Cloud ERP Market Future Growth, Size & Revenue Projection To 2026 – Keep Reading

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Cloud ERP Marketreport to study and analyses the market size (Consumption, Value, Volume andProduction) By Company, Key Regions, Products and End User/Application, Cloud ERP market breakdown data from 2014 to 2019, and 6 year forecast from 2020 to 2026. BedsidesCloud ERP industryresearch report enriched on worldwide competition by topmost prime manufactures (Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation, SAP SE, Infor, Sage Software, Inc., Epicor Software Corporation, Intacct Corporation, Financialforce.Com, Plex Systems, Inc., Ramco Systems) which providing information such asCompany Profiles, Gross, Gross Margin, Capacity, Product Picture and Specification, Production, Price, Cost, Revenueand contact information.Cloud ERP Market report provide the in-depth analysis of key factors influencing the growth of the market (Growth Potential, Opportunities, Drivers, Industry-Specific Challenges and Risks).

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The Latest Cloud ERP Industry Data Included in this Report:Cloud ERP Market Size & Analysis (2014 2026); Cloud ERP Market Volume & Future Trends (2014 2026); Cloud ERP Market; By Geography (Volume and Value); 2014 2026; Cloud ERP Market Opportunity Assessment (2014 2026); Cloud ERP (Installed Base) Market Share: By Company; Major Deals in Cloud ERP Market; Cloud ERP Reimbursement Scenario; Cloud ERP Current Applications; Cloud ERP Competitive Analysis: By Company; Key Market Drivers and Inhibitors; Major Companies Analysis.

Scope of Cloud ERP Market:Cloud ERP is a type of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that is hosted on a cloud computing platform, rather than on premises within an enterprises own data center.

The cloud ERP market is segmented on the basis of deployment type, vertical and organization size. By deployment type segment consists of public, private and hybrid. A public cloud is one based on the standard cloud computing model, in which a service provider makes resources, such as applications and storage, available to the general public over the Internet. Public cloud services may be free or offered on a pay-per-usage model.

On the basis of product type, this report displays the shipments, revenue (Million USD), price, and market share and growth rate of each type.

Finance Marketing Sales Operations Human Resource

On the basis on the end users/applications,this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, shipments, revenue (Million USD), price, and market share and growth rate foreach application.

SMEs Large Enterprises

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Cloud ERP Market Future Growth, Size & Revenue Projection To 2026 - Keep Reading

Recovering A Strong American Conception Of Property Rights – The Federalist

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Within our constitutional framework, property rights have been relegated to second-class citizenship.

Take the Supreme Courts double-standard on the Fifth Amendments prohibition against the government taking private property unless its for public use. For alleged infringements of other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, the Court strictly scrutinizes government action. But with the Fifth Amendments property protections, the Court allows legislatures to interpret their own constitutional boundaries. If only property rights are at stake, then the fox may guard the henhouse.

Or consider the Courts amorphous review for substantive due process, a values-based inquiry into the constitutional legitimacy of state and federal regulatory laws. On this score, the Court candidly concedes that property rights and contractual freedoms enjoy less protection than other, non-economic liberties.

In his new book Property and the Pursuit of Happiness: Locke, the Declaration of Independence, Madison, and the Challenge of the Administrative State, Edward Erler shows how constitutional property rights climbed through the looking glass and came out topsy-turvy. From Americas founding era to the present day, property rights flipped from cachet to low-caste, and whats supposed to be up, well, is down.

Erler is a professor of political philosophy, so its unsurprising this books foremost contribution is its discussion of the vital role property rights played in the Framers constitutional vision. Tracing an arc of political thought from Aristotle through Locke on to the Declaration of Independence, Erler argues that the Founding Fathers put an inherently American gloss on pre-existing conceptions of property one that merged natural rights and moral obligation into a synthesis they called the pursuit of happiness.

For the Founders, the right to property was the comprehensive right that included all other rights. In this spirit, the Supreme Court in 1795 averred that the right of acquiring and possessing property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Erler explains the decline of property rights from these sanctified heights. As the economy advanced and governments grew, vested property interests came increasingly into conflict with public policy, and it fell to the courts to demarcate the boundaries between public and private spheres.

For much of our nations history, as courts wrestled with these controversies, they hewed to an understanding of property rights closer the Framers than what we see today. The practical result was that property rights enjoyed considerable constitutional protection from overbearing government.

But the scales of justice shifted early in the twentieth century, when the Progressive forces of history swept first into legislatures and then into the courts. Progressives rejected the Founders conception of property rights because it impeded the science of economic planning. As Progressive influence waxed, property rights waned.

Although Property and the Pursuit of Happiness overlaps in subject and tone with Richard Epsteins excellent 2008 book, Supreme Neglect: How to Revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property, the two books are complementary but not the same. Discussion of the Founding Fathers is largely absent from the latterarguably the only flaw in Epsteins seminal workand this topic is Erlers strongest contribution.

This is not to say that Property and the Pursuit of Happiness is flawless. In the introduction, Erler warns that he test[s] the patience of the reader on some occasions, and hes not lying. The book is needlessly difficult. Relatedly, he peppers his prose with awkward sentence introductions (e.g., In a statement that is not entirely hyperbolic . . .). Further, the books subtitle, which mentions the Challenge of the Administrative State, engages in a bit of false advertising, as Erler gives the topic only a cursory examination.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, Property and the Pursuit of Happiness is an important contribution to a growing body of scholarship pushing for a restoration of property rights to their original place among our individual freedomsparticularly with respect to the Fifth Amendments Takings Clause.

The good news is that these ideas are taking root. To wit, the Trump administration is reshaping the federal judiciary with a generation of judges affected by Richard Epsteins work. On the other side of the bar, dogged public interest lawyersmost notably those at the Pacific Legal Foundationhave advanced property rights in courts across the country. After decades, all this effort is paying off.

Consider the blowback to the Supreme Courts infamous holding 15 years ago in Kelo v. City of New London, which allows government to condemn peoples homes and give their land to a corporation in the name of economic development. As Ilya Somin explains in his book The Grasping Hand, many state courts reacted to Kelo by tightening restrictions on the use of eminent domain.

Last Summer, the Court handed down a watershed decision in Knick v. Township of Scott, which basically puts property rights (and Fifth Amendment takings claims, specifically) on the same procedural footing as other guarantees enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The Courts newest members, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, joined Chief Justice John Robertss Knick opinion. The holding is a bold step towards ending the inequality of our constitutional rights.

None of these welcome developments would have happened absent the toils of scholars and practitioners who laid the foundations for a resurgence of property rights. With Property and the Pursuit of Happiness, Erler adds a valuable voice to this worthy cause.

William Yeatman is a research fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

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Recovering A Strong American Conception Of Property Rights - The Federalist

Why havent Chad and Lori been arrested? – Post Register

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Why havent they been arrested?

Its the question on the minds of many as Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell spend their days at Hawaiian resorts on the sunny island of Kauai. On Thursday the couple was spotted at Costco casually picking up groceries. A photo taken by a fellow shopper shows Lori leaning on the grocery cart as Chad smiles at her.

Recently released photos of their November wedding show the couple laughing near the ocean in Hawaii and Chad strumming a ukulele just a couple weeks after his wife of 29 years died in her sleep, according to Chads account to law enforcement.

The beach visits, the errand running, the happy photos all seem to have struck a nerve with the public. The story of Lori and Chad, their respective dead spouses, and her missing children has captivated the nation.

In the last 220 days, Loris brother Alex Cox killed her husband Charles following a family argument in July, Chads seemingly healthy wife died in her sleep in October in a manner police are calling suspicious, and Cox, also young and apparently healthy, died mysteriously on a bathroom floor in December.

And of course, Loris two minor children, Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow, have disappeared. No one has seen the children since September. Neither Chad nor Lori reported them missing. Shortly after Rexburg police questioned the couple in late November about the childrens whereabouts, Lori and Chad fled to Hawaii. Earlier this month a storage unit full of the childrens belongings the kind of things youd think theyd want in their new home was found in chilly Rexburg, thousands of miles from Hawaii where Chad and Lori have lived for more than a month.

As the public continues to learn about strange circumstance after strange circumstance surrounding the couple, many believe the deaths and disappearances were orchestrated by Chad and Lori.

If thats the case, why havent they been arrested?

The answer, according to legal experts, is most likely a lack of evidence. That lack of evidence is primarily due to law enforcements inability to locate Tylee and J.J. Until police can prove something criminal has happened to the children, Chad and Lori are looking at nothing more than misdemeanors for their failure to cooperate in the investigation. A judge may hold off on the arduous and expensive extradition process following Loris potential contempt of court charge until law enforcement finds evidence for more serious charges, said Samuel Newton, assistant professor of law at the University of Idaho.

Lori was ordered to physically present J.J. and Tylee to Madison County officials by Jan. 30 but failed to do so.

The Post Register looked to legal experts and past cases to try to figure out, should Tylee and J.J. remain unfound, what charges could Lori and Chad face in the future in a variety of possible scenarios and what evidence would police need to bring charges in those scenarios.

The disappearance of Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow:

Scenario 1: Chad and Lori were not actively responsible for the disappearance of Tylee and J.J., but they did not alert authorities when the children went missing.

Possible charges: Perjury for giving false information. Police say Vallow and Daybell indicated (J.J) was staying with a family friend in Arizona. Rexburg police said they investigated and did not find that to be true. According to Idaho law, this crime is considered a misdemeanor. There is no Idaho law requiring parents to alert authorities when children go missing.

Evidence police would need to charge Lori or Chad: Police likely have enough evidence to prove Lori provided false information concerning J.J.s whereabouts.

Famous similar case: In a case that received national attention, Caylee Anthonys mother, Casey Anthony, never reported her daughter missing. Caylees Law, which has been enacted in 10 states, makes it a felony for parents to fail to report their child as missing. Anthony was eventually acquitted of all charges except four misdemeanor counts of providing false information to law enforcement. Anthony was sentenced to one year and $1,000 for each misdemeanor count, for a total of four years in prison and $4,000 in fines. Caylees Law does not exist in Idaho.

Scenario 2: Lori and Chad have hidden the children.

Possible charges: Contempt of court

Evidence police would need to charge Lori or Chad: Police likely have enough evidence to prove contempt of court. On Jan. 25, law enforcement in Princeville, Hawaii, served Vallow with a court order demanding that she physically produce Tylee and J.J. to the Idaho Department of Welfare in Rexburg, Idaho, or to the Rexburg Police within five days of being served with the order. Vallow did not comply with that order and could now be found by a Madison County judge to be in contempt of court. Per Idaho law, a misdemeanor for contempt carries a penalty of an up to $5,000 fine, a maximum of five days in jail, or both.

Famous similar case: In Baltimore City Department of Social Services v. Bouknight, Jacqueline L. Bouknight, of Baltimore, was ordered to produce her child in court. She claimed to have left her son with a friend but would not reveal anything more. In a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Bouknight claimed that forcing her to disclose her sons location violated her Fifth Amendment right not to self-incriminate. The Supreme Court ruled the Fifth Amendment does not protect a custodian from refusing to produce his or her child pursuant to a court order. Despite this ruling, Bouknight refused to produce her son. A Baltimore judge continued to find Bouknight in contempt of court for seven years; she spent those seven years in jail. After that, she was released and has never been convicted for further charges regarding her son. Her son has never been seen since.

Scenario 3: Chad and/or Lori are responsible for the death of Tylee and J.J., but police cannot find their bodies.

Possible charges: Murder

Evidence: According to Thomas A. DiBiase, a former federal homicide prosecutor and expert on no body murder cases, in cases when there is no body but police believe a murder was convicted, evidence is most likely to come from forensic evidence such as blood, hair, or fingerprints, confessions to family or friends, or confessions to police. When none of those are available, Alton D. Kenney an attorney and former prosecutor who has gotten convictions on two no body cases, said it is possible to prove victims are dead through what he calls negative inference. This involves proving all expected normal routines are not being met. For example, a teenager may suddenly stop all social media activity, stop speaking to all friends and relatives, stop continuing to pursue life milestones such as getting a drivers license or applying for a job. These negative inferences may convince a jury that a missing individual has died. Then, the court can prove someone is responsible for that death. According to Kenney, however, cases involving negative inference take a long time to prove and police may wait a full year before bringing charges.

Famous similar case: More than 50 people have been convicted of murder without a body being found. However, when police lack forensic evidence or a confession, it becomes more difficult. When Susan Powell went missing in 2009, her husband Josh Powell claimed she had abandoned the family. Despite a mountain of strange circumstances surrounding Josh, he was never charged with her murder. In 2012, Josh killed himself and his two sons. Since Susans body has never been recovered, she has still not been declared dead.

Charges involving the deaths of Charles Vallow, Tammy Daybell, or Alex Cox: All three deaths are still under investigation. Authorities are still waiting on autopsy results for Tammy Daybell and Cox. The lack of charges may mean authorities have not found evidence as of yet to prove Chad or Lori were involved. Autopsy results may provide more information.

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Why havent Chad and Lori been arrested? - Post Register

Messenger: Denied order of protection by judge, woman fights for her rights and wins – STLtoday.com

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Eventually, the man was found guilty of assault in municipal court. He paid a fine.

This is where the story gets all too familiar for women who have reported sexual harassment at work, or sexual assault, or other forms of discrimination.

In January 2018, after seeking help from a womens crisis center, the woman filed for an order of protection in St. Louis Circuit Court. There was a hearing before Judge Lynne R. Perkins. The woman testified. Her co-worker refused to testify, citing the Fifth Amendment protection against self incrimination.

The judge denied the order of protection.

Not deterred, the woman filed sexual harassment allegations at work. Instead of getting the help she sought, she was suspended and forced to take a workplace violence class because she threw a beer at the man. At one point, she was given a notice that she was to be terminated. She still has her job.

Is it any wonder women dont report? she told me. The courts werent helping me. My employer came after me.

Wessling, of the Crime Victim Center, appealed Perkins refusal to issue the order of protection, and in July 2019, a three-judge panel from the Missouri Court of Appeals reversed Perkins decision.

Appellant presented sufficient testimony to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Respondent had stalked her, Judge Sherri B. Sullivan wrote. Respondent did not contest the relevant portions of her testimony, at the hearing or on appeal, or present any evidence or argument showing his actions were justified under the law.

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Messenger: Denied order of protection by judge, woman fights for her rights and wins - STLtoday.com

Boeing 737 Max: Prosecutors investigate whether company lied to FAA – Business Insider – Business Insider

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The Department of Justice is investigating whether Boeing knowingly lied to Federal Aviation Administration officials while working to get approval for the 737 Max, according to The New York Times.

Over the past several months, The Times reported, prosecutors have questioned several Boeing employees in front of a grand jury. The prosecutors specifically focused on whether Boeing's former chief pilot on the 737 Max project, Mark Forkner, had intentionally lied about a new flight-control system on the plane called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).

MCAS was designed to make the 737 Max handle essentially identically to the previous version of the plane the 737 New Generation despite the Max planes having larger engines. Under certain conditions in which those larger engines could cause the plane's nose to drift upward potentially causing the plane to stall the MCAS software would activate and automatically adjust the airplane's trim, pointing the nose slightly down.

Design flaws in the MCAS software have been involved in two fatal 737 Max crashes that killed a combined 346 people.

Federal prosecutors issued a subpoena to Forkner last year for documents related to the plane's development, and Forkner invoked the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, according to The Seattle Times.

Forkner described "egregious" problems with MCAS in 2016 messages to another Boeing employee, Patrik Gustavsson, saying the software was "running rampant in the sim," in reference to flight-simulator tests.

In another message, he suggested that he had unintentionally misled the FAA about the issue.

"I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)," he said.

Earlier in 2016, Forkner asked the FAA for permission to remove mentions of the MCAS from the pilot manual for the 737 Max, saying it would activate only in rare cases and was designed to run in the background. The FAA approved the request.

"We are cooperating with the Justice Department's investigation," a Boeing spokesperson told The New York Times.

According to The Times, Forkner's lawyers have strongly denied that their client had misled regulators.

"Mark didn't lie to anyone," they said, according to The Times. "He did his job honestly, and his communications to the FAA were honest. As a pilot and Air Force vet, he would never jeopardize the safety of other pilots or their passengers. That is what any fair investigation would find."

The 737 Max has been grounded globally since the second crash, which occurred in March, as it works to complete and gain approval on a fix.

The grounding has led to a crisis at Boeing, which suffered its worst financial year in decades and saw CEO Dennis Muilenburg ousted over his handling of the situation.

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Boeing 737 Max: Prosecutors investigate whether company lied to FAA - Business Insider - Business Insider

The perils of opening the mind – The Boston Globe

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Used properly and creatively, new technologies that open up the mind could let us know more about ourselves than we could gain from introspection, control far-flung environments, and even transcend the boundaries of self by participating in multi-brain networks. But such technologies may also allow unprecedented monitoring, loss of autonomy and liberty, discrimination, and loss of the default right to exclude others from the inner mental and physical self.

Existing laws, regulations, and business practices are no match for these prospects. As it stands now, nothing not the Constitution, not federal or state laws, and certainly not the user-consent agreements on neurotech products appropriately defines when and how neurotech devices may be used. Nothing limits access to the newly emerging class of information derived directly from our brains.

This matters greatly because an ability to get inside our minds creates concerns about privacy and autonomy that go beyond those presented by other kinds of data. Data from GPS and social media, for example, can inform others (appropriately or not) of facts we largely already know about ourselves and that we have expressed through our movements, clicks, and posts. Brain-derived data, by contrast, enables others to know things about us that we have not outwardly expressed and that we may not even know about ourselves, since we cannot know the workings of our brains by introspection. Unknown to us and outside of our control, these mental and neurological processes nevertheless may have greater predictive validity than other forms of data about our health and behavior.

WHAT COULD BE done with information derived from the brain? Large stores of data at the population level could advance neurological research. Long-term information about your brain activity could help you make lifestyle choices like identifying the best methods of reducing stress in your life. The data also could help you and your doctor spot neurological problems earlier than generally happens now.

But imagine, as well, the following scenarios:

An employer wants to reduce the risk of on-the-job disability, so it screens applicants for neurological markers that they are predisposed to chronic pain and depression.

A school system equips students with headbands that monitor their state of focus, restricting students cognitive freedom and perhaps justifying cutting back on teachers.

A gaming company tracks a users arousal patterns, fine-tuning the game to his or her precise tastes, inducing behavioral addiction.

A political campaign buys large volumes of neurological data from a data broker to identify individuals with hallmarks of impulsivity and aggression, then targets them with politically radical social media messaging and advertising.

Workers and students in some parts of the world already are made to wear headbands that read their brains EEG signals or are watched by affect recognition systems that monitor their attention and mood. The data from such systems may not truly be helpful or relevant; it may be of middling accuracy or provide an unrepresentative type of insight into performance. But given that employers, education systems, and governments have screened individuals using all kinds of dubious and debunked instruments, from handwriting analysis to spurious personality tests and unreliable polygraphs, even inappropriate neurotechnologies could be put into widespread use and have substantial consequences.

The holes in existing privacy laws are easy to see. Health privacy laws, for example, dictate that if a device transmits information about your mood to your doctor, your doctor has to keep the information confidential. But if the same information is also held by the device manufacturer, or you keep it on an app on your phone, the device manufacturer and app maker are not bound by these obligations. Many of the new neurotech devices dont even have medical applications.

In the realm of criminal law, apart from the warrant requirement under the Fourth Amendment, nothing limits the ability of the state to obtain and use neurological information to probe memory, evaluate veracity, or predict future risk. The Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate oneself and the First Amendment protection against compelled speech also may fail to apply. Just as the state can cause a person to take a blood-alcohol test but cannot make him admit that he is drunk, the state potentially could require a suspect to undergo a neurological test when it cannot compel him to make a statement.

ON THE CUSP of becoming transparent by default, we need to consider how to shape the kind of open-minded world we want.

Frequently, the United States avoids regulation by relying on the notion of consent. We allow individuals to opt into all kinds of things, including the sale of our data. That apparent liberty is taken off the table only in a few cases, mostly relating to sale of the self and physical body. But consent is meaningless where there are great asymmetries of power or knowledge. If employers require certain neurological testing or monitoring, how free is an individual to make the choice not to be employed? If neurological data harvested from an individual today could be used against that person five years into the future, in a way that is currently unforeseeable, how meaningful was the consent? Consent falls apart if a person cannot know the content of that to which they are consenting.

Another option would be to selectively restrict the conduct of companies or organizations that would use neurotechnologies. A visionary piece of legislation preventing discrimination based on biological data, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, GINA, provides a model for how to allow progress in scientific and commercial development while limiting related social ills. The 2008 law prohibits genetic discrimination in employment and health insurance coverage by blocking employers and insurers from mandating DNA testing. But a pitfall of this approach is apparent as well. Only 12 years later, employers and insurers can now obtain genetic information from third-party providers just as law enforcement currently accesses third-party GPS and genetic data.

A third approach could be to regulate neurotech devices and data in a manner that focuses on the values we want to protect, as GINA does, with some of the adaptability of successful anti-discrimination laws. For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act broadly prohibits employers from discriminating based on an individuals disability or the employers perception of disability. This transcends specific facts or acts; it does not specify the conditions that constitute disabilities, the particular conduct that amounts to discrimination, or the particular accommodations that employers have to make. This protects workers who are in jobs that didnt exist when the law was drafted and whose needs can be met with tools that didnt exist at the time.

Neurotech and the information it generates touch on values core to American society, from nondiscrimination to cognitive liberty and self-determination. The right way to guard these values, before we lose them unwittingly, is for authoritative bodies to convene wide-ranging conversations among developers, investors, researchers, citizens of many perspectives, law enforcement, ethicists, lawyers, and lawmakers to describe the precise harms that could occur and values that require safeguards. Eventually, it may even be wise to have a standing body to regulate uses of this technology in light of established, consensus principles.

The key is to start these conversations now and then legislate incrementally and appropriately, so that we do not mindlessly slide into our open-mindedness.

Amanda Pustilnik is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and a faculty member at the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital.

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The perils of opening the mind - The Boston Globe

The Sky This Week from February 21 to March 1 – Astronomy Magazine

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Monday, February 24A pair of fine binocular objects shows up nicely on evenings this week. The open star clusters M46 and M47 reside about a degree apart in the northwestern corner of the constellation Puppis the Stern. The two lie about 12 east-northeast of magnitude 1.5 Sirius, the night skys brightest star. The western cluster, M47, glows at 4th magnitude and appears as a fuzzy patch sprinkled with several pinpoint stars. Sixth-magnitude M46 shows up as a hazy collection of faint stars that is hard to resolve under most conditions. Although it contains nearly twice as many stars as M47, M46 appears fainter and fuzzier because it lies some three times farther from Earth.

Tuesday, February 25With an age of 4.5 billion years, young might not seem an appropriate word to describe our Moon. But tonight, you have an exceptional opportunity to see what astronomers call a young Moon a slender crescent visible in the early evening sky. With New Moon having occurred two days ago, only 5 percent of our satellites disk appears illuminated after sunset tonight. (Tomorrow evening, a 10-percent-lit lunar crescent hangs noticeably higher in the sky.) You should notice an ashen light faintly illuminating the Moons dark side. This is earthshine, sunlight reflected by Earth that reaches the Moon and then reflects back to our waiting eyes.

Mercury reaches inferior conjunction at 9 p.m. EST. This means the innermost planet lies between the Sun and Earth and remains hidden in our stars glare.

Wednesday, February 26Venus gleams in the western sky after sunset. The brilliant planet stands out just a half-hour after sundown, when it appears 35 above the horizon, and it is still 25 high once darkness settles in. Venus remains on display until 9:30 p.m. local time. Shining at magnitude 4.3, it is by far the brightest point of light in the night sky. A telescope reveals the planets disk, which spans 18" and appears about two-thirds lit. The waxing crescent Moon lies just 10 (about the width of your closed fist when held at arms length) below Venus tonight. Photographers should think about capturing the pair with a pretty foreground and in twilight to add a dash of color to the scene.

The Moon reaches apogee, the farthest point in its orbit around Earth, at 6:34 a.m. EST. It then lies 252,450 miles (406,278 kilometers) from Earths center.

Thursday, February 27The waxing crescent Moon gains about 10 of altitude each evening at this time of year, and that movement carries it to a position 7 to Venus left tonight. The two form a spectacular and photogenic pair from shortly after sunset until around 9:30 p.m. local time.

Friday, February 28Although Saturn passed on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth in mid-January, it already appears low in the southeast before dawn. Look for the magnitude 0.7 ringed planet 9 above the horizon and the same distance to the lower left of Jupiter. Saturns low altitude means it wont look like much through a telescope, though that will change dramatically in the coming months.

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The Sky This Week from February 21 to March 1 - Astronomy Magazine

Astronomers Have Detected Molecular Oxygen in Another Galaxy For The First Time – ScienceAlert

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In a wild galaxy over half a billion light-years away, astronomers have detected molecular oxygen. It's only the third such detection ever outside the Solar System - and the first outside the Milky Way.

Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the Universe, behind hydrogen (naturally) and helium. So its chemistry and abundance in interstellar clouds are important for understanding the role of molecular gas in galaxies.

Astronomers have searched for oxygen again and again, using millimetre astronomy, which detects the radio wavelengths emitted by molecules; and spectroscopy, which analyses the spectrum to look for wavelengths absorbed or emitted by specific molecules.

But these searches have turned up a puzzling lack of oxygen molecules. Which means "a comprehensive picture of oxygen chemistry in different interstellar environments is still missing," wrote a team of astronomers led by Junzhi Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in a new paper.

One place molecular oxygen has been detected is the Orion nebula; it's been hypothesisedthat out in space, oxygen is bound up with hydrogen in the form of water ice that is clinging to dust grains.

But the Orion nebula is a stellar nursery, and it's possible that the intense radiation from very hot young stars shocks the water ice into sublimation and splits the molecules, releasing the oxygen.

Which brings us to a galaxy called Markarian 231.

Markarian 231 is special. It's 561 million light-years away, and powered by a quasar. That's an extremely luminous galactic nucleus with an active supermassive black hole in the centre. They're the brightest objects in the Universe, and Markarian 231 contains the closest quasar to Earth.

In fact, astronomers think Markarian 231 might have two active supermassive black holes in its centre, whirling around each other at a furious rate.

An active galactic nucleus drives molecular outflows, producing continuous shocks of the kind that might release oxygen from water in molecular clouds. The molecular outflows in Markarian 231 are particularly high velocity, so Wang and colleagues went looking for oxygen.

Using the IRAM 30-metre radio telescope in Spain, they took observations of the galaxy for four days across a number of wavelengths. In those data, they found the spectral signature of oxygen, in line with the shock hypothesis.

"With deep observations toward Markarian 231 using the IRAM 30 meter telescope and NOEMA, we detected [molecular oxygen] emission in [an] external galaxy for the first time," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"The detected O2 emission is located in regions about 10 kpc (32,615 light-years) away from the center of Markarian 231 and may be caused by the interaction between the active galactic nucleus-driven molecular outflow and the outer disc molecular clouds."

The team's measurements revealed that the abundance of oxygen compared to hydrogen was around 100 times higher than that found in the Orion nebula, so the galaxy could be undergoing a more intense version of the same molecule-splitting process.

As Markarian is a starburst galaxy, undergoing furious star formation, this could be possible. Just one region in the galaxy is forming new stars at a rate of over 100 solar masses a year. The Milky Way, by contrast, is pretty quiet, with a star formation rate of around 1 to two solar masses.

On the other hand,these findings could also mean that more observations need to be taken to confirm that the astronomers are correct in interpreting their results as oxygen.

If the results hold, the phenomenon could be used to understand more about both molecular oxygen in galaxies, and the molecular outflow from an active galactic nucleus, the researchers said.

"This first detection of extragalactic molecular oxygen provides an ideal tool to study active galactic nucleus-driven molecular outflows on dynamic timescales of tens of megayears," they wrote.

"O2 may be a significant coolant for molecular gas in such regions affected by active galactic nucleus-driven outflows."

The research has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

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Astronomers Have Detected Molecular Oxygen in Another Galaxy For The First Time - ScienceAlert

Could alien life hitchhike to Earth on space rocks from other stars? – Astronomy Magazine

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Life on comets

But how could life find its way onto a comet? According to Loeb, Earth and other worlds may not even need to be hit by space rocks to send microbes out into the cosmos.

In a January 2019 study published in the International Journal ofAstrobiology, Loeb and a Harvard undergraduate student, Amir Siraj, suggest that Earth-grazing comets and interstellar objects could have snagged microbes from high in our atmosphere and then carried them out into the Milky Way. Their estimates predict this could have already happened many times, depending on how high up life exists on our planet.

"We found that there could be thousands, if not tens of thousands, that could pass through the Earth's atmosphere, collect microbes, and then get kicked to another solar system," Loeb says.

Loeb and Siraj even think they may have identified the first known interstellar meteor by mining existing databases and studying known object's trajectories. However, they won't be sure until they can get someone with a U.S. government security clearance to provide them with the classified raw data. The object was likely picked up by a missile alert system, but Loeb says he's struggled to get the information they need to finish their study.

In our own system, Jupiter and the Sun also could act as a "fishing net" that permanently captures interstellar objects, instead of letting them sail through like 'Oumuamua did. Binary star systems including Proxima Centauri, our nearest neighboring star would have an easier time catching interstellar objects, according to Loeb.

But one of the biggest unknowns is still how long a lifeform could survive on an interstellar object. "The lifetime is really critical because it determines how long it can travel from the system it left," he says. "We don't have good experimental data."

Some fraction of microorganisms would likely make it below the object's icy surface, Loeb says, where they'd be sheltered from radiation. But if they can only survive there for 100,000 years, it would severely restrict panspermia's prospects. If they could instead survive tens of millions of years, then life would have a decent shot at traveling between stars.

Loeb points out that tardigrades an eight-legged micro-animal found all over the planet have endured the vacuum of space, returned to Earth, and still managed to reproduce.

"Even tiny animals are known to be very good astronauts without even a suit," he says. "Viruses and bacteria may be able to survive much longer."

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Could alien life hitchhike to Earth on space rocks from other stars? - Astronomy Magazine

How Interferometry Works, and Why it’s so Powerful for Astronomy – Universe Today

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When astronomers talk about an optical telescope, they often mention the size of its mirror. Thats because the larger your mirror, the sharper your view of the heavens can be. Its known as resolving power, and it is due to a property of light known as diffraction. When light passes through an opening, such as the opening of the telescope, it will tend to spread out or diffract. The smaller the opening, the more the light spreads making your image more blurry. This is why larger telescopes can capture a sharper image than smaller ones.

Diffraction doesnt just depend on the size of your telescope, it also depends on the wavelength of light you observe. The longer the wavelength, the more light diffracts for a given opening size. The wavelength of visible light is very small, less than a millionth of a meter in length. But radio light has a wavelength that is a thousand times longer. If you want to capture images as sharp as those of optical telescopes, you need a radio telescope that is a thousand times larger than an optical one. Fortunately, we can build radio telescopes this large thanks to a technique known as interferometry.

To build a high-resolution radio telescope, you cant simply build a huge radio dish. You would need a dish more than 10 kilometers across. Even the largest radio dish, Chinas FAST telescope, is only 500 meters across. So instead of building a single large dish, you build dozens or hundreds of smaller dishes that can work together. It is a bit like using only parts of a great big mirror instead of the whole thing. If you did this with an optical telescope your image wouldnt be as bright, but it would be almost as sharp.

But its not as simple as building lots of little antenna dishes. With a single telescope, the light from a distant object enters the telescope and is focused by the mirror or lens onto a detector. The light that left the object at the same time reaches the detector at the same time, so your image is in sync. When you have an array of radio dishes, each with their own detector, the light from your object will reach some antenna detectors sooner than others. If you just combined all your data you would have a jumbled mess. This is where interferometry comes in.

Each antenna in your array observes the same object, and as they do they each mark the time of the observation very precisely. This way you have dozens or hundreds of streams of data, each with unique timestamps. From the timestamps, you can put all the data back in sync. If you know that dish B gets a single 2 microseconds after dish A, you know signal B has to be shifted forward 2 microseconds to be in sync.

The math for this gets really complicated. In order for interferometry to work, you have to know the time difference between each pair of antenna dishes. For 5 dishes thats 15 pairs. But the VLA has 26 active dishes or 325 pairs. ALMA has 66 dishes, which makes for 2,145 pairs. Not only that, as the Earth rotates the direction of your object shifts relative to the antenna dishes, which means the time between the signals changes as you make observations. You have to keep track of all of it in order to correlate the signals. This is done with a specialized supercomputer known as a correlator. It is specifically designed to do this one computation. It is the correlator that lets dozens of antenna dishes act as a single telescope.

It has taken decades to refine and improve radio interferometry, but it has become a common tool for radio astronomy. From the inauguration of the VLA in 1980 to the first light of ALMA in 2013, interferometry has given us extraordinarily high-resolution images. The technique is now so powerful that it can be used to connect telescopes all over the world.

In 2009 radio observatories across the world agreed to work together on an ambitious project. They used interferometry to combine their telescopes to create a virtual telescope as large as a planet. It is known as the Event Horizon Telescope, and in 2019 it gave us our first image of a black hole.

With teamwork and interferometry, we can now study one of the most mysterious and extreme objects in the universe.

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How Interferometry Works, and Why it's so Powerful for Astronomy - Universe Today

Controversial simulation creates galaxies without using dark matter – Astronomy Magazine

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Dark matter dogma

Pavel Kroupa, an astrophysicist at the University of Bonn in Germany, is among these standard model critics. According to him, dark matter has become dogma. He cites a handful of real-world properties seen in galaxies that dont make sense with dark matter. And he also questions many fundamental and widely-accepted aspects of modern cosmology, from the idea that galaxies can merge to whether the Cosmic Microwave Background is really evidence of the Big Bang.

Kroupa has spent the past two decades pushing MOND, an alternative theory of the universe. Scientists who support this model believe that the most puzzling aspects of the cosmos the ones that led astronomers to discover dark matter and dark energy can actually be explained with slight modifications to Newtons laws describing gravity.

But to convince the larger scientific community, contrarians like Kroupa have to show that MOND can actually recreate our universe while also explaining the same mysteries that first led astronomers to embrace the dark side. And until now, computer simulations using MOND have failed to build virtual galaxies that look like the real ones we see today.

So, other scientists skeptical of the standard model see this new study as a potential milestone.

This is clearly an important study, because MOND was often criticized for not being able to describe galaxy formation in the same successful way as models based on dark matter, says University of Amsterdam theoretical physicist Erik Verlinde, a prominent dark matter critic who was not involved in the research.

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Controversial simulation creates galaxies without using dark matter - Astronomy Magazine

Star Betelgeuse’s mysterious dimming has the attention of UA astronomer – Arizona Public Media

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A University of Arizona astronomer has his eye on a mysteriously dimming star in outer space.

Narsi Anugu is a postdoctoral scholar at the UA studying interstellar space. He is focusing on the star Betelgeuse, 642.5 light years from earth. The star's light has been dimming for the past several months, and some scientists speculate it is on the verge of exploding, or going supernova. Anugu thinks if that happens, the resulting phenomenon will create a boon for space science.

This will boost astronomy, clear up many questions about whether astronomy is interesting, and increase funding," he said. "Every astronomer would love to see that.

Betelgeuse is seen from Earth as part of the popular constellation Orion, the hunter. The star marks the shoulder of the hunter on the left side of the figure to a viewer from Earth. Scientists say whenever Betelgeuse explodes, it will be visible in Earth's daylight sky and would be bright enough to cast shadows at night. But they cautiously add the event might not happen for another 100,000 years.

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Star Betelgeuse's mysterious dimming has the attention of UA astronomer - Arizona Public Media

Heather Couper, 19492020 – Astronomy Now Online

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Photo: Heather Couper.

Heather Couper, one of the UKs most prolific astronomy broadcasters and writers, who inspired many to take up stargazing, has died at the age of 70.

Couper came to prominence in the 1980s, writing and presenting two landmark Channel 4 television series, The Planets (1985) and The Stars (1988), as well as The Neptune Encounter (1989) for ITV, which was made under the auspices of her production company Pioneer Productions, which she founded with her long-time friend and collaborator Nigel Henbest and director Stuart Carter. She also narrated Pioneer Productions award-winning Channel 4 documentary Electric Skies (1994), about lightning, as well as the ten-part Raging Planet series (1997) and Space Shuttle: Human Time Bomb? (2003). Couper has also presented numerous radio documentaries, including Radio Fours Cosmic Quest about the history of astronomy, and the long-running Seeing Stars on the BBC World Service, presented alongside Nigel Henbest.

She graduated from the University of Leicester with a BSc in Astronomy and Physics, although by her own admission in an interview for The Independent (for whom she was also a columnist), she was not a model student at school or university. However, it was her passion for astronomy, having witnessed a green meteor as a child, that spurred her on. After leaving research half way through her PhD studies at The University of Oxford, she joined the planetarium at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich as Senior Lecturer, where she remained until 1983 when she departed to pursue her media career.

Couper helped break down boundaries for women in astronomy. The year after leaving Greenwich she was elected President of the British Astronomical Association the first woman, and the second youngest person (at the age of 35), to hold the position. Between 1987 and 1989 she held the position of President for what is now known as The Society for Popular Astronomy. She was one of the speakers at the very first European AstroFest conference in 1992.

In 1993, she became Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College in London the first female professor at Gresham in its 400-year history (Carolin Crawford and Katherine Blundell have since followed in her footsteps), where she gave public talks on astronomy for three years. And of course, as one of the public faces of astronomy on television, she inspired many girls, as well as boys (including a certain Editor of Astronomy Now magazine), to take an interest in astronomy.

She was also a prolific writer alongside Nigel Henbest, with dozens of titles spanning forty years, including companions to her TV series The Planets and The Stars, The Secret Life of Space, and her most recent books including Philips 2020 Stargazing Month by Month and The Universe Explained: A Cosmic Q&A, published by Firefly.

In 1994 Couper was elected to serve on the Millennium Commission, which dished out money raised by the National Lottery to good causes. She remained on the commission until it closed in 2009, and in 2007 she was awarded a CBE by the Queen for her work on both the commission and her life-long mission to promote astronomy.

Couper also has an asteroid named after her, asteroid 3922 Heather.

She died in her sleep at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, on 19 February 2020, following a short illness.

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Heather Couper, 19492020 - Astronomy Now Online

Molecular oxygen has been spotted beyond the Milky Way for the first time – Science News

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For the first time, astronomers have found molecular oxygen thesame gas humans need to breathe in a galaxy outside the Milky Way.

Oxygen is the third most common element in the cosmos, after hydrogen andhelium. So astronomers once thought molecular oxygen, O2, would becommon in the space between the stars. But despite repeated searches, no onehad ever seen molecular oxygen beyond our galaxy until now.

Junzhi Wang, an astronomer at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China, andhis colleagues spotted the molecules calling card in a galaxy named Markarian231. Lying 560 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, Markarian 231is the nearest galaxy to Earth that contains a quasar, where gaswhirls around a supermassive black hole and gets so hot that it glowsbrilliantly.(SN: 8/31/15).

Using radio telescopes in Spain and France, the astronomers saw radiation at awavelength of 2.52 millimeters, a signatureof O2s presence, the team reports in the Feb. 1 Astrophysical Journal.This is the first detection of molecular oxygen in an extragalactic object,Wang says.

Its also the most molecular oxygen ever seen outside the solarsystem. Previously, astronomers had seen the molecule in just two star-formingclouds within the Milky Way, the Orion Nebula and the Rho Ophiuchicloud(SN: 1/28/20). Astronomers think the shortage of interstellar O2 isdue to oxygen atoms and water molecules freezing onto dust grains, locking up theoxygen. In these stellar nurseries, though, shocks from bright newborn starscan rip water ice from the dust, freeing oxygen atoms to find each other andform molecules.

But even in the Orion Nebula, molecular oxygen is rare, withhydrogen molecules outnumbering oxygen molecules a million to one. Hydrogenalso dominates in Markarian 231. But molecular oxygen spans the outskirts ofthe galactic disk at abundances more than 100 times greater than in the OrionNebula.

Thats very high, says Gary Melnick, an astrophysicist at theHarvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who was notinvolved in the work. There is no known explanation for an abundance of molecularoxygen that high. To confirm that the radiation really arises from O2,Melnick says the observers should look for a second wavelength from themolecule.

That wont be easy, Wang says, because other molecules also emit radiation atthose wavelengths. To shore up the case for O2, the scientists wentthrough the many molecules that give off wavelengths similar to the onedetected and found that nobody had ever seen any of those molecules in space except for O2. It is guilt by elimination, if you will, says teammember Paul Goldsmith, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory inPasadena, Calif.One possibleexplanation for all the O2 is that Markarian 231 goes through a morevigorous version of the Orion Nebulas oxygen-forming process. The galaxy is aprolific star factory, spawning new stars 100 times as fast as the Milky Wayand spewing out 700 solar masses of gas per year. High-speed gas from thegalaxys center may slam into gas in the disk, shaking water ice from dust grainsso that molecular oxygen can form.

In turn, that oxygen couldkeep the galaxy hyperactive: Radiation the molecule emits helps cool thegas so that some of it can collapse and create even more new stars in thegalaxy.

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Molecular oxygen has been spotted beyond the Milky Way for the first time - Science News

Heather Couper: Astronomer who brought the stars to a wide audience – The Independent

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Heather Couper, who has died aged 70, was just seven when she spotted what looked like a bright-green meteor in the sky. Her airline pilot father told her there was no such thing, but newspapers subsequently reported on a shooting star and she set her heart on becoming an astronomer.

At the age of 16, she wrote to Patrick Moore, whose television programme The Sky at Night inspired viewers to look to the heavens, and askedwhether being female might hamper her ambitions. Being a girl is no problem at all, Moore replied.

So she carved out a career as an astronomer and, from 1978 to 1984, while lecturing on the subject, was often seen as a guest or co-presenter on The Sky at Night.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

She also succeeded Moore as president of the British Astronomical Association (1984-86), the first woman in the role one previously occupied by worthy old gentlemen who preferred to remain discreetly out of the public eye, aside from Moore, according to New Scientist magazine at the time.

With the ability to popularise astronomy for a wide audience, Couper went freelance to become a television presenter and producer.

She and fellow astronomer Terence Murtagh hosted the 1981 childrens series Heavens Above. The wonders of the universe was the pairs theme as they examined the planets in the solar system.

Film shot by the American Viking and Voyager space probes vividly brought their words to life. There were also enlightening items such as an imaginary trip to Earth from a planet in the Andromeda galaxy.

Moving on to TV for grown-ups, Couper wrote and presented two of Channel 4s early science successes.

Mars, until quite recently, held out the promise of life, but now we know its a sun-bleached, sterile world, was typical of her candid assessments of the subjects in The Planets (1985).

Couper with her collaborator and lifelong companion Nigel Henbest: their Stargazing column has run in The Independent since 1987(Hencoup Enterprises/PA)

The Stars (1988) was a natural follow-up. Stars were the sparks that rescued our universe from becoming an ever-cooling and expanding vastness, explained Couper as she launched the series with the potentially worrying observation that galaxies giant, rotating star cities like our own Milky Way had been moving fatally further apart. The gravity of stars kept the universe alive, she said.

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Couper also presented the marathon30-part radio series Cosmic Quest (2008), charting the rise of science by tracing the progress of astronomy and astronomers such as Ptolemy, Copernicus and Halley through the ages.

She said her career highlight was being the astronomer aboard Concorde in 1986 showing Halleys Comet to passengers on a flight to New Zealand.

In 1999, on her 50th birthday, Asteroid 3922 Heather, discovered 28 years earlier, was named after her.

Heather Anita Couper was born in Wallasey, Cheshire, in 1949 to Anita (nee Taylor) and George Couper, and brought up in Ruislip, Middlesex.

On leaving St Marys Grammar School, Northwood (now Haydon School), she spent two years as a management trainee with Topshop, then owned by the fashion retailer Peter Robinson.

Joining a local astronomical society reignited her interest in astronomy and she began to realise her dream by working as a research assistant at Cambridge Observatories (1969-70), before graduating in astrophysics from Leicester University in 1973.

Couper became a researcher in Oxford Universitys astrophysics department and, from 1977 to 1983, a lecturer at the Greenwich Planetarium in the Royal Observatory.

Couper was author or co-author of more than 40 books (Hencoup Enterprises/PA)

She then concentrated on broadcasting. Nigel Henbest, who became her lifelong companion after they met as students at Leicester University, worked as a researcher and consultant on The Planets and The Stars, then formed Pioneer Productions in 1988 with Couper and TV director Stuart Carter to make science programmes for global markets.

For Pioneer, she presented The Neptune Encounter (1989), about Nasa spacecraft Voyager 2s flyby of the planet, and Space Shuttle Discovery (1993), as well as writing and narrating Space Shuttle: Human Time Bomb? (2003), investigating the design flaws and cost-cutting measures leading to the disintegration of the returning shuttle Columbia.

As a producer, Couper made Wonders of Weather (1996), Black Holes (1997) and Universe: Beyond the Millennium (1999), as well as episodes of Horizon and Equinox.

Her many radio series as a presenter included Starwatch (1996) and Worlds Beyond (2004-5). She was an author of more than 40 books, many with Henbest, and since 1987 the pair wrote The Independents monthly Stargazing column.

Couper was the first female professor of astronomy at Gresham College (1993-96) and, from 1994 to 2009, served as one of the millennium commissioners responsible for allocating 500m to public science projects. She was made a CBE in 2007.

Heather Couper, astronomer, born 2 June 1949, died 19 February 2020

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Heather Couper: Astronomer who brought the stars to a wide audience - The Independent

These 60 Hyderabad kids are falling in love with astronomy at BMBSC. Do you know how? – EdexLive

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All those students who aim to reach for the stars, quite literally, to pursue a career inAstronomyor just want to understand the cosmos better are a part of the ongoingWinter School onAstronomybeing conducted atBM Birla Science Centrein Hyderabad from February 16 to 21. The fourth edition of the five-day camp is being attended by 60 space enthusiasts selected carefully from over 700 applicants. "We just want to offer a platform where students get to know about high-end Science and what's actually happening in the field," saysPranav Sharma, Scientific Officer and Curator of the Space Museum. What this school does is effectively combine talks with hands-on workshops which gives the participants, who are senior undergraduate and postgraduate students, a clear path that they could take towardsAstronomy. Students are participating from across India and care was taken to ensure a gender-balanced ratio; students from Tier II and III cities were given preference.

Another point to note about the school is that students from diverse backgrounds and an inclination towardsAstronomywere selected. "Interdisciplinary studies need to be encouraged and students should understand that disciplines don't have any borders," says the three-time winner of the REX Karmaveer Chakra Award. Especially with the advent of Computer Science and Big Data, everything has changed, he asserts.

What was new this year is a talk and workshop on Computational Astrophysics by none other than Prof Ashish Mahabal, anastronomerand Lead Computational and Data Scientist at the California Institute of Technology. In fact, this was what this year's session started with on February 16. On February 17 was a talk on Big Data and Deep Learning inAstronomyand Biology by Prof Ajit Kembhavi, Professor Emeritus at the Inter-University Centre forAstronomyand Astrophysics, Pune, that was also the need of the hour, as per the 27-year-old. On the last day, a talk on 'New Insights and Challenges in Probing our Nearest Star: The Sun' by Prof Siraj Hasan, former Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, will enthrallthe participants.

The response, needless to say, is exceptional. Many discussions, including off-stage ones, are going on wherein experts from academia and students were seen engrossed in intense talks. "This offered a great chance for the senior academicians to interact with students, something that they don't get to do on a regular basis," says the Agra-born curator.Pranav asserts that the scope ofAstronomyin India is expanding and students can make the most of it if they wish. "With projects like the CERN collaboration and the Thirty Meter Telescope that India has taken on, youngsters interested in the field have enough to look forward to," he says and concludes.

Other interesting sessions:- The Exciting World of Neutrinos by Prof Sanjib Agarwalla from Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar- Exhibition on various sizes of kytoons (kite balloons)- The Romance ofAstronomyby Pranav Sharma, Curator of the Space Museum- Twenty Five Years of Exoplanets: What Have We Learned So Far? by Prof Manoj Puravankara, TIFR, Mumbai

Scenes from the previous schools

For more on them, visit: astrowin19.wixsite.com/astrowin20

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These 60 Hyderabad kids are falling in love with astronomy at BMBSC. Do you know how? - EdexLive

How a Single Image Taken in 1995 Revolutionized Astronomy – Fstoppers

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The Hubble Space Telescope has been one of the most important scientific instruments to have ever been deployed, and it has provided countless advancements to the fields of astronomy and cosmology. This fascinating video takes a look at one of the earliest and most important images the telescope took and how it continues to impact science even 25 years later.

Coming to you from Vox, this excellent video details the 1995 Hubble Space Telescope deep field observation and how it vastly changed our knowledge ofthe universe and even how astronomers work with data. The two things I have always loved about these images are the age of the light we are looking at and the sheer vastness contained in such a tiny spec (relatively speaking) of space. The image shows somegalaxies that are over 12 billion years old, meaning they were around at a relatively young time for the universe, giving us amazing insight into its history. It also boggles my mind just how much is contained in each of those little blips of light. Entire galaxies with millions orbillions of stars reside in those seemingly innocuous specs, reinforcing how the universe operates on scales of size that are truly beyond our own intuitive grasp. Check out the video above for the full story.

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How a Single Image Taken in 1995 Revolutionized Astronomy - Fstoppers

Astronomers look to preserve the night sky as thousands of satellites set to launch – CBC.ca

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The potential launch of tens of thousands of satellitesis a serious threat to astronomy, according to the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Now, it's trying to find solutions.

The announcement came just days before SpaceX launched an additional 60 of its Starlink satellites.

Such "constellations" any collection of artificial satellites are already in wide use,powering the GPS in our cars and cellphones, for instance. But it's the massive number yet to come that has astronomers around the world deeply concerned.

"We are used to some satellites crossing the night sky, but now we're talking about thousands, some that would be bright enough to seewith the human eye," said Piero Benvenuti, an adviser at the executive committee of the IAU, which has more than 13,000 members worldwide.

In all, SpaceXplans to launch as many as 42,000 satellites, and it's not theonly one. Amazon plans to launch roughly 3,200 satellites, and OneWeb's 650 satellites. Canada also plans to launch 300 Telesat satellites.

The goal of Starlink isto bring internet connectivity to every part of the world, a goal similar to OneWeb's.

And while astronomers agree that goal is a practical one, they are concerned over not only the loss of the night sky, which is already under threat due to light pollution, but also to large-scale and very expensive observatories, like the $1 billion US, 8.4-metre, ground-based Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

There are more and more of these all-sky surveys being put into place. Instead of looking at a small patch of sky, they scan large swaths. But moving satellites create long streaks of light in the images collected.

"Apart from their naked-eye visibility, it is estimated that the trails of the constellation satellites will be bright enough to saturate modern detectors on large telescopes," the IAU statement said. "Wide-field scientific astronomical observations will therefore be severely affected."

Reports of the visibility of a "train" of Starlink satellites began lastMay, shortly after the first batch of 60 were launched. Astronomers, both professional and amateur, posted videosand photos of the long streak of satellites dotting the night sky.

Then, in December, more satellites were launched.

But while the threat may be most felt by professionals, the IAU statement noted, "The appearance of the pristine night sky, particularly when observed from dark sites, will nevertheless be altered, because the new satellites could be significantly brighter than existing orbiting man-made objects."

As a result, the IAU, as well as other organizations like the American Astronomical Society, sought out professional astronomers to run simulations showing what would happen with tens of thousands of satellites in orbit around Earth. Thehope was to not only better understand the consequencesbut also head toward some solutions.

They found that, using an exampleof 25,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit which ranges from 160 to 2,000 kilometres above Earth and with orbits between 84 and 127 minutes at any given point, satellites above the horizon could number from 1,500 toa few thousand.

Some other notable findings:

Benvenuti is keen for more researchin order to better understand what the effects of tens of thousands of satellites could be.Right now, he said, astronomers are working with SpaceX in an effort to reduce their reflectivity called albedo and trying to work with other companies as well.

Connie Walker, an astronomer and president of the Commission B7, which is involved in the IAUconstellation analysis, saidthe idea is to find a solution suitable for everyone.

"It's going to be a long process, and I think to some extent, the various companies producing these satellite constellations are willing to try to come up with some solutions," she said. Some of the ideas being examined, she said, are changes to thecoatings of the satellites and changes to software to help observatories avoid, or compensate for, albedo.

But, she said, there is unlikely to be one quick-fix that will check off all the boxes.

The launch of satellite constellations and their consequences have largely taken the astronomical community by surprise. One of the problems is that there is no regulation surrounding the albedo of an object in orbit.

But that might change.

WATCH: Atrain of Starlink satellites crosses the sky (on theright)

The IAU plans to bring the issue to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) in the coming months. They also plan to include the issue of constellations and their threat to science inthe program of the Conference on Dark and Quiet Skies for Science and Society, held by the IAU, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs and the Government of Spain in October.

"We don't want to stop the progress of having this G5 interconnectivity," Benvenuti said. "But one has to consider the implications that you're creating on the environment, and in particularthe night sky."

And, he added, "We don't want to cry wolf and say it's a disaster and you can't do astronomy anymore."

But astronomy is more than just looking up at the night sky, admiring the stars or photographing them. It's about advancing knowledge and even technologies.

"The progress that we've made in the last 100 years It's absolutely astonishing how much we've learned because of astronomical observations," he said. "When you use your GPS, you apply Einstein's relativity, otherwise you wouldn't know where you are. People tend to forget about this."

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Astronomers look to preserve the night sky as thousands of satellites set to launch - CBC.ca

Look up: Astronomical event on the way – WOODTV.com

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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) Early Tuesday morning, a neatastronomical event will occur. Across the United States, people will be able towatch the planet Mars disappear behind the moon.

Unfortunately, its looking cloudy in West Michigan, so we wonthave the best view here. Our neighbors across the country with clearerconditions will be able to see Mars disappear behind the lit side of the moon thenreappear on the dark side around an hour later.

In Grand Rapids, Mars will disappear behind the moon around 7:12a.m., just before sunrise. It will reappear after sunrise around 8:38 a.m. Ifskies were clear, a telescope would likely still be needed to view the phenomenondue to the lighter conditions. The western United States will have a betterchance of seeing the occultation with the naked eye.

An occultation of a planet is not rare, but you have to be on theright spot of the globe to see it happen. Almost all the United States will beable to see this occultation of Mars (weather permitting) with the onlyexceptions being Hawaii, Alaska and a small portion of the PacificNorthwest.

We have a better chance of clearer conditions early Wednesdaymorning and early Thursday morning. In the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday, look tothe southeast toward the moon. You should be able to see Jupiter to the left ofthe moon.

Both Saturn and Jupiter will be close to the moon on Thursday morning. The moon will be to the lower right of Saturn and Jupiter will be to the upper right of the moon. Again, youll want to look toward the southeast at dawn.

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Look up: Astronomical event on the way - WOODTV.com

SETI and other alien-hunting strategies are dealing with new tools and new troubles – GeekWire

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Two PANOSETI telescopes are installed in the recently renovated Astrograph Dome at the Lick Observatory in California. PANOSETI will use a configuration of many SETI telescopes to allow simultaneous monitoring of the entire observable sky. ( Laurie Hatch Photo via UCSD)

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, better known as SETI, is taking advantage of a widening array of strategies ranging from sophisticated laser searches, to a new type of wide-angle optical observatory, to arrangements to conduct the search simultaneously with other scientific efforts.

But new technologies are also bringing new challenges: For example, how will radio astronomers deal with the noise created by a fast-growing number of satellites in low Earth orbit?

The technological pluses and minuses for the SETI quest, and for other strategies aimed at detecting life beyond our solar system, took the spotlight in Seattle last weekend during a session presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Were bringing a Silicon Valley approach to the search for advanced life, said Andrew Siemion, whos the director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center as well as principal investigator for the 10-year, $100 million Breakthrough Listen project. Usually I add that were trying to bring the good parts of Silicon Valley to the search, not necessarily some of the bad parts.

Siemion focused on the good parts, including the public release of the second big batch of radio data from Breakthrough Listen. That campaign got its start nearly five years ago with a high-profile kickoff from Israeli-Russian tech billionaire Yuri Milner and the late British physicist Stephen Hawking.

Since then, Breakthrough Listen has forged partnerships with radio telescope arrays around the world most recently with the National Radio Astronomy Observatorys Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, which took a star turn in the SETI movie Contact.

Were developing a system that will allow us to tap all of the data that the VLA produces and use it 24 hours a day, seven days a week to search for anomalies alongside other science, Siemion said.

If NRAO wins the go-ahead for a next-generation upgrade of the Jansky VLA, Breakthrough LIstens capability would be similarly upgraded.

This is the first radio telescope that would ever be built that would allow us to be sensitive to leakage radiation radio signals that are as weak as our isotropic emissions from the planet from a handful of nearby stars, Siemion said. In other words, it would theoretically be capable of picking up the signals coming from E.T.s smartphone on Proxima Centauri b.

Huge radio dishes arent the only instruments being used in the hunt for alien signals: Pioneer SETI astronomer Jill Tarter touted the development of a new type of wide-angle optical observatory, known as Panoramic SETI or PANOSETI, which would be capable of recording brief flashes of light. Such flashes may be associated with weird phenomena known as fast radio bursts, and theres a chance they might follow a pattern suggestive of intentional transmissions from a far-off civilization.

Two prototype PANOSETI telescopes are being tested at the Lick Observatorys Astrograph Dome in California. The plan calls for building two PANOSETI observatories, each with 80 telescopes arranged to cover the sky. If you get a pulse somewhere between a nanosecond and a second in duration, both observatories will see it, and you will be very confident of your result, Tarter explained.

Another long-running project at the SETI Institute, called LaserSETI, takes a different approach to the search for optical signals. LaserSETIs compact camera enclosures are designed to scan the entire sky for short blips of laser light, from as many as 15 sites around the world.

Since last August, the first two enclosures have been operating on the rooftop of the Robert Ferguson Observatory in Sonoma, California, Tarter said. The next two enclosures are going to be placed in Hawaii, at the Haleakala Observatory. And ultimately, well have something like this globally to look at all the sky, all the time, for transients.

Optical SETI could widen the search for alien signals to a whole new region of the electromagnetic spectrum, but theres an all-too-earthly obstacle to overcome.

Neither PANOSETI nor LaserSETI are fully funded, so we cant say when they might be complete, Tarter told the Seattle audience. If you have an opportunity to provide some funding, both of those projects would benefit from it.

As the acronym suggests, SETI looks for the characteristic patterns of intentional signals from beyond the solar system. But theres growing interest in the search for signs of less advanced life among the stars.

Were not looking for little green men, were looking for little green pond slime, said University of Washington astronomer Victoria Meadows, who heads UWs Virtual Planetary Laboratory.

In the decade ahead, NASAs James Webb Space Telescope could track down the first chemical signals of extraterrestrial life processes, perhaps through the detection of such gases as water vapor, methane and carbon dioxide in alien atmospheres. The next generation of ground-based telescopes could also contribute to the quest.

For now, the most promising nearby target for closer inspection is the TRAPPIST-1 system, which appears to have more than one potentially habitable planet. But Meadows warned that appearances can be deceiving. Computer simulations suggest that some seemingly habitable planets could have had their oceans cooked away early in the process of planetary evolution. Such planets turn out looking more like hellish Venus than habitable Earth.

If you think of the Earth as a kernel of corn, then Venus is like the popcorn of the solar system. Can we discriminate between a nice habitable planet, and one thats undergone ocean or atmospheric loss to be in the popcorn zone? Meadows said.

She said its likely to take more than the James Webb Space Telescope to nail down the chemical case for life beyond the solar system.

JWST will really give us a tantalizing glimpse that would be potentially habitable. Well get this tantalizing glimpse, but we wont get anything really definitive, Meadows said. To do that, we are going to need far more capable missions, and happily, NASA is currently considering them.

Several mission concepts with implications for astrobiology including HabEx, LUVOIR, Lynx and Origins are due to be assessed during a decadal survey of astronomical priorities.

Over the course of the next couple of decades, those new spacecraft should give astronomers a much better view of the heavens. But other types of new spacecraft are giving astronomers pause: Several companies including SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat and Amazon are planning to put thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit to provide global broadband internet access. The satellites already launched by OneWeb and SpaceX have sparked concerns about radio interference, an issue that strikes at the heart of the traditional SETI quest.

If it happened that some civilization is transmitting in exactly one of the frequencies used by one of these companies, theres going to be a problem detecting it, NRAO Director Tony Beasley told GeekWire.

Beasley said he and other astronomers are involved in discussions with SpaceX to work out ways to minimize the potential harm, and hes hoping to have similar talks with OneWeb and the other satellite constellation companies. One of the measures being discussed would involve switching off the satellites for brief periods while they pass over sensitive radio dishes. Other measures could involve processing radio data to cancel out the satellites effects.

There are ways with our telescopes to be able to detect nearby moving objects and so we do have ways to separate them from celestial signals in some sense, Beasley said. But in general, a noisier environment just makes it harder to hear something.

If scientists do hear a confirmed signal from E.T., you can bet that the conflict over constellations would quickly fade away. So would the financial challenges that SETI astronomers currently face.

Ive been promised unlimited funding if we detect a signal, Breakthrough Listens Siemion said.

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SETI and other alien-hunting strategies are dealing with new tools and new troubles - GeekWire