http://www.redorbit.com Space http://www.redorbit.com/modules/news/images/tools/rss_logo.gif http://www.redorbit.com Image 1: In the top right of this Cassini image, the southern end of Titan's huge lake of liquid hydrocarbons called Kraken Mare is visible near the moon's north pole. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)Image 2: This image shows the northern and southern hemispheres of Titan, showing the disparity between the abundance of lakes in the north and their paucity in the South. The hypothesis presented favors long-term flux of volatile hydrocarbons, predominantly methane, from hemisphere to hemisphere. Recently the direction of transport has been from south to north, but the effect would have reversed tens of thousands of years ago. Credit: The mosaic includes Cassini SAR, ISS, and VIS images (NASA/JPL/Caltech/University of Arizona/Cassini Imaging Team). http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791832/scientists_explain_puzzling_lake_asymmetry_on_titan/index.html?source=r_space Sun, 29 Nov 2009 12:10:00 -0500 Space Space shuttle Atlantis and its seven-member crew are expected to return to Earth on Friday, Nov. 27, after an 11-day mission. The two landing opportunities at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida are at 9:44 a.m. and 11:19 a.m. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791531/atlantis_set_to_land_friday/index.html?source=r_space Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:25:00 -0500 Space Astronomers on behalf of Galaxy Zoo have unveiled a new game aimed at letting players help them understand how galaxies have formed.The game involves images taken by a camera attached to a telescope in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791491/galaxy_game_employs_participants_to_help_astronomers/index.html?source=r_space Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:37:38 -0500 Space Image 1: In Cygnus X-3, an accretion disk surrounding a black hole or neutron star orbits close to a hot, massive star. Gamma rays (purple, in this illustration) likely arise when fast-moving electrons above and below the disk collide with the star's ultraviolet light. Fermi sees more of this emission when the disk is on the far side of its orbit. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight CenterImage 2: Brighter colors indicate greater numbers of gamma rays detected in this Fermi LAT view of a region centered on the position of Cygnus X-3 (circled). The brightest sources are pulsars. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT CollaborationImage 3: This image locates the view around Cygnus X-3 within Fermi's all-sky map. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1792120/fermi_peers_deep_into_a_microquasar/index.html?source=r_space Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:05:00 -0500 Space Image 1: Messier 82. Composite of Chandra, HST and Spitzer images. X-ray data recorded by Chandra appears in blue; infrared light recorded by Spitzer appears in red; Hubble's observations of hydrogen emission appear in orange, and the bluest visible light appears in yellow-green. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/UofA/ESA/AURA/JHUImage 2: PACS spectrum of Messier 82. Credit: ESA & the PACS consortium; background: NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA/The Hubble Heritage Team http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791810/herschels_splendid_spectra/index.html?source=r_space Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:30:00 -0500 Space China is planning to launch its second lunar probe next October to get ready for an unmanned moon landing by the end of 2012, state-run media reported on Friday. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791754/china_set_to_launch_second_lunar_probe/index.html?source=r_space Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:10:00 -0500 Space After an 11 day mission to the International Space Station, space shuttle Atlantis and seven astronauts finally wrapped up their 4,490,138 mile flight Friday morning as they were welcomed back to Earth.Announcing its arrival with subsonic booms, it appeared through a perfectly clear sky at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:44 a.m. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791749/atlantis_lands_in_florida/index.html?source=r_space Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:55:00 -0500 Space A top Russian space official said Thursday that there is no more room for space tourists hoping to fly to the International Space Station, The Associated Press reported.Sergei Krikalyov, the chief of the Cosmonaut Training Center, said since the space station's crew doubled to six people earlier this year, there is no longer room for tourists who pay tens of millions of dollars for a trip on a Russian spacecraft from Earth.After next year’s planned retirement of the U.S. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791679/no_more_tourist_trips_to_iss_russia/index.html?source=r_space Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:40:00 -0500 Space A top Russian space official said Thursday that there is no more room for space tourists hoping to fly to the International Space Station, The Associated Press reported.Sergei Krikalyov, the chief of the Cosmonaut Training Center, said since the space station's crew doubled to six people earlier this year, there is no longer room for tourists who pay tens of millions of dollars for a trip on a Russian spacecraft from Earth.After next year’s planned retirement of the U.S. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791679/no_more_tourist_trips_to_iss_russia/index.html?source=r_space Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:40:00 -0500 Space A top Russian space official said Thursday that there is no more room for space tourists hoping to fly to the International Space Station, The Associated Press reported.Sergei Krikalyov, the chief of the Cosmonaut Training Center, said since the space station's crew doubled to six people earlier this year, there is no longer room for tourists who pay tens of millions of dollars for a trip on a Russian spacecraft from Earth.After next year’s planned retirement of the U.S. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791679/no_more_tourist_trips_to_iss_russia/index.html?source=r_space Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:40:00 -0500 Space A top Russian space official said Thursday that there is no more room for space tourists hoping to fly to the International Space Station, The Associated Press reported.Sergei Krikalyov, the chief of the Cosmonaut Training Center, said since the space station's crew doubled to six people earlier this year, there is no longer room for tourists who pay tens of millions of dollars for a trip on a Russian spacecraft from Earth.After next year’s planned retirement of the U.S. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791679/no_more_tourist_trips_to_iss_russia/index.html?source=r_space Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:40:00 -0500 Space Notes[1] Telescopes on the ground suffer from a blurring effect introduced by atmospheric turbulence. This turbulence causes the stars to twinkle in a way that delights poets but frustrates astronomers, since it smears out the fine details of the images. However, with adaptive optics (AO) techniques, this major drawback can be overcome so that the telescope produces images that are as sharp as theoretically possible, i.e. approaching conditions in space. Adaptive optics systems work by means of a computer-controlled deformable mirror that counteracts the image distortion introduced by atmospheric turbulence. It is based on real-time optical corrections computed at very high speed (many hundreds of times each second) from image data obtained by a wavefront sensor (a special camera) that monitors light from a reference star, Present AO systems can only correct the effect of atmospheric turbulence in a very small region of the sky — typically 15 arcseconds or less — the correction degrading very quickly when moving away from the reference star. Engineers have therefore developed new techniques to overcome this limitation, one of which is multi-conjugate adaptive optics. MAD uses up to three guide stars instead of one as references to remove the blur caused by atmospheric turbulence over a field of view thirty times larger than existing techniques (ESO PR 19/07).More InformationThis research was presented in a paper that appears in the 26 November 2009 issue of Nature , “The cluster Terzan 5 as a remnant of a primordial building block of the Galactic bulge”, by F. R. Ferraro et al..The team is composed of Francesco Ferraro, Emanuele Dalessandro, Alessio Mucciarelli and Barbara Lanzoni (Department of Astronomy, University of Bologna, Italy), Giacomo Beccari (ESA, Space Science Department, Noordwijk, Netherlands), Mike Rich (Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA), Livia Origlia, Michele Bellazzini and Gabriele Cocozza (INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, Italy), Robert T. Rood (Astronomy Department, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA), Elena Valenti (ESO and Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Departamento de Astronomia, Santiago, Chile) and Scott Ransom (National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, USA).ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organization in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious program 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 organizing 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. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 42-meter European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.---Image 1: Peering through the thick dust clouds of our galaxy's central parts (the "bulge") with an amazing amount of detail, a team of astronomers has revealed an unusual mix of stars in the stellar grouping known as Terzan 5. Never observed anywhere in the bulge before, this peculiar cocktail of stars suggests that Terzan 5 is in fact one of the bulge's primordial building blocks, most likely the relic of a dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way during its very early days. This near-infrared image was obtained with the Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (MAD) instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope. Observations in two bands (J and K) were combined. The field of view is 40 arcseconds across. Credit: ESO/F. FerraroImage 2: This wide-field image, based on data from Digitized Sky Survey 2, shows the whole region around the stellar grouping Terzan 5. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791480/vestiges_of_milky_ways_building_blocks_revealed/index.html?source=r_space Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:30:00 -0500 Space The launch of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, aboard a Delta II rocket is scheduled to occur between 9:09 a.m. and 9:23 a.m. EST on Wednesday, Dec. 9, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791403/wise_spacecraft_ready_for_launch_dec_9/index.html?source=r_space Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:20:00 -0500 Space The team operating NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter plans to uplink protective files to the spacecraft next week as one step toward resuming the orbiter's research and relay activities.Since the orbiter spontaneously rebooted its computer on Aug. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791385/mars_recon_team_plans_uplink_of_protective_files/index.html?source=r_space Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:20:00 -0500 Space Image 1: Artist's concept of GOES-O in orbit. Credit: NASA/Honeywell Tech Solutions, C. Meaney Image 2: When GOES-14 replaces either GOES-11 or GOES-12, it will provide satellite weather imagery just as GOES-12 captured a dying Tropical Storm Danny on the U.S. east coast (top right) and an explosive Tropical Storm Jimena on the Mexican west coast (bottom left) on August 29. Credit: NASA/GOES Project http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1792121/goes14_moving_into_onorbit_storage_around_the_earth/index.html?source=r_space Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:15:00 -0500 Space Notes[1] Supermassive black holes are found in the cores of most large galaxies; unlike the inactive and starving one sitting at the center of the Milky Way, a fraction of them are said to be active, as they eat up enormous amounts of material. These frantic actions produce a copious release of energy across the whole electromagnetic spectrum; particularly spectacular is the case of quasars, where the active core is so overwhelmingly bright that it outshines the luminosity of the host galaxy.[2] This part of the study is based on observations performed at mid-infrared wavelengths, with the powerful VLT spectrometer and imager for the mid-infrared (VISIR) instrument at the VLT, combined with additional data including: spectra acquired using VLT-FORS, optical and infrared images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and radio observations from the Australia Telescope National Facility.[3] Most galaxies in the local Universe contain a supermassive black hole with a mass about 1/700th the mass of the stellar bulge. The origin of this black hole mass versus stellar mass relation is one of the most debated subjects in modern astrophysics.More InformationThis research was presented in papers published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics: “Quasar induced galaxy formation: a new paradigm?” by Elbaz et al., and in the Astrophysical Journal “The QSO HE0450-2958: Scantily dressed or heavily robed? A normal quasar as part of an unusual ULIRG” by Jahnke et al.The team is composed of David Elbaz (Service d’Astrophysique, CEA Saclay, France), Knud Jahnke (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany), Eric Pantin (Service d’Astrophysique, CEA Saclay, France), Damien Le Borgne (Paris University 6 and CNRS, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France) and Géraldine Letawe (Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique, Université de Liège, Belgium).ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organization in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious program 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 organizing 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. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 42-meter European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.---Image 1: This artist’s impression shows how jets from supermassive black holes could form galaxies, thereby explaining why the mass of black holes is larger in galaxies that contain more stars. Credit: ESO/L. CalçadaImage 2: Color composite image of a peculiar object, the nearby quasar HE0450-2958, which is the only one for which no sign of a host galaxy has yet been detected. A team of astronomers has identified black hole jets as a possible driver of galaxy formation, which may also represent the long-sought missing link to understanding why the mass of black holes is larger in galaxies that contain more stars. The mid-infrared part of this image was obtained with the VISIR instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, while the visible image comes courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Credit: ESO http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791892/do_black_holes_build_their_own_galaxies/index.html?source=r_space Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:45:00 -0500 Space Japan launched a next-generation spy satellite on Saturday as part of efforts to beef up its surveillance system against the threat of North Korea's missiles.An H-2A rocket carrying the nation's No. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791821/5th_spy_satellite_launched_by_japan/index.html?source=r_space Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:08:09 -0500 Space Image 1: A solar tsunami seen by the STEREO spacecraft from orthogonal points of view. The gray part of the animation has been contrast-enhanced by subtracting successive pairs of images, resulting in a "difference movie." [ View Movie ]Image 2: The dancing prominence (circled). Watch it bounce up and down after getting hit by a faint but powerful solar tsunami. [ View Movie ]---On the Net:A selection of solar tsunami movies:May 19, 2007--observed by STEREO-ADec. 14, 2007--observed by STEREO-AFeb. 13, 2009--observed by both STEREO-A and STEREO-BDec. 6, 2006--observed by a National Solar Observatory telescope in New MexicoMore Links: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791240/solar_monster_waves_are_real/index.html?source=r_space Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:10:00 -0500 Space Access to data from the ESA-NASA SOHO mission has just become easier with the launch of a new SOHO science archive with enhanced capabilities for searching and visualizing the vast SOHO data archive. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1790987/soho_science_archive_now_online/index.html?source=r_space Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:54:48 -0500 Space NASA will host a media teleconference with Bob Ess, Ares I-X mission manager, at 1 p.m. CST on Thursday, Dec. 3. Ess will provide reporters with an update on data gathered during the test flight of the rocket, which took place Oct. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1792313/nasa_sets_briefing_to_discuss_ares_ix_launch_data/index.html?source=r_space Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:54:46 -0500 Space WASHINGTON -- NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has made the first unambiguous detection of high-energy gamma-rays from an enigmatic binary system known as Cygnus X-3. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791691/nasas_fermi_telescope_peers_deep_into_a_microquasar/index.html?source=r_space Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:55:00 -0500 Space Image Caption: At a ceremony held in ESRIN, GOCE Project Manager Danilo Muzi(left) formally transferred mission responsibility to GOCE Mission Manager Rune Floberghagen. Credits: ESA http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791386/keys_to_goce_handed_over/index.html?source=r_space Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:27:29 -0500 Space Space shuttle Atlantis and its seven-astronaut crew undocked from the International Space Station at 4:53 a.m. EST. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791237/atlantis_undocks_from_station/index.html?source=r_space Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:15:00 -0500 Space NJIT researchers are at work on many scientific and technological frontiers. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1791482/njit_receives_funding_to_improve_big_bear_telescope_study_solar/index.html?source=r_space Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:50:00 -0500 Space NASA Television will air the events surrounding the landing of three International Space Station crew members who will return to Earth Dec. 1. The space travelers have lived and worked aboard the space station for the past six months. http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1790976/nasa_tv_will_broadcast_soyuz_landing_events/index.html?source=r_space Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:17:57 -0500 Space