Pluto Now Has Five (Yes, Five) Moons
Observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope in just the past two weeks have revealed yet another moon in the Pluto system: S/2012 P 1, aka “P5” (circled, above). This wayward chunk of ice and rock may be no more than about 15 miles in diameter, the size of a small city, and irregularly shaped. Why should anyone care how many moons this “former” planet has? Because a spacecraft from Earth is on its way to give us our first close-up view of this distant moon — the New Horizons mission, arriving in 2015. We’ll be in largely uncharted waters, and the discovery of more Plutonian moons means that even smaller ones may exist that we can’t see from Earth. That makes for a potentially dangerous flyby, although we will be as prepared as we can to visit this totally unfamiliar place. There are new discoveries to be made right here, in our own Solar System, still. -JCB
(via discoverynews)
Asteroid 2012 LZ1 Just Got Supersized
On Sunday, June 10, a potentially hazardous asteroid thought to have been 500 meters (0.31 miles) wide was discovered by Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Fortunately for us, asteroid 2012 LZ1 drifted safely by, coming within 14 lunar distances from Earth on Thursday, June 14. Phew.
But as it turns out, this particular space rock was a civilization-killing asteroid in disguise.
Sun Blasts Huge Magnetic Bubble at Earth
For the second day in a row, an active region on the sun has erupted with a coronal mass ejection, blasting the beautifully dynamic magnetic bubble of energetic plasma in the direction of Earth.
(From spaceweather.com: “The fast-moving (1360 km/s) cloud isexpected to hit our planet’s magnetic field on June 16th at 14:00 UT, possibly sparking a geomagnetic storm. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.” That time is about 10AM EDT on Saturday, but there is always some uncertainty in the delay between the arrival of a coronal mass ejection on Earth and the onset of aurorae. -JCB)
Get Ready, Because Voyager I Is **This Close** to Leaving Our Solar System
We’re on the cusp of one of the greatest scientific accomplishments of all time, but we may not know when the moment strikes. Or, rather, there may be no moment.
(An artist’s rendering of the two Voyager spacecraft at the outer edge of our solar system. Credit: NASA)
“Last week, in the corners of the Internet devoted to outer space, things started to get a little, well, hot. Voyager 1, the man-made object farthest away from Earth, was encountering a sharp uptick in the number of a certain kind of energetic particles around it. Had the spacecraft become the first human creation to “officially” leave the solar system?”
“It’s hard to overstate how wild an accomplishment this would be: A machine, built here on Earth by the brain- and handiwork of humans, has sailed from Florida, out of Earth’s orbit, beyond Mars, beyond the gas giants of Jupiter and Saturn, and may now have left the heliosphere — tiny dot in the universe beholden to our sun. Had it really happened? How would we know?”
Runts of Stellar Litter Rarer than Thought
Observations by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer have revealed a surprise.
Space Scientists Hold Bake Sales To Highlight NASA Cuts
Focusing on a $300 million NASA budget cut for planetary exploration, some American astro-brains will hold bake sales and car washes Saturday to raise a little political capital.
(Image Credit: AFP/File, Stan Honda)
“Organizers say about 20 fund- and attention-raising events are planned nationwide.”
“‘We’re not asking for more of the pie, we’re asking for less of a bite out of the pie,’ said Laura Seward, a graduate student at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and organizer of the Planetary Exploration Car Wash and Bake Sale. ‘A strong robotic planetary exploration program is essential for a strong human planetary exploration program.’”
“Among the cuts in his February budget, President Obama canceled joint U.S.-European robotic missions to Mars in 2016 and 2018, forcing NASA scientists to figure out how to still reach the Red Planet in 2018, when it makes its closest approach to Earth in 15 years.”
“‘It’s important these cuts be repaired to maintain U.S. leadership in this area of science, to prevent mission cuts, and to prevent student and research job losses,’ said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., which is sponsoring the day’s events.
“Astronomer Jill Tarter of the Center for SETI Research said the the nation ‘risks the loss of a generation of upcoming, talented engineers and researchers whose careers are centered on the exploration of our solar system in the quest for life beyond Earth.’”
(Blogger’s editorial note: The level of tone deafness involved in this event is stunning. The planetary science community, like the astronomy community, is quickly going to have to learn how to do as much as it can with significantly less federal funding. While standing up publicly for their craft is admirable, it comes across as a stunt, one that seems designed to merely forestall the inevitable. In an era of dwindling budgets, branches of science without obvious angles for commercial exploitation are slow-moving targets for bureaucrats, and American planetary science swims against this rising tide at its own peril. -JCB)
The Square Kilometre Array: Divide And Rule
The world’s biggest astronomy project is split between Africa and Australasia. That gives South Africa, in particular, a chance to show its scientific mettle.
(Radio dishes look skyward. Credit: AFP)
“THE reputation of physics as the queen of sciences is reflected in the amount of money that governments are willing to spend on it. The Large Hadron Collider, Europe’s latest particle smasher, cost around $9 billion and took a decade to build. But, just occasionally, other fields get to play with some big, taxpayer-funded kit of their own, too.”
“On May 25th it was the astronomers’ turn in the limelight. For several years two groups of countries, one consisting of Australia and New Zealand, and the other of several sub-Saharan nations led by South Africa, have been polishing their rival bids to host the Square Kilometre Array, a gargantuan, €1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) radio telescope first proposed in 1991 and designed to be the most sensitive ever constructed. After months of deliberation, the SKA’s funding nations announced their decision: that the telescope would be split, and both groups would host a bit of it.”
“That the funding nations felt able to split the telescope in half reflects how closely matched the two bids were. Both consortia had constructed precursor telescopes that could be integrated into the SKA itself, and each bid had its advantages. The African bid, whose core will be in Northern Cape province, did well in the technical stakes, chiefly because the geography of the area allows a more efficient layout for the telescope, and also because electricity was thought likely to be cheaper there. The SKA will use about 110 megawatts when up and running, so power bills will be a significant expense. The Australasian bid, centred on the virtually unpopulated Shire of Murchison, in Western Australia, scored better for radio quietness (important to prevent interference), and on non-scientific factors such as political stability and the quality of the working environment.”
(Word on the street is that much of the decision of locating SKA came down to politics and was not as driven by the science requirements. The Economist story touches on this: “[M]any people—including Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s science minister, who said as much in an official statement—reckon that the decision had more to do with politics than science.” This is the nature of international collaboration: only by merging budgets is such blockbuster science possible, but it comes at a matching high political price. Politics driving science may be the new reality of the 21st century. -JCB)
Is ‘Planet X 2.0’ Lurking Beyond Pluto’s Orbit?
Before the doomsayers hijacked “Planet X” and used it as a phantom (a.k.a. “Nibiru”) to scare people into believing the 2012 doomsday hype, the hunt for Planet X was an exciting astronomical quest to find a hypothetical world in the outermost reaches of the solar system in the early 20th century.
Although dwarf planet Pluto was discovered during the search for Planet X in 1930, apparently ending the quest, there is enduring evidence for the existence of a substantial planet gravitationally shaping the population of minor bodies in the Kuiper belt and beyond. The only problem is, we can’t see it.
The partially-eclipsed Sun in projection. Washburn Observatory, Madison, WI, 20 May 2012.
Hubble to Watch Historic Venus Transit, Using Moon as Mirror
Scientists are planning to use NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to observe next month’s historic transit of Venus across the sun’s face.
But there’s a twist. Researchers can’t point Hubble anywhere near the sun, because our star’s bright light could damage the telescope’s super-sensitive instruments. So Hubble will watch the June 5-6 Venus transit by using the moon as a mirror.
The goal is to see if Hubble can determine the makeup of Venus’ atmosphere by studying sunlight that has poured through it. Astronomers already know a great deal about Venus’ air, so next month’s observations are a test run to see if the technique could be used to determine the atmospheric composition of faraway alien planets, researchers said.
Scientists hope the method can help them find an “alien Earth,” a habitable planet much like our own, orbiting a distant star. Venus is an excellent proxy for this search because it’s nearly the same size and mass as Earth, researchers said.
(via astrotastic)
Source: space.com
Astronomy news, recent research results, and pretty pictures from the media along with context, commentary, and explanations for folks who dig this sort of thing. Written by a quasi-professional astronomer affiliated with the University of Texas at Austin.
