KC AstroNews SEPT-OCT 03

EQUINOX SPECIAL

• TOP SPACE MYSTERIES FOR 2003
• SETI@home and I LOVE LUCY
• VISIT AN OBSERVATORY
• PICK A MARS PIC
• GALILEO TAKES THE PLUNGE
• COOL EYE IN THE SKY
• COSMIC CLASSROOM
• BLACK HOLE THAT HUMS
• IN MEMORY OF THE COLUMBIA 7

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Up This Month
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Look up!

Fall is here, the autumnal EQUINOX has come and gone.

FALL constellations are moving into prime-time evening viewing hours. The best known are five constellations from Greek mythology: Pegasus, Andromeda, Perseus, Cassiopeia, and Cepheus. All stand high overhead in mid evening.

The MARS hoopla has died and Mars is not quite as bright as a month ago. The red planet is still the brightest object in the night sky except for the Moon. Look for it low in the southeast in early evening.

SATURN is coming back into the evening sky! Right now it rises around 1 AM, and by early October Saturn is rising, in Gemini, around midnight. Saturn will gradually rise a little earlier every day throughout October. The amazing rings are visible in even the smallest telescope or binoculars at 25x magnification.

TOP SPACE MYSTERIES FOR 2003 CONTINUED

7. THE ENIGMATIC SUN

If you're looking for a career with a really bright future, become a solar physicist.

New pictures of sunspots in 2002, the most detailed ever, revealed canal-like structures reaching from bright regions into the dark hearts of sunspots. The strange structures are fueled by the Sun's tremendous heat and magnetic energy, but beyond that, their generation is a mystery.

"Exactly what happens and why these kind of structures are formed, we don't know," said study member Dan Kiselman.

And the Sun in general? "The amazing zoo of structures and dynamic phenomena on the Sun are not well understood in general, though they have been observed for a very long time," Kiselman said. Sounds like serious job security.

8. AGE OF THE UNIVERSE

Scientists pretty much agree on the general method by which the early universe evolved.

The age of the universe has been put at 12 billion to 15 billion years for some time now, but every few months a revision or refinement is announced. Hubble Telescope observations yielded in April an estimate of 13-14 billion years.

A related and even more vexing set of questions: What exactly happened at the beginning of the universe, and what existed before that instant? These are questions cosmologists will likely wrangle with forever, since no direct observations can be made of those time frames and therefore, presumably, no proof can come.

Next Month: Missing Planets & Can We Survive 2003?

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SETI@home and I LOVE LUCY

SETI@home has nearly 5 million users. They use this software to search for ET. You too can help search for extraterrestrials with your home computer!

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

The SETI@home screen saver identifies four different types of events: spikes, Gaussians, pulses, and triplets. Events caused by Earth broadcasts (also called RFI), have to be distinguished from alien signals. One way is to assume that extraterrestrials send signals persistently over time.

Alien signals could be intentional attempts at communication or merely leakage. Earth has been leaking radio signals for 60 years now, beginning with radio and television programs such as "The I Love Lucy Show". We've seen it as reruns for more than half a century, but it's entering its first season at locations 60 light-years away from us!

SETI@home has accumulated enough data to cover each part of the sky approximately 3-4 times. So signals arriving from the same direction in space can be matched up. If these matching signals have similar frequencies, then it's quite possible they were emitted by the same source.

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

Download the latest free version of SETI@home software:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu

ASTROTIP

VISIT AN OBSERVATORY

Visit an observatory near you to catch a bigger, better glimpse of the heavens!

In the San Francisco Bay Area we have the Chabot Observatory at the Chabot Space and Science Center.

It's a great facility up on a hill near Oakland. They have free viewing for the public on Friday and Saturday nights.

Chabot Space and Science Center:
http://www.chabotspace.org/

PICK A MARS PIC

Are you a real Mars buff? Would you like a chance to aim the camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter and take a picture of something on the red planet?

Yup, the public is now able to suggest what high resolution images are to be obtained by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) camera.
Using a web site interface, you can indicate the location of your recommended MOC image. Your request is evaluated by the Mars science staff at Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) and put into a database for future targeting.

The camera on Mars Global Surveyor has returned more than 120,000 pictures, since the spacecraft began orbiting Mars in 1997. Its high-resolution images have covered only about three percent of the planet's surface. Three percent of Mars, while seemingly small, represents a huge amount of "real estate," or nearly 5 million square kilometers (3 million square miles), that have been observed at spectacular resolution - detail as small as a large SUV.

How do you submit suggestions? Visit the Mars Orbiter Camera Target Request Site:

http://www.msss.com/plan/intro/

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DISTANT DISCOVERIES

GALILEO TAKES THE PLUNGE

Galileo, one of NASA's most successful planetary probes, has spent eight years studying Jupiter and its moons. Last week Galileo dove into the Jovian atmosphere for a fiery end.

NASA officials decided to destroy the spacecraft rather than risk the chance of it crashing into and contaminating one of Jupiter's moons.

Galileo penetrated the topmost region of Jupiter's atmosphere. It entered a high radiation area on its way down to Jupiter. Data was received until the craft broke apart and vaporized.

Galileo had discovered 21 new moons around Jupiter and caught the flashy destruction of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which slammed into the gas giant in 1994.

The Galileo mission took its name from famed astronomer Galileo Galilei, who made the first telescope observations of Jupiter in 1610. The planets largest moons, Io, Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, are known as the Galilean satellites in honor of Galileos observations of their motions about Jupiter.

Studies of the Jovian system allow researchers to better understand the evolution of the Solar System and the properties of extrasolar planets.

One of the high points of Galileo was the success of its atmospheric probe, a combination reentry vehicle and weather balloon designed to relay observations of Jupiter's atmosphere. Before Galileo, no direct measurements of a gas giants atmosphere existed.

The probes biggest surprise for researchers was the unexpected rarity of water it detected.

Although Jupiters atmosphere appeared devoid of much water, the planets moons seem flush with the stuff in one form or another.

Galileos studies of Europa reinforced the belief by researchers that the moon carries a liquid, subsurface ocean. Europas oceans would contain about twice the amount of water than all the oceans of Earth.

Galileos observations showed Callisto and Ganymede as icy worlds akin to Europa, with Ganymede bigger than Mercury - boasting its own magnetosphere, two findings that were not picked up in Voyager observations.

Galileo visited Io with radiation-damaged instruments and finicky camera, the but crafts instruments recorded active volcanoes and lava flowing with temperatures of 1800 Kelvin (1526.85 degrees Celsius), hotter than anyplace on Earth.

The Galileo mission to Jupiter and its Moons may be succeeded by proposed missions such as Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO), a mission to the larger Jovian moons thought to harbor water or even life, and Jupiter Polar Orbiter with Probes (JPOP), a detailed survey of Jupiter's polar region with planetary probes.

SIRTF

COOL EYE IN THE SKY

NASA's latest satellite observatory was built to see objects either too cold to cast their own light or obscured by interstellar dust.

From failed stars that never turned on, to the galaxy's own dust-shrouded heart, the Space Infra-Red Telescope Facility (SIRTF) will look into the dark, cold corners of the universe, making itself sensitive to the faintest heat signatures by cooling its own instruments to just a degree or two above absolute zero.

SIRTF is a space-borne, cryogenically-cooled infrared observatory capable of studying objects ranging from our Solar System to the distant reaches of the Universe.

The $700 million satellite is the last of NASA's so-called Great Observatories. When combined with the Hubble Space Telescope, which sees in the visible light spectrum, and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, astronomers will get their most complete view yet of matter and energy near the edge of the known universe. Chandra sees objects that are millions of degrees in temperature, Hubble thousands of degrees, and SIRTF hundreds of degrees.

SIRTIF also has a job closer to home - study the Kuiper Belt. That's the wide belt of icy objects that circle the sun way out there beyond Pluto. When the Kuiper Belt sends one of its ice balls into the inner solar system, it becomes a comet when heated by the sun - like Halley's Comet or Hale-Bopp.

Astronomers will get their best look yet at the mysterious heart of the galaxy, where the star field in much denser. This area is hidden from view at optical wavelengths by dust clouds.

When viewed by SIRTF, the universe will not be a field pinpointed by individual lights but a swirling maelstrom of energy sources.

SIRTF will be given a proper name, like Hubble, Chandra and the defunct Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, about four months after launch

SIRTF was launched in August 2003. A first image has already been taken by the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) to make sure it survived liftoff. The scope is being fine-tuned as SIRTF cools to its operating temperature of a few degrees above absolute zero. Expect more SIRTF images in December 2003!

SIRTF WEBSITE:
http://sirtf.caltech.edu/

COSMIC CLASSROOM

The "Cool Cosmos” portal is the main gateway of the NASA “Cool Cosmos” Education and Public Outreach (EPO) group at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) and the SIRTF Science Center

Communicating the world of infrared astronomy to the public is the main topic of the “Cool Cosmos” portal but certainly not its only goal. In the past few years the “Cool Cosmos” team has created a wide variety of educational products that explain the infrared as well as the multi-wavelength universe. We've produced a suite of award-winning websites

COOL COSMOS
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/

FAR OUT FACTS

BLACK HOLE THAT HUMS

A giant black hole has probably been humming B flat for billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear.

The intensity of the sound is comparable to human speech but the pitch is about 57 octaves below middle C, roughly the middle of a standard piano keyboard. The discovery was made with NASA's orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory and it is the deepest note ever detected in the universe.

The sound comes from the Perseus Cluster, a cluster of galaxies 250 million light-years away. In case anyone forgot, a light year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km), the distance light travels in a year.

When scientists trained Chandra on the center of Perseus they saw concentric ripples in the cosmic gas that fills the space between the galaxies in the cluster. The size of these ripples is 30,000 light-years.

Researchers presumed that a supermassive black hole, with perhaps 2.5 billion times the mass of our sun, lay there. As the black hole pulls material in it also creates jets of material shooting out above and below it, and it is these powerful jets that create the pressure that creates the sound waves.

Pressure ripples equate to sound waves. Calculate how far apart the ripples are, how fast sound travels, and you determine the musical note of the sound.

IN MEMORY OF THE COLUMBIA 7

In April 2003 the Planetary Society, the Association of Space Explorers, and the American Astronautical Society held a workshop at the George Washington University's Space Policy Institute about the future of human space transportation.

The following conclusions have been endorsed by The Planetary Society and the American Astronautical Society and by a number of astronauts present at the workshop.

CONCLUSIONS
Human space exploration is a great and unifying enterprise of planet Earth. The loss of Columbia reminds us that astronauts are the emissaries of humankind as part of our civilization's aspirations for great achievements and new discoveries.

The United States' commitment to human exploration reflects humankind's movement outward from Earth, to become eventually a multi-planet species. We do this to understand and cope with the limits of Earth, its finite resources and indeed its finite lifetime, and to satisfy the innate desire of people to advance civilization and understand their place in the universe. We do this not just for our own country, but also for all our planet's citizens. Furthermore, the space enterprise provides a unique means of building national intellectual, technical and personal capabilities. It is a commitment to a positive future.

The workshop in memory of the Columbia space shuttle crew assessed launch vehicle requirements to meet the needs of human space exploration beyond Earth orbit. Conclusions from this assessment are:

THE IMPERATIVE
* There are strong societal imperatives for exploring space. The natural curiosity to explore new frontiers coupled with an instinctive desire to preserve the future of humankind motivates our continued exploration of space. Space exploration will provide new knowledge and resources for a more prosperous and secure future.
* There are fundamental questions concerning our cosmic origin, our future and whether or not we are alone in the universe. Science in pursuit of these questions can provide a credible goal-oriented strategy for an evolutionary approach to exploring deep space destinations with both robots and humans.
* The exploration of deep space by humans will be energized by the goals of individual nations woven into an international enterprise and infused with a sense of human destiny in space.

THE DESTINATIONS
* The most important scientific destinations for human explorers are the Moon, Mars, Near-Earth Objects and the Sun-Earth Lagrangian point L2[1] (for astronomical observatories).
* Mars is the ultimate destination for human explorers in the foreseeable future. Consequently the robotic Mars exploration program should progress beyond sample return to robotic outposts in preparation for human presence.

A STRATEGY
* By adopting a phased approach to human exploration beyond Earth orbit, we can develop a cost-effective program that is exciting, scientifically rewarding and for which the risks can be measured and managed.
* The initial stages of a robust human exploration architecture can proceed using existing and currently planned propulsion technologies.
* We see no essential role for continuing flight of the shuttle orbiter beyond its immediate goal of completing construction of the International Space Station and early transport of crew members to and from the Station. As soon as an alternate mode of human transport into and from low Earth orbit (LEO) is available, which should be accomplished as soon as possible, the shuttle orbiter should be retired.
* Crew and cargo should be transported separately to increase flexibility, reduce cost and reduce risk associated with human space exploration.
* The underutilized fleet of existing expendable launch vehicles should play a major role in the next stages of human space exploration, as well as in human and cargo transportation into LEO.
* Increased investment in on-orbit operations and in-space propulsion technologies is required.

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

* Exploration beyond Earth orbit is an intrinsically global enterprise. It is unlikely that any nation acting alone will commit the necessary resources for a major human exploration mission initiative beyond Earth orbit.
* International partnerships provide tangible benefits for human space exploration. These include broadening public and political support, sharing of the cost and risk, adding resiliency and enriching the scientific and technological content.
* To this end all space faring nations should strengthen mechanisms for exchanging information on human exploration activities and plans, increase international participation in robotic exploration missions, and explore mechanisms for sharing critical roles among partners.

1)Lagrangian points (L1-L5) are points in space where the gravitational forces from the two most nearby influential gravitational masses (in this case the Sun and Earth) are in equilibrium.

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My god! It's full of stars!