I always love to chat about stories by close-to-home scientists. I just talked recently about some University of Waterloo cosmological work, but today I can follow it up with a very close to home scientist that I’ve run into a few times. Something about seeing the achievements of those you know makes you feel pride too – it gives us all a good reason to support friends, colleagues, and even acquaintances, since we can share in their passion. Astronomer Lisa Esteves, a PhD candidate from the University of Toronto, has been watching exoplanets carefully with the Kepler Space Telescope, seeing...
That’s right it is not always Polaris. Over a human lifetime Polaris will always be our north star, but in the year 14,000, it will be the bright star Vega. This is due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis, which precesses like a spinning top, albeit much more slowly, over a 32,000 year period.
The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest large spiral to our own Milky Way, and the only major Galaxy moving toward us. Turns out its on a direct collision course, but we still have 3.5 Billion years to prepare, so its not exactly pressing news. On the plus side, studying Andromeda allows us to infer properties of more distant galaxies, and it gives us a map of what our own Milky Way Galaxy may look like. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a giant halo of gas around Andromeda, and the Milky Way may have a similar one. By...
Massive star clusters can pop into existence in a matter of a few million years, a very short period of time on astronomical time scales. They consist of hundreds or thousands of massive, bright, hot stars that will live relatively short lives of a few hundred millions of years. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have discovered a vanishingly rare molecular cloud of highly dense gas, containing no stars. It is poised to become a massive star cluster, and we found it in its infancy. “We may be witnessing one of the most ancient and extreme modes of...
As we push the limits of our technology, we naturally will find the biggest, the brightest, the smallest, the most extreme, and of course the most distant objects in the universe. We are at the time in history where we are beginning to see the edges of our universe in unprecedented detail. Eventually will will stop finding the biggest, brightest, and most distant, after which point our technology will serve to improve our precision and allow us to peer within these unique objects. Astronomers have used this incredible technology to discover the most distant galaxy in the universe, forming only...
I feel this will be a recurring theme with my posts, especially for those who read my blog on a regular basis. I love Pluto and am fascinated by new horizons. Its like a kitten chasing a ball of yarn. But with so many new possibilities popping up with Pluto as the new horizons rendezvous draws near, its hard to contain my excitement at the prospects of great science. The latest photo taken from just under 100 Million Km distant, shows some surface features for the first time. The features are interpreted as broad surface features, some are brigt and...
Okay so even though it is technically the first ever Earth-borne object to ever touch the surface of Mercury, it isn’t as hopeful as one might expect from the planet’s best and brightest scientists. But in all fairness we have crash landed on Mars, the Moon, and into the clouds of Jupiter, so it’s not uncommon. The Messenger spacecraft has been in space since 2004, orbiting the Sun multiple times in order to arrive at Mercury in 2008. Since then it has completed 4,103 orbits and obtained an incredible amount of scientific data as the first ever space probe to...
The recent launch of the Russian Progress spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station has entered a fast spin of about 20-30 RPM. The resupply mission has been aborted and currently mission controllers are focussing on salvaging the craft, attempting to regain control before it`s orbit degrades, sending it into the Earth`s atmosphere where it will burn up. Time will tell if the 3000 lbs of supplies and experiments survive.
It’s always nice to know that amazing science is being done in local institutions. Here in Ontario, Canada, we have 24 universities, and I had the pleasure of attending two of them, giving me a first hand look at the day to day work of astronomers. It certainly helped me realize how hard scientists work to get one simple result that the public will only care about for a day or two. About 95% of the work, from grant writing to data acquisition to data reduction to analysis and interpretation, is behind the scenes, and the final 5%, the result,...
Over the past few years, before heading to Ceres in a landmark rendezvous in March of 2015, the Dawn spacecraft mapped out the surface of the largest asteroid, Vesta. This amazing little applet shows the entire surface of the asteroid with some craters highlighted. Called Vestatrek, it shows all kinds of data from Dawn, including a 3D model of Vesta. Definitely worth the time to geek out. http://vestatrek.jpl.nasa.gov/
