astronomy

Supermassive black hole rises and shines

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Science News reports that Astronomers watch as wake-up call rouses slumbering monster … It’s unclear whether it was a stellar meal or simply gas that woke the sleeping giant. But astronomers say the ongoing outburst recorded by a spacecraft since March 28 is the first time scientists have witnessed the sudden activation of a dormant … Read more

A galactic rose

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NASA Press release …

April 20, 2011: To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope’s deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble’s eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. This image is a composite of Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 data taken on December 17, 2010, with three separate filters that allow a broad range of wavelengths covering the ultraviolet, blue, and red portions of the spectrum.

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Newly Discovered Asteroid Is Earth’s Companion

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Astronomers from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland have found that a recently discovered asteroid has been following Earth in its motion around the Sun for at least the past 250,000 years, and may be intimately related to the origin of our planet.

Details are here on the Royal Astronomical Scciety website.

Their work appears in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

The asteroid first caught the eye of the scientists, Apostolos “Tolis” Christou and David Asher, two months after it was found by the WISE infrared survey satellite, launched in 2009 by the United States. “Its average distance from the Sun is identical to that of the Earth,” says Dr Christou, “but what really impressed me at the time was how Earth-like its orbit was.” Most near-Earth Asteroids — NEAs for short — have very eccentric, or egg-shaped, orbits that take the asteroid right through the inner solar system. But the new object, designated 2010 SO16, is different. Its orbit is almost circular so that it cannot come close to any other planet in the solar system except Earth.

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Storm on Saturn – Cassini captures images

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In the past few weeks a new storm erupted on Saturn. The Cassini probe did a pass on 24th Dec and successfully captured images of it. This is the raw unprocessed image … they will of course need to validate and calibrate it, then file in on the Planetary Data System, but that will not … Read more

Geminid meteor shower … Tonight …

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The Geminids are a meteor shower caused by the object 3200 Phaethon, which is thought to be a Palladian asteroid. This would make the Geminids the only meteor shower not originating from a passing comet. If you would like to see them, well tonight is the night … they have been building up to their … Read more

Huge Magnetic Filament Erupts on the Sun – Don’t Panic

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Wired magazine reports that a magnetic filament more than 50 times the Earth’s width is erupting off the surface of the sun … here is the NASA time lapsed image of this … Wired then goes on to report … The loop of hot plasma has been snaking around the sun’s southeast limb since Dec. … Read more