Category Archives: Astronomy

Astronomy, Physics, Research work

IOP Newton Lecture, 'From Mars to the Multiverse', 28 February

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From Mars to the Multiverse

Prof Martin Rees, Lord Rees of Ludlow

Institute of Astronomy

Date: Thursday 28 February 2013

Venue: Institute of Physics, 76 Portland Place, London, W1B 1NT

Time: 17.30 (registration from 17.00)

rees
Prof Martin Rees

‘Astronomers have made astonishing progress in probing our cosmic environment. We can trace cosmic history from some mysterious “beginning” nearly 14 billion years ago, and understand in outline the emergence of atoms, galaxies, stars and planets.

But the key parameters of our expanding universe — the expansion rate, the geometry and the content — were established far earlier still, when the physics is still conjectural but can be pinned down by future observations. These advances pose new questions: What does the long-range future hold? Should we be surprised that the physical laws permitted the emergence of complexity? And is physical reality even more extensive than the domain that our telescopes can probe? This illustrated lecture will attempt to address such issues.’

Follow the link below to register.

Link
The Newton Lecture

Note
The original message is from Claire Copeland, Science Support Officer at the Institute of Physics.

Astronomy, General

Fallen space heros of 2012

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Last year we lost three very important people in the field of space exploration and astronomy.

Sally Ride
May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012 (aged 61)

Ride
Ride in 1984

She was the first American woman to enter into low Earth orbit in 1983 and remains the youngest American astronaut to be launched into space.

Niel Armstrong
August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012 (aged 82)

Armstrong
Armstrong in 1969

He was the first man to step foot on the Moon way back in 1969. Armstrong’s first space flight, as command pilot of Gemini 8, in 1966, made him NASA’s first civilian astronaut to fly in space.

Patrick Moore
4 March 1923- 9 December 2012 (aged 89)

Patrick
Patrick Moore

Known as the presenter of the world’s longest-running television series with the same original presenter, the BBC’s The Sky at Night. Moore was a former president of the British Astronomical Association. He was a co-founder and former president of the Society for Popular Astronomy (SPA). As an author he wrote over 70 books on astronomy. He was the reason many astronomers here in the UK became astronomers.

Astronomy, General

Sir Patrick Moore passes away

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Today at 12:25 Sir Patrick Moore passed away peacefully at his home in Selsey, West Sussex.

Moore

Patrick presented the BBC’s The Sky At Night for over 50 years, making him the longest-running host of the same television show in history.

He counted himself as a writer and broadcaster first and foremost, but as Britain’s most recognisable scientist for more than 50 years, he inspired countless people to take up astronomy as a hobby or astrophysics as a career.

Chris Lintott

Astronomy has lost one of its heroes and the country has lost an institution. Our thought are with his friends and family.

Links

BBC News report

Sir Patrick Moore: Chris Lintott’s tribute

Astronomy

Planet Hunters find a planet with four suns

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Volunteers taking part in the Planet Hunters citizen science project have discovered a planet with four suns [1]. This is the first of its kind discovered. The two discovers are Kian Jek of San Francisco and Robert Gagliano from Cottonwood, Arizona.

The planet is located just under 5,000 light-years away and has been named PH1 after the Planet Hunters. It is thought that PH1 is a gas giant, with a radius more than six times the radius of the Earth.

Reference

[1] Megan E. Schwamb et.al. (2012) Planet Hunters: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet in a Quadruple Star System. arXiv:1210.3612v1 [astro-ph.EP]. Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.

Links

Planet Hunters website

Astronomy, General, Physics

Climate change skeptics prominent in the US and UK media

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Earth

Earth as seen from Apollo 17.

According to some new research [1], climate skeptics are given a prominent voice in the US and UK media. James Painter (University of Oxford) and Teresa Ashe (University of London) looked at how climate skepticism manifested itself in the print media of the US, UK, Brazil, China, India and France during a 3-month period.

The period included ‘Climategate’ in 2009/10 and a second period which covered the IPCC’s fourth assessment report in 2007.

The UK media

In the UK, the Guardian/Observer ran 14 opinion pieces containing skeptical points of view during the two periods. All of which were countered by mainstream environmental scientists. The Telegraphs ran 34 opinion pieces, over half of which were not contested.

Global warming?

The skeptics that question whether global temperatures are warming at all appear almost exclusively in the UK and US newspapers. The rest of the world seems less likely to print opinions denying global warming.

References

[1] James Painter and Teresa Ashe 2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 044005

Links

IOP NEWS

Environmental Research Letters

Astronomy

A Marian rock called Jake Matijevic

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rock

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Above is a picture of a rock taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on board NASA’s Curiosity rover. The rock has been called “Jake Matijevic” by the team in commemoration of influential Mars-rover engineer Jacob Matijevic (1947-2012).

rock

NASA/JPL-Caltech

The above image shows the robotic arm of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity with the first rock touched by an instrument on the arm.

Links

Mars Program

Astronomy

Hubble goes eXtreme

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scope

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has produced an image of galaxies going back almost to the time when the first stars began to shine. The image shows galaxies as old as 13.2 billion years. The Universe is about 13.7 billion years old. The image is of a small patch of sky, only a small fraction of the angular diameter of the full moon, located at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

eXtreme

(Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team)

The photograph was assembled by combining 10 years of Hubble Space Telescope photographs, which amounts to more than 2,000 individual images.

moon

(Illustration Credit: NASA; ESA; and Z. Levay, STScI; Moon Image Credit: T. Rector; I. Dell’Antonio/NOAO/AURA/NSF)

The above image gives you an idea of the angular size of the image.

For more details consult NASA’s webpages.

Links

HubbleSite

NASA