This composite image shows powerful radio jets from the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy in the Phoenix Cluster inflating huge bubbles in the hot, ionized gas surrounding the galaxy. The cavities inside the blue region were imaged by NASAs Chandra X-ray observatory. Hugging the outside of these bubbles, ALMA discovered an unexpected trove of cold gas, the fuel for star formation (red). The background image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. Image: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) H.Russell, et al.; NASA/ESA Hubble; NASA/CXC/MIT/M.McDonald et al.; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

The Phoenix cluster is an enormous accumulation of about 1,000 galaxies, located 5.7 billion light years from Earth. At its center lies a massive galaxy, which appears to be spitting out stars at a rate of about 1,000 per year. Most other galaxies in the universe are far less productive, squeaking out just a few stars each year, and scientists have wondered what has fueled the Phoenix clusters extreme stellar output.

Now scientists from MIT, the University of Cambridge, and elsewhere may have an answer. In a paper published today in theAstrophysical Journal, the team reports observing jets of hot, 10-million-degree gas blasting out from the central galaxys black hole and blowing large bubbles out into the surrounding plasma.

These jets normally act to quench star formation by blowing away cold gas the main fuel that a galaxy consumes to generate stars. However, the researchers found that the hot jets and bubbles emanating from the center of the Phoenix cluster may also have the opposite effect of producing cold gas, that in turn rains back onto the galaxy, fueling further starbursts. This suggests that the black hole has found a way to recycle some of its hot gas as cold, star-making fuel.

We have thought the role of black hole jets and bubbles was to regulate star formation and to keep cooling from happening, says Michael McDonald, assistant professor of physics in MITs Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. We kind of thought they were one-trick ponies, but now we see they can actually help cooling, and its not such a cut-and-dried picture.

The new findings help to explain the Phoenix clusters exceptional star-producing power. They may also provide new insight into how supermassive black holes and their host galaxies mutually grow and evolve.

McDonalds co-authors include lead author Helen Russell, an astronomer at Cambridge University; and others from the University of Waterloo, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the University of Illinois, and elsewhere.

Hot jets, cold filaments

The team analyzed observations of the Phoenix cluster gathered by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), a collection of 66 large radio telescopes spread over the desert of northern Chile. In 2015, the group obtained permission to direct the telescopes at the Phoenix cluster to measure its radio emissions and to detect and map signs of cold gas.

The researchers looked through the data for signals of carbon monoxide, a gas that is present wherever there is cold hydrogen gas. They then converted the carbon monoxide emissions to hydrogen gas, to generate a map of cold gas near the center of the Phoenix cluster. The resulting picture was a puzzling surprise.

You would expect to see a knot of cold gas at the center, where star formation happens, McDonald says. But we saw these giant filaments of cold gas that extend 20,000 light years from the central black hole, beyond the central galaxy itself. Its kind of beautiful to see.

The team had previously used NASAs Chandra X-Ray Observatory to map the clusters hot gas. These observations produced a picture in which powerful jets flew out from the black hole at close to the speed of light. Further out, the researchers saw that the jets inflated giant bubbles in the hot gas.

When the team superimposed its picture of the Phoenix clusters cold gas onto the map of hot gas, they found a perfect spatial correspondence: The long filaments of frigid, 10-kelvins gas appeared to be draped over the bubbles of hot gas.

This may be the best picture we have of black holes influencing the cold gas, McDonald says.

Feeding the black hole

What the researchers believe to be happening is that, as jet inflate bubbles of hot, 10-million-degree gas near the black hole, they drag behind them a wake of slightly cooler, 1-million-degree gas. The bubbles eventually detach from the jets and float further out into the galaxy cluster, where each bubbles trail of gas cools, forming long filaments of extremely cold gas that condense and rain back onto the black hole as fuel for star formation.

Its a very new idea that the bubbles and jets can actually influence the distribution of cold gas in any way, McDonald says.

Scientists have estimated that there is enough cold gas near the center of the Phoenix cluster to keep producing stars at a high rate for another 30 to 40 million years. Now that the researchers have identified a new feedback mechanism that may supply the black hole with even more cold gas, the clusters stellar output may continue for much longer.

As long as theres cold gas feeding it, the black hole will keep burping out these jets, McDonald says. But now weve found that these jets are making more food, or cold gas. So youre in this cycle that, in theory, could go on for a very long time.

He suspects the reason the black hole is able to generate fuel for itself might have something to do with its size. If the black hole is relatively small, it may produce jets that are too weak to completely blast cold gas away from the cluster.

Right now [the black hole] may be pretty small, and itd be like putting a civilian in the ring with Mike Tyson, McDonald says. Its just not up to the task of blowing this cold gas far enough away that it would never come back.

The team is hoping to determine the mass of the black hole, as well as identify other, similarly extreme starmakers in the universe.

See more here:

Astronomers observe black hole producing cold, star-making fuel - Astronomy Now Online

NASAs Mars 2020 rover is the next major interplanetary mission that will be sent to the Red Planet to look for signs of past habitability, martian life, and will collect samples to return to Earth. The rover is set to land in February 2021, but where it will land no one yet knows.

Astronomers working on the mission have met a few times to narrow down the list of landing sites, and will meet a fourth time in mid-2018 to pick the final destination.

The final three candidates on that list, which was narrowed down from the previous list of eight sites, include Northeast Syrtis Major, Jezero Crater, and Columbia Hills/Gusev Crater.

Jezero Crater is of interest because of its dried-up lake that could potentially provide evidence of a previous microbial life form. Northeast Syrtis Major is in an area that astronomers thought was warm and wet at one point but now hosts a shield volcano near an impact crater. The area with the most mixed responses was Columbia Hills, where the Spirit rover had previously found volcanic ash, suggesting an old active hot spring and a chance to find past life on Mars.

Mars 2020 is not a life-detection mission, but I think targeted to the right place we can make great strides toward finally answering the question about life on Mars, John Grant, geologist at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and co-chair of the Mars 2020 Landing Site Steering Committee, told Scientific American. It gets us down the road [to find out].

Though this rover is very similar to the Curiosity, its software upgrades with make it operate quicker, more efficiently, and more independently.

Due to funding, Mars 2020 is currently NASAs last confirmed mission heading to Mars. The lack of funding may have an impact on research on the Red Planet, but researchers are remaining optimistic.

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Scientists narrow down list of landing sites for Mars 2020 - Astronomy Magazine

Astronomy may be the oldest natural science in the world. Before humans ever took to systematically studying the skies, we were craning our necks upwards, observing the curious movements of some bright points of light, and the stillness of others. Civilizations around the world have incorporated astronomical observations into everything from their architecture to their storytelling and while the pinnacle of the science is most commonly thought to have been during the Renaissance, it actually began a thousand years earlier and 5,000 miles to the East.

Around the 6th century AD, Europe entered whats known as the Dark Ages. This period of time from around 500 AD until to the 13th century witnessed the suppression of intellectual thought and scholarship around the continent because it was seen as a conflict to the religious views of the church. During this time the written word became scarce, and research and observations went dormant.

While Europe was in an intellectual coma, the Islamic empire which stretched from Moorish Spain, to Egypt and even China, was entering their Golden Age. Astronomy was of particular interest to Islamic scholars in Iran and Iraq and until this time around 800 AD, the only astronomical textbook was Ptolemys Almagest, written around 100 AD in Greece. This venerable text is still used as the main reference for ancient astronomy in academia to this day. Muslim scholars waited 700 years for this fundamental Greek text to be translated into Arabic, and once it was, they got to work understanding its contents.

Astronomers like Ibn Yunus from Egypt found faults in Ptolemys calculations about the movements of the planets and their eccentricities. Ptolemy was trying to find an explanation for how these bodies orbited in the sky, including how the Earth moved within these parameters. Ptolemy calculated that the wobble of the Earth, or precession as we now know it, varied 1 degree every 100 years.

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How Islamic scholarship birthed modern astronomy - Astronomy Magazine

A team of astronomers has located over 100 celestial bodies that could very well be previously unknown exoplanets.

One is even kind of close to home, orbiting a star that is a mere 8.1 light years from here.

A University of Hertfordshire press release notes, "Gliese 411b is a hot super-Earth with a rocky surface located in the fourth nearest star system to the Sun, making it the third nearest planetary system to the Sun. The significance of its discovery demonstrates that virtually all the nearest stars to the Sun have planets orbiting them. Planets that could be like Earth."

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8 iconic moments in space exploration history

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Sputnik

The Soviet Union launched the first satelliteinto spaceon October 4, 1957.Sputnikis often considered to be the first victory of the infamous SpaceRace between the United States and the U.S.S.R. While the U.S. launched its first satellite less than a year later, the race was far from over. This competition was part of what ledPresident John F. Kennedy to announcea new national goal in 1961: Send an American safely to the moon by the end of the decade.

(Photo via Bettmann/Getty Images)

The first man in space

Yuri Gagarin wasthe first man to go into space, sent there by the U.S.S.R. in April of 1961. Two monkeys namedAble and Baker, who were sent into spaceby the U.S. in 1959, had previously been the first creatures to survive a spaceflight, though Able died during an operation afterward. While the U.S. had this honor, it wasn't going to be outdone by the U.S.S.R. It sent astronaut Alan Shepard into spaceabout a month after Gagarin's trip.

(Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The first woman in space

Valentina Tereshkova becamethe first woman to go into spaceon June 16, 1963. Aboard the Russian spacecraftVostok 6, she orbited the Earth48 times and returned, although there are reports she was injured upon landing, according to the BBC. She married another spaceexplorer Andrian Nikolayev, and their child Elena became an interest to scientists who had never before been able to study the offspring of two individuals who had both been exposed to spacetravel.

(Photo via Bettmann/Getty Images)

The first African-American in space

Guion "Guy" Bluford wasthe first African-American to go into space. Though he is attributed with this honor, his class included two other African-American astronauts. "All of us knew that one of us would eventually step into that role," he said after the fact. He flew four missions, the first being in1983. However,the first person of African descent and also the first Latinoto go into spacewas actually Arnaldo Tamayo Mndez. Mndez traveled into spaceas a cosmonaut on Sept. 18, 1980, three years before Bluford.

(Photo by MPI/Getty Images)

Construction of the International Space Station

Construction of theInternational SpaceStation (ISS)began in 1998, and it is currently thelargest artificial object within the Earth's orbit, allowing it to sometimes be seen from Earth. The station and satellite is a home for many different research projects, according toSpace.com. It also lets us have a constant presence in space, whereat least three peopleare manning the station at all times, and the number of occupants can reach as high as 10.

(Photo via REUTERS/NASA/Handout)

The first space tourist

Dennis Tito, an American businessman, isthe first person who ever paid to be sent into space. Tito, now 76, went to the ISS in 2001 aboard a Russian spacecraft.He paid $20 million for his flight,and he spent six days at the SpaceStation. He later called it a "40-year dream." "The thing I have taken away from it is a sense of completeness for my life that everything else I would do in my life would be a bonus," he said.

(Photo via Reuters)

The Mars rovers

The Marsexploration roverswere launched in 2003with the goal of allowing us to better understand the history of water on Mars. Spirit, the first of the Marsrovers, made its last communication in2010, while Curiosity, which landed in 2012, iscurrently still in communication withNASA. According to theSmithsonian, these rovers have brought about one of the most significant events in spaceexploration of the 21st century: the discovery that Marswas once a wet world with plenty of water, andthe later discoverythat liquid water still flows on the planet today.

(Photo viaREUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Handout)

The moon landing

Of course, no list on spaceexploration can be complete without a mention of one of the United States' and mankind's greatest achievements: the moon landing. On July 20, 1969,Apollo 11, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins,became the first manned lunar landing mission. Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the surface of the moon, and as he did so,he uttered the famous line, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." You can still watch thefootageof the moon landing on YouTube in a video that has over 13 million views.

(Photo by NASA via Reuters)

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The international group made the observations by utilizing the radial velocity method.

The Carnegie Institution for Science notes that the means, "is one of the most successful techniques for finding and confirming planets. It takes advantage of the fact that in addition to a planet being influenced by the gravity of the star it orbits, the planet's gravity also affects the star. Astronomers are able to use sophisticated tools to detect the tiny wobble the planet induces as its gravity tugs on the star."

They applied it to decades of data gathered by HIRES, a spectrometer affixed to the Keck-1 telescope at W.M. Keck Observatory.

In addition to releasing their findings, the team publicized a staggering amount of the information the apparatus has collected over the years.

More from AOL.com: Ancient volcano on Mars once erupted for 2 billion years straight Massive black hole swallows meal so big it sets a record Astronomers discover comet 100,000-times bigger than Halley's

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Astronomy team find dozens of potential exoplanets including a 'Super-Earth' - AOL News

A planet 370 light years away gives its home star tiny little pulses to show it cares.

The planet, HAT-P-2b, orbits an F-type star slightly larger than the Sun. At eight times the mass of Jupiter, the planet is fairly massive and orbits its star in a little more than five days. As the planet moves along, it induces seismic waves in the surface of its star.

The star itself is right at a boundary called the Delta Scuti instability strip, which leads to stars that brighten and dim called cepheid variables. The presence of the planet momentarily pushes the star over this limit in intervals of roughly 87 minutes. So far, it isnt understood if theres any abnormal effect from the star HAT-P-2 to its planet aside from creating intense amounts of heat thanks to its proximity to its star.

It is not impossible that there is a transfer of energy from the planet orbit to the star to induce these pulsations, but it is a long-term effect whose amplitude will depend on the exact process behind these pulsations so we will need more work to figure all that out, Julien de Wit, a co-author of the paper published today in The Astrophysical Journal, says.

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This planet briefly pulls its star into a cepheid variable stage - Astronomy Magazine

[image credit: University of Arizona]

Heres a fun question: Are there asteroids sharing Earths orbit around the Sun?

Cutting to the chase: Yes, there is at least one. But how many are there? There might be a lot, but we dont know. The cool news is, we may very well know more soon.

In general, its actually a bit tough to have a small object like an asteroid share an orbit with a big object like a planet. Even though it orbits at the same distance from the Sun at the same speed, that kind of orbit is unstable. The weak but persistent tug of gravity from other planets would tend to alter the asteroids orbit, moving it in closer or pulling it farther out from the Sun. Over time, the asteroid will catch up to Earth (or vice versa), and our planets gravity would change the asteroids orbit to a much larger degree, flinging it away (or causing it to impact us, which is not the optimal outcome).

But it turns out the story is more complicated and fun than that (which is almost always the case in science). In the 18th century, two mathematicians, Leonhard Euler and Joseph-Louis Lagrange, discovered that there are five points along a planets orbit where gravity and centrifugal force balance, such that an object placed in one of those positions will stay there. We call those the Lagrange points.

The first Lagrange point, called L1, is inside the planets orbit toward the Sun. L2 is outside the planets orbit, and L3 is on the opposite side of the planet from the Sun. These points are metastable: If you put an object there,itll stay there, but if you poke it somehow, itll fall away from that point. Think of these regions as being the tops of hills. Put a ball there, and itll stay, but a gust of wind will cause the ball to roll downhill*.

L4 and L5 are different. Those act like valleys, gravitational dips. Poke an object thats in one of those points and itll actually fall back into it. Those points are stable. The L4 point is 60 ahead of the planet in its orbit, and the L5 point 60 behind.

Jupiter has a lot of gravity, and it turns out that its L4 and L5 points are very stable. Asteroids that wander in there stay there. In 1906, a 135-km-wide asteroid was discovered in Jupiters L4 point. It was named Achilles, and it soon became customary to name all the asteroids in Jupiters Lagrange points after figures in the Trojan War (Greek ones at L4 and Trojans at L5), and we generically call them Trojan asteroids. We know of thousands of Jupiter Trojans!

Weve discovered Trojan asteroids in the orbits of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. Mercury is too close to the Sun to find them, and Saturn Trojans may not be stable due to Jupiters influence.

And Earth? Well, thats a funny thing: Its really hard for us to observe any Earth Trojans from Earth, because theyre 60 away from the Sun in the sky. That means they set not long after sunset, and rise not long before sunrise. That makes them very hard to find, and in fact we know of precisely one, called 2010 TK7. As its name implies, it was discovered in 2010, in observations taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. WISE orbits the Earth, and has a better view from space than we do stuck on the planet.

So, how do we find more? Why, Im glad you asked.

The spacecraft OSIRIS-REx (potential winner of the most tortured acronym name: Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) is currently on its way to the near-Earth asteroid called Bennu. It launched on September 8, 2016, and is taking two years to get to the rock. Right now,its about 120 million km from Earth, ahead of us and just inside our orbit around the Sun.

Perhaps you see where this is going.

Starting on February 9, and continuing on through February 20, OSIRIS-REx is in the perfect position to look for Earths L4 Trojans. Its passing near that region of space, so any faint rocks will be easier to spot, and the spacecrafts position means the geometry is good as well itll have the Sun to its back, so any L4 asteroids will be fully lit and as far from the Sun in the sky as they can be. So, for a dozen days, the spacecraft is scanning the sky, looking for any asteroids that are in our L4 point. It will gaze at the same fields over and over again, looking for any objects that move the right way against the background stars to be Earth Trojans.

Bonus: That region of the sky also includes Jupiter and three main-belt asteroids (Pandora, Victoria, and Aglaja), so we get free science. Also, the techniques used to look for the Earth Trojans will give the engineers back here on Earth practice and knowledge that will be valuable once OSIRIS-Rex reaches Bennu.

This is pretty exciting. There are two ways for an asteroid to be in the Earths L4 point: It can wander in from another orbit and settle into the gravitational divot which is interesting enough or it could have been there since the formation of the solar system. Thats potentially very cool, indeed. A primordial asteroid, relatively untouched since the birth of the Sun and planets 4.6 billion years ago, would be an astronomical time capsule, allowing us to see what conditions were like back then. Trojan asteroids arent terribly hard to send spacecraft to, either, so if we do find any substantial rocks there, I would dearly love to see a mission planned to explore them (a mission called Lucy has already been announced by NASA to look at some of Jupiters Trojans up close).

I love stuff like this, using spacecraft to do incidental -- but important -- science. And, like so many such endeavors, its just so dang cool. Whether it finds Earth Trojans or not, some important science will be learned, and thats why we do these missions in the first place. If we knew what was out there, we wouldnt call it exploring.

* It turns out that theres yet another weird trick to the L1 and L2 points: Due to the complex nature of gravity and centrifugal force, you can actually put an object into orbit around one of those two points, and its kinda sorta stable. You need to tend to it, using a thruster to keep it there, but its a lot easier than being at the L1 or L2 themselves. We put lots of satellites there; the James Webb Space Telescope will be in such a halo orbit around the Earths L2 point after its launched in 2018.

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Does Earth have a Trojan horde? - Blastr

When massive stars (on the order of ten or more times the mass of our Sun) end their lives, they go out with a bang. In an instant, these stars send out a massive shock wave as type II supernovae, spreading the contents of their interiors hydrogen, helium, and heavier elements that include silicon, oxygen, and iron into the interstellar medium, sprinkling the materials of future stars and solar systems throughout the galaxy.

Supernovae have been observed, both within our galaxy and in other galaxies, for thousands of years, and their results can be seen as nebulae, neutron stars, and black holes. But what is it that actually makes these stars go bang? The answer is: We dont know.

But Ofer Yaron of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and his colleagues have just brought us a little closer to finding that answer. In a paper recently published in the journal Nature Physics, Yaron and his colleagues report their measurements of supernova SN2013fs, which exploded in the nearly galaxy NGC 7610 in 2013. Their results represent some of the earliest post-explosion follow-up observations of a supernova event, including the earliest spectra of a supernova ever, shedding light on the dying stars final days.

Reading the gas

What we do know is that the evolution of a star prior to its explosion likely holds key clues about the processes that precede type II supernova. The stars behavior, such as its growth into a red supergiant and the mass loss it experiences during this phase, affect the results we see when the star does explode. But the red supergiant phase is actually quite short (cosmically speaking; this phase can last between a few hundred thousand to maybe a million years), so we rarely see stars in this part of their life cycle.

Because supernovae are instantaneous and unpredictable, we also rarely catch them right as theyre happening. The chance to see a supernova just as its occurring, rather than days or weeks later, could translate into the data needed to trace back the stars evolution and even understand the instant of the explosion itself.

One of the processes astronomers are looking to trace is the red giants history of mass loss. Mass can be lost through expansion as the star ages, as well as via eruptions of the stars upper atmosphere. This mass loss can cause a shell of circumstellar material that blankets the star. And when the supernova occurs, the way it lights up this material can thus tell astronomers about how the material was lost, highlighting the stars most recent history like the last few rings in a trees trunk.

When the supernova occurs, the shock wave it produces causes a process called photoionization, which strips electrons away from the gas surrounding the star. Shortly thereafter, all these free electrons recombine with the gas atoms of the shell (in a process aptly called recombination), which causes the gas to shine. Studying the resulting spectrum of the gas reveals information about the elements in this gas shell, as well as its density, motions, and the distance of the gas from the star.

As the shock wave moves through the shell surrounding the star, it lights up different features, all of which provide 3-dimensional information about the structure of the cloud. All of this information can be used to reconstruct a picture of the environment around the star just before the supernova occurred.

The key, though, is catching the supernova in its earliest stages, because as the shock wave progresses through the material around the dying star, it quickly distorts it and blows it away, erasing the information there like shaking a cosmic Etch A Sketch.

SN2013fs observations

SN2013fs was first detected in October of 2013 by the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) survey. The event was quickly followed up in multiple wavelengths, including X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, and infrared. These follow-up observations include the earliest spectroscopy of a type II supernova ever obtained. The explosion was first identified just three hours after it occurred, and the first spectrum was taken within six hours of the initial event.

The observations are consistent with a shell of material surrounding the star out to a distance of about 1015cm thats a little more than 66 times the Earth-Sun distance. Models indicate that the bulk of this material was ejected within the last few hundred days of the stars life. But because the velocity of the gas cloud around the star could not be directly measured, its still difficult to decouple the effects of a short burst of mass loss right before the supernova event from longer-term, slower mass loss due to a stellar wind over hundreds of years.

Fortunately, surveys such as the one that identified SN2013fs are on the rise, and the better and more comprehensive these surveys become, the more likely it is that additional young supernova events will receive the follow-up necessary to begin piecing together the physics that lead to these cataclysmic events in the first place.

Read the rest here:

Astronomers catch a supernova just as its big boom begins - Astronomy Magazine

The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, has provided a wellspring of information about our universe over the last 27 years. Some of those discoveries required five upgrades to the system.

And now, according to a Wall Street Journal report, there could be a sixth. According to the report, the servicing would provide an insurance policy in case the James Webb Space Telescope, which will perch itself far from low-Earth orbit (and even beyond the Moon) at a stable point called L2.

With the space shuttle program ending in 2009, there isnt a vehicle to complete the mission. Yet. But Sierra Nevada, a private spaceflight company, has worked for years on a miniature space shuttle called the Dream Chaser, based on older designs generated in the early days of NASA. Right now, the craft is only cleared for automated flights and may resupply the ISS as soon as 2019. The project would require a human-piloted variant relying on infrastructure that already exists in the ships design.

According to the WSJ report, the possibility is currently in the (very) preliminary stages. It would represent a public-private venture that would drive down federal government costs by teaming up with private spaceflight companies, a model that is expected to be utilized in the administration in general.

Along with the Webb telescope, NASA has two telescopes based on modified versions of the Hubble design donated by the National Reconnaissance Office. One such mission, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, will be utilized as an exoplanet and dark matter hunter to be launched in the mid-2020s. Plans for the other telescope have not yet been announced.

Originally posted here:

Another Hubble repair mission could be on the way - Astronomy Magazine

An international team of astronomers has released the largest ever compilation of exoplanet-detecting observations made using a technique called the radial velocity method. By making the data public, the team is offering unprecedented access to one of the best exoplanet searches in the world.

The data were gathered as part of a two-decade planet-hunting program using a spectrometer called HIRES, built by UC Santa Cruz astronomer Steven Vogt and mounted on the 10-meter Keck-I telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

"HIRES was not specifically optimized to do this type of exoplanet detective work, but has turned out to be a workhorse instrument of the field," said Vogt, a professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics. "I am very happy to contribute to science that is fundamentally changing how we view ourselves in the universe."

The data compilation, available on the team's web site, includes almost 61,000 individual measurements made on more than 1,600 stars. An initial analysis of the data revealed more than 100 potential exoplanets, including one orbiting the fourth-closest star to our own solar system. The researchers presented their findings in a paper accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal and available online.

"This paper and data release represents a good chunk of my life work," said lead author Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution for Science, one of the researchers who helped jumpstart the field of exoplanet science.

Wobbly stars The radial velocity method is one of the most successful techniques for finding and confirming planets. It takes advantage of the fact that, in addition to a planet being influenced by the gravity of the star it orbits, the planet's gravity also affects the star. Astronomers are able to use sophisticated tools to detect the tiny wobble the planet induces as its gravity tugs on the star.

As the HIRES survey moves into its third decade, the team members decided it was time to clean house. With so much data at hand and a limited amount of time, they recognized that more exoplanets would be found by sharing their catalog with the exoplanet community.

Before giving everyone the keys to their exoplanet-finder, however, the team took it out for a spin themselves. Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire led a sophisticated statistical analysis of the large data set to tease out the periodic signals most likely to be planets.

"We were very conservative in this paper about what counts as an exoplanet candidate and what does not," Tuomi explained, "and even with our stringent criteria, we found over 100 new likely planet candidates."

One of these probable planets is around a star called GJ 411, also known as Lalande 21185. It is the fourth-closest star to our own sun and has only about 40 percent of the sun's mass. The planet has a very short orbital period of just under 10 days, so it is no Earth-twin. However, GJ 411b continues a trend that has been seen in the overall population of detected exoplanets: The smallest planets are found around the smallest stars.

Open source An open-source software package for analyzing exoplanet data (Systemic Console) was developed at UC Santa Cruz by team member Greg Laughlin and his students, primarily Stefano Meschiari.

"One of our key goals in this paper is to democratize the search for planets," explained Laughlin, now at Yale University. "Anyone can download the velocities published on our website and use the open-source Systemic software package and try fitting planets from the data."

The team is hoping their decision will lead to a flurry of new science as astronomers around the globe combine the HIRES data with their own existing observations or mount new observing campaigns to follow up on potential signals. The catalog release is part of a growing trend in exoplanet science to broaden the audience and discovery space, which has emerged in part to handle the follow-up of planets discovered by NASA's Kepler and K2 missions.

"I think this paper sets a precedent for how the community can collaborate on exoplanet detection and follow-up, moving forward," said team member Johanna Teske of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

"With NASA's TESS mission on the horizon, which is expected to detect 1,000-plus planets orbiting bright, nearby stars, exoplanet scientists will soon have a whole new pool of planets to follow up."

"The best way to advance the field and further our understanding of what these planets are made out of is to harness the abilities of a variety of precision radial velocity instruments and deploy them in concert. But that will require some big teams to break from tradition and start leading serious cooperative efforts," added team member Jennifer Burt, who earned her Ph.D. at UC Santa Cruz last year and is now at MIT.

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Astronomy team finds more than 100 exoplanet candidates - Space Daily

A team led by the Carnegie Institution for Science along with MIT has given the public a chance to assist with exoplanet research.

The team has released two decades worth of data, a software package, and an online tutorial to the public to bring a fresh look into the observations of more than 1,600 nearby stars.

This is an amazing catalog, and we realized there just arent enough of us on the team to be doing as much science as could come out of this dataset, Jennifer Burt, a Torres Postdoctoral Fellow in MITs Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, said in a press release. Were trying to shift toward a more community-oriented idea of how we should do science, so that others can access the data and see something interesting.

The team has found more than 100 potential exoplanets during a study has appeared in The Astronomical Journal. The released data is from the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES), which is designed to help astronomers measure wavelengths to determine characteristics of the starlight.

[HIRES] wasnt specifically optimized to look for exoplanets, Burt says. It was designed to look at faint galaxies and quasars. However, even before HIRES was installed, our team worked out a technique for making HIRES an effective exoplanet hunter.

HIRES helps astronomers by splitting incoming light from the star into the color of certain elements (most commonly known as spectrum), making it easier to measure the wavelengths with accuracy. HIRES really came in handy, though, by finding when a stars spectra moves in a regular pattern, indicating a potential exoplanets orbit of Earth.

The data collected from HIRES has more than 1,600 neighborhood stars within 325 light years from Earth, and the team has highlighted more than 100 stars that may host exoplanets. These observations require more research, though, so nothing has been confirmed yet.

I think this opens up possibilities for anyone who wants to do this kind of work, whether youre an academic or someone in the general public whos excited about exoplanets, Burt says. Because really, who doesnt want to discover a planet?

The team will continuously update the public dataset with new data while HIRES continues observing nearby stars.

Read more here:

A team of astronomers open dataset of nearby stars to the public - Astronomy Magazine

Dressed in parkas and knit caps, the three volunteerslug crates of power tools and spooled wireinto thegleaming mountaintop edifice that some have called astronomys Sistine Chapel and immediately start tinkering.

In 1904, workers installed the first telescope at the still uncompleted Mt. Wilson Observatory. For much of the 20th century,astronomers with names like Hale and Hubble used it and the new telescopes it sprouted the 100-inch reflector and three solar telescopes followed the initial 60-incher as a figurative launch pad for exploration that changed our understandingof the cosmos.

Gradually, though, financial support waned along with the observatorys cutting-edge status, and for the last 20 yearsits telescopes, still impressive by any standard, rely on the kind attention of a small volunteer team of retired space industry electrical engineers, most now in their 70s and 80s.

So it is that on a morning when parts of the San Gabriels are topped with snow, Kenneth Evans is on a ladder, his head lamp fixed on a new sensor switch for a 100-inch reflecting telescope that dominated the world of astronomy for more than three decades.

Nearby, William Leflang and Gale Gant test the wiring of a control console.

Dusting off his hands, Evans tells Leflang to give it some power.

He pivots to eyeball the sensor, which willimprove the scopes ability to track the movement of celestial objects, and with a grand wave of his grease-covered hands, says, Works great.

Satisfied smiles break out on the faces of men who seem confident that they were born to fix things.

The volunteers took up their cause in the late 1990s after the Carnegie Institution for Science, whose namesake had invested the initial funds for construction,transferred ownership of the Mt. Wilson Observatory to the nonprofit Mt. Wilson Institute.

Now, they shoulder much of the responsibility for keeping the observatorys cluster of vintage telescopes from deteriorating into non-functioning museum pieces.

Other volunteers include John Harrigan, a former power distribution expert at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power; Richard Johnston, an information technology consultant, and his son, Eric Johnston, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristols Center for Quantum Photonics. Taking on problems one weekend work partyat a time, the team has solved hundreds of pressing issues at the 40-acre observatory complex.

They have patched holes in walls, strengthened ceilings and walkways with wooden beams, fixed broken water mains and used steel wool and solvents to scour rust and old axle grease off flywheels and gearsat the observatory, which looks much as it did when it was completed in 1917.

Mt. Wilson aficionados still talk about how Evans and his brother Larry refurbished a 1911 50-horsepower 2-cylinder vertical Fairbanks-Morse Type RE engine with brass plumbing and 22,000 pounds of machinery so that it could be used in demonstrations.

Now theyre laboring to improve the giant reflectors potential as an educational tool and tourist draw.

But money for maintaining the observatory remains tight, the institute says, and the fate of the reflector,hailed as the mightiest instrument in astronomy when it was built, remains uncertain.

For Thomas Meneghini, the institutes executive director, the facilitys dual nature conjures a peculiar charm: rooms where Albert Einstein once bunkedbunched around picnic grounds, a museum, hiking trails and vista points that offer views from Pasadena, directly below, out across Southern California.

But raising funds has been a challenge. Thats why our volunteer engineers are heroes. They are keeping it alive. Without them and other supporters, these magnificent instruments would just be cold hunks of steel and glass.

A 150-foot-tall solar facility at Mt. Wilson has already deteriorated to the point that it can be used only for school programs and public demonstrations. That instruments 1970s-era computer system is a shambles. Its magnetograph an instrument allowing detailed observations of the suns magnetic fields was shut down in 2013, a year after its tower received a new coat of paint funded with a $1.5-million federal grant.

A separate solar telescope installed in 1904 to make photographic images of the wavelengths of the suns light has come to be known as Leflangs baby. Thats because he maintains that instrument, which is used only two weeks a year for educational purposes.

Mt. Wilsons biggest draw remains the 100-inch reflector, which reigned supreme until completion of Caltechs 200-inch telescope on Mt. Palomar in San Diego County after World War II.

While Los Angeles slept, astronomer Edwin Hubble and others used the reflector to discover billions of galaxies where none were known before, most of them speeding away from each other in all directions. Theseobservations led to the Big Bang theory, which suggests the universe began in a single explosive moment.

Keeping it in reliable shape, however,has been a work in progress since 1985, when the Carnegie Institution for Science put it in mothballs due to light pollution in the Los Angeles Basin and a commitment to expand its Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, which was more suitable for focusing on distant faint objects.

The telescope was reopened in 1994, nine years after Carnegie officials transferred ownership to the institute.

But it needs upgrades to continue operating.

And so the unusual fraternity gathers,trash-talking one another in termsthat perhaps only those who recite antique gas engine minutiae like baseball stats can appreciate.

Theres a lot of epic history in here, Leflang says, proceeding gingerly past colossal marvels of World War I-era engineering and astrophysics.

The 87-ton scope has 2,000 moving parts including a cast-iron worm gear 18 feet in diameter. Steel cables as thick as mooring ropes attached to a crane used to service its 9,500-pound primary mirror. A 450-ton dome rotatesoverhead on trolley tracks.

Framed photographs of Hubble, George Ellery Haleand other pioneer astronomers are displayed on walls and scaffolding studded with rivets, and in the drawers of a wood filing cabinet are hundreds of original blueprints of the facility dated Jan. 17, 1917.

It takesthe team about an hour to complete the modification, which they accomplished without altering the telescopes basic design or optics.

Some folks refer to this scope as the grand dame of astronomy, Gant sayswith a boyish grin. We call it a complex beast.

Read more from the original source:

Atop Mt. Wilson, retired engineers keep alive astronomy's 'Sistine Chapel' - Los Angeles Times

Astronomers have identified AR Scorpii a binary stellar system in the constellation Scorpius, 380 light-years from Earth as the first example of a white dwarf pulsar.

AR Scorpii, the first discovered white dwarf pulsar. In this unique double star a rapidly spinning white dwarf (right) powers electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high energy particles release blasts of radiation that lash the companion red dwarf (left) and cause the entire system to pulse dramatically every 1.97 minutes with radiation ranging from UV to radio. Image credit: M. Garlick / University of Warwick / ESO.

AR Scorpii is composed of a cool, low-mass star in a tight, 3.55-hour orbit with a more massive white dwarf.

The distance between the two stars is around 1.4 million km which is three times the distance between the Moon and the Earth.

The low-mass companion in AR Scorpii a red dwarf star is about one-third the mass of the Sun. The white dwarf is the size of Earth but 200,000 times more massive.

This system was recently discovered to pulse in brightness every 1.97 min from UV wavelengths into the radio regime.

AR Scorpiis white dwarf lashes its red dwarf companion with powerful beams of electrical particles and radiation.

According to new research in the journal Nature Astronomy, the lash of energy is a focused beam, emitting concentrated radiation in a single direction much like a particle accelerator something which is totally unique in the known Universe.

The new data show that AR Scorpiis light is highly polarized, showing that the magnetic field controls the emission of the entire system, and a dead ringer for similar behavior seen from the more traditional neutron star pulsars, said co-author Prof. Tom Marsh, from the University of Warwick, UK.

With an electromagnetic field 100 million times more powerful than Earth, AR Scorpii produces lighthouse-like beams of radiation and particles, which lash across the face of the red dwarf.

AR Scorpii is like a gigantic dynamo: a magnet, size of the Earth, with a field that is roughly 10,000 stronger than any field we can produce in a lab, and it is rotating every two minutes, said co-author Prof. Boris Gnsicke, also from the University of Warwick.

This generates an enormous electric current in the companion star, which then produces the variations in the light we detect.

_____

D. A. H. Buckley et al. 2017. Polarimetric evidence of a white dwarf pulsar in the binary system AR Scorpii. Nature Astronomy 1, article number: 0029; doi: 10.1038/s41550-016-0029

The rest is here:

Astronomers Find First Ever White Dwarf Pulsar - Sci-News.com

Planet Venus graces the west-southwest horizon of UK skies at dusk, attaining its greatest brilliancy of magnitude -4.8 on 17February. To put this in context, Venus is now in excess of twenty times more luminous than brightest star Sirius currently low in the southeast. Planet Mars, magnitude +1.2, lies just 7degrees (the field of view of a 7x binocular) to Venus upper left. Gas giant planet Uranus also lies close by. AN graphic by Ade Ashford.Currently setting over four hours after the Sun as seen from the heart of the British Isles and visible in the west-southwest at dusk, dazzling Venus is about to hit peak brightness in the constellation of Pisces. The planet attains magnitude -4.8 on Friday 17February, some 21 times the luminosity of Sirius the brightest star gracing the southeast horizon as darkness falls.

At UK dusk on 17February, Venus lies 0.42 astronomical units (AU), or 39million miles (63million kilometres) from Earth. It has a 39.4-arcsecond-wide, 27percent illuminated crescent that requires a telescope magnification of just 48x to make it appear the same size as an average Moon to the unaided eye. As the days pass, Venus phase decreases and its apparent size increases as the planets orbital motion carries it further around the Sun and nearer the Earth.

Planet Mars lies less than a span of a fist at arms length to the upper left of Venus until about the third week of the month, so it is easy to identify. On the night of Venus peak brightness the Red Planet shines at just magnitude +1.2, making it a full six magnitudes or 250 times fainter than its dazzling sibling. In a telescope, Mars disc is a tiny 4.8arcseconds wide one-eighth that of Venus on account of a distance of 1.96AU or 182million miles (294million kilometres).

To complete the evening planet ensemble, you may wish to seek out Uranus. The magnitude +5.9 gas giant lies 6.2degrees (or slightly less than a 7x binocular field of view) to Mars upper left. Some 3.4arcseconds in size, Uranus lies 20.52 astronomical units or 1,908million miles (3,070million kilometres) from Earth on 17February.

Can Venus cast a shadow? Returning to the brightest planet, there is a fun experiment that you might like to conduct if you live in (or have access to) an area where there is no light pollution especially now that the Moon is rising after 8pm. Using our Almanac, select the city nearest you and note the time at which astronomical twilight ends for the centre of the British Isles, this is currently about 7:20pmGMT.

Allowing at least 15minutes for your eyes to become dark adapted, turn your back to Venus close to the time astronomical twilight ends and see if you can discern your shadow cast solely by the light of Venus on a west-facing fence or wall. You may need to use your peripheral vision to see it. While Venus remains visible until 9pm for much of the UK, you need to conduct this little experiment with Venus highest in the sky as soon as darkness falls.

I have twice seen my shadow cast by the light of Venus while working at the Mount John University Observatory under the pristine, exceptionally dark skies found at the heart of New Zealands South Island.

For a comprehensive guide to observing all that is happening in the coming months sky, tailored to Western Europe and North America, obtain a copy of the February 2017 edition of Astronomy Now.

Never miss an issue by subscribing to the UKs biggest astronomy magazine. Also available for iPad/iPhone and Android devices.

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See planet Venus hit peak brightness in the evening sky - Astronomy Now Online

[Image credit: Voyager 3]

I dont mean to make this blog all Jupiter all the time, but cmon. Its Jupiter.

The biggest planet in our solar system is truly a monster: At 140,000 kilometers in diameter, it can be resolved into a disk and viewed with some detail with only binoculars or a small telescoe, even at a typical distance from Earth of 700 million kilometers.

So, what happens when you take more than a thousand images of Jupiter from 91 gifted amateur astronomers across the Earth and process them to combine them into a global map that changes over time?

Magnificence.

And I can prove it. Watch:

That incredible video is the product of Voyager 3, a group of amateur astronomers in Sweden. Voyagers 1 and 2 were two of the most successful probes ever launched by NASA, and the group originally banded together to recreate the famous approach video to Jupiter made from Voyager 1 images. So, the name works for me.

In this case, the task was to create a high-resolution moving map of Jupiters clouds using the combined images from dozens of astronomers. Once the images were taken, Christoffer Svenske and Johan Warell still faced the daunting task of combining them. The images were taken across 3.5 months, which poses quite a problem. Jupiter rotates once every ten hours, and it doesnt have a solid surface: What we see are the cloud tops, which roil and flow and change on a daily basis.

Also, from Earth, we only see Jupiter from one angle. It orbits the Sun in pretty much the same planewe do, and its spin axis is perpendicular to that plane. That means the polar regions are very difficult to observe.

But thats what computers are for. They combined the images to make 54 full-planet maps covering different times, then interpolated them to double that number and provide for a smoother video flow*.

Once they did this, a lot of things became possible. For example, each pixel in the image can be remapped to show Jupiter in different ways, like the cylindrical projection at the top of this article. They also mapped them onto a sphere, so that virtual flybys become possible. Amazing.

Theres a lot to see! The banding on Jupiter is caused by convection rising and falling air. In the lighter zones, air is rising and cooling, allowing ammonia ice crystals to form. These are very reflective, so the zones are brighter. The darker belts are where air is sinking, and the ammonia is clearer vapor, so we see deeper into Jupiters atmosphere.

One thing that struck me is how fast the light-colored equatorial zone region flows relative to everything else. It zips along in an eastward direction, in whats called a jet. Appropriate.

You can see the Great Red Spot to the south, and I love how the air flows around it, creating huge vortices to its left. Lots of other smaller storms can be seen all over the place, too.

Im fascinated by the view looking down on the south pole. Due to geometry, when we view Jupiter from Earth the equator will in general show the most detail, since were looking straight down on it from Earth; closer to the poles, perspective foreshortens details, blurring them. But in the artificial polar projection,the equatorial features are near the planets limb (the outer circumference), so they get foreshortened. At the same time, the polar details are still blurred in the original images, so theyre still fuzzy even though it looks like were peering straight down at them. The highest resolution features in the polar map are therefore at mid latitudes, where real resolution and remapping balance. Pretty cool.

Mind you, we cant see that view from Earth! But we do get images of it from spacecraft, like Juno, which just dipped down over Jupiters poles for the fourth time in its mission. Its amazing to see any detail at all near the pole of Jupiter in the Voyager 3 images, and still,they managed to show quite a bit there.

This sort of work shows once again what a valuable asset so-called amateur astronomers can be to science; maps like this can be important in identifying features in the Juno images, for example. And I say so-called amateurs because that adjective is misleading. The line between professional and amateur has been blurred increasingly over the years; with high-quality digital video cameras and powerful computers to process the data, the sort of thing that can be done by a few individuals more than rivals what professionals could do in the past. It surpasses it, in many cases by leaps and bounds. What used to be the purview of huge observatories is now possible to achieve from someones back yard. Incredible images of the heavens, precise measurements of variable stars and asteroids, and more, all because of a revolution in technology.

And, of course, the intense dedication of people who truly love their craft. Dont discount that. It can go a very, very long way it can discover entire worlds.

* Interpolation is a mathematical technique that lets you fill in gaps in data by making assumptions about the data around the gap. For example, if a feature in the images moves ten pixels in an hour, then in half that time it should move half that distance. The actual process can be considerably more complex than that, but thats the general idea.

See the rest here:

A journey to Jupiter, without leaving Earth - Blastr

On Jan. 26, the asteroid 693 Zerbinetta, a 40-mile wide rock that orbits the sun in a five year orbit, passed in front of a faint star in the constellation Auriga casting a thin shadow on the Earth that blocked the star from observers in the southwestern United States. As it happened, Sierra Vista fell close to the centerline of the predicted path of this occultation.

By precisely timing the blocking of the star at several points along the asteroid shadows path, scientists can build a map of the asteroid. With enough data points, the shape and size of the asteroid is revealed and knowledge of its rotation rate and orbit can be refined.

Members of IOTA, the International Occultation Timing Association, travel the world over filming and timing these occultations to build a database of asteroid measurements. They often enlist the help of other amateur astronomers along the predicted path of the event.

On the night of Jan. 25, members of the Huachuca Astronomy Club (HAC) were enlisted by IOTA member, Paul Maley of Carefree, Arizona, to record the passage of Zerbinetta in front of the faint star known by the catalog designation 2UCAC 46262076. The asteroid would block the star for only a few seconds, just minutes past midnight on the morning of Jan. 26. The measurement had to be perfect or the data would be useless.

The Patterson Observatory, on the campus of the University of Arizona Sierra Vista, was deemed to be just 1.98 miles from the centerline. HAC members David Roemer, Rick Burke and Ken Duncan manned the observatory and operated a video camera attached to an 8-inch telescope that rides piggyback on the observatorys 20-inch telescope. Special software was downloaded into the observatorys computer to insert a precise time stamp into the recorded video.

Mr. Maley set up similar equipment at my own observatory about eight miles east of Patterson and about three miles from the centerline.

Reducing the recorded video data to a graph of time versus brightness, a scientifically valuable data set is produced. Comparing that data from several sites along the path yields the desired information that can then add to our knowledge of this asteroid.

The Patterson Observatory is owned by the University South Foundation, Inc. and is operated by volunteers from the Huachuca Astronomy Club. This is not the first time that valuable science has been collected at the Patterson. It has been used previously to record an asteroid occultation, it is occasionally used to record asteroid observations for the Lunar and Planetary Laboratorys Target Asteroid Campaign and HAC astronomers used Patterson to participate in the worldwide Comet ISON observing campaign. Plans to participate in LPLs 4*P comet coma morphology study are ongoing as well. The observatory is open to the public once a month for a free open house observing session called Public Night.

The next Public Night is March 2. Doors open at 7 p.m.

View original post here:

Local astronomers help map asteroid - Sierra Vista Herald

Universe Today

91 Astronomers Combine 1000 Images Into One Amazing Journey to Jupiter Universe Today I have been into Astronomy since I was a teenager in the early 1970's and immediately I got a passion for astrophotography, and more specifically, photographing the planets. I see astronomy as a life-long passion, so it is quite normal to strive for ...

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91 Astronomers Combine 1000 Images Into One Amazing Journey to Jupiter - Universe Today

Human beings have always been fascinated by stars, the moon and the ever-changing sky. The fascination endures till date, even when modern science has taken away much of the mystery. Driven by this fascination, many may have wanted to take up astronomy, the study of heavenly bodies, not simply as a hobby but as a career.

But how does one go about becoming an astronomer?

Curiosity is the key. You should be somebody who has lots of questions about the sunrise, sunset, stars, colours in the sky, etc, says Amanjot Singh, a 24-year-old amateur astronomer. Back in 2010, while still in school, Singh and his friend Sahil Wadhwa had found an asteroid the first Indian students to do so when they had taken part in the All India Asteroid Search Campaign conducted by SPACE, an NGO that works to popularise astronomy. The asteroid they discovered is named 2010 PO24.

One can start by reading books on the subject and joining an astronomy club in school, recommends Singh. Students in schools where there are no astronomy clubs can form their own or join clubs run by science NGOs like SPACE. Besides, there are web portals like Zooniverse and phone apps that provide a fun way to learn about astronomy. One could also buy a telescope or take up photography, Singh advises. A 76-mm telescope costs around Rs 10,000. Or they can start astro-photography with a DSLR camera or by attaching a mobile device to a telescope.

Busting a myth, Singh, who has studied aerospace engineering, says, It is not necessary to excel in maths and science to become an astronomer. One just needs to have an inclination for the subjects and lots of patience. In school, Singh also worked as a volunteer with space research organisations; they would send him data in the form of pictures or graphs from observatories and he had to process the data and send it back within 24 hours.

Those who want to take up astronomy as a profession need to get a Bachelors degree in physics or mathematics and follow it up with a Masters degree in astrophysics or astronomy, offered in India by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Indian Institute of Science and Homi Bhabha National Institute among others. Those seeking to study further and get a PhD need to appear for the Joint Entrance Screening Test, which is conducted annually in February. As for jobs, there are opportunities to work as a research scientist with organisations like the Indian Space Research Organisation and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Authority). They can also teach astronomy and astrophysics are specialisations offered in the physics course in several universities or they can become educators with NGOs like SPACE.

Astronomy requires specialised products whether it is instruments or computer programming and developing these is another way to get into the profession. Engineers with a specialisation in electronics, computer science, mechanical, aerospace or mechatronics fit the job. With growing popularity and a trend to innovate, a number of start-ups are coming up in the field of space education and technology. They provide career opportunities, but one has to be aware of the upcoming discoveries and technologies, says Shreya Santra, who works as a research assistant at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia.

Apart from these, there is also the option of an optician course, where one can study about lenses to pursue a career in astronomy.

To earn a good living in India, one needs to hold a PhD degree or has to be a senior scientist, says Santra, and adds that students with a PhD or Masters degree earn enough to support themselves.

Private companies and government agencies like Team Indus, ISRO, HAL, PRL, etc. have a good pay bracket if one performs well, she adds.

More:

How youngsters can reach for the stars with a career in astronomy - Daily News & Analysis

Presidents Day has evolved from a specific salute to the countrys first commander in chief, George Washington, to a broad celebration of all the chief executives and their accomplishments. Most of them have exhibited a wide range of interests and many demonstrated a curiosity about, if not aptitude for, the sciences. In the area of astronomy alone, presidents have looked to the skies for various reasons, from trying to gain a basic understanding of the workings of our universe, to metaphorically explaining the state of the union and establishing the countrys prominence in science and technology.

This interest in celestial matters began with George Washington himself, who as a surveyor became proficient in collecting accurate astronomical data. Perhaps not surprisingly, Washingtons fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, took an active interest in astronomical matters, from directing Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to use celestial navigation in fixing the coordinates of rivers they explored during their perilous Corps of Discovery Expedition, to making his own observations. Once, while suffering through a bout of rheumatism, he passed the time by observing the Sun and calculating the longitude of his residence. On September 17, 1811, he witnessed an annular solar eclipse with a refracting telescope and recorded the timing of each stage of the event. He also observed and commented on Uranus and double stars and even included an observatory in his design for the University of Virginia.

Jefferson is remembered as one of our most learned presidents, a true Renaissance man. President John Kennedy famously commented on this at an April 29, 1962, gathering of Nobel Prize winners at the White House. During his welcoming speech, Kennedy said, I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

Kennedy himself pointed his eyes to the heavens, galvanizing the country to work together in the name of national and ideological pride to send humans to the Moon. Kennedy was one of our more charismatic leaders and, on a sweltering day at Rice University on September 12, 1962, he gave a speech that left no doubt about his view on the importance of this quest.

The most poignant part of Kennedys speech read:

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people...There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the Moon! ... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win

A century before Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln incorporated his memory of a spectacular meteor shower (probably the Leonid Meteor Shower of 1833, which one observer estimated peaked at 100,000 meteors per hour!) into a comment about the troubled nation. The story was later recounted by poet Walt Whitman in his 1882 book, Specimen Days & Collect:

As is well known, story-telling was often with President Lincoln a weapon which he employed with great skill. Very often he could not give a point-blank reply or comment and these indirections, (sometimes funny, but not always so,) were probably the best responses possible. In the gloomiest period of the war, he had a call from a large delegation of bank presidents. In the talk after business was settled, one of the big Dons asked Mr. Lincoln if his confidence in the permanency of the Union was not beginning to be shaken whereupon the homely President told a little story. When I was a young man in Illinois, said he, I boarded for a time with a Deacon of the Presbyterian church. One night I was roused from my sleep by a rap at the door, & I heard the Deacons voice exclaiming Arise, Abraham, the day of judgment has come! I sprang from my bed & rushed to the window, and saw the stars falling in great showers! But looking back of them in the heavens I saw all the grand old constellations with which I was so well acquainted, fixed and true in their places. Gentlemen, the world did not come to an end then, nor will the Union now.

Lincoln also looked to astronomy for respite from the stresses of the crumbling nation. On several occasions, he sneaked away from the White House to peer through a telescope at the United States Naval Observatory (USNO), then located in Washington, D.Cs Foggy Bottom area, just north of where the memorial to Lincoln would one day be built.

The USNO is one of the oldest agencies of scientific research in the United States. Like Percival Lowells observatory here in Flagstaff, the USNO sprouted from the mind of an amateur astronomer from Massachusetts. His name was John Quincy Adams, yet another president who looked to the skies in the name of curiosity, knowledge, and national pride.

Kevin Schindler is the Lowell Observatory historian

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View from Mars Hill: Astronomy often a hobby and fascination of presidents - Arizona Daily Sun

USA Today is touting it as a Triple Treat.

Weather.com saidstargazers are in for a spectacular celestial show Friday night.

But the hype for to nights full moon, penumbral eclipse and passing of a small comet left Chuck Dibbs and other South Hampton Roads astronomy buffs scratching their heads.

When I started here 17 years ago I used to promote things like this, said Dibbs, the director of the Virginia Beach Schools Planetarium. Then people would come and complain to me that they didnt see anything and didnt understand what the big deal was.

This is seriously a nonevent.

Leigh Anne Lagoe, vice president of Back Bay Amateur Astronomers, found herself confused when a neighbor told her how excited she was about todays event.

I had no idea what she was talking about, Lagoe said. I had to Google it and saw all this hype.

The club wont be going out for this one, she said.

The expectations for today begin with the full moon what some media are calling a snow moon.

Theyre giving it a catchy name because its a full moon in February, the month when we get the most snow, Dibbs said. Like we wont ever have another full moon. Believe me, we will.

Then theres the penumbral eclipse, when the full moon darkens as it passes through the earths shadow . The moons journey to night, however, takes it through a very narrow portion of the shadow. The full moon will darken somewhat, Dibbs said, but not dramatically like the full eclipse that will come in August.

Most people wont even be able to notice the difference, Dibbs said.

And the comet? Comet 45P, known to astronomers as Comet Honda Mrkos Pajdusakova, was discovered in 1948 and will make its closest approach to Earth this weekend.

Youre going to need a good pair of high-powered binoculars to see it, and you wont see much, Dibbs said.

While the eclipse will peak at 7:43 tonight, the comet wont until around 3 a.m. Saturday.

Its just going to be a fuzzy patch in the sky, Lagoe said. Its not very impressive. Besides, with a full moon out, you wont be able to see much of anything anyway.

Plus, theres the weather.

According to the National Weather Service, skies will be partly cloudy and will become mostly overcast as the night goes on. So those looking for a triple treat to night might be better off seeking something else like a hot fudge, ice cream and brownie sundae.

The rest is here:

Big celestial event Friday? Local astronomers say it's more media ... - Virginian-Pilot

[Above: Photo of a lunar eclipse from September 2015, taken just as the Moon started toslipinto the darker part of Earth's shadow. Tonight's eclipse should look similar. Credit: Phil Plait]

Tonight Friday, February 10, 2017 about half the planet will be treated to a lunar eclipse. But not an ordinary one: It will be a deep penumbral eclipse, and youll have to be diligent to see it.

OK, so what does that mean?

Well, for one thing, the Moon wont get as dark as it does in a total lunar eclipse. But it will get noticeably duskier, especially on one side, and that should be pretty neat to see. Also, itll be visible mostly to folks in Europe and Africa, but those of us in the U.S. get a view of it as well, right after sunset (see below for specific times).

An eclipse is when an astronomical object blocks the light from another astronomical object. As the Moon orbits the Earth, it sometimes slides into the Earths shadow in space. When it does, the Earth blocks the Sun, the Moon grows dark, and we get a lunar eclipse.

But things get a bit complicated. Because theres nothing between the Earth and Sun, the Earths shadow is always pointing away from the Sun in space. But it actually casts two shadows; a dark, narrow cone-shaped one called the umbra (Latin for shadow) and a wider, less dark one surrounding the umbra called the penumbra (almost shadow). This is due to the geometry of the Sun being a disk in the sky and not a dot. I explain how all this works in my episode of Crash Course Astronomy: Eclipses:

The first part is about solar eclipses (the lunar eclipse part starts around 6:45), but explains why we have an umbra and penumbra. NASA also has a nice video showing the geometry of eclipses; it wasnt made for this particular eclipse, but it does show the orbital tilts to scale very nicely:

Each lunar eclipse is different because of the tilt of the Moons orbit. Sometimes it passes into the umbral shadow, and we see a nice, dark eclipse. But sometimes the Moons orbital tilt only lets it dip its toe, so to speak, into the penumbra. If it stays near the outer edge the dimming is so minor you might not even notice!

But thats why tonights eclipse (remember, thats why I started this article in the first place) is so interesting: The Moon misses the umbra, but only by a tiny bit. Thats why this is called a deep penumbral eclipse; it passes deeply into the secondary shadow of the Earth, but not the really dark one. As the folks at Sky and Telescope note, the Moon misses the umbra by a mere 160 km! Mind you, the Moon is 3470 km across, so this is a pretty near miss. In fact, the penumbra is just narrower than the Moon itself, and the Moon is never completely inside the penumbra at any one time during this eclipse.

So, when should you go out to see it? The Moon first starts to slide into the penumbra at 22:34 UTC, or 5:34 p.m. Eastern US time. If you live on the east coast of the US thats just after the Moon rises. Those of us farther west wont see this part of the eclipse, because it wont have risen yet!

The deepest part of the eclipse occurs about two hours later at 00:45 UTC technically, in Greenwich (where UTC is officially marked) the next day, February 11, but in the US its still Friday night at 7:45 p.m. Eastern time. For my location, in Colorado, the Moon rises just minutes later, so for me it will already be in the deepest part. If youre on the west coast, you wont even see this until its already over. That happens at 02:53 UT (9:53 p.m. Eastern).

So, the farther east you are, the better. Anyone in Europe and Africa will see the whole thing, but itll be late at night. India and China will only be able to see the start of the eclipse; itll set before the Moon reaches the deepest area of the penumbra.

And what will you see? Thats hard to say. If were lucky, at the greatest point in the eclipse the northern part of the Moon will look darker than the southern side, but neither will be dark dark. More dusky, probably. It should certainly be noticeable, though. Still, it wont get blood red like it does during a total lunar eclipse, so dont expect that. This will be more subtle.

Im not even sure Ill be able to tell from where I am; the Moon will rise fully eclipsed and then get brighter over the next two hours. It kinda does that anyway as it rises and clears the murk near the horizon. Ill take a look anyway, because every eclipse is different, so you never know. Thats part of the fun!

The next total lunar eclipse is just a year from now, on January 31, 2018. That one does favor the west coast, so yall will get your chance. Still, it happens late at night so you might want to nap first.

And, of course, we have a major solar eclipse coming: on August 21, 2017 the path of that will sweep across the continental US in what may be the most viewed eclipse in history. And duh: Ill have a lot more about that coming soon. Stay tuned. Until then, enjoy tonights show!

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Will you be able to see tonight's deep penumbral lunar eclipse? - Blastr