This week in space

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Six coronal mass ejections in 24 hours

If these head our way, expect some 'fun' interference on communications.

The sun let loose with at least six coronal mass ejections (CMEs) -- solar phenomena that can send solar particles into space and affect electronic systems in satellites -- from 7 PM ET on September 18, 2011 until 1 PM on September 19.

Read more about it HERE

 

Young clays on Mars could have been habitable regions for life


Let's just hurry up and get a manned mission to Barsoom so we can see evidence of life, instead of finding evidence to suggest it may be possible for life to be there.

Two small depressions on Mars found to be rich in minerals that formed by water could have been places for life relatively recently in the planet’s history, according to a new paper in the journal Geology.

See more about it HERE

 

From the comfort of home, Web users may have found new planets

All I have to say, is... AWESOME!

Since the online citizen science project Planet Hunters launched last December, 40,000 web users from around the world have been helping professional astronomers analyze the light from 150,000 stars in the hopes of discovering Earth-like planets orbiting around them.

See more about it HERE

 

WISE mission captures black hole's wildly flaring jet

Even black holes experience flatulence. True story.

Astronomers using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have captured rare data of a flaring black hole, revealing new details about these powerful objects and their blazing jets.

See more about it HERE

 

Saturn's moon Enceladus spreads its influence

Old Faithful... IN SPACE!

Chalk up one more feat for Saturn's intriguing moon Enceladus. The small, dynamic moon spews out dramatic plumes of water vapor and ice -- first seen by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2005. It possesses simple organic particles and may house liquid water beneath its surface. Its geyser-like jets create a gigantic halo of ice, dust and gas around Enceladus that helps feed Saturn's E ring. Now, thanks again to those icy jets, Enceladus is the only moon in our solar system known to influence substantially the chemical composition of its parent planet.

See more about it HERE

 

The secret lives of solar flares

People were about crazy leaders nuking humans to death... I worry about solar flares hurling us into the middle ages, because it's a very very likely possibility.

One hundred and fifty two years ago, a man in England named Richard Carrington discovered solar flares.

See more about it HERE

 

The mission to find the missing lunar module

Aliens took it, for a museum, duh.

Where is the Apollo 10 Lunar lander module? It’s somewhere out there — orbiting the Sun — and there’s a new initiative to try and find it!

See more about it HERE

Proof Nicolas Cage is immortal

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I'm going to just copy paste the entire eBay auction, so that when it ends and is envetually archived there is still the evidence of it here. Perhaps he is immortal, or perhaps he was part of Project Pegasus like Andrew D. Basiago

 

 

(The Thanatos Archive watermark is not on the original image)

Original c.1870 carte de visite showing a man who looks exactly like 
Nicolas Cage. Personally, I believe it's him and that he is some sort of
walking undead / vampire, et cetera, who quickens / reinvents
himself once every 75 years or so. 150 years from now, he might
be a politician, the leader of a cult, or a talk show host.

This is not a trick photo of any kind and has not been manipulated
in Photoshop or any other graphics program. It's an original photo  
of a man who lived in Bristol, TN sometime around the Civil War.

For the many of you insisting that this is a Photoshop manipulation:
Any serious potential buyer will be allowed to have a photo expert
of their choice examine the original photograph before any money
changes hands.

I've had a lot of questions asking where I purchased this. As followers
of my website know, I collect antique memorial photography - 
images of dead people - from the 1800s.  This photo was found in
the very back of album that contained an unusual number of
Civil War era death portraits (which is why I purchased it). All of
the other people in the album, living and dead, were identified 
by name - this man was not. 

Photographer is Professor G.B. Smith. A contact of mine forwarded
this interesting article (link) about the photographer, Smith. Turns
out he was a confederate Civil War prisoner of war photographer.

Guaranteed to be an original 1860s-70s photograph and not
a modern reproduction, copy or photo manipulation.

4" x 2.5".

Condition
Unevenly trimmed on all sides.

* Items shipped to U.S. addresses are shipped within 1-2 business days.
* Items shipped to all international addresses are shipped within 1-4 business days.

* All photos are shipped in photo mailer with cardboard and "Do Not Bend" on outside. Never had a damaged item!
* An option to add insurance will be available - please review your invoice carefully!

 

See the eBay auction of the photo HERE

 

This week in space

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US satellite may crash back to Earth Sept 23: NASA

More space junk, coming home. I've heard your chances of getting hit by a piece of this range from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 10,000 depending on who you listen to.

A 20-year-old satellite that measured the ozone layer is expected to crash back to Earth late next week, but NASA said it still does not know where it will fall.

Read more about it HERE

 

Rocky planets could have been born as gas giants

So planets can be formed many ways (at least we think so), this means planets could be far more common, and we are already seeing this is true as we are spotting extrasolar planets left and right now.

When NASA announced the discovery of over 1,200 new potential planets spotted by the Kepler Space Telescope, almost a quarter of them were thought to be Super-Earths. Now, new research suggests that these massive rocky planets may be the result of the failed creation of Jupiter-sized gas giants.

Read more about it HERE

 

Help! My stars are leaking!


All I've got to say is, this makes for some awesome astrophotography.

Star clusters are wonderful test beds for theories of stellar formation and evolution. One of the key roles they play is to help astronomers understand the distribution of stellar masses as stars form (in other words, how many high mass stars versus intermediate and low mass stars), known as the Initial Mass Function (IMF). One of the problems is that this is constantly evolving away from the initial distribution as stars die or are ejected from the cluster. As such, understanding these mechanisms is essential for astronomers looking to backtrack from the current population to the IMF.

Read more about it HERE

 

Small distant galaxies host supermassive black holes

I'm starting to think black holes are just an important part of things working, in fact I almost wonder if they aren't even necessary for a galaxy to form.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope to probe the distant universe, astronomers have found supermassive black holes growing in surprisingly small galaxies. The findings suggest that central black holes formed at an early stage in galaxy evolution.

Read more about it HERE

 

Neutron star blows away models for thermonuclear explosions

See, everytime we think we understand something... something out there confuses us.

Amsterdam astronomers have discovered a neutron star that confounds existing models for thermonuclear explosions in such extreme objects. In the case of the accreting pulsar IGR J17480-2446, it seems to be a strong magnetic field that causes some parts of the star to burn more brightly than the rest. The results of the study, by Yuri Cavecchi et al. (2011), are to be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Read more about it HERE

 

Dark matter packs a punch: Milky Way's spiral arms formed by intergalactic collision

Thank the gods these things happen on such a long time scale (to us anyway) that we'd never have to worry about this happening again (until a time where we develop immortality... which might not be far off if we can figure out  away to download consciousness and store it electronically).

The signature spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy were likely formed by an epic collision between the Milky Way and the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy, according to a University of Pittsburgh researcher and his collaborators, published today in the prestigious British journal Nature.

Read more about it HERE

 

NASA's Dawn collects a bounty of beauty from Vesta

I just love the images we are getting of this thing, almost feels like something out of a video game.

A new video from NASA's Dawn spacecraft takes us on a flyover journey above the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.

Read more about it HERE

Danger!

Alert. A highly dangerous virus called “Weekly Overload Recreational Killer” (WORK) is currently going around. If you come in contact with this WORK virus, you should immediately go to the nearest “Biological Anxiety Relief” (BAR) to see liquid treatment known as ‘Work Isolating Neutralizer Extract” (WINE), “Radioactive UnWORK Medicine” (RUM), “Bothersome Employer Elimination Rebooter” (BEER) or “Vaccino Officio Depression Killing Antigen”(VODKA).

Today in Space

Planet found with double suns (just like in Star Wars)

Awesome, further proof George Lucas knows more than he's letting on... because Saturn's Moon Iaepetus is the deathstar. First the Iaepetus/Deathstar photo, then on with Kepler-16b.

(go read about Iapetus over at Enterprise Mission)

Star Wars fans will appreciate this bit of news from NASA: The double sunset observed by Luke Skywalker on the fictional planet Tatooine is a reality on a planet about 200 light years away from Earth.

The planet, called Kepler-16b, is cold and gaseous — in other words, Luke isn’t there. But it orbits two stars, making it the first circumbinary planet ever officially confirmed by astronomers.

Read more about this Star Wars-like planet HERE

 

Senate saves the James Webb Space Telescope

Yay! I can't wait till this thing gets finished and launched, it's going to give us lots of awesome stuff!

The 2012 fiscal year appropriation bill, marked up today by the Senate, allows for continued funding of the James Webb Space Telescope and support up to a launch in 2018! Yes, it looks like this bird is going to fly.

Read more about it HERE

 

Soyuz lands safely in Kazakhstan, rattles nerves

Hopefully this gives some confidence back to the use of the Russian equipment.

A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying three returning astronauts from the International Space Station touched down safely Friday in the central steppes of Kazakhstan, but not without rattling nerves after a breakdown in communications.

Read more about it HERE

 

How single stars lost their companions


Not all stars are loners. In our home galaxy, the Milky Way, about half of all stars have a companion and travel through space in a binary system. But explaining why some stars are in double or even triple systems while others are single has been something of a mystery. Now a team of astronomers from Bonn University and the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio astronomy (also in Bonn) think they have the answer – different stellar birth environments decide whether a star holds on to its companion. The scientists publish their results in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Read more about it HERE

 

NASA Mars research helps find buried water on Earth

A NASA-led team has used radar sounding technology developed to explore the subsurface of Mars to create high-resolution maps of freshwater aquifers buried deep beneath an Earth desert, in the first use of airborne sounding radar for aquifer mapping.

Read more about it HERE