NGC 4666. Click for a larger version. Credit: ESO

A very nice new release from the ESO. I’ve included the press release below, but if you have the time the site has additional images.

NGC 4666 is in the Constellation Virgo.

It’s even viewable from the Northern Hemisphere:
RA: 12h 45m 06.0s  Dec: -00°28’00″  (Epoch 2000)
It’s kind of small (Size: 4.2′ x 1.4′) but with a back yard telescope but at a magnitude 10.8 it is sufficiently bright you should be able to pick it out with dark adapted eyes.

The ESO press release:

The prominent galaxy NGC 4666 in the centre of the picture is a starburst galaxy, about 80 million light-years from Earth, in which particularly intense star formation is taking place. The starburst is thought to be caused by gravitational interactions between NGC 4666 and its neighbouring galaxies, including NGC 4668, visible to the lower left. These interactions often spark vigorous star-formation in the galaxies involved.

A combination of supernova explosions and strong winds from massive stars in the starburst region drives a vast flow of gas from the galaxy into space — a so-called “superwind”. The superwind is huge in scale, coming from the bright central region of the galaxy and extending for tens of thousands of light-years. As the superwind gas is very hot it emits radiation mostly as X-rays and in the radio part of the spectrum and cannot be seen in visible light images such as the one presented here.

This image was made as part of a follow-up to observations made with the ESA XMM-Newton space telescope in X-rays. NGC 4666 was the target of the original XMM-Newton observations, but thanks to the telescope’s wide field-of-view many other X-ray sources were also seen in the background. One such serendipitous detection is a faint galaxy cluster seen close to the bottom edge of the image, right of centre. This cluster is much further away from us than NGC 4666, at a distance of about three billion light-years.

In order to fully understand the nature of astronomical objects, researchers must study them at several wavelengths. This is because light of different wavelengths can tell us about different physical processes taking place. In this case the Wide Field Imager (WFI) [1] observations were made in visible light to further investigate these serendipitously detected X-ray objects — a good example of how astronomers using different telescopes work together to explore the Universe.

Hurricane Earl from the ISS. Wallpaper sizes below. Images: Douglas Wheelock aboard the ISS / Twitpic / NASA

Time for some new wallpaper on this machine. This is a picture of Hurricane Earl taken by Astronaut Douglas Wheelock aboard the International Space Station will do very nicely.

Earl is a Category 4 storm and is expected to come up the US east coast and have some sort if impact from the Carolinas to Nova Scotia.  Visit the National Hurricane Center for the details.

You can see more of Doug’s images on Twitpic (where this image came from), there are some real nice shots there so be sure to check it out.

Thanks to Doug for sharing!

Here are a few wallpaper versions:

“Venera” is the Russian word for “Venus”, it looks kinda like this in Cyrillic:  Behepa.

Believed location of the Venera landers, archival image

The series was very successful, becoming the first man-made device to enter the atmosphere of another planet (Venera 4), to soft-land on another planet (Venera 7), to return images from another planet surface (Venera 9), and to perform radar mapping of Venus (Venera 15).  Of course, during the time period this occurred, the US and the USSR were fussy with each other, so this amazing accomplishment didn’t receive a lot of air time in the West.

Venera 7 lander capsule, NASA archival image

The probes started out designed to land on a planet much like Earth, but when the atmosphere of Venus was discovered to be so much heavier and more hostile than that of Earth, the hull of the probes was strengthened to survive entry and landing.  We got the first images from the surface of Venus from the Venera probes:

Venera 9 panorama of Venusian surface (1975), archival image

The Venera orbiters mapped much of the surface of Venus, while the landers returned information of surface conditions, including some soil samples.  Venera 12 possibly even recorded lighting on Venus.

An interesting aside is that one of the Venera series that didn’t make it out of Earth’s orbit, becoming renamed “Kosmos 96″, is believed to have crash-landed near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.  It then became tangled up in what was known as the “Kecksburg Incident” among UFO enthusiasts.

All in all, the Venera series is a wonderful chapter in space exploration… one that didn’t receive near the attention it deserved.  Do you remember Venera?

Hat tip to Don — this is really good.

I’ve watched this over and over focusing on one thing or another, in the beginning you can follow individual asteroids.  The orbital elements were taken from the ‘astorb.dat’ data created by Ted Bowell and associates at http://www.naic.edu/~nolan/astorb.html.

Scott Manley did a nice job putting things together.

It’s Saturday again, and time for a riddle.  I’ll make today’s riddle easy, so if you’ve been hanging back through a couple of difficult ones, today is your day.  This one should be solved quickly, so get your guess in early.  And, by the way, even if you aren’t 100% sure of your answer, try it anyway.  Nobody is going to laugh at you.

Okay?  You ready to go?  Moving right along…

Today’s answer is an object.

It exists in the real world.

This is a singular thing, although for much of its history it was thought to be two things.

It was known to ancient man, but they didn’t know at what they were looking.

Our own knowledge of this thing has increased a great deal in the last 35 years, for a specific reason.

In the past, this object has been associated with speech, writing, arithmetic, and the conveyance of knowledge from one area to another.

It has many interesting features; in fact, some of them are downright weird.

This hard-shelled candy has a soft, chewy center.

That should do it.  You know where to find me; lurking as usual.  Remember, this one will go fast…

… in fact, speed is what it’s all about!

Fiddleback meets saxaphoneback

NJIT/BBSO NST sunspot

Amazing.  This is from the New Solar Telescope (NST) at the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO), using adaptive optics.  From the press release:

NJIT Distinguished Professor Philip R. Goode and the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) team have achieved “first light” using a deformable mirror in what is called adaptive optics at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO). Using this equipment, an image of a sunspot was published yesterday on the website of Ciel et l’Espace, as the photo of the day: http://www.cieletespace.fr/node/5752

“This photo of a sunspot is now the most detailed ever obtained in visible light,” according to Ciel et l’Espace. In September, the publication, a popular astronomy magazine, will publish several more photos of the Sun taken with BBSO’s new adaptive optics system.

Here’s a link to the press release if you’re interested in reading more about it.

This is cool stuff,  astronomers using the ESO HARPS instrument have discovered a planetary system with at least five planets and possibly a couple more around a Sun-like star. The star is called HD10180 and is located 127 light-years away in the constellation Hydrus.

Here’s the press release from the ESO:

“We have found what is most likely the system with the most planets yet discovered,” says Christophe Lovis, lead author of the paper reporting the result. “This remarkable discovery also highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research: the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets. Studies of planetary motions in the new system reveal complex gravitational interactions between the planets and give us insights into the long-term evolution of the system.”

The team of astronomers used the HARPS spectrograph, attached to ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile, for a six-year-long study of the Sun-like star HD 10180, located 127 light-years away in the southern constellation of Hydrus (the Male Water Snake). HARPS is an instrument with unrivalled measurement stability and great precision and is the world’s most successful exoplanet hunter.

Thanks to the 190 individual HARPS measurements, the astronomers detected the tiny back and forth motions of the star caused by the complex gravitational attractions from five or more planets. The five strongest signals correspond to planets with Neptune-like masses — between 13 and 25 Earth masses — which orbit the star with periods ranging from about 6 to 600 days. These planets are located between 0.06 and 1.4 times the Earth–Sun distance from their central star.

“We also have good reasons to believe that two other planets are present,” says Lovis. One would be a Saturn-like planet (with a minimum mass of 65 Earth masses) orbiting in 2200 days. The other would be the least massive exoplanet ever discovered, with a mass of about 1.4 times that of the Earth. It is very close to its host star, at just 2 percent of the Earth–Sun distance. One “year” on this planet would last only 1.18 Earth-days.

“This object causes a wobble of its star of only about 3 km/hour— slower than walking speed — and this motion is very hard to measure,” says team member Damien Ségransan. If confirmed, this object would be another example of a hot rocky planet, similar to Corot-7b (a href=”http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0933/”>eso0933).

The newly discovered system of planets around HD 10180 is unique in several respects. First of all, with at least five Neptune-like planets lying within a distance equivalent to the orbit of Mars, this system is more populated than our Solar System in its inner region, and has many more massive planets there. Furthermore, the system probably has no Jupiter-like gas giant. In addition, all the planets seem to have almost circular orbits.

So far, astronomers know of fifteen systems with at least three planets. The last record-holder was 55 Cancri, which contains five planets, two of them being giant planets. “Systems of low-mass planets like the one around HD 10180 appear to be quite common, but their formation history remains a puzzle,” says Lovis.

Using the new discovery as well as data for other planetary systems, the astronomers found an equivalent of the Titius–Bode law that exists in our Solar System: the distances of the planets from their star seem to follow a regular pattern. “This could be a signature of the formation process of these planetary systems,” says team member Michel Mayor.

Another important result found by the astronomers while studying these systems is that there is a relationship between the mass of a planetary system and the mass and chemical content of its host star. All very massive planetary systems are found around massive and metal-rich stars, while the four lowest-mass systems are found around lower-mass and metal-poor stars. Such properties confirm current theoretical models.

The discovery is announced today at the international colloquium “Detection and dynamics of transiting exoplanets”, at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence, France.

Click image to see the targets.

I am a HUGE fan of this program so if you have or know some kids or are a kid yourself, please participate.  If you are a teacher, oh please consider this for a class project!!!

Oh sure you have to do a little work but it’s a great project and I’m sure you will find it FUN!!  Stop rolling your eyes now and have a look (besides it’s only 500 words!):

Title: Cassini Scientist for a Day Essay Contest
Website: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/scientistforaday/
For Grades: 5-6, 7-8, and 9-12
Prizes: All participants receive a certificate.  Winners get their essays
posted on a NASA webpage and are invited to participate in a teleconference
with Cassini scientists and engineers.
Topic: Saturn and its rings and moons (detailed topic descriptions are on
the contest website)
Word Max: 500 words

Deadline: October 27, 2010 at noon Pacific Time
Description:
Write a 500 word essay about Saturn and its rings and moons.  Essay topics
change for each contest.  Winners will have their essays posted on a NASA
website and will have an opportunity to participate in a teleconference with
Cassini scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  The contest is
open to all students in the U.S. and in many other countries worldwide.

Download the flyer here (PDF)

Jupiter has had another impact as you can see in the video, this one on August 20^th.  Hard to say what the impacting body was.  There weren’t any black plumes so it could be the density/mass wasn’t like the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet (D/1993 F2) of 1994. Then again trajectory and velocity needs to be figured in, still it’s likely smaller.  Probably an object captured by Jupiter’s gravity, a moon of sorts, falling into the planet.  Not at all far fetched; an object ventures too close to the massive planet, gets captured into an orbit but doesn’t have enough velocity to keep it from spiraling to its demise.  From our perspective the object would lack the punch to do much more than end its life in a flash.

It is likely we will see more impacts like these thanks to dedicated observers like amateur astronomer Mr. Masayuki Tachikawa the gentleman who captured the video.

The tiny Martian moons Phobos and Deimos were discovered by Asaph Hall in August, 1877.  Deimos on the 12th, Phobos on the 18th.  Hall was specifically looking for moons around Mars when he found them.  The names come from the Iliad; Phobus and Deimus were the children of Ares, the Greek god of war (“Mars” is the Roman name for the same entity).

NASA/JPL Phobos and Deimos

Thought to be ancient captures, Phobos will eventually break apart and crash into Mars while Deimos will be pushed away from Mars, eventually drifting free.

NASA/ESA JPL Mars, Phobos, Deimos to scale

Phobos, the larger of the two moons, is also the closest moon to its primary than any other moon in the solar system.  It orbits so fast, so close to the planet that from the surface of Mars Phobos will rise in the West and set in the East.  Phobos is heavily cratered; the largest being the Stickney Crater, which looks to have almost disrupted the tiny moon.  The surface of Phobos is also grooved, thought to have formed as the moon passes through planetary ejecta from impacts on Mars.  Once thought to be hollow, Phobos is now known to be extremely porous.

Deimos, the personification of terror, is the smaller, more distant moon.  It is about 12.6 km is diameter, and shows the same weathered surface as Phobos.  Not as much is known about this little moon.  Even from the surface of Mars, Deimos appears to be a very bright star.