KC AstroNews JAN-FEB 03

NEW YEAR SPECIAL

• DRACO THE DRAGON
• TOP SPACE MYSTERIES FOR 2003
• STAR PREPARES TO BLOW
• MARS NEEDS STUDENTS
• NEW WAY FINDS DISTANT PLANET
• POWERS OF TEN

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Up This Month
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Look up!

DRACO THE DRAGON

Most of our readers are familiar with the BIG DIPPER, which is the well known section of the constellation URSA MAJOR, the big bear.

But few folks are aware that another constellation weaves right between the two dippers! It is Draco, the dragon or snake or serpent. Although the stars of Draco are faint, the constellation is so large that if its stars were pulled into a straight line, they would stretch from horizon to horizon.

Draco is also one of the few constellations that resemble the object they are named after. If you watch the movie Dragonheart you'll see this constellation depicted many times. As the year goes on, Draco turns upside down. This is because from our point of view here on Earth, it has rotated around the North Star.

GIANT PLANETS


SATURN is found near the cluster of stars called the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters.

Directly below it is the brightest star in Taurus, Aldebaran. Saturn lies to the lower left of Aldebaran.

This is the best time to view Saturn for three reasons:

1) Saturn reached opposition on December 17, a position diametrically opposite the sun in our sky and the best time to view the planet.

2) Saturn is close to perihelion, the closest point to the sun in its orbit. This puts Saturn closer to Earth than it has been in nearly 30 years.

3) The rings are tilted at their maximum toward us, making Saturn both bright and spectacular.

JUPITER, the other giant planet, rises in the east-northeast as twilight falls.

It is the brightest object in the sky aside from the moon. It is east-southeast of M44, the wonderful Beehive star cluster in Cancer.

Wait until about 10 p.m. for good telescopic views, when Jupiter has climbed high enough to be less affected by atmospheric turbulence. Jupiter will reach opposition on February 2. By the end of January its apparent diameter has grown to the maximum size for the year. This renders atmospheric details visible on a scale suitable even for small telescopes.

TOP SPACE MYSTERIES FOR 2003

Here are the Top Space Mysteries that astronomers will be pondering in 2003:

1. DARK ENERGY

Nobody knows what it is, but it is officially repulsive. And it is more powerful than gravity.

Gravity holds things together at the local level (within galaxies and even between them, forming galactic clusters) but some unknown force is working behind the scenes and across the universe to pull everything apart.

Scientists have only come to realize this dark force in recent years, by discovering that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing pace. Having no clue what it is, they've labeled it dark energy.

The past year was a good one for proving that dark energy is at work. Calculations have been refined: The repulsive force dominates the universe, comprising 65 percent of its makeup.

(Similarly unseen and exotic dark matter makes up 30 percent of the universe, leaving us with a universe that contains just 5 percent normal matter and energy.)

Two curious ideas related to the accelerating expansion, both of which emerged in 2002: All galaxies are destined to become frozen in time or, perhaps, time never ends.

2. WATER ON MARS?

Mars simply will not give up its most coveted secrets. The big quest for Mars scientists is about whether there is life, but before that's answered, there is the question of liquid water, a requirement of life as we know it.

Despite two major discoveries of water ice in 2002, nobody can figure out yet whether any of it might exist in the melted state.

One study released in December 2002 attributed dark streaks on the surface to salty, running water. NASA's Odyssey spacecraft is circling Mars as you read this, hunting for more evidence.

NEXT MONTH: Our Mediocre Black Hole & The Origin of Life

Source: Space.com

STAR PREPARES TO BLOW

Watch this star! It's a monster star that lobbed 10,000 times the Earth's mass into space when it erupted two years ago and it is ready to blow again.

The star is 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia and any explosion there would have no effect on Earth. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.

As a hypergiant, Rho Cas has a huge atmosphere. If it were located where our sun is, its atmosphere would extend beyond Mars, engulfing Earth.

Read on:
http://skyandtelescope.com/news/current/article_842_1.asp

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SETI@home: WAY COOL

SETI@home has over 4 million users. They use this software to search for ET. You can too! Use your home computer to help search for extraterrestrials!

How? The SETI@home screen saver is a scientific analytical software. It performs a mathematical operations on data you download from the SETI program.

SETI@home uses the largest telescope in the world, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, to continuously scan the sky for radio signals.

So far no signs of life. So if you want to help, maybe you can be the lucky one who finds ET!

ASTROTIP

MARS NEEDS STUDENTS

For the first time in the history of the space program, NASA has allowed a private organization, The Planetary Society, to create an educational experiment for an actual Mars mission AND include specially selected students to participate in hands-on mission operations. The revolutionary student-involvement program is called Red Rover Goes to Mars.

Next spring the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission heads to the Red Planet with its two rovers.

For the first time, public participants - not just a small, lucky, elite group of NASA scientists - will be part of mission control, sitting in on operations meetings and working with the mission science team.

This is only the second time in the history of space exploration that privately contributed hardware is flying to another world -- the first time was when a Mars Microphone flew in 1998 (also a project of the Planetary Society).

Learn more online at:
http://planetary.org/

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DISTANT DISCOVERIES

NEW WAY FINDS DISTANT PLANET

The most distant known planet, a large and hot world pelted by iron rain and orbiting a star about 5,000 light-years away, has been found with a new and promising search technique.

The discovery extends astronomers capabilities for planet hunting beyond the roughly 160 light-years of nearby space in which other planets had been found. The number of stars that can now be examined jumps from 40,000 to 100 million or more, said the scientists involved in the discovery.

The planet is about the size of Jupiter and orbits its host star every 29 hours, closer than Mercury is to our Sun. It was discovered because it crosses in front of the star, as seen from Earth. Astronomers measured a slight dip in starlight as the planet transits the star.

The effect is akin to watching a mosquito flying in front of a searchlight two hundred miles away, the researchers said.

While only a small percentage of planets can be conveniently configured this way, this transit method shows great promise for finding more of them, experts say. Previously, all firm planet detections were made by the so-called wobble method, in which astronomers note slight wobbles in stars induced by the gravitational tug of an orbiting world.

Ultimately, however, nearer planets can be more thoroughly examined by space-based observatories planned for launch over the next decade.

FAR OUT FACTS

POWERS OF TEN

Have you ever seen that video animation where they show a human standing on earth and then they zoom out until they show the entire earth and then the entire solar system and ultimately you see entire galaxies. Then they shift into reverse and start zooming in until they are back on earth on a human scale again?

Well here is a website that has a similar animation where you can view the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then you move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tree.

After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

POWERS OF TEN
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/

AstroNews is an electronic newsletter by Kahl Consultants. Stay abreast of astronomy and extraterrestrial news.  Browse the AstroNews Archives.

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My god! It's full of stars!