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The space observatory Herschel Space Agency (ESA) has detected water vapor emission in the disk of dust surrounding the young star TW Hydrae. These issues indicate the existence of a water reservoir capable of filling thousands of Earth’s oceans, so opening a new testing ground to investigate how water came to Earth.
(Artist’s impression of protoplanetary disk of TW Hydrae. Image: ESA / NASA / JPL-Caltech)
Scientists think that a good part of the water on our planet came aboard comets struck the Earth during its early formative stages. This hypothesis has been supported recently with the discovery by Herschel of water similar to Earth on a comet (103P/Hartley 2).
Now the same space telescope, thanks to the HIFI instrument has also detected water vapor emission throughout the disk swirling around TW Hydrae, a star formed about 5-10 million years and located at 176 light years the Earth. The discovery shows that there are significant reserves and water in protoplanetary disks surrounding some stars.
TW Hydrae is in the last stage of his training and is surrounded by a disk of dust and gas condensed to be completed to give rise to a whole system of planets.
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New Space Telescope observations of the NASA WISE suggest that Baptistina asteroid family, which some scientists believed responsible for the disappearance of the dinosaurs, not the cause. The origin of the asteroid continues and remains a mystery.
(Recreation of the asteroid after the collision that defragmented. Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech)
New data collected by the Infrared Explorer mission of NASA’s Wide Field (WISE, for its acronym in English: Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) Seem to discard the theory that pointed to a particular family of asteroids as responsible for the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
“After investigation WISE science team, the disappearance of dinosaurs remains an unsolved case,” said Lindley Johnson, program director Observing Near Earth Objects (NEO, for its acronym in English) of the seat NASA in Washington (USA).
The theory, proposed in 2007, argues that some 160 million years, the asteroid collided with another Baptistina called main belt between Mars and Jupiter. After impact, large size fragments spread and one of them ended up crashing into the earth and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
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The University of the Balearic Islands hosts the international congress Astro-GR 2011, from 5 to 9 September 2011 on the campus of the UIB in Palma. The meeting, which was organized by the Group of Relativity and Gravitation UIB, brings together over 80 scientists from around the world, including representatives from the European Space Agency (ESA). The central theme of this edition of the Astro-GR will be the impact and scientific potential of the new e-LISA space mission.
The University of the Balearic Islands is home to the Astro-GR International Congress 2011 will take place from 5 to 9 September 2011 on the campus of the UIB in Palma. This meeting has been organized by the Relativity and Gravitation Group of UIB, will bring together over 80 scientists from around the world, including representatives from the European Space Agency (ESA). The central theme of this edition of the Astro-GR will be the impact and scientific potential of the new e-LISA space mission.
The opening of the congress has been carried out by the Chancellor of the UIB, Dr. Montserrat Casas, Dr. Paul Amaro-Seoane, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Germany) and Dr. Alicia Sintes, professor in the Department of Physics UIB.
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Two groups of researchers, led by Pennsylvania State University (USA), were first observed what happens in the first moments in which a black hole absorbs a star. What is surprising about this finding is that it provides a unique opportunity to study how bright the relativistic jets of matter that is issued at the beginning of the phenomenon.
A team of researchers has observed a supermassive black hole at the moment, apparently, attracted a star that was near and absorbed. This has been possible due to space observatory Swiftat NASA.
“Until now, this is a unique event. Although it has long been expected that such events should occur, the glow it emits is a surprise, “said Jamie A. SINC Kennea, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University and coauthor of the study published in the latest issue of the journal Nature .
Scientists have determined that the black hole is at the center of a galaxy at a distance such that the light of this phenomenon took about 4 billion years to reach.
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The flagship project of NASA, the space telescope James Webb , could be truncated. The U.S. agency has already warned he will not be ready until at least 2018-a delay of four years and will cost 2,000 million dollars more than expected. Now, a committee of the U.S. Congress wants to cut off the supply to the financing of this instrument, which should replace the Hubble to explore the ancient corners of the universe.
(An engineer checks the James Webb telescope mirrors. Image: NASA)
After the window of a clean room in building 29 of the Goddard Space Flight Center (Maryland, USA), NASA engineers, clad in costumes like the movies, working on parts of the space telescope James Webb . It is the replacement for Hubble , the most powerful tool that astrophysicists have in their hands for decades to come. Official information on the walls hung announces he will be ready in 2014, but the grimace of the press officer says that in no way going to meet the deadline.
The initial budget for the James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST) was 5,000 million dollars and its launch was scheduled for 2014. In October 2010 an independent report prepared by John Casani at the request of U.S. government revealed that its final cost would be 6,500 million dollars and would not be ready until late 2015. Now there is talk of over 7,000 million dollars, NASA has stated that at the earliest, could put into orbit in October 2018, and that if extra funding.
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The Gaia mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) has taken a step forward with the digital camera placement largest ever built for a space mission consists of 106 charge-coupled device high sensitivity. This matrix of pixels billion will be the eye of Gaia , a satellite designed to map the Milky Way and whose mission work together over 400 European scientists, including thirty researchers and technicians from the Department of Astronomy and Meteorology University of Barcelona .
(Technical Astrium France in Toulouse, working on the assembly of mosaic CCD on the satellite ‘Gaia’. Image: Astrium.)
The human eye can see at a glance several thousand stars on a clear night. Gaia will be able to study one billion stars within the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies, over the five year duration of its mission . This way, you create a catalog record which specify the brightness, spectral characteristics and three-dimensional position and displacement of each object observed.
To study the most distant stars, whose brightness is about a million times smaller than the human eye can detect, Gaia has a CCD detector consists of 106, an advanced version of the sensors can be found in the conventional digital cameras. The detector designed for the mission Gaia is formed by 106 CCD developed specifically for this mission by the company e2v Technologies, Chelmsford, UK. Each of them is a bit smaller than a credit card (4.7 x 6 cm) and thinner than a human hair.
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In the past 130 years, Saturn has recorded five named storms colossal large white spots . These phenomena are repeated every time that Saturn goes around the Sun (30 years), but last December the telescopes got the start ahead of the last spots . The analysis and interpretation of the images have participated Spanish researchers.
(The image of Saturn taken by the camera of Cassini on December 24, 2010, shows the storm latitudinal and longitudinal extension of 10,000 and 17,000 km respectively. Image: Carolyn Porco / CICLOPS / NASAJPL-CaltechSSI.)
“It’s a unique phenomenon and majestic in the solar system,” said Agustin Sanchez Lavega SINC, lead author of the research and director of the Planetary Sciences Group at the University of the Basque Country (UPV / EHU), referring to the great storm observed by the spacecraft Cassini .
The large white spot is the nickname by which astronomers call this weather phenomenon of massive proportions taking place on Saturn is unique in the solar system, and a width of the size of Earth. The disturbance expands and surrounds the planet, forming a ring of white clouds that have given their name.
These storms “are rare because they occur once for each year of Saturn (equivalent to 29.5 years),” says Sanchez Lavega.
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The new observation extends the knowledge of the early stages of development in the early universe
Could pave the way for a deeper understanding of the development of the primordial universe to the discovery of a group of astronomers was able to observe what is a candidate to be the farthest quasars that we know about so far.
This rare and brilliant “cosmic lighthouse” fueled by the black hole a black hole with two billion times more massive than the Sun, is by far the brightest object ever observed in the universe when it had more than 800 million years , ie only a small percentage of its current age.
The found object, called J1120 +0641 Ulas is 100 million years younger than the object that previously held the record of the distance.
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Astrophysicists who work in the optical, X-ray and millimeter must learn to cooperate more closely to understand what is happening
The mass of the largest objects in the universe, clusters of galaxies or clusters, depending on the method used to establish it? And ‘This is the disturbing question that astrophysicists have set an international conference organized dall’Astrophysics Research Institute (ARI) at John Moores University in Liverpool, devoted to “scaling relations of galaxy clusters.” The discussion we were the first results of the Planck satellite, which is performing a scan of the sky at millimeter wavelengths, and their comparison with the measurements in the optical Digitised Sky Survey and the Sloan new X-ray observations of the satellite XMM-Newton and Chandra. The determination of the mass of galaxy clusters is an important parameter to value their content of dark matter and trace the evolution over time.
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The second Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-2) of the European Space Agency, named Johannes Kepler , disintegrated during re-entry last night in Earth’s atmosphere. The ship, from the International Space Station had to deal with an other debris prior to its destruction under control.
(Representation of the reentry of ATV-2. Image: ESA – D.Ducros.)
The freighter or ATV European resupply ship completed its mission last night to disintegrate during a controlled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, becoming a shooting star. Contact with the ship was lost at 22h41 (GMT) at an altitude of 80 km.
The ship left the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday at 16h46, starting a solo flight as the team’s mission control in Toulouse (France), estimated parameters for controlled destruction. During this phase, the ATV had to make an unplanned maneuver: to avoid a piece of space junk, about two hours after leaving the station
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(Artist’s impression of protoplanetary disk of TW Hydrae. Image: ESA / NASA / JPL-Caltech)
(Recreation of the asteroid after the collision that defragmented. Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech)
The University of the Balearic Islands is home to the Astro-GR International Congress 2011 will take place from 5 to 9 September 2011 on the campus of the UIB in Palma. This meeting has been organized by the Relativity and Gravitation Group of UIB, will bring together over 80 scientists from around the world, including representatives from the European Space Agency (ESA). The central theme of this edition of the Astro-GR will be the impact and scientific potential of the new e-LISA space mission.
A team of researchers has observed a supermassive black hole at the moment, apparently, attracted a star that was near and absorbed. This has been possible due to space observatory Swiftat NASA.
(An engineer checks the James Webb telescope mirrors. Image: NASA)