Authors: X. L. Zhang, J.-E. Arlot and Z. Liu.<br />Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 532 , page A36<br />Published online: 19/07/2011<br />
Keywords:
techniques: photometric ; occultations ; planets and satellites: dynamical evolution and stability ; celestial mechanics.
Strong chaos induced by close encounters with Ceres and Vesta
Authors: J. Laskar, M. Gastineau, J.-B. Delisle, A. Farrés and A. Fienga.<br />Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 532 , page L4<br />Published online: 14/07/2011<br />
Keywords:
chaos ; methods: numerical ; celestial mechanics ; planets and satellites: dynamical evolution and stability ; minor planets, asteroids: individual: Ceres ; minor planets, asteroids: individual: Vesta.
The remnant of SN?1987A revealed at (sub-)mm wavelengths?
Authors: M. Laki?evi?, J. Th. van Loon, F. Patat, L. Staveley-Smith and G. Zanardo.<br />Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 532 , page L8<br />Published online: 22/07/2011<br />
Keywords:
ISM: supernova remnants ; ISM: individual objects: SN 1987A ; radio continuum: ISM ; submillimeter: ISM ; infrared: ISM.
Discovery of the X-ray selected galaxy cluster XMMU?J0338.8+0021 at z = 1.49
Authors: A. Nastasi, R. Fassbender, H. Böhringer, R. Šuhada, P. Rosati, D. Pierini, M. Verdugo, J. S. Santos, A. D. Schwope, A. de Hoon, J. Kohnert, G. Lamer, M. Mühlegger and H. Quintana.<br />Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 532 , page L6<br />Published online: 21/07/2011<br />
Keywords:
galaxies: clusters: general ; X-rays: general.
Inhomogeneities in molecular layers of Mira atmospheres???
Authors: M. Wittkowski, D. A. Boboltz, M. Ireland, I. Karovicova, K. Ohnaka, M. Scholz, F. van Wyk, P. Whitelock, P. R. Wood and A. A. Zijlstra.<br />Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 532 , page L7<br />Published online: 21/07/2011<br />
Keywords:
techniques: interferometric ; techniques: photometric ; stars: AGB and post-AGB ; stars: atmospheres ; stars: fundamental parameters ; stars: mass-loss.
The Na D profiles of nearby low-power radio sources: jets powering outflows?
Authors: M. D. Lehnert, C. Tasse, N. P. H. Nesvadba, P. N. Best and W. van Driel.<br />Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 532 , page L3<br />Published online: 14/07/2011<br />
Keywords:
galaxies: evolution ; galaxies: ISM ; galaxies: jets ; galaxies: kinematics and dynamics.
Our Twisted Galactic Ring
The twisted ring around the galactic center. Larger versions linked below. Images: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech
If you are having trouble visualizing the ring click the image. You can get larger versions of the images at the link below and I recommend you do so, they are really good.
From the ESA Herschel Space Observatory site (via Caltech).
New observations from the Herschel Space Observatory show a bizarre, twisted ring of dense gas at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Only a few portions of the ring, which stretches across more than 600 light-years, were known before. Herschel’s view reveals the entire ring for the first time, and a strange kink that has astronomers scratching their heads.
“We have looked at this region at the center of the Milky Way many times before in the infrared,” said Alberto Noriega-Crespo of NASA’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “But when we looked at the high-resolution images using Herschel’s sub-millimeter wavelengths, the presence of a ring is quite clear.” Noriega-Crespo is co-author of a new paper on the ring published in a recent issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The Herschel Space Observatory is a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions. It sees infrared and sub-millimeter light, which can readily penetrate through the dust hovering between the bustling center of our galaxy and us. Herschel’s detectors are also suited to see the coldest stuff in our galaxy.
When astronomers turned the giant telescope to look at the center of our galaxy, it captured unprecedented views of its inner ring — a dense tube of cold gas mixed with dust, where new stars are forming.
Astronomers were shocked by what they saw — the ring, which is in the plane of our galaxy, looked more like an infinity symbol with two lobes pointing to the side. In fact, they later determined the ring was torqued in the middle, so it only appears to have two lobes. To picture the structure, imagine holding a stiff, elliptical band and twisting the ends in opposite directions, so that one side comes up a bit.
“This is what is so exciting about launching a new space telescope like Herschel,” said Sergio Molinari of the Institute of Space Physics in Rome, Italy, lead author of the new paper. “We have a new and exciting mystery on our hands, right at the center of our own galaxy.”
Observations with the ground-based Nobeyama Radio Observatory in Japan complemented the Herschel results by determining the velocity of the denser gas in the ring. The radio results demonstrate that the ring is moving together as a unit, at the same speed relative to the rest of the galaxy.
The ring lies at the center of our Milky Way’s bar — a bar-shaped region of stars at the center of its spidery spiral arms. This bar is actually inside an even larger ring. Other galaxies have similar bars and rings. A classic example of a ring inside a bar is in the galaxy NGC 1097, imaged here by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images/2687-ssc2009-14a-Coiled-Creature-of-the-Night The ring glows brightly in the center of the galaxy’s large bar structure. It is not known if that ring has a kink or not.
The details of how bars and rings form in spiral galaxies are not well understood, but computer simulations demonstrate how gravitational interactions can produce the structures. Some theories hold that bars arise out of gravitational interactions between galaxies. For example, the bar at the center of our Milky Way might have been influenced by our largest neighbor galaxy, Andromeda.
The twist in the ring is not the only mystery to come out of the new Herschel observations. Astronomers say that the center of the torqued portion of the ring is not where the center of the galaxy is thought to be, but slightly offset. The center of our galaxy is considered to be around “Sagittarius A*,” where a massive black hole lies. According to Noriega-Crespo, it’s not clear why the center of the ring doesn’t match up with the assumed center of our galaxy. “There’s still so much about our galaxy to discover,” he said.
An abstract and full PDF of the Astrophysical Journal Letters study is online at http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5486.
Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA’s Herschel Project Office is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel’s three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
Landing Day – The End
Well this is it, NASA’s human spaceflight becomes a memory after the landing of Atlantis this morning. Thousands of people gave all they had to the various programs over the years and now their efforts are essentially being tossed away but those efforts were not for naught and they will be remembered by some of us. some would say well there are the other missions in the works, the sad truth is the human program was probably the toughest nut to crack and the rest could be cancelled quite easily. Fortunately there are other countries out there with the foresight to continue to build their programs.
We are hanging our hats on private industry and they will not disappoint I am sure as long as the economy doesn’t preclude it.
So hopefully this UStream video link works and we can watch live, I will admit I will be watching on NASA TV as well.
Four Moons for Pluto
Pluto and the now FOUR moons. Click for larger. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)
Cool, Pluto might be “just” a dwarf planet but it sports four moons and thanks to Hubble we know it. I am amazed even Hubble could spot the tiny moon P4.
The short version from Hubblesite (click for the Full Story and more images):
These two images, taken about a week apart by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, show four moons orbiting the distant, icy dwarf planet Pluto. The green circle in both snapshots marks the newly discovered moon, temporarily dubbed P4, found by Hubble in June. P4 is the smallest moon yet found around Pluto, with an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Pluto’s largest moon Charon is 746 miles (1,200 km) across. Nix and Hydra are 20 to 70 miles (32 to 113 km) wide. The new moon lies between the orbits of Nix and Hydra, two satellites discovered by Hubble in 2005. P4 completes an orbit around Pluto roughly every 31 days.
The new moon was first seen in a photo taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 on June 28, 2011. The sighting was confirmed in follow-up Hubble observations taken July 3 and July 18. P4, Nix, and Hydra are so small and so faint that scientists combined short and long exposures to create this image of Pluto and its entire moon system. The speckled background is camera “noise” produced during the long exposures. The linear features are imaging artifacts. The Hubble observations will help NASA’s New Horizons mission, scheduled to fly through the Pluto system in 2015. Space Telescope Science Institute director’s discretionary time was allocated to make the Hubble observations.
Let’s Take A Quick Look
Dawn captured this image of Vesta yesterday, July 17:
NASA/Dawn at about 9,500 miles
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned the first close-up image after beginning its orbit around the giant asteroid Vesta. On Friday, July 15, Dawn became the first probe to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The image taken for navigation purposes shows Vesta in greater detail than ever before. When Vesta captured Dawn into its orbit, there were approximately 9,900 miles (16,000 kilometers) between the spacecraft and asteroid. Engineers estimate the orbit capture took place at 10 p.m. PDT Friday, July 15 (1 a.m. EDT Saturday, July 16).
Vesta is 330 miles (530 kilometers) in diameter and the second most massive object in the asteroid belt. Ground- and space-based telescopes have obtained images of Vesta for about two centuries, but they have not been able to see much detail on its surface. “We are beginning the study of arguably the oldest extant primordial surface in the solar system,” said Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell from the University of California, Los Angeles. “This region of space has been ignored for far too long. So far, the images received to date reveal a complex surface that seems to have preserved some of the earliest events in Vesta’s history, as well as logging the onslaught that Vesta has suffered in the intervening eons.”
Vesta is thought to be the source of a large number of meteorites that fall to Earth. Vesta and its new NASA neighbor, Dawn, are currently approximately 117 million miles (188 million kilometers) away from Earth. The Dawn team will begin gathering science data in August. Observations will provide unprecedented data to help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system. The data also will help pave the way for future human space missions.
NASA - Check out the enlargement
Undocked
Click here to view the embedded video.
Atlantis has undocked from the ISS marking a milestone in extinguishing the US human space program. It’d kind of ironic really, considering tomorrow (July 20) is the anniversary of the first manned moon landing. Don’t forget to watch for the pair in the skies over head, you will never get another look at them together. You can find when to look by checking Heavens Above or Spaceweather.com
Oh by the way, the place I posted about last week (and they donated the riddle prize), Headlineshirts is running a sale on a moon themed tee shirt called the Moon Flamingo , it’s only $ 2.00 with the code SPACEBOOTS.
Washington Examiner Defends Light Bulb Misinformation… with More Misinformation | The Intersection
by Jon Winsor
The Washington Examiner’s Ron Arnold is a bit perturbed that anyone is calling out the misinformation campaign about the “incandescent light bulb ban.” So he’s trying to turn the tables:
Time claims: “Philips and other manufacturers are already making more efficient incandescent bulbs.” That’s short of an outright lie but it’s way beyond hogwash. What Philips is making is halogen lamps, which are incandescent alright, but complex electronic circuit devices about as close to an ordinary incandescent lamp as a third-degree burn, which you can efficiently obtain from a halogen lamp.
To all appearances it works just like an ordinary incandescent bulb, and looks almost the same (see upper right). If there are any weird, “complex electronic circuit devices” (CECDs), you can’t tell by looking at it.
Arnold continues:
Philips’ 36-page “product information” manual, shows on page 23 that their “Clickline” halogen lamp operates at temperatures as high as 480 degrees Fahrenheit (on the contacts), and 1,650 degrees F. (on the bulb). All aren’t that hot, but not by much. By the way, aluminum melts at 1,220.58 degrees Fahrenheit.
1,650 degrees F on the bulb? Melts Aluminum? Now you’ve got me scared. Only, not:
Shadows of phenotypes lost | Gene Expression
I have posted on the existence of blonde hair amongst some Melanesians before. There are natural chemical treatments as well as extreme malnutrition which can result in blonde hair in dark skinned people. The latter seems unlikely from the photos I’ve seen (the lightening of hair due to lack of food has been reported in African refugee camps). In regards to the former I’m confused as to why chemical treatments would be common among Oceanian people as disparate as Solomon Islanders and central desert Australian Aborigines, and yet not among many other east Eurasian populations.
In any case, in response to this comment below on Negrito appearance, I started using google images, and I stumbled upon something strange. In my Malaysian Negrito sample there’s a division between two ethnic groups, Kensiu and Jehai. The Kensiu have hardly any Austro-Asiatic or Austronesian admixture compared to the Jehai. When I looked for images of the Kensiu I came upon on this page, which seems to relate an experience of an aid worker in an isolated Malaysian village. The inhabitants were ethnically diverse, some Malays, but indigenous Negritos a well. Well, it turns out that some of ...
The shuttle as a flop (in numbers) | Gene Expression
Amos Zeeberg, the person you should pester (hopefully ineffectually!) when I’m not being nice to you in the comments, has an interesting opinion piece up lambasting the Shuttle program. Here are the numbers which jumped out at me (I knew the broad outlines, but nice to have precise numbers):
The most important thing to realize about the space shuttle program is that it is objectively a failure. The shuttle was billed as a reusable craft that could frequently, safely, and cheaply bring people and payloads to low Earth orbit. NASA originally said the shuttles could handle 65 launches per year; the most launches it actually did in a year was nine; over the life of the program, it averaged five per year. NASA predicted each shuttle launch would cost $50 million; they actually averaged $450 million. NASA administrators said the risk of catastrophic failure was around one in 100,000; NASA engineers put the number closer to one in a hundred; a more recent report from NASA said the risk on early flights was one in nine. The failure rate was two out of 135 in the tests that matter most.
To take the intangible value of human life out of ...
NCBI ROFL: When it comes to penis length and economic growth, size does matter. | Discoblog
Male organ and economic growth: does size matter?
“This paper explores the link between economic development and penile length between 1960 and 1985. It estimates an augmented Solow model utilizing the Mankiw-Romer-Weil 121 country dataset. The size of male organ is found to have an inverse U-shaped relationship with the level of GDP in 1985. It can alone explain over 15% of the variation in GDP. The GDP maximizing size is around 13.5 centimetres, and a collapse in economic development is identified as the size of male organ exceeds 16 centimetres. Economic growth between 1960 and 1985 is negatively associated with the size of male organ, and it alone explains 20% of the variation in GDP growth. With due reservations it is also found to be more important determinant of GDP growth than country’s political regime type. Controlling for male organ slows convergence and mitigates the negative effect of population growth on economic development slightly. Although all evidence is suggestive at this stage, the `male organ hypothesis’ put forward here is robust to exhaustive set of controls and rests on surprisingly strong correlation”
Bonus quotes from the main text:
“Only stylized explanations ...
The fiery descent of Atlantis… in 3D! | Bad Astronomy
Well, today is certainly shaping up to be "jaw-dropping pictures of Atlantis day"! How so? Well, I already posted the stunning image of the Orbiter’s descent as seen from space, and just the other day I mentioned how I was hoping Nathanial Burton-Bradford would make more 3D images… so guess what? Get out your red/cyan glasses: here’s the plasma-lit descent of Atlantis as seen from space in 3D!
Wow! The ISS astronauts took several pictures of the Orbiter as it descended. Nathanial took two of them from NASA’s spaceflight gallery and combined them to make this anaglyph. If you click between the two original shots (here and here) you can see they were taken a few seconds apart; the motion of the stars, the Earth, and the plasma plume change a little bit (click between them rapidly and you’ll actually get a feel of the motion. Weird).
The other pictures at the NASA page are amazing as well. Funny, when I first heard of the plasma picture I poked around NASA’s site and couldn’t find any other images, but clearly I either missed them or they weren’t up ...
Friday Fluff – July 22nd, 2011 | Gene Expression
1) Post from the past: Religion & IQ.
2) Weird search query of the week: “picture of john gillespie japanese sports.”
3) Comment of the week, in response to “Neanderthal-human mating, months later….”:
Humans mating with Neanderthals? Hmmm, could this be the first evidence of alcohol use?
4) And finally, your weekly fluff fix:
Newsflash: Gravity is Now a Little Weaker; Mass of Proton a Bit Smaller | 80beats
Whip out that red pen and make just a few…little…tweaks…
The physical world should feel a little more comfy now: Gravity is a little bit less than it was last Thursday. And the electromagnetic force? A smidge stronger.
Every four years, the National Institute of Science and Technology adjusts the official values of such natural constants to reflect more accurate measurements made possible by advancing technology. This week, in the latest update, the radius of a proton, the speed of light, the Planck constant, and many, many others have received facelifts that will decrease uncertainty in physics measurements. But this update will also affect units much closer to home: In October, the General Conference on Weights and Measures will vote on a measure to base the definition of a kilogram on the values of such natural constants, instead of the 130-year-old slug of platinum and iridium that currently holds the title.
For the time being, the current upgrade will likely trickle down to we armchair physicists once Google Calculator, the search giant’s handy-dandy constant provider, starts using the new numbers. Judging from its current value for the Planck constant, it’s still working ...
Dolphins Heal from Seemingly Fatal Injuries in Just Weeks | 80beats
Michael Zasloff, a researcher at the Georgetown University Medical Center, has discovered that bottlenose dolphins have “miraculous” healing powers: within several weeks they can heal from basketball-sized injuries, without any lasting disfigurements. Moreover, the injuries, presumably from clashes with sharks, don’t seem to cause the animals any apparent pain and don’t become visibly infected. Several abilities seem to be working together to promote healing; for example, Zasloff hypothesizes that bottlenose dolphins prevent bleeding to death by restricting blood flow to certain areas of their bodies, giving large gashes time to clot.
[Read more (and see pictures) at LiveScience.]
Image: Flickr/mattk1979
Blog Shout-out: Planet of the Apes | Cosmic Variance
Last year, friend and fine Philly science writer Faye Flam wrote a guest post for us here at Cosmic Variance, in which she chronicled her experiences writing about climate science as part of her brief at the Philadelphia Inquirer. You may recall that her articles on this hot-button topic led to quite over-the-top responses, including a death threat. And our comment section after her post was certainly lively, although relatively well-behaved.
Well, now Faye is tackling a new controversial (although it shouldn’t be) topic. While continuing with her regular writing, she has, over the last few months, begun writing a blog for the Inquirer on the topic of evolution. Titled Planet of the Apes, the blog features Faye’s writing paired up with illustrations from the paper’s staff editorial cartoonist, Tony Auth.
It’s a fun read, and covers current news in evolution as well as taking on some of the questions that come up when discussing the topic with those who, for whatever reason, are resistant to this established branch of scientific knowledge. Take a look at the back catalog to see some of these.
I wish Faye the best of luck with this new endeavor, and hope that we’ll see another guest post here from her soon.
