Stellary Starry Universe

 

NASA is turning control of the Hubble Space Telescope over to the general public to give non-scientists a chance to choose which target the iconic observatory should turn its camera eyes on next.

The U.S. space agency is inviting the public to vote for one of six candidate astronomical objects for Hubble to observe in honor of the International Year of Astronomy, which began this month. The options, which Hubble has not previously photographed, range from far-flung galaxies to dying stars. Votes can be cast until March 1. [...]

 

Source: Space.com – click here for full article

 

 

NASA’s Mars rover Spirit is displaying odd behavior that puzzled engineers. NASA engineers are scratching their heads over some unexpected behavior from the long-lived Spirit rover, which began its sixth year exploring Mars this month.

Spirit failed to report in to engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., last weekend, prompting a series of diagnostic tests this week to hunt the glitch’s source. The aging Mars rover did not beam home a record of its weekend activities and, more puzzlingly, apparently failed to even record any of its actions on Sunday, mission managers said.

“We don’t have a good explanation yet for the way Spirit has been acting for the past few days,” said NASA’s Sharon Laubach, who leads the JPL team that that writes and checks commands for the rover and its robotic twin Opportunity. “Our next steps will be diagnostic activities.” [...]

 

Source: Space.com – click here for full article

 

 

The new W2M communications satellite has failed just over a month after launch.

PARIS – The Eutelsat W2M telecommunications satellite – the inaugural product of a Euro-Indian commercial joint venture – has failed in orbit just five weeks after launch and is likely a total loss, industry officials said.

Paris-based Eutelsat, in a Jan. 28 statement, confirmed that W2M, launched Dec. 20, suffered “a major anomaly affecting the satellite’s power subsystem” and would not fulfill its role of replacing Eutelsat’s W2 satellite at the company’s 16 degrees east orbital position.

The W2 satellite at that orbital slot continues to work well, but is nearly 11 years old. Eutelsat said it now will replace W2 with the much larger W3B satellite scheduled for launch in mid-2010. [...]

 

Source: Space.com – click here for full article

 

 

The leading idea falls apart under the turbulent forces. Gas-rich planets such as Jupiter and Saturn grew from a disk of dust and gas which eventually crumpled like a piece of paper under its own gravitational instability — or so one theory goes.

Now a computer simulation suggests that this idea falls apart under the turbulent forces within early protoplanetary systems.

The old, favored theory relies on the protoplanetary dust disk becoming denser and thinner until it reaches a tipping point, where it becomes gravitationally unstable and collapses into kilometer-sized building blocks that form the basis for gas giants. But 3D modeling has shown for the first time that turbulence prevents the dust from settling into the dense disk necessary for gravitational instability to work

“It has been known since the ’80s that there have been problems with that theory, but no one had gotten around to doing 3D simulations,” said Joseph Barranco, an astrophysicist at San Francisco State University in California. [...]

 

Source: Space.com – click here for full article

 

 

VLT Adaptive Optics shows stellar nurseries, black hole at center of nearby galaxy.

A sharp-eyed instrument on the Very Large Telescope has given astronomers a peek at the heart of a nearby galaxy, revealing a host of young, massive and dusty stellar nurseries and a possible twin of our own Milky Way’s supermassive black hole.

The galaxy, dubbed NGC 253, is one of the brightest and dustiest spiral galaxies in the sky. It is also known as the Sculptor Galaxy, because it is located in the Sculptor constellation.

The Sculptor Galaxy is a starbust galaxy, so-called because of very intense star formation there.

 

 

Source: Space.com – click here for full article