Stories tagged astronomy
What moon am I?: Ancient cultures had special names for each full month's full moon. Tonight's full moon is a "Buck Moon." Can you figure out what moon this one is?
Courtesy Luc ViatourTonight there will be a full moon. It happens every 29.5 days, no big deal right?
But did you know each full moon through the cycle of a calendar year has a special name? Tonight’s full moon, the one for July, is called a “Buck Moon,” named after a male deer.
The special monthly names for the full moons go back to ancient cultures, who tied the full moons to hunting, weather, planting and harvesting cycles of the year. Full details can be found here.
FYI: Here is a rundown of the various names for each month’s full moon:
January – Wolf Moon
February – Snow Moon
March – Worm Moon
April – Pink Moon
May – Flower Moon
June – Strawberry Moon
July – Buck Moon
August – Sturgeon Moon
September – Harvest Moon
October – Hunter's Moon
November – Beaver Moon
December – Cold Moon
Tags : 
Are we next?: No. Definitely not.
Courtesy NASAY’all know what “fratricide” is? It’s when a brother kills a brother. Or when a sister kills her brother. Or when a sister and a brother kill their brother. Any combination, really, involving a brother getting iced.
Well, it has happened on Jupiter. A little brother has been torn apart by his giant siblings. And by giant, I mean many times the size of earth.
The Great Red Spot is a huge hurricane-like storm on the surface of Jupiter. The storm has been spinning for several hundred years, and has a diameter about three times that of Earth. Also, it’s red.
The spot happens to have a couple of little brothers, too, named Red Spot Jr. (or Oval Ba, if you can’t get your head around having a little brother that’s your “Jr.”) and the Little Red Spot. Or, I should say, it had a couple of little brothers. Now it has a little brother, and some spare brother chunks. You see, Great Red Spot, and Red Spot Jr. tore Little Red Spot to shreds last week.
Officials are still baffled as to the motive, but what we know is this: LRS was strolling innocently through its neighborhood of Jupiter when it was ambushed from either side by GRS and RSJ. No weapons are thought to have been involved, ironically making the crime that much more brutal—the larger storms ripped their little brother apart with their own stormy hands, and when GRS and RSJ ran off, all that was left of LRS were sad little shreds.
The proximity of the incident has complicated investigation, to say the least, but I have my own theories. Red Spot Junior, as it happens, only recently earned its title—it was not until only two years ago that it actually turned red. I think that RSJ may have been long overdue to prove itself as a true red spot. Both intimidated and protected by its larger brother, RSJ was content to allow GRS to be the planet’s muscle. Over the months, however, I guess that RSJ’s desire to prove itself intensified, or that GRS tired of doing its little brother’s dirty work. Either way, the two larger spots turned their sites towards their small brother, always the “simplest” of the three. I think it’s very likely that GRS provided cover and just watched while RSJ did the butcher’s work, but the blood doesn’t stand out on its recently acquired coloring.
The red color of the spots, although no doubt symbolic of their bloodthirsty hearts, is not entirely understood. It’s thought that the color may come from material sucked from deep in the planet as the storms get stronger. Phosphorus-containing molecules, for instance would turn red when exposed to sunlight on the planet’s surface.
Astronomers the world over are reeling from the violent act.
Researchers have used a solar eclipse to determine that Odysseus returned home from the Trojan Wars on April 16, 1178 B.C. Not bad for a character widely thought to be fictional.
Spiral galaxy M81: The black hole in the center of this galaxy is 70 million times as massive as the Sun, but it behaves exactly the same as much, much smaller black holes.
Courtesy X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wisconsin/D.Pooley & CfA/A.Zezas; Optical: NASA/ESA/CfA/A.Zezas; UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA/J.Huchra et al.; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA
This may fall under the heading of small comfort, but a new study has shown that all black holes, big or small, suck in matter in the same way. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, astronomers studied the different types of light (X-ray, radio and visible) emanating from the region around a massive black hole in the center of galaxy M81. They found that this light was the same as light coming from smaller black holes, even though this one is some 10 million times bigger, and is sucking in matter from a different source. This confirms a part of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which predicted that black holes would be fairly simple objects, not subject to a lot of variation. Which doesn’t really help much if you find yourself getting sucked in, but at least you know it’s nothing personal.
You can learn more about Chandra and X-ray astronomy in our Be an Astronomer! web exhibit. And you can ask questions of Megan Donahue, a scientist who work with the Chandra observatory.
Good lookin', bad soundin': Radiowaves that get caught up in the Northern Lights are creating some annoying noises that zap out into space.
Courtesy NASANo wonder aliens want to attack the Earth with such regularity in the movies. From out in space, we sound pretty annoying, like that renter in the apartment above you who insists on playing Yoko Ono records at 2:30 in the morning.
You laugh, but new recordings from space show that Earth, our home, makes an array of nasty sounds that ring out across the universe.
Scientists have actually known about this phenomenon since the 1970s. But today we have some audio evidence of this annoying noise. So what’s happening?
There’s a bunch of radiation created high above our planet. Solar winds blow it into Earth’s magnetic field and then things start to get loud. Basically, this radiation gets sucked into the same conditions that cause the Northern Lights. While they look great, they sound horrible – sorta like Brittney Spears.
Earth’s ionosphere keeps the radio waves created in this action from coming down toward us, which is a good thing. That’s because they’re about 10,000 times stronger than any radio signals we have on our planet.
Satellites from the European Space Agency's Cluster mission, however, have now detected strong beams of these annoying radio waves out in space.
Click here to hear a sample of what this space noise sounds like. Personally, I think I’ve experienced this sound, much quieter, after eating a bad burrito.
Two NASA scientists propose building giant telescopes on the Moon, using Moon dust as raw material. If successful, the telescopes would be larger than anything on Earth. And with no atmosphere to distort images, the pictures would be sharper, too.
It looks like ice on Mars: NASA scientists think the bright chunks must be ice.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M UniversityA few days ago on Mars, the robotic scoop on NASA’s Phoenix Lander uncovered some white, dice-sized chunks of material in a trench it was digging. Today, some of those same bright chunks are nowhere to be seen leading NASA scientists to think they were ice that has since evaporated.
"These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice,” said Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."
Check out the official ASU Phoenix site for some cool (pun intended) photos and more information about the mission.
LINKS
More info on NASA site
Soaring to space: The dual-hulled WhiteKnightTwo will soar through the atmosphere to an altitude of 50,000 feet where it will then launch SpaceShipTwo, cradled in the middle, off to space. WhiteKnightTwo should be ready for initial testing next month.
Courtesy Virgin GalacticWhile we’ve been getting cranked up here at SMM about this week’s opening of the Star Wars exhibit, where people will be able to get the virtual feel of what it’s like to be in one of the popular sci-fi movies, the folks at Virgin Galactic are frying up some bigger space fish.
Next month in the anticipated date for the roll-out of WhiteKnightTwo, a mother-ship aircraft that will be fly high into the sky to launch smaller crafts into space. The first big application of this technology, space tourism flights, are targeted to start in 2009. You can plunk down a down payment of $20,000 for a $200,000 ticket on a flight by clicking here to get to the Virgin Galactic website.
A shuttle for tourists: This diagram shows how SpaceShipTwo will work once it gets into space and also how it prepares for re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
Courtesy Virgin GalacticHere’s how it works. After taking off from a conventional airstrip, WhiteKnightTwo will climb to about 50,000 feet carrying the craft SpaceShipTwo in the space between its twin bodies.
SpaceShipTwo then fires its rockets and releases from WhiteKnightTwo roaring into a suborbital path 68 miles above the earth. In space, it can reach a speed of more than three times the speed of sound.
After giving its six passengers a unique view of space scenery and the experience of weightlessness, SpaceShipTwo turns back to Earth. Moving into the atmosphere, it extends its wings and aerodynamically flies back to the airstrip as a conventional plane landing.
Reservations have already been made by 254 people to take part in the flights. Virgin Galactic is shooting at booking 500 to 600 passengers before beginning flights. And the company’s business model shows that with that kind of participation, the endeavor will be profitable.
In the meantime, Virgin Galactic will be doing testing on the WhiteKnightTwo, with 130 to 150 test flights on the docket before commercial operations. Preliminary tests on SpaceShipOne and WhiteKnightOne were done in 2004.
Operations are currently being based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, but an official terminal for the “spaceline” is currently under construction in New Mexico. SpaceShipTwo will be brought out to the public sometime early next year.
Along with carrying passengers in SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic foresees WhiteKnightTwo being able to carry other payloads up toward space, including microsatellites. Also, WhiteKnightTwo could be used to carry huge water tanks for flyovers of forest fires.
Drinking where others have gone before: ISS to convert urine into drinking water
Would this make you less likely to want to join a space exploration crew on the International Space Station? On its next mission, space shuttle Endeavor will be delivering equipment that NASA has developed that will recycle astronauts' eliminations -- more specifically urine -- into drinking water. With crews of the space station growing from three to six people in the near future, the technology is needed to keep up with the water demands for a larger crew. You can get all the details here from USA Today.
Science Buzz and all related activities
Add a new comment