Audio Promo for ORBITAL MANEUVERS

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Check out the audio promo for ORBITAL MANEUVERS at Drabblecast.org, a great Sci-Fi short story audio podcast site.  The host, Norm Sherman did a great job putting the promo together, along with the really neat feature short story (with adult themes), A Matter of Sizeby Robert Jeschonek.

If you’d like to give the book a try, the first 7 chapters are available at the ORBITAL MANEUVERS website.  If you want more, you can download the first half of the book in several different electronic formats free at Smashwords.com.

If you like Sci-Fi you will do yourself a big favor by checking out Drabblecast.org.  Norm puts on some really amazing short story productions by some very talented authors, with top-notch narration by Norm and other voice actors, music and special effects, it’s a very entertaining half hour.  His site won the  2010 Parsec Award for “Best Speculative Fiction Magazine” – a very well deserved honor.

Till next time,

RC Davison

Many Faces of Andromeda

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The Andromeda galaxy is one of my favorite galaxies, so the latest images from the European Space Agency (ESA) are a real treat.  Using the Hershel observatory to take Andromeda’s portrait in the infrared and the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory to capture the galaxy’s image in the high energy spectrum, ESA has produced a composite image that shows the star birthing and dying regions of the galaxy in the highest resolution to date.

Multispectral views of Andromeda from ESA's Hershel and Newton

      The top right image show the galaxy in the infrared as taken by Hershel.  This shows the regions of the galaxy where there are concentrations of dust that harbor the development and birth of stars.  The image at the lower right shows the regions hot with X-rays, which is indicative of gas being heated to extremely high temperatures from the shockwaves produced when stars meet their end as novas and supernovas. X-rays can also be generated as one star pulls material from another in a binary pair.  This gas is heated to high temperatures as it is accelerated in its fall to the parasite star.

     The image also shows a high concentration of X-rays at the center of the galaxy, which is to be expected because of the high density of stars there and the resident supermassive black hole that resides at the core of the galaxy. If you look closely at the X-ray image there appears to be a bubble surrounding the core of the galaxy.  Possibly a shockwave propagating outward from the core, indicating a more active period of the galaxy’s massive black hole. Be sure to check the links to see the all the detail in these great high-resolution images.

     Take a look at ESA’s website for more information on these new images of Andromeda.

Till next time,

RC Davison

The Power of Infrared

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The power of using infrared light to peer through the dust in the cosmos is clearly demonstrated in this stunning image of the Lagoon Nebula (M8) from the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.

Infrared and visual images of the Lagoon nebula

The top view shows a vast field of stars, many of which are cool red stars, but it is the hot young stars that radiate prodigiously in the ultraviolet that help the Lagoon nebula glow in the visible range as seen in the bottom view.

Here is a nice video that fades from visual to infrared views of the Lagoon nebula.

Check out some larger images and more information at ESO’s website…

Till next time,

RC Davison

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Speaking of Galaxies…

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In the last post (It’s Full of Galaxies) we saw an infrared image from the Herschel space telescope looking at a tiny piece of the cosmos revealing thousands of galaxies 10 – 12 billion light-years from us.  The image below is also an infrared image, but it is a view of millions of galaxies as taken by the 2MASS (Two Micron All Sky Survey) looking across the night sky.

2MASS View of the Night Sky

      The blue band in the image comes from the stars in our own galaxy.  Note that the distribution of galaxies is not uniform, as one might expect but there are clusters, strings and webs of galaxies.  These structures are remnants of the big bang and the gravitational attraction between matter and the mysterious dark matter.  Think about this:  All of the matter we can see and account for in the Universe only adds up to about 4-5% of the total mass of the Universe!

     The  2MASS survey was conducted using two 1.3 meter telescopes, one in Arizona and the other in Chile, imaging the sky at 3 separate frequencies in the near infrared.  Imagine what this would look like if we were able to use telescopes in space that are above the filtering effects of our atmosphere in the infrared.

      Check these links for more information and a larger image.

Till next time,

RC Davison

It’s Full of…Galaxies!

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Image from the Herschel Infrared Telescope courtesiy of the ESA

      These are not stars but galaxies, thousands and thousands of them and each one containing billions of stars.  This snapshot from the Herschel infrared space telescope shows galaxies that are 10-12 billion years old with the red ones being the most distant.  The white  ones indicate galaxies with the greatest star formation.  Looking closely at the image one does not see an even distribution of dots/galaxies, which indicates that some of these galaxies were forming in clusters at that time.

     This image was one taken as part of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) Key Project.  The purpose of the project is to study the evolution of galaxies in the distant cosmos.  This particular image lies in a region of space called the Lockman Hole, which is in the constellation of Ursa Major and provides a relatively unobstructed view into a far corner of the Universe.

     The next night you are out, take a look up into the night sky and think about the fact that all you can see is in the optical region of the spectrum.  Consider what lies beyond our narrow view of the vast cosmos.

Till next time,

RC Davison

Total Lunar Eclipse on December 20 – 21, 2010

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Total Lunar Eclipse October 27, 2004 - Image by Fred Espenak

Look up!  Something to look forward to on the night of December 20 and into the early morning hours of the 21st.  The above image is the Moon in a total lunar eclipse as seen on October 27, 2004 from the United States.

      Lunar eclipses occur when the Earth, Sun and Moon are aligned with each other.  The Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon every month and that’s when we see a full Moon, but because the Moon’s orbit is tilted relative to the Earth, we only occasionally get eclipses.  Partial eclipses are more common as the Earth, Moon, and Sun are not quite aligned.  This eclipse on the 20th/21st will be a total eclipse as seen by people in the US.

       Check out Fred Espenak’s site for some great information on where and when the eclipse will be visible and what to expect.  Lunar eclipses are great to watch because you don’t have to worry about eye protection as you do when observing solar eclipses.  So sit back and enjoy!

       Here’s one more image from Forrest J. Egan at Digital Astro showing a time-lapse image of the lunar eclipse of October 2004. For more detailed information on this image go to the “Astronomy Picture of the Day” site.

Time-lapse image of the October 2004 lunar eclipse by Forrest J. Egan.

Till next time,

RC Davison

Bubbles in Space

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This delicate bubble is the remnant of a supernova, SNR 0509-67.5, which is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 160,000 light-years from Earth.

Hubble Supernova Bubble Resembles Holiday Ornament

Source: Hubblesite.org

The nebula is about 23 light-years across and is expanding at more than 11 million miles per hour.  The image was provided by Hubble and augmented below with data from the Chandra X-ray observatory.  The blue and green gossamer structure in the center is material heated by the expanding shock-wave of the supernova, which occurred almost 400 years ago.

Optical/X-ray Composite Image of Supernova Remnant 0509-67.5

Source: Hubblesite.org

See the Hubble site for more information and images.

Till next time,

RC Davison

The Ever Active Sun

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Take a look at this coronal mass ejection (CME) that the Sun set off on the 6th of December.

Filament breaking loose from the Sun - Image Courtesy of NASA

Be very happy that it wasn’t pointed in our general direction!  The filament extended over 435,000 miles (700,000 km). almost twice the distance between the Earth and Moon.

This video was taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)

Till next time.

RC Davison

Our Closest Galaxy

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Pop quiz!  What’s the closest galaxy to our Milky Way?

Nope! It’s not Andromeda.  And, it is not the Large or the Small Magellanic Clouds. (Which all those who live in the Southern Hemisphere get to see!)

The closest galaxy to ours is the irregular dwarf galaxy Canis Major, which is about 42,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way.  The galaxy was only discovered in 2003, as it is obscured by dust and gas that lays within the Milky Way.  Andromeda (M31) is about 2.5 million light years away from us, which makes it the 35th most distant galaxy from the Milky Way.  Andromeda is the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way.

The Andromeda galaxy has the distinction of the being the largest galaxy in our gravitationally bound local group of about 40 galaxies.  It’s about twice as big as Milky Way, and that places our galaxy as the second largest in the group, followed by Triangulum (M33), a beautiful spiral galaxy that is possibly a satellite galaxy of Andromeda.

Andromeda Galaxy - Image by Tony Hallas http://astrophoto.com/contact.htm Triangulum Galaxy - Image by Manfred Konrad http://www.astrofotografie-laupheim.de/

Till next time,

RC Davison

Of Arsenic, Red Dwarfs and Atmospheres

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NASA’s press conference today (December 2, 2010) revealed that there is a bacteria that can use arsenic instead of phosphorous to survive.  Phosphorus is one of the  six basic elements required for “life as we know it”—the others being, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur. This expands the opportunities for finding life elsewhere in the Universe.

When you couple the information about these unique bacteria with the news release from Yale’s Professor Pieter van Dokkum that there are probably three times as many stars (300 sextillion!!) in the universe than previously thought, you have a whole lot of opportunities for life in the cosmos!  This announcement is about red dwarf stars, which are smaller and cooler than our Sun and have extremely long life times because they use their hydrogen fuel at such a slow rate.

One last bit of information that came out this week is from the European Southern Observatory.  Astronomers were able to analyze the atmosphere of a “super-Earth” GJ 1214b, as it passed in front of its parent star GJ1214.  The results showed that the planet has an atmosphere mostly made of water in the form of steam or at the very least it is dominated by thick clouds or haze.  This was gleaned from a planet that is over 40 light-years from us and orbits its star every 38 hours at a distance of about 2 million kilometers.  (Note that we are about 150 million km from our Sun.)

To summarize this week’s events: We’ve got a form of life on Earth that lives off an element that is poisonous to most life on our planet; three times as many stars that may have planets in the Universe; extrasolar planets that have water vapor in their atmospheres.  Sounds to me like the odds for extraterrestrial life is getting better and better!

It’s about time that ET phones our home!

Till next time,

RC Davison