20-MILLION MILESTONE FOR 100-YEAR CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECT

Congrats AAVSO.

–Ben

20-MILLION MILESTONE FOR 100-YEAR CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECT

A citizen science project running for over 100 years reached a key milestone this month when an amateur astronomer contributed the 20 millionth observation of a variable star on February 19, 2011.

A variable star changes in brightness over time. Records of these changes can be used to uncover the astrophysical processes within evolving star systems. With a database going back over a century, variable star astronomers have access to a data source unparalleled in astronomy…

http://www.aavso.org/20-million-milestone-100-year-citizen-science-project

A Solar System Family Portrait, from the Inside Out

Cool.

Voyager I took a mosaic looking the other way, now thanks to Messenger we have this.

–Ben

A Solar System Family Portrait, from the Inside Out

Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)

Of Interest: In 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft captured the first portrait of our Solar System as seen from the outside looking in. As a complement to this view, which contained the iconic “pale blue dot” image of Earth, the MESSENGER spacecraft collected this series of images to complete a “family portrait” of our Solar System as seen from the inside looking out. Comprised of 34 WAC image positions with NAC insets, the majority of this mosaic was obtained on 3 November 2010. However, due to pointing constraints on the spacecraft, the portion of the mosaic near and covering Neptune was acquired a few weeks later on 16 November 2010. All of the planets are visible except for Uranus and Neptune, which at distances of 3.0 and 4.4 billion kilometers were too faint to detect with even the longest camera exposure time of 10 seconds, though their positions are indicated. (The dwarf-planet Pluto, smaller and farther away, would have been even more difficult to observe). Earth’s Moon and Jupiter’s Galilean satellites (Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Io) can be seen in the NAC image insets. Our Solar System’s perch on a spiral arm also afforded a beautiful view of a portion of the Milky Way galaxy in the bottom center. .

The curved shape of the mosaic is due to the inclination of MESSENGER’s orbit from the ecliptic, the plane in which Earth and the other planets orbit, which means that the cameras must point up to see some planets and down to see others. The images are stretched to make it easier to detect the planets, though this stretch also highlights light scattered off of the planet limbs, and in some cases creates artifacts such as the non-spherical shape of some planets. Around Venus and to some degree Earth, a diffraction pattern that results from light reflecting within the WAC is visible. Each image is a merged product of three calibrated 10-second exposures to reduce scene noise…

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/image.php?image_id=399

Hubble Shows New Image of Spiral Galaxy NGC 2841

nice pic.
–Ben

Hubble Shows New Image of Spiral Galaxy NGC 2841

Hubble Space Telescope reveals a majestic disk of stars and dust lanes in this view of the spiral galaxy NGC 2841, which lies 46 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). This image was taken in 2010 through four different filters on Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Wavelengths range from ultraviolet light through visible light to near-infrared light…

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/06/

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1104/

http://heritage.stsci.edu/2011/06/

Stardust NExT Comet Tempel 1 flyby movie

been waiting for someone to post it, didn’t find one so I made one myself.

–Ben

http://freemars.org/mnfan/MNSFS/2011-02-Tempel1-stuff/Tempel-1_4-64.gif 931K animated GIF

Super Massive Black holes – lite

Super Massive Black holes – lite.
Now with just 1/10 the mass.

–Ben

Broad-line active galactic nuclei rotate faster than narrow-line ones

…we can derive the central black-hole masses more accurately; they are two to ten times smaller than has been estimated previously…

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09761.html

Supermassive black holes not so big after all

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4060/supermassive-black-holes-not-so-massive

All 1,200 newly discovered exoplanets orbiting in one gigantic solar system

interesting data visualization.
–Ben

This amazing video brings together all 1,236 exoplanet candidates that the Kepler telescope has spotted, and it imagines how they would look all together in a single solar system. All the planets are to scale and in the correct relative positions to their star. Prepare to be blown away by just how crowded our galaxy has gotten.

The video is the work of Vancouver-based artist and educator Jer Thorp. The configuration is of course just meant as a hypothetical – gravitational forces would rip apart such a crowded solar system – but it provides an ingenious way of visualizing how all the newly discovered planet candidates fit together…

All 1,200 newly discovered exoplanets orbiting in one gigantic solar system

http://io9.com/#!5755102/all-1200-newly-discovered-exoplanets-orbiting-in-one-gigantic-solar-system

Cosmos At Least 250x Bigger Than Visible Universe, Say Cosmologists

boy, do I feel ‘small’ now.
–Ben

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Cosmos At Least 250x Bigger Than Visible Universe, Say Cosmologists

When we look out into the Universe, the stuff we can see must be close enough for light to have reached us since the Universe began. The universe is about 14 billion years old, so at first glance it’s easy to think that we cannot see things more than 14 billion light years away.

That’s not quite right, however. Because the Universe is expanding, the most distant visible things are much further away than that. In fact, the photons in the cosmic microwave background have travelled a cool 45 billion light years to get here. That makes the visible universe some 90 billion light years across…

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26333/