Astronomy News and Research - July 2007 Archives
 | An international team of astronomers using NASA's Swift satellite and the Japanese/U.S. Suzaku X-ray observatory has discovered a new class of active galactic nuclei (AGN). ...> Full Article |
 | A rare, timely conjunction of ground-based instrumentation and a dozen satellites has helped scientists better understand how electrons in space can turn into 'killers'. 's Cluster constellation has contributed crucially to the finding. ...> Full Article |
 | In the three-and-a-half years that they've been on Mars, the NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity have never seen anything like this: a large-scale dust storm that has darkened the skies and put the rovers in the gravest danger they have yet faced. ...> Full Article |
Computer science PhD candidate Dustin Lang has embarked on his own Star Trek as part of astronometry.net, a collaboration between computer scientists at U of T and astronomers at New York University.
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 | Launch of NASA's Phoenix Mars lander is scheduled for Friday, Aug. 3, from Pad 17-A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. There are two instantaneous launch times, 5:35:18 and 6:11:24 a.m. EDT. NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center is responsible for the launch of Phoenix aboard a Delta II rocket. United Launch Alliance is conducting the launch service for NASA. Should the launch be postponed 24 hours for any reason, the launch times are 5:26:31 and 6:02:55 a.m. EDT. For a 48-hour postponement, the launch times are 5:17:23 and 5:53:59 a.m. EDT. ...> Full Article |
 | The Martian surface will be explored for conditions favorable for past or present life thanks to micro-machine technology supplied by Imperial College London. ...> Full Article |
 | Die-hard Pluto fans still seeking redemption for their demoted planet have cause for despair this week. New data shows that the dwarf planet Eris is 27 percent more massive than Pluto, thereby strengthening the decree last year that there are eight planets in the solar system and a growing list of dwarf planets. ...> Full Article |
 | Frigid geysers spewing material up through cracks in the crust of Pluto's companion Charon could be making this distant world into the equivalent of an outer solar system ice machine. ...> Full Article |
 | A team of European and American astronomers has announced the discovery of the best evidence yet for the nature of the star systems that explode as type Ia supernovae. The team obtained a unique set of observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and the Keck I 10-meter telescope in Hawaii. ...> Full Article |
 | University of Arizona astronomers who are probing the oxygen-rich environment around a supergiant star with one of the world's most sensitive radio telescopes have discovered a score of molecules that include compounds needed for life. ...> Full Article |
 | Scientists from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini mission have announced the discovery of a new moon orbiting Saturn, bringing the total number of known moons in the Saturnian system to 60. ...> Full Article |
 | The University of Arizona-based High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) group this week released a good look at a dust devil on Mars. This is not the storm bedeviling NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. ...> Full Article |
 | Thermodynamic studies of Martian clay soils suggest inconsistencies in theories of a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere, says a study in Nature. ...> Full Article |
On 18 May 2007, the VIRGO interferometer began its first phase of scientific operation. This is a crucial step in the hunt for gravitational waves. VIRGO, which is the largest European (French-Italian) detector, joins company with the LIGO detectors in the US. This ultra-high-performance array of observation instruments will in particular be able to observe the coalescence of binary black holes in distant galaxies and provide information about the direction of the source. VIRGO is jointly run by CNRS and Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN).
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A new study suggests that dogs and cats may get into more medical mischief during certain phases of the lunar cycle. The study, authored by Dr. Raegan Wells, a veterinarian, and her colleagues at Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, shows a possible link between an increase in emergency room visits for dogs and cats during days when the moon is at or near its fullest.
...> Full Article
Researchers at UCL (University College London) are part of an international team which has discovered water on an extra-solar planet for the first time. Findings will be published in this week's Nature (July 12).
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 | In the 40 years that humans have been traveling into space, the suits they wear have changed very little. The bulky, gas-pressurized outfits give astronauts a bubble of protection, but their significant mass and the pressure itself severely limit mobility. ...> Full Article |
A team of astronomers, headed by Wits Professor David Block, have discovered a gargantuan ring of carbon bearing stars spanning up to 4,000 light years in width, in the Triangulum Galaxy (also known as Messier 33). In a paper to appear in Europe's premier astronomy journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, the astronomers show that these carbon stars are the results of cosmic rain 3-million light years away - rain in the form of hydrogen gas falling onto the outer galactic disk.
...> Full Article
 | NASA's next Mars mission will look beneath a frigid arctic landscape for conditions favorable to past or present life. ...> Full Article |
Astronomers who used powerful telescopes in Arizona and Chile in a survey for planets around nearby stars have discovered that extrasolar planets more massive than Jupiter are extremely rare in other outer solar systems.
...> Full Article
 | Scientists at ASU's Mars Space Flight Facility are using the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to monitor a large dust storm on the Red Planet. ...> Full Article |
Chemists at Queen's University Belfast are working with NASA and scientists in Canada and the United States to design a telescope that can be stationed on the Moon.
...> Full Article
New discoveries about another universe whose collapse appears to have given birth to the one we live in today will be announced in the early online edition of the journal Nature Physics on July 1 and will be published in the August issue of the journal's print edition. "My paper introduces a new mathematical model that we can use to derive new details about the properties of a quantum state as it travels through the Big Bounce, which replaces the classical idea of a Big Bang as the beginning of our universe," said Martin Bojowald, assistant professor of physics at Penn State. Bojowald's research also suggests that, although it is possible to learn about many properties of the earlier universe, people always will be uncertain about some of these properties because his calculations reveal a "cosmic forgetfulness" that results from the extreme quantum forces during the Big Bounce.
...> Full Article
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