Starsglaxiesspace - SPACE

Venus Over Disneyland - Tuitey Fruity (2017) 

Disney is sort of under where Venus is. Oh and if you were wondering:

A NEW APPROACH FOR DETECTING PLANETS IN THE ALPHA CENTAURI SYSTEM

Yale astronomers have taken a fresh look at the nearby Alpha Centauri star system and found new ways to narrow the search for habitable planets there.

According to a study led by Professor Debra Fischer and graduate student Lily Zhao, there may be small, Earth-like planets in Alpha Centauri that have been overlooked. Meanwhile, the study ruled out the existence of a number of larger planets in the system that had popped up in previous models.

“The universe has told us the most common types of planets are small planets, and our study shows these are exactly the ones that are most likely to be orbiting Alpha Centauri A and B,” said Fischer, a leading expert on exoplanets who has devoted decades of research to the search for an Earth analog.

The new study appears in the Astronomical Journal. Co-authors are John Brewer and Matt Giguere of Yale and Bárbara Rojas-Ayala of Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile.

The Alpha Centauri system is located 1.3 parsecs (24.9 trillion miles) from Earth, making it our closest neighboring system. It has three stars: Centauri A, Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. Last year, the discovery of an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri set off a new wave of scientific and public interest in the system.

“Because Alpha Centauri is so close, it is our first stop outside our solar system,” Fischer said. “There’s almost certain to be small, rocky planets around Alpha Centauri A and B.”

The findings are based on data coming in from a new wave of more advanced spectrographic instruments at observatories located in Chile: CHIRON, a spectrograph built by Fischer’s team; HARPS, built by a team from Geneva; and UVES, part of the Very Large Telescope Array. “The precision of our instruments hasn’t been good enough, until now,” Fischer said.

The researchers set up a grid system for the Alpha Centauri system and asked, based on the spectrographic analysis, “If there was a small, rocky planet in the habitable zone, would we have been able to detect it?” Often, the answer came back: “No.”

Zhao, the study’s first author, determined that for Alpha Centauri A, there might still be orbiting planets that are smaller than 50 Earth masses. For Alpha Centauri B there might be orbiting planets than are smaller than 8 Earth masses; for Proxima Centauri, there might be orbiting planets that are less than one-half of Earth’s mass.

In addition, the study eliminated the possibility of a number of larger planets. Zhao said this takes away the possibility of Jupiter-sized planets causing asteroids that might hit or change the orbits of smaller, Earth-like planets.

“This is a very green study in that it recycles existing data to draw new conclusions,” said Zhao. “By using the data in a different way, we are able to rule out large planets that could endanger small, habitable worlds and narrow down the search area for future investigations.”

This new information will help astronomers prioritize their efforts to detect additional planets in the system, the researchers said. Likewise, the continuing effort by Fischer and others to improve spectrographic technology will help identify and understand the composition of exoplanets.

Illustration by Michael S. Helfenbein

Dragon Attached to Station for Month of Cargo Transfers

SpaceX - CRS-13 Dragon Mission patch. Dec. 17, 2017

Image above: The Dragon resupply ship is pictured just 10 meters away from the space station’s Canadarm2. Image Credit: NASA TV. The SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft was installed on the Harmony module of the International Space Station at 8:26 a.m. EST. The 13th contracted commercial resupply mission from SpaceX (CRS-13) delivered more than 4,800 pounds of supplies and payloads to the station. Among the research materials flying inside Dragon’s pressurized area, one investigation will demonstrate the benefits of manufacturing fiber optic filaments in a microgravity environment. Designed by the company Made in Space, and sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the investigation will attempt to pull fiber optic wire from ZBLAN, a heavy metal fluoride glass commonly used to make fiber optic glass. Results from this investigation could lead to the production of higher-quality fiber optic products for use in space and on Earth.

U.S. Commercial Cargo Ship Arrives at the Space Station

Dragon is scheduled to depart the station in January 2018 and return to Earth with more than 3,600 pounds of research, hardware and crew supplies. Loaded with some three tons of experiments and supplies, the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft arrived at the International Space Station Dec. 17, where Expedition 53 crew members Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba of NASA captured it by using the Canadian-built robotic arm.

Image above: Dec. 17, 2017: International Space Station Configuration. Four spaceships are parked at the space station including the SpaceX Dragon space freighter, the Progress 67 and 68 resupply ships and the Soyuz MS-06 crew ship. Image Credit: NASA TV. Ground controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston took over after Dragon was grappled, sending commands to maneuver the ship to the Earth-facing side of the Harmony module where it was attached for a month-long stay. Dragon was launched Dec. 15 on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to begin its journey to the international outpost. Related links: Debris Sensor (SDS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2145.html Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS): http://www.iss-casis.org/ Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor, or TSIS-1: http://www.nasa.gov/tsis-1 SpaceX: http://www.nasa.gov/spacex Commercial Resupply: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/index.html Expedition 54: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/future.html International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html Images (mentioned), Video (NASA TV), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article

Right now Chandra is studying a galaxy in Ursa Major. Nearby in this dwarf galaxy, stars are forming at a furious rate! The galaxy, known as I Zwicky 18, is located about 59 million light years from Earth.

The constellation name, Ursa Major, means Big Bear. The “bear” association has its origins in two major civilizations which saw two very different bears in the sky. The Greeks who named this constellation (later translated into the Latin name we use today) thought that the stars outlined the shape of a bear walking about on its clawed feet. It and its smaller companion, Ursa Minor were said to be the prey of Boötes and his hunting dogs. The long cat-like tail on the bears was part of the ancient pattern and is somewhat of a mystery. A story in Ovid tried to offer an explanation. In that myth, Zeus fell in love with Callisto. Hera changed her into a bear out of jealousy. Her son Arcus (the namesake of Arcturus, the alternate name for the constellation Boötes) came upon her in the forest and she ran to greet him. Not knowing the bear was his mother, he was about to kill her. To save her, Zeus turned Arcus into a smaller bear, grabbed them both by their tails and flung them into the sky, causing their tails to be stretched. A number of Native American tribes also referred to this constellation as a bear, but with a clever addition. In their description of these stars, the bear is the same, but without the “tail”. Instead, those three stars are three hopeful hunters, and the middle one is carrying a cooking pot for cooking up the bear. Johannes Hevelius’ Ursa Major from Uranographia (1690) The most common pattern seen in this constellation is composed of a smaller group of the brightest stars (called an asterism) that outline the Big Dipper. This name comes from many different cultures which have seen in these stars a long handled spoon, often used for dipping water for drinking. Others call this pattern a plow, seeing instead of a dipper, an old-style, ox-pulled farm plow. The plow pattern, pulled by oxen, is the shape referenced in the myth of the Triones, the oxen and plow driven by Bootes the herder. The Egyptians and the Chinese saw different associations. Even in relatively more modern times, early European civilizations continued to invent new meanings for this pattern.

Constellation map from: http://www.lunarplanner.com/StarsProperMotion/UrsaMajor/

For a list of objects in Ursa Major that Chandra has observed and article, see link:  http://chandra.si.edu/photo/constellations/ursamajor.html

Hubble-X in galaxy NGC 6822

The saying 'X' marks the spot holds true in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image where Hubble-X marks the location of a dramatic burst of star formation, very much like the Orion Nebula in our Milky Way galaxy, but on a vastly greater scale.

(ESA/Hubble)  Hubble-X is a glowing gas cloud, one of the most active star-forming regions within galaxy NGC 6822. The name Hubble-X does not refer to the shape of the gas cloud, but rather is derived from a catalog of objects in this particular galaxy.

Credit: NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

About the Object Name: Barnard’s Galaxy, Hubble-X, NGC 6822 Type: Local Universe : Nebula : Type : Star Formation           Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Barred           Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Irregular Distance: 2 million light years ConstellatioSagittarius Category: Galaxies

Coordinates

Position  (RA):19 45 5.03 Position (Dec): -14° 43’ 20.00" Field of view: 1.09 x 1.01 arcminutes Orientation: North is 305.8° left of vertical

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