Powerful space storm hits Earth

NEW YORK (MYFOXNY) - 

NOAA

A geomagnetic storm that government scientists rate as severe hit the planet on Tuesday morning.
The storm rated as a G4 on a NOAA scale, which tops out at G5. It's the strongest storm that's happened in the current solar cycle, which lasts about 11 years.
The Space Weather Prediction Center says that the storm is from sun activity that started on March 15. Two magnetic eruptions occurred in quick succession. They combined into one larger eruption before intersecting the Earth's orbit on Tuesday.
The storm arrived earlier (10 a.m. EDT) and was stronger than predicted. The storm could last 24-36 hours.
It warned that there could be possible widespread voltage control problems at power systems and some protective systems could trip out key assets from the grid but that appeared to not be happening.
"We are receiving no reports of abnormality or disconnects on the power grid," NOAA's Tom Burger said at a Tuesday afternoon press briefing.
Spacecraft could also experience surface charging and tracking problems and corrections may be needed for orientation problems.
It warned that satellite navigation systems could be affected for hours and low-frequency radio navigation disrupted.
It also said that the aurora could be seen as far south as California because of the storm. Images on Twitter showed it was visible in the pre-dawn hours in Washington state.
There were other reports of the aurora being seen in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Alaska.
Widespread areas of Northern Europe were expected to see the aurora later Tuesday.
NOAA scientists say that depending on how long it lasts and how intense the storm continued to be, states as far south as from Alabama to northern California on Tuesday night.
A less severe storm hit Earth on January 7. That storm was classified as a G3. NOAA said that it has been about a decade since a G5 storm hit the planet.

Vega To Launch Skybox Satellites

By  Jeff Foust — March 17, 2015

Skybox Imaging, a commercial remote sensing company acquired last year by Google, currently has two remote sensing satellites in orbit and a dozen more under contract with SSL. Credit: Skybox artist's concept.

WASHINGTON — Arianespace has signed the first American customer for its Vega small launch vehicle, agreeing to launch several Skybox Imaging satellites in 2016, the launch services company announced March 17.
Arianespace said it will launch a “block” of Skybox Imaging satellites some time in 2016. Details of the contract, including the number of satellites to be launched and a more specific launch date, were not disclosed. Ching-Yu Hu, head of business operations for Skybox, said at the Satellite 2015 conference here March 17 that four satellites will be launched on the mission.
“This new contract with Skybox marks our first U.S. customer of the Vega and adds to Vega’s order book of nine small satellites to be launched in the coming three years,” Arianespace chief executive Stephane Israel said in a statement announcing the deal.
Skybox Imaging, a commercial remote sensing company acquired last year by Google, currently has two remote sensing satellites in orbit and a dozen more under contract with SSL. The two operational satellites were launched as secondary payloads on a Dnepr in November 2013 and a Soyuz in July 2014.
In a presentation at the Satellite 2015 conference here March 16, Joe Rothenberg, director of engineering and operations for Skybox Imaging, said that after the launch of a third prototype satellite late this year, the company plans to launch four satellites in July 2016 and six more in September 2016, with the final two of the 12 ordered from SSL to launch in early 2017. Rothenberg did not disclose the launch vehicles the company would use.
Skybox Imaging announced a contract with Orbital Sciences Corp. (now Orbital ATK) in February 2014 for the launch of six satellites on a Minotaur-C rocket, a commercial version of its Minotaur vehicle normally reserved for government-sponsored payloads. At the time of the contract announcement, the launch was planned for late 2015. Hu said March 17 that the Minotaur-C launch is now planned for 2016.
Skybox Imaging is also a customer for Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne small-satellite launch vehicle, one of several that Virgin announced when it announced the vehicle in 2012. Virgin Galactic Chief Executive George Whitesides said March 16 that the first LauncherOne mission should take place by the end of 2016.
Rothenberg said March 16 that Skybox Imaging is working a plan for a second group of 12 satellites that it expects to present to Google executives for funding this summer.

The Vega rocket lifting off for its inaugural launch in 2012. Credit: Arianespace

Why isn't the universe as bright as it should be?

This Hubble Space Telescope image of galaxy NGC 1275 reveals the fine, thread-like filamentary structures in the gas surrounding the galaxy. The red filaments are composed of cool gas being suspended by a magnetic field, and are surrounded by the 100-million-degree Fahrenheit gas in the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster. The filaments are dramatic markers of the feedback process through which energy is transferred from the central massive black hole to the surrounding gas.

Credit: Courtesy of NASA (edited by Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT)

A handful of new stars are born each year in the Milky Way, while many more blink on across the universe. But astronomers have observed that galaxies should be churning out millions more stars, based on the amount of interstellar gas available.

Now researchers from MIT and Michigan State University have pieced together a theory describing how clusters of galaxies may regulate star formation. They describe their framework this week in the journal Nature.
When intracluster gas cools rapidly, it condenses, then collapses to form new stars. Scientists have long thought that something must be keeping the gas from cooling enough to generate more stars -- but exactly what has remained a mystery.
For some galaxy clusters, the researchers say, the intracluster gas may simply be too hot -- on the order of hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius. Even if one region experiences some cooling, the intensity of the surrounding heat would keep that region from cooling further -- an effect known as conduction.
"It would be like putting an ice cube in a boiling pot of water -- the average temperature is pretty much still boiling," says Michael McDonald, a Hubble Fellow in MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. "At super-high temperatures, conduction smooths out the temperature distribution so you don't get any of these cold clouds that should form stars."
For so-called "cool core" galaxy clusters, the gas near the center may be cool enough to form some stars. However, a portion of this cooled gas may rain down into a central black hole, which then spews out hot material that serves to reheat the surroundings, preventing many stars from forming -- an effect the team terms "precipitation-driven feedback."
"Some stars will form, but before it gets too out of hand, the black hole will heat everything back up -- it's like a thermostat for the cluster," McDonald says. "The combination of conduction and precipitation-driven feedback provides a simple, clear picture of how star formation is governed in galaxy clusters."
Crossing a galactic threshold
Throughout the universe, there exist two main classes of galaxy clusters: cool core clusters -- those that are rapidly cooling and forming stars -- and non-cool core clusters -- those have not had sufficient time to cool.
The Coma cluster, a non-cool cluster, is filled with gas at a scorching 100 million degrees Celsius. To form any stars, this gas would have to cool for several billion years. In contrast, the nearby Perseus cluster is a cool core cluster whose intracluster gas is a relatively mild several million degrees Celsius. New stars occasionally emerge from the cooling of this gas in the Perseus cluster, though not as many as scientists would predict.
"The amount of fuel for star formation outpaces the amount of stars 10 times, so these clusters should be really star-rich," McDonald says. "You really need some mechanism to prevent gas from cooling, otherwise the universe would have 10 times as many stars."
McDonald and his colleagues worked out a theoretical framework that relies on two anti-cooling mechanisms.
The group calculated the behavior of intracluster gas based on a galaxy cluster's radius, mass, density, and temperature. The researchers found that there is a critical temperature threshold below which the cooling of gas accelerates significantly, causing gas to cool rapidly enough to form stars.
According to the group's theory, two different mechanisms regulate star formation, depending on whether a galaxy cluster is above or below the temperature threshold. For clusters that are significantly above the threshold, conduction puts a damper on star formation: The surrounding hot gas overwhelms any pockets of cold gas that may form, keeping everything in the cluster at high temperatures.
"For these hotter clusters, they're stuck in this hot state, and will never cool and form stars," McDonald says. "Once you get into this very high-temperature regime, cooling is really inefficient, and they're stuck there forever."
For gas at temperatures closer to the lower threshold, it's much easier to cool to form stars. However, in these clusters, precipitation-driven feedback starts to kick in to regulate star formation: While cooling gas can quickly condense into clouds of droplets that can form stars, these droplets can also rain down into a central black hole -- in which case the black hole may emit hot jets of material back into the cluster, heating the surrounding gas back up to prevent further stars from forming.
"In the Perseus cluster, we see these jets acting on hot gas, with all these bubbles and ripples and shockwaves," McDonald says. "Now we have a good sense of what triggered those jets, which was precipitating gas falling onto the black hole."
On track
McDonald and his colleagues compared their theoretical framework to observations of distant galaxy clusters, and found that their theory matched the observed differences between clusters. The team collected data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the South Pole Telescope -- an observatory in Antarctica that searches for far-off massive galaxy clusters.
The researchers compared their theoretical framework with the gas cooling times of every known galaxy cluster, and found that clusters filtered into two populations -- very slowly cooling clusters, and clusters that are cooling rapidly, closer to the rate predicted by the group as a critical threshold.
By using the theoretical framework, McDonald says researchers may be able to predict the evolution of galaxy clusters, and the stars they produce.
"We've built a track that clusters follow," McDonald says. "The nice, simple thing about this framework is that you're stuck in one of two modes, for a very long time, until something very catastrophic bumps you out, like a head-on collision with another cluster."
The researchers hope to look deeper into the theory to see whether the mechanisms regulating star formation in clusters also apply to individual galaxies. Preliminary evidence, he says, suggests that is the case.
"If we can use all this information to understand why or why not stars form around us, then we've made a big step forward," McDonald says.

---

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Jennifer Chu. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Astronomers find star speeding out of the galaxy Read more at http://newsdaily.com/2015/03/astronomers-find-star-speeding-out-of-the-galaxy/#jg67yt9smJQGUOCv.99

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – Astronomers have found a star hurtling through the galaxy faster than any other, the result of being blasted away by the explosion of a massive partner star, researchers said on Thursday.
The star, known as US 708, is traveling at about 746 miles (1,200 km) per second, fast enough to actually leave the Milky Way galaxy in about 25 million years, said astronomer Stephan Geier with Germany-based European Southern Observatory, which operates three telescopes in Chile.
“At that speed you could travel from Earth to the moon in five minutes,” noted University of Hawaii astronomer Eugene Magnier.
US 708 is not the first star astronomers have found that is moving fast enough to escape the galaxy, but it is the only one so far that appears to have been slingshot in a supernova explosion.
The 20 other stars discovered so far that are heading out of the galaxy likely got their impetus from coming too close to the supermassive black hole that lives at the center of the Milky Way, scientists report in an article in this week’s edition of the journal Science.
Before it was sent streaming across the galaxy, US 708 was once a cool giant star, but it was stripped of nearly all of its hydrogen by a closely orbiting partner. Scientists suspect it was this feeding that triggered the partner’s detonation.
If confirmed, these types of ejected stars may provide more insight into how supernova explosions occur. Since the explosions give off a fairly standard amount of radiation, scientists can calculate their distances by measuring how bright or dim they appear and determine how fast the universe is expanding.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Click For Restrictions

Read more at http://newsdaily.com/2015/03/astronomers-find-star-speeding-out-of-the-galaxy/#jg67yt9smJQGUOCv.99

Planets smashed into dust near supermassive black holes

---

2006 Hubble Space Telescope image of the "light echo" of dust illuminated by the nearby star V838 Monocerotis that became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun in January 2002. The flash is believed to have been caused by a giant collision of some kind, e.g., between two stars or a star and a planet. Credit: NASA, ESA, and H. Bond (STScI)

Fat doughnut-shaped dust shrouds that obscure about half of supermassive black holes could be the result of high speed crashes between planets and asteroids, according to a new theory from an international team of astronomers.

The scientists, led by Dr. Sergei Nayakshin of the University of Leicester, are publishing their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Supermassive black holes reside in the central parts of most galaxies. Observations indicate that about 50% of them are hidden from view by mysterious clouds of dust, the origin of which is not completely understood. The new theory is inspired by our own Solar System, where the so-called zodiacal dust is known to originate from collisions between solid bodies such as asteroids and comets. The scientists propose that the central regions of galaxies contain not only black holes and stars but also planets and asteroids.
Collisions between these rocky objects would occur at colossal speeds as large as 1000 km per second, continuously shattering and fragmenting the objects, until eventually they end up as microscopic dust. Dr. Nayakshin points out that this harsh environment -- radiation and frequent collisions -- would make the planets orbiting supermassive black holes sterile, even before they are destroyed. "Too bad for life on these planets," he says, "but on the other hand the dust created in this way blocks much of the harmful radiation from reaching the rest of the host galaxy. This in turn may make it easier for life to prosper elsewhere in the rest of the central region of the galaxy."
He also believes that understanding the origin of the dust near black holes is important in our models of how these monsters grow and how exactly they affect their host galaxies. "We suspect that the supermassive black hole in our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, expelled most of the gas that would otherwise turn into more stars and planets," he continues, "Understanding the origin of the dust in the inner regions of galaxies would take us one step closer to solving the mystery of the supermassive black holes."

---

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

The powerful gravity of a galaxy embedded in a massive cluster of galaxies in this Hubble Space Telescope image is producing multiple images of a single distant supernova far behind it. Both the galaxy and the galaxy cluster are acting like a giant cosmic lens, bending and magnifying light from the supernova behind them, an effect called gravitational lensing.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Rodney (JHU) and the FrontierSN team; T. Treu (UCLA), P. Kelly (UC Berkeley), and the GLASS team; J. Lotz (STScI) and the Frontier Fields team; M. Postman (STScI) and the CLASH team; and Z. Levay (STScI)

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have spotted for the first time a distant supernova split into four images. The multiple images of the exploding star are caused by the powerful gravity of a foreground elliptical galaxy embedded in a massive cluster of galaxies.

This unique observation will help astronomers refine their estimates of the amount and distribution of dark matter in the lensing galaxy and cluster. Dark matter cannot be seen directly but is believed to make up most of the universe's mass.
The gravity from both the elliptical galaxy and the galaxy cluster distorts and magnifies the light from the supernova behind them, an effect called gravitational lensing. First predicted by Albert Einstein, this effect is similar to a glass lens bending light to magnify and distort the image of an object behind it. The multiple images are arranged around the elliptical galaxy in a cross-shaped pattern called an Einstein Cross, a name originally given to a particular multiply imaged quasar, the bright core of an active galaxy.
The elliptical galaxy and its cluster, MACS J1149.6+2223, are 5 billion light-years from Earth. The supernova behind it is 9.3 billion light-years away.
Although astronomers have discovered dozens of multiply imaged galaxies and quasars, they have never seen a stellar explosion resolved into several images. "It really threw me for a loop when I spotted the four images surrounding the galaxy -- it was a complete surprise," said Patrick Kelly of the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the Grism Lens Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS) collaboration. The GLASS group is working with the Frontier Field Supernova Search (FrontierSN) team to analyze the exploding star. Kelly is also the lead author on the science paper, which will appear on March 6 in a special issue of the journal Science celebrating the centenary of Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.
When the four images fade away, astronomers predict they will have a rare opportunity to catch a rerun of the supernova. This is because the current four-image pattern is only one part of the lensing display. The supernova may have appeared as a single image some 20 years ago elsewhere in the cluster field, and it is expected to reappear once more within the next five years.
This prediction is based on computer models of the cluster, which describe the various paths the supernova light is taking through the maze of clumpy dark matter in the galactic grouping. Each image takes a different route through the cluster and arrives at a different time, due, in part, to differences in the length of the pathways the light follows to reach Earth. The four supernova images captured by Hubble, for example, appeared within a few days or weeks of each other.
The supernova's various light paths are analogous to several trains that leave a station at the same time, all traveling at the same speed and bound for the same location. Each train, however, takes a different route, and the distance for each route is not the same. Some trains travel over hills. Others go through valleys, and still others chug around mountains. Because the trains travel over different track lengths across different terrain, they do not arrive at their destination at the same time. Similarly, the supernova images do not appear at the same time because some of the light is delayed by traveling around bends created by the gravity of dense dark matter in the intervening galaxy cluster.
"Our model for the dark matter in the cluster gives us the prediction of when the next image will appear because it tells us how long each train track is, which correlates with time," said Steve Rodney of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, leader of the FrontierSN team. "We already missed one that we think appeared about 20 years ago, and we found these four images after they had already appeared. The prediction of this future image is the one that is most exciting because we might be able to catch it. We hope to come back to this field with Hubble, and we'll keep looking to see when that expected next image appears."
Measuring the time delays between images offers clues to the type of warped-space terrain the supernova's light had to cover and will help the astronomers fine-tune the models that map out the cluster's mass. "We will measure the time delays, and we'll go back to the models and compare them to the model predictions of the light paths," Kelly said. "The lens modelers, such as Adi Zitrin (California Institute of Technology) from our team, will then be able to adjust their models to more accurately recreate the landscape of dark matter, which dictates the light travel time."
While making a routine search of the GLASS team's data, Kelly spotted the four images of the exploding star on Nov. 11, 2014. The FrontierSN and GLASS teams have been searching for such highly magnified explosions since 2013, and this object is their most spectacular discovery. The supernova appears about 20 times brighter than its natural brightness, due to the combined effects of two overlapping lenses. The dominant lensing effect is from the massive galaxy cluster, which focuses the supernova light along at least three separate paths. A secondary lensing effect occurs when one of those light paths happens to be precisely aligned with a specific elliptical galaxy within the cluster. "The dark matter of that individual galaxy then bends and refocuses the light into four more paths," Rodney explained, "generating the rare Einstein Cross pattern we are currently observing."
The two teams spent a week analyzing the object's light, confirming it was the signature of a supernova. They then turned to the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, to measure the distance to the supernova's host galaxy.
The astronomers nicknamed the supernova Refsdal in honor of Norwegian astronomer Sjur Refsdal, who, in 1964, first proposed using time-delayed images from a lensed supernova to study the expansion of the universe. "Astronomers have been looking to find one ever since," said Tommaso Treu of the University of California, Los Angeles, the GLASS project's principal investigator. "The long wait is over!"

---

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Astronomers find recoiling supermassive black hole

In a Hubble picture, a red circle indicates an object in a distant galaxy that could be an ejected black hole.

Credit: Image courtesy of SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research

 

Astronomers have found a possible supermassive black hole that is recoiling out of a distant galaxy at high speed. The black hole, visible with X-rays as a clear star, is not located in the center of the galaxy, as would normally be the case. Recoiling black holes are interesting because they provide insights into how supermassive black holes develop in the center of galaxies.

Utrecht University student Marianne Heida discovered the bizarre star during her final undergraduate project, undertaken at SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, in a galaxy more than half a billion light years away. To make the discovery, she had to compare hundreds of thousands of X-ray sources, picked up by chance, with the positions of millions of galaxies. Normally each galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its centre that sometimes lights up under X-rays. Yet the star Heida discovered was clearly not located in the center of the system. However, under X-rays the object is so bright that it can best be compared to other bright supermassive black holes in the universe.
A supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy easily weighs more than 1 billion times the mass of the sun. Such a heavy object could be located so far from the center of a system if it recoils out of the center at considerable speed. The expulsion can take place under special conditions when two black holes merge. The newly formed black hole created after the merging process is then shot out of the center of the system at high speed. Over the last few years various predictions have been made about the speed at which the hole would be slung away. These calculations have only recently become possible, as they require extremely powerful computers. The calculations reveal that the speed of the hole mainly depends on the direction and speed with which the two black holes rotate around their axes before merging.
Heida's research result is probably the tip of the iceberg. Heida says: "We have found even more of this strange class of X-ray sources. However, for these objects we first of all need accurate measurements from NASA's Chandra satellite to pinpoint them more precisely." Finding more recoiling black holes will provide a better understanding of the characteristics of black holes before they merge.
In future, it might even be possible to observe this process with the planned LISA satellite. Astronomers hope to use this satellite to measure the gravity waves that the two merging black holes emit. Ultimately this information must tell us if supermassive black holes in the cores of galaxies are the result of many lighter black holes merging.
Marianne Heida carried out her research at SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Utrecht under the supervision of Peter Jonker. The research results have been accepted for publication in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The authors are: Peter G. Jonker (SRON), Manuel A.P. Torres (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), Andy C. Fabian (Cambridge), Marianne Heida (Utrecht), Giovanni Miniutti (Centro de Astrobiologia), Dave Pooley (Wisconsin).

---

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

From space junk to asteroids, dark energy camera unveils small objects in our solar system

Composite picture of stars over the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

Credit: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab

The Dark Energy Camera, or DECam, peers deep into space from its mount on the 4-meter Victor Blanco Telescope high in the Chilean Andes.

Thirty percent of the camera's observing time -- about 105 nights per year -- go to the team that built it: scientists working on the Dark Energy Survey.
Another small percentage of the year is spent on maintenance and upgrades to the telescope. So who else gets to use the 570-megapixel DECam, built at the Department of Energy's Fermilab? Dozens of other projects share its remaining time.
Many of them study objects far across the cosmos, but five of them investigate ones closer to home.
Overall, these five groups take up just 20 percent of the available time, but they've already taught us some interesting things about our planetary neighborhood and promise to tell us more in the future.
Far-out asteroids
Stony Brook University's Aren Heinze and the University of Western Ontario's Stanimir Metchev used DECam for four nights in early 2014 to search for unknown members of our solar system's main asteroid belt, which sits between Mars and Jupiter.
To detect such faint objects, one needs to take a long exposure. However, the paths of these asteroids lie close enough to Earth that taking an exposure longer than a few minutes results in blurred images. Heinze and Metchev's fix was to stack more than 100 images taken in less than two minutes each.
With this method, the team expects to measure the positions, motions and brightnesses of hundreds of main belt asteroids not seen before. They plan to release their survey results in late 2015, and an early partial analysis indicates they've already found hundreds of asteroids in a region smaller than DECam's field of view -- about 20 times the area of the full moon.
Whole new worlds
Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC and Chad Trujillo of Gemini Observatory in Hilo, Hawaii, use DECam to look for distant denizens of our solar system. The scientists have imaged the sky for two five-night stretches every year since November 2012.
Every night, the DECam's sensitive eye captures images of an area of sky totaling about 200 to 250 times the area of the full moon, returning to each field of view three times. Sheppard and Trujillo run the images from each night through software that tags everything that moves.
"We have to verify everything by eye," Sheppard says. So they look through about 60 images a night, or 300 total from a perfect five-night observing run, a process that gives them a few dozen objects to study at Carnegie's Magellan Telescope.
The scientists want to find worlds beyond Pluto and its brethren -- a region called the Kuiper Belt, which lies some 30 to 50 astronomical units from the sun (compared to the Earth's 1). On their first observing run, they caught one.
This new world, with the catalog name of 2012 VP113, comes as close as 80 astronomical units from the sun and journeys as far as 450. Along with Sedna, a minor planet discovered a decade ago, it is one of just two objects found in what was once thought of as a complete no man's land.
Sheppard and Trujillo also have discovered another dwarf planet that is one of the top 10 brightest objects beyond Neptune, a new comet, and an asteroid that occasionally sprouts an unexpected tail of dust.
Mythical creatures
Northern Arizona University's David Trilling and colleagues used the DECam for three nights in 2014 to look for "centaurs" -- so called because they have characteristics of both asteroids and comets. Astronomers believe centaurs could be lost Kuiper Belt objects that now lie between Jupiter and Neptune.
Trilling's team expects to find about 50 centaurs in a wide range of sizes. Because centaurs are nearer to the sun than Kuiper Belt objects, they are brighter and thus easier to observe. The scientists hope to learn more about the size distribution of Kuiper Belt objects by studying the sizes of centaurs. The group recently completed its observations and plan to report them later in 2015.
Next-door neighbors
Lori Allen of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory outside Tucson, Arizona, and her colleagues are looking for objects closer than 1.3 astronomical units from the sun. These near-Earth objects have orbits that can cross Earth's -- creating the potential for collision.
Allen's team specializes in some of the least-studied NEOs: ones smaller than 50 meters across.
Even small NEOs can be destructive, as demonstrated by the February 2013 NEO that exploded above Chelyabinsk, Russia. The space rock was just 20 meters wide, but the shockwave from its blast shattered windows, which caused injuries to more than 1000 people.
In 2014, Allen's team used the DECam for 10 nights. They have 20 more nights to use in 2015 and 2016.
They have yet to release specific findings from the survey's first year, but the researchers say they have a handle of the distribution of NEOs down to just 10 meters wide. They also expect to discover about 100 NEOs the size of the one that exploded above Chelyabinsk.
Space waste
Most surveys looking for "space junk" -- inactive satellites, parts of spacecraft and the like in orbit around the Earth -- can see only pieces larger than about 20 centimeters. But there's a lot more material out there.
How much is a question Patrick Seitzer of the University of Michigan and colleagues hope to answer. They used DECam to hunt for debris smaller than 10 centimeters, or the size of a smartphone, in geosynchronous orbit.
The astronomers need to capture at least four images of each piece of debris to determine its position, motion and brightness. This can tell them about the risk from small debris to satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Their results are scheduled for release in mid-2015.

---

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Old-looking galaxy in a young universe: Astronomers find dust in the early universe

Dust plays an extremely important role in the universe -- both in the formation of planets and new stars. But dust was not there from the beginning and the earliest galaxies had no dust, only gas. Now an international team of astronomers, led by researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, has discovered a dust-filled galaxy from the very early universe. The discovery demonstrates that galaxies were very quickly enriched with dust particles containing elements such as carbon and oxygen, which could form planets. The results are published in the scientific journal, Nature.

Cosmic dust are smoke-like particles made up of either carbon (fine soot) or silicates (fine sand). The dust is comprised primarily of elements such as carbon, silicon, magnesium, iron and oxygen. The elements are synthesised by the nuclear combustion process in stars and driven out into space when the star dies and explodes. In space, they gather in clouds of dust and gas, which form new stars, and for each generation of new stars, more elements are formed. This is a slow process and in the very earliest galaxies in the history of the universe, dust had not yet formed.
But now a team of researchers have discovered a very distant galaxy that contains a large amount of dust, changing astronomers' previous calculations of how quickly the dust was formed.
"It is the first time dust has been discovered in one of the most distant galaxies ever observed -- only 700 million years after the Big Bang. It is a galaxy of modest size and yet it is already full of dust. This is very surprising and it tells us that ordinary galaxies were enriched with heavier elements far faster than expected," explains Darach Watson, an astrophysicist with the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
Darach Watson led the project, with Lise Christensen from the Dark Cosmology Centre and researchers from Sweden, Scotland, France and Italy.
Lucky location
Because the galaxy is very distant and therefore incredibly faint, it would not usually be detectable from Earth. But a fortunate circumstance means the light from it has been amplified. This is because a large cluster of galaxies called Abell 1689, lies between the galaxy and Earth. The light is refracted by the gravity of the galaxy cluster, thus amplifying the distant galaxy. The phenomenon is called gravitational lensing and it works like a magnifying glass.
"We looked for the most distant galaxies in the universe. Based on the colours of the light observed with the Hubble Space Telescope we can see which galaxies could be very distant. Using observations from the very sensitive instrument, the X-shooter spectrograph on the Large Telescope, VLT in Chile, we measured the galaxy's spectrum and from that calculated its redshift, i.e. the change in the light's wavelength as the object recedes from us. From the redshift we can calculate the galaxy's distance from us and it turned out to be, as we suspected, one of the most distant galaxies we know of to date," explains Lise Christensen, an astrophysicist at the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute.
Early planet formation
Darach Watson explains that they then studied the galaxy with the ALMA telescopes, which can observe far-infrared wavelengths and then it became really interesting, because now they could see that the galaxy was full of dust. He explains that young stars in early galaxies emit hot ultraviolet light. The hot ultraviolet radiation heats the surrounding ice-cold dust, which then emits light in the far-infrared.
"It is this far-infrared light, which tells us that there is dust in the galaxy. It is very surprising and it is the first time that dust has been found in such an early galaxy. The process of star formation must therefore have started very early in the history of the universe and be associated with the formation of dust. The detection of large amounts of solid material shows that the galaxy was enriched very early with solids which are a prerequisite for the formation of complex molecules and planets," explains Darach Watson.
Now the researchers hope that future observations of a large number of distant galaxies using the ALMA telescopes could help unravel how frequently such evolved galaxies occur in this very early epoch of the history of the universe.

---

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by University of Copenhagen - Niels Bohr Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Tech demo lets you visit the International Space Station in VR

  

Wondrous as today's technology is, there remains no feasible way to put ordinary people in space. Except, it seems, through virtual reality. Australian multimedia company Opaque Multimedia has combined an Oculus Rift headset with Microsoft Kinect 2 motion tracking to make it possible for every Tom, Dick, and Sally on the planet to get a first-hand (virtual) taste of life on – or rather just outside – the International Space Station. The comapny's new tech demo, Earthlight, lets players explore in first person around the outside of the ISS as it orbits the Earth, safe in the comfort of their living room.

Earthlight may not capture every element of the real experience, but it was designed to get as close to it as possible. Move your hands out in front of you and you'll see in your headset a space-gloved hand exactly where you'd expect it to be. Similarly, reach out to a handle or bit of scaffolding and give it a tug and your virtual self will begin to float forwards. And as you explore you might just see the Earth as it looks from 431 kilometers (268 miles) above.
It was difficult to make this work from a technical standpoint because even a millisecond delay or minor deviation between your movement and your avatar's movement can make the experience more horrifying than exhilarating. Project lead Norman Wang says that to keep it running smoothly they had to push both the software and hardware to their limit.

The project's main goal was to demonstrate how the two technologies can be made to work together at the limits of their current capabilities, and to show off the power of a Kinect 4 Unreal plugin developed by Opaque Multimedia for use with Microsoft Kinect 2 and Unreal 4 on Windows.
Earthlight will be available at the Opaque Multimedia booth at the 2015 Game Developers Conference this week, with a public release to follow soon after. Kinect 4 Unreal is available now from the Opaque Multimedia website and will be available from the Unreal Marketplace from March 18.
You can check out a trailer for Earthlight below.
Source: Opaque Multimedia

Must read-The History of India in Space

Space technology has allowed the nation of India to move into the world of high technology, a place previously occupied only by more-developed nations.

India has been up there since July 18, 1980, when it became the eighth to demonstrate it could send a satellite to orbit above Earth. India launched the satellite Rohini 1 on an Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV) rocket from the Sriharikota Island launch site.

Indian cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma spent eight days in 1984 aboard the USSR's space station Salyut 7.

In recent years, India has concentrated much of its space development work on complex applications satellites and more powerful rockets. The nation's two main interests are satellites for remote sensing and communications -- used for weather pictures, disaster warnings and feeds to 552 television and 164 radio stations on the ground.

Here's a partial chronology:

• 1963 - The first sounding rocket was launched Nov. 21 from TERLS.
  
  
• 1965 -Space Science & Technology Centre (SSTC) was established in Thumba.
  
  
• 1967 - Satellite Telecommunication Earth Station was erected at Ahmedabad.
  
  
• 1969 - Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was created August 15 in the Department of Atomic Energy. Since then, ISRO has managed India's space research and the uses of space for peaceful puroposes.
  
  
• 1972 - The government established the Space Commission and the Department of Space (DOS) in June. DOS conducts the nation's space activities for ISRO at four space centres across the country. DOS reports directly to the Prime Minister.
  
  
• 1972 - ISRO placed under DOS on June 1.
  
  
• 1975 - ISRO made a Government Organisation on April 1.
  
  
• 1975 - Aryabhata, the first Indian space satellite, was launched for India on April 19.
  
  
• 1979 - Bhaskara-I, an experimental satellite for earth observations, launched on June 7.
  
  
• 1979 - The first experimental launch of an SLV-3 rocket on August 10 did not place its Rohini Technology Payload satellite in orbit.
  
  
• 1980 - India successfully launched its own Rohini-1 satellite on July 18 on a Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV) rocket from the Sriharikota Island launch site.
  
  
• 1983 - The Rohini-3 communications satellite, launched in August, had by the end of 1985 extended nationwide television coverage from 20 percent to 70 percent of the population. Today it is about 90 percent.
  
  
• 1984 - The first Indian cosmonaut became the 138th man in space when he spent eight days aboard the USSR's space station Salyut 7. Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma, a 35 year old Indian Air Force pilot, was launched to space along with two Soviet cosmonauts aboard Soyuz T-11 on April 2. While in space, Sharma conducted multispectral photography of the northern region of India in preparation for construction of hydroelectric power stations in the Himalayas. Sharma and his backup, Wing Commander Ravish Malhotra, had prepared in advance an elaborate series of zero-gravity Yoga exercises that Sharma carried out while aboard Salyut 7. Indian Space Research Organisation's manned space program has depended for the most part on the Soviet Union.
  
  
• 1987 - The first developmental launch of a larger Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV) rocket on March 24 did not place its SROSS-1 satellite in orbit. It could lift a 300-lb. satellite to an orbit 250 miles above Earth.
  
  
• 1988 - The second developmental launch of an ASLV in July also failed. Later, the third and fourth attempts would be successful.
  
  
• 1992 - The Indian-built INSAT-2 geostationary communications and meteorological satellite superseded an American-built INSAT-1.
  
  
• 1993 - The even larger Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) debuted in September, but failed to attain orbit. Its individual elements were successful. PSLV can lift a one-ton satellite to a Sun-synchronous polar orbit.
  
  
• 2001 -- The first launch of a still larger Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket was successful on April 18. GSLV can boost a 2.5-ton satellite. In addition to placing large communications and weather satellites in high stationary orbits, India plans to use GSLV rockets to send probes away from Earth to explore the planets. Missions to Mercury, Venus and Mars are under consideration.
  Courtesy:www.spacetoday.org