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Astronomy C13 – 2014-09-30: The Life and Death of Stars – Video

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Danzig

Astronomy C13 - 2014-09-30: The Life and Death of Stars
Astronomy C13, 001 - Fall 2014 Origins: from the Big Bang to the Emergence of Humans - Charles Marshall, Eliot Quataert All Rights Reserved.

By: UCBerkeley

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Astronomy C13 - 2014-09-30: The Life and Death of Stars - Video

7th International Meeting of Astronomy and Astronautics – Part 3 – Video

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Danzig

7th International Meeting of Astronomy and Astronautics - Part 3
Part 3 Solemn Session of the City Council of Campos dos Goytacazes during the 7th International Meeting of Astronomy and Astronautics on April 11th, 2014 Sesso Solene na Cmara dos Vereadores...

By: Marcelo Souza

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7th International Meeting of Astronomy and Astronautics - Part 3 - Video

Kepler’s New Astronomy, Q+A – Video

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Danzig

Kepler #39;s New Astronomy, Q+A
Q+A on the New Astronomy.

By: LaRouchePAC Science

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Kepler's New Astronomy, Q+A - Video

Astronomy: To catch a cosmic ray

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Danzig

The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina has spent almost ten years looking for the source of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays but to no avail. Now the observatory faces an uncertain future.

01 October 2014

Argentina, famed for its beef and wine, is also home to the Pierre Auger Observatory, which uses water-filled plastic tanks spaced across the plains of Pampa Amarilla at the foot of the Andes to search for the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

Katia Moskvitch

Each canister is filled with 12,000 litres of purified water, which produces a faint but detectable streak of blue-ish light when a charged particle passes through. Most lie on land owned by local farmers. This tank has been on Anselmo Francisco Jake's land for about two decades.

Katia Moskvitch

In addition to the tanks, the observatory has 27 fluorescence telescopes grouped at four sites around the edges of the array. These telescopes scan the skies for the faint ultraviolet light produced when the high-energy particles rip through the atmosphere.

Katia Moskvitch

The cosmic rays never reach the ground. Instead, they hit an air molecule high in the atmosphere, blasting loose billions of secondary particles in an 'air shower' that continues to cascade downwards along the cosmic ray's original path. These air-shower particles are the ones generally detected by Augers 1,600 tanks, shown as yellow dots superimposed over their actual location near the town of Malarge.

Cosmus: Randy Landsberg, Dinoj Surendran and Mark SubbaRao (Univ. Chicago/Adler Planetarium)/AIRES: Sergio Sciutto/PAO (CC BY-SA)

Astronomy: To catch a cosmic ray

Astronomy: Wild ducks take flight in open cluster

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Danzig

The Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile has taken this beautiful image, dappled with blue stars, of one of the most star-rich open clusters currently known -- Messier 11, also known as NGC 6705 or the Wild Duck Cluster.

Messier 11 is an open cluster, sometimes referred to as a galactic cluster, located around 6000 light-years away in the constellation of Scutum (The Shield). It was first discovered by German astronomer Gottfried Kirch in 1681 at the Berlin Observatory, appearing as nothing more than a fuzzy blob through the telescope. It wasn't until 1733 that the blob was first resolved into separate stars by the Reverend William Derham in England, and Charles Messier added it to his famous catalogue in 1764.

Messier was a comet hunter and the catalogue came into being as he was frustrated by constantly observing fixed, diffuse objects that looked like comets (for example, objects that we now know to be clusters, galaxies and nebulae). He wanted a record in order to avoid accidentally observing them again and confusing them with possible new comets. This particular stellar cluster was noted down as the eleventh such object -- hence the name of Messier 11.

Open clusters are typically found lying in the arms of spiral galaxies or in the denser regions of irregular galaxies, where star formation is still common. Messier 11 is one of the most star-rich and compact of the open clusters, being almost 20 light-years across and home to close to 3000 stars. Open clusters are different to globular clusters, which tend to be very dense, tightly bound by gravity, and contain hundreds of thousands of very old stars -- some of which are nearly as old as the Universe itself.

Studying open clusters is great way to test theories of stellar evolution, as the stars form from the same initial cloud of gas and dust and are therefore very similar to one another -- they all have roughly the same age, chemical composition, and are all the same distance away from Earth. However, each star in the cluster has a different mass, with the more massive stars evolving much faster than their lower mass counterparts as they use up all of their hydrogen much sooner.

In this way, direct comparisons between the different evolutionary stages can be made within the same cluster: for example, does a 10 million year old star with the same mass as the Sun evolve in a different way to another star that is the same age, but half as massive? In this sense, open clusters are the closest thing astronomers have to "laboratory conditions."

Because the stars within open clusters are very loosely bound to one another, individuals are very susceptible to being ejected from the main group due to the effect of gravity from neighbouring celestial objects. NGC 6705 is already at least 250 million years old, so in a few more million years it is likely that this Wild Duck formation will disperse, and the cluster will break up and merge into its surroundings.*

This image was taken by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.

Notes

*The alternative and evocative name for NGC 6705, the Wild Duck Cluster, came about in the 19th century. When the cluster was seen through a small telescope it was noticed that the brightest stars formed an open triangle pattern on the sky that resembled ducks flying in formation.

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Astronomy: Wild ducks take flight in open cluster

Gift has teen seeing stars

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Danzig

Act caps of successful space camp EMMA BAILEY

EMMA BAILEY/ Fairfax NZ

HUGE PRIZE: Emilie Agnew with the telescope she was gifted after attending space camp and Robert McTague, from the South Canterbury Astronomers Group.

A potential new star has been born in the astronomy world thanks to the generosity of a Timaru woman.

Last month, a Space Camp was held at Raincliff Camp and, to fundraise, a raffle was held with the winner receiving a $849 telescope donated by New Zealand Telescopes.

Freedom Ramage was at the supermarket and bought a ticket.

When South Canterbury Astronomers Group (SCAG) founder Robert McTague called her to say she had won the telescope, she asked if he knew of a young person passionate about astronomy.

"I thought I could have a lot of fun with it but not as much as someone that is passionate about astronomy and especially someone that went to the camp," Ramage said.

"As soon as I said did he know someone, he said a name straight away, a 15-year-old girl that would love it. I am a Christian so I don't believe in keeping everything for yourself."

Emilie Agnew attended the camp and was delighted to get the telescope.

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Gift has teen seeing stars

Fidelity Labs: Financial Services Tech Incubator

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Danzig

Artificial intelligence, robotics, and wearables are among the many tech innovations percolating in Fidelity Labs, the Boston tech incubator for Fidelity Investments.

Artificial intelligence, robotics, and wearables are not typically the first things that come to mind when considering the worldwide operations of a financial services firm like Fidelity Investments. Yet these are among the many tech innovations percolating in Fidelity Labs, the Boston incubator for Fidelity Investments.

Such labs may be commonplace in technology companies that live and die by their product innovations. And innovation labs might become more commonplace in the next five years as a wide range of industries attempt to keep ahead of technological change. So, perhaps what's most surprising about Fidelity Labs is not that it's new, but that it's been in operation since 1998.

Fidelity Labs employs 80 people worldwide in incubation spaces in the US, China, and Ireland. It was founded by the company's chairman, Edward C. "Ned" Johnson III, who was concerned that day-to-day technology operations were keeping the company from exploring new ideas, said Hadley Stern, VP of Fidelity Labs, in his presentation at the InformationWeek IT Leadership Summit on Tuesday. The IT Leadership Summit is one of several workshops being held this week during the Interop New York IT Conference and Expo.

"We run proof of concepts, pilots, and incubators," said Stern. "Anything that's unclear, whether it will come into the customer base or to the enterprise, we're looking at it."

The organization worked on Fidelity's mobile app and more recently has been exploring artificial intelligence, robotics, wearables, gamification, pervasive video, and cloud offerings.

Read the rest of this article on InformationWeek.

Susan Nunziata works closely with the site's content team and contributors to guide topics, direct strategies, and pursue new ideas, all in the interest of sharing practicable insights with our community. Nunziata was most recently Director of Editorial for ... View Full Bio

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Fidelity Labs: Financial Services Tech Incubator

PowerMILL Focus Aerospace Through Curve – Video

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Danzig

PowerMILL Focus Aerospace Through Curve
Projection through a curve offers much more control and flexibility to 5 axis machining. By influencing the machine head movements as well as tip contact poi...

By: Delcam Advanced Manufacturing Solutions

B/E Aerospace at Oracle OpenWorld 2014 #2 – Video

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Danzig

B/E Aerospace at Oracle OpenWorld 2014 #2

By: OraclePartnerNetwork

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B/E Aerospace at Oracle OpenWorld 2014 #2 - Video

Q20. Are women who have sex with women at risk for HIV infection? – Video

Posted on October 1, 2014 by ev1

Q20. Are women who have sex with women at risk for HIV infection?
From the HIV Avatar Project, posted by the Department of Behavioral Science and Community Health at the University of Florida hiv-avatar-project.com http://b...