Posted by Davin Flateau on 2 Jun 2005 at 3:52 pm.
Filed under Astronomy.
It’s been a busy week in astronomy and space news. The American Astronomical Society meeting is wrapping up in Minneapolis, where many interesting discoveries were announced, and NASA was also busy with the shuttle and new space missions. Here’s a wrap-up of some of the more interesting stories this week.
NASA’s Going Back to Jupiter. Galileo gave us a great views in the 90s, and NASA wants a sequel. The new Juno mission is slated to launch its polar orbiting probe no later than 2010. Isn’t that the year we make contact?
Sim Universe - A team of astronomers simulated how to the Universe came to be in an amazingly complex computer simulation. Supercomputers? Check. Quadrillions of calculations? Check. Pretty pictures? Oh yeah.
Flashers - Astronomers have been trying to nail down what causes short bursts of gamma radiation in the sky. At least some of them could be coming from ultra-dense neutron stars smashing into each other. That’s the celestial equivalent of two VW Bugs filled with lead hitting each other head on going 100 mph. Get out of the way!
Rubble Trouble - Jupiter’s moon Amalthea appears to be just a loose pile of rock, with an overall density less than a diet coke, and it’s not what scientists were expecting. No one expects the NASA inquisition!
Mars Floods - The Mars Express probe orbiting the red planet has captured an image of what might be an ancient outflow channel of water almost 900 miles long. That’s almost as long as the line of people that will flood into theaters for the next Mars image.
Star Power - NASA’s orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope took an amazing infrared image of the region around the massive star Eta Carinae. It seems that the big bully and its family are throttling the surrounding gas and dust clouds with their radiation and solar wind, creating even more stars. Fire up your printer, this picture’s a keeper.
That’s just some of the news that’s fit to print. If you have other news items you think folks would find interesting, add a reply, and post a link to them below.
Davin Flateau
