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Post by Leda EmBorr on Aug 26, 2008 19:17:46 GMT -5
Pretty cool! As long as they don't blow up Switzerland in the process.... LOL Tests clear way for "Big Bang" experiment Mon Aug 25, 2008 2:55pm EDT by Robert Evans GENEVA (Reuters) - Tests have cleared the way for the start-up next month of an experiment to restage a mini-version underground of the "Big Bang" which created the universe 15 billion years ago, the project chief said on Monday.
Lyn Evans of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said weekend trials in the vast underground LHC machine in which the particle-smashing experiment will take place over the coming months and years "went without a hitch".
"We look forward to a resounding success when we make our first attempt to send a beam all the way round the LHC," said Evans, who heads the multinational team of scientists that shaped the project and the machine, the Large Hadron Collider.
The final tests involved pumping a single bunch of energy particles from the project's accelerator into the 27-km (17-mile) beam pipe of the collider and steering them counter- clockwise around it for about 3 kms (2 miles).
Earlier in the month a clockwise trial in the LHC -- which runs deep under French and Swiss territory between the Jura Mountains and Lake Geneva -- had been equally successful, CERN said.
The LHC team now plans to send a full particle beam all the way around the collider pipe in one direction on September 10 as a prelude to sending beams in both directions and smashing them together later in the year. That collision, in which both particle clusters will be traveling at the speed of light, will be monitored on computers at CERN and laboratories around the world by scientists looking for, among other things, a particle that made life possible. The elusive particle, which has been dubbed the "Higgs boson" after Scottish physicist Peter Higgs who first postulated nearly 50 years ago that it must exist, is thought to be the mysterious factor that holds matter together. Recreating a "Big Bang," which most scientists believe is the only explanation of an expanding universe, ought to show how stars and planets came together out of the primeval chaos that followed, the CERN team believes. Efforts to track it down in a predecessor to the LHC at CERN, and in another experiment in the United States, failed. But scientists are confident that the vast leap in technologies represented by the LHC will make the difference. Higgs, a 79-year-old Edinburgh University professor who as an atheist angrily rejects the idea of calling the boson the "God particle" -- believes it will show up very quickly once the beams are colliding in the LHC. "If it doesn't," he said during a visit to CERN earlier this year, "I shall be very, very puzzled." (Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Mary Gabriel)
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Mon-Jas Charan
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"Poena Vigoratus. Pullus cavo vix. Palma , est eternus"
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Post by Mon-Jas Charan on Sept 19, 2008 6:37:06 GMT -5
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Mon-Jas Charan
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"Poena Vigoratus. Pullus cavo vix. Palma , est eternus"
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Post by Mon-Jas Charan on Dec 31, 2008 9:55:31 GMT -5
Celestial Show Set for New Year's Eve Robert Roy Britt Editorial Director SPACE.com robert Roy Britt editorial Director space.com Tue Dec 30, 11:47 am ET
A delightful display of planets and the moon will occur on New Year's Eve for anyone wishing to step outside and look up just after sunset.
Venus, brighter than all other planets and stars, will dangle just below the thin crescent moon in the southwestern sky. It'll be visible -- impossible to miss, in fact -- just as the sun goes down, assuming skies are cloud-free.
Soon thereafter, Mercury and Jupiter will show up hugging the south-southwestern horizon (just above where the sun went down) and extremely close to each other. Jupiter is very bright and easy to spot; Mercury is faint and harder to see, but it'll be apparent by its location just to the left of Jupiter.
Jupiter and Mercury will set less than an hour after the sun, so timing your viewing just after sunset is crucial. You'll also need a location with a clear view of the western horizon, unobstructed by buildings, trees or mountains.
All the planets, along with the moon and sun, traverse an arc across our sky called the ecliptic, which corresponds to the plane in space that they all roughly share. For this reason, you could draw an imaginary line from the general location of Venus and the moon, down through the other two planets, and the line would point to where the sun went down. This line could also initially help you find Jupiter and Mercury.
Weather permitting, you can get a preview of the sky show on Tuesday, Dec. 30. On this evening, the planets will be in nearly the same place they'll be on Dec. 31, but the moon will be midway between Venus and the Mercury-Jupiter pairing.
One last trick:
Venus is so bright you can see it during daylight if you know where to look. Given Venus' proximity to the moon on New Year's Eve, this would be an excellent moment -- just before sunset -- to use the moon to help you find Venus and gain bragging rights for being one of the few people to be able to claim seeing more than one planet during the daytime (Earth being the other one).
* Gallery: Moon Images * Skywatcher's Guide to the Moon * Top 5 Amazing Astronomy Discoveries in 2008
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Post by Xana on Dec 31, 2008 15:09:03 GMT -5
Wow. Wish I could see that!! It's snowing here, so I doubt I'll be able to see it. I like snow, so it's cool anyway.
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Post by Ani-Chay Pinn on Feb 27, 2009 23:14:17 GMT -5
One place I like to check out is NASA'S PlanetQuest page that has information about planets discovered outside the solar system. They've got 342 so far and they seem to find a several new ones every month.
There is also the The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia which is a plain, but straightforward database listing.
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Mon-Jas Charan
Message Board Member
"Poena Vigoratus. Pullus cavo vix. Palma , est eternus"
Posts: 2,630
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Post by Mon-Jas Charan on Mar 16, 2009 9:59:19 GMT -5
For the next several days, it might be possible to see Venus in both the morning sky and the evening sky. Venus passes the Sun on the 27th, but stays 8° north of the Sun at inferior conjunction. This morning, Venus rose less than a minute before sunrise and sets about 1½ hours after sunset. It will be easier to see Venus in the morning and harder to see Venus in the evening in the coming days. The best days to see Venus in both morning and evening will be between the 21st and the 26th of March.
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Post by Jedimom/Cor-Al Gelkar on Apr 6, 2009 21:55:24 GMT -5
This is so cool Tiny and dying but still-powerful stars called pulsars spin like crazy and light up their surroundings, often with ghostly glows. So it is with PSR B1509-58, which long ago collapsed into a sphere just 12 miles in diameter after running out of fuel. And what a strange scene this one has created. In a new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, high-energy X-rays emanating from the nebula around PSR B1509-58 have been colored blue to reveal a structure resembling a hand reaching for some eternal red cosmic light. The star now spins around at the dizzying pace of seven times every second -- as pulsars do -- spewing energy into space that creates the scene. Strong magnetic fields, 15 trillion times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field, are thought to be involved, too. The combination drives an energetic wind of electrons and ions away from the dying star. As the electrons move through the magnetized nebula, they radiate away their energy as X-rays. The red light actually a neighboring gas cloud, RCW 89, energized into glowing by the fingers of the PSR B1509-58 nebula, astronomers believe. The scene, which spans 150 light-years, is about 17,000 light years away, so what we see now is how it actually looked 17,000 years ago, and that light is just arriving here. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
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Post by J'aii-Gun Jiinn on Apr 6, 2009 22:04:06 GMT -5
Almost looks like a hand Space pictures always amaze me.How tiny and insiganificant that we are to the vastness and beauty of the universe
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Post by Ldi-Ovef Te_Azi on Apr 7, 2009 1:00:37 GMT -5
that view is really cool, it does almost look like a hand, neat, its a shame up close you dont get to see such beauty, its just from afar
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Mon-Jas Charan
Message Board Member
"Poena Vigoratus. Pullus cavo vix. Palma , est eternus"
Posts: 2,630
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Post by Mon-Jas Charan on May 4, 2009 13:31:02 GMT -5
The eta Aquarid Meteor Shower SpaceWeather.com Global Notes: This shower can be seen from both hemispheres--north and south..
Forecasters expect the 2009 eta Aquarid shower to peak on Wednesday morning, May 6th, with as many as 85 meteors per hour over the southern hemisphere. Sky watchers in Australia, New Zealand, South America and southern Africa are favored. Rates in the northern hemisphere will be less, 20 to 30 per hour. The best time to look is during the moonless hour before local sunrise. That is when the shower's radiant is high in the sky and the nearly-full Moon will have set, leaving the sky dark for meteors.
Eta Aquarids are flakes of dust from Halley's Comet, which last visited Earth in 1986. Although the comet is now far away, beyond the orbit of Uranus, it left behind a stream of dust. Earth passes through the stream twice a year in May and October. In May we have the eta Aquarid meteor shower, in October the Orionids. Both are caused by Halley's Comet.
The shower is named after a 4th-magnitude star in the constellation Aquarius. The star has nothing to do with the meteor shower except that, coincidentally, meteors appear to emerge from a point nearby. Eta Aquarii is 156 light years from Earth and 44 times more luminous than the Sun.
The constellation Aquarius does not rise very far above the horizon in the northern hemisphere, and that's why northerners see relatively few meteors. But the ones they do see could be spectacular Earthgrazers. (continued below)
Sky maps: Northern Hemisphere | Southern Hemisphere
Earthgrazers are meteors that skim horizontally through the upper atmosphere. They are slow and dramatic, streaking far across the sky. The best time to look for Earthgrazers is between 2:00 to 2:30 a.m. local time when Aquarius is just peeking above the horizon.
Experienced meteor watchers suggest the following viewing strategy: Dress warmly. Bring a reclining chair, or spread a thick blanket over a flat spot of ground. Lie down and look up somewhat toward the east. Meteors can appear in any part of the sky, although their trails will point back toward Aquarius.
Tidbits:
Eta Aquarid meteoroids hit Earth's atmosphere traveling 66 km/s. Typical eta Aquarid meteors are as bright as a 3rd magnitude star.
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Post by Nova Darklighter on May 11, 2009 14:13:08 GMT -5
It will be interesting to see what photos there will be if they get the Hubble repaired.
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Post by Jedimom/Cor-Al Gelkar on May 11, 2009 15:09:10 GMT -5
We had the hand, now the eye in space news.aol.com/article/hubble-giant-eye/474661The Hubble Space Telescope's legendary Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 has produced one of its last images, a gorgeous shot of a planetary nebula. The nebula, a colorful cloud of gas and dust named Kohoutek 4-55 (or K 4-55), has an eye that appears to be looking right back at Hubble. The image was taken May 4 and released today. On Monday, NASA aims to send the space shuttle Atlantis to Hubble, where astronauts will replace the camera with the Wide Field Camera 3, among other upgrades and fix-it projects. At a press conference today, space agency officials said the camera will make one last image tomorrow, of a nearby galaxy named IC 5152, but that image won't be released immediately. Planetary nebulas have nothing to do with planets. They were named so because in early telescopes, they had the fuzzy look of planets in our outer solar system. In fact planetary nebulas sit throughout our galaxy. This one contains the outer layers of a red giant star that were expelled into space as the star entered its death throes. Ultraviolet radiation from the remaining hot core of the star zaps the ejected gas shells, making them glow. A bright inner ring is surrounded by a bipolar structure. The entire system is then surrounded by a faint red halo, seen in the emission by lit-up nitrogen gas. This multi-shell structure is fairly uncommon in planetary nebulas, astronomers said. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 instrument, the size of a baby grand piano, was installed in 1993 to replace the original Wide Field/Planetary Camera. Among its iconic images:
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Mon-Jas Charan
Message Board Member
"Poena Vigoratus. Pullus cavo vix. Palma , est eternus"
Posts: 2,630
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Post by Mon-Jas Charan on May 15, 2009 9:45:33 GMT -5
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Post by Nova Darklighter on May 24, 2009 17:14:24 GMT -5
It will be interesting to see the new pics when they are posted, and the Atlantis landed a few hours ago in CA. Mon Jas, that is a neat picture, it's all in the perspective.
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Post by Ani-Chay Pinn on May 25, 2009 21:13:55 GMT -5
According to hubblesite.org they won't have new pics until September. I know they put new instuments on it, but geeeez, how long does it take to calibrate them?
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