AstroNews 4/2000

APRIL
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PLANETARY ALIGNMENT   |   HUBBLE TURNS TEN
WIN SOME, LOSE SOME   |   AMAZING SETI@home
CLEAR SKIES TONIGHT?
PLANET HUNTING MILESTONE
LIFE ON EUROPA?

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Up This Month
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PLANETARY ALIGNMENT
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The planets are having a little gathering in the evening sky. Jupiter, Mars and Saturn can all be seen at the same time with a pair of binoculars. They are within 5 degrees of each other on the northwest horizon.
 

HUBBLE TURNS TEN
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The Hubble Space Telescope is ten years old! To celebrate this anniversay and commemorate the astronomer that the telescope is named for (Edwin Powell Hubble), the U.S. Postal Service issued five new commemorative postage stamps.

The stamps are definite collector items. They feature Hubble images of the Eagle Nebula, the Ring Nebula, the Lagoon Nebula, the Egg Nebula and Galaxy NGC 1316.

Hubble's is a long-lived space-based observatory that benefits the global astronomical community. Hubble is a cooperative program of the European Space Agency and the NASA.
[Source: CNN]
 

WIN SOME, LOSE SOME
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First the GOOD NEWS: a powerful new tool for exploring Earth’s magnetosphere is in orbit. The spacecraft is called IMAGE (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration). The scientific instruments on IMAGE (neutral atom, ultraviolet, and radio imaging) will create the first three-dimensional "pictures" of Earth’s magnetosphere. Ultraviolet views of the aurora are also planned.

Want to know more about IMAGE:
http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/
http://pluto.space.swri.edu/IMAGE/

Then the BAD NEWS: The ASTRO-E mission has been lost. ASTRO-E was to have opened a new window into the workings of black holes, neutron stars, active galaxies, and other very energetic objects. How? By observing the X-ray spectrum of the distant universe closer than anything that came before.

But NOOOOOO! Because the rocket carrying this spacecraft had an attitude control problem it didn't reach an orbit that was high enough. So.... ASTRO reentered the atmosphere and burned up. 

Since SETI@home doesn't need to point to any specific point in the sky, it just "goes along for the ride" while other astronomers use the giant antenna. The goal is to collect and analyze at least two years worth of data. This would cover the sky seen from Arecibo about three times.  Why would we want to cover the sky three times? Redundancy!

SETI@home now has enough computer power to analyze almost all the data gathered to the present time. Given enough additional funding, in future versions of SETI@home, they hope to increase the bandwidth searched, and expand the search in other parts of the sky using other radio telescopes around the world.

What have they found? Several extremely strong signals. Unfortunately , none of these have turned out to be extraterrestrials. Don't get discouraged. Given the increasing sophistication of home computers and signal processing technology, they will keep improving their techniques by leaps and bounds. So keep SETI@home running! It's our planet's largest supercomputer!

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu

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http://www.kahl.net/global

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http://www.kahl.net/weather

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Did you know that 30 planets have already been found outside our solar system? They are all at least the size of Jupiter, Earth's largest neighbor.

Who are these guys? Geoff Marcy and Paul Butler of the Carnigie Institute, and Steve Vogt of the University of California. Using Hawaii's Keck Observatory, they measured changes in the velocity of the parent stars as small as the speed of a bicyclist!

The astronomers indirectly detected the new planets by studying their gravitational pull on host stars.  To detect the planets, the astronomers looked for a wobble in their parent star's motion, detectable as a shift in the star's spectra. The two new planets are more than 100 light years away.

The finding of Saturn-sized planets supports the idea that large planets accrete from small ones, using gas and dust that encircle stars, according to NASA. The theory predicts that more small planets exist than large ones; researchers are increasingly finding this trend in the data.

Both newly discovered planets orbit very close to their parent stars. They are presumably gas giants made of hydrogen and helium, and undoubtably experience blistering temperatures - no chance of life as we know it here.

Researchers said ground-based observations will help them find planets the size of Neptune within a few years. They think many smaller planets exist, but they do not have the ability to detect Earth-sized planets around other stars yet. Advanced space telescopes would be required to find them.
[BBC News Online, various other sources]
 
 

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FAR OUT FACT
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LIFE ON EUROPA?
Europa is one of those places in our Solar System where LIFE CAN EXIST. According to data from the Galileo spacecraft, this large moon of Jupiter probably has a subsurface ocean beneath it's icy surface. Surface features tell us about the potential for biological niches here. Warm ice plumes may induce partial melting within Europa's ice shell, potentially creating biological niches.

Theoretical modeling and Galileo data suggest that Europa's ocean and ice shell are rich in salt. LIke ice on earth, salt-rich Europan ice should partially melt when contacted by a heat pulse. Scientists conclude that the most accessible near-surface niches in which to find Europan biology are brine-rich liquid inclusions within the ice. They are analogous to those recently identified in terrestrial sea ice. Stay tuned, someday we may find evidence of life on Europa!
 

LAST PLUG
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AstroNews is an electronic newsletter by Kahl Consultants. Stay abreast of astronomy and extraterrestrial news. 

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My god! It's full of stars!