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The Last Month in Astronomy

MAR-16-2009 • Arp 261 • • The ESO’s aptly named VLT (Very Large Telescope) has taken the best image yet of a strange pair of colliding galaxies called Arp 261. Halton Arp created the catalog Peculiar Galaxies in the 1960’s. This object is 70 million light-years away and appears in the constellation Libra. In a collision of this sort, stars are unlikely to collide but the gas and dust in each galaxy will smash together at very high speeds and create clusters of new, hot stars. The original stars start to travel in different patterns and create the swirls seen in this image. The image contains the remnant of a core collapse supernova, SN 1995N. It is unusual for a remnant to still be viewable so long after the event. It is also one of the few supernovae that has been seen to emit x-rays. That might be an effect caused by having a supernova in such a dense region of space.

In the color image a couple of objects near the top and to the left show up as streaks that appear to change colors. These are asteroids and the color change is due to the changing of the color filters while this picture was taken.

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=8017

 

APR-12-2009 • JHJ and What’s Up • Jane Houston Jones, a long time friend of the SJAA, has a monthly podcast where she talks about what is up in the sky that astronomers might want to see. This month she talks about viewing M51 in various parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. If you have problems getting the video to play on your computer, try pausing it just as it begins and the hit the play button after it has downloaded most of the 3 minute video. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=824

APR-12-2009 • New Info from the Trapezium • One of my favorite objects to show during a star party is the trapezium, the trapezoid shape formed from the bright stars in the Orion Nebula. A new high resolution image of the brightest of these stars, Theta1 Ori C, is about to be published. The information from the image has been used to get more information about the tightly bound double star that is Theta1 Ori C. The two components are 38 and 9 solar masses and the period is 11 years. The double star is so tight that the second star was not detected until 1999. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090402104724.htm

APR-07-2009 • Kepler blows its lid • The cover that has been protecting the Kepler spacecraft has been successfully jettisoned. The 42 CCDs on board Kepler are now measuring star light as part of the calibration being performed before the real scientific start of the mission. Kepler will spend 3 and half years staring at a spot in the sky between Deneb and Vega looking for planets that transit their star. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-065

APR-07-2009 • Low on Hydrogen Cyanide • Astronomers are using the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope to look for hydrogen cyanide in the planet-forming material around different types of stars. They found the molecule around sun-like stars but not around cooler stars such as the dwarfs in the M class. The importance of this molecule is that it forms part of adenine, the A in the GATC that forms DNA. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-064

MAR-18-2009 • Asteroid Close to Earth • An asteroid named 2009 FH (the name tells you that it was only recently discovered) passed close to Earth. How close? About one-fifth of the distance between the Earth and the moon. It is only 50 feet wide and it apparently will not hit Earth in the foreseeable future. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2085

 

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Last updated: April 29, 2009

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