces... wow.

Here on Earth we are occasionally concerned about solar flares due to the impact they can have on our electrical systems. But our solar flares are puny when compared to so-called superflares that occur with other stars. A new research study by a team from Japan’s Kyoto University has found after studying one patch of sky over a 120 day period in 1990 using data from the Kepler telescope, that superflares are rather common, and as they describe in their paper published in the journal Nature, some are a billion times as powerful as those that occur with our own sun.

Read more HERE

Hubble spies edge-on beauty

Here is your beautiful image of the week!

Visible in the constellation of Andromeda, NGC 891 is located approximately 30 million light-years away from Earth. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope turned its powerful wide field Advanced Camera for Surveys towards this spiral galaxy and took this close-up of its northern half. The galaxy's central bulge is just out of the image on the bottom left.

Read more HERE

Mother ship detected near Mercury after a solar flare revealed it.

"A gigantic object the size of a planet has appeared on astronomers screens lurking near Mercury, with UFO hunters around the world wondering whether it’s an alien ship.

The object appears from nowhere in a sequence of images of a coronal ejection from the Sun, taken by a Nasa telescope.

As the flare races past Mercury, a huge round object appears next to it – but Nasa scientists insist that the object is merely a result of the way the images are processed."

The image from the telescope was analysed by the United States Naval Research Laboratory, with engineer Nathan Rich explaining that the ‘object’ is actually the image of Mercury from the previous day.

To make sure that the solar flare stood out, researchers compare the image with one taken the day before and subtract anything that appears twice – because that means it’s interfering background light.

Stars are easily eliminated, but moving objects, like planets, are more difficult to remove.

Rich told Space.com: ‘When [this averaging process] is done between the previous day and the current day and there is a feature like a planet, this introduces dark artifacts in the background where the planet was on the previous day, which then show up as bright areas in the enhanced image.’

Astronomer Dr Heather Couper also agrees that it’s not a huge death star.

AWESOME. Absolutely AWESOME.

Read more about it HERE, HERE and HERE

This week in space

Computer simulation shows Solar System once had an extra planet

Hrmm, Nibiru ring a bell anyone?

A new study published on arXiv.org shows that, based on computer simulations, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune may not have been the only gas giants in our solar system. According to David Nesvorny from Colorado’s Southwest Research Institute, our current solar system could never have happened without the existence of a fifth planet.

Read more about it HERE

Globular clusters on a plane

Ok, so does anyone else feel like a galaxy comes along, cannibalizes another, then takes a big fat dump and leaves it along a plane before moving on to the next?

Globular clusters are generally some of the oldest structures in our galaxy. Many of the most famous ones formed around the same time as our galaxy, some 13 billion years ago. However, some are distinctly younger. While many classification schemes are used, one breaks globular clusters into three groups: an old halo group which includes the oldest of the clusters, those in the disk and bulge of the galaxy which tend to have higher metallicity, and a younger population of halo clusters. The latter of these provides a bit of a problem since the galaxy should have settled into a disk by the time they formed, depriving them of the necessary materials to form in the first place. But a new study suggests a solution that’s not of this galaxy.

Read more about it HERE

An X1.4 Solar Flare and a CME

Nothing really to say here, X class falres just interest me.

A large coronal mass ejection (CME) shot off the West (right) side of the sun at 6:24 PM ET on September 21, 2011. The CME is moving away from Earth at about 900 miles per second.

Read more about it HERE

Exploring an asteroid with the Desert RATS

Other than in movies, like Armageddon, I don't think we need a vehicle for landing on and exploring asteroids yet, we aren't quite ready for mining the asteroid belt.

Earlier this month, European scientists linked up with astronauts roaming over the surface of an asteroid. Desert RATS, NASA’s realistic simulation of a future mission, this year included a European dimension for the first time.

Read more about it HERE

NASA completes Orion spacecraft parachute testing in Arizona

Parachutes, seriously? We know that there is a secret space program not in the public view that has had anti gravity capabilities for ages now.

NASA this week completed the first in a series of flight-like parachute tests for the agency's Orion spacecraft. The drop tests at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona support the design and development of the Orion parachute assembly.

Read more about it HERE

This week in space

Six coronal mass ejections in 24 hours

If these head our way, expect some 'fun' interference on communications.

The sun let loose with at least six coronal mass ejections (CMEs) -- solar phenomena that can send solar particles into space and affect electronic systems in satellites -- from 7 PM ET on September 18, 2011 until 1 PM on September 19.

Read more about it HERE

Young clays on Mars could have been habitable regions for life

Let's just hurry up and get a manned mission to Barsoom so we can see evidence of life, instead of finding evidence to suggest it may be possible for life to be there.

Two small depressions on Mars found to be rich in minerals that formed by water could have been places for life relatively recently in the planet’s history, according to a new paper in the journal Geology.

See more about it HERE

From the comfort of home, Web users may have found new planets

All I have to say, is... AWESOME!

Since the online citizen science project Planet Hunters launched last December, 40,000 web users from around the world have been helping professional astronomers analyze the light from 150,000 stars in the hopes of discovering Earth-like planets orbiting around them.

See more about it HERE

WISE mission captures black hole's wildly flaring jet

Even black holes experience flatulence. True story.

Astronomers using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have captured rare data of a flaring black hole, revealing new details about these powerful objects and their blazing jets.

See more about it HERE

Saturn's moon Enceladus spreads its influence

Old Faithful... IN SPACE!

Chalk up one more feat for Saturn's intriguing moon Enceladus. The small, dynamic moon spews out dramatic plumes of water vapor and ice -- first seen by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2005. It possesses simple organic particles and may house liquid water beneath its surface. Its geyser-like jets create a gigantic halo of ice, dust and gas around Enceladus that helps feed Saturn's E ring. Now, thanks again to those icy jets, Enceladus is the only moon in our solar system known to influence substantially the chemical composition of its parent planet.

See more about it HERE

The secret lives of solar flares

People were about crazy leaders nuking humans to death... I worry about solar flares hurling us into the middle ages, because it's a very very likely possibility.

One hundred and fifty two years ago, a man in England named Richard Carrington discovered solar flares.

See more about it HERE

The mission to find the missing lunar module

Aliens took it, for a museum, duh.

Where is the Apollo 10 Lunar lander module? It’s somewhere out there — orbiting the Sun — and there’s a new initiative to try and find it!

See more about it HERE

Today in Space

Exotic galaxy reveals tantalizing tale

A galaxy with a combination of characteristics never seen before is giving astronomers a tantalizing peek at processes they believe played key roles in the growth of galaxies and clusters of galaxies early in the history of the Universe.

Read about it HERE

A planet made of diamond

A once-massive star that's been transformed into a small planet made of diamond: that is what University of Manchester astronomers think they've found in the Milky Way.

Read about it HERE

'Instant cosmic classic' supernova discovered

A supernova discovered yesterday is closer to Earth—approximately 21 million light-years away—than any other of its kind in a generation. Astronomers believe they caught the supernova within hours of its explosion, a rare feat made possible with a specialized survey telescope and state-of-the-art computational tools.

Read about it HERE

Report: NASA made proper pick for retired shuttles

NASA acted properly when it picked new homes for the retired space shuttles, the space agency's watchdog said Thursday.

Read about it HERE

Russia's Soyuz: historic symbol of space reliability

Russia's Soyuz rocket, which failed to put a Russian supply ship into orbit, is descended from launch vehicles of the early days of the space race but until now has been a byword for reliability.

Read about it HERE

Sunspot breakthrough

Imagine forecasting a hurricane in Miami weeks before the storm was even a swirl of clouds off the coast of Africa—or predicting a tornado in Kansas from the flutter of a butterfly's wing in Texas. These are the kind of forecasts meteorologists can only dream about.

Read about it HERE

40 year old Mariner 5 solar wind problem finds answer - turbulence doesn't go with the flow

Research led by astrophysicists at the University of Warwick has resolved a 40 year old problem with observations of turbulence in the solar wind first made by the probe Mariner Five. The research resolves an issue with what is by far the largest and most interesting natural turbulence lab accessible to researchers today.

Read about it HERE