Archive for January, 2006

The 10th Planet has been downsized…

Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 12:45 PM

2003 UB313 was announced last summer as the first Kuiper Belt Object bright enough and far enough out to be significantly larger than Pluto. In fact, unless it was 100% reflective, it was almost certainly larger than Pluto in diameter and so many started calling this distant world the 10th planet. The actual [...]

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Cool THINGS

Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 10:57 AM

When THINGS is done they will have (hopefully) images of 34 galaxies in neutral hydrogen, revealing the gas that makes up the majority of the “normal” matter in the universe. These observations can be used to investigate the 3-D structure of the gas, the dark matter distribution (which gravitationally tugs on this material), and the condition of the gas involved in star formation.

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View Saturn at its best for the year!

Thursday, January 26th, 2006 at 12:42 PM

 In 2009 the rings will be seen edge-on and will seem to disappear.  Afterwards the tilt will come back to full view in 2016.  Now would be a good time to watch the changes in the ring orientation the next few years as the rings of Saturn will slowly disappear. During the Spring Astronomy Public Nights we will observe Saturn through telescopes.  Additional information about the Public Nights will come out next month.(Click on image for full-size version.)A photograph of Light Pillars over Saint Cloud.

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A beautiful picture of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Wednesday, January 11th, 2006 at 11:21 PM

So emission line spectra are to astronomers what DNA is to crime scene investigators, something that can be pinned down to an individual (in this case, an individual type of atom).The MCELS folks looked specifically in five wavelength bands focused on the wavelengths emitted by hydrogen, doubly-ionized oxygen, and singly-ionized sulfur, as well wide red and green continuum bands…. The Magellanic Clouds provide a unique venue for studying the interstellar medium and its components on all size scales.”If you examine these images up close, you an see what look like little bubbles, many of which are the expanding shells of heated gas from supernovas that went off in the distant past.

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News from the AAS Making it into the Media

Wednesday, January 11th, 2006 at 11:45 AM

Scientists ‘RAVE-ing’ about most ambitious star survey ever: RAVE is “an ambitious all-sky spectroscopic survey aimed at measuring the speed, temperature, surface gravity and composition of up to a million stars passing near the sun.” They have gathered data on 80,000 of the 1.2 million stars they hope to eventually obtain spectra for.Clemson research collaboration reveals star forming activity: Basically, an interesting project to track the amount of an isotope of aluminum in the interstellar medium which has a relatively short half-life and only produced in Supernova in order to determine the rate of Supernova in the galaxy.NASA chief: Money will be tight for astronomy: Hubble panoramic view of Orion Nebula reveals thousands of starsAstronomers report mysterious giant star clusters engaging in “Star Formation on Steroids: This was kind of neat, the announcement of observations of “super star clusters” in a dozen nearby galaxies.

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