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Space.com has a bunch of cool stuff this week so instead of making a separate thread for each one, I'll stick'em all here:
First: Actual images of extrasolar planets made:
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And this bit of good news about the good 'ole Hubble:
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And here: Saturn continues to pull new weird stuff that is keeping scientists on their toes:
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And some news on the Spirit, Opportunity and Phoenix Mars machines.
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Finally this last story is unfortunately dated but it's still interesting:
First: Actual images of extrasolar planets made:
MORE HEREMajor Breakthrough: First Photos of Planets Around Other Stars
By Jeanna Bryner
Senior Writer
posted: 13 November 2008
02:00 pm ET
Astronomers have taken what they say are the first-ever direct images of planets outside of our solar system, including a visible-light snapshot of a single-planet system and an infrared picture of a multiple-planet system.
Earth-like worlds might also exist in the three-planet system, but if so they are too dim to photograph. The other newfound planet orbits a star called Fomalhaut, which is visible without the aid of a telescope. It is the 18th brightest star in the sky.
The massive worlds, each much heftier than Jupiter (at least for the three-planet system), could change how astronomers define the term "planet," one planet-hunter said.
Breakthrough technology
Until now, scientists have inferred the presence of planets mainly by detecting an unseen world's gravitational tug on its host star or waiting for the planet to transit in front of its star and then detecting a dip in the star's light. While these methods have helped to identify more than 300 extrasolar planets to date, astronomers have struggled to actually directly image and see such inferred planets.
The four photographed exoplanets are discussed in two research papers published online today by the journal Science.
"Every extrasolar planet detected so far has been a wobble on a graph. These are the first pictures of an entire system," said Bruce Macintosh, an astrophysicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and part of the team that photographed the multi-planet system in infrared light. "We've been trying to image planets for eight years with no luck and now we have pictures of three planets at once."
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And this bit of good news about the good 'ole Hubble:
SOURCEHubble problems identified, science to restart this weekend
By John Timmer | Published: October 23, 2008 - 02:57PM CT
Earlier this afternoon, NASA held a press conference to update the public on what's happening with what might be its most famous bit of hardware: the Hubble Space Telescope. Last week, the news from orbit wasn't that great: activation of a backup data formatting unit went well, but the telescope shut itself down when the science instruments were brought back on line. This week, the news was much better: they've identified the problems, and none of them are serious.
The previous reboot of the telescope suffered from two problems that sent the entire Hubble into what's called "save mode," and it wasn't clear whether one had triggered the other. Now, the observatory's handlers are pretty sure they're not related.
The first issue came from a bad voltage reading in a solar shade on its Advanced Camera for Surveys. Data obtained from the Hubble now shows that the reading was in error; the reboot of the observatory's clock had thrown off the timing of its activation sequence. In effect, this caused the program that launched the self-test suite to expect an answer before the test program could even run. A software patch will loosen up the timing requirements; NASA expects to have it in place before the end of next week.
So, if this wasn't a major problem, why did the scope shut down? Several computers turned themselves off simultaneously, which leads the folks at NASA to suspect that it was simply a random, temporary short. As one of the speakers put it, these events are, "not uncommon in electrical components that have been powered off for a long time," which describes the backup data formatter very well. The unit may not trigger another short, but they wouldn't be surprised if it did.
As of 1 PM Eastern today, the main computer is up and running, and the backup data formatter is online. NASA expects that it will be able to start taking instruments out of safe mode by the weekend, and expects to start doing science again on Saturday. If the Advanced Camera for Surveys patch goes as planned, everything will be back to normal by the end of next week.
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And here: Saturn continues to pull new weird stuff that is keeping scientists on their toes:
MORE HEREMysterious Light Show Seen at Saturn
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 12 November 2008
01:01 pm ET
An inexplicable new broad region of auroral light has been photographed at Saturn's polar cap.
"We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere," said Tom Stallard, an RCUK Academic Fellow working with Cassini data at the University of Leicester. "It's not just a ring of aurorae like those we've seen at Jupiter or Earth. This one covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas on what forms Saturn's aurorae predict that this region should be empty, so finding such a bright one here is a fantastic surprise."
These colorful atmospheric light shows are caused when charged particles stream along the magnetic field of a planet and into its atmosphere. On Earth the charged particles come from the solar wind – a stream of particles that emanates from the sun. Skywatchers at high latitudes know the resulting displays as the Northern Lights.
Jupiter's main auroral ring, caused by interactions internal to Jupiter's magnetic environment, is constant in size. Saturn's main aurora, which is caused by the solar wind, changes size dramatically as the wind varies.
The newly observed aurora at Saturn, however, doesn't fit into either category.
"Saturn's unique auroral features are telling us there is something special and unforeseen about this planet's magnetosphere and the way it interacts with the solar wind and the planet's atmosphere," said Nick Achilleos, a scientist on the Cassini magnetometer team at the University College London. "Trying to explain its origin will no doubt lead us to physics which uniquely operates in the environment of Saturn."
The new image, in infrared, was imaged by the Cassini spacecraft. It is reported in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Nature.
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And some news on the Spirit, Opportunity and Phoenix Mars machines.
MOREMars Rover Spirit Has 'Serious' Problem
By Leonard David
SPACE.com's Space Insider Columnist
posted: 12 November 2008
03:11 pm ET
UPDATE 10:16 p.m. ET Nov. 13: Ground controllers have heard from Spirit. "The skies are still dusty and the rover is still dirty, but Spirit is healthy and talking to us," said mission leader Steve Squyres. -- LD
Even on Mars, misery may love company.
On Monday, NASA declared the Phoenix Lander sitting in Mars' arctic plains as a rest-in-peace goner. Dust storm activity and the seasonal decline in sunshine at the robot's landing site meant that the craft's solar arrays couldn't churn up enough energizing power – and expected outcome after five months of exploration.
But now the word is that the Spirit Mars rover may be facing near-death.
Resting in its equatorial exploration zone on the red planet, Spirit is in silent mode.
"It's hard to say exactly how bad this is," said Steve Squyres, leader of the Mars Exploration Rover twins – Spirit and Opportunity.
"We've got a rover with dirty solar panels that took a direct hit from a major regional dust storm, so that's serious business. But we don't know enough right now to say how serious," Squyres told me.
Ground controllers have sent commands to Spirit telling it to conserve power and not talk back to Earth until tomorrow. So not hearing from Mars machinery right now is hardly a surprise.
"Of course, we could also not be hearing from it because the power situation has gotten bad enough that it can't communicate," Squyres added. "At this point, we simply have no way of knowing."
So the planetary prognosis for Spirit: "We have to wait patiently, trust the vehicle's ability to keep itself safe...and hope for the best," Squyres advised.
As for the Opportunity Mars rover, "things are looking great," Squyres noted. That robot is in some very difficult terrain at the moment, but still routinely driving some 260 feet (80 meters) or more per Mars day.
"For the time being life is good at Meridiani Planum," Squyres said.
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Finally this last story is unfortunately dated but it's still interesting:
SOURCENASA Surprised by Unexpected Meteor Outburst
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 11 November 2008
07:39 am ET
When NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke arrived at the Marshall Space Flight Center and checked his email Sept. 9, 2008, he was very surprised to learn that he'd slept through a dramatic event.
A flurry of shooting stars had lit up the pre-dawn skies, including more than two dozen fireballs brighter than Venus. Cooke's all-sky Sentinel camera recorded the whole thing and had left him an email summarizing the outburst.
"Our Sentinel system consists of a computer-controlled camera, fisheye lens and digital video recorder," Cooke explained. "It was developed by researchers at the University of Western Ontario for studies of meteors over Canada, and now we've adapted it for our purposes. Every night, Sentinel patrols the sky, looking for the unexpected, and it never gets sleepy."
An annual meteor shower around Sept. 9 was known to scientists, but it has always involved a few dim streaks coming from the constellation Perseus. It is called the September Perseids, and it had never measured up to the more dramatic August Perseid meteor shower. So few if any meteor enthusiasts ever bothered to watch the September event.
"Now we know better," Cooke said in a statement yesterday. "The September Perseids of 2008 were fantastic."
[The November Taurid meteor shower may generate a few bright fireballs through tomorrow.]
A meteor shower is typically generated by debris left behind by a comet -- grains of ice and dirt ranging from the size of sand grains to peas. The comet responsible for the September Perseids is unknown, but it must have laid down multiple debris streams as it orbited the sun. This year, Earth ran into a denser stream, Cooke figures.
There could be many unknown streams of debris crossing Earth's orbit, in fact. "We can discover new meteoroid streams that could pose a threat to spacecraft and satellites -- or just put on a pretty show from time to time," Cooke said.
Cooke's team has since set up a second camera, 100 miles away, to make the Sentinel system able to determine the direction from which a meteor comes. This would allow scientists to figure out the orbit of the comet involved.
The first successful test of the two-station Sentinel system came on Oct. 1, when a centimeter-sized meteoroid hit Earth's atmosphere over the southeastern United States with about as much energy as 500 pounds of TNT. Both cameras recorded the fireball.
Using software developed by Rob Weryk of the University of Western Ontario, the Sentinel system automatically calculated the orbit of the meteoroid and emailed the results to Cooke. "It came from the asteroid belt," he said.