Jupiter's Big Moon Ganymede Albedo Mapped by Amateur Astronomer

An amateur astronomer has created the first-ever homemade brightness map of Jupiter's huge moon Ganymede in a magnificent display of how non-professional skywatchers can contribute to the field of observational astronomy.

Greek skywatcher Emmanuel Kardasis of the Hellenic Amateur Astronomy Association (HAAA) created the new Ganymede map using a common "hobby" telescope and off-the-shelf camera and computer equipment.

His map matches up well with images of Ganymede's surface taken by professionals, said officials with the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC), which is meeting this week in Madrid.

For example, Kardasis' reflected brightness (or albedo) map identifies such Ganymede features as Phrygia Sulcus, a system of grooves and ridges thousands of miles across, and a low-lying dark area called the Nicholson region.

To create the images, Kardasis attached a camera to his telescope and recorded a video of the ice-covered Ganymede, which is the largest moon in the solar system at 3,273 miles (5,268 kilometers) across.

He picked the video's sharpest frames, then enhanced them using photo-editing software, EPSC officials said.

"Ganymede has a tiny disk as seen from Earth so was a good test for my techniques," Kardisis said in a statement.

"If the same methods were applied to other worlds, perhaps [Jupiter's] volcanic moon Io, we could capture surface fluctuations."

"Professional observatories may create better images, but they cannot monitor our rapidly and ever-changing universe."

"The equipment amateurs need to generate products like his Ganymede map is relatively easy to find" Kardasis said.

"Creating useful images of planets requires a telescope with a diameter of at least eight inches. For tiny discs, such as the moons of Jupiter, bigger is definitely better," he said.

"My Ganymede images were made using an 11-inch telescope. You also need a good motor drive on your tripod, a sensitive camera, some freely available software and lots of patience!"

Milky Way's Magnetic Fields Mapped with Highest Precision

The sky map of the Faraday effect caused by the magnetic fields of the Milky Way. Red and blue colors indicate regions of the sky where the magnetic field points toward and away from the observer, respectively.

The band of the Milky Way (the plane of the galactic disk) extends horizontally in this panoramic view. The center of the Milky Way lies in the middle of the image. The North celestial pole is at the top left and the South Pole is at the bottom right.

With a unique new all-sky map, scientists at MPA have made significant progress toward measuring the magnetic field structure of the Milky Way in unprecedented detail.

Specifically, the map is of a quantity known as Faraday depth, which among other things, depends strongly on the magnetic fields along a particular line of sight.

To produce the map, data were combined from more than 41,000 individual measurements using a novel image reconstruction technique.

The work was a collaboration between scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), who are specialists in the new discipline of information field theory, and a large international team of radio astronomers.

The new map not only reveals the structure of the galactic magnetic field on large scales, but also small-scale features that provide information about turbulence in the galactic gas.

All galaxies are permeated by magnetic fields, including our own Milky Way galaxy. Despite intensive research, the origin of galactic magnetic fields is still unknown.

One assumes, however, that they are built up by dynamo processes in which mechanical energy is converted into magnetic energy.

Similar processes occur in the interior of the earth, the Sun, and - in the broadest sense - in the gadgets that power bicycle lights through peddling.

By revealing the magnetic field structure throughout the Milky Way, the new map provides important insights into the machinery of galactic dynamos.

One way to measure cosmic magnetic fields, which has been known for over 150 years, makes use of an effect known as Faraday rotation.

When polarized light passes through a magnetized medium, the plane of polarization rotates. The amount of rotation depends, among other things, on the strength and direction of the magnetic field.

Therefore, observing such rotation allows one to investigate the properties of the intervening magnetic fields.

To measure the magnetic field of our own galaxy, radio astronomers observe the polarized light from distant radio sources, which passes through the Milky Way on its way to the Earth.

The amount of rotation due to the Faraday effect can be deduced by measuring the polarization of the source at several frequencies.

Each such measurement can only provide information about a single path through the Galaxy. To get a complete picture of the magnetic fields in the Milky Way from Faraday rotation measurements, one must observe many sources distributed across the entire sky.

A large international collaboration of radio astronomers have provided data from 26 different projects to give a total of 41,330 individual measurements. On average, the complete catalogue contains approximately one radio source per square degree of sky.

UK Scientist have mapped Lung, skin cancer genetic codes

The genetic codes for lung and skin cancer have been mapped, an accomplishment that could lead to vastly improved treatments, scientists in Britain say.

The Wellcome Trust researchers told the BBC knowing the genetic code ultimately could mean better blood tests to spot tumors sooner and drugs that pinpoint cancer cells.

Scientists in 10 countries are moving on to catalog genes in other cancers, with Britain tackling breast cancer, Japan taking on liver cancer, India mouth cancer, China stomach cancer, and the United States cancers of the brain, ovary and pancreas, the British broadcaster reported Wednesday. It could take five years to complete the mapping.

"These catalogs are going to change the way we think about individual cancers," said Wellcome Trust scientist Professor Michael Stratton, the lead researcher in Britain. "By identifying all the cancer genes we will be able to develop new drugs that target the specific mutated genes and work out which patients will benefit from these novel treatments.

"We can envisage a time when following the removal of a cancer cataloging it will become routine."