Watch the reveal of SpaceX next generation crewed space-craft Dragon V2:

Labels: Dragon V2, news, SpaceX, video

Artist's conception of Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Spitzer space telescope, that was launched in 2003 might be shut down by the end of September this year.
Spitzer observes the universe in the infrared wavelengths, although since 2009, it has only been able to work in near-infrared, because of having run out of cryogenic helium that could cool the sensors well enough.

Unfortunately NASA's budget is constrained, since some of their priorities need a lot of funding - International Space Station, constructing the heavy-lift Space Launch System, and ofcourse also James Webb Space Telescope. Although Spitzer is still useful for scientific observations, the telescope would have to be shut down at some time anyway, as it is moving further away from the Earth, as it is in an Earth-trailing orbit around the Sun and as the distance between the Earth and Spitzer increases, communication gets more difficult, and when it's in the opposite part of its orbit behind the sun, communication will be impossible.

Spitzer has been used for studying exoplanets and their atmospheres, brown dwarfs, and also galaxies.

Even when the telescope will be shut down, we know what is going to replace its observations in the infrared - the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to be launched in 2018.

Labels: nasa, news, Spitzer

Labels: astronaut, ISS, nasa, video

There were several forecasts saying that we might expect a meteor storm form the May Camelopardalids this past weekend. The show wasn't as impressive though, showing just about 5-10 meteors per hour.
Although there weren't as many meteors, it is impressive that scientists are able to predict that a new meteor shower will occur and at an exact date.

Did you see any Camelopardalids?

Labels: meteor shower

Grappling with Gravity
How Will Life Adapt to Living in Space?

by Robert W. Phillips

Humans have been going to space for more than fifty years, starting with Yuri Gagarin's first orbit around the Earth on the Vostok spacecraft in 1961, and since that time scores of astronauts, cosmonauts and taikonauts have been to near-Earth orbit and some have even reached the Moon. In that time humankind has learned a lot about what happens to the human body during space-flight, and some of the fears that were considered serious threats for humans, like not being able to swallow food or the eye's shape changing have been overcome.

In Robert W. Phillips' book, Grappling with Gravity, one can read mostly about some of the biggest problems that astronauts face in micro-gravity, but it covers other topics related to space travel as well.

Some of the effects that being in space brings about for astronauts have gotten more attention than others – the space adaptation syndrome, a kind of motion sickness experienced by many astronauts, is a usual candidate, as well as the loss of bone-mass and muscle atrophy, that are caused by the bones and muscles not having to do any work against gravity unless the astronauts exercise.

Also the changes that come about in the human body because of the fluids not behaving the same way as they do in a normal 1-G environment, are explained – for example blood wouldn't be pooling in the legs in space as it does on Earth because of gravity, instead, more blood rushes to the head causing the face to look puffier, and other fluids in the human body are causing problems as well – for example it's common to get blocked sinuses in space.

The book is quite interesting as the topics flow from one to another naturally, starting with reasons why mankind should go to space and a bit of the history of spaceflight, and in addition to all of the physiological and psychological problems one might encounter on a spacecraft, it also describes some of the problems that first settlers might face on the Moon or Mars and what can be done to overcome those difficulties.

An even more fascinating topic is reproduction in space – is it possible for humans to reproduce in space in a Martian colony for example and could children who have been born and raised on Mars come and live a normal life on Earth?

Phillips raises a lot of interesting questions and also answers some of them making it an ideal book for those interested in the changes that the human body will experience away from the familiar Earth's environment.

One of the good things about this book is that it is written in a simple way, so it might even be suitable for younger readers who have a little bit of knowledge about how the human body works.

Labels: book review, Grappling with Gravity, humans, microgravity, Robert W. Phillips, space flight

How would it look life if you'd fall into a black hole?

Labels: black hole, video

NASA's Kepler, that suffered an equipment breakdown last year has been granted a new mission - K2.
The new mission got funding for two years, enabling the Kepler team more time to search for exoplanets, this time a little differently from how they did it before.

Kepler will be looking at a star field in the plane of the ecliptic - this way solar radiation pressure can help stabilize the spacecraft and keep it steady.

It differs from the previous mission, that observed a star-field in the Milky Way, where the constellations Cygnus, Lyra and Draco are located. However since two of it's orientation-reaction wheels have broken down, it can't keep itself pointing in that direction steadily, thus the need for a new mission.

To read more about the K2 mission, visit Kepler Science Center website.
 

Artist's impression of the Kepler spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Labels: Kepler, nasa, news

The greatest storm in the solar system -also known as Jupiter's Great Red Spot, that was first observed in 1831, has been observed to be shrinking in size since 1930-s and has now reached the smallest size that has ever been measured, now measuring just a little less than 16,500km. Historically it has been measured to have been as large as 51,000km across in the late 1800s.

Watch the trailer of one of NASA's next missions - the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, that will be studying the Earth's magnetosphere with four identical spacecraft.

Labels: MMS, video

Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, edited by Douglas A. Vakoch
Rating: 8/10

Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence covers some of the fascinating topics and problems that were discussed at the fourth biennial NASA's Astrobiology Science Conference in 2010.

This voluminous collection gives an interesting insight into SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) research from various angles, starting from passive SETI – listening to ET in radio or other wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, to discussions on whether or not humankind should or even could engage in active SETI – send out messages for other civilizations to find, and how it could be done.

SETI research has been going on for over fifty years, and it was interesting to read about how scientists from other countries like Japan or Italy are taking steps towards SETI – the SAZANKA project in Japan being especially curious because of the large count of observatories that were engaged in observations at the same time, although no signals from ETI were received.

Some other interesting chapters include one where the reader can find out how an advanced civilization might be found because of using solar energy and having large surface areas under solar cells, as it can make the planet, that might be visible in infrared wavelengths, appear to change in brightness, as normally solar cells don't absorb infrared light, but instead reflect it.

In addition of-course there are several chapters about sending messages to ETI and the pessimistic and optimistic views about whether or not we should send messages, as it might be dangerous if the Extraterrestrials are nearby and violently minded and likely to come and destroy humankind; but if their far away then there might be no bad outcomes, but we might never receive an answer to the message – which also means that the content of the message is very important, as it might be the last sign of human civilization in space. Should it be the whole human knowledge about the Universe? Or should it be “Hello from Earth, we're peaceful.”? One can read about what kind of messages to the stars have been sent out this far, when and with what content, and are those likely to be detected.

But the content isn't the only important part, as the way how the message can be sent has implications for how much information can be transmitted. Would there even be civilizations capable of continuously letting other star-systems know of their existence and might it even be economically possible?

This book will certainly give a more rounded impression of some of the areas of research and philosophy of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, together with more technical details and overviews.

Labels: book review, Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Labels: simulation, video

Just around 20 years ago finding exoplanets was considered an achievement in itself, now however ever more data is gathered - be it the composition of an exoplanet's atmosphere or cloud-cover.

Now scientists have measured the rotation period for an exoplanet around its axis - the length of its day.
The planet is Beta Pictoris b, a young planet with about 3000 times Earth's mass.

Scientists used spectroscopy in order to get an idea how fast different parts of the planet are moving away or toward us - the result - the exoplanet's day is about 8 hours long.

Find out more here.

Labels: Beta Pictoris b, exoplanet, news

If you've just missed the peak of Eta Aquariids and can't wait until Perseid meteors, there's still hope to see a possibly great meteor shower before the night sky gets to bright and nights too short.

The new meteor shower named May Camelopardalids is predicted to happen on May 24th, originating from the periodic comet 209P/LINEAR with the radiant in the constellation Camelopardalis. That might be a potentially great sight for northern hemisphere observers.

NASA scientists are predicting that it might rival the Perseid meteor shower, with different forecasts saying the peak might be 100 to 400 meteors per hour, or it might be even a meteor storm with more than 1000 meteors per hour.

Now there's a reason to wake up before dawn to go and do some stargazing.

Labels: meteor shower, news, skywatch

The Sun imaged in Hydrogen Alpha with a Coronado SolarMax II telescope and Canon EOS 500D camera, ISO 1600, exposure 1/125 s.

Credit: Kadri Tinn

Labels: astrophotography, sun, sunspot

Incoming Asteroid: What Could We Do About It? by Duncan Lunan

Rating: 8/10

In Lunan's Incoming Asteroid the reader first gets acquainted with asteroids – large boulders mostly in orbit beyond the orbit of Mars, but sometimes in various other orbits as well.

The second type of object that is very important for this book are comets – the dirty ice-balls that come further away from the Kuiper belt or even further from the Oort cloud.

Comets and asteroids have different physical characteristics and chemical composition, but they do have some things in common – for example their orbits might cross the orbit of the Earth, making them Near-Earth Objects or NEOs – the search for which has gotten rather active in the past years, with most of the objects larger than a kilometer in diameter having been discovered already.

In case of asteroid discoveries what most interests astronomers in the first place are the asteroids' orbit and mass, but what would happen if there'd be a discovery of an asteroid that has enough mass to devastate a large part of the Earth and is on a collision course with the planet in the next ten years?

That is the problem with which Lunan continues. We find out about what would be the political reaction and whether something can be done even before, when there hasn't been any such disturbing discovery as an asteroid coming straight at us. Although the impression is that before a certain threat there won't be almost any action taken. However if there would be a discovery what could we possibly do about it?

Lunan shows some of the ways in which authors of science-fiction books and producers of sci-fi movies have gotten rid of asteroids – blowing them up with nuclear-war-heads etc. Naturally those aren't the only ways as Lunan shows most of the methods would be inefficient or make the asteroid even a bigger threat. But he does have some alternative methods for dealing with the threat, which constitute some of the most interesting parts of this book as the reader can find out about how could giant mirrors be used for getting rid of a potential impactor or why a manned mission might be necessary in case of some other possible methods.

In general the book is very illuminating, and Lunan shows that not all is without hope – there are ways in which humankind might deal with a potential threat, but as the technologies needed for it haven't been tested in large part, we can't know whether or not they'd work in real life.

It is interesting how Lunan is able to first show that we'd be in a hopeless situation if the asteroid impact is imminent as there haven't been any steps taken to counter the threat, but then he shows what would be possible in an ideal case – with enough time to act and prepare, but then after the proposed technological solutions have been presented the reader also gets an impression of what would happen if everything fails or if there have been no actions taken against the asteroid. It is a sad end, where a sufficiently large rock from the sky will have destroyed a lot more than just a city or two and killed people, but what might lead to the collapse of states and democracy as tidal waves and dust clouds do their jobs.
Maybe reading this book by a large enough part of human population (especially politicians) would make it possible to avoid such a fate. But of-course it might be years or centuries or even thousands of years before there is a big enough impact that would make everyone pay more attention to the possible prevention of asteroid or comet impacts.

A wonderfully informative and important book that shows both the hope and possible destruction.

Labels: asteroid, book review, Duncan Lunan, Incoming Asteroid, Near-Earth Objects

Scientists have discovered the coldest brown dwarf in the vicinity of the Solar system, lying just 7.2 light-years away. This distance makes it fourth closest system to us.

Artists conception of the coldest known brown dwarf (WISE J085510.83-071442.5) . Credit:  Penn State University/NASA/JPL-Caltech

The object was discovered with NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and Spitzer Space Telescope, both of which see the universe in infrared, the radiation most visible from brown dwarfs is in the infrared wavelengths of the spectrum.

The objects temperature has been determined to be between -48 degrees Centigrade up to -13 degrees. It's mass estimations range from 3 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter, which would make it quite a light-weight brown dwarf.

The closest brown dwarfs to the Sun were discovered in 2013, their a lot warmer pair of brown dwarfs 6.5 light-years away.

Labels: brown dwarfs, news

The Eta Aquariid meteor shower is active at around April 20th to May 10, usually peaking on May 6th.
The radiant for this meteor shower is in Aquarius, which in the northern hemisphere rises a few hours before the sunrise - thus the meteor shower is best observed near the equator and in the southern hemisphere. However in the north early hours in the dawn might show some meteors.

Labels: Eta Aquarids meteors, meteor shower

Saturn will be reaching opposition on May 10th, making it a great and convenient sight in the night sky, as it rises at about the time when the Sun sets and is visible the whole night in the constellation Libra shining at around magnitude +0.3.

Labels: saturn, sky watch