J. F Kennedy "Bullet"

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Hi

Still the mystery surrounding assassination of J.F.Kennedy 1963, its surprising with developments on science that nobody has come up with solution as to how many/who was involved (weapon's fired). With all the still photo's and newsreels available, bullet(s) would be in pictures! And sho

P-91 Welding

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ASTM A335-09a, paragraph 9.3 specifies a hardness range for the finished materail (Post heat treatment), however, both ASME B31.1 and ASME Section I do not specify a maximum hardness for PWHT of the welds. Is there an industry standard (Refinery, Power, etc) that establishes a "best practice" hardne

Getting Rid of House Odors

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The property in question was rented to people who had a large dog. The two story house, with a full concrete basement, is now vacant. A strong unpleasant smell is present throughout the house, but more especially on the main floor near the front entrance door. I tried sopping the entrance area floo

Rust Converter

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What would cause a gallon of freshly prepared rust converter to bulge? Would the gas be hydrogen? Is this cause by metals in the formula? Which ones?Can something be done to prevent this bulging? Could the bulk of rust converter still be used? thanks!

Advice Regarding Car Engine Oil

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Could you please help and advice me to choosing the better and the good car engine oil. Frankly I don't understand dose there any effect if I replace by another oil type for my car engine. Normally I send my car to the agency to replace the oil after complete 5000km/h is this right or I can use the

Whey Protein

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Want to know what is "Whey Protein"? and all of the chemicals and toxic things in it?

Any reliable online source for online studying?

U.S. Government Granted Exemptions after Oil Leak

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*Video: best and worst case scenarios from homeland security secretary janet napolitano in biloxi, miss., last week.

In this video, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano discusses worst and best case scenarios while in Biloxi, Miss., last week. McClatchy media has uncovered an astounding bit of information, given the devastation that is happening in the Gulf of Mexico.   There should, right now, be a moratorium on new drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico, or at least that is what we have been led to believe.   It’s not the truth, though. Exemptions for new drilling are being granted dirty oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, even while the current disaster is still unfolding.*

WASHINGTON — Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama’s vow that his administration would launch a “relentless response effort” to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling

The exemptions, known as “categorical exclusions,” were granted by the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a BP exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet.

“Is there a moratorium on off shore drilling or not?” asked Peter Galvin, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group that discovered the administration’s continued approval of the exemptions. “Possibly the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has occurred and nothing appears to have changed.”

MMS officials said the exemptions are continuing to be issued because they do not represent final drilling approval.”

Or, we are not being told the truth about what the U.S. government is really doing or intending to do about offshore drilling.  Now that we know President Obama doesn’t appear to be serious about fighting climate change, he was probably never serious about a “clean green economy” either.  Oil and gas and coal run the U.S. economy, they control our Congress, and it appears that they also control all facets of our government. We are a corporation controlled economy, and this is led by big fossil fuel companies and giant banks. It’s time for some real reform in the U.S.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/07/93761/despite-spill-feds-still-giving.html#none#ixzz0nhnSvVUY

Could our government’s plan be to completely trash the Atlantic Ocean? That’s what it looks like. We now know without a doubt that big corporations like Transocean, Halliburton, and BP don’t care anything about our environment. Their product is dirty and polluting, from the moment it’s pumped out [...]

NASA Deploys Planes, Targets Satellites to Aid in Oil Spill Response

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NASA sent its ER-2 research aircraft from California to Texas on May 6 for a series of flights to map the oil spill and coastal areas with an advanced instrument onboardNASA has mobilized its remote-sensing assets to help assess the spread and impact of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico at the request of U.S. disaster response agencies.

As part of the national response to the spill, NASA deployed its instrumented research aircraft the Earth Resources-2 (ER-2) to the Gulf on May 6. The agency is also making extra satellite observations and conducting additional data processing to assist the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the Department of Homeland Security in monitoring the spill.

"NASA has been asked to help with the first response to the spill, providing imagery and data that can detect the presence, extent, and concentration of oil," said Michael Goodman, program manager for natural disasters in the Earth Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "We also have longer-term work we have started in the basic research of oil in the ocean and its impacts on sensitive coastal ecosystems."

At NOAA's request, NASA sent the ER-2 outfitted with the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) and the Cirrus Digital Camera System to collect detailed images of the Gulf of Mexico and its threatened coastal wetlands. The camera system is supplied by NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

NASA pilots flew the ER-2 from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California to a temporary base of operations at Johnson Space Center's Ellington Field in Houston. Along the way, the plane collected data over the Gulf coast and the oil slick to support spill mapping and document the condition of coastal wetlands before oil landfall. The ER-2 made a second flight on May 10 and more flights are planned.

The AVIRIS team led by Robert Green of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is measuring how the water absorbs and reflects light in order to map the location and concentration of oil, which separates into a widespread, thin sheen and smaller thick patches. Satellites can document the overall extent of the oil but cannot distinguish between the sheen and thick patches. While the sheen represents most of the area of the slick, the majority of the oil is concentrated in the thicker part. AVIRIS should be able to identify the thicker parts, helping oil spill responders know where to deploy oil-skimming boats and absorbent booms.

Researchers also plan to measure changes in vegetation along the coastline and assess where and how oil may be affecting marshes, swamps, bayous, and beaches that are difficult to survey on the ground. The combination of satellite and airborne imagery will assist NOAA in forecasting the trajectory of the oil and in documenting changes in the ecosystem.

From the outset of the spill on April 20, NASA has provided satellite images to federal agencies from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites; the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on Terra; and the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) and Hyperion instruments on NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. All of these observations have been funneled to the Hazards Data Distribution System operated by the USGS.

With its very wide field of view, MODIS provides a big-picture of the oil spill and its evolution roughly twice per day. The Hyperion, ALI, and ASTER instruments observe over much smaller areas in finer detail but less often (every 2-5 days).

Other NASA satellite and airborne instruments are collecting observations of the spill to advance basic research and to explore future remote-sensing capabilities. From space, the Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) on Terra and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on Aqua as well as the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) on the joint NASA-France CALIPSO satellite are collecting data.

Another NASA research aircraft, the King Air B-200 from Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., was previously scheduled to fly to California this week but changed its flight plan to collect data over the area of the oil spill. It completed its first flight over the spill on May 10.

The High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) onboard the plane uses pulses of laser light to locate and identify particles in the environment. Led by Chris Hostetler of Langley, HSRL provides measurements similar to those from the CALIOP instrument on CALIPSO. Data from these space-based and airborne lidars will be used to investigate the thickness of the oil spill below the surface of the water and evaluate the impacts of dispersants used to break up the oil.

"Although NASA's primary expertise is in using remote-sensing instruments to conduct basic research on the entire Earth system, our observations can be used for societal benefit in response to natural and technological disasters like this oil spill," said Goodman.

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NASA Joins in National Lab Day Events to Promote ‘Educate to Innovate’ Campaign

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Rockets Aloft

Fifth grade students hold their model rockets aloft as they pose for a photo with Aerospace Education Specialist Elicia Fullwood, left, at the Langdon Education Campus, Tuesday, May 11, 2010 in Washington. NASA staff, including Administrator Bolden, visited Langdon in support of National Lab Day to bring hands-on learning to students across the country.

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X-ray Discovery Points to Location of Missing Matter

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Artist concept of the so-called Sculptor WallUsing observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton, astronomers have announced a robust detection of a vast reservoir of intergalactic gas about 400 million light years from Earth. This discovery is the strongest evidence yet that the "missing matter" in the nearby Universe is located in an enormous web of hot, diffuse gas.

This missing matter -- which is different from dark matter -- is composed of baryons, the particles, such as protons and electrons, that are found on the Earth, in stars, gas, galaxies, and so on. A variety of measurements of distant gas clouds and galaxies have provided a good estimate of the amount of this "normal matter" present when the universe was only a few billion years old. However, an inventory of the much older, nearby universe has turned up only about half as much normal matter, an embarrassingly large shortfall.

The mystery then is where does this missing matter reside in the nearby universe? This latest work supports predictions that it is mostly found in a web of hot, diffuse gas known as the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM). Scientists think the WHIM is material left over after the formation of galaxies, which was later enriched by elements blown out of galaxies.

"Evidence for the WHIM is really difficult to find because this stuff is so diffuse and easy to see right through," said Taotao Fang of the University of California at Irvine and lead author of the latest study. "This differs from many areas of astronomy where we struggle to see through obscuring material."

To look for the WHIM, the researchers examined X-ray observations of a rapidly growing supermassive black hole known as an active galactic nucleus, or AGN. This AGN, which is about two billion light years away, generates immense amounts of X-ray light as it pulls matter inwards.

Lying along the line of sight to this AGN, at a distance of about 400 million light years, is the so-called Sculptor Wall. This "wall", which is a large diffuse structure stretching across tens of millions of light years, contains thousands of galaxies and potentially a significant reservoir of the WHIM if the theoretical simulations are correct. The WHIM in the wall should absorb some of the X-rays from the AGN as they make their journey across intergalactic space to Earth.

Using new data from Chandra and previous observations with both Chandra and XMM-Newton, absorption of X-rays by oxygen atoms in the WHIM has clearly been detected by Fang and his colleagues. The characteristics of the absorption are consistent with the distance of the Sculptor Wall as well as the predicted temperature and density of the WHIM.

This result gives scientists confidence that the WHIM will also be found in other large-scale structures.

Several previous claimed detections of the hot component of the WHIM have been controversial because the detections had been made with only one X-ray telescope and the statistical significance of many of the results had been questioned.

"Having good detections of the WHIM with two different telescopes is really a big deal," said co-author David Buote, also from the University of California at Irvine. "This gives us a lot of confidence that we have truly found this missing matter."

In addition to having corroborating data from both Chandra and XMM- Newton, the new study also removes another uncertainty from previous claims. Because the distance of the Sculptor Wall is already known, the statistical significance of the absorption detection is greatly enhanced over previous "blind" searches. These earlier searches attempted to find the WHIM by observing bright AGN at random directions on the sky, in the hope that their line of sight intersects a previously undiscovered large-scale structure.

Confirmed detections of the WHIM have been made difficult because of its extremely low density. Using observations and simulations, scientists calculate the WHIM has a density equivalent to only 6 protons per cubic meter. For comparison, the interstellar medium -- the very diffuse gas in between stars in our galaxy -- typically has about a million hydrogen atoms per cubic meter.

"Evidence for the WHIM has even been much harder to find than evidence for dark matter, which is invisible and can only be detected indirectly," said Fang.

There have been important detections of possible WHIM in the nearby Universe with relatively low temperatures of about 100,000 degrees using ultraviolet observations and relatively high temperature WHIM of about 10 million degrees using observations of X-ray emission in galaxy clusters. However, these are expected to account for only a relatively small fraction of the WHIM. The X-ray absorption studies reported here probe temperatures of about a million degrees where most of the WHIM is predicted to be found.

These results appear in the May 10th issue of The Astrophysical Journal. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

More information, including images and other multimedia, can be found at:

http://chandra.harvard.edu

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Rock and Roll: Titan’s Gem Tumbler

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The left-hand image, obtained by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, shows rounded rocks from the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.
The left-hand image, obtained by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, shows rounded rocks from the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. Huygens rode with NASA's Cassini spacecraft to the Saturn system. The right-hand image, taken by amateur photographer Sandra M. Matheson, shows river rocks on Earth. › Larger image
It appears flash flooding has paved streambeds in the Xanadu region of Saturn's moon Titan with thousands of sparkling crystal balls of ice, according to scientists with NASA's Cassini spacecraft. By analyzing the way the terrain has scattered radar beams, scientists deduce the spheres measure at least a few centimeters (inches) and maybe up to a couple of meters (yards) in diameter. The spheres likely originated as part of water-ice bedrock in higher terrain in Xanadu.

"What we believe happened in this area is a lot like what creates polished river rocks on Earth," said Alice Le Gall, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the lead author of the study, which used the Cassini radar instrument. "Bouncing downstream smoothes out the edges of rocks."

As foothill residents know in southern California and other areas, sudden rains can trigger mudslides and flooding at the mountainous fringes of desert areas. Those flows can pick up boulders and debris and tumble them downstream. On Titan, the flows appear to have occurred periodically for eons, on a catastrophic scale. The process on Titan, however, involves rain made of liquid methane and ethane, rather than Earth's water rain. Titan's rocks are believed to be made primarily of water ice frozen into a hard mass about minus 180 degrees Celsius (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit), rather than Earth's mineral rocks.

Earth-like river rocks have already been observed on Titan at the landing site of the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, near the equator in the borderland between the Adiri and Shangri-la regions. The landing site also showed signs of flash flooding that deposited cobblestones about 2 to 20 centimeters (1 to 8 inches) in diameter.

But the spidery channels in this southern lowland part of Xanadu looked brighter to Cassini's radar instrument than the Huygens landing area. In fact, the channels, which were scanned by Cassini in May 2008, are among the brightest features ever seen on Titan by the radar instrument.

In a paper now available online in the journal Icarus, Le Gall and colleagues concluded that the most plausible explanation for the extreme brightness of the Xanadu channels was a collection of transparent spherical sediments, packed more tightly together than the cobblestones at the Huygens landing site. The effect would be similar to bejeweling an area with light-catching rhinestones.

The spheres appear to be made of water ice – possibly doped with ammonia – that would look bright to the microwaves used by Cassini's radar. Spheres are good at sending light back in the direction it came from. This property has actually led manufacturers to use plastic spheres in reflective paints and tape, Le Gall said.

Xanadu may be an especially good gem grinder because of its broad expanse and gentle southward slope. Flows could have traveled long distances there and tumbled the chunks for hundreds of kilometers (miles). The subtle work to shape them into spheres could have come from fine grit rubbing against the rocks in the flowing methane. Or, ice may be malleable in Titan's cold temperatures, deforming plastically during the collisions rather than fracturing. The flows that transported these icy spheres probably traveled around 1 meter per second (2 mph).

"It's been really hard for a long time for people to understand why Xanadu is so bright," said Steve Wall, a radar team member at JPL. "You might not expect these kinds of geometries in a natural setting, but we believe this can explain the enigma."

The radar team plans to continue looking for other instances of small, smooth spheres in nature to increase their confidence about the explanation. They also said more study is needed on the mechanical properties of water ice at such cold temperatures.

"Here is yet another example of Titan as a world with Earth-like processes," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL. "As the seasons change on Titan, maybe we'll get a chance to see methane flow through some of the river channels."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

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Herschel Finds a Hole in Space

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The dark hole seen in the green cloud at the top of this image was likely carved out by multiple jets and blasts of radiation. Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Toledo

The Herschel Space Observatory has made an unexpected discovery: a gaping hole in the clouds surrounding a batch of young stars. The hole has provided astronomers with a surprising glimpse into the end of the star-forming process.

Stars are born hidden in dense clouds of dust and gas, which can now be studied in remarkable detail with Herschel, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation. Although jets and winds of gas have been seen streaming from young stars in the past, it has always been a mystery exactly how a star uses the jets to blow away its surroundings and emerge from its birth cloud. For the first time, Herschel may be seeing an unexpected step in this process.

A cloud of bright reflective gas known to astronomers as NGC 1999 sits next to a black patch of sky. For most of the 20th century, such black patches were known to be dense clouds of dust and gas that block light from passing through.

When Herschel looked in its direction to study nearby young stars, astronomers were surprised to see the cloud continued to look black, which shouldn't have been the case. Herschel's infrared eyes are designed to see into such clouds. Either the cloud was immensely dense or something was wrong.

Investigating further using ground-based telescopes, astronomers found the same story no matter how they looked: this patch looks black not because it is a dense pocket of gas but because it is truly empty. Something has blown a hole right through the cloud.

"No one has ever seen a hole like this," says Tom Megeath of the University of Toledo, Ohio, the principal investigator of the research. "It's as surprising as knowing you have worms tunneling under your lawn, but finding one morning that they have created a huge, yawning pit."

The astronomers think that the hole must have been opened when the narrow jets of gas from some of the young stars in the region punctured the sheet of dust and gas that forms NGC 1999. The powerful radiation from a nearby adolescent star may also have helped to clear the hole. Whatever the precise chain of events, it could be an important glimpse into the way newborn stars rip apart their birth clouds.

Other members of the research team include Thomas Stanke of the European Southern Observatory, Germany; Amy Stutz of the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany, and the Steward Observatory, Tucson; John Tobin of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Lori Allen of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson; Ali Babar of the NASA Herschel Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; and Will Fischer and Erin Kryukova, University of Toledo, Ohio.

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.

More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu , http://www.nasa.gov/herschelhttp://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html.

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Hubble Camera Arrives in Time for JPL Open House

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The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2
The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 is delivered to JPL on May 11, 2010. The camera, on loan from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, was retrieved from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 2009 by space-walking astronauts. During its 15 years on Hubble, the camera took many colorful, iconic and scientifically rich space images. › Larger image

The historic Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, developed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, has arrived at JPL in advance of this weekend's annual Open House. Known informally as "The Camera That Saved Hubble," the baby-grand-piano-sized camera is on temporary loan from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington.

"It was 17 years ago this month that this camera left JPL on its way to Earth orbit," said John Trauger of JPL, NASA's principal investigator for the camera. "It looks almost brand new - which is remarkable when you think it spent over 15 years orbiting 353 miles straight up."

The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 was the workhorse camera on Hubble after being added to the observatory in December 1993 to correct an imaging problem created by the telescope's faulty primary mirror. During its tenure aboard Hubble, the camera produced most of the stunning deep space images ever released. Its high image resolution and quality are some of the reasons the camera became the space telescope's most requested instrument during its operational lifetime. Logging 15 years aboard the observatory, the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 was the Hubble Space Telescope's longest serving instrument.

Space-walking astronauts retrieved the camera during the final Hubble servicing mission in May 2009.

More information about the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 is at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wfpc2. An image gallery contains some of the camera's historic photos.

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NASA Invites Public to Take Virtual Walk on Moon

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Screen capture of the Moon Zoo site.More than 37 years after humans last walked on the moon, planetary scientists are inviting members of the public to return to the lunar surface as “virtual astronauts” to help answer important scientific questions.

No spacesuit or rocket ship is required -- all visitors need to do is go to http://www.moonzoo.org and be among the first to see the lunar surface in unprecedented detail. New high-resolution images, taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), offer exciting clues to unveil or reveal the history of the moon and our solar system.

“We need Web users around the world to help us interpret these stunning new images of the lunar surface,” said Chris Lintott of Oxford University and chair of the Citizen Science Alliance. “If you only spend five minutes on the site counting craters you’ll be making a valuable contribution to science and, who knows, you might run across a Russian spacecraft.”

Scientists are particularly interested in knowing how many craters appear in a particular region of the moon in order to determine the age and depth of the lunar surface (regolith). Fresh craters left by recent impacts provide clues about the potential risks from meteor strikes on the moon and on Earth.

“We hope to address key questions about the impact bombardment history of the moon and discover sites of geological interest that have never been seen before,” said Katherine Joy of the Lunar and Planetary Institute and a Moon Zoo science team member.

NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) scientists are contributing to the Moon Zoo efforts by providing science expertise. NLSI is also providing educational content and supporting outreach goals of the project.

“The NASA Lunar Science Institute is very excited to be involved with Moon Zoo and support lunar citizen science,” said David Morrison, NLSI director. “Science and public outreach are cornerstones of our Institute; Moon Zoo will contribute to the accomplishment of important science, while being a major step forward in participatory exploration.”

The Moon Zoo Web site is a citizen science project developed by the Citizen Science Alliance, a group of research organizations and museums, and builds on the team's success with Galaxy Zoo, which has involved more than 250,000 people in astronomical research.

“The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Science Office is excited to see LRO data being used for citizen science projects,” said Rich Vondrak, LRO project scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “The Moon Zoo project provides an opportunity for everyone to participate in analysis of images from the LRO Camera and to make a significant contribution to scientific knowledge about the moon.”

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and the LROC instruments are based out of Arizona State University in Tempe, Az. The NASA Lunar Science Institute is based out of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

Related Links:

› More about Moon Zoo
› More about the Citizen Science Alliance
› More about the NASA Lunar Science Institute
› More about LROC

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Ancient City of Galaxies Looks Surprisingly Modern

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Primitive cluster of galaxies
Astronomers are a bit like archeologists as they dig back through space and time searching for remnants of the early universe. In a recent deep excavation, courtesy of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers unearthed what may be the most distant, primitive cluster of galaxies ever found.

In a twist, however, this apparent ancestor to today's "big cities" of grouped galaxies looks shockingly modern. Called CLG J02182-05102, the ancient cluster is dominated by old, red and massive galaxies, typical of present-day clusters. For example, it is similar to a young version of the Coma Cluster of today, which has had billions of more years to develop.

"We are seeing something already aged and red like a younger version of the Coma Cluster from a distant, bygone era," said Casey Papovich, lead author of a new study and an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University in College Station.

Papovich added, "it is as though we dug an archeological site in Rome and found pieces of modern Rome in amongst the ruins."

ClG J02182-05102 might have indeed been ahead of its time. Just as Rome was the world's biggest city more than 2,000 years ago with a population of about a million residents - a figure not again matched until the early 1800s in London - so too was this galactic grouping an advanced civilization for so early an era in the developing universe.

Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe and are thought to have formed piecemeal over cosmic time. For now, ClG J02182-05102 is the only known galactic grouping so far away in the past, and studying it will help researchers understand the overall history of how galaxies congregate and evolve.

A Cosmic Archeological Expedition

In their hunt for rare ancient cities in the early universe, Papovich and his team started with the largest extragalactic survey ever made. Called the Spitzer Wide-area InfraRed Extragalactic (SWIRE) survey, it observed a huge portion of the sky that could contain 250 full moons.

Because more light gathered means more information, the researchers looked at a cosmic region within this giant starscape that had also been studied by other instruments. These additional observations came from a survey combining light from Japan's Subaru telescope - housed atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii - and the European Space Agency's orbiting XMM-Newton telescope. The United Kingdom Infra-Red Telescope, also in Hawaii, provided infrared data along with another set of Spitzer observations called the Public Ultra Deep Sky survey.

When all these data were compiled, Spitzer's infrared observations made dozens of distant galaxies jump out. "We would not have found this object without Spitzer because there is very little optical light coming from this group of galaxies," said Papovich.

His team then obtained time on the Magellan telescope in Chile to study the faint light coming from ClG J02182-05102's least-dim galaxies. This light allowed the astronomers to archeologically date the candidate cluster to 9.6 billion years ago.

With these observations, Papovich and his team confirmed that seven of ClG J02182-05102's galaxies have nearly the same distance, suggesting they are part of a grouping of about 60 galaxies. Whether or not this association of galaxies fully qualifies as a gravitationally bound cluster will rely on further observations. Furthermore, the definition of a "cluster" itself remains unsettled, somewhat like the blurry distinctions between a city and a town, made trickier still given the limited light that makes it to our telescopes from these relics.

The Rise and Fall of CLG J02182-05102

For now, ClG J02182-05102 stands out as a greatly over-dense region of galaxies - a metropolis in a land of isolated villages. At its center regions loom red, monster galaxies containing about 10 times as many stars as our Milky Way galaxy. This puts them on par with the most mammoth galaxies in the nearby universe, which have grown fat through repeated mergers with other galaxies. These big galaxies are so uncharacteristic of those in the early universe that in some sense it is like finding modern skyscrapers in ancient Rome.

The Papovich et al paper was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal on April 21, 2010. A subsequent study by Masayuki Tanaka of the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe in Japan confirmed the discovery, and the work was the subject of a news release on May 10, 2010.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

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