astro
catdynamics | August 6, 2009NASA's Kepler Planet Finding Mission makes its first discovery announcement.
Announcement on NASA TV, from www.nasa.gov at 2pm thursday 6th of August, 2009.
Now with figures and press release info.
UPDATE: Kepler Early Results Press Release.
And, they're off... the announcement, as rumoured is what they could squeeze out of the calibration data.
In particular, calibration suggests photometry is good enough, and stable enough - at least over month time scales, and hopefully longer - that Kepler will have sensitivity to find Earth sized planets, at least for the less luminous stars.…
catdynamics | July 28, 2009The precise measurement of the microwave background fluctuations by COBE, followed by the tour de force "concordance cosmology" results of the WMAP mission combined with decades of data on large scale structure, clusters of galaxies and distance ladder calibrations, up to and including type Ia supernovae, is one of the great pieces of modern complex physical science, and am endeavour which promises continued deep insight into the origin and properties of the universe, and the fundamental laws of physics.
Now with update and indirect word of WMAP reaction.
The current best estimate of the…
catdynamics | July 24, 2009It is carnival time, and the hits just keep on coming...
40 years ago today, three astronauts in the command module Columbia, of the Apollo 11 mission, splashed down in the Pacific, having just come back from the Moon.
As one does.
Cheap Astronomy has the third in a series of Apollo 11 podcasts: Getting Back Again, while the Lab Lemming talks about what they returned with, and the science of Apollo.
Babe in the Universe was at the Moonfest, both at JSC and Ames, seeing that people still really do care.
21st Century Waves contemplates that Giant Leap, and whether it went nowhere or is the…
catdynamics | July 22, 2009there's a persistent urban legend out there, that the three body problem can not be solved
this, of course, is not true:
so when XKCD promulgates the myth, the time comes when a stand must be taken
click to embiggen
sigh.
The classical problem of the solution of the motion of three bodies, moving under the influence of Newtonian gravitational dynamics only, is an old one.
The difficulty of the problem was quickly realised in the context of predicting the orbit of the Moon - just the Earth-Moon-Sun problem, though well posed, is extremely hard to even get to the point of having a formalism…
catdynamics | July 21, 2009So, Jupiter has now been impacted twice in 15 years: first by Shoemaker-Levy/9 in 1994 and now by the mystery Wesley's Object.
So what?
And, why didn't we see this coming?
impact 1994 - click to embiggen
SL9 was a respectably sized comet, probably a few km across, and it was spotted more than a year before it hit Jupiter.
SL9 was tidally torn apart by Jupiter before impact, leading to a chain of impacts, with associated transient "dark spots", bright in the infrared.
The current dark spot looks to be comparable to the first impact of the SL9 fragments, by fragment A, which was probably a…
catdynamics | July 20, 2009JPL scientists confirm new impact by a comet or asteroid on Jupiter using NASA infrared telescope in Hawaii. Independent confirmation by UC scientists using Keck telescope.
NASA's InfraRed Telescope Facility on Hawaii got near-IR images of the new dark spot on Jupiter.
As I speculated, a recent impact would bright in the infrared.
Sure enough, there it is.
Cool. Very cool.
NASA IRTF image showing infrared glow of new dark spot - click to embiggen
from JPL
Keck also got it.
Keck near IR imaging - Kalas et al - from Keck- click to embiggen
New Scientist story with Keck image
Here is the…
catdynamics | July 20, 2009"My son and I stand beneath the great night sky
And gaze up in wonder
I tell him the tale of Apollo And he says
"Why did they ever go?"
It may look like some empty gesture
To go all that way just to come back
But don't offer me a place out in cyberspace
Cos where in the hell's that at?"
B.B.
I had to look something up on nasa.gov earlier today, and was met with the grainy footage of an astronaut descending the ladder to the lunar surface, exactly 40 years ago today as I start typing this, thanks to the "flash" script that grabbed my browser as I entered the site.
I hadn't forgotten, just not…
catdynamics | July 19, 2009is it similar to the ones from yesteryear?
Could Jupiter have just been hit by a sizable comet?
Again?
Anthony Wesley at 15:54 UT from Australia.
Notes new dark spot near Jupiter's south pole.
Morphologically similar, in visible, to chain of spots seen after the Shoemaker-Levy/9 impacts
from www.acquerra.com.au - A. Wesley - click to embiggen
The dark spot, near the top of the image, is similar to the spots seen on Jupiter in 1994 after it was hit by comet Shoemaker-Levy/9.
So, the conjecture is, that this spot may also be due to an impact, by a comet or asteroid which snuck up on…
catdynamics | July 14, 2009Congratulations to SpaceX
Falcon 1 from SpaceX launched successfully on July 13th.
Launch placed Razaksat (Malaysian reconsat in near equatorial orbit) in orbit.
If the Falcon 9 maiden flight is successful later this year, or soon thereafter, well then we are really talking.
catdynamics | June 19, 2009NASA has announced the selection of the Small Explorer Missions for the current round of competition.
And the winners are...
The Small Explorer class missions are small (under $105 million including MODA but excluding launcher) fast science missions, there was a competition for two slots, with six concepts selected for further study last year. Final selection was just announced
IRIS: Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph
Solar physics mission - spectroscopy of the chromosphere
PI Alan Title from LockMart ATC in Palo Altoo
and
GEM: Gravity and Extreme Magnetism
the x-ray polarimetry mission…
catdynamics | June 9, 2009there is a strange thing on the arXiv today
Julianne ponder the metaness of the papers which must not be mentioned
You should read this
and this
It is a most interesting result.
But I may not comment, yet.
You can though.
catdynamics | June 8, 2009Congratulations to Wendy, Rob and Jeremy.
Recipients of the 2009 Gruber Cosmology Prize
For calibrating the Hubble constant, using Cepheid pulsations and the Hubble Space Telescope to find that the current value of the Hubble is 72 km/sec/Mpc
$500,00 to Prof. Wendy Freedman (Carnegie), Robert Kennicutt (Cambridge) and Jeremy Mould (Melbourne)
Like this: NGC 4603
catdynamics | June 5, 2009are the odds of a meteorite downing an aircraft reasonable?
John at CV asks whether a meteorite could have downed fligh 447?
he concludes it is possible, but not very likely.
As he notes the meteorite hypothesis was also suggested for flight 800 from JFK back in 1996, but careful forensics showed it was due to a fuel vapour explosion in the central tank.
Learning from a Tragedy: Explosions and Flight 800 (.pdf) by Joe Shepherd
The CV comments have much discussion about the validity of the approximations John uses in deriving the odds of an impact on a plane in flight.
There is a simpler…
catdynamics | June 5, 2009We hear that Kepler scientists looking at commissioning data are rather pleased...
Kepler scientists after first look photometry...
Here is the official word.
Note "...data are of very high quality and the scientists are very pleased with the precision of the data..."
This is, I gather, what we might call an understatement.
There is unprocessed pipeline calibration photometry and apparently it looks very very good indeed.
Should get even better with post-processing, though of course long term stability is not yet known.
Kepler field
They are being careful, not going to release anything…
catdynamics | June 1, 2009Members of the Augustine Commission on Human Space Flight Plans announced.
h/t NASAwatch
and the winners are...
- Norman Augustine (chair), retired chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corp., and former member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush
- Dr. Wanda Austin, president and CEO, The Aerospace Corp.
- Bohdan Bejmuk, chair, Constellation program Standing Review Board, and former manager of the Boeing Space Shuttle and Sea Launch programs
- Dr. Leroy Chiao, former astronaut, former International Space Station…
catdynamics | June 1, 2009Now do we have our spots back?
With bonus pretty pictures.
You'd think after my last debacle of prematurely pronouncing the reappearance of sunspots I'd have learned...
but, is it, could it be...?
click to embiggen
looks like a small complex of spots in the upper left quadrant...
there are associated emission lines, but today's magnetogram is not up yet
yup
is calling it, spot 1019, member of new solar cycle 24
close up from Robert Arnold
more pics at spaceweather.com 01/06/09
including this, rather cool one:
Sunspot 1019 and International Space Station transit, at the same time…
catdynamics | May 28, 2009NASA is due to name the 10 panel members of the Augustine panel on human spaceflight and NASA goals, possibly today.
The Orlando Sentinel thinks it knows who most of the members are.
The Write Stuff blog at the Orlando Sentinel names 8 names they claim to know will be on the panel.
Chris Chyba (astrobio/policy - Princeton)
Sally Ride (astronaut UC)
Lester Lyles (USAF ex-general - NASA advisory cmt)
Edward Crawley - (MIT engineer - earth obs.)
Bo Bejmuk (Boeing/Sea Launch)
Jeff Greason (Rotary/XCOR)
Wanda Austin (CEO Aerospace Corps)
Wow.
I'm glad to see Bejmuk and Greason on the list.…