The Last Month in Astronomy

JAN-08-2009 • Oxygen on moon • Future lunar explorers may find the oxygen they need on the moon itself. Nearly half of the moon (by weight) is oxygen. NASA is testing technology that could extract that oxygen at a test site on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090108-am-pisces-hawaii.html

JAN-07-2009 • Stars go ballistic • The Hubble telescope has found 14 stars that tear through space at a speed of more than 110,000 miles per hour compared to the gas surrounding the star. This is about 5 times more than normal. It’s only about half of the speed of our sun in its orbit around the galaxy but nearly everything around us is going the same speed. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-002

JAN-06-2009 • 30 new gamma-ray pulsars • The Fermi space telescope has found 12 new gamma-ray only pulsars and 18 other pulsars that emit some energy in the gamma-ray part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The new observations add evidence to the idea that the gamma-rays emit from a location above the neutron star’s surface rather than on the surface itself. http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=7799

JAN-06-2009 • Brown Dwarfs Exclusive • The number of brown dwarfs has always seemed a bit small. This has been called the brown dwarf desert. It turns out that brown dwarfs tend to hang out with their own kind. This was one result of a survey done of nearby (within 10 parsecs) stars. This survey is called RECONS (Research Consortium on Nearby Stars) and it found 239 red dwarf stars (about 20% of solar mass) but only 12 brown dwarfs. http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=7800

JAN-05-2009 • MW = Andromeda • Scientists using the VLBA (Very Long Baseline Array) have been remaking the map of the Milky Way. What they have found is that our galaxy has as much mass as Andromeda. We’re not number two in the local group anymore. http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2009/mwrotate/

JAN-03-2009 • 5 years for Rovers • January marks the 5th anniversary of the landings of the two Martian rovers. Both of them are still functioning. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-243

DEC-29-2008 • Epoxi gets boost • The Epoxi spacecraft, headed for a flyby of comet Hartley 2 in November of 2010, gets a speed boost from the Earth. This manuver is sometimes a slingshot effect but a better analogy is a ping pong ball thrown at an overhead fan. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1993

DEC-22-2008 • First antenna at ALMA • The ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) has received it’s first of 66 antennae. The 40 foot diameter is now in place at the 3 mile high site in Chile. This antenna was built by Mitsubishi but antennae from America and Europe will arrive soon. http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=7766

DEC-22-2008 • Swiss Cheese vs. Dark Energy • In the decade since it was discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, a mysterious force labeled “dark energy” has been proposed to account for this. This study was done by Alex Filippenko (UC-Berkely) and others. Some (from Fermi Labs) have proposed that the universe is actually a lot like Swiss cheese with large voids that act a bit like concave lenses causing distant supernovae to appear to be farther away. In other words, “object may be closer than they appear”. But Ali Vanderveld at JPL has shown that such voids are not sufficient to eliminate dark energy. She says “The lumpiness of the universe could still be tricking us into thinking it’s accelerating, but we did not find this to be the case with our best, current models of the universe”. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1988

DEC-18-2008 • Kepler readied for launch • The Kepler spacecraft is headed to Cape Canaveral. Kepler will monitor 100,000 stars looking for transits by, hopefully, earth-like planets. Kepler is scheduled to launch on March 5. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2008/08-111AR.html