Amateur Astronomer Catches Cosmic 'Tadpoles' in Celestial Sea

Emission nebula IC 410 lies roughly 12,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Auriga. Astrophotographer Steve Coates of Ocala, Fla. captured this photo on Dec. 1, 2013.

Credit: Steve Coates

Xmas Tree-Type Cluster and the Cone Nebula

Xmas Tree-Type Gaseous Cloud Cluster and the Cone Nebula.

NASA - Jupiter Shakes it off

Jupiter has been suffering more impacts over the last four years than ever previously observed, including this meteoroid impact on Sept. 10, 2012.

The left-hand image was taken from a red-filtered video by amateur astronomer George Hall of Dallas, Texas, on Sept. 10 and processed by Ricardo Hueso (University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain).

The right-hand image is an infrared image from NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, taken on Sept. 11.

Scientists compare the visible-light images to the infrared images to learn about the fireball's disruption of the Jovian atmosphere.

In this case, the infrared view reveals no long-term disturbance. The circles in the annotated version indicate where the impact occurred.

Scientists think the fireball was caused by an object less than 45 feet (15 meters) in diameter.

Image credit: NASA/IRTF/JPL-Caltech/G. Hall/University of the Basque Country

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!"

Near-Earth Asteroid Captured by Amateur Astronomer - Video

Gianluca Masi (www.virtualtelescope.eu) captured telescope video of asteroid 2012 QG42 on September 11, 2012. It will pass 1,739,839 miles from Earth on September 14th and is about the size of three football fields. Credit: Gianluca Masi

Jupiter fireball captured on video by amateur astronomer

Jupiter fireball captured on video by amateur astronomer Texan George Hall. http://spaceweather.com

On September 10, amateur astronomer George Hall caught an impactor – likely a gravitationally captured asteroid or comet – vapourising in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

It is likely the impactor was quite large to produce such a visible result, but the numbers aren’t in yet.

The after effects will also be telling.

The largest impactors, such at the 1994 comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, leave black marks on Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Jupiter experiences a greater number of impactors than Earth since its mass provides a strong gravitational pull on passing objects.

Jupiter is even credited with clearing space that would otherwise be filled with Earth-bound debris.

Amateur Astronomer Captures Jupiter

Image Credit: NASA/Damian Peach

This image of Jupiter and its moons, icy Io and, the largest of Jupter's moons, Ganymede was acquired by amateur astronomer Damian Peach, when Jupiter was close to opposition. 

South is up and the "Great Red Spot" is visible in the image.

Ground-based astronomy will play a vital role in the success of NASA's Juno mission.

Because Jupiter has such a dynamic atmosphere, images from amateur astronomers will assist the JunoCam instrument team predict what features will be visible when the camera's images are taken.

With its suite of science instruments, the Juno spacecraft will investigate the existence of a solid planetary core, map the planet's intense magnetic field, measure the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere and observe the planet's auroras.

Image credit: NASA/JPL

Juno's primary goal is to improve our understanding of Jupiter's formation and evolution.

The spacecraft will spend a year investigating the planet's origins, interior structure, deep atmosphere and magnetosphere.

Juno's study of Jupiter will help us to understand the history of our own solar system and provide new insight into how planetary systems form and develop in our galaxy and beyond.

Juno's principal investigator is Scott Bolton, Director of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver, Colo., is building the spacecraft. The Italian Space Agency, Rome, is contributing an infrared spectrometer instrument and a portion of the radio science experiment.

UK Astronomer Creates Wine from 4 Billion-Year-Old Meteorite

An UK astronomer has, apparently, created wine from a 4.5 billion year old meteorite!

Ex-pat, Ian Hutechon has labelled his astronomical-alcoholic creation - Meteorito. The wine was created by placing a meteorite inside a wine barrel.

The base wine was from Hutcheon's own vineyard, in the Cachapoal Valley of Chile, which he bought in 2009.

The specially chosen grapes are fermented for 25 days before placed in a vine barrel with a three-inch (7.6cm) piece of the meteorite.

Apparently there are already 10,000 litres of this other-worldly drink ready.

The meteorite itself, incidentally, came from an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and crashed into the Atacama Desert some 6,000 years ago.

The wine is available only at the Centro Astronomico Tagua Tagua observatory, which was established by Hutcheon in 2007.

"A major difference is that you are tasting elements from the birth of the solar system, and that for me this is a major difference," said Hutcheon, the creator of this special wine.

"You are tasting space, in a way you physically taste elements of the solar system and of the history of the meteorite that spent millions of years orbiting the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, you are tasting that," he added.

Stargazing Amateur Astronomer: Detecting a new planet

The public push initiated on BBC Two's Stargazing Live series to find planets beyond our Solar System has had an immediate result.

A viewer who answered the call has helped spot a world that appears to be circling a star dubbed SPH10066540.

The planet is described as being similar in size to our Neptune and circles its parent every 90 days.

Chris Holmes from Peterborough found it by looking through time-lapsed images of stars on Planethunters.org.

The website hosts data gathered by Nasa's Kepler space telescope, and asks volunteers to sift the information for anything unusual that might have been missed in a computer search.

"I've never had a telescope. I've had a passing interest in where things are in the sky, but never had any more knowledge about it than that," Mr Holmes told BBC News.

"Being involved in a project like this and actually being the one to find something is a very exciting position."

Chris Lintott from Oxford University who helps organise Planethunters.org added: "We're ecstatic. We've been groaning under the strain of all these people who want to help us, which is exactly how it should be."

The public participation project was launched last year, but it got a huge fillip when it was featured in the popular Stargazing series' return to BBC Two on Monday.

Volunteers have tripled to more than 100,000 people, and the number of images inspected has now reached a million.

The new planet candidate's status will need more checking, but it looks strong, said Dr Lintott.

"It would be our fifth detection since we started and our first British one as well," he added.

Amateur Astronomer Catches sight of China's Tiangong 1 space station

While watching a fly-over of Italy's SkyMed-2 satellite, a second brighter satellite - China's Tiangong 1 - flew across the view of amateur astronomer Kevin Fetter's low light security camera. The Chinese module was launched on September 29th.
Credit: Kevin Fetter

Astrophotographer: Captures Colossal Pinwheel Galaxy

The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101 or NGC 5457) is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars, about 100 billion of them could be similar to our sun.

CREDIT: Thierry Legault

Equipped with an arsenal of telescopes and cameras, a French skywatching enthusiast had to venture beyond his suburban home in the so-called City of Lights to capture a brilliant deep-sky image of the Pinwheel Galaxy.

"I live in the suburbs of Paris, in a site that is very polluted by city lights," amateur astronomer Thierry Legault wrote on his website.

"From my backyard, I can take images of the sun, the moon, planets and nebulas with narrow band filters.

For deep sky imaging (galaxies, comets, nebulas...), I am obliged to go in the land, after loading my van."

The talented astrophotographer, who has become known for his eye-catching images, works as an engineer by day.

The Pinwheel Galaxy, which is also known as Messier 101 or NGC 5457, is a spiral galaxy 21 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.

The galaxy was first discovered by Pierre Méchain on March 27, 1781. Charles Messier confirmed its position and it was included in the astronomer's famous Messier Catalogue as one of the final entries.

ISS interrupts image of NGC7000

Astro physicist Nick Howes was on an automated observing run, and decided to image NGC7000 just to test a new guide camera, and the ISS decided to fly right through the image.

Spaceweather.com

It might sound like an incredible stroke of luck to catch the ISS crossing an interstellar cloud, but this week the odds are tilted in some observers' favour.

In Europe, the space station is passing overhead as often as three times each night, crossing stars, planets, and distant nebulae as it slides silently from horizon to horizon over and over again.

If you live in that part of the world, check the Simple Satellite Tracker for flyby times; an incredible stroke of luck could be in the offing.

Planetary Nebula Discovered By Amateur Astronomer

Gemini Observatory image of Kronberger 61 showing the ionized shell of expelled gas resembling a soccer ball.

The light of the nebula here is primarily due to emission from twice-ionized oxygen, and its central star can be seen as the slightly bluer star very close to the center of the nebula.

The field of view is 2.2 x 3.4 arcminutes with north up (rotated 22 degrees west of north). Image processing by Travis Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage.

A colour composite image, it consists of two narrow-band images ([O III] and hydrogen alpha with three, 500-second integrations each) obtained with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i.

Below the bright star at left is a barred spiral galaxy in the distant background, careful inspection will reveal several additional distant galaxies in the image.

Russian astronomers predict asteroid Apophis collision with Earth

Russian astronomers have predicted that asteroid Apophis may strike Earth on April 13, 2036.

"Apophis will approach Earth at a distance of 37,000-38,000 kilometers on April 13, 2029. Its likely collision with Earth may occur on April 13, 2036," Professor Leonid Sokolov of the St. Petersburg State University said.

The scientist said, however, the chance of a collision in 2036 was extremely slim saying that the asteroid would likely disintegrate into smaller parts and smaller collisions with Earth could occur in the following years.

"Our task is to consider various alternatives and develop scenarios and plans of action depending on the results of further observations of Apophis," Sokolov said.

The asteroid, discovered in 2004, is considered the largest threat to our planet, although NASA scientists reduced the likelihood of a hazardous strike with Earth in 2036.

Russia's space agency announced its plans earlier to consider a project to prevent the large asteroid from colliding with Earth.

Qatar funds collaborative discovery of new exo-Planet

PhD students Grant Miller and David Brown used Scotland's largest optical telescope, the 0.9m diameter James Gregory telescope at the St Andrews campus observatory, to confirm the presence and measure the diameter of the new planet, contributing to the discovery of a new alien world.

The St Andrews team helped to find the new planet in record time thanks to teamwork and internet communications between astronomers in Qatar, the US, Germany, Denmark, and at the Universities of Leicester and Keele.

The group said this discovery was a good example of successful collaboration across international borders and time zones.

The planet, described as a 'hot Jupiter' which has been named Qatar-1b, adds to the growing list of alien planets orbiting distant stars discovered by scientists around the world.

These distant planets are detected by scientists who closely study the light emitted by stars. Because the planets orbit their parent star, and will regularly pass directly between it and the earth and block its light, causing a characteristic dip in the amount of light coming from the star.

While a huge number of stars are observed, only a few will have detectable planets.

In this case, Qatar's wide-angle cameras - located in New Mexico - took images of the sky every clear night beginning in early 2010. The digital images then were transmitted to the UK for computer analysis by collaborating astronomers at St Andrews, Leicester and Qatar.

Data from hundreds of thousands of stars was examined after it was extracted from the images, and the analysis narrowed the field to a few hundred possible stars.

The group followed up on the most promising candidates with Dr David Latham from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, making observations from Arizona to weed out binary-star systems with grazing eclipses that can mimic planetary transits. The resulting data measured the mass of the new planet.

Dr Latham said: "The discovery of Qatar-1b is a wonderful example of how science and modern communications can erase international borders and time zones. No one owns the stars. We can all be inspired by the discovery of distant worlds."

Qatar-1b is a gas giant planet, 20% larger than Jupiter in diameter and 10% more massive. It belongs to the 'hot Jupiter' family because it orbits 3.5 million km from its star, so close that it roasts at a temperature of around 1100 degrees Celsius. The orbital period is just 34 hours.

St Andrews astronomer Professor Keith Horne said: "Qatar-1b is just the beginning. With Qatar's new planet-hunting cameras, we should soon be finding smaller planets as well, hot Saturns and hot Neptunes, and ultimately, with a different technique, cool Earths.

Hubble Uncovers An Overheated Early Universe

This is the conclusion of a team of astronomers who used the new capabilities of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to probe the invisible, remote universe.

Using the newly installed Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) they have identified an era, from 11.7 to 11.3 billion years ago, when the universe stripped electrons off from primeval helium atoms - a process called ionization.

This process heated intergalactic gas and inhibited it from gravitationally collapsing to form new generations of stars in some small galaxies. The lowest-mass galaxies were not even able to hold onto their gas, and it escaped back into intergalactic space.

Michael Shull of the University of Colorado and his team were able to find the telltale helium spectral absorption lines in the ultraviolet light from a quasar - the brilliant core of an active galaxy.

The quasar beacon shines light through intervening clouds of otherwise invisible gas, like a headlight shining through a fog. The beam allows for a core-sample probe of the clouds of gas interspersed between galaxies in the early universe.

The universe went through an initial heat wave over 13 billion years ago when energy from early massive stars ionized cold interstellar hydrogen from the big bang. This epoch is actually called reionization because the hydrogen nuclei were originally in an ionized state shortly after the big bang.

But Hubble found that it would take another 2 billion years before the universe produced sources of ultraviolet radiation with enough energy to do the heavy lifting and reionize the primordial helium that was also cooked up in the big bang.

This radiation didn't come from stars, but rather from quasars. In fact the epoch when the helium was being reionized corresponds to a transitory time in the universe's history when quasars were most abundant.

The universe was a rambunctious place back then. Galaxies frequently collided, and this engorged supermassive black holes in the cores of galaxies with infalling gas. The black holes furiously converted some of the gravitational energy of this mass to powerful far-ultraviolet radiation that would blaze out of galaxies.

This heated the intergalactic helium from 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit to nearly 40,000 degrees. After the helium was reionized in the universe, intergalactic gas again cooled down and dwarf galaxies could resume normal assembly. "I imagine quite a few more dwarf galaxies may have formed if helium reionization had not taken place," said Shull.

So far Shull and his team only have one sightline to measure the helium transition, but the COS science team plans to use Hubble to look in other directions to see if the helium reionization uniformly took place across the universe.

Fireballs seen on Jupiter

A fleeting bright dot on each of these images of Jupiter marks a small comet or asteroid burning up in the atmosphere. The image on the left was taken on June 3, 2010, by amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley, who was visiting a friend in Broken Hill, Australia, when he obtained the image with a 37-centimeter (14.5-inch) telescope. Wesley's image is a color composite. The fireball appears on the right side of Wesley's image. The color image on the right was taken by amateur astronomer Masayuki Tachikawa, of Kumamoto, Japan, on Aug. 20, 2010. The fireball appears in the upper right of Tachikawa's image. Image credit: A. Wesley and M. Tachikawa

Amateur Astronomer Captures Jellyfish Nebula: astrophotography

This gorgeous image of the Jellyfish Nebula leads off our second installment of reader-contributed astrophotography.

Also known as IC443, the Jellyfish in the upper right of the image is about 5,000 light years away in the constellation Gemini. It is the remnant of a supernova that exploded around 30,000 light years ago.

This image was captured by Mel Martin with an SBIG STL-11000 astronomical camera and a Takahashi 5-inch refractor telescope, from his backyard observatory near Tucson. The image took three hours of total exposure, 2 hours through a hydrogen-alpha filter, and one hour of color data.

“What I find interesting in all these images are the subtle differences in star colors sprinkled around the field of view,” Martin wrote in an email to Wired.com. “Our eyes are attracted to the red hydrogen nebula, but the stars are really quite varied and pretty.”

Below, this view of the Whirlpool galaxy 23 million light years away was captured by Stem cell researcher Alexander Boiko from his backyard in Menlo Park, California with an SBIG STL-11000 astronomical camera and telescope

Stars put up for adoption to fund exoplanet research

Hard-up astronomers are raising funds for research by selling the stars.

A nonprofit organisation has started an adopt-a-star programme to raise money for an international research consortium to analyse data from NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission.

The programme, which is not affiliated with NASA, is called "Pale Blue Dot" to echo Carl Sagan's description of Earth as seen from space. It encourages donors to pick one of 100,000 stars in Kepler's field of view that show promise for hosting planets.

For $10, you – and you alone – can plant your personal flag in that star on Google Sky. As Kepler makes new discoveries, you will get email updates about your star and its potential planets.

"There are plenty of phony name-a-star things on the web, but I think we were the first scientists to use this sort of model for fundraising, and as a public outreach tool," says project leader Travis Metcalfe of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. "We're trying to educate people about what the Kepler mission does, and to get them excited about the quest for other Earths."

Mysterious Spot found on Venus

(Illustration: Melillo/Maxson/ESA/University of Wisconsin-Madison/ALPO)

A new, bright spot in the clouds of Venus was reported by amateur astronomer Frank Melillo on 19 July

Observations show that the spot had already spread out somewhat by the end of last week, and astronomers are awaiting more recent observations from Venus Express.

The spot is bright at ultraviolet wavelengths, which may argue against a meteoroid impact as a cause. That's because rocky bodies, with the exception of objects very rich in water ice, should cause an impact site to darken at ultraviolet wavelengths as it fills with debris that absorbs such light, says Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Venus Express team.

Powerful eruption?

Another possibility is that a gust of charged particles from the sun could have created the glow by energising a patch of the upper atmosphere. Alternatively, waves in the atmosphere, which trigger turbulence and are thought to carry material up and down, could have concentrated bright material to create the spot.

A volcanic eruption is another suspect. Venus boasts the most volcanoes of any planet in the solar system, and nearly 90% of its surface is covered by basaltic lava flows, although no 'smoking gun' has yet been found for current volcanic activity. But an eruption would have had to be very powerful to punch through a dense layer in Venus's atmosphere to create the spot some 65 to 70 kilometres above the planet's surface.

"It's fair to say something unusual happened on Venus. Unfortunately, we don't know what happened," Limaye