tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80540447374629820072024-02-07T04:54:00.496-08:00Photonic PositiveAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.comBlogger144125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-73777605447901276782017-02-03T06:39:00.000-08:002017-02-03T06:39:44.631-08:00Astronomers Discover Powerful Cosmic Double Whammy <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5OuM0PIG8hfhvMNHGzPE6jOOQZCotAi6LNfUGCzL5Fb33UJlzUONcChajK8RJAEUmIBFAF9IcxdcJSxJ9I8_KSYzNJiEi6RAB5Ewi6s5vJx_ws797Ih24U3NYzlZB8SsWYzf_QkXYhI12/s1600/DSC_0016c1bF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5OuM0PIG8hfhvMNHGzPE6jOOQZCotAi6LNfUGCzL5Fb33UJlzUONcChajK8RJAEUmIBFAF9IcxdcJSxJ9I8_KSYzNJiEi6RAB5Ewi6s5vJx_ws797Ih24U3NYzlZB8SsWYzf_QkXYhI12/s400/DSC_0016c1bF.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial;">credit <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/iotd.html">NASA</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Astronomers have discovered what happens when the eruption from a supermassive black hole is swept up by the collision and merger of two galaxy clusters. This composite image contains X-rays from Chandra (blue), radio emission from the GMRT (red), and optical data from Subaru (red, green, and blue) of the colliding galaxy clusters called Abell 3411 and Abell 3412. These and other telescopes were used to analyze how the combination of these two powerful phenomena can create an extraordinary cosmic particle accelerator.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/R. van Weeren et al; Optical: NAOJ/Subaru; Radio: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/iotd.html">link</a></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-35271677094078618792017-02-01T13:23:00.000-08:002017-02-01T13:23:03.414-08:00Money doesn’t grow on trees, but electricity might someday.<span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2017/01/31/biomimetictree">Iowa State University</a> scientists have built a device that mimics the branches and leaves of a cottonwood tree and generates electricity when its artificial leaves sway in the wind.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9j4nAbb1qxqjRHYbJ49A8NzhU8fa0satyZsCk06Rm-WhcYOfsXnx_gexohdpD91L6QCW2K_xqAGN2sD_JWxv7BirBNFbwdbCMVuAmxw0JRazKrIspiKTLKsHKht4qFnc39vbp7jGx6-Nz/s1600/JGVC-648.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9j4nAbb1qxqjRHYbJ49A8NzhU8fa0satyZsCk06Rm-WhcYOfsXnx_gexohdpD91L6QCW2K_xqAGN2sD_JWxv7BirBNFbwdbCMVuAmxw0JRazKrIspiKTLKsHKht4qFnc39vbp7jGx6-Nz/s400/JGVC-648.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Curtis Mosher (left), Eric Henderson (middle) and Mike Mcloskey (right) have assembled a prototype biomimetic tree that produces electricity. Such technology could appeal to a niche market in the future, according to the researchers. <em>Photo by Christopher Gannon.</em></span></span><br /><br /> Michael McCloskey, an associate professor of </span><a href="http://www.gdcb.iastate.edu/"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">genetics, development and cell biology</span></a><span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> who led the design of the device, said the concept won’t replace wind turbines, but the technology could spawn a niche market for small and visually unobtrusive machines that turn wind into electricity.<br /><br />“The possible advantages here are aesthetics and its smaller scale, which may allow off-grid energy harvesting,” McCloskey said recently in his ISU laboratory. “We set out to answer the question of whether you can get useful amounts of electrical power out of something that looks like a plant. The answer is ‘possibly,’ but the idea will require further development.”<br /><br />McCloskey said cell phone towers in some urban locations, such as Las Vegas, have been camouflaged as trees, complete with leaves that serve only to improve the tower’s aesthetic appeal. Tapping energy from those leaves would increase their functionality, he said.<br /><br /> In a paper published this month in the peer-reviewed academic journal PLOS ONE, the ISU research team delves into the world of biomimetics, or the use of artificial means to mimic natural processes. The concept has inspired new ways of approaching fields as varied as computer science, manufacturing and nanotechnology.<br /><br /> It’s unlikely that many people would mistake the prototype in McCloskey’s laboratory for a real tree. The device features a metallic trellis, from which hang a dozen plastic flaps in the shape of cottonwood leaves.<br /><br /> Curtis Mosher, an associate scientist at Iowa State and co-author of the paper, said it’s not that great of a leap from the prototype the researchers built to a much more convincing artificial tree with tens of thousands of leaves, each producing electricity derived from wind power. <br /><br />“It’s definitely doable, but the trick is accomplishing it without compromising efficiency,” Mosher said. “More work is necessary, but there are paths available.”<br /><br />Small strips of specialized plastic inside the leaf stalks release an electrical charge when bent by moving air. Such processes are known as piezoelectric effects. Cottonwood leaves were modeled because their flattened leaf stalks compel blades to oscillate in a regular pattern that optimizes energy generation by flexible piezoelectric strips.<br /><br /> Eric Henderson, a professor of genetics, development and cell biology who also works on the research team, envisions a future in which biomimetic trees help to power household appliances.<br /><br /> Such biomimetic technology could become a market for those who want the ability to generate limited amounts of wind energy without the need for tall and obstructive towers or turbines, Henderson said.<br /><br /> But McCloskey said making that vision reality means finding an alternative means of mechanical-to-electrical transduction, or a scheme for converting wind energy into usable electricity. The piezo method adopted for the ISU experiments didn’t achieve the efficiency the technology will need to compete in the market.<br /><br /> Piezoelectricity was an obvious place to start because the materials are widely available, Henderson said. But taking the next step will require a new approach.<br /><br /> Other transduction methods such as triboelectricity, or the generation of charge by friction between dissimilar materials, work at similar efficiency and can power autonomous sensors. However, McCloskey said it will require much greater efficiency – and further research – to produce a practical device.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-89691674491518337882017-02-01T13:04:00.001-08:002017-02-01T13:04:47.977-08:00Neutrino studies could improve understanding of the universe<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><em>A news report from <a href="http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/ghost-particles-could-improve-understanding-the-universe/">Michigan State University</a></em></span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trillions of neutrinos, or ghost particles, are passing through us every second. While scientists know this fact, they don’t know what role neutrinos play in the universe because they are devilishly hard to measure.</span><br />
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Credit:<a href="https://icecube.wisc.edu/"> IceCube</a></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">New measurements of neutrino oscillations, observed at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, have shed light on outstanding questions regarding fundamental properties of neutrinos. These new measurements of neutrinos as they change from one type to another while they travel were presented at the American Physical Society Meeting in Washington. They could help fill key gaps in the Standard Model, the theory that describes the behavior of fundamental particles at every energy scale scientists have been able to measure.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“While the Standard Model is an accurate theory, it leaves gaping holes, like the nature of dark matter and how a universe filled with matter, rather than anti-matter, arose from the Big Bang. We don’t know how to fill them yet,” said </span><a href="http://msutoday.msu.edu/360/2015/tyce-deyoung-basic-research-is-cool-very-cool/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tyce DeYoung</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, MSU associate professor of physics and astronomy. “We’re hoping that by measuring the properties of neutrinos, such as their masses and how they morph or oscillate from one into another, we may get some clues into these open questions.”</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Neutrinos are weird particles. Unlike other elementary particles that make up ordinary matter, such as electrons and quarks, neutrinos have no electric charge. They’re also at least a million times lighter than any other particle known to science. In fact, their masses are so small scientists have not yet been able to measure them accurately.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With this in mind, DeYoung compares his work to a fishing trip, one in which scientists aren’t quite sure of the best bait to use. “Fishing” through the ice of Antarctica, though, is yielding promising results and narrowing the search.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“As physicists, we hoped the Higgs boson would point us to the physics that lies beyond the Standard Model; unfortunately, our measurements of the Higgs haven’t turned up many clues,” DeYoung said. “So we hope we may find something by studying neutrinos. IceCube detects neutrinos with a wider range of energies and distances than other experiments, so we cast a wide net.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Energetic neutrinos produced by cosmic rays hitting the Earth’s atmosphere can be detected at the South Pole, using the Antarctic ice as a particle detector like no other on the planet.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The IceCube data suggest that one species of neutrino may comprise exactly equal amounts of two neutrino “flavors.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Neutrinos have a habit of changing, or oscillating, between three types, we call them ‘flavors,’” said Joshua Hignight, the MSU research associate who presented the new results at the meeting. “So, if one neutrino is a precisely equal mix of two flavors, it could be a surprising coincidence or there might be a deeper reason for it coming from the physics beyond the Standard Model.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These measurements are consistent from results from other experiments using neutrinos with lower energies, but whether this flavor mixture is exactly balanced remains under debate. The IceCube physicists will continue to refine their analysis and collect more data. Future data will enable these measurements to be made more precisely, DeYoung said.</span><br />
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<a href="https://icecube.wisc.edu/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">IceCube</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> is the world’s largest neutrino detector, using a billion tons of the Antarctic ice cap beneath the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to observe neutrinos. It’s operated by a collaboration of 300 physicists from 48 universities and national laboratories in 12 countries. Construction was made possible by support from the National Science Foundation and other international funding agencies.</span><br />
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<span class="contacts">Contact(s): <span class="contactdetails"><span class="contactmain">Layne Cameron</span> Media Communications office: (517) 353-8819 cell: (765) 748-4827 <a href="mailto:Layne.Cameron@cabs.msu.edu">Layne.Cameron@cabs.msu.edu</a></span> , <span class="contactdetails"><span class="contactmain">Tyce DeYoung</span> Physics and Astronomy office: (517) 884-5511 <a href="mailto:tdeyoung@msu.edu">tdeyoung@msu.edu</a></span></span><br />
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<span class="contacts"><span class="contactdetails"><a href="http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/ghost-particles-could-improve-understanding-the-universe/">article credit</a></span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-84188148809984004042017-01-31T11:57:00.000-08:002017-01-31T12:07:35.498-08:00Joint UK and Algeria CubeSat Mission: First colour image <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<li><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Captured image marks an important milestone as AlSat Nano is Algeria’s first CubeSat mission.</span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.surrey.ac.uk/ssc/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Surrey Space Centre (SSC)</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, University of Surrey was responsible for the design, build and verification of the spacecraft including a training program for Algerian students, as well as supporting development of a ground station in Algeria and training their operators.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">AlSat Nano stuck to a tight development schedule, with less than 18 months between payload selection and flight readiness, allowing UK industry and academia to stay ahead of the curve in the competitive global CubeSat market.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">AlSat Nano is a joint nanosatellite mission between the UK Space Agency and Algerian Space Agency (ASAL) as part of an on-going initiative to enhance collaboration. The UK Space Agency has funded the design, build and verification of the spacecraft at Surrey Space Centre (SSC), University of Surrey, as a hands-on learning exercise for Algerian postgrad students to demonstrate the practical elements of low cost space technology. ASAL has provided the launch, and operations are being undertaken in Algeria by ASAL operators trained at SSC.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The image was taken by the Open University C3D2 instrument’s wide field camera on 3rd December 2016 over the Arkhangelsk Oblast region, on the North West coast of Russia. The image was captured under twilight conditions at dawn, showing the coastline to the top of the image, and a brief winter sunrise over the arctic region with a deep red-brown hue. Through the cloud cover there is evidence of hills and snow on mountains, and mist in the river valleys. The object in the foreground is the Oxford Space Systems Ltd AstroTube<sup>TM</sup> Boom payload, also carried on board the spacecraft.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.surrey.ac.uk/ssc/people/guglielmo_aglietti/"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Prof Guglielmo Aglietti</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, Director of Surrey Space Centre, said: “AlSat Nano has been an exciting project for the Surrey Space Centre to be leading. Educational and research elements, and the technology knowledge transfer with the Algerian Space Agency were key parts of this project. Additionally, the development of this nanosatellite platform has been a great opportunity to work with UK payload providers, who are demonstrating some exciting new technologies.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">AlSat Nano is Algeria’s first CubeSat mission and is globally showcasing the capability of UK technology in partnership with industry and academia. With a spacecraft the size of a shoebox yet featuring all the core subsystems of much larger satellites, the programme demonstrates how CubeSats can be assembled quickly and launched at a fraction of the cost. This will help Algeria strengthen its domestic space technology capability by giving their scientists and engineers first-hand experience of spacecraft operations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Dr Abdewahab Chikouche, Director of Space Programmes at Algerian Space Agency, said: “The Alsat-1N project is a concrete example of the success of our cooperation with UKSA. This project, very enriching from the scientific and technological point of view, allowed ASAL engineers to progress in the integration and testing of nanosatellites and acquire autonomy in its operation. This project will enable Algerian researchers and academics to strengthen national capabilities in advanced space technology.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The AlSat Nano mission hosts and has demonstrated three payloads, showcasing innovative technologies from UK suppliers: C3D2 imager from Open University, AstroTube<sup>TM</sup> Boom from Oxford Space Systems and Thin Film Solar Cell from Swansea University.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Dr Ben Taylor, the SSC AlSat-Nano Project Lead, said: “The Alsat-Nano mission has been a great opportunity to work with a diverse and committed team across the UK and Algeria. The spacecraft carries some exciting new technologies which are already returning some great results and we are looking forward to further results as the mission continues”.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The mission builds on the success of the flight services division at Surrey Space Centre, who are involved with a range of on-going spacecraft missions including CubeSats and larger scale missions. A major on-going project is </span><a href="http://www.surrey.ac.uk/ssc/research/space_vehicle_control/removedebris/"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">RemoveDebris</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, a €15.2M mission led by Surrey, aiming to be one of the world’s first demonstrations of space junk removal when it launches later this year. </span><br />
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<em><span style="color: purple;"><a href="http://photonicpositive.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/first-smartphone-satellite-to-launch.html">earlier related post</a></span></em>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-32488915051458677452017-01-31T11:20:00.001-08:002017-01-31T11:20:54.376-08:00Comet-Like Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The lesser-known constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs), is home to a variety of deep-sky objects — including this beautiful galaxy, known as NGC 4861. Astronomers are still debating on how to classify it. While its physical properties — such as mass, size and rotational velocity — indicate it to be a spiral galaxy, its appearance looks more like a comet with its dense, luminous “head” and dimmer “tail” trailing off. Features more fitting with a dwarf irregular galaxy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although small and messy, galaxies like NGC 4861 provide astronomers with interesting opportunities for study. Small galaxies have lower gravitational potentials, which simply means that it takes less energy to move stuff about inside them than it does in other galaxies. As a result, moving in, around, and through such a tiny galaxy is quite easy to do, making them far more likely to be filled with streams and outflows of speedy charged particles known as galactic winds, which can flood such galaxies with little effort.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These galactic winds can be powered by the ongoing process of star formation, which involves huge amounts of energy. New stars are springing into life within the bright, colorful ‘head’ of NGC 4861 and ejecting streams of high-speed particles as they do so, which flood outwards to join the wider galactic wind. While NGC 4861 would be a perfect candidate to study such winds, recent studies did not find any galactic winds in it.<br /> </span><br />
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</span><em><strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Image credit: <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-gazes-at-a-cosmic-megamaser">ESA/Hubble & NASA</a><br /> Text credit: <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-gazes-at-a-cosmic-megamaser">European Space Agency</a></span></strong></em>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-22994638191460462552017-01-24T13:03:00.002-08:002017-01-24T13:03:20.795-08:00NOAA’s GOES-16 weather satellite sends first images of Earth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since the GOES-16 satellite lifted off from Cape Canaveral on November 19, scientists, meteorologists and ordinary weather enthusiasts have anxiously waited for the first photos from </span><a href="http://www.noaa.gov/stories/noaa-s-goes-16-satellite-sends-first-images-of-earth"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NOAA</span></a><span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">’s newest weather satellite, GOES-16, formerly GOES-R.</span></div>
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The release of the first images today is the latest step in a new age of weather satellites. It will be like high-definition from the heavens.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This 16-panel image shows the continental United States in the two visible, four near-infrared and 10 infrared channels on the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). These channels help forecasters distinguish between differences in the atmosphere like clouds, water vapor, smoke, ice and volcanic ash. (NOAA/NASA)</span></div>
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The pictures from its Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument, built by Harris Corporation, show a full-disc view of the Western Hemisphere in high detail — at four times the image resolution of existing GOES spacecraft. The higher resolution will allow forecasters to pinpoint the location of severe weather with greater accuracy. GOES-16 can provide a full image of Earth every 15 minutes and one of the continental U.S. every five minutes, and scans the Earth at five times the speed of NOAA’s current GOES imagers.</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NOAA’s GOES-16, situated in geostationary orbit 22,300 miles above Earth, will boost the nation’s weather observation network and NOAA’s prediction capabilities, leading to more accurate and timely forecasts, watches and warnings.</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“This is such an exciting day for NOAA! One of our GOES-16 scientists compared this to seeing a new-born baby’s first pictures — it’s that exciting for us,” said Stephen Volz Ph.D. director of NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service. “These images come from the most sophisticated technology ever flown in space to predict severe weather on Earth. The fantastically rich images provide us with our first glimpse of the impact GOES-16 will have on developing life-saving forecasts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">GOES-16 captured this view of the moon as it looked across the surface of the Earth on January 15. Like earlier GOES satellites, GOES-16 will use the moon for calibration. (NOAA/NASA)</span> </div>
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In May, NOAA will announce the planned location for GOES-16. By November 2017, GOES-16 will be operational as either GOES-East or GOES-West. Once operational, NOAA will use the satellite’s six new instruments to generate new or improved meteorological, solar, and space weather products.</span></div>
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Second satellite in GOES series already in development</span></h4>
<span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following on the heels of GOES-R will be, GOES-S, the second of four spacecraft in the series. GOES-S is undergoing environmental testing at Lockheed Martin’s Corporation facility in Littleton, Colorado, where it was built. A full set of environmental, mechanical and electromagnetic testing will take about one year to complete. The GOES-S satellite will be moved into the other operational position as GOES-17 immediately after launch and initial checkout of the satellite, approximately nine months after GOES-16.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: purple;"><strong>Additional information:</strong><br /> Learn more about the </span></span><a href="https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">GOES series of satellites</span></a></div>
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">GOES-16 </span><a href="https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/goes-16-image-gallery"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">image gallery</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.noaa.gov/stories/noaa-s-goes-16-satellite-sends-first-images-of-earth">credit</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-37225416974819897092017-01-24T01:32:00.000-08:002017-01-24T01:40:04.408-08:00Manchester, England, aims to be City of Trees<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Northern England City of Manchester has embarked on an ambitious project to plant at least one tree for every person in its three million population over the next 25 years. To paraphrase their website, </span><a href="http://www.cityoftrees.org.uk/about-city-trees"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">City of Trees</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> , this is an innovative and exciting movement, set to re-invigorate Greater Manchester’s landscape by restoring underused, unloved woodland and planting a tree for every man, woman and child that lives in this post-industrial City Region. </span><br />
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<img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQE-ugmLaDf51ppvHVhCDzqd-g1z5Zh2bOKedtfzjx0GTOXussXeLVPpq-r3vQMfSmw0Mzuo9JDdTnict4cTUj0xPrXuxnRLOkbWLUMaO464WzZXxVmwjP1zntmdJvbBBsv8OEkpNquvsQ/s400/279770849.jpg" width="400" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">c. <a href="http://www.stephenfrostphotography.co.uk/">StephenFrostPhotography</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Please visit their website and consider helping, either locally if you are lucky to live in this fantastic part of the world, or perhaps by a </span><a href="http://donation./"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">donation.</span></a><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The pioneers believe that trees are essential to the future of our towns and cities, and a City of Trees is one that is healthier, more resilient and more prosperous. Here is a link with more about the </span><a href="http://www.cityoftrees.org.uk/why-trees"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">benefits of trees</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Initiated by </span><a href="http://www.oglesbycharitabletrust.co.uk/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Oglesby Charitable Trust</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, and </span><a href="http://cf-trust.org/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Community Forest Trust</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, the charitable organisation that supports the delivery of City of Trees, this ambitious movement is securing a much greener, more resilient and pleasant environment that everyone can enjoy. You can find out more about the history of the movement on our </span><a href="http://www.cityoftrees.org.uk/timeline"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">timeline.</span></a><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<strong><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Their goals</span></strong><br />
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<li><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> 3 million trees planted, one for every man, woman and child across Greater Manchester</span></li>
<li><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> 2,000 hectares of unmanaged woodland brought back into a productive state</span></li>
<li><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Connect people to the trees and woods around them</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">c. </span><a href="http://www.stephenfrostphotography.co.uk/"><span style="font-family: "arial";">StephenFrostPhotography</span></a></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<strong><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The movement</span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial";"></span></strong><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A City of Trees will mean great things for Greater Manchester and you can help to make it happen!</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> City of Trees is being spearheaded by a number of committed partners and to realise their vision they need companies, organisations and individuals from across Greater Manchester to come together.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><strong>If you are an individual </strong>you can get involved in a number of different ways - whether that’s coming along to one of our </span></span><a href="http://www.cityoftrees.org.uk/events"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">events</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, helping to plant a tree, or simply keeping in touch with them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><strong>If you are a company, </strong>community group or organisation you can </span></span><a href="http://www.cityoftrees.org.uk/become-a-partner"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">become a partner</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> in the movement.</span><a href="http://www.cityoftrees.org.uk/donate"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">http://www.cityoftrees.org.uk/donate</span></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-7913073836529513162017-01-20T12:04:00.002-08:002017-01-20T12:04:53.966-08:00Breakthrough Initiative Are We Alone? VLT to Search for Planets in Alpha Centauri System<h2>
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Are We Alone?</span></h2>
<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First</span> </span><a href="http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/AreWeAlone"><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a reproduction of an open letter</span></a><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> , then a news report!</span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now is the time to find out</span></strong><br />
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<a href="https://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/paranal/">image credit: ESO</a></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who are we?</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A mature civilization, like a mature individual, must ask itself this question. Is humanity defined by its divisions, its problems, its passing needs and trends? Or do we have a shared face, turned outward to the Universe?</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1990, Voyager 1 swiveled its camera and captured the ‘Pale Blue Dot’ - an image of Earth from six billion kilometers away. It was a mirror held up to our planet - home of water, life, and minds. A reminder that we share something precious and rare.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But how rare, exactly? The only life? The only minds?</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the last half-century, small groups of scientists have listened valiantly for signs of life in the vast silence. But for government, academia, and industry, cosmic questions are astronomically far down the list of priorities. And that lengthens the odds of finding answers. It is hard enough to comb the Universe from the edge of the Milky Way; harder still from the edge of the public consciousness.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet millions are inspired by these ideas, whether they meet them in science or science fiction. Because the biggest questions of our existence are at stake. Are we the Universe’s only child - our thoughts its only thoughts? Or do we have cosmic siblings - an interstellar family of intelligence? As Arthur C. Clarke said, “In either case the idea is quite staggering.”</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That means the search for life is the ultimate ‘win-win’ endeavor. All we have to do is take part.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today we have search tools far surpassing those of previous generations. Telescopes can pick out planets across thousands of light years. The magic of Moore’s law lets our computers sift data orders of magnitude faster than older mainframes - and ever quicker each year.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These tools are now reaping a harvest of discoveries. In the last few years, astronomers and the Kepler Mission have discovered thousands of planets beyond our solar system. It now appears that most stars host a planetary system. Many of them have a planet similar in size to our own, basking in the ‘habitable zone’ where the temperature permits liquid water. There are likely billions of earth-like worlds in our galaxy alone. And with instruments now or soon available, we have a chance of finding out if any of these planets are true Pale Blue Dots – home to water, life, even minds.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There has never been a better moment for a large-scale international effort to find life in the Universe. As a civilization, we owe it to ourselves to commit time, resources, and passion to this quest.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But as well as a call to action, this is a call to thought. When we find the nearest exo-Earth, should we send a probe? Do we try to make contact with advanced civilizations? Who decides? Individuals, institutions, corporations, or states? Or can we as species - as a planet - think together? </span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Three years ago, Voyager 1 broke the sun’s embrace and entered interstellar space. The 20th century will be remembered for our travels within the solar system. With cooperation and commitment, the present century will be the time when we graduate to the galactic scale, seek other forms of life, and so know more deeply who we are.</span> </blockquote>
This open letter was signed by:<br />
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<strong>Yuri Milner</strong> Founder Breakthrough Prize, Founder DST Global</div>
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<li><strong>Cori Bargmann</strong> Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Torsten N. Wiesel Professor, The Rockefeller University</li>
<li><strong>Sarah Brightman</strong> Soprano</li>
<li><strong>Magnus Carlsen</strong> World Chess Champion</li>
<li><strong>Ding Chen</strong> Professor and Principal Investigator of the Search for Terrestrial Exo-Planets Mission, Chinese Academy of Sciences</li>
<li><strong>Frank Drake</strong> Chairman Emeritus, SETI Institute; Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz; Founding Director, National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center; Former Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy, Cornell University</li>
<li><strong>Ann Druyan</strong> Creative Director of the Interstellar Message, NASA Voyager; Co-Founder and CEO, Cosmos Studios; Emmy and Peabody award winning Writer and Producer</li>
<li><strong>Stephen Hawking</strong> Professor, Dennis Stanton Avery and Sally Tsui Wong-Avery Director of Research, University of Cambridge</li>
<li><strong>Paul Horowitz</strong> Professor of Physics and of Electrical Engineering, Emeritus, Harvard University </li>
<li><strong>Garik Israelian</strong> Professor and Staff Astrophysicist, Institute of Astrophysics of Canary Islands</li>
<li><strong>Lisa Kaltenegger</strong> Director, Carl Sagan Institute; Associate Professor of Astronomy, Cornell University</li>
<li><strong>Nikolay Kardashev</strong> Director, Astro Space Center of PN Lebedev Physics Institute</li>
<li><strong>Mark Kelly</strong> Astronaut</li>
<li><strong>Eric Lander</strong> President and Founding Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Professor of Biology, MIT; Professor of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School</li>
<li><strong>Alexey Leonov</strong> Cosmonaut</li>
<li><strong>Avi Loeb</strong> Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science, Chair of the Astronomy Department and Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation, Harvard University</li>
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<li><strong>Seth MacFarlane</strong> Writer, Director and Actor</li>
<li><strong>Geoff Marcy</strong> Professor of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley</li>
<li><strong>Lord Martin Rees</strong> Astronomer Royal, Fellow of Trinity College; Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, University of Cambridge</li>
<li><strong>Kenneth Rogof</strong> Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics, Harvard University; International Grandmaster of Chess</li>
<li><strong>Dimitar Sasselov</strong> Phillips Professor of Astronomy, Harvard University; Founding Director, Harvard Origins of Life Initiative</li>
<li><strong>Sara Seager</strong> Professor of Planetary Sciences and Professor of Physics, MIT</li>
<li><strong>Sujan Sengupta</strong> Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Ministry of Science and Technology</li>
<li><strong>Seth Shostak</strong> Professor, Senior Astronomer and Director, Center for SETI research</li>
<li><strong>Thomas Stafford</strong> Astronaut</li>
<li><strong>Jill Tarter</strong> Astronomer; Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research, SETI Institute</li>
<li><strong>Kip Thorne</strong> Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus, California Institute of Technology; Scientific consultant and an executive producer, Interstellar</li>
<li><strong>James Watson</strong> Chancellor Emeritus, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Nobel Prize Laureate</li>
<li><strong>Steven Weinberg</strong> Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of Texas at Austin; Nobel Prize Laureate</li>
<li><strong>Edward Witten</strong> Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study</li>
<li><strong>Pete Worden</strong> Chairman, Breakthrough Prize Foundation</li>
<li><strong>Shinya Yamanaka</strong> Professor and Director of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Kyoto University; Nobel Prize Laureate</li>
</ul>
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<a href="http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/AreWeAlone">credit</a></div>
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<span style="color: blue;">news update</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="color: blue;">VLT to Search for Planets in Alpha Centauri System</span></h2>
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<strong><span style="color: blue;">ESO has signed an agreement with the Breakthrough Initiatives to adapt the Very Large Telescope instrumentation in Chile to conduct a search for planets in the nearby star system Alpha Centauri. Such planets could be the targets for an eventual launch of miniature space probes by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative.</span></strong></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifzcBuxFurmfNO84cJOP5QUcE4WICG2KU33b0M5IdQp0wU0EeuUy255-NbFWdIy4SnjFy1qkZI9zPY18WFhfZYIKpzOjnKROcle-61o3q46tOI6Ql_cFMELuI_NPBzYTHqYT6lWel5dShw/s1600/platform-to-northwest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifzcBuxFurmfNO84cJOP5QUcE4WICG2KU33b0M5IdQp0wU0EeuUy255-NbFWdIy4SnjFy1qkZI9zPY18WFhfZYIKpzOjnKROcle-61o3q46tOI6Ql_cFMELuI_NPBzYTHqYT6lWel5dShw/s320/platform-to-northwest.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/paranal/">image credit: ESO</a></div>
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<strong></strong> </div>
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ESO, represented by the Director General, Tim de Zeeuw, has signed an agreement with the </span><a href="http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Breakthrough Initiatives</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, represented by </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Worden" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pete Worden</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, Chairman of the </span><a href="https://breakthroughprize.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Breakthrough Prize Foundation</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and Executive Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives. The agreement provides funds for the </span><a href="https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/vlt/vlt-instr/visir/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">VISIR</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared) instrument, mounted at ESO’s </span><a href="https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Very Large Telescope</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (VLT) to be modified in order to greatly enhance its ability to search for potentially habitable planets around </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alpha Centauri</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, the closest stellar system to the Earth. The agreement also provides for telescope time to allow a careful search programme to be conducted in 2019.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The </span><a href="https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1629/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">discovery in 2016</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> of a planet, Proxima b, around Proxima Centauri, the third and faintest star of the Alpha Centauri system, adds even further impetus to this search.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Knowing where the nearest exoplanets are is of paramount interest for Breakthrough Starshot, the research and engineering programme launched in April 2016, which aims to demonstrate proof of concept for ultra-fast light-driven “nanocraft”, laying the foundation for the first launch to Alpha Centauri within a generation.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Detecting a habitable planet is an enormous challenge due to the brightness of the planetary system’s host star, which tends to overwhelm the relatively dim planets. One way to make this easier is to observe in the mid-infrared wavelength range, where the thermal glow from an orbiting planet greatly reduces the brightness gap between it and its host star. But even in the mid-infrared, the star remains millions of times brighter than the planets to be detected, which calls for a dedicated technique to reduce the blinding stellar light.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The existing mid-infrared instrument VISIR on the VLT will provide such performance if it were enhanced to greatly improve the image quality using adaptive optics, and adapted to employ a technique called coronagraphy to reduce the stellar light and thereby reveal the possible signal of potential terrestrial planets. Breakthrough Initiatives will pay for a large fraction of the necessary technologies and development costs for such an experiment, and ESO will provide the required observing capabilities and time.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The new hardware includes an instrument module contracted to </span><a href="http://www.ktoptics.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kampf Telescope Optics</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (KTO), Munich, which will host the wavefront sensor, and a novel detector calibration device. In addition, there are plans for a new coronagraph to be developed jointly by University of Liège (Belgium) and Uppsala University (Sweden).</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Detecting and studying potentially habitable planets orbiting other stars will be one of the main scientific goals of the upcoming European Extremely Large Telescope (</span><a href="https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/e-elt/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">E-ELT</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">). Although the increased size of the E-ELT will be essential to obtaining an image of a planet at larger distances in the Milky Way, the light collecting power of the VLT is just sufficient to image a planet around the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The developments for VISIR will also be beneficial for the future </span><a href="https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/e-elt/e-elt-instr/metis/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">METIS</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> instrument, to be mounted on the E-ELT, as the knowledge gained and proof of concept will be directly transferable. The huge size of the E-ELT should allow METIS to detect and study exoplanets the size of Mars orbiting Alpha Centauri, if they exist, as well as other potentially habitable planets around other nearby stars.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More Information</span></h3>
<a href="https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Breakthrough Initiatives</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> are a program of scientific and technological exploration founded in 2015 by Internet investor and science philanthropist Yuri Milner to explore the Universe, seek scientific evidence of life beyond Earth, and encourage public debate from a planetary perspective.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Breakthrough Starshot is a $100 million research and engineering program aiming to demonstrate proof of concept for a new technology, enabling ultra-light unmanned space flight at 20% of the speed of light, and to lay the foundations for a flyby mission to Alpha Centauri within a generation.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.</span><br />
<h3>
Links</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/" target="_blank">Breakthrough Initiative</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/paranal/" target="_blank">Photos of the VLT</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>
Contacts</h3>
<strong>Markus Kasper</strong><br /> ESO<br /> Garching bei München, Germany<br /> Tel: +49 89 3200 6359<br /> Email: <a href="mailto:mkasper@eso.org">mkasper@eso.org</a> <br />
<strong>Breakthrough Initiatives</strong><br /> Email: <a href="mailto:media@breakthroughprize.org">media@breakthroughprize.org</a> <br />
<strong>Janet Wootten</strong><br /> Rubenstein Communications, Inc.<br /> Tel: +1 212 843 8024<br /> Email: <a href="mailto:jwootten@rubenstein.com">jwootten@rubenstein.com</a> <br />
<strong>Richard Hook</strong><br /> ESO Public Information Officer<br /> Garching bei München, Germany<br /> Tel: +49 89 3200 6655<br /> Cell: +49 151 1537 3591<br /> Email: <a href="mailto:rhook@eso.org">rhook@eso.org</a> <br />
<a href="https://www.eso.org/public/outreach/social/" target="_blank">Connect with ESO on social media<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"></a></a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-8280585078380036302017-01-20T11:26:00.003-08:002017-01-20T11:31:39.389-08:00Search for Signs of Life on Wolf 1061 Exoplanet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://news.sfsu.edu/news-story/sf-state-astronomer-searches-signs-life-wolf-1061-exoplanet"><img alt="http://news.sfsu.edu/news-story/sf-state-astronomer-searches-signs-life-wolf-1061-exoplanet" border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiHwIZWMRPUYfPg2jW87WVOavjMcxG8G2l_Ur6CeqN4MaBDtGW9rV8FfAT2tjErYtf3tyvQ3pE15cPxpNztIYEw2CsbauAAbJlCwz0hBiykQS60kmnAy9J-wJtcuchD32LGE71dan0Fy8x/s400/wolf1061-nasa-main_1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SF State astronomer <a href="http://news.sfsu.edu/news-story/sf-state-astronomer-searches-signs-life-wolf-1061-exoplanet">Stephen Kane</a> searches for signs of life in one of the extrasolar systems closest to Earth</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">image credit: <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/">NASA</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Is there anybody out there? The question of whether Earthlings are alone in the universe has puzzled everyone from biologists and physicists to philosophers and filmmakers. It’s also the driving force behind <a href="http://www.sfsu.edu/">San Francisco State University</a> astronomer Stephen Kane’s research into exoplanets — planets that exist outside Earth’s solar system.</span><br />
<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial";"></span><br />
<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As one of the world’s leading “planet hunters,” Kane focuses on finding “habitable zones,” areas where water could exist in a liquid state on a planet’s surface if there’s sufficient atmospheric pressure. Kane and his team, including former undergraduate student Miranda Waters, examined the habitable zone on a planetary system 14 light years away. Their findings will appear in the next issue of Astrophysical Journal in a paper titled “</span><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.09324" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Characterization of the Wolf 1061 Planetary System</span></a><span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">.”</span><br />
<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial";"></span><br />
<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“The Wolf 1061 system is important because it is so close and that gives other opportunities to do follow-up studies to see if it does indeed have life,” Kane said. </span><br />
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But it’s not just Wolf 1061’s proximity to Earth that made it an attractive subject for Kane and his team. One of the three known planets in the system, a rocky planet called Wolf 1061c, is entirely within the habitable zone. With assistance from collaborators at Tennessee State University and in Geneva, Switzerland, they were able to measure the star around which the planet orbits to gain a clearer picture of whether life could exist there.</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When scientists search for planets that could sustain life, they are basically looking for a planet with nearly identical properties to Earth, Kane said. Like Earth, the planet would have to exist in a sweet spot often referred to as the “Goldilocks zone” where conditions are just right for life. Simply put, the planet can’t be too close or too far from its parent star. A planet that’s too close would be too hot. If it’s too far, it may be too cold and any water would freeze, which is what happens on Mars, Kane added. </span><br />
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Conversely, when planets warm, a “runaway greenhouse effect” can occur where heat gets trapped in the atmosphere. Scientists believe this is what happened on Earth’s twin, Venus. Scientists believe Venus once had oceans, but because of its proximity to the sun the planet became so hot that all the water evaporated, </span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2002/02_60AR.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">according to NASA</span></a><span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. Since water vapor is extremely effective in trapping in heat, it made the surface of the planet even hotter. The surface temperature on Venus now reaches a scalding 880 degrees Fahrenheit.</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Since Wolf 1061c is close to the inner edge of the habitable zone, meaning closer to the star, it could be that the planet has an atmosphere that’s more similar to Venus. “It’s close enough to the star where it’s looking suspiciously like a runaway greenhouse,” Kane said. </span><br />
<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Kane and his team also observed that unlike Earth, which experiences climatic changes such as an ice age because of slow variations in its orbit around the sun, Wolf 1061c’s orbit changes at a much faster rate, which could mean the climate there could be quite chaotic. “It could cause the frequency of the planet freezing over or heating up to be quite severe,” Kane said.</span><br />
<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial";"></span><br />
<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These findings all beg the question: Is life possible on Wolf 1061c? One possibility is that the short time scales over which Wolf 1061c’s orbit changes could be enough that it could actually cool the planet off, Kane said. But fully understanding what’s happening on the planet’s surface will take more research.</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the coming years, there will be a launch of new telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, Kane said, and it will be able to detect atmospheric components of the exoplanets and show what’s happening on the surface.</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial";"><a href="http://news.sfsu.edu/news-story/sf-state-astronomer-searches-signs-life-wolf-1061-exoplanet">credit</a></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-86548578618534542022017-01-18T12:09:00.000-08:002017-01-18T12:09:13.849-08:00Calorie restriction lets monkeys live long and prosper <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong><em>Photonic Health</em></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: red;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: red;"><em>This is an interesting news report from the <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">University of Wisconsin–Madison</span></em></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: red;"><em> that is specific to monkeys but does add to the dietary knowledge which we all should sift through in order to take control of our own human health (or not if that's the case for you).</em> </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Settling a persistent scientific controversy, a long-awaited report shows that restricting calories does indeed help rhesus monkeys live longer, healthier lives. </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A remarkable collaboration between two competing research teams — one from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and one from the <a href="https://www.nia.nih.gov/">National Institute on Aging</a> — is the first time the groups worked together to resolve one of the most controversial stories in aging research. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDg0gbr2SB7zgTge5hIrBe7emjW4oUv7WSHQQpY6vaGYoTA6Rnw4qVPIDNxIUBOUMxGyGpyR9mr7wkkuV48sTC9Fm8MayR6hc3IRfFYlJW_I6pmYbdJhPChyphenhyphenD_5WaFe4AJJkQwJL0keFuC/s1600/monkey_diet_study09_5657-1-1024x681.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDg0gbr2SB7zgTge5hIrBe7emjW4oUv7WSHQQpY6vaGYoTA6Rnw4qVPIDNxIUBOUMxGyGpyR9mr7wkkuV48sTC9Fm8MayR6hc3IRfFYlJW_I6pmYbdJhPChyphenhyphenD_5WaFe4AJJkQwJL0keFuC/s400/monkey_diet_study09_5657-1-1024x681.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The findings by the collaboration — including Senior Scientist Ricki Colman of the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center and UW–Madison Associate Professor of Medicine Rozalyn Anderson; and NIA Staff Scientist and Nonhuman Primate Core Facility Head Julie Mattison and Senior Investigator and Chief of the Translational Gerontology Branch Rafael de Cabo — were published yesterday, 2017) in the journal Nature Communications. </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 2009, the UW–Madison study team reported significant benefits in survival and reductions in cancer, cardiovascular disease, and insulin resistance for monkeys that ate less than their peers. In 2012, however, the NIA study team reported no significant improvement in survival, but did find a trend toward improved health. </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“These conflicting outcomes had cast a shadow of doubt on the translatability of the caloric-restriction paradigm as a means to understand aging and what creates age-related disease vulnerability,” says Anderson, one of the report’s corresponding authors. Working together, the competing laboratories analyzed data gathered over many years and including data from almost 200 monkeys from both studies. Now, scientists think they know why the studies showed different results.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First, the animals in the two studies had their diets restricted at different ages. Comparative analysis reveals that eating less is beneficial in adult and older primates but is not beneficial for younger animals. This is a major departure from prior studies in rodents, where starting at an earlier age is better in achieving the benefits of a low-calorie diet. </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Second, in the old-onset group of monkeys at NIA, the control monkeys ate less than the Wisconsin control group. This lower food intake was associated with improved survival compared to the Wisconsin controls. The previously reported lack of difference in survival between control and restricted groups for older-onset monkeys within NIA emerges as beneficial differences when compared to the UW–Madison data. In this way, it seems that small differences in food intake in primates could meaningfully affect aging and health. </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Third, diet composition was substantially different between studies. The NIA monkeys ate naturally sourced foods and the UW–Madison monkeys, part of the colony at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, ate processed food with higher sugar content. The UW–Madison control animals were fatter than the control monkeys at NIA, indicating that at non-restricted levels of food intake, what is eaten can make a big difference for fat mass and body composition. </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, the team identified key sex differences in the relationship between diet, adiposity (fat), and insulin sensitivity, where females seem to be less vulnerable to adverse effects of adiposity than males. This new insight appears to be particularly important in primates and likely is translatable to humans. </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The upshot of the report is that caloric restriction does indeed seem to be a means to affect aging. However, for primates, age, diet and sex must all be factored in to realize the full benefits of lower caloric intake.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> - See more at: <a href="http://news.wisc.edu/calorie-restriction-lets-monkeys-live-long-and-prosper/#sthash.ta0TK7Wi.dpuf">http://news.wisc.edu/calorie-restriction-lets-monkeys-live-long-and-prosper/#sthash.ta0TK7Wi.dpuf</a> </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://news.wisc.edu/">credit</a></span><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial;"><em>On a personal (human) note, I have had some success with a </em><a href="https://thebloodsugardiet.com/"><em>low carbohydrate diet</em></a><em> recently, rather than a low calorie diet. Works for me and is very popular at present, particularly in using non-medication to control or reverse pre-diabetes. However that isn't an endorsement and you may not suit everyone. Ed.</em></span><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial;"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-40162486426583868932017-01-17T11:32:00.002-08:002017-01-24T13:07:33.829-08:00Space X Flight Success<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SpaceX is </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">'bouncing back' in its quest for the development of private space flight. On January 9th the SpaceX company successfully launched another rocket, its first since a major set-back when one of its spaceship exploded last September. The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and deployed ten Iridium satellites.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG6ZAzYRYKoPilpAfWR9UO0ozWx_h1IJKTRaLCKUdCOQGm2uJOo8kM6i-DlojclonSdRIHH7jSijS3uZWkHbD_aL58dFJoT21pj5neDdlCZ7-N2FewijpW6nEitfrFJ-4Kh91xlYbPdO61/s1600/a005_c007_05016i_00020412.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG6ZAzYRYKoPilpAfWR9UO0ozWx_h1IJKTRaLCKUdCOQGm2uJOo8kM6i-DlojclonSdRIHH7jSijS3uZWkHbD_aL58dFJoT21pj5neDdlCZ7-N2FewijpW6nEitfrFJ-4Kh91xlYbPdO61/s320/a005_c007_05016i_00020412.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is a great resource on the SpaceX site showing a graphic depiction of the </span><a href="http://www.spacex.com/falcon9"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Falcon 9</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> rocket and a break down of its ultimate aims, including manned flight. </span><br />
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<a href="https://www.iridium.com/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Iridium satellites</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, the name of a commercial group of satellites, are well known to amateur astronomers for the 'Iridium flare' effect, perhaps better known as .s<strong>atellite flare</strong>, and also called sa<strong>tellite glint. </strong>This phenomenon is caused by the reflective surfaces on </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_satellite" title="Artificial satellite"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">satellites</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> (such as </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antenna_(radio)" title="Antenna (radio)"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">antennas</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_aperture_radar" title="Synthetic aperture radar"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SAR</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> or </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_module" title="Photovoltaic module"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">solar panels</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">) reflecting sunlight directly onto the Earth below and appearing as a brief, bright "flare". These flashes in the sky are entirely predictable for a given location and can be found in tables on several web sites and apps; I use </span><a href="http://www.heavens-above.com/IridiumFlares.aspx?lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=UCT"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Heavens-Above.</span></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJIYj1iBAYfdwN-Nz13K-93V7uvX0kC8d2O-Ia4g8FNzf4Ph4657jpV8-w0CDZcJdgfv79ECuZSbBAjEaKvIdaWLX8jp6Egwbiym-zO_Cvdt_u_cfVzPruAevvHvgVBsWYDWm6ty5kDeoO/s1600/150px-Comet_holmes_and_iridium_flare.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJIYj1iBAYfdwN-Nz13K-93V7uvX0kC8d2O-Ia4g8FNzf4Ph4657jpV8-w0CDZcJdgfv79ECuZSbBAjEaKvIdaWLX8jp6Egwbiym-zO_Cvdt_u_cfVzPruAevvHvgVBsWYDWm6ty5kDeoO/s400/150px-Comet_holmes_and_iridium_flare.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: "arial";">s<strong>atellite flare</strong></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SpaceX of course is also know for its recoverable first stage which if all goes well lands back to earth on a floating platform. Here is a </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYmQQn_ZSys"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">link</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> to a video of a 2016 landing.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9qhRH2-eVkdr7HlU-EvETf8MURcDPARbVnrQbOQ1UA2kXsMLlC2qSKa5IuGQnQKg-yccKXq_vv3rovVeQUAznm04W47IYXZ-OJbmHhyphenhyphenHnY9_I2UViEnRkUh8-wAAQeF0X8mtg52NUxayC/s1600/home_block_reusable.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9qhRH2-eVkdr7HlU-EvETf8MURcDPARbVnrQbOQ1UA2kXsMLlC2qSKa5IuGQnQKg-yccKXq_vv3rovVeQUAznm04W47IYXZ-OJbmHhyphenhyphenHnY9_I2UViEnRkUh8-wAAQeF0X8mtg52NUxayC/s1600/home_block_reusable.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Those of us who were around in 1960s Britain, and perhaps some others who have seen it since, may be reminded uncannily of its predecessor, Fireball XL5. I have sadly to admit I have the box set already. (ed.).</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-48253439968600007422017-01-16T09:44:00.000-08:002017-01-16T09:44:03.202-08:00Great Observatories Unique Views of the Milky Way <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/PIA12348/PIA12348~orig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/PIA12348/PIA12348~orig.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span class="ng-binding ng-scope editable" data-ng-bind="media.Description" e-form="editDescription" editable-textarea="media.Description" onbeforesave="requireKeywordsDesc($data)"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></span><br />
<span class="ng-binding ng-scope editable" data-ng-bind="media.Description" e-form="editDescription" editable-textarea="media.Description" onbeforesave="requireKeywordsDesc($data)"><span style="color: red; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Great Images from Space</span></span><br />
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<span class="ng-binding ng-scope editable" data-ng-bind="media.Description" e-form="editDescription" editable-textarea="media.Description" onbeforesave="requireKeywordsDesc($data)"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, NASA's Great Observatories -- the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory -- have produced a matched trio of images of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy. Each image shows the telescope's different wavelength view of the galactic center region, illustrating the unique science each observatory conducts. In this spectacular image, observations using infrared light and X-ray light see through the obscuring dust and reveal the intense activity near the galactic core. Note that the center of the galaxy is located within the bright white region to the right of and just below the middle of the image. The entire image width covers about one-half a degree, about the same angular width as the full moon. Spitzer's infrared-light observations provide a detailed and spectacular view of the galactic center region [Figure 1 (top frame of poster)]. The swirling core of our galaxy harbors hundreds of thousands of stars that cannot be seen in visible light. These stars heat the nearby gas and dust. These dusty clouds glow in infrared light and reveal their often dramatic shapes. Some of these clouds harbor stellar nurseries that are forming new generations of stars. Like the downtown of a large city, the center of our galaxy is a crowded, active, and vibrant place. Although best known for its visible-light images, Hubble also observes over a limited range of infrared light [Figure 2 (middle frame of poster)]. The galactic center is marked by the bright patch in the lower right. Along the left side are large arcs of warm gas that have been heated by clusters of bright massive stars. In addition, Hubble uncovered many more massive stars across the region. Winds and radiation from these stars create the complex structures seen in the gas throughout the image.This sweeping panorama is one of the sharpest infrared pictures ever made of the galactic center region. X-rays detected by Chandra expose a wealth of exotic objects and high-energy features [Figure 3 (bottom frame of poster)]. In this image, pink represents lower energy X-rays and blue indicates higher energy. Hundreds of small dots show emission from material around black holes and other dense stellar objects. A supermassive black hole -- some four million times more massive than the Sun -- resides within the bright region in the lower right. The diffuse X-ray light comes from gas heated to millions of degrees by outflows from the supermassive black hole, winds from giant stars, and stellar explosions. This central region is the most energetic place in our galaxy. </span></span><br />
<span class="ng-binding ng-scope editable" data-ng-bind="media.Description" e-form="editDescription" editable-textarea="media.Description" onbeforesave="requireKeywordsDesc($data)"></span><br />
<span class="ng-binding ng-scope editable" data-ng-bind="media.Description" e-form="editDescription" editable-textarea="media.Description" onbeforesave="requireKeywordsDesc($data)"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> <a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12348">http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12348</a></span></span> <br />
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<strong><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><em>Credits</em></span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><em><strong>NASA ID:</strong> <span class="ng-binding" data-ng-bind="media.NASAID">PIA12348</span> <!-- end ngIf: media.NASAID --> </em></span></span><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-38784478703643863972015-02-03T05:12:00.000-08:002015-02-03T05:15:27.208-08:00Research points to a future biofuel: Fistulifera solaris<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 23px;"></span><br />
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Biofuels made from plant-produced oils are an attractive alternative to fossil fuels. However, the enormous amount of arable land needed for production and the competition between their uses as food/feed and fuel present obstacles to the production of biofuels from crops. These considerations have led to focus on microalgae as oil producers. Microalgae are tiny photosynthetic organisms found in both ocean water and freshwater. They grow quickly in liquid culture and can produce high levels of oils. In fact, the omega-3 fatty acids present in fish are actually produced by microalgae that are eaten by the fish. Institutions throughout the world have generated collections of wild microalgae in efforts to find species with desirable characteristics.</div>
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One such microalga is a species of diatom called <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Fistulifera solaris</em>, which is emerging as a promising candidate for next-generation biofuel technology. Diatoms are microscopic algae that are major contributors to marine ecosystems; they are also the basis of diatomaceous earth, which is used by gardeners as a natural pest deterrent. Not only does<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">F. solaris</i> grow quickly and produce high levels of oils, it does both at the same time, unlike other oil-producing microalgae that produce their highest amounts of oil at stages when they grow slowly, if at all. These characteristics make <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">F. solaris</i> an excellent candidate for batch culture (see figure) to produce biomass from which oil for biofuels can be harvested.</div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">F. solaris</i> was originally isolated from samples taken at the junction of two rivers in Japan. A collaboration of scientists in Japan and France aimed to elucidate the molecular underpinnings of simultaneous growth and oil production by sequencing the genome of <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">F. solaris</i> and also cataloguing the transcriptome - providing a read-out of all genes expressed at a given time. Lead scientist Dr. Tsuyoshi Tanaka of the Division of Biotechnology and Life Science in the Institute of Engineering at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, highlights the need for this information, saying "Biofuel production using photosynthetic organisms such as microalgae is one of the most promising approaches to generating sustainable energy. However, the molecular functions of organisms such as oleaginous microalgae remain unclear, thus hampering efforts to improve productivity". Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology.</div>
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<a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/asop-ttn020215.php">link to article</a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">original author: Nancy Hofmann, PhD <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a href="mailto:nhofmann@aspb.org" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.1s; -webkit-transition-property: all; -webkit-transition-timing-function: linear; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0088cc; text-decoration: none;">nhofmann@aspb.org</a> </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">avoiding fossil fuels: ed.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-41396333026267791842015-02-02T11:12:00.001-08:002015-02-02T11:12:24.128-08:00Mining the moon becomes a serious prospect<br />
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With an estimated 1.6 billion tonnes of water ice at its poles and an abundance of rare-earth elements hidden below its surface, the Moon is rich ground for mining.</div>
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In this month’s issue of <em><a href="http://www.iop.org/news/15/feb/page_64944.html">Physics World</a>,</em> science writer Richard Corfield explains how private firms and space agencies are dreaming of tapping into these lucrative resources and turning the Moon's grey, barren landscape into a money-making conveyer belt. A video preview of the February issue of <em>Physics World</em> can be viewed <a href="http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid106573614001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAGKlf6FE~,iSMGT5PckNvcgUb_ru5CAy2Tyv4G5OW3&bctid=4022634841001" style="color: #cc0000; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;">here</a>.</div>
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Since NASA disbanded its manned Apollo missions to the Moon over 40 years ago, unmanned spaceflight has made giant strides and has identified a bountiful supply of water ice at the north and south poles of the Moon.</div>
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“It is this, more than anything else,” Cornfield writes, “that has kindled interest in mining the Moon, for where there is ice, there is fuel.”</div>
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Texas-based Shackleton Energy Company (SEC) plans to mine the vast reserves of water ice and convert it into rocket propellant in the form of hydrogen and oxygen, which would then be sold to space partners in low Earth orbit.</div>
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As the company’s chief executive officer, Dale Tietz, explains, the plan is to build a “gas station in space” in which rocket propellant will be sold at prices significantly lower than the cost of sending fuel from Earth.</div>
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SEC plans to extract the water ice by sending humans and robots to mine the lunar poles, and then use some of the converted products to power mining hoppers, lunar rovers and life support for its own activities.</div>
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Moon Express, another privately funded lunar-resources company, is also interested in using water ice as fuel – but in a different form. It plans to fuel its operations and spacecraft using “high-test peroxide” (HTP), which has a long and illustrious history as a propellant.</div>
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As for mining the rare-earth elements on the Moon, China is making the most noticeable headway. The Jade Rabbit lander successfully touched down on the Moon in December 2013 and the Chinese space agency has publicly suggested establishing a “base on the Moon as we did in the South Pole and the North Pole”.</div>
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With a near-monopoly on the dwindling terrestrial rare-earth elements, which are vital for everything from mobile phones to computers and car batteries, it is no surprise that China may want to cast its net wider.</div>
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“All interested parties agree that the Moon – one step from Earth – is the essential first toehold for humankind’s diaspora to the stars,” Corfield concludes.</div>
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<a href="http://www.iop.org/news/15/feb/page_64944.html">link to article</a></div>
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<i>Perhaps the mining bases on the moon will be built using 3D printing, as <span id="goog_1732071063"></span><a href="http://photonicpositive.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/space-3d-printing-of-moon-base.html">described earlier:</a> <span id="goog_1732071064"></span>ed.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-78246212838617145212015-01-24T14:01:00.000-08:002015-01-24T14:01:09.439-08:00Chandra Celebrates the International Year of Light:: image of SNR 0519-69.0<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The year of 2015 has been declared the International Year of Light (IYL) by the United Nations. Organizations, institutions, and individuals involved in the science and applications of light will be joining together for this yearlong celebration to help spread the word about the wonders of light.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NASA’s <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/main/index.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">Chandra X-ray Observatory</a> explores the universe in X-rays, a high-energy form of light. By studying X-ray data and comparing them with observations in other types of light, scientists can develop a better understanding of objects likes stars and galaxies that generate temperatures of millions of degrees and produce X-rays.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To recognize the start of IYL, the Chandra X-ray Center is releasing a set of images that combine data from telescopes tuned to different wavelengths of light. From a distant galaxy to the relatively nearby debris field of an exploded star, these images demonstrate the myriad ways that information about the universe is communicated to us through light.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In this image, an expanding shell of debris called SNR 0519-69.0 is left behind after a massive star exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. Multimillion degree gas is seen in X-rays from Chandra, in blue. The outer edge of the explosion (red) and stars in the field of view are seen in visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/celebrate-intl-year-of-light.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">> More: Chandra Celebrates the International Year of Light</a></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-22108918636477804772015-01-20T04:18:00.000-08:002015-01-20T04:18:16.227-08:00Unexplained cosmic burst of radio waves deep in space<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: small;">A strange phenomenon has been observed by astronomers as it was happening – a ‘fast radio burst’. The eruption is described as an extremely short, sharp flash of radio waves from an unknown source in the universe. The results have been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Over the past few years, astronomers have observed a new phenomenon, a brief burst of radio waves, lasting only a few milliseconds.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">It was first seen by chance in 2007, when astronomers went through archival data from the Parkes Radio Telescope in Eastern Australia.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Since then we have seen six more such bursts in the Parkes telescope’s data and a seventh burst was found in the data from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. They were almost all discovered long after they had occurred, but then astronomers began to look specifically for them right as they happen.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">A team of astronomers in Australia developed a technique to search for these ‘Fast Radio Bursts’, so they could look for the bursts in real time. The technique worked and now a group of astronomers, led by Emily Petroff (Swinburne University of Technology), have succeeded in observing the first ‘live’ burst with the Parkes telescope. The characteristics of the event indicated that the source of the burst was up to 5.5 billion light years from Earth.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">The electromagnetic spectrum. There are many more colors that our eyes can see: electromagnetic radiation is defined by its wavelength. Visible light is only a small part of the existing spectrum. For the study of fast radio bursts, scientists looked for radio waves with the Parkes telescope, then X-rays with the Swift satellite, and then optical light with the Nordic Optical Telescope, among others.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Now that they had the burst location and as soon as it was observed, a number of other telescopes around the world were alerted – on both ground and in space, in order to make follow-up observations on other wavelengths.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">“Using the Swift space telescope we can observe light in the X-ray region and we saw two X-ray sources at that position,” explains Daniele Malesani, astrophysicist at the Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Then the two X-ray sources were observed using the Nordic Optical Telescope on La Palma. “We observed in visible light and we could see that there were two quasars, that is to say, active black holes. They had nothing to do with the radio wave bursts, but just happen to be located in the same direction,” explains astrophysicist Giorgos Leloudas, Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen and Weizmann Institute, Israel.</span></div>
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<a class="fancybox" href="http://www.nbi.ku.dk/Nyheder/nyheder_15/snapshot-af-kosmisk-udbrud-af-radioboelger/lightcurve_dotted1000.jpg" rel="group" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><img src="http://www.nbi.ku.dk/Nyheder/nyheder_15/snapshot-af-kosmisk-udbrud-af-radioboelger/lightcurve_dotted-275.png" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial;" /></span></a></address>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">The intensity profile of the fast radio burst, showing how quickly it evolved in time, last only a few milliseconds. Before and after the burst, only noise from the sky was detected. <em>(Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions)</em></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: small;">Further investigation</span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">So now what? Even though they captured the radio wave burst while it was happening and could immediately make follow-up observations at other wavelengths ranging from infrared light, visible light, ultraviolet light and X-ray waves, they found nothing. But did they discover anything?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">“We found out what it wasn’t. The burst could have hurled out as much energy in a few milliseconds as the Sun does in an entire day. But the fact that we did not see light in other wavelengths eliminates a number of astronomical phenomena that are associated with violent events such as gamma-ray bursts from exploding stars and supernovae, which were otherwise candidates for the burst,” explains Daniele Malesani.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">But the burst left another clue. The Parkes detection system captured the polarisation of the light. Polarisation is the direction in which electromagnetic waves oscillate and they can be linearly or circularly polarised. The signal from the radio wave burst was more than 20 percent circularly polarised and it suggests that there is a magnetic field in the vicinity.</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><a href="http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/news/news15/snapshot-of-cosmic-burst-of-radio-waves/">more information</a></span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-61825786728774422352015-01-18T03:24:00.000-08:002015-01-18T03:24:03.415-08:00The Beagle Has Landed!<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #575757; font-family: MiloWeb, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"></span><br />
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On Christmas Day 2003, a kitchen table-size lander descended onto the surface of the red planet on a mission to study the Martian surface and potential clues for life. The probe never called home, and no one knew what happened to it. Until now.</div>
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<a class="colorbox cboxElement init-colorbox-processed" href="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/story-images/beaglelanded.jpg" rel="gallery-node-58125" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-size: 9px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Upon landing, Beagle 2 was designed to unfold like a pocket watch into its main components, a petal-like array of solar panels and a robotic arm bristling with scientific instruments. (Artist's impression: Beagle2.com)"><img alt="Upon landing, Beagle 2 was designed to unfold like a pocket watch into its main components, a petal-like array of solar panels and a robotic arm bristling with scientific instruments. (Artist's impression: Beagle2.com)" src="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/styles/story_body_aspect_ratio_switcher/public/story-images/beaglelanded.jpg?itok=I39uE4hH" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(238, 241, 241); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 9px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Upon landing, Beagle 2 was designed to unfold like a pocket watch into its main components, a petal-like array of solar panels and a robotic arm bristling with scientific instruments. (Artist's impression: Beagle2.com)" typeof="foaf:Image" /></a><div class="caption" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Upon landing, Beagle 2 was designed to unfold like a pocket watch into its main components, a petal-like array of solar panels and a robotic arm bristling with scientific instruments. (Artist's impression: Beagle2.com)</div>
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<a class="colorbox cboxElement init-colorbox-processed" href="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/story-images/Beagle%20brown.jpg" rel="gallery-node-58125" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-size: 9px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="HiRISE image of the Beagle 2 landing site."><img alt="HiRISE image of the Beagle 2 landing site." src="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/styles/story_body_aspect_ratio_switcher/public/story-images/Beagle%20brown.jpg?itok=IHwt4XGg" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(238, 241, 241); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 9px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="HiRISE image of the Beagle 2 landing site." typeof="foaf:Image" /></a><div class="caption" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
HiRISE image of the Beagle 2 landing site.</div>
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<a class="colorbox cboxElement init-colorbox-processed" href="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/story-images/Beagle_gray.jpg" rel="gallery-node-58125" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-size: 9px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="HiRISE image of the Beagle-2 landing site."><img alt="Zoomed-in view of the landing site shows Beagle 2's petal-like solar panels." src="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/styles/story_body_aspect_ratio_switcher/public/story-images/Beagle_gray.jpg?itok=deslTPu-" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(238, 241, 241); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 9px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="HiRISE image of the Beagle-2 landing site." typeof="foaf:Image" /></a><div class="caption" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Zoomed-in view of the landing site shows Beagle 2's petal-like solar panels.</div>
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The UK-led <a href="http://www.beagle2.com/" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><strong style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #ab0520; font-size: 17px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Beagle 2 Mars Lander</strong></a>, thought lost on Mars since 2003, has been found partially deployed on the surface of the planet, ending the mystery of what happened to the mission more than a decade ago.</div>
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Images taken by the <a href="https://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">HiRISE</a> camera on NASA’s <a href="http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter</a>, or MRO, and initially searched by Michael Croon of Trier, Germany, a former member of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express operations team at the European Space Operations Centre, have identified clear evidence for the lander and convincing evidence for key entry and descent components on the surface of Mars within the expected landing area of Isidis Planitia, an impact basin close to the equator.</div>
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This finding shows that the Entry, Descent and Landing, or EDL, sequence for Beagle 2 worked and the lander did successfully touchdown on Mars on Christmas Day 2003.</div>
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"We've been looking for all the past landers with HiRISE, this is the first time we found one that didn't send a signal after it landed," said <a href="https://www.lpl.arizona.edu/resources/faculty/mcewen" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Alfred McEwen</a>, principal investigator of the HiRISE mission and professor in the UA's Lunar and Planetary Lab. "If the landing sequence works correctly, the probe sends a radio signal, and you can use that to pinpoint where it is coming from, even if it broadcasts only very briefly. But in the case of Beagle 2, we didn't get anything. All we had to go by was the target landing area."</div>
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Since the loss of Beagle 2 following its landing timed for Dec. 25, 2003, a search for it has been underway using images taken by the HiRISE camera on the MRO. HiRISE has been taking occasional pictures of the landing site in addition to pursuing its scientific studies of the surface of Mars. The planned landing area for Beagle 2 at the time of launch was approximately 170 x 100 kilometers (105 x 62 miles) within Isidis Planitia. With a fully deployed Beagle 2 being less than a few meters across and a camera image scale of about 0.3 m (10 inches), detection is a very difficult and a painstaking task. The initial detection came from HiRISE images taken on Feb. 28, 2013, and June 29, 2014 (Images ESP_037145_1915 and ESP_030908_1915). Croon had submitted a request through the<a href="http://uanews.org/story/public-invited-pick-pixels-mars" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">HiWISH</a> program, which allows anyone to submit suggestions for HiRISE imaging targets.</div>
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"He found something that would be a good candidate at the edge of the frame," McEwen said. "But contrast was low in the first image, and it was difficult to convince yourself something special was there."</div>
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The team acquired several more images, which showed a bright spot that seemed to move around.</div>
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"That was consistent with Beagle 2," McEwen said. "Because its solar panels were arranged in petals, each one would reflect light differently depending on the angles of the sun and MRO, especially if the lander was resting on sloping ground."</div>
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The imaging data may be consistent with only a partial deployment of Beagle 2 following landing, which would explain why no signal or data was received from the lander, as full deployment of all solar panels was needed to expose the RF antenna, which would transmit data and receive commands from Earth via orbiting Mars spacecraft.</div>
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The HiRISE images reveal only two or three of the motorized solar panels, but that may be due to their favorable tilts for sun glints. According to the UK Space Agency, if some panels failed to deploy, reasons could include obstruction from an airbag remaining in the proximity of the lander due to gas leakage, or a damaged mechanism or structure or broken electrical connection, perhaps due to unexpected shock loads during landing. The scenario of local terrain topology, including rocks blocking the deployment, is considered unlikely given images of the landing area, which show few rocks, but this cannot be ruled out. Further imaging and analysis is planned to narrow the options for what happened. Slope and height derived from the HiRISE images show that Beagle 2 landed on comparable flat terrain with no major hazards.</div>
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The discovery benefited from an additional image clean-up step that the HiRISE team has been testing, which removes very subtle electronic noise patterns that have to do with the way the instruments work on the MRO. Sarah Sutton, a HiRISE image processing scientist at LPL who was involved in processing the images that revealed the marooned lander, pointed out that this process is an additional step to make the images "just a little bit clearer."</div>
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"We have to be really careful not to modify the science data," said Sutton, who received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from the UA. "We do not make any enhancements or modify the images. All we do is eliminate subtle artifacts from high-frequency electronic noise. The untrained eye would not see it, but I see it.</div>
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"When we look at objects that are at the limit of the resolution of HiRISE, like Beagle 2, every bit of image clean-up helps." </div>
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Beagle 2 was part of the ESA Mars Express Mission launched in June 2003. Mars Express is still orbiting Mars and returning scientific data on the planet. Beagle 2 was successfully ejected from ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft on the Dec. 19, 2003 — 5.75 days away from Mars and Mars Express’ engine firing and orbital injection.</div>
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Beagle 2 inspired many in the general public and led indirectly to the UK becoming a leading member of ESA’s Aurora program and the UK-led ESA ExoMars mission. This rover will explore Mars in 2019, drilling up to 2 meters (6 feet) beneath the soil to explore the geochemistry and mineralogy of Mars and search for potential evidence of past life.</div>
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<a class="colorbox cboxElement init-colorbox-processed" href="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/b2_animated_zoom_wb_label_ack.gif" rel="gallery-node-58125" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Tyler Meier, executive director of the UA Poetry Center, says the center is working to expand the University's mission of engagement."><img alt="Animated overlay of HiRISE images showing the Beagle-2 landing site at different times. Lander components show up differently depending on the angle of sunlight. " class="colorbox cboxElement init-colorbox-processed" heigh="auto" src="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/b2_animated_zoom_wb_label_ack.gif" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Animated overlay of HiRISE images showing the Beagle-2 landing site at different times. Lander components show up differently depending on the angle of sunlight. " typeof="foaf:Image" width="100%" /></a><div class="caption" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Animated overlay of HiRISE images showing the Beagle 2 landing site at different times. Lander components show up differently, depending on the angle of sunlight.</div>
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<a href="http://uanews.org/story/years-later-hirise-camera-confirms-the-beagle-has-landed">link to article</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-18101935831723810652015-01-17T05:05:00.000-08:002015-01-17T05:05:22.884-08:00Three Nearly Earth-Size Planets Found Orbiting Nearby Star<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #303030; font-family: miloserifweb, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><br /></span></span>
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<a class="colorbox init-colorbox-processed cboxElement" href="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/story-images/kepler-k2_artistconcept.jpg" rel="gallery-node-58129" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-size: 9px; line-height: 21px; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="This artistic impression shows NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft operating in a new mission profile called K2. By analyzing data captured by the Kepler spacecraft, a UA-led team of researchers has discovered three new Earth-size planets orbiting a star only 150 light-years from our sun. (Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T Pyle)"><img alt="This artistic impression shows NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft operating in a new mission profile called K2. By analyzing data captured by the Kepler spacecraft, a UA-led team of researchers has discovered three new Earth-size planets orbiting a star only 150 light-years from our sun. (Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T Pyle)" height="255" src="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/styles/story-page-headline-800-300/public/story-images/kepler-k2_artistconcept.jpg?itok=B0z7v81u" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 9px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="This artistic impression shows NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft operating in a new mission profile called K2. By analyzing data captured by the Kepler spacecraft, a UA-led team of researchers has discovered three new Earth-size planets orbiting a star only 150 light-years from our sun. (Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T Pyle)" typeof="foaf:Image" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="story-image" style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; float: right; font-style: italic; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 615px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: MiloWeb, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Impression (artistic) shows NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft operating in a new mission profile called K2. By analyzing data captured by the Kepler spacecraft, a UA-led team of researchers has discovered three new Earth-size planets orbiting a star only 150 light-years from our sun. (Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T Pyle)</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: MiloWeb, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: MiloWeb, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: MiloWeb, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: miloweb, serif; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://uanews.org/story/three-nearly-earth-size-planets-found-orbiting-nearby-star">Researchers</a> led by UA scientist Ian Crossfield has found a star with three planets, one of which may have temperatures moderate enough for liquid water — and maybe even life — to exist</b></span><i>.</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: MiloWeb, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<a class="colorbox cboxElement init-colorbox-processed" full="" href="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/story-images/crossfield_sm_0.png" is="" nature="" of="" rel="gallery-node-58129" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-size: 9px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" surprises.="" title="UA astronomer Ian Crossfield: "><img alt="UA astronomer Ian Crossfield: " full="" is="" nature="" of="" src="http://uanews.org/sites/default/files/styles/story_body_aspect_ratio_switcher/public/story-images/crossfield_sm_0.png?itok=t0Ykbf-r" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(238, 241, 241); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 9px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" surprises.="" title="UA astronomer Ian Crossfield: " typeof="foaf:Image" /></a><div class="caption" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
UA astronomer Ian Crossfield: "Nature is full of surprises."</div>
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NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, despite being hobbled by the loss of critical guidance systems, has discovered a star with three planets only slightly larger than Earth. The outermost planet orbits in the "Goldilocks" zone, a region where surface temperatures could be moderate enough for liquid water — and perhaps life — to exist.</div>
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The star, EPIC 201367065, is a cool red M-dwarf about half the size and mass of our own sun. At a distance of 150 light-years, the star ranks among the top 10 nearest stars known to have transiting planets. The star’s proximity means it is bright enough for astronomers to study the planets’ atmospheres, to determine whether they are like Earth’s atmosphere and possibly conducive to life.</div>
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"A thin atmosphere made of nitrogen and oxygen has allowed life to thrive on Earth. But nature is full of surprises. Many exoplanets discovered by the Kepler mission are enveloped by thick, hydrogen-rich atmospheres that are probably incompatible with life as we know it," said <strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ian Crossfield</strong>, the University of Arizona astronomer who led the study.</div>
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A paper describing the find by astronomers at the UA, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and other institutions has been submitted to Astrophysical Journal and is freely available on the <a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1501.03798v1.pdf" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">arXiv website</a>. NASA and the National Science Foundation funded the research.</div>
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Co-authors of the paper include <strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Travis Barman</strong>, a UA associate professor of planetary sciences, and Joshua Schlieder of the NASA Ames Research Center and colleagues from Germany, the United Kingdom and the U.S.</div>
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The three planets are 2.1, 1.7 and 1.5 times the size of Earth. The smallest and outermost planet, at 1.5 Earth radii, orbits far enough from its host star that it receives levels of light from its star similar to those received by Earth from the sun, said UC Berkeley graduate student Erik Petigura. He discovered the planets Jan. 6 while conducting a computer analysis of the Kepler data NASA has made available to astronomers. In order from farthest to closest to their star, the three planets receive 10.5, 3.2 and 1.4 times the light intensity of Earth, Petigura calculated.</div>
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"Most planets we have found to date are scorched. This system is the closest star with lukewarm transiting planets," Petigura said. "There is a very real possibility that the outermost planet is rocky like Earth, which means this planet could have the right temperature to support liquid water oceans."</div>
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University of Hawaii astronomer Andrew Howard noted that extrasolar planets are discovered by the hundreds these days, although many astronomers are left wondering if any of the newfound worlds are really like Earth. The newly discovered planetary system will help resolve this question, he said.</div>
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"We’ve learned in the past year that planets the size and temperature of Earth are common in our Milky Way galaxy," Howard said. "We also discovered some Earth-size planets that appear to be made of the same materials as our Earth, mostly rock and iron."</div>
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<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kepler’s K2 Mission</strong></div>
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After Petigura found the planets in the Kepler light curves, the team quickly employed telescopes in Chile, Hawaii and California to characterize the star’s mass, radius, temperature and age. Two of the telescopes involved — the Automated Planet Finder on Mount Hamilton near San Jose, California, and the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii — are University of California facilities.</div>
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The next step will be observations with other telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, to take the spectroscopic fingerprint of the molecules in the planetary atmospheres. If these warm, nearly Earth-size planets have puffy, hydrogen-rich atmospheres, Hubble will see the telltale signal, Petigura said.</div>
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The discovery is all the more remarkable, he said, because the Kepler telescope lost two reaction wheels that kept it pointing at a fixed spot in space.</div>
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Kepler was reborn in 2014 as "K2" with a clever strategy of pointing the telescope in the plane of Earth’s orbit, the ecliptic, to stabilize the spacecraft. Kepler is now back to mining the cosmos for planets by searching for eclipses or "transits," as planets pass in front of their host stars and periodically block some of the starlight.</div>
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"This discovery proves that K2, despite being somewhat compromised, can still find exciting and scientifically compelling planets," Petigura said. "This ingenious new use of Kepler is a testament to the ingenuity of the scientists and engineers at NASA. This discovery shows that Kepler can still do great science."</div>
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Kepler sees only a small fraction of the planetary systems in its gaze: only those with orbital planes aligned edge-on to our view from Earth. Planets with large orbital tilts are missed by Kepler. A census of Kepler planets the team conducted in 2013 corrected statistically for these random orbital orientations and concluded that one in five sunlike stars in the Milky Way galaxy has Earth-size planets in the habitable zone. Accounting for other types of stars as well, there may be 40 billion such planets galaxywide.</div>
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The original Kepler mission found thousands of small planets, but most of them were too faint and far away to assess their density and composition and thus determine whether they were high-density, rocky planets like Earth or puffy, low-density planets like Uranus and Neptune. Because the star EPIC-201 is nearby, these mass measurements are possible. The host star, an M-dwarf, is less intrinsically bright than the sun, which means that its planets can reside close to the host-star and still enjoy lukewarm temperatures.</div>
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According to Howard, the system most like that of EPIC-201 is Kepler-138, an M-dwarf star with three planets of similar size, though none are in the habitable zone. </div>
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<i>CONTACTS</i></h3>
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<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Researcher contacts:</i></strong></div>
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<i>Erik Petigura, <a class="mailto" href="mailto:epetigura@berkeley.edu" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(171, 5, 32) !important; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 100; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">epetigura@berkeley.edu<span class="mailto" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://uanews.org/sites/all/modules/extlink/extlink_s.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: -20px 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; height: 10px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: 10px;"><span class="element-invisible" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); font-size: 17px; height: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: absolute !important; vertical-align: baseline;">(link sends e-mail)</span></span></a>, 650-804-1379 (cell)</i></div>
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<i>Ian Crossfield, <a class="mailto" href="mailto:ianc@lpl.arizona.edu" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(171, 5, 32) !important; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 100; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">ianc@lpl.arizona.edu<span class="mailto" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://uanews.org/sites/all/modules/extlink/extlink_s.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: -20px 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; height: 10px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: 10px;"><span class="element-invisible" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); font-size: 17px; height: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: absolute !important; vertical-align: baseline;">(link sends e-mail)</span></span></a>, 520-626-2083</i></div>
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<i>Andrew Howard, <a class="mailto" href="mailto:howard@ifa.hawaii.edu" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(171, 5, 32) !important; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 100; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">howard@ifa.hawaii.edu<span class="mailto" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://uanews.org/sites/all/modules/extlink/extlink_s.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: -20px 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; height: 10px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: 10px;"><span class="element-invisible" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); font-size: 17px; height: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: absolute !important; vertical-align: baseline;">(link sends e-mail)</span></span></a>, 808-956-8637 (office), 808-208-1224 (cell)</i></div>
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<i>Geoff Marcy, </i><a class="mailto" href="mailto:gmarcy@berkeley.edu" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(171, 5, 32) !important; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 100; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>gmarcy@berkeley.edu</i><span class="mailto" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://uanews.org/sites/all/modules/extlink/extlink_s.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: -20px 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; height: 10px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: 10px;"><span class="element-invisible" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); font-size: 17px; height: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: absolute !important; vertical-align: baseline;">(link sends e-mail)</span></span></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Media contact:</strong></div>
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Doug Carroll</div>
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<a class="mailto" href="mailto:dougcarroll@email.arizona.edu" style="border-bottom-color: transparent; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(171, 5, 32) !important; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 100; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">dougcarroll@email.arizona.edu<span class="mailto" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://uanews.org/sites/all/modules/extlink/extlink_s.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: -20px 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; height: 10px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: 10px;"><span class="element-invisible" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); font-size: 17px; height: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: absolute !important; vertical-align: baseline;">(link sends e-mail)</span></span></a></div>
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520-621-9017</div>
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<a href="http://uanews.org/story/three-nearly-earth-size-planets-found-orbiting-nearby-star">link to article</a></div>
</section></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-41236580861720891912015-01-14T12:03:00.001-08:002015-01-14T12:03:47.600-08:00Robots Learn to Use Kitchen Tools by Watching YouTube Videos<br />
<h3 style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 1.5em; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 21px; font-style: italic; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Autonomous robots can learn and perform complex actions via observation</b></span></em></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Imagine having a personal robot prepare your breakfast every morning. Now, imagine that this robot didn’t need any help figuring out how to make the perfect omelet, because it learned all the necessary steps by watching videos on YouTube. It might sound like science fiction, but a team at the University of Maryland has just made a significant breakthrough that will bring this scenario one step closer to reality.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://photos.cmns.umd.edu/viewphoto.php?imageId=12375696" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"></a></span></div>
<div class="caption right image_float_right" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; float: right; font: inherit; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 309px;">
<a href="http://photos.cmns.umd.edu/viewphoto.php?imageId=12375696" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="University of Maryland computer scientist Yiannis Aloimonos (center) is developing robotic systems able to visually recognize objects and generate new behavior based on those observations. Photo: John T. Consoli (Click image to download hi-res version.)" class="caption image_float_right" src="http://photos.cmns.umd.edu/s/310th_sm_N2svxJzfJ3OK.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; float: right; font: inherit; height: auto; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" title="University of Maryland computer scientist Yiannis Aloimonos (center) is developing robotic systems able to visually recognize objects and generate new behavior based on those observations. Photo: John T. Consoli (Click image to download hi-res version.)" /><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; line-height: 1.25; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">University of Maryland computer scientist Yiannis Aloimonos (center) is developing robotic systems able to visually recognize objects and generate new behavior based on those observations. Photo: John T. Consoli (Click image to download hi-res version.)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Researchers at the</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">(UMIACS) partnered with a scientist at the</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.nicta.com.au/" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">National Information Communications Technology Research Centre of Excellence in Australia</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">(NICTA) to develop robotic systems that are able to teach themselves. Specifically, these robots are able to learn the intricate grasping and manipulation movements required for cooking by watching online cooking videos. The key breakthrough is that the robots can “think” for themselves, determining the best combination of observed motions that will allow them to efficiently accomplish a given task.</span></span><div style="line-height: 20px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~yzyang/paper/YouCookMani_CameraReady.pdf" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">work</a> will be presented on Jan. 29, 2015, at the <a href="http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/aaai15.php" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference</a> in Austin, Texas. The researchers achieved this milestone by combining approaches from three distinct research areas: artificial intelligence, or the design of computers that can make their own decisions; computer vision, or the engineering of systems that can accurately identify shapes and movements; and natural language processing, or the development of robust systems that can understand spoken commands. Although the underlying work is complex, the team wanted the results to reflect something practical and relatable to people’s daily lives.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We chose cooking videos because everyone has done it and understands it,” said <a href="http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/people/yiannis" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Yiannis Aloimonos</a>, UMD professor of computer science and director of the Computer Vision Lab, one of 16 labs and centers in UMIACS. “But cooking is complex in terms of manipulation, the steps involved and the tools you use. If you want to cut a cucumber, for example, you need to grab the knife, move it into place, make the cut and observe the results to make sure you did them properly.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One key challenge was devising a way for the robots to parse individual steps appropriately, while gathering information from videos that varied in quality and consistency. The robots needed to be able to recognize each distinct step, assign it to a “rule” that dictates a certain behavior, and then string together these behaviors in the proper order.</span></div>
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<a href="http://photos.cmns.umd.edu/viewphoto.php?imageId=12375697" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="University of Maryland researcher Cornelia Ferm&uuml;ller (left) works with graduate student Yezhou Yang (right) on computer vision systems able to accurately identify and replicate intricate hand movements. Photo: John T. Consoli (Click image to download hi-res version.)" class="caption image_float_left" height="206" src="http://photos.cmns.umd.edu/s/310th_sm_0LEQGTTP2LtZ.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; float: left; font: inherit; height: auto; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" title="University of Maryland researcher Cornelia Ferm&uuml;ller (left) works with graduate student Yezhou Yang (right) on computer vision systems able to accurately identify and replicate intricate hand movements. Photo: John T. Consoli (Click image to download hi-res version.)" width="309" /><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; line-height: 1.25; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">University of Maryland researcher Cornelia Fermüller (left) works with graduate student Yezhou Yang (right) on computer vision systems able to accurately identify and replicate intricate hand movements. Photo: John T. Consoli (Click image to download hi-res version.)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">“We are trying to create a technology so that robots eventually can interact with humans,” said</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/people/fer" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Cornelia Fermüller</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">, an associate research scientist at UMIACS. “So they need to understand what humans are doing. For that, we need tools so that the robots can pick up a human’s actions and track them in real time. We are interested in understanding all of these components. How is an action performed by humans? How is it perceived by humans? What are the cognitive processes behind it?”</span></span><div style="line-height: 20px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Aloimonos and Fermüller compare these individual actions to words in a sentence. Once a robot has learned a “vocabulary” of actions, they can then string them together in a way that achieves a given goal. In fact, this is precisely what distinguishes their work from previous efforts.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Others have tried to copy the movements. Instead, we try to copy the goals. This is the breakthrough,” Aloimonos explained. This approach allows the robots to decide for themselves how best to combine various actions, rather than reproducing a predetermined series of actions.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The work also relies on a specialized software architecture known as deep-learning neural networks. While this approach is not new, it requires lots of processing power to work well, and it took a while for computing technology to catch up. Similar versions of neural networks are responsible for the voice recognition capabilities in smartphones and the facial recognition software used by Facebook and other websites.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While robots have been used to carry out complicated tasks for decades—think automobile assembly lines—these must be carefully programmed and calibrated by human technicians. Self-learning robots could gather the necessary information by watching others, which is the same way humans learn. Aloimonos and Fermüller envision a future in which robots tend to the mundane chores of daily life while humans are freed to pursue more stimulating tasks.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“By having flexible robots, we’re contributing to the next phase of automation. This will be the next industrial revolution,” said Aloimonos. “We will have smart manufacturing environments and completely automated warehouses. It would be great to use autonomous robots for dangerous work—to defuse bombs and clean up nuclear disasters such as the Fukushima event. We have demonstrated that it is possible for humanoid robots to do our human jobs.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><i>In addition to Aloimonos and Fermüller, study authors included <a href="http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~yzyang/" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Yezhou Yang</a>, a UMD computer science doctoral student, and <a href="http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~yili/" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Yi Li</a>, a former doctoral student of Aloimonos and Fermüller from NICTA.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: PTSansBold; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">UMIACS video "Autonomy in Robotics" featuring researchers Yiannis Aloimonos and Cornelia Fermüller</strong> <span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 1em; font: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">The <a href="http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~yzyang/paper/YouCookMani_CameraReady.pdf" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">study</a>, “Robot Learning Manipulation Action Plans by ‘Watching’ Unconstrained Videos from the World Wide Web,” Yezhou Yang, Yi Li, Cornelia Fermüller and Yiannis Aloimonos, will be presented on Jan. 29, 2015, at the<a href="http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/aaai15.php" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference</a> in Austin, Texas.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-50016037817569245492015-01-12T05:20:00.000-08:002015-01-12T05:20:02.369-08:00World’s Most Powerful Camera Receives Funding Approval<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Many photography enthusiasts may be asking when they can have a compact version. (ed.)</span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; font-weight: 600; line-height: normal;"><a href="https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2015-01-09-world%E2%80%99s-most-powerful-camera-receives-funding-approval.aspx"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px;">L</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">arge Synoptic Survey Telescope Passes Major Milestone</span></a></span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">As of January 9, 2015, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; line-height: 18px;"> plans for the construction of the world’s largest digital camera at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have reached a major milestone. The 3,200-megapixel centerpiece of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will provide unprecedented details of the universe and help address some of its biggest mysteries, has received key “Critical Decision 2” approval from the DOE.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 15px;">Rendering of the LSST camera. SLAC is leading the construction of the 3,200-megapixel camera, which will be the size of a small car and weigh more than 3 tons. The digital camera will be the largest ever built, allowing LSST to create an unprecedented archive of astronomical data that will help researchers study the formation of galaxies, track potentially hazardous asteroids, observe exploding stars and better understand mysterious dark matter and dark energy, which make up 95 percent of the universe. (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">“This important decision endorses the camera fabrication budget that we proposed,” said LSST Director Steven Kahn. “Together with the <a href="https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2014-08-04-construction-large-synoptic-survey-telescope-begin.aspx" style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; text-decoration: none;">construction funding</a> we received from the National Science Foundation in August, it is now clear that LSST will have the support it needs to be completed on schedule.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Science operations are scheduled to begin in 2022 with LSST taking digital images of the entire visible southern sky every few nights from atop a mountain called Cerro Pachón in Chile. It will produce the widest, deepest and fastest views of the night sky ever observed. Over a 10-year time frame, the observatory will detect tens of billions of objects—the first time a telescope will catalog more objects in the universe than there are people on Earth—and will create movies of the sky with details that have never been seen before.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">LSST will generate a vast public archive of data—approximately 6 million gigabytes per year—that will help researchers study the formation of galaxies, track potentially hazardous asteroids, observe exploding stars and better understand dark matter and dark energy, which make up 95 percent of the universe but whose nature remains unknown.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">“The telescope is a key part of the long-term strategy to study dark energy and other scientific topics in the United States and elsewhere,” said David MacFarlane, SLAC’s director of particle physics and astrophysics. “SLAC places high priority on the successful development and construction of the LSST camera, and is very pleased that the project has achieved this major approval milestone.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">The LSST team can now move forward with the development of the camera and prepare for the “Critical Decision 3” review process next summer, the last requirement before actual fabrication of the camera can begin. Components of the camera, which will be the size of a small car and weigh more than 3 tons, will be built by an international collaboration of labs and universities, including DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and SLAC, where the camera will be assembled and tested.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">“Many excellent, hard-working people have been developing LSST for a long time and it is gratifying to see the quality of their efforts being recognized by the DOE approval,” said Steve Ritz of the University of California, Santa Cruz, the lead scientist of the camera project. “We are all excited about the amount of great science that LSST will enable.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><a href="https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2015-01-09-world%E2%80%99s-most-powerful-camera-receives-funding-approval.aspx">link to article</a></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-52495601907376340732015-01-10T04:07:00.000-08:002015-01-10T04:07:26.947-08:00Flexible Methane Production from Electricity and Bio-mass, a possible energy storage approach<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the logical issues surrounding renewables is storage of excess power. A simple example is how to use excess wind power once the wind stops blowing. This article from </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.kit.edu/kit/english/index.php"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)</span></a></strong></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> in Germany shows a potential way forward (ed.)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pilot Plant Demonstrates that Fluctuating Amounts of Green Electricity Can Be Used Reliably by the Methanation of Biogenous Gases</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The DemoSNG pilot plant fits into a standard shipping container. It is mobile and can be applied decentrally. (Photo: KIT)</span></div>
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<strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Interlinkage of the power and gas grids is planned to make electricity supply sustainable and robust in the future. Fluctuating amounts of wind and solar power, for instance, might be stored in the form of the chemical energy carrier methane. Researchers of the KIT and DVGW have now proved that this element of the Energiewende is technically feasible. The DemoSNG pilot plant constructed by the KIT will be used in Sweden for the reliable and efficient production of methane from biomass-based carbon dioxide and variable amounts of hydrogen from green power.</strong></div>
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“The variable operation modes were the biggest challenge during development,” says Project Head Siegfried Bajohr of the Engler-Bunte Institute (EBI) of KIT. From the products of a biomass gasification plant, i.e. hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, the DemoSNG pilot plant directly produces methane and water by means of a nickel catalyst (SNG operation). If green power is available, it is used for electrolysis and the production of additional hydrogen. Then, the volume flow in the plant can be doubled, utilization of carbon from biomass will increase to nearly 100%, and a large amount of usable waste heat will be produced by the catalyst (PtG operation).</div>
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“As conventional methanation processes reach their limits at this point, we have developed a new reactor concept,” Bajohr says. The initial feedstock flows meet in a honeycomb catalyst carrier that can be designed for the efficient operation of both modes and mixing states.”The DemoSNG plant shows that our concept also works in a large-scale pilot plant.” Metallic honeycombs are already used as catalytic convertors of exhaust gas in cars. They are characterized by a high thermal conductivity and mechanical robustness with a low pressure loss during alternating operation modes.</div>
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The DemoSNG plant was installed into a standard shipping container (12 m x 2.4 m x 2.4 m) and is mobile. The first tests of operation at KIT have now been completed. The plant will be moved to Köping in Sweden. There, it will be integrated into the gas flows of a biomass gasification plant utilizing wooden residues. The honeycomb catalyst can be implemented easily in various plant sizes. In the future, it might be possible to efficiently operate even smaller decentralized units, e.g. at rural biogas facilities.</div>
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“DemoSNG shows the way to storing green power and transporting it in our gas grids in the form of methane,” Thomas Kolb, Head of the Engler-Bunte Institute of KIT, emphasizes. Frank Graf, Section Head of the test laboratory of the German Technical and Scientific Association of Gas and Water (DVGW) at KIT, adds: “So far, admixture of hydrogen in the natural gas grid has been limited to a few percent, as storage, distribution, and use require the solution of various technical problems.” Methanation has the advantage that the infrastructure existing for the distribution and storage of natural gas and the standard appliances can be used further without any modifications or readjustments being required. Via an effective methanation, wind and solar power can be fed into the natural gas grid without any limitations.</div>
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“DemoSNG demonstrates how sustainable European innovations are,” Karl-Friedrich Ziegahn, Head of the Natural and Built Environment Division of KIT and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the European KIC InnoEnergy, says. With plants, such as DemoSNG, excessive green electricity can be used much better. For example, it might be converted decentrally with the carbon dioxide produced by the about 800,000 biogas facilities and stored in the form of methane. Thanks to the newly developed honeycomb catalyst, also smaller and medium-sized plants can be operated efficiently.</div>
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KIC InnoEnergy combines research with education and innovation in order to accelerate technology transfer and create a sustainable energy system for Europe. KIC InnoEnergy (Knowledge & Innovation Community) is composed of 35 European partners from companies, universities, research institutions, and business schools. It is funded by the EU via the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).</div>
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KIC InnoEnergy initiated the DemoSNG (Demonstration Substitute Natural Gas) project in the amount of EUR 4.5 million. Partners of the project started in 2009 are the University KTH, the company Cortus, the utility company Gas Natural Fenosa, and the coordinator KIT.</div>
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</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 23px;">l<a href="http://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2014_16120.php">ink to article</a></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-49120749862487389782015-01-08T03:17:00.001-08:002015-01-08T03:17:32.705-08:00Super-Earths Have Long-Lasting Oceans<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For life as we know it to develop on other planets, those planets would need liquid water, or oceans. Geologic evidence suggests that Earth's oceans have existed for nearly the entire history of our world. But would that be true of other planets, particularly super-Earths? New research suggests the answer is yes and that oceans on super-Earths, once established, can last for billions of years.</span></div>
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image credit David A. Aguilar (CfA)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"When people consider whether a planet is in the habitable zone, they think about its from the star and its temperature. However, they should also think about oceans, and look at super-Earths to find a good sailing or surfing destination," says lead author Laura Schaefer of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Schaefer presented her findings today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even though water covers 70 percent of Earth's surface, it makes up a very small fraction of the planet's overall bulk. Earth is mostly rock and iron; only about a tenth of a percent is water.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Earth's oceans are a very thin film, like fog on a bathroom mirror," explains study co-author Dimitar Sasselov (CfA).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, Earth's water isn't just on the surface. Studies have shown that Earth's mantle holds several oceans' worth of water that was dragged underground by plate tectonics and subduction of the ocean seafloor. Earth's oceans would disappear due to this process, if it weren't for water returning to the surface via volcanism (mainly at mid-ocean ridges). Earth maintains its oceans through this planet-wide recycling.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Schaefer used computer simulations to see if this recycling process would take place on super-Earths, which are planets up to five times the mass, or 1.5 times the size, of Earth. She also examined the question of how long it would take oceans to form after the planet cooled enough for its crust to solidify.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She found that planets two to four times the mass of Earth are even better at establishing and maintaining oceans than our Earth. The oceans of super-Earths would persist for at least 10 billion years (unless boiled away by an evolving red giant star).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Interestingly, the largest planet that was studied, five times the mass of Earth, took a while to get going. Its oceans didn't develop for about a billion years, due to a thicker crust and lithosphere that delayed the start of volcanic outgassing.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"This suggests that if you want to look for life, you should look at older super-Earths," Schaefer says.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sasselov agrees. "It takes time to develop the chemical processes for life on a global scale, and time for life to change a planet's atmosphere. So, it takes time for life to become detectable."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This also suggests that, assuming evolution takes place at a similar rate to Earth's, you want to search for complex life on planets that are about five and a half billion years old, a billion years older than Earth.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.</span></div>
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<strong>For more information, contact:</strong></div>
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<strong>David A. Aguilar</strong><br />Director of Public Affairs<br />Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics<br />617-495-7462<br /><a href="mailto:daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu" style="color: #660000; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu</a></div>
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<strong>Christine Pulliam</strong><br />Public Affairs Specialist<br />Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics<br />617-495-7463<br /><a href="mailto:cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu" style="color: #660000; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">cpulliam@cfa.harva</a>rd.edu</div>
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<a href="http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2015-02">link</a></div>
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</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-42810674000783045452015-01-08T02:59:00.000-08:002015-01-08T02:59:37.186-08:00Eight New Planets Found in "Goldilocks" Zone<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Astronomers announced today (6 Jan 2015) that they have found eight new planets in the "Goldilocks" zone of their stars, orbiting at a distance where liquid water can exist on the planet's surface. This doubles the number of small planets (less than twice the diameter of Earth) believed to be in the habitable zone of their parent stars. Among these eight, the team identified two that are the most similar to Earth of any known exoplanets to date.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Most of these planets have a good chance of being rocky, like Earth," says lead author Guillermo Torres of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).</span></div>
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</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">These findings were announced today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The two most Earth-like planets of the group are Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b. Both orbit red dwarf stars that are smaller and cooler than our Sun. Kepler-438b circles its star every 35 days, while Kepler-442b completes one orbit every 112 days.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With a diameter just 12 percent bigger than Earth, Kepler-438b has a 70-percent chance of being rocky, according to the team's calculations. Kepler-442b is about one-third larger than Earth, but still has a 60-percent chance of being rocky.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be in the habitable zone, an exoplanet must receive about as much sunlight as Earth. Too much, and any water would boil away as steam. Too little, and water will freeze solid.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"For our calculations we chose to adopt the broadest possible limits that can plausibly lead to suitable conditions for life," says Torres.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kepler-438b receives about 40 percent more light than Earth. (In comparison, Venus gets twice as much solar radiation as Earth.) As a result, the team calculates it has a 70 percent likelihood of being in the habitable zone of its star.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kepler-442b get about two-thirds as much light as Earth. The scientists give it a 97 percent chance of being in the habitable zone.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"We don't know for sure whether any of the planets in our sample are truly habitable," explains second author David Kipping of the CfA. "All we can say is that they're promising candidates."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Prior to this, the two most Earth-like planets known were Kepler-186f, which is 1.1 times the size of Earth and receives 32 percent as much light, and Kepler-62f, which is 1.4 times the size of Earth and gets 41 percent as much light.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The team studied planetary candidates first identified by NASA's Kepler mission. All of the planets were too small to confirm by measuring their masses. Instead, the team validated them by using a computer program called BLENDER to determine that they are statistically likely to be planets. BLENDER was developed by Torres and colleague Francois Fressin, and runs on the Pleaides supercomputer at NASA Ames. This is the same method that has been used previously to validate some of Kepler's most iconic finds, including the first two Earth-size planets around a Sun-like star and the first exoplanet smaller than Mercury.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the BLENDER analysis, the team spent another year gathering follow-up observations in the form of high-resolution spectroscopy, adaptive optics imaging, and speckle interferometry to thoroughly characterize the systems.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those follow-up observations also revealed that four of the newly validated planets are in multiple-star systems. However, the companion stars are distant and don't significantly influence the planets.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As with many Kepler discoveries, the newly found planets are distant enough to make additional observations challenging. Kepler-438b is located 470 light-years from Earth while the more distant Kepler-442b is 1,100 light-years away.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The paper reporting these results has been accepted for publication in <cite>The Astrophysical Journal</cite> and is available<a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~torres/smallHZ/smallHZplanets.pdf" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">online</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.</span></div>
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<strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For more information, contact:</span></strong></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>David A. Aguilar</strong><br />Director of Public Affairs<br />Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics<br />617-495-7462<br /><a href="mailto:daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Christine Pulliam</strong><br />Public Affairs Specialist<br />Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics<br />617-495-7463<br /><a href="mailto:cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu</a></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-54069213090922142942015-01-08T02:27:00.000-08:002015-01-08T02:27:33.787-08:00NASA Observatories Take an Unprecedented Look into Superstar Eta Carinae<br />
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Eta Carinae, the most luminous and massive stellar system within 10,000 light-years of Earth, is known for its surprising behavior, erupting twice in the 19th century for reasons scientists still don't understand. A long-term study led by astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, used NASA satellites, ground-based telescopes and theoretical modeling to produce the most comprehensive picture of Eta Carinae to date. New findings include Hubble Space Telescope images that show decade-old shells of ionized gas racing away from the largest star at a million miles an hour, and new 3-D models that reveal never-before-seen features of the stars' interactions.</div>
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"We are coming to understand the present state and complex environment of this remarkable object, but we have a long way to go to explain Eta Carinae's past eruptions or to predict its future behavior," said Goddard astrophysicist Ted Gull, who coordinates a research group that has monitored the star for more than a decade.</div>
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Located about 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina, Eta Carinae comprises two massive stars whose eccentric orbits bring them unusually close every 5.5 years. Both produce powerful gaseous outflows called stellar winds, which enshroud the stars and stymy efforts to directly measure their properties. Astronomers have established that the brighter, cooler primary star has about 90 times the mass of the sun and outshines it by 5 million times. While the properties of its smaller, hotter companion are more contested, Gull and his colleagues think the star has about 30 solar masses and emits a million times the sun's light.</div>
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Explore Eta Carinae from the inside-out with the help of supercomputer simulations and data from NASA satellites and ground-based observatories.</div>
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Image Credit: </div>
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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center</div>
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<a href="http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11725" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 11px; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">Download this video and additional multimedia in HD formats from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio</a></div>
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Speaking at a press conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle on Wednesday, the Goddard researchers discussed recent observations of Eta Carinae and how they fit with the group's current understanding of the system.</div>
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At closest approach, or periastron, the stars are 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) apart, or about the average distance between Mars and the sun. Astronomers observe dramatic changes in the system during the months before and after periastron. These include X-ray flares, followed by a sudden decline and eventual recovery of X-ray emission; the disappearance and re-emergence of structures near the stars detected at specific wavelengths of visible light; and even a play of light and shadow as the smaller star swings around the primary.</div>
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During the past 11 years, spanning three periastron passages, the Goddard group has developed a model based on routine observations of the stars using ground-based telescopes and multiple NASA satellites. "We used past observations to construct a computer simulation, which helped us predict what we would see during the next cycle, and then we feed new observations back into the model to further refine it," said Thomas Madura, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at Goddard and a theorist on the Eta Carinae team.</div>
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<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/animated_crab_eta_car_slowest.gif" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 11px; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Hubble images of Eta Carinae captured by Hubble's STIS instrument between 2010 and 2014" height="527" src="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/animated_crab_eta_car_slowest.gif" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 11px; font: inherit; height: auto; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" typeof="foaf:Image" width="530" /></a></div>
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Seen in blue light emitted by doubly ionized iron atoms (4,659 angstroms), these images of Eta Carinae were captured by Hubble's STIS instrument between 2010 and 2014. Gas shells created during the binary's 2003 close approach race outward at about 1 million mph (1.6 million km/h).</div>
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Image Credit: </div>
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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/T. Gull et al.</div>
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<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/r1_xy_density.gif" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 11px; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="supercomputer simulation of the stars of Eta Carinae" height="600" src="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/r1_xy_density.gif" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 11px; font: inherit; height: auto; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" typeof="foaf:Image" width="600" /></a></div>
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In this supercomputer simulation, the stars of Eta Carinae are shown as black dots. Lighter colors indicate greater densities in the stellar winds produced by each star. At closest approach, the fast wind of the smaller star carves a tunnel in the thicker wind of the larger star.</div>
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Image Credit: </div>
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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/T. Madura</div>
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<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/hs-2009-25-aw-full_jpg.jpg" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 11px; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Hubble image of Homunculus Nebula" height="222" src="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/226xvariable_height/public/hs-2009-25-aw-full_jpg.jpg?itok=cFr4lRG9" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 11px; font: inherit; height: auto; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" typeof="foaf:Image" width="226" /></a></div>
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Eta Carinae's great eruption in the 1840s created the billowing Homunculus Nebula, imaged here by Hubble. Now about a light-year long, the expanding cloud contains enough material to make at least 10 copies of our sun. Astronomers cannot yet explain what caused this eruption.</div>
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Image Credit: </div>
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NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team</div>
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According to this model, the interaction of the two stellar winds accounts for many of the periodic changes observed in the system. The winds from each star have markedly different properties: thick and slow for the primary, lean and fast for the hotter companion. The primary's wind blows at nearly 1 million mph and is especially dense, carrying away the equivalent mass of our sun every thousand years. By contrast, the companion's wind carries off about 100 times less material than the primary's, but it races outward as much as six times faster.</div>
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Madura's simulations, which were performed on the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, reveal the complexity of the wind interaction. When the companion star rapidly swings around the primary, its faster wind carves out a spiral cavity in the dense outflow of the larger star. To better visualize this interaction, Madura converted the computer simulations to 3-D digital models and made solid versions using a consumer-grade 3-D printer. This process revealed lengthy spine-like protrusions in the gas flow along the edges of the cavity, features that hadn't been noticed before. </div>
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"We think these structures are real and that they form as a result of instabilities in the flow in the months around closest approach," Madura said. "I wanted to make 3-D prints of the simulations to better visualize them, which turned out to be far more successful than I ever imagined." A paper detailing this research has been submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.</div>
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The team detailed a few key observations that expose some of the system's inner workings. For the past three periastron passages, ground-based telescopes in Brazil, Chile, Australia and New Zealand have monitored a single wavelength of blue light emitted by helium atoms that have lost a single electron. According to the model, the helium emission tracks conditions in the primary star's wind. The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) aboard Hubble captures a different wavelength of blue light emitted by iron atoms that have lost two electrons, which uniquely reveals where gas from the primary star is set aglow by the intense ultraviolet light of its companion. Lastly, X-rays from the system carry information directly from the wind collision zone, where the opposing winds create shock waves that heat the gas to hundreds of millions of degrees.</div>
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"Changes in the X-rays are a direct probe of the collision zone and reflect changes in how these stars lose mass," said Michael Corcoran, an astrophysicist with the Universities Space Research Association headquartered in Columbia, Maryland. He and his colleagues compared periastron emission measured over the past 20 years by NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, which ceased operation in 2012, and the X-ray Telescope aboard NASA's Swift satellite. In July 2014, as the stars rushed toward each other, Swift observed a series of flares culminating in the brightest X-ray emission yet seen from Eta Carinae. This implies a change in mass loss by one of the stars, but X-rays alone cannot determine which one.</div>
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Goddard's Mairan Teodoro led the ground-based campaign tracking the helium emission. "The 2014 emission is nearly identical to what we saw at the previous periastron in 2009, which suggests the primary wind has been constant and that the companion's wind is responsible for the X-ray flares," he explained.</div>
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After NASA astronauts repaired the Hubble Space Telescope's STIS instrument in 2009, Gull and his collaborators requested to use it to observe Eta Carinae. By separating the stars' light into a rainbow-like spectrum, STIS reveals the chemical make-up of their environment. But the spectrum also showed wispy structures near the stars that suggested the instrument could be used to map a region close to the binary system in never-before-seen detail.</div>
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STIS views its targets through a single narrow slit to limit contamination from other sources. Since December 2010, Gull's team has regularly mapped a region centered on the binary by capturing spectra at 41 different locations, an effort similar to building up a panoramic picture from a series of snapshots. The view spans about 430 billion miles (670 billion km), or about 4,600 times the average Earth-sun distance.</div>
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The resulting images, revealed for the first time on Wednesday, show that the doubly ionized iron emission comes from a complex gaseous structure nearly a tenth of a light-year across, which Gull likens to Maryland blue crab. By stepping through the STIS images, vast shells of gas representing the crab's "claws" can be seen racing away from the stars with measured speeds of about 1 million mph (1.6 million km/h). With each close approach, a spiral cavity forms in the larger star's wind and then expands outward along with it, creating the moving shells.</div>
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"These gas shells persist over thousands of times the distance between Earth and the sun," Gull explained. "Backtracking them, we find the shells began moving away from the primary star about 11 years or three periastron passages ago, providing us with an additional way to glimpse what occurred in the recent past."</div>
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When the stars approach, the companion becomes immersed in the thickest part of the primary's wind, which absorbs its UV light and prevents the radiation from reaching the distant gas shells. Without this energy to excite it, the doubly ionized iron stops emitting light and the crab structure disappears at this wavelength. Once the companion swings around the primary and clears the densest wind, its UV light escapes, re-energizes iron atoms in the shells, and the crab returns. </div>
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Both of the massive stars of Eta Carinae may one day end their lives in supernova explosions. For stars, mass is destiny, and what will determine their ultimate fate is how much matter they can lose -- through stellar winds or as-yet-inexplicable eruptions -- before they run out of fuel and collapse under their own weight.</div>
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For now, the researchers say, there is no evidence to suggest an imminent demise of either star. They are exploring the rich dataset from the 2014 periastron passage to make new predictions, which will be tested when the stars again race together in February 2020.</div>
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NASA is exploring our solar system and beyond to understand the universe and our place in it. We seek to unravel the secrets of our universe, its origins and evolution, and search for life among the stars.</div>
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<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">credit: F<a href="mailto:francis.j.reddy@nasa.gov?subject=RE-%20NASA%20Observatories%20Take%20an%20Unprecedented%20Look%20into%20Superstar%20Eta%20Carinae" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">r</a>ancis Reddy<br style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/goddard" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center</a>, Greenbelt, Maryland</em></strong></div>
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<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-observatories-take-an-unprecedented-look-into-superstar-eta-carinae/#.VK5aHirKe2I">link</a></em></strong></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11830287229294441266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054044737462982007.post-33732204259322287742014-12-22T05:49:00.000-08:002014-12-22T05:49:15.074-08:00Messy Star Factory: a great image from NASA<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" src="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/946xvariable_height/public/thumbnails/image/potw1450a.jpg?itok=QduJJ_aQ" height="306" width="400" /></div>
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<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-sweeps-a-messy-star-factory/#.VJgfqlkJAA">Hubble Sweeps a Messy Star Factory</a></div>
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This sprinkle of cosmic glitter is a blue compact dwarf galaxy known as Markarian 209. Galaxies of this type are blue-hued, compact in size, gas-rich, and low in heavy elements. They are often used by astronomers to study star formation, as their conditions are similar to those thought to exist in the early Universe.</div>
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Markarian 209 in particular has been studied extensively. It is filled with diffuse gas and peppered with star-forming regions towards its core. This image captures it undergoing a particularly dramatic burst of star formation, visible as the lighter blue cloudy region towards the top right of the galaxy. This clump is filled with very young and hot newborn stars.</div>
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This galaxy was initially thought to be a young galaxy undergoing its very first episode of star formation, but later research showed that Markarian 209 is actually very old, with an almost continuous history of forming new stars. It is thought to have never had a dormant period — a period during which no stars were formed — lasting longer than 100 million years.</div>
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The dominant population of stars in Markarian 209 is still quite young, in stellar terms, with ages of under 3 million years. For comparison, the sun is some 4.6 billion years old, and is roughly halfway through its expected lifespan.</div>
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The observations used to make this image were taken using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, and span the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared parts of the spectrum. A scattering of other bright galaxies can be seen across the frame, including the bright golden oval that could, due to a trick of perspective, be mistaken as part of Markarian 209 but is in fact a background galaxy.</div>
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<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-sweeps-a-messy-star-factory/#.VJgfqlkJAA">European Space Agency</a></em></strong></div>
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<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgement: Nick Rose</em></strong></div>
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<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-sweeps-a-messy-star-factory/#.VJgfqlkJAA">link</a></em></strong></div>
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