Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Uluru under the Milky Way. Picture: Toi Wu Yip (Hong Kong) Taken on the photographers first visit to Uluru, it was winter in the Southern Hemisphere and the sky had turned dark before the closing of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. After all the other tourists left once they had finished watching the famous Uluru sunset, the photographer was left alone wait for the night show to start. Eventually the Milky Way came out and appeared above the giant red rock; the sky was so clear that some airglow could be seen above the horizon. Uluru, Northern Territory, Australia, 7 July 2016

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Mr Big Dipper. Picture: Nicholas Roemmelt (Denmark) A stargazer observes the constellation of the Big Dipper perfectly aligned with the window of the entrance to a large glacier cave in Engadin, Switzerland. This is a panorama of two pictures, and each is a stack of another two pictures: one for the stars and another one for the foreground, but with no composing or time blending.

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Reflection . Picture:Beate Behnke (Germany) The reflection in the wave ripples of Skagsanden beach mirrors the brilliant green whirls of the Aurora Borealis in the night sky overhead. To obtain the effect of the shiny surface, the photographer had to stand in the wave zone of the incoming flood, and only when the water receded very low did the opportunity to capture the beautiful scene occur. Skagsanden, Lofoten, Norway, 28 October 2016

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Beautiful Trmso . Picture: Derek Burdeny (USA) The aurora activity forecast was low for this evening, so the photographer remained in Troms rather than driving to the fjord. The unwitting photographer captured Natures answer to a stunning firework display as the Northern Lights dance above a rainbow cast in the waters of the harbour in Trmso made for a spectacular display, but did not realize what he had shot until six months later when reviewing his images. Troms, Norway, 7 March 2016

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: A Battle We Are Losing . Picture: Haitong Yu (China) The Milky Way rises ominously above a small radio telescope from a large array at Miyun Station, National Astronomical Observatory of China, in the suburbs of Beijing. The image depicts the ever-growing light pollution we now experience, which together with electromagnetic noise has turned many optical and radio observatories near cities both blind and deaf a battle that inspired the photographers title of the shot. The image used a light pollution filter (iOptron L-Pro) and multiple frame stacking to get the most of the Milky Way out of the city light. Beijing, China, 2 March 2017

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Auroral Crown . Picture: Yulia Zhulikova (Russia) During an astrophotography tour of the Murmansk region with Stas Korotkiy, an amateur astronomer and popularizer of astronomy in Russia, the turquoise of the Aurora Borealis swirls above the snow covered trees. Illuminated by street lamps, the trees glow a vivid pink forming a contrasting frame for Natures greatest lightshow. Murmansk, Russia, 3 January 2017

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Fall Milk . Picture: Brandon Yoshizawa (USA) The snow-clad mountain in the Eastern Sierras towers over the rusty aspen grove aligned perfectly in front of it, whilst our galaxy the Milky Way glistens above. Eastern Sierras, California, USA, 21 October 2016

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: NGC 2170: Dust and Reflections . Picture: Steven Mohr (Australia) This very unusual but beautiful reflection nebula can be found in the constellation of Monoceros. Adjoining NGC 2170 is a dense red emission region, while flowing overhead, and dispersing in numerous directions, are fluttering ribbons of pronounced dense dust, which sit in the foreground of the gentle red emission nebula LBN999. To the lower right of the image, the scene is shared with the delicate reflection nebula NGC 2182. The image is a composition of luminance, red, green and blue filters, which were then processed in CCDStack, CCDBand-Aid, Photoshop, PixInsight, and StarTools. Central Victoria, Australia, 3 March 2017

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Crescent Moon over Mount Banks . Picture: Luke Tscharke (Australia) In the Blue Mountains, the photographer jumped out of his sleeping bag, and left the campsite to see an early morning cloud inversion had swept across the Grose Valley, dancing as a soft warm breeze pushed it along its way. The galactic core of the Milky Way was visible above the waning crescent Moon, seemingly stacked over the silhouetted summit of Mount Banks. In the distance, beyond the city lights of Sydney, a brightening patch on the horizon indicated the rising Sun was soon to appear. The best things in life may be free but they do sometimes require an early alarm! Blue Mountains National Park, New South Wales, Australia, 6 March 2016

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Super Moon . Picture: Giorgia Hofer (Italy) The magnificent sight of the Super Moon illuminating the night sky as it sets behind the Marmarole, in the heart of the Dolomites in Italy. On the night of 14 November 2016, the Moon was at perigee at 356.511 km away from the centre of Earth, the closest occurrence since 1948. It will not be closer again until 2034. On this night, the Moon was 30% brighter and 14% bigger than other full moons. Laggio di Cadore, Province of Belluno, Italy, 15 November 2016

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Shooting Star and Jupiter . Picture: Rob Bowes (UK) A shooting star flashes across the sky over the craggy landscape of Portland, Dorset, as our neighbouring planet Jupiter looks on. The image is of two stacked exposures: one for the sky and one for the rocks. Portland, Dorset, UK, 25 March 2017

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Eastern Prominence . Picture: Paul Andrew (UK) A large, searing hedgerow prominence extends from the surface of the Sun on 29 August 2016. There are a number of different prominence types that have been observed emanating from the Sun, and the hedgerow prominence is so called due the grouping of small prominences resembling rough and wild shrubbery. Dover, Kent, UK, 29 August 2016

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Solar Trails above the Telescope Maciej Zapior (Poland) Taken with a solargraphy pinhole camera, the image charts the movement of the Sun over the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague with an exposure of half a year (21 December 201521 June 2016). As a photosensitive material, regular black-and-white photographic paper without developing was used, and after exposure the negative was scanned and post-processed using a graphic program (colour and contrast enhancement). The exposure time was from solstice to solstice, thus recording the solar trails above the telescope dome and the rainbow of colours of the trails are the result of the sensitivity of the paper changing as it is exposed to different temperatures and humidity.

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: The Road Back Home. Picture:Ruslan Merzlyakov (Latvia) Noctilucent clouds stretch across the Swedish sky illuminating a motorcyclists ride home in this dramatic display. Noctilucent clouds are the highest clouds in the Earths atmosphere and form above 200,000 ft. Thought to be formed of ice crystals, the clouds occasionally become visible at twilight when the Sun is below the horizon and illuminates them. Near Ume, Sweden, 8 August 2016

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: NGC 2170: Dust and Reflections . Picture: Steven Mohr (Australia) This very unusual but beautiful reflection nebula can be found in the constellation of Monoceros. Adjoining NGC 2170 is a dense red emission region, while flowing overhead, and dispersing in numerous directions, are fluttering ribbons of pronounced dense dust, which sit in the foreground of the gentle red emission nebula LBN999. To the lower right of the image, the scene is shared with the delicate reflection nebula NGC 2182. The image is a composition of luminance, red, green and blue filters, which were then processed in CCDStack, CCDBand-Aid, Photoshop, PixInsight, and StarTools. Central Victoria, Australia, 3 March 2017

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Crescent Moon over the Needles . Picture: Ainsley Bennett (UK) The 7% waxing crescent Moon setting in the evening sky over the Needles Lighthouse at the western tip of the Isle of Wight. Despite the Moon being a thin crescent, the rest of its shape is defined by sunlight reflecting back from the Earths surface. Alum Bay, Freshwater, Isle of Wight, UK, 3 October 2016

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: ISS Daylight Transit . Picture: Dani Caxete (Spain) The International Space Station (ISS) whizzes across the dusky face of the Earths natural satellite, the Moon, whilst photographed in broad daylight. Shining with a magnitude of -3.5, the ISS was illuminated by the Sun at a height of 9 on the horizon. Like the Moon, the ISS receives solar rays in a similar way during its 15 orbits of the Earth a day, making it possible to see it when the Sun is still up. This is a real shot, with no composite or clipping in the process. Madrid, Spain, 2 April 2017

Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist selection: Tarantula Colours . Picture: Diego Colonnello (Venezuela) The Tarantula Nebula or 30 Doradus is an H II region, or a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that has been ionized, that is found in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Although it is about 160,000 light years away, the Tarantula Nebula has an apparent magnitude of 8, meaning that is an extremely luminous object, and if it were as close to our planet as the Orion Nebula is, it would actually cast visible shadows. Airport West, Victoria, Australia, 10 February 2017

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Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition entries reveal the beauty of the night sky - NEWS.com.au

By Kenneth Hicks For Columbus Dispatch

If you havent already heard about it, the Great American Eclipse of 2017 is going to come your way on Aug. 21. Skies will darken to varying degrees at mid-afternoon across the entire USA on that day.

A total eclipse, where the sun is completely obscured by the moon, will be seen in a band that stretches from Oregon to South Carolina. Columbus will see a partial eclipse of about 90 percent, which will still be pretty spectacular. The maximum darkness in Columbus is expected at about 2:30 pm that day.

Theres little doubt in my mind that you will hear multiple warnings about looking directly at the eclipse, even when using sunglasses. The 10 percent of the sun that gets past the eclipse is still dangerous to look at.

There are a number of products, such as special eclipse glasses, that will allow one to look at it safely. I certainly encourage everyone to not wait until the last minute and to get proper eye protection if you want to see this rare event. Its a serious issue, as eye damage can result from looking at the eclipse without precautions.

If you have the opportunity to travel to a location in the path of the total eclipse, the experience can be breathtaking. When twilight comes in the middle of the day, it can be a very strange feeling and maybe even an unforgettable moment.

But be aware that hotels in the path of the total eclipse may be scarce. A friend of mine booked one almost a year ago, and told me back then that some hotels were already fully booked.

The next total eclipse visible in the U.S. will occur in 2024 and will mostly cross Texas. Although there have been a number of partial eclipses over the years, the last total eclipse that covered a large portion of the U.S. was in 1970. These events are pretty rare, and for children it can be a unique experience, so its worth putting some time and effort into planning how to view it safely.

Eclipses have long fascinated people. Centuries ago, before modern communications existed (and when many people were illiterate), the ability to predict when an eclipse would happen was seen as a manifestation of power.

Imagine a king of the realm being able to tell the peasants that the sun would disappear for a few minutes on the next day. Some peasants might conclude that the king had a direct link to God, and hence that would increase reverence for the king.

Throughout the Middle Ages, astronomers were part of the courts of many realms, and although the movements of the planets follow precise mathematical laws, it must have seemed like a magical ability to predict their actions. Indeed, it is known that some astronomers carefully guarded their knowledge rather than share it freely, as is done today.

Back then, the distinction between astronomy and astrology became blurred. Although astrology is mysticism, not science, it still uses the knowledge of where the planets are in the sky, which overlaps with the science of astronomy.

But if an asteroid were on a collision course with Earth, I know Id rather have a good astronomer on hand to help predict how to deflect it, whereas astrology would not be of much use (at least not for that purpose).

However you choose to enjoy the eclipse, I hope you will do it safely. It can be a memorable event, especially for children, and it will be many years before the next opportunity to see one.

Kenneth Hicks is a professor of physics and astronomy at Ohio University in Athens.

hicks@ohio.edu

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Astronomy: Make a plan to view the American eclipse safely - The Columbus Dispatch

Strong hints have been found of a possible exomoon candidate orbiting a gas giant planet over 4,000 light years away in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan. Should the moon be confirmed later this year by the Hubble Space Telescope, it will be the first moon ever discovered around a planet beyond our Solar System.

The potential discovery has come from the Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler collaboration, which is led by David Kipping of Columbia University in New York. The project uses observations collected by NASAs Kepler Space Telescope, which watches for dips in starlight as planets cross, or transit, the face of their host stars and block some of the light.

The idea behind hunting for exomoons is that natural satellites should also cause a dip in the starlight, either just before or just after their parent planets transit. However, given the size of moons compared to their planets, the dip in light caused by an exomoon should be small and hard to discern, even for Kepler.

To even the odds, Kippings team stacked together multiple light curves (graphs showing how a stars light output changes over time while a planet is transiting it) for each of the 284 planets they were studying, looking for recurring dips that could be attributed to exomoons. They only found one strong candidate, accompanying the planet Kepler-1625b.

At present Kippings team, which includes his Columbia colleague Alex Teachey and citizen scientist Allan Schmidt, are remaining cautious about the potential discovery. The signal of the possible exomoon was seen during three consecutive transits by Kepler, but thats not sufficient to conclusively confirm the moon exists. The next transit is set to take place in October 2017 and the team have already acquired time on the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the planet and, hopefully, confirm that the moon exists.

If it does exist then it is an exceptionally strange moon quite unlike anything in our Solar System. The planet is enormous, with ten times the mass of Jupiter, while the proposed moon has a mass equivalent to Neptune. In some ways the system could be classed as a double planet, and it is unlikely that a moon of this size would have formed in orbit around its planet.

Planetary formation can be a chaotic affair, with planets capable of migrating inwards during their early growth phase as the protoplanetary disc of gas and dust encircling their star saps the planets angular momentum. So as Kepler-1625b migrated inwards, it may have run across a Neptune-sized world that it captured.

In this case, Kepler-1625b may have gained a moon, but theoretical models predict that normally migration is bad for moons, with gravitational encounters between planets stripping moons away from their parent worlds. The dearth of moons in the sample of 284 exoplanets studied by Kippings team suggest that these models are correct, meaning that the observations also imply that migration is a common occurrence in exoplanetary systems.

However, finding moons with masses similar to Earths Moon, or the Galilean moons of Jupiter, is a tough proposition and it is not yet certain how rare smaller moons really are. Should they be uncommon, then. the lack of moons will not necessarily impact the habitability of exoplanets. In the 1990s the French astronomer Jacques Laskar of the French National Centre for Scientific Research concluded that the presence of a large moon was important for stabilising the obliquity of Earth and hence our planets long-term stable climate. However, more detailed simulations run by Jack Lissauer of NASAs Ames Research Center found that even without the Moon, Earth would wobble on its axis by only ten degrees, which is not enough to render the climate uninhabitable. Meanwhile, Lissauer also discovered that fast-spinning planets (with days less than ten hours long) or backwards-spinning worlds are able to stabilise their tilts without requiring the presence of a large moon. Therefore, the lack of exomoons need not be a barrier to habitable environments on exoplanets.

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Possible exomoon signal found - Astronomy Now Online

When you gaze up at the night sky, you're not just looking at celestial objects far away in space. You're looking at objects far away in time, too.

The light from a distant star can take thousands of years to reach Earth. That means astrophotography images of the night sky is the closest thing we may have to a time machine. The best astrophotography is breathtakingly beautiful to boot.

Below are several images shortlisted for the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 awards , meaning they represent the most stunning astrophotography work in the world. They include images of the Northern Lights, a crescent Moon, and the Milky Way.

The final winners of the contest will be announced Sept. 14 at London's Royal Observatory Greenwich.

Yulia Zhulikova

During an astrophotography tour of the Murmansk region with Stas Korotkiy, an amateur astronomer and popularizer of astronomy in Russia, the turquoise of the Aurora Borealis swirls above the snow covered trees. Illuminated by street lamps, the trees glow a vivid pink forming a contrasting frame for Natures greatest lightshow.

Murmansk, Russia , Jan. 3, 2017

Canon EOS 6D camera, 14 mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 3200, four 2-second exposures combined

Steve Brown

The seemingly pop art inspired canvas of the rainbow of colours exhibited by the brightest star in our sky, Sirius. These colours are obvious to the naked eye and more so through the eyepiece of a telescope, but are difficult to capture in an image. To do this the photographer had to somehow freeze each colour as it happened by taking a series of videos at different levels of focus and then extracted the frames from each video to make up this composite image. By capturing the star out of focus, the light from Sirius was spread out over a larger area, which resulted in the colours it displayed being more obvious. The image is made up of 782 different frames at different levels of focus. There is a single frame of a focused Sirius in the centre of the image.

Stokesley, North Yorkshire, UK. Jan 11, 2016.

Canon EOS 600D camera with Star Adventurer tracking mount, 250 mm lens, ISO 3200, composite of 782 images

Agurtxane Concellon

The purples and greens of the Northern Lights radiate over the coal mining city of Svea, in the archipelago of Svalbard. The earthy landscape below the glittering sky is illuminated by the strong lights of industry at the pier of Svea.

Svea, Svalbard, Norway , Feb. 25, 2017

Nikon D810 camera, 15 mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 500, 13-second exposure

Brandon Yoshizawa

The snow-clad mountain in the Eastern Sierras towers over the rusty aspen grove aligned perfectly in front of it, whilst our galaxy the Milky Way glistens above.

Eastern Sierras, Calif. Oct. 21, 2016

Nikon D750 camera, 50 mm f/1.8 lens, foreground: f/8, ISO 500, 10-second exposure, sky: f/2.5, ISO 6400, 6-second exposure

Warren Keller

Lying in the constellation of Orion, at a distance of 1467 light years from our planet is the emission and reflection nebula NGC 2023. Most often photographed next to the famous Horsehead Nebula, the photographer has instead given NGC 2023 the spotlight in order to try and bring out all of the wonderful detail seen across its diameter of 4 light years, making it one of the largest reflection nebulae ever discovered. Partner Steve Mazlin is the lead processor on this one for SSRO.

Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, near La Serena, Chile. Jan 2, 2016.

RCOS 16-inch f/11.3 reflector telescope, PlaneWave Ascension 200HR mount, FLI PL16803 camera, 1800-second exposure

Ainsley Bennett

The 7% waxing crescent Moon setting in the evening sky over the Needles Lighthouse at the western tip of the Isle of Wight. Despite the Moon being a thin crescent, the rest of its shape is defined by sunlight reflecting back from the Earths surface.

Alum Bay, Freshwater, Isle of Wight, UK, 3 October 2016

Nikon D810 camera, 200 mm f/5.6 lens, ISO 500, 2.5-second exposure

Michael Wilkinson

The Sun photographed in Calcium-K light, depicting the stars inner chromosphere. In the colour-rendering scheme used, the surface is shown as negative, with the sunspots as bright spots, but the area outside the limb is shown with increased contrast, highlighting a surge on the western limb, and several small prominences. Although the Sun is shown entering a quieter phase, a lot of activity is still taking place, illustrating just how dynamic our star is.

Groningen, Netherlands. April 4, 2017.

APM 80 mm f/6 refractor telescope, Vixen Great Polaris mount, ZWO ASI178MM camera, stack of 400 frames

Giorgia Hofer

The magnificent sight of the Super Moon illuminating the night sky as it sets behind the Marmarole, in the heart of the Dolomites in Italy. On the night of 14 November 2016, the Moon was at perigee at 356.511 km away from the centre of Earth, the closest occurrence since 1948. It will not be closer again until 2034. On this night, the Moon was 30% brighter and 14% bigger than other full moons.

Laggio di Cadore, Province of Belluno, Italy. Nov. 15, 2016.

Nikon D750 camera, 400 mm f/8 lens, ISO 250, background: f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/1000-second exposure, foreground: f/8, ISO 250, -second exposure

Andrew Whyte

The radiant, concentric star trails seemingly spinning over a lone stargazer against the glowing purples and pinks of the night sky during the hour when the clocks spring forward to begin British Summer Time. With time so intrinsically linked to celestial activity, a one-hour star trail seemed the perfect metaphor. Through the use of long exposures, the trails depict the rotation of the Earth on its axis centring on the north celestial pole, the sky moving anti-clockwise around this point.

Titchfield, Hampshire, UK. March 26, 2016.

Sony 7s camera, 17 mm f/4 lens, ISO 1600, 120 x 30-second exposures

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Best Astronomy Pictures: Insight Photographer of the Year | Time.com - TIME

Daniel Zantzinger Skywatcher's Guide

Among the myriad celestial sights these August nights, the new moon's eclipse of the sun on Aug. 21 is clearly this month's highlight.

In a nutshell, the moon passes between earth and sun Aug. 21 (a Monday), casting its shadow called the umbra onto the earth's surface and briefly blocking sunlight. The path of the nation's first total solar eclipse in 38 years is a 70-mile wide band that stretches 8,600 miles from sunrise near Midway Atoll and the International Date Line in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to sunset southwest of the Cabo Verde archipelago in the far eastern Atlantic Ocean. For North America, the path of totality, tilted from the northwest to the southeast, is a narrow strip spanning from the westernmost coast of central Oregon to the easternmost coast of central South Carolina.

Most skywatchers, however, don't live along this path, and as such have two options.

First option is to visit https://is.gd/2017eclipsemap, find a location closest to you and hit the road. Skywatchers can book a room in Casper, Wyo., or pitch a tent in Grand Island KOA Journey campground in Nebraska.

The truly hardcore and well-financed who want to experience the greatest duration of totality need head no further than to the wilds of Giant City State Park, about six miles from Carbondale, Ill. If you want to experience the greatest eclipse, that is, be exactly where the axis of the moon's shadow slices closest to the earth's center, trek to the northwestern outskirts of Hopkinsville, Ky.

Before you pack up the RV, though, be forewarned. Totality along thiseclipse path is never longer than 2 minutes 40.2 seconds. The umbra is racing across the earth's face at three times the speed of sound, so unless you're in the unlikely position of piloting a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird roaring down the path of totality, you're going to get your two-plus minutes as a maximum regardless where you go and how much you spend.

Second, and better, option is to stay put with family and friends. Be here now.

Although totality will come and go for the lucky few in just a few minutes, the partial eclipse lasts nearly three hours. Obscuration of the sun for the northern half of Colorado is more than 90 percent. Further, the partial for most of the rest of the country is better than 80 percent.

For skywatchers in Longmont and surrounding areas, the eclipse begins at 10:23 a.m., reaching a maximum obscuration of 93.84 percent at 11:46 a.m. before sliding off and finally ending at 1:14 p.m.

If you can, take the day off work, invite family and friends over, fire up the barbecue and make a summer day of it.

There are basically two ways that skywatchers can experience the solar eclipse, by direct viewing through a safe solar filter and indirectly by projection. It goes without saying that immensely painful and irreversible blindness can happen in an instant if you don't properly protect your eyes from the brilliance of the sun, especially when using a telescope and binoculars.

Direct viewing requires nothing more than inexpensive eclipse glasses with "ISO 12312-2" printed on them. There are pre-mounted glass and thin, metal coated plastic film filters available for telescopes and binoculars that you can buy, or you can make one yourself using Baader Astro-Solar thin film. Let it stay slack, otherwise your view will be hazy and it might tear during observation, creating dangerous viewing condition. Be sure that it can't blow off.

Projection works with a telescope, binoculars or even your hands.

Position the 3-inch or smaller telescope's aperture so the light floods through your lowest power eyepiece, and then focus the image on a mounted piece of paper. Larger telescopes risk overheating, so for those cut a 3-inchhole in a piece of cardboard and mount it over the aperture.

You can also project with binoculars. Move the paper and/or the binoculars to resolve the image.

Fold your fingers of both hands in a waffle pattern and let the sunlight through onto a flat uniform background a sidewalk, for example. You'll see multiple images of the partially obscured solar disc.

For more information, visit http://www.skyandtelescope.com/2017-eclipse.

The moon is full at 12:11 p.m. Aug. 7, and is called the Full Sturgeon Moon.

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Astronomy: August's solar eclipse nearly total - Longmont Times-Call

OmegaCAM the wide-field optical camera on ESOs VLT Survey Telescope (VST) has captured the spectacular Orion Nebula and its associated cluster of young stars in great detail, producing this beautiful new image. This famous object, the birthplace of many massive stars, is one of the closest stellar nurseries, at a distance of about 1350 light-years. Credit: ESO/G. Beccari

Using new observations from ESOs VLT Survey Telescope, astronomers have discovered three different populations of young stars within the Orion Nebula Cluster. This unexpected discovery adds very valuable new insights for the understanding of how such clusters form. It suggests that star formation might proceed in bursts, where each burst occurs on a much faster time-scale than previously thought.

OmegaCAM the wide-field optical camera on ESOsVLT Survey Telescope(VST) has captured the spectacularOrion Nebulaand its associated cluster of young stars in great detail, producing a beautiful new image. This object is one of the closest stellar nurseries for both low and high-mass stars, at a distance of about 1350 light-years.

But this is more than just a pretty picture. A team led by ESO astronomer Giacomo Beccari has used these data of unparallelled quality to precisely measure the brightness and colours of all the stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster. These measurements allowed the astronomers to determine the mass and ages of the stars. To their surprise, the data revealed three different sequences of potentially different ages.

Looking at the data for the first time was one of those Wow! moments that happen only once or twice in an astronomers lifetime, says Beccari, lead author of the paper presenting the results. The incredible quality of the OmegaCAM images revealed without any doubt that we were seeing three distinct populations of stars in the central parts of Orion.

Monika Petr-Gotzens, co-author and also based at ESO Garching, continues, This is an important result. What we are witnessing is that the stars of a cluster at the beginning of their lives didnt form altogether simultaneously. This may mean that our understanding of how stars form in clusters needs to be modified.

The astronomers looked carefully at the possibility that instead of indicating different ages, the different brightnesses and colours of some of the stars were due to hidden companion stars, which would make the stars appear brighter and redder than they really were. But this idea would imply quite unusual properties of the pairs, which have never before been observed. Other measurements of the stars, such as their rotation speeds and spectra, also indicated that they must have different ages.

Although we cannot yet formally disprove the possibility that these stars are binaries, it seems much more natural to accept that what we see are three generations of stars that formed in succession, within less than three million years, concludes Beccari.

The new results strongly suggest that star formation in the Orion Nebula Cluster is proceeding in bursts, and more quickly than had been previously thought.

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A tale of three stellar cities - Astronomy Now Online

Ten billion years ago, a big star went boom and now astronomers have captured the ancient flash that may be the earliest supernova ever detected.

The supernova, according to a University of California Santa Cruz press release, is brighter than all of our galaxys stars combined. That brightness may be because of its special place in the history of our universe: a time called "cosmic high noon."

The supernova, called DES15E2mlf, occurred in a galaxy that is more massive than previously observed host galaxies for superluminous supernovae. These events tend to happen in smaller, metal-poor galaxies with metal-poor stars pristine objects in the early universe that have only undergone a few generations of stellar formation. Because its host galaxy exists at such an early time, however, even such a massive object could be relatively devoid of metals, setting the stage for a superluminous supernova. This new event confirms that supernovae were occurring at that time as well, indicating that early stars could accumulate enough mass to later destabilize themselves in a giant explosion more luminous than normal supernovae.

This, in turn, could tell us a lot about how galaxies form. Most galaxies at that time were not only less massive than those we see today, but they were also more compact. Understanding how massive stars form and die in all types of galaxies can also teach us about the history of our own Milky Way, which was once metal-poor as well.

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Astronomers detect a supernova brighter than all the Milky Way's stars combined - Astronomy Magazine

This illustration shows the most common type of gamma-ray burst, thought to occur when a massive star collapses, forms a black hole, and blasts particle jets outward at nearly the speed of light. Credit: NASA/GSFC

Gamma-ray bursts are among the most energetic and explosive events in the universe. They are also short-lived, lasting from a few milliseconds to about a minute. This has made it tough for astronomers to observe a gamma-ray burst in detail.

Using a wide array of ground- and space-based telescope observations, an international team led by University of Maryland astronomers constructed one of the most detailed descriptions of a gamma-ray burst to date. The event, named GRB 160625B, revealed key details about the initial prompt phase of gamma-ray bursts and the evolution of the large jets of matter and energy that form as a result of the burst. The groups findings are published in the July 27, 2017, issue of the journal Nature.

Gamma-ray bursts are catastrophic events, related to the explosion of massive stars 50 times the size of our Sun. If you ranked all the explosions in the universe based on their power, gamma-ray bursts would be right behind the Big Bang, said Eleonora Troja, an assistant research scientist in the UMD Department of Astronomy and lead author of the research paper. In a matter of seconds, the process can emit as much energy as a star the size of our Sun would in its entire lifetime. We are very interested to learn how this is possible.

The groups observations provide the first answers to some long-standing questions about how a gamma-ray burst evolves as the dying star collapses to become a black hole. First, the data suggest that the black hole produces a strong magnetic field that initially dominates the energy emission jets. Then, as the magnetic field breaks down, matter takes over and begins to dominate the jets. Most gamma-ray burst researchers thought that the jets were dominated by either matter or the magnetic field, but not both. The current results suggest that both factors play key roles.

There has been a dichotomy in the community. We find evidence for both models, suggesting that gamma-ray burst jets have a dual, hybrid nature, said Troja, who is also a visiting research scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. The jets start off magnetic, but as the jets grow, the magnetic field degrades and loses dominance. Matter takes over and dominates the jets, although sometimes a weaker vestige of the magnetic field might survive.

The data also suggest that synchrotron radiation which results when electrons are accelerated in a curved or spiral pathway powers the initial, extremely bright phase of the burst, known as the prompt phase. Astronomers long considered two other main candidates in addition to synchrotron radiation: blackbody radiation, which results from the emission of heat from an object, and inverse Compton radiation, which results when an accelerated particle transfers energy to a photon.

Synchrotron radiation is the only emission mechanism that can create the same degree of polarization and the same spectrum we observed early in the burst, Troja said. Our study provides convincing evidence that the prompt gamma-ray burst emission is driven by synchrotron radiation. This is an important achievement because, despite decades of investigation, the physical mechanism that drives gamma-ray bursts had not yet been unambiguously identified.

Comprehensive coverage of GRB 160625B from a wide variety of telescopes that gathered data in multiple spectra made these conclusions possible, the researchers said.

Gamma-ray bursts occur at cosmological distances, with some dating back to the birth of the universe, said Alexander Kutyrev, an associate research scientist in the UMD Department of Astronomy and a co-author of the research paper. The events are unpredictable and once the burst occurs, its gone. We are very fortunate to have observations from a wide variety of sources, especially during the prompt phase, which is very difficult to capture.

NASAs Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope first detected the gamma-ray emission from GRB 160625B. Soon afterward, the ground-based MASTER-IAC telescope, a part of Russias MASTER robotic telescope network located at the Teide Observatory in Spains Canary Islands, followed up with optical light observations while the prompt phase was still active.

MASTER-IAC gathered critical data on the proportion of polarized optical light relative to the total light produced by the prompt phase. Because synchrotron radiation is one of only a limited number of phenomena that can create polarized light, these data provided the crucial link between synchrotron radiation and the prompt phase of GRB 160625B.

A magnetic field can also influence how much polarized light is emitted as time passes and the burst evolves. Because the researchers were able to analyze polarization data that spanned nearly the entire time-frame of the burst a rare achievement they were able to discern the presence of a magnetic field and track how it changed as GRB 160625B progressed.

There is very little data on polarized emission from gamma-ray bursts, said Kutyrev, who is also an associate scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. This burst was unique because we caught the polarization state at an early stage. This is hard to do because it requires a very fast reaction time and there are relatively few telescopes with this capability. This paper shows how much can be done, but to get results like this consistently, we will need new rapid-response facilities for observing gamma-ray bursts.

In addition to the gamma-ray and optical light observations, NASAs Swift Gamma-ray Burst Mission spacecraft captured X-ray and ultraviolet data. The Reionization and Transient InfraRed/Optical Project camera a collaboration between NASA, the University of California system and the National Autonomous University of Mexico installed at Mexicos Observatorio Astrnomico Nacional in Baja California captured infrared data. The group also gathered radio observations from Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisations Australia Telescope Compact Array, located north of Sydney in rural New South Wales, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatorys Very Large Array outside of Socorro, New Mexico.

Excerpt from:

Gamma-ray burst captured in unprecedented detail - Astronomy Now Online

NORTHAMPTON When Smith College astronomy professor James Lowenthal got images back from the Hubble Space Telescope this year, his initial response was simple: Wow!

What he was looking at were the brightest infrared galaxies in the universe close-up views of rare, ultrabright collections of stars from the early universe that are furiously producing even more stars. Those views, Lowenthal said speaking at his office on Tuesday, may someday help answer a fundamental question about the history of the cosmos: how did galaxies form and evolve?

The images Lowenthal was observing made use of a well-known effect called gravitational lensing. Essentially, the light from those 22 distant galaxies passes through the gravitational field of a closer massive object, which acts as a kind of cosmic magnifying glass for researchers on Earth.

That foregrounded, natural lens allows astronomers to see otherwise impossible-to-see pictures of the distant universe. Light traveling from those galaxies takes billions of years to reach Earth, so researchers are quite literally looking into the past at galaxies from as long as 12 billion years ago about 90 percent of the way back to the Big Bang, according to Lowenthal.

Lowenthal presented those images at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas, last month.

The reaction has been in our scientific community, This is so, so cool, Lowenthal said of the response from his colleagues.

But before Lowenthal could take that peek into the past with his fellow researchers including Min Yun, Kevin Harrington, Patrick Kamieneski and Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts Amherst they had to write a scientifically rigorous proposal laying out their case for getting highly sought-after time on the Hubble telescope.

We convinced them it would be really cool, Lowenthal said of the proposal. And wow! It was really cool.

Lowenthal said Yun and others cleverly discovered the galaxies by using publicly available data from several telescopes, and used the Large Millimeter Telescope a joint project between UMass and Mexicos National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics to confirm their distances from Earth.

It was thanks to that work narrowing down a list of distant galaxies that the team knew where to look when they got time on the Hubble telescope.

The distant galaxies in the Hubble images are producing 5,000 to 10,000 times more stars than the Milky Way, but are using the same amount of gas contained in the Milky Way. That fact leaves astronomers to puzzle over what exactly is fueling that star birth.

Possible explanations for the rapid creation of stars could be the collision of massive galaxies, a flood of gas or something entirely different. At issue is the very nature of galaxy formation and evolution.

Those are lingering questions that Lowenthal hopes to answer, but first the images from the Hubble telescope must be decoded.

While gravitational lensing makes those distant galaxies more visible in high detail, it also bends their light, leaving warped images with streaks, circles and arcs that can leave researchers unclear about what exactly theyre looking at. The task now is to unscramble those pictures.

To explain the warping of the images, Lowenthal used the analogy of looking at candlelight through a wine glass. The light will appear in different spots, or even stretch across the bottom of the glass in a circle, depending on how the glass is held.

Because the images theyve received are warped, researchers must now work backwards to reconstruct what those galaxies actually looked like before passing through the lens. Knowing the distance of those galaxies, Lowenthal and others must figure out other variables like the gravitational pull of the lens to model what the original image looked like, or to even figure out what the background and foreground are.

From Hubble, we got only monochromatic, black and white images. Its only one wavelength, Lowenthal said, noting that hes hoping to get images from Hubble in the future that will show colors like red and blue. If we did have that information, it would tremendously, instantly help us separate foreground from background, because the foreground and background are almost always different colors.

Lowenthal and his colleagues failed to get approval to use the Hubble telescope during the latest cycle of proposals, but he said he hopes theyll soon have access again, and they hope to gain further insight into the nature of those early galaxies.

Visit link:

A 'wow' moment for the astronomy community - The Recorder

Students Oian MacMichael (left) and Luis Alberto Canizares walk through the I-LOFAR in the grounds of Birr Castle in Co Offaly. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Birr Castles status as a world-class place for astronomy research has been restored with the opening of the Irish Low Frequency Array Radio Telescope (I-LOFAR) on Wednesday.

The 2 million I-LOFAR is part of a much bigger network of radio telescopes spread from Ireland to Poland and connected by a high speed network to a centre in the Dutch city of Groningen.

I-LOFAR was funded with a 1.4 million grant from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). The rest came from donations from business people including Denis OBrien and Dermot Desmond as well as local schoolchildren who raised 700.

The castles original telescope had a diameter of six foot (1.8 metres). From 1845 to 1917, the telescope, known as the Leviathan of Parsonstown, was the biggest ever built.

The LOFAR array across Europe has the equivalent of a diameter of 2,000 kilometres, making it over a million times more powerful than the original Leviathan.

It means we can make very precise measurements of very faint objects, explained Prof Peter Gallagher of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), head of the I-LOFAR collaboration.

The research will be able to detect exoplanets, planets around other stars, with strong magnetic fields like Earth which make them places that could harbour life.

To date 3,500 have been discovered including many which potentially could have the conditions suitable for life as it is on Earth.

I-LOFAR can also pick up signals from extraterrestrial intelligence if any such intelligence exists elsewhere in the universe.

It will also be used to monitor solar flares and the early light from the universe.

It is humbling to realise that 170 years later we have brought one of the biggest telescopes in the world back to Birr, Prof Gallagher said.

I think our heritage in astronomy is as important to us as the Book of Kells or W.B Yeats.

See more here:

After a century, world-class astronomy returns to Birr Castle - Irish Times

This illustration shows how scientists used data from NASAs WISE spacecraft to determine the nucleus sizes of comets. They subtracted a model of how dust and gas behave in comets in order to obtain the core size. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Comets that take more than 200 years to make one revolution around the Sun are notoriously difficult to study. Because they spend most of their time far from our area of the solar system, many long-period comets will never approach the Sun in a persons lifetime. In fact, those that travel inward from the Oort Cloud a group of icy bodies beginning roughly 186 billion miles (300 billion kilometres) away from the Sun can have periods of thousands or even millions of years.

NASAs WISE spacecraft, scanning the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, has delivered new insights about these distant wanderers. Scientists found that there are about seven times more long-period comets measuring at least 0.6 mile (1 kilometre) across than had been predicted previously. They also found that long-period comets are on average up to twice as large as Jupiter family comets, whose orbits are shaped by Jupiters gravity and have periods of less than 20 years.

Researchers also observed that in eight months, three to five times as many long-period comets passed by the Sun than had been predicted. The findings are published in the Astronomical Journal.

The number of comets speaks to the amount of material left over from the solar systems formation, said James Bauer, lead author of the study and now a research professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. We now know that there are more relatively large chunks of ancient material coming from the Oort Cloud than we thought.

The Oort Cloud is too distant to be seen by current telescopes, but is thought to be a spherical distribution of small icy bodies at the outermost edge of the solar system. The density of comets within it is low, so the odds of comets colliding within it are rare. Long-period comets that WISE observed probably got kicked out of the Oort Cloud millions of years ago. The observations were carried out during the spacecrafts primary mission before it was renamed NEOWISE and reactivated to target near-Earth objects (NEOs).

Our study is a rare look at objects perturbed out of the Oort Cloud, said Amy Mainzer, study co-author based at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and principal investigator of the NEOWISE mission. They are the most pristine examples of what the solar system was like when it formed.

Astronomers already had broader estimates of how many long-period and Jupiter family comets are in our solar system, but had no good way of measuring the sizes of long-period comets. That is because a comet has a coma, a cloud of gas and dust that appears hazy in images and obscures the cometary nucleus. But by using the WISE data showing the infrared glow of this coma, scientists were able to subtract the coma from the overall comet and estimate the nucleus sizes of these comets. The data came from 2010 WISE observations of 95 Jupiter family comets and 56 long-period comets.

The results reinforce the idea that comets that pass by the Sun more often tend to be smaller than those spending much more time away from the Sun. That is because Jupiter family comets get more heat exposure, which causes volatile substances like water to sublimate and drag away other material from the comets surface as well.

Our results mean theres an evolutionary difference between Jupiter family and long-period comets, Bauer said.

The existence of so many more long-period comets than predicted suggests that more of them have likely impacted planets, delivering icy materials from the outer reaches of the solar system.

Researchers also found clustering in the orbits of the long-period comets they studied, suggesting there could have been larger bodies that broke apart to form these groups.

The results will be important for assessing the likelihood of comets impacting our solar systems planets, including Earth.

Comets travel much faster than asteroids, and some of them are very big, Mainzer said. Studies like this will help us define what kind of hazard long-period comets may pose.

Link:

Large, distant comets more common than previously thought ... - Astronomy Now Online

NASAs New Horizons spacecraft changed our view of the outer solar system forever when it flew by Pluto in 2015. Now, its on its way to the next destination: a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) known only as 2014 MU69. Although the spacecraft wont reach its target until New Years Day in 2019, NASA is already looking ahead to learn as much about 2014 MU69 as possible, thanks to a convenient temporary alignment that recently allowed the object to pass in front of a background star.

The passage, called an occultation, occurs when objects line up in the sky as viewed from Earth. When an object, such as an asteroid, planet, dwarf planet, or KBO, passes in front of a distant star, astronomers can watch the way the starlight dims and returns to gain information about the object passing in front of it. This information can include size, shape, and even whether the object possesses rings, moons, or an atmosphere.

The recent occultation was visible from the Southern Hemisphere; the New Horizons team used 24 mobile telescopes in Argentina to view the event, which lasted only about two seconds. This effort, which thus far has yielded five successful occultation detections, is vital to the characterization of 2014 MU69 before New Horizons arrives. Thats because this tiny, distant object is poorly understood; currently, its believed to span about 14-25 miles in diameter (22-40 kilometers), but little else is known about its shape and composition thus far.

See the original post:

New Horizons' next target: spotted - Astronomy Magazine

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Original post:

These are the most breathtaking astronomy photographs of the year ... - Evening Standard

After those two huge solar eclipse posts this week (glad you asked: they are here and here), how about a bit of planetary eye candy for you?

If you go outside tonight after sunset and look to the sky, you might notice a bright "star" high to the southwest (for Northern Hemisphere observers). That's the planet Jupiter. If you turn and look southeast you can also see Saturn, another bright star-like shining object.

To the eye, they are unresolved, just dots. But to a powerful telescope in the right location, they are glorious. Behold!

Holy wow! That, me droogs, is Jupiter and its moon Ganymede. And that image was taken not by a space probe orbiting the giant planet, but by a telescope right here on Earth!

It was taken on June 10, 2017, using a 1-meter telescope at the Pic du Midi observatory, one of the best (if not the best) spots on Earth to observe the planets. The observatory is in the French Pyrenees, and has very stable air around it. Unsteady atmospheric conditions blur out small details (astronomers confusingly call this seeing), but the smooth flow around Pic du Midi means really high-res images can be taken.

That image, and all the others in this article, were taken as part of a professional-amateur collaboration, in which truly advanced and expert amateur astronomers get access to the scopes and then process the images. The scientific purpose is to keep track of the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) and Venus, monitoring their atmospheric patterns and wind speeds to aid spacecraft sent to investigate them up close.

But more than that, this sort of collaboration is a meeting of brains, a sharing of experience, that allows everyone to learn from each others efforts. The image above was processed by master planetary astrophotographer Damian Peach. The details are astonishing; you can see whorls of turbulence between the dark belts and light zones, individual storms thousands of kilometers across in the southern belt, and of course the Great Red Spot about to rotate out of view on the right.

Note Ganymede in the upper left: Thats Jupiters biggest moonand, indeed, the biggest moon in the solar system. Its comfortably bigger than Mercury, and if Jupiter werent there we might consider it a planet in its own right! You can see detail on the surface of this rocky, icy world; note how dark it is, punctuated with spots of brighter ice. Compare it to a map made from Galileo and Voyager images the bright spot to the lower right is the impact crater Osiris.

In this image, Damian processed Ganymede differently and then created a final composite moving Ganymede in closer to the planet so its easier to see. Another of the astronomers on the team, Emil Kraaikamp, processed one of the images taken a bit later, keeping Ganymede in its correct spot relative to its home planet:

Note how far it is! And also note that the Red Spot has rotated a bit to the east, and is closer to the planets limb.

They also created a gorgeous animation of the planet rotating using infrared light:

Wow. You can see Jupiters cloud patterns change subtly, and Ganymede move in its week-long orbit around the massive planet.

I already wrote about the image they took of Saturn a few hours later that same night, and its just as stunning. I havent seen the images of Neptune or Uranus yet, though. However, later that night, before sunrise, they caught Venus rising in the east:

The animation was made from two images taken about 25 minutes apart, and you can see some movement in that time. The images were in the ultraviolet; using visible light (the kind we see) Venus is almost featureless, but the clouds reflect ultraviolet sunlight differently, and more interesting things can be seen. Venus rotates slowly, taking 243 Earth days to spin once, but the atmosphere rotates faster than that. This is called superrotation, and is what causes that huge chevron-shaped feature in the clouds.

What wonderful images! Such a delight for the eyes and brain, but also for the science itself. To think that we can achieve such results from Earth, tens if not hundreds of millions of kilometers from the target planets. And in three cases (Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn), its done to support probes we have physically orbiting those bodies! And who knows? Maybe, in the next few years,well send more spacecraft to Uranus and Neptune.

Im very glad to see this teamwork out of Pic du Midi. Its a lovely example of collaboration, which is in many ways what science is all about.

Original post:

Believe it or not, these planetary pictures were taken from Earth! - SYFY WIRE (blog)

NORTHAMPTON When Smith College astronomy professor James Lowenthal got images back from the Hubble Space Telescope this year, his initial response was simple: Wow!

What he was looking at were the brightest infrared galaxies in the universe close-up views of rare, ultrabright collections of stars from the early universe that are furiously producing even more stars. Those views, Lowenthal told the Gazette at his office on Tuesday, may someday help answer a fundamental question about the history of the cosmos: how did galaxies form and evolve?

The images Lowenthal was observing made use of a well-known effect called gravitational lensing. Essentially, the light from those 22 distant galaxies passes through the gravitational field of a closer massive object, which acts as a kind of cosmic magnifying glass for researchers on Earth.

That foregrounded, natural lens allows astronomers to see otherwise impossible-to-see pictures of the distant universe. Light traveling from those galaxies takes billions of years to reach Earth, so researchers are quite literally looking into the past at galaxies from as long as 12 billion years ago about 90 percent of the way back to the Big Bang, according to Lowenthal.

Lowenthal presented those images at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas, last month.

The reaction has been in our scientific community, This is so, so cool, Lowenthal said of the response from his colleagues.

But before Lowenthal could take that peek into the past with his fellow researchers including Min Yun, Kevin Harrington, Patrick Kamieneski and Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts Amherst they had to write a scientifically rigorous proposal laying out their case for getting highly sought- after time on the Hubble telescope.

We convinced them it would be really cool, Lowenthal said of the proposal. And wow! It was really cool.

Lowenthal said Yun and others cleverly discovered the galaxies by using publicly available data from several telescopes, and used the Large Millimeter Telescope a joint project between UMass and Mexicos National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics to confirm their distances from Earth.

It was thanks to that work narrowing down a list of distant galaxies that the team knew where to look when they got time on the Hubble telescope.

The distant galaxies in the Hubble images are producing 5,000 to 10,000 times more stars than the Milky Way, but are using the same amount of gas contained in the Milky Way. That fact leaves astronomers to puzzle over what exactly is fueling that star birth.

Possible explanations for the rapid creation of stars could be the collision of massive galaxies, a flood of gas or something entirely different. At issue is the very nature of galaxy formation and evolution.

Those are lingering questions that Lowenthal hopes to answer, but first the images from the Hubble telescope must be decoded.

While gravitational lensing makes those distant galaxies more visible in high detail, it also bends their light, leaving warped images with streaks, circles and arcs that can leave researchers unclear about what exactly theyre looking at. The task now is to unscramble those pictures.

To explain the warping of the images, Lowenthal used the analogy of looking at candlelight through a wine glass. The light will appear in different spots, or even stretch across the bottom of the glass in a circle, depending on how the glass is held.

Because the images theyve received are warped, researchers must now work backwards to reconstruct what those galaxies actually looked like before passing through the lens. Knowing the distance of those galaxies, Lowenthal and others must figure out other variables like the gravitational pull of the lens to model what the original image looked like, or to even figure out what the background and foreground are.

From Hubble, we got only monochromatic, black and white images. Its only one wavelength, Lowenthal said, noting that hes hoping to get images from Hubble in the future that will show colors like red and blue. If we did have that information, it would tremendously, instantly help us separate foreground from background, because the foreground and background are almost always different colors.

Lowenthal and his colleagues failed to get approval to use the Hubble telescope during the latest cycle of proposals, but he said he hopes theyll soon have access again, and they hope to gain further insight into the nature of those early galaxies.

While he waits for more data, however, the images Lowenthal already has have nevertheless changed his perception of the cosmos in at least some way. As a scientist who normally studies distant galaxies without much emphasis on gravitational lensing, the new images have made him rethink the galaxies he has been looking at for so many years.

I have not been thinking, Most of those galaxies are probably gravitationally lensed, at least a little bit, Lowenthal said. And now Im thinking, Everything is lensed!

Its definitely startling to have a big shift like that, he said, though the smile on his face and wonder in his eyes seemed to indicate he was far more excited and curious for the work ahead than startled.

Read the original here:

Smith astronomer presents rare images of stars at national conference - GazetteNET

LEXINGTON, Ky (LEX 18) With the solar eclipse just around the corner, a UK astronomy professor who has traveled the world to see solar eclipses sat down with LEX 18 to describe what people should expect to see on August 21.

"A total eclipse of the sun is an event in which the moon comes between the sun and the Earth. And the moon casts its shadow on the Earth," said UK Physics and Astronomy Professor, Tom Troland.

He said to see the total solar eclipse, you have to be in the path of totality.

"It is a path across the face of the Earth, about 100 miles wide and thousands of miles long. That path of totality passes across the entire continental United States," he said.

The path of totality goes from Oregon to South Carolina, going through Western Kentucky but not through Lexington. The professor says Lexington will be able to see part of the eclipsethough.

"In Lexington, the sun will only be 95% covered at the maximum eclipse time, which is about 2:30 in the afternoon on August 21st," he said.

And he said you don't need to be an astronomer to appreciate the total solar eclipse.

"If you're a sensing human being, if you have some sense of the beauty of nature, you'll never forget what you see with a total solar eclipse," he said.

Continue reading here:

UK Astronomy Professor Discusses What To Expect On Eclipse Day - LEX18 Lexington KY News

While there are plenty of features dubbed seas on the Moon, none of them ever contained watery depths. For decades, scientists believed this was also true of our satellites interior based on our theories of the Moons formation, its mantle should contain little water. However, a new study indicates that the Moons mantle may be more water-rich than we thought.

The study, published today in Nature Geoscience, was carried out by Ralph Milliken, an associate professor in Brown's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, and Shuai Li, a recent Brown graduate now working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii. They began seeking a way to more accurately measure the water content of the Moon after studies performed in 2008 and 2011 found traces of water in lunar samples returned to Earth on the Apollo 15 and 17 missions. Based on the amount of water in the samples, which was comparable to the water content of basalts on Earth, planetary scientists calculated that parts of the Moons mantle could contain similar amounts of water much more than previously thought.

But because we have such limited samples of lunar rock from only a few landing sites, it was unknown whether the Apollo mission samples were unique. The key question is whether those Apollo samples represent the bulk conditions of the lunar interior or instead represent unusual or perhaps anomalous water-rich regions within an otherwise dry mantle, said Milliken in a press release.

Thus, the team turned to orbital data taken with the Moon Minerology Mapper, an instrument on the Indian Space Research Organisations Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, to deconstruct reflected sunlight from the Moons surface. Specifically, they looked at large-scale volcanic deposits called pyroclastic deposits, which brought material from deeper within the Moon to its surface. These deposits were not sampled by the Apollo astronauts. By studying the reflected light from these areas, the team aimed to determine the makeup of the material and look for water.

But there was a snag the wavelengths at which water can be detected are also the wavelengths affected by heating as sunlight strikes the Moon. So in order to say with any confidence that water is present, we first need to account for and remove the thermally emitted component, Milliken explained.

That required the pair to understand and model this heating. To accomplish this task, Milliken and Li used the existing Apollo samples in combination with additional data on the heating experienced by the Moons surface to remove this component from the Chandrayaan-1 readings.

Once the heating was removed, the team found evidence for water in almost every volcanic deposit they studied, including sites located near where Apollo 15 and 17 touched down. The distribution of these water-rich deposits is the key thing, Milliken said of their finding. They're spread across the surface, which tells us that the water found in the Apollo samples isn't a one-off. Lunar pyroclastics seem to be universally water-rich, which suggests the same may be true of the mantle.

If that is true, it might require us to tweak our theory of the Moons formation. Previously, the Moon was not thought to contain a significant amount of water because the collision that created it should have been hot enough to destroy the hydrogen required to form water as the debris condensed into our satellite.

However, the new finding does not discredit this theory. The growing evidence for water inside the Moon suggest that water did somehow survive, or that it was brought in shortly after the impact by asteroids or comets before the Moon had completely solidified, said Li. The exact origin of water in the lunar interior is still a big question.

The rest is here:

Is the Moon's mantle wet? - Astronomy Magazine

[Note: There is a lot to say about this eclipse. Every time I thought I was done writing this, I remembered something else I had to tell you about! Once it hit 3000 words I figured it was better to split it into two parts. Part 1, todays post, is an introduction to the eclipse: why its a big deal, how it works, and where to go see it. Tomorrow, Part 2, will have information on how to safely observe the eclipse what you can do to see it, and just as importantly what you shouldnt do, as well as equipment you might want to have handy. Ill also have extensive links with more information.]

Get ready, America. The Moon is about to eat the Sun.

Yesterday (Sunday, July 23, 2017) was the new Moon, when the Moon is closest to the Sun in the sky. That means we are just one lunation one complete cycle of lunar phases away from what may be the most viewed eclipse in human history.

I say that with some confidence. For one thing, there are more people alive today than ever before, so we have that going for us. Plus, the path of this eclipse cuts right across the continental United States, including some major cities; for millions of people the farthest they need to travel to see it is to their front yard.

And then theres the internet. I expect the live streaming for this event will be one of the biggest data streams weve ever seen. I wonder how many millions of photos will be taken during the roughly two minutes of totality

This eclipse is a big deal.

For one thing, total solar eclipses in any given spot on the Earth are rare. They happen roughly once or twice a year somewhere on Earth, but its a big planet, and a lot of it is hard to reach. 70% is ocean, and a lot of whats left of the real estate is taken up by places like the Arctic and Antarctic. So getting a total solar eclipse over, say, the U.S. doesnt happen often. The last one was in 1979, and that one cut a shallow chord across the northwest.

For another, total solar eclipses are one of the most beautiful, wondrous, awe-inspiring sights nature provides for us. The Moon slowly covers the Sun, taking nearly 90 minutes. In the last seconds before the Sun is totally covered, the sky grows dark, the air cools, birds fooled into thinking night has fallen stop singing and then the moment arrives.

Totality. The last bit of solar surface is blocked by the Moon, and the glory of the corona is revealed.

Ah, the Suns outer atmosphere, the ethereally thin gas that is normally invisible due to the Suns overwhelming glare. But when the Sun is behind the Moon, the corona is visible, sometimes reaching out for several times the Suns diameter. Shaped by magnetic forces, it can appear wispy, or shot through with tendrils, or as just a smooth glow. It all depends on the Suns magnetic mood at that moment.

I know many people who have seen total solar eclipses, and they all say every last one of them that its one of the most beautiful things they have ever seen in their entire lives. For a few moments, under the shadow of the Moon, people gasp, choke up, even weep openly.

Or so I hear. Ive never seen a total solar eclipse. A partial one, sure, many times, but never total. After all these decades of being an astronomer, this will be my first.

So if its your first too, heres some advice on what to do, where to go, and what youll see.

I have some details about how eclipses work below, but first, I devoted an entire episode of Crash Course Astronomy to eclipses (both solar and lunar), and it has most of the basic info you need to understand the whys and hows of this. Its only a few minutes, so watch!

That was a lot in a short amount of time, I know. In the interest of making sure this is understandable, here are some more details.

The Moon orbits the Earth about once per month. As it does so it passes by the Sun once per month as well, usually getting a degree or two away from it in the sky. But every now and again this celestial dance aligns, and the Moon passes directly in front of the Sun. Thats a solar eclipse. The Moon is casting its shadow on the Earth!

One of the most common questions I get asked is, why dont we get a total solar eclipse every four weeks? I explain it in the Crash Course episode, but this video shows it a bit better:

The green square represents the orbit of the Earth. The Sun is in that plane, far to the left. The blue is the plane of the Moon. Looking down, they seem coincident. But when we view from an angle, we see theyre not (like one hula hoop wedged inside another, they intersect at two opposite points, called nodes). The Moons orbit is tilted by about 5 with respect to the Earths, so usually at new Moon (when the Moon is between the Earth and Sun) it passes above or below the Sun in the sky. But a couple of times a year, the Moon happens to be new just as it passes a node, and you get an eclipse.

So what happens during the actual eclipse?

At first you see a little dip (called first contact), a nibble, taken out of the side of the Sun as the leading edge of the Moon moves onto the Suns face. As the Moon progresses in its orbit you see a deeper and deeper cut into the Sun (the Moon appears dead black during an eclipse because its between us and the Sun, so were seeing its unlit side, plus the Sun is so bright it totally overwhelms the far darker Moon). The Sun appears as thick crescent, then a thinner one and then suddenly the Sun is gone, completely blocked by the Moon.

This is second contact, or more commonly: totality.

The time from first to second contact is roughly 70 90 minutes, depending on your location. Totality lasts only minutes, however, because of a cosmic coincidence

The size of an object on the sky depends on two things: How big it is, and how far away it is. The Moon is 3474 kilometers across, and at the time of the eclipse will be about 366,000 km from the Earths center. The Sun is 1,391,000 km across and will be a little over 151 million kilometers from the Earth at the time of the eclipse.

So the Sun is 400 times wider than the Moon, but will be 412 times farther away. These numbers almost exactly balance out, so the Sun and Moon will appear to be the same size in the sky!

Well, almost. The Sun is actually more than 400 times farther away, so it appears fractionally smaller than the Moon. Thats good news for us! If they were exactly the same size, totality would last a fraction of a second. But because the Sun looks smaller, it takes time for the Moon to move across it. For this eclipse, given their sizes and distances, and how fast the Moon moves across the sky (about 1.1 degrees every hour), this all shakes out to totality lasting roughly two minutes.

Ill get back to that in a sec. But once those two minutes or so are up, the Moons trailing edge uncovers the Sun, and boom! Totality is over. Thats called third contact. Then, over the course of the next 70 - 90 minutes the whole thing plays out in reverse. The Sun looks like a thin crescent, then a thicker one and finally the trailing edge of the Moon leaves the Sun altogether. Thats fourth contact, but more importantly, it means the whole thing is done.

But totality is the big show. Thats due to combination of factors. One is environmental: During an eclipse, it gets dark. I mean, duh, but this is really something! It gets dark during the middle of the day, which is weird. This doesnt happen until minutes before totality, actually; even when the Sun is half covered or more you might not notice. But in the minutes leading up things around you start to change.

And once the Sun is totally covered, things change immediately. Thats when the sky gets actually dark, like a deep twilight. You might see stars, and some planets (like Mars and Venus toward the west [to the right in the sky], Mercury very close to the Sun [below and to the left] and Jupiter and Saturn to the east [left] this sky map should help). And of course, the solar corona.

The corona is invisible right up until the last moment before totality. But then it pops into view, far fainter than the Sun but obvious once the Sun is gone. This is what Im looking forward to seeing the most. Ive only seen pictures of it, and itll be very cool to say the least! to see it for myself.

There are tons of details about what to look for during those precious brief minutes of totality. I talk a little bit about them in the Crash Course video (the diamond ring effect, Bailys beads, and more) but the American Astronomical Society has a nice brief synopsis of what to watch out for. Theres enough there to get you started, and a good Google search will fill in the blanks.

So now you know how this works, and what to look for. The next big question is obvious.

In Part 2 of this post Ill go over how to safely observe the eclipse, but to see it at all you need to plan ahead. The Moons shadow on the Earth is relatively small and moves rapidly, so you need to be at the right place at the right time!

This map shows the path of the eclipse. If you go anywhere between the two blue lines, youll see a total eclipse. The red line is the centerline of the path, where the Moon appears to cut most directly across the Sun, and so the closer you are to that line the longer the eclipse will last.

If youre outside the lines, the eclipse wont be total. The farther away from it you are, the less of the Sun will be covered. Youll get a partial eclipse, which is still very cool! But you wont get the glory of totality.

There is an interactive map of the eclipse online (care of NASA and eclipse expert Fred Espenak). You can click on it and itll tell you how much of the Sun is covered from that location, as well as the times of the eclipse events (it might help to check the box labeled Large map on the lower right). Its extremely useful, so check it out! Important: The times listed are in Universal Time, so youll want to make sure you have the right conversion. In August, Pacific time is UT 7 hours, Mountain is UT 6, Central is UT 5, and Eastern UT 4.

Also, heres a video showing the Moons shadow sweeping across the US (note that the local times, duration, latitude and longitude of the shadow center, and the altitude of the Sun over the horizon are shown on the left):

Having said that, heres the bad news: You can bet that pretty much every hotel in the path of totality is booked. You can try to find one, and please do! But I suspect itll be difficult. Many have been booked for a year or more.

Worse, traffic will be very difficult. Because the eclipse happens in the late morning to midday for many locations, a lot of people will get up early and drive to the centerline. A lot of the locations are rural, and not designed to handle thousands of cars all at once. So be prepared: If you get stuck in a traffic jam five kilometers north of the line, youll miss totality! This website has traffic info and has links to real-time traffic data. It should prove useful. Apparently there are still campsites and RVC parks available; check here for more.

Also, be aware of weather. If its cloudy, you wont see it (though itll get completely dark, like nightfall, which is kinda cool). Theres a map online with historic cloud cover of the sky that will show you where the best places are to see it, statistically speaking.

Now, if you dont want to or cannot travel far (or you already live in the eclipse path), you still have options. For one thing, there will be a ton of live feeds streamed online, and Ill have links to some in Part 2.

You can also find out if theres a museum, a planetarium, a university, or an astronomy club near you. I strongly suspect many of them in the country will be holding viewing parties at the time of the eclipse. This has lots of advantages: experts on tap, access to observing equipment (and itll be far more likely to be safe to use, too; see below), live feeds from the centerline, and what will no doubt be a festive atmosphere for the event.

I expect a lot of schools may be holding events as well for the students. If youre a parent, see if theyll allow you to attend maybe even volunteer to help out! They may need help distributing safe viewing glasses, talking to the students, and especially making sure everyone stays safe and views the event in the correct manner so no one damages their eyes.

And that brings me to the next part observing this rare and wonderful astronomical occurrence in a responsible manner that still maximizes the experience.

But thats for tomorrow, in Part 2. Stay tuned!

Here is the original post:

The Great American Solar Eclipse of August 21, 2017 (Part 1) - SYFY WIRE (blog)

Astronomer Diane Turnshek CANAAN VALLEY, WV On Tuesday, July 25th at 7:30 pm at the Canaan Valley Resort State Park Main Lodge, The Tucker County Planning Commission will host Astronomer Diane Turnshek for Stars Above, an educational talk about Astronomy and dark sky preservation with guided stargazing at 9:00 pm at Canaan Valley Resort State Parks Nature Center.

Diane Turnshek is an Astronomy lecturer at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh.

Turnshek has published hard Science Fiction with a focus on space colonization and first contact. Her love of both Astronomy and Science Fiction led her to crew the Mars Desert Research Station near Bryce Canyon, UT in 2012, where she turned her attention to dark sky advocacy. Turnshek runs the Pittsburgh Chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association (IDApgh.org) and is a 2015 IDA Dark Sky Defender award recipient.

Turnshek will speak about dark places, why they are so important, and what can be done to preserve them. Immediately following this talk will be a Question and Answer session in which attendees will have the opportunity to ask any question about Astronomy.

The Tucker County Planning Commission sees Tucker Countys dark skies as a unique cultural asset to be preserved for future generations enjoyment and for increased tourism and local economic activity. The Tucker County Planning Commission is taking steps to promote and preserve Tucker Countys dark skies as Corridor H will bring more development, and potentially more light pollution, to Tucker County.

This event is free and open to the public. In case of rain or excessive cloud cover, the talk and star gazing event will be moved to Friday, August 25 at 7:30 and 9:30 pm, respectively.

Excerpt from:

Planning Commission to Host Astronomer for Stars Above - The Parsons Advocate

The Voyager spacecraft have been exploring our solar system for the last four decades. As their 40th-anniversary approaches, AAC has been taking a weekly look at the experiments and engineering that made this incredible feat possible.

To honor the upcoming 40th anniversary of the Voyager missions, All About Circuits is exploring the extraordinary engineering that went into developing these spacecraft.

Check out the other articles in this seriesbelow:

This week, series coordinator Mark Hughes will guide you through the infrared, ultraviolet, and radio science experiments the Voyager missions were equipped to conduct.

Photons generated in the photosphere of the sun cover a broad range of energies and wavelengths. The photons leave the sun and travel in all directions until they encounter the atoms and molecules in the atmosphere or on the surface of planets and their moons. Certain wavelengths are reflected, other wavelengths are transmitted, and some wavelengthsare absorbed and re-emitted aslonger wavelengths.

By comparing the intensities of transmitted and reflected light at specific wavelengths through the atmosphere of planets, scientists can determine the composition and relative quantities of atoms and molecules present in the atmosphere and soil. Scientists can also use this information to determine the energy balance of a planet or moon.

By observing the light or radio waves that passthrough the atmosphereof a planet or satellite duringoccultation(when the body of a planet blocks a direct view of the spacecraft), scientists can determine a great deal about the quantity and types of atoms and molecules present in the atmosphere.

Infrared light is electromagnetic energy that is just outside the visible spectrum for humans. The wavelength of the photons is a bit longerand the energies are a bit lower than those of red light. It is useful to scientists because there is a strong correlation between the peak infrared wavelength and the temperature of an object.

The Infrared experiments aboard the Voyager Spacecraft had several stated goals:

According to the Voyager Backgrounder(PDF): "The instrument provides broad spectral coverage, high spectralresolution, and low noise-equivalence-radiance through the use ofdual interferometers. That and the variable resolution of theinstrument, as well as the precision of the radiometer, willallow scientists to acquire information about a wide variety ofscientific questions concerning the atmospheres of the planetsand satellites, local and global energy balance, and the natureof satellite surfaces and the rings." The instrument utilizes two fields of view: the Cassegrain telescope and the solar calibration.

The Deep Space Network antennas that transmit and receive data from the Voyager spacecraft operate at frequencies in the GHz range and are capable of detecting frequency variations that are a fraction of a hertz. As radio waves are transmitted from the Earth to the spacecraft, they are Doppler corrected for the movement of the spacecraft, as well as the movement of Earth. As the radio waves travel through space to reach a spacecraft and are returned back to Earth, they are refracted and perturbed by atoms and molecules in the atmosphere of a planet or moon.

Scientists that study the changes in the radio waves during periods of occultation can use the information to determine the properties of a planet's atmosphere and ionosphere. Particles around the rings of Saturn scatter the radio waves and analysis allows the determination of average particle size distribution and size of the planetary rings.

And, as noted in our other article on the Voyager communications, multiple receiving stations can simultaneously record the transmissions of a spacecraft to accurately determine the spacecraft's trajectory as it travels around and near planets.

The ultravioletspectrometer experiment had four stated goals:

From the Voyager Backgrounder(PDF): "The instrument measures ultraviolet radiation in 1,200-Angstrombandwidth in the range from 400 to 1,800 Angstroms. Ituses a grating spectrometer with a microchannel plate electronmultiplier and a 128-channel anode array. A fixed-position mirrorreflects sunlight into the instrument during occultation.The instrument has a 0.86-degree by 0.6-degree field of view during occultation and a 0.86 by 2-degree field of view for airglowmeasurements.The ultraviolet spectrometer weighs 4.49 kg (9.89 lbs.)anduses 2.5 watts of power."

Electromagnetic energy that passes through the different layers of atmosphere of a planet is affected by the atoms and molecules that are present.By studying the deviations and changes ofoptical and radio energy, scientists can determine the molecular composition, density, and depth of a planet's atmosphere.

See the original post:

The Infrared Interferometer, Spectrometer, and Radio Astronomy of the Voyager Spacecraft - All About Circuits