'Milky Way explorer' tours the solar system

Posted on by

Imagine seeing the Sun, planets, and a myriad other objects in our Solar System as you have never seen them before -- in invisible radio light! That is the experience you will get through the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's (NRAO) newly released Solar System installment of its popular Milky Way Explorer, an online tour of our interstellar neighborhood guided by the actual astronomers who explore it using radio waves.

Through an entertaining and informative series of videos, NRAO's Science Visualization Team presents multimedia-rich tours of the radio Sun as well as many of the planets, moons, and asteroids that orbit it. At each stop along the way, planetary radio astronomers reveal the new science and exciting details we have learned about our Solar System neighbors through the use of radio telescopes.

Unlike familiar optical telescopes, which can only study objects illuminated by our Sun and other stars, radio telescopes can see the otherwise invisible cold, dark features in space. This includes the faint radio light that is naturally emitted by the molecules and chemicals that make up the atmospheres of planets and certain moons in our Solar System.

Radio dishes, when paired with powerful radar transmitters on Earth, can also reveal hidden landscapes, such as the Moon's dust-layered surface and Venus's alien features shrouded behind its thick clouds.

The Milky Way Explorer, which was launched in 2013, also includes dozens more videos showcasing the diverse radio astronomy studies of our spiral island of stars, stellar nurseries, and dark matter. A third set of interviews and animations is scheduled for 2015 to share more radio astronomy discoveries made inside our Galaxy and among the nearest neighboring galaxies of our Universe.

https://public.nrao.edu/explorer/milkyway/TheMilkyWayExplorer.php

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

More here:

'Milky Way explorer' tours the solar system

NASA's WISE Mission Shuffles Sun's Nearest Stellar Neighbors

Posted on by

For decades, the ten stars closest to our own Sun made a pretty static list. Ideas about where to send the first interstellar probes tended to focus on the same three or four star systems which all lie well within ten light years.

But in the last few years,

NASAs WISE spacecraft, in particular, has caused celestial cartographers to redraw their star maps to include recently discovered cooler and lower mass stars and even brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are conventionally defined as stellar-type objects from between 13 to 74 Jupiter masses that are simply too small to ignite thermonuclear burning of hydrogen in their cores. However, some brown dwarfs are thought to burn deuterium.

Artists conception of the binary system WISE J104915.57-531906 with the Sun in the background. Credit: Janella Williams, Penn State University.

The new third and fourth nearest stellar objects are now known to actually be cool brown dwarfs found last year with WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission data.

Id like to visit Wise1049-5319 and Wise0855-0714 most because I discovered them, said Kevin Luhman, an astronomer at Penn State University. Wise1049-5319 is a binary system in which the companions have masses of roughly 50 times the mass of Jupiter, he says, and as far as we know, Wise0855-0714 is a single object with a probable mass between 3 and 10 times the mass of Jupiter.

Its surface temperature is similar to the North Pole, making it the coldest object seen outside the solar system, probably with clouds of water ice in its atmosphere, said Luhman. If a probe visited either system, one would want it to come within one [Earth-Sun] distance or less to study these brown dwarfs in detail.

But undoubtedly the first stop would be nearby Proxima Centauri at only 4.2 light years away in the Alpha Centauri star system. As an M-spectral type red dwarf, it remains closest known star to earth, but is widely-separated from Alpha Centauri A & B the next nearest stars to Earth.

At only 6 light years away, Barnards star in the constellation of Ophiuchus is the second closest stellar system to Earth. And although this high-velocity red dwarf star has a long history of astronomers who have claimed that it harbors planets. No such detections have thus far been corroborated, however.

The nearest stars are still the G, M, and K spectral types, says Davy Kirkpatrick, an infrared astronomer at Caltech. But when you start getting to twenty down the list in terms of distance, he says, you start picking up L and T brown dwarfs, about the radius of Jupiter, that werent known to exist 15 years ago.

Read this article:

NASA's WISE Mission Shuffles Sun's Nearest Stellar Neighbors

New Orfeo. Orfeo’s aria "Dall’amore piu sventurato" Arno Raunig – Video

Posted on by


New Orfeo. Orfeo #39;s aria "Dall #39;amore piu sventurato" Arno Raunig
Awesome film "A.I. Artificial Intelligence", awesome voice Arno Raunig, awesome song Orfeo #39;s aria "Dall #39;amore piu sventurato". The boy, as Orfeo, asks to return Mother, but she can only live...

By: Victoria AGOS

Read more here:

New Orfeo. Orfeo's aria "Dall'amore piu sventurato" Arno Raunig - Video

Aerospace Monte Carlo Simulation in CATIA V5 – How Much Could You Be Saving? – Video

Posted on by


Aerospace Monte Carlo Simulation in CATIA V5 - How Much Could You Be Saving?
The Aerospace industry is fraught with difficulties. Building such large and complex assemblies is not easy, especially with each piece of the assembly being...

By: Ben Reese

Read the original here:

Aerospace Monte Carlo Simulation in CATIA V5 - How Much Could You Be Saving? - Video

DayZ SA 0.49 Update | SMERSH VEST | RUS/NATO HELI CRASH SITE | COM Event 2 |German HD – Video

Posted on by


DayZ SA 0.49 Update | SMERSH VEST | RUS/NATO HELI CRASH SITE | COM Event 2 |German HD
Hallo Leute, hier Part 3 zum 0.49 Stable Update und zum Com Event 2, Hoffe es gefllt euch wenn ja last doch ein Like und Abo da. P.s. schaut auch mal Bei Ot...

By: RC PHiL

Follow this link:

DayZ SA 0.49 Update | SMERSH VEST | RUS/NATO HELI CRASH SITE | COM Event 2 |German HD - Video

Rapid Trident Drills in Ukraine: NATO members and allies show muscle in the face of Russian threat – Video

Posted on by


Rapid Trident Drills in Ukraine: NATO members and allies show muscle in the face of Russian threat
The annual drill, which is taking place in the Yavoriv training centre near Ukraine #39;s border with Poland, was initially scheduled for July, but was put back ...

By: UKRAINE TODAY

Follow this link:

Rapid Trident Drills in Ukraine: NATO members and allies show muscle in the face of Russian threat - Video

Un progetto di Business Sociale, nato dall’OST di Generazioni in rete – Video

Posted on by


Un progetto di Business Sociale, nato dall #39;OST di Generazioni in rete
L #39;Open Space Technology una metodologia innovativa che permette di creare dei gruppi di lavoro e progettazione condivisa, stimolando l #39;ispirazione, la creativit e il problem solving. Per...

By: Generazioni in Rete

See more here:

Un progetto di Business Sociale, nato dall'OST di Generazioni in rete - Video