Scientists Discover Exoplanet With Rings Far More Impressive Than Our Saturn

Artist’s conception of the extrasolar ring system circling the young giant planet or brown dwarf J1407b is shown. Credit: Ron Miller

Children and adults alike marvel at the rings around Saturn. In a model of our solar system, Saturn—and its rings—is typically the one that gets the most attention.

But while it is easy to be fascinated by Saturn, astronomers have recently found an exoplanet with an even grander expanse of wings that is sure to wow a new generation of stargazers.

“The star is much too far away to observe the rings directly, but we could make a detailed mode based on the rapid brightness variations in the star light passing through the ring system. If we could replace Saturn’s rings with the rings around J1407b, they would be easily visible at night and be many times larger than the full moon,” explains lead researcher Matthew Kenworthy. “The details that we see in the light curve are incredible. The eclipse lasted for several weeks, but you see rapid changes on time scales of tens of minutes as a result of fine structures in the rings.”

Study co-author Eric Mamaek, who first found the rings of the planet, comments, “The planetary science community has theorized for decades that planets like Jupiter and Saturn would have had, at an early stage, disks around them that then led to the formation of satellites. However, until we discovered this object in 2012, no-one had seen such a ring system. This is the first snapshot of satellite formation on million-kilometer scales around a substellar object.”

The University of Rochester professor of physics and astronomy goes on to say, “This planet is much larger than Jupiter or Saturn, and its ring system is roughly 200 times larger than Saturn’s rings are today. You could think of it as a kind of super Saturn.”

Source : piercepioneer.com

Researchers: Solar system may have Planet X , Planet Y

The presence of two additional planets might explain the unexpected orbital features of some trans-Neptunian objects.

Scientists have postulated the existence of possibly two undiscovered planets beyond the orbit of Neptune to explain discrepancies in the orbits of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO). The objects have orbits that take them beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune.

Theory predicts that they be randomly distributed and that their orbits must have a semi-major axis with a value around 150 AU; an orbital inclination of nearly zero degrees; and an angle of perihelion, the point in the object’s orbit at which it is closest to the Sun, of zero to 180 degrees.

However, a dozen ETNO do not fit these orbital criteria. These objects have semi-major axis values of 150 to 525 AU, orbital inclinations of around 20 degrees, and angles of perihelion far from 180 degrees.

According to a statement, a new study by astrophysicists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and University of Cambridge have calculated that these orbital discrepancies could be explained by the existence of at least two additional planets beyond the orbits of Neptune and dwarf planet Pluto. Their study suggests that the gravitational pulls of those two planets must be disturbing the orbits of some smaller ETNO.

However, there are two difficulties with the hypothesis. One is that current models of the formation of our solar system do not allow for additional planets beyond Neptune. Secondly, the team’s sample size is very small, only 13 objects. However, additional results are in the pipeline, which will expand the sample.

“This excess of objects with unexpected orbital parameters makes us believe that some invisible forces are altering the distribution of the orbital elements of the ETNO and we consider that the most probable explanation is that other unknown planets exist beyond Neptune and Pluto,” said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of UCM and lead author on the study.

The new findings have been published in two papers published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.

Source : thespacereporter

Philae sleeps, but Rosetta's not done yet

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Its battery dead, the European lander is lost in a crater somewhere on a huge comet. But the orbiter that brought it there still has plenty of science left to do.



As of Saturday morning, the Philae lander is in a digital coma somewhere on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. But even if the history-making little robot never wakes again, the Rosetta mission and the orbiter of the same name still have a long journey ahead of them.

The plan was for Philae to land at a targeted site on the comet, firing harpoons into the surface of the icy rock to keep itself locked in place for a long trip around the sun. The strong grip was particularly important since a comet this size has only a tiny fraction of the gravity of a place like Earth, leaving little Philae at risk of floating off into space.

But when showtime came, there were problems with Philae's downward thrusters and with firing the harpoons. The European Space Agency reports that the lander bounced off the surface of the comet twice and eventually landed somewhere else without much access to the sunlight its solar panels need to keep it functioning.

Friday evening, Philae used its remaining energy to upload all its data before going into hibernation mode. There was a time slot early this morning during which, the ESA had reported, communication with the lander was possible, but that time has now come and gone.

Still, Rosetta remains.

Even if Philae stays lost in a comet crater for the next year, the orbiter that traveled almost half a billion miles to get to this point will continue to orbit the comet and its lost lander.

Right now, Rosetta has been pulling out to a 30 kilometer orbit of the comet. It will come closer again early next month to get more details on the comet -- some of its flybys will be as close as 8 kilometers to the comet. There's a whole lot of potential science and data about comets, planets and our solar system packed in that process, building up to the trio's closest encounter with the sun, next August.

Before that point there may also be better opportunities to rouse Philae.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crbnOY8WeB8#t=15

10 Wonders Of The Universe

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What's the biggest thing in the universe? Find out here, along with 9 other incredible astronomical wonders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUbQnHvXYEI

3D-printed engine parts future of space launches: NASA

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A team of NASA researchers has found that 3D manufactured copper parts could withstand the heat and pressure required of combustion engines used in space launches.

The US space agency and California-based rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne (AR) conducted 19 hot-fire tests on four injector and thrust chamber assembly configurations at NASA's Glenn Research Centre.

"The successful hot fire test of engine components provides confidence in the additive manufacturing process and paves the way for full-scale development," said Tyler Hickman, lead engineer for the test at Glenn.

3D printing approach is changing the speed, cost and flexibility of designing and building future machines for space and earth applications.

The work is a major milestone in the development and certification of different materials used in the manufacturing process.

Copper alloys offer unique challenges to the additive manufacturing processes.

"Additively manufactured metal propulsion components are truly a paradigm shift for the aerospace industry," added Paul Senick, Glenn project manager.

This will improve efficiency and bring down the cost of space launches and other earth applications, he concluded.

Source : business standard

A Universe of Blue Dots? --"Water Common During the Formation of All Planetary Systems"

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The new SciFi blockbuster, Interstellar, shows astonauts from post apocalyptic earth, destroyed by what appears to be a modern dust-bowl, catapulted into the unknown of outer space in the hopes of finding a new home for the human race, only to discover an extraterrestrial tidal wave on a distant exo planet. How realistic is the premise of an alien water planet? New findings suggest it's based on solid science.
"This is an important step forward in our quest to find out if life exists on other planets," said Tim Harries, from the University of Exeter's Physics and Astronomy department, who was part of the research team. "We know that water is vital for the evolution of life on Earth, but it was possible that the Earth's water originated in the specific conditions of the early solar system, and that those circumstances might occur infrequently elsewhere. By identifying the ancient heritage of Earth's water, we can see that the way in which our solar system was formed will not be unique, and that exoplanets will form in environments with abundant water. Consequently, it raises the possibility that some exoplanets could house the right conditions, and water resources, for life to evolve."
The implication of these findings is that some of the solar system's water must have been inherited from the Sun's birth environment, and thus predate the Sun itself. If our solar system's formation was typical, this implies that water is a common ingredient during the formation of all planetary systems.

To date, the Kepler satellite has detected nearly 1,000 confirmed extrasolar planets. The widespread availability of water during the planet-formation process puts a promising outlook on the prevalence of life throughout the galaxy.

A pioneering new study has shown that water found on Earth predates the formation of the Sun – raising hopes that life could exist on exoplanets, the planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy. The ground-breaking research set out to discover the origin of the water that was deposited on the Earth as it formed.

It found that a significant fraction of water found on Earth, and across our solar system, predates the formation of the Sun. By showing that water is 'inherited' from the environment when a star is born, the international team of scientists believe other exoplanetary systems also had access to an abundance of water during their own formation.

As water is a key component for the development of life on Earth, the study has important implications for the potential for life elsewhere in the galaxy.

Scientists have previously been able to understand the conditions present when stars are formed by looking at the composition of comets and asteroids, which show which gases, dust and, most importantly, ices were circling the star at its birth.

The team of international scientists were able to use 'heavy water' ices – those with an excess of water made with the element deuterium rather than hydrogen – to determine whether the water ices formed before, or during, the solar system's formation.

The Rosetta comet landing has made history

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02758/Rosetta_2758749b.jpg

After 10 years of hard work and one nerve-wracking night, the Rosetta mission has made history by landing on the surface of a comet.

The lander Philae was confirmed to touch down on the surface of the comet more than 300 million miles away at 11:03 a.m. Eastern. Now, scientists expect it to send a panoramic image home and begin analyzing the comet for scientists back on Earth.

Philae is already transmitting scientific data back home, but we're still waiting to see whether the probe is in a stable position. Until we know it's anchored tight, it could roll onto its back and never get back up.

Tensions were high in the European Space Agency's German mission control center, especially as the landing window approached. Because the comet that Philae landed on is so far from Earth, there's a communications delay of 28 minutes. So as the minutes ticked by, the Rosetta team knew that Philae had already either landed or failed — and there was nothing they could do but wait for the data to reach them. Those following the video online were nearly as desperate for news, and Twitter became a sounding chamber of anticipation and excitement.

But a few minutes after 11 a.m., the stern, cautious expressions of the mission control team melted into smiles. And just like that, the world swiveled from anxiety to elation: Philae was on the surface of the comet and ready to do some science.

The comet contains the materials that originally formed our solar system, frozen in time. By digging them out, we can learn more about the origins of our planet. The Rosetta spacecraft has made invaluable observations about the comet's attributes, and it will continue to do so as it follows it around the sun for the next year. But Philae will be able to look more closely at the comet's physical and molecular composition.

"It's a look at the basic building blocks of our solar system, the ancient materials from which life emerged," said Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern in Switzerland, one of the Rosetta project's lead researchers. "It's like doing archaeology, but instead of going back 1,000 years, we can go back 4.6 billion."

It's no easy thing to land on a comet's surface: These chunks of rock and ice are constantly spinning, and Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which was discovered in 1969, orbits the sun at a speed of about 85,000 mph. It's irregularly shaped — like a toddler's play-dough impression of a duck, or something — and its surface is uneven and pitted. And in a universe of unimaginable proportion, Rosetta's target is just 2.5 miles in diameter — smaller than Northwest Washington's Columbia Heights neighborhood.

So Rosetta has taken an onerous journey to get in sync with the comet's orbit, which would allow it to drop down a lander. In 2004, the spacecraft began what would be three looping orbits around the sun, altering its trajectory as it skimmed Mars, just 150 miles from the surface, and enduring 24 minutes in the planet’s shadow to align with Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The cumulative distance traveled by the craft – with all its looping and gravity assists – is a stunning 4 billion miles. “When the Rosetta signal reappeared after the passage behind Mars, shortly after the end of the ‘shadow’ period, there was a collective sigh of relief,” ESA said.

At one point in 2011, the spacecraft even had to hibernate for nearly three years. It flew so far from the sun — nearly 500 million miles — that its solar panels couldn't leech enough energy to keep the spacecraft operational. But in January of this year, Rosetta woke up, and quickly approached its target.

The last leg of this landing has not been without its bumps. Even as the mission approached its most critical moment, controllers at the European Space Agency on Tuesday night reported a problem with the thruster on the lander that could make for a rough landing. The gravity of the problem — and the extent to which it threatened the mission — remained unknown. “We’ll need some luck not to land on a boulder or a steep slope,” blogged Stephan Ulamec, lander manager for the project.

Source : washington post

3D-printed moonbase? ESA suggested future moon colony

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The European Space Agency (ESA) has proven that its project to 3D-print a base on the Moon is possible. In a latest video the agency shows how 3D-printing robots may be used to build the base using lunar material.

The ESA started investigation of the lunar base possibility in 2013, working alongside its industrial and architectural partners. The creation of the reliable semi-spherical structures on the surface of the moon could be fulfilled within the next 40 years, and 90 percent of the materials needed would be derived from the moon itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk9PWUGkz7o

latest details of the new concept, which is, however, still "firmly on the drawing board," were discussed at a conference this week at ESA's technical center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

"

ISS crew lands, brings space-born flies to Earth

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Three crew members of the International Space Station have safely returned to Earth aboard a Soyuz-13M spacecraft, bringing back good memories and results of their 165-day shift in orbit – including a space-born generation of experimental fruit flies.

The spacecraft carrying the commander of the ISS Expedition 41 Russian cosmonaut Maksim Surayev, as well as two flight engineers, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, landed some 80 km from Arkalyk, Kazakhstan.

As part of their mission, the crew completed some 2,640 orbits covering more than 70 million miles and have participated in a number of experiments, including breeding of fruit flies that could potentially shed light on long-term space flight effects on human beings.

Amazing photo of Saturn and its Titan moon looks like high art in deep space

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This amazing image shows Saturn and its moon Titan as crescents on Aug. 11, 2013. NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

An amazing photo taken by a NASA probe shows Saturn and its large moon Titan shining as pretty crescents in deep space.

The two cosmic bodies were imaged by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been exploring the Saturn system for about 10 years. The image -- released on Monday (Nov. 3) -- was captured as the robotic ship was flying about 1.1 million miles (1.7 million kilometers) from the ringed wonder on Aug. 11, 2013, according to NASA. Some of Saturn's ring plane can even be seen in the black and white image.

"More than just pretty pictures, high-phase observations -- taken looking generally toward the sun, as in this image -- are very powerful scientifically since the way atmospheres and rings transmit sunlight is often diagnostic of compositions and physical states," NASA officials said in an image description. "In this example, Titan's crescent nearly encircles its disk due to the small haze particles high in its atmosphere scattering the incoming light of the distant sun."

Mars bombarded by once-in-8-million-year meteor storm: NASA

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This handout artist's concept provided by NASA/JPL shows the Comet Siding Spring approaching Mars, shown with NASA’s orbiters preparing to make science observations of this unique encounter.

A pristine distant comet created a once-in-8-million-year fireworks show above Mars last month. But no one got to see it live.

New NASA data from satellites circling Mars shows that when the comet named Siding Spring skimmed the red planet, tons of comet dust bombarded the Martian sky with thousands of fireballs an hour. It warped the Martian atmosphere leaving all sorts of metals and an eerie yellow afterglow on Oct. 19.

A meteor shower from magnesium, sodium, iron and five other metals may have been so heavy that it might be even considered a meteor storm, said University of Colorado scientist Nick Schneider. Spikes in magnesium physically changed the atmosphere around Mars, while sodium left a yellowish glow in the sky after the meteor showers finished, he said.

“It would have been truly stunning to the human eye,” said Schneider, who was the lead instrument scientist for one of NASA’s Martian satellites. “It would have been really mind-blowing.”

The best view would have been from the Martian surface, where NASA had the rovers Opportunity and Curiosity looking up. But the rovers could only take stills, said agency chief planetary scientist Jim Green. There was no video to capture the shooting stars that made it a spectacular light show.

Instead, NASA’s satellites recorded lots of scientific data, which allowed astronomers to describe what it must have been like.

The core of the spinning comet moved by Mars at more than 125,000 mph and could have been as large as 1.2 miles wide, astronomers said.

It was not only big, but the dust assault was far larger than NASA anticipated, Green said. NASA’s models estimated that the dust wouldn’t be enough to harm the satellites around Mars, but the agency moved them to the other side of the planet just in case. That turned out to be wise, he said.

The comet came from the Oort Cloud, which is at the very edge of our solar system. Comets from there are rare so this was the type of event that happens once every 8 million years. And when they come toward the sun they aren’t as dusty as others, more pristine, astronomers said.

“We never before had the opportunity to observe an Oort Cloud comet up close,” Green said. “Instead of going to the comet, it came to us.”

Source: new york post

Is Earth the only technologically-intensive civilization in Universe?

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A new study has revealed that the combination of earth-based science of sustainability and the space-oriented field of astrobiology can shed light on the future of technological civilization on Earth and is the planet first and only technologically-intensive culture in Universe.
Human-caused climate change, ocean acidification and species extinctions may eventually threaten the collapse of civilization, according to some scientists, while other people argue that for political or economic reasons industrial development should be allowed without restrictions.

In the paper, two astrophysicists argue that these questions may soon be resolvable scientifically, thanks to new data about the Earth and about other planets in our galaxy, and by combining the earth-based science of sustainability with the space-oriented field of astrobiology .

Astrophysicists Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan call for creation of a new research program to answer questions about humanity's future in the broadest astronomical context.

The authors explained that the point would be to see that Earth's current situation might, in some sense, be natural or at least a natural and generic consequence of certain evolutionary pathways.

The researchers also showed that how habitability studies of exoplanets hold important lessons for sustaining the civilization we have developed on Earth.

According to the results, studying past extinction events and using theoretical tools to model the future evolutionary trajectory of humankind and of still unknown but plausible alien civilizations could inform decisions that would lead to a sustainable future.

Source : Zee news

Hubble spots massive 'eye in the sky'

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It might look like a giant eye in the sky, or something from a science fiction fiction film, but in fact this incredible image reveals just how violent planet formation is.

Captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, it shows the huge dusty debris discs around stars.

Created by collisions between leftover objects from planet formation, were imaged around stars as young as 10 million years old and as mature as more than 1 billion years old in Nasa's images.

The researchers discovered that no two "disks" of material surrounding stars look the same.

“We find that the systems are not simply flat with uniform surfaces,” Schneider said.

Source: dailymail

Half of universe's stars are orphans with no galaxy

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Celestial orphans are relatively small, less massive, cooler than our sun, expert says

New observations from suborbital rocket launches and an orbiting observatory show that as many as half the stars in the universe may be orphans with no galaxy scientists said on Thursday. They found that the dim light these stars produce from the far reaches of the cosmos equals the amount coming from all the galaxies.

'The night sky on a planet around such a star would be profoundly boring and black to human eyes - no other stars, or at least very few, no Milky Way band, only distant galaxies.'                                        - Michael Zemcov, Caltech experimental astrophysicist

The phenomenon of the orphan star has been well known. Astronomers have witnessed tidal streams of stars being stripped away from colliding pairs of galaxies.

The data suggests orphan stars are probably relatively small, less massive and cooler than our Sun, but typical of most stars in the universe, said Caltech experimental astrophysicist Michael Zemcov.

The night sky as seen from Earth is brimming with starlight. But these orphans would be so distant from other stars that a view from one would offer almost complete nothingness.

"The night sky on a planet around such a star would be profoundly boring and black to human eyes - no other stars, or at least very few, no Milky Way band, only distant galaxies. You might be lucky and see your parent galaxy off in the distance like we see Andromeda," Zemcov said.

Zemcov said scientists have traced the origin of galaxies to about 13.2 billion years ago, 500 million years after the Big Bang that created the universe.

"Galaxies have been forming and interacting continuously since then, with a peak in the star formation rate about two billion years after the Big Bang," Zemcov said. "You have enough interactions over enough time, and you end up stripping out a lot of stars."

Source : cbc.ca

Rosetta spacecraft set to land on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko

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An artist's impression of the Philae probe setting down on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

If you have an interest in space exploration, you could not have picked a better time in history to be alive than right now. Data and images stream back to Earth daily at an unprecedented rate from robotic spacecraft active at far-flung destinations all over the solar system. To use an old political quote – we've never had it so good.

In the past 50 years we've exploded out of our "little blue dot" to leave boot prints on the moon, land on Venus, Mars and Saturn's moon Titan, and to orbit Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, asteroids and comets, giving us incredible visual vistas of all.

What's missing is a detailed view of dwarf planet Pluto, but we'll have that when the New Horizons spacecraft gets there next year.

There's also another missing first about to be achieved next week – we're going to make a soft landing on the surface of a comet.

Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko had to wait around patiently for billions of years for humans to discover it in 1967. However, it's been a much shorter wait for an opportunity to get up close and personal with it – we're landing a probe on the frozen dumbbell-shaped comet next Wednesday, November 12.

The Rosetta spacecraft, carrying the Philae probe, was launched  from French Guiana in February 2004 by the European Space Agency. It arrived in August this year and has already given us great views of the comet.

It was named for the Rosetta Stone found in Egypt that was crucial in deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Similarly the "lander" is named for the Nile River island Philae, where an obelisk also assisted in solving the puzzle of these symbols.

China probe flies around moon and back in first such mission since 1970s

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Chinese researchers examine the scorched Chang’e 5-T1 return capsule after it landed successfully in Inner Mongolia having travelled around the moon and back.

Photograph: Xinhua

China has completed its first return mission to the moon with the successful re-entry and landing on Earth of an unmanned probe, state media reported.

The probe, Chang’e 5-T1, landed safely in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region, state news agency Xinhua said, citing the Beijing Aerospace Control Centre.

Xinhua said the probe, dubbed “Xiaofei” (little flyer) on social media, took “some incredible pictures” of the Earth and the moon. It is the first trip around the moon and back since US and Russian flights of the 1970s, 40 years ago.

Prior to re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere the unnamed probe had been travelling at 11.2 kilometres per second (25,000 miles per hour), a speed that can generate temperatures of more than 1,500C (2,700F), the news agency reported.

To slow it down scientists let the craft “bounce” off Earth’s atmosphere before re-entering again and landing.

The probe’s mission was to travel to the moon, fly around it and head back to Earth, said the the state science and technology agency, Sastind. The module went 413,000km from Earth at its furthest point.

The mission was launched to test technology to be used in the Chang’e-5, China’s fourth lunar probe, which aims to gather and return samples from the surface in 2017.

The military-run space project has plans for a permanent orbiting station by 2020 and eventually to send a human to the moon.

China currently has a robotic rover, Yutu (Jade Rabbit), on the moon. It landed on 14 December 2013 and completed parts of its mission before grinding to a halt on 25 January 2014 due to equipment failure.

Source : The Guardian

China’s Lunar Test Spacecraft Takes Incredible Picture of Earth and Moon Together

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The Chinese lunar test mission Chang’e 5T1 has sent back some amazing and unique views of the Moon’s far side, with the Earth joining in for a cameo in the image above. According to the crew at UnmannedSpaceflight.com the images were taken with the spacecraft’s solar array monitoring camera.



A closeup of Mare Marginis, a lunar sea that lies on the very edge of the lunar nearside. Credit: Xinhua News, via UnmannedSpacefight.com

The mission launched on October 23 and is taking an eight-day roundtrip flight around the Moon and is now journeying back to Earth. The mission is a test run for Chang’e-5, China’s fourth lunar probe that aims to gather samples from the Moon’s surface, currently set for 2017. Chang’e 5T1 will return to Earth on October 31.

The test flight orbit had a perigee of 209 kilometers and reached an apogee of about 380,000 kilometers, swinging halfway around the Moon, but did not enter lunar orbit.



A view of Earth on October 24, 2014, from the Chinese Chang’e-5 T1 spacecraft.

Source : universe today

Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole Reveals Identity of Strange Object at Center of Our Galaxy

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 What are Supermassive Black Hole ?

Supermassive black hole (SMBH) is the largest type of black hole, on the order of hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses. Most—and possibly all—galaxies are inferred to contain a supermassive black hole at their centers.In the case of the Milky Way, the SMBH is believed to correspond with the location of Sagittarius A*.

For years, astronomers have been puzzled by a bizarre object in the center of the Milky Way that was believed to be a hydrogen gas cloud headed toward our galaxy's enormous black hole. Having studied it during its closest approach to the black hole this summer, UCLA astronomers believe that they have solved the riddle of the object widely known as G2.

A team led by Andrea Ghez, professor of physics and astronomy in the UCLA College, determined that G2 is most likely a pair of binary stars that had been orbiting the black hole in tandem and merged together into an extremely large star, cloaked in gas and dust — its movements choreographed by the black hole's powerful gravitational field. The research is published today in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"We are seeing phenomena about black holes that you can't watch anywhere else in the universe," Ghez added. "We are starting to understand the physics of black holes in a way that has never been possible before."

Ghez, who studies thousands of stars in the neighborhood of the supermassive black hole, said G2 appears to be just one of an emerging class of stars near the black hole that are created because the black hole's powerful gravity drives binary stars to merge into one. She also noted that, in our galaxy, massive stars primarily come in pairs. She says the star suffered an abrasion to its outer layer but otherwise will be fine.

Astronomers had figured that if G2 had been a hydrogen cloud, it could have been torn apart by the black hole, and that the resulting celestial fireworks would have dramatically changed the state of the black hole. "G2 survived and continued happily on its orbit; a simple gas cloud would not have done that," said Ghez, who holds the Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics. "G2 was basically unaffected by the black hole. There were no fireworks."

Black holes, which form out of the collapse of matter, have such high density that nothing can escape their gravitational pull — not even light. They cannot be seen directly, but their influence on nearby stars is visible and provides a signature, said Ghez, a 2008 MacArthur Fellow.

The image below shows Sagittarius A* — the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy — appears dim in this composite image because very little material is falling into it.

Ghez and her colleagues — who include lead author Gunther Witzel, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar, and Mark Morris and Eric Becklin, both UCLA professors of physics and astronomy — conducted the research at Hawaii's W.M. Keck Observatory, which houses the world's two largest optical and infrared telescopes.

When two stars near the black hole merge into one, the star expands for more than 1 million years before it settles back down, said Ghez, who directs the UCLA Galactic Center Group. "This may be happening more than we thought. The stars at the center of the galaxy are massive and mostly binaries. It's possible that many of the stars we've been watching and not understanding may be the end product of mergers that are calm now."

Ghez and her colleagues also determined that G2 appears to be in that inflated stage now. The body has fascinated many astronomers in recent years, particularly during the year leading up to its approach to the black hole. "It was one of the most watched events in astronomy in my career," Ghez said.

Ghez said G2 now is undergoing what she calls a "spaghetti-fication" — a common phenomenon near black holes in which large objects become elongated. At the same time, the gas at G2's surface is being heated by stars around it, creating an enormous cloud of gas and dust that has shrouded most of the massive star.

Witzel said the researchers wouldn't have been able to arrive at their conclusions without the Keck's advanced technology. "It is a result that in its precision was possible only with these incredible tools, the Keck Observatory's 10-meter telescopes," Witzel said.

The telescopes use adaptive optics, a powerful technology pioneered in part by Ghez that corrects the distorting effects of the Earth's atmosphere in real time to more clearly reveal the space around the supermassive black hole. The technique has helped Ghez and her colleagues elucidate many previously unexplained facets of the environments surrounding supermassive black holes.

The image at the top of the page is a simulation showing the possible behavior of a gas cloud that has been observed approaching the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

Source :  daily galaxy

ISRO plans second mission to Mars in 2018

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The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to launch second mission to Mars with a lander and rover to carry out more experiments on the red planet.

The proposed plans come after the Indian space agency has successfully placed its unmanned Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft to the Martian orbit in September.

ISRO satellite centre director Shiva Kumar was quoted by IANS as saying: "We plan to launch a second mission to Mars in 2018, probably with a lander and rover, to conduct more experiments for which we have to develop new technologies.

"We will be able to take the Mars-2 mission after launching the second mission to the moon (Chandrayaan-2) in 2016 with our own lander and rover, which will help us develop a separate lander and rover for the red planet."

The agency is looking to launch the programme in 2018 as the missions to Mars can be launched at two year intervals.

ISRO intends to have fully operational heavy rockets ready by then to carry communication satellites weighing around 3t into the geo-stationary orbits around the earth.

In line with this plans, the agency has developed the geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV Mark I-III) to launch heavier communication satellites.

GSLV Mark-III is scheduled to take its first partial test flight in early December.

ISRO chairman Radhakrishnan was quoted by The Hindu as saying that the test flight will lead to a 'future workhorse vehicle that will stay with us for many years'.

Tests will be conducted on unmanned crew module of the three-stage launch vehicle, to evaluate heating during its re-entry and its behaviour in the crucial space phase.

Source : aerospace-technology

NASA rocket to click 1,500 images of Sun in 5 minutes

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This image provided by NASA shows the sun emitting a significant X3.2-class flare erupting from the lower half of the sun, peaking at 5:40 p.m. EDT on Oct. 24, 2014. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly and captured images of the event.

A sounding rocket fitted with technology to gather 1,500 images of the Sun in flat five minutes is set for launch on Monday.

Capturing five images per second, the Rapid Acquisition Imaging Spectrograph Experiment (RAISE) mission will focus in on the split-second changes that occur near active regions on the Sun.

These are areas of intense and complex magnetic fields that can give birth to giant eruptions on the Sun that shoot energy and particles out in all directions, the U.S. space agency said in a statement.

“Even on a five-minute flight, there are niche areas of science we can focus on well. There are areas of the Sun that need to be examined with the high-cadence observations we can provide,” said Don Hassler, solar scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

RAISE will create a kind of data product called a spectrogram which separates the light from the sun into different wavelengths.

“The Sun has been extremely active recently, producing several X-class flares in the past few weeks. The team will aim their instrument at one of these active regions to try to understand better the dynamics that cause these regions to erupt,” Mr. Hassler explained.

The team hopes to see how heat and energy move through such active regions, which, in turn, helps scientist understand what creates the regions and perhaps even what catalyses the sun’s eruptions.

RAISE’s launch time is planned for 2.07 p.m. (EST) from the White Sands Missile Range near Las Cruces, New Mexico.