Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.

In his own words

“This first episode is about saving the world from asteroid impacts. In most science TV shows on this topic they’re heavy on the death and destruction, but pretty light on what we can actually do about them. But if you’ve read my book Death from the Skies!you know I’m all about getting off our collective butts and doing something. So in “Bad Universe” we go step-by-step, looking into what can be done to keep an impact from ruining our whole day.”

Here is a sneak preview. Nightsky.ie wishes him lots of success.  More news about this here

This sums up for me what to expect from Phil. Cool stuff that’s really real….

Phil Plait: The Bad Astronomer

ESO/S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard)

Source, ESO VLT Picture of the week:

Despite the Perseids being best visible in the northern hemisphere, due to the path of Comet Swift-Tuttle’s orbit, the shower was also spotted from the exceptionally dark skies over ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. In order not to miss any meteors in the display, ESO Photo Ambassador Stéphane Guisard set up 3 cameras to take continuous time-lapse pictures on the platform of the Very Large Telescope during the nights of 12–13 and 13–14 August 2010. This handpicked photograph, from the night of 13–14 August, was one of Guisard’s 8000 individual exposures and shows one of the brightest meteors captured. The scene is lit by the reddened light of the setting Moon outside the left of the frame.

Although the comet debris particles are travelling parallel to each other, the meteors appear to radiate from a spot on the sky in the constellation of Perseus (here seen very low on the horizon and partly covered by the VLT enclosures). This effect is due to perspective, as the parallel tracks seem to converge at a distance. The apparent origin in Perseus is what gives the Perseid meteor shower its name.

“This is an important milestone that allows us to finalise the baseline design of this very ambitious project, which will vastly advance astronomical knowledge,” says Tim de Zeeuw, ESO’s Director General. “I thank the site selection team for the tremendous work they have done over the past few years.”

ESO’s next step is to build a European extremely large optical/infrared telescope (E-ELT) with a primary mirror 42 metres in diameter. The E-ELT will be “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — the only such telescope in the world. ESO is drawing up detailed construction plans together with the community. The E-ELT will address many of the most pressing unsolved questions in astronomy, and may, eventually, revolutionise our perception of the Universe, much as Galileo’s telescope did 400 years ago. The final go-ahead for construction is expected at the end of 2010, with the start of operations planned for 2018.

“This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 48 degrees below the ringplane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 28, 2009 at a distance of approximately 1 million kilometers (620,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 59 kilometers (37 miles) per pixel.”

Shadow and Ringshine March 16, 2010: Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

When I first saw the images below I was thinking of the term pareidolia, but this seem like such a nice example I thought it was worth sharing. Happy Valentine’s Day.

heart-shaped nebula IC 4628 in Scorpius

LRO Image: Intricate young ejecta blanket in ancient Murchison Crater

Betelgeuse, the red supergiant at the top of the constellation of Orion

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, and one of the largest and most luminous stars known. If the star were at the center of our solar system its surface might extend out to between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Current belief is that it is only a few million years old and there is some debate that it might even go supernova within  the lifespan of the human civilization.

What is so cool is that recently using interferometry, an image has been created by an international team led by an astronomer of l’Observatoire de Paris. There are clearly two bright spots whose size is equivalent to the Earth-Sun distance and they cover a large fraction of the surface.  It is an indication of the presence of the convection phenomenon which is a transport of heat by moving matter in a star.

Betelgeuse: The surface of Betelgeuse in near infrared at 1.64 micron in wavelength, obtained with the IOTA interferometer. The image has been reconstructed with two different algorithms, which yield the same details, of 9 milliarcseconds (mas). The star diameter is about 45 milliarcseconds. Copyright 2010 Haubois/Perrin (LESIA, Observatoire de Paris

Usually, even with our most powerful telescopes, most stars are unresolved dots. But because Betelgeuse is so big, it can be resolved using interferometry. This uses a number of telescopes to collect light and adds them together in such a way that extremely small objects (based on distance) can be resolved. Stunning image.

Here is a size comparison. You can barely see the sun in the image below.

Sun vs Betelgeuse Size comparison

Saturn's Northern Lights: Credit Nasa/Cassini

Nasa have recently released a nice false color short video taken by Cassini of Saturn’s northern lights. The images were taken over 81 hours in black and white and colored orange to enhance them from the background of space. The aurora is high above the northern part of Saturn and moves from the night side to the day side of the planet.

According to NASA “These observations, taken over four days, represent the first visible-light video of Saturn’s auroras. They show tall auroral curtains, rapidly changing over time when viewed at the limb, or edge, of the planet’s northern hemisphere. The sequence of images also reveals that Saturn’s auroral curtains, the sheet-like formations of light-emitting atmospheric molecules, stretch up along Saturn’s magnetic field and reach heights of more than 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) above the planet’s limb. These are the tallest known “northern lights” in the solar system.

These auroral displays are created by charged particles from the magnetosphere that plunge into the planet’s upper atmosphere and cause it to glow. The magnetosphere is the region of electrically charged particles that are trapped in the magnetic field of the planet. The auroral curtains shown in the movie reveal the paths that these charged particles take as they flow along lines of the magnetic field between the planet’s magnetosphere and ionosphere.”

Artists Impression: Approaching Bernard's Star

I’d love to see a craft sent to another star within a lifetime.  NASA may not have anything planned but the following article discusses the recent Icarus Project Symposium which was focused on  updating the work of the  ”Daedalus” study which was completed by the  British Interplanetary Society (BIS) back in the late 1970′s. Daedalus aimed to design an interstellar probe for a flyby mission to Barnard’s Star.

Icarus reviews and updates the findings of the Daedalus to bring it in line with our current technology.  The project is required to discuss issues such as propulsion, onboard power and computing, whether the craft should slowdown at the target or not and clarify the terms of reference.

To the best of my knowledge we are not aware of any planets around Bernard’s Star, and if they exist, its not likely be Earth type planets, which is unfortunate. There are plenty of eyes on the star system however, and it is included as a target for the under construction NASA (SIM) Space Interferometry Mission project. SIM has a mission, among other things, to find Earth type planets.

I’ll leave you with a summary of the terms of reference and links to both the article by Pat Galea and the Project Icarus site itself.  I really enjoyed the article.

The Terms of Reference are as follows:

• To design an unmanned probe that is capable of delivering useful scientific data about the target star, associated planetary bodies, solar environment and the interstellar medium.
• The spacecraft must use current or near future technology and be designed to be launched as soon as is credibly determined.
• The spacecraft must reach its stellar destination within as fast a time as possible, not exceeding a century and ideally much sooner.
• The spacecraft must be designed to allow for a variety of target stars.
• The spacecraft propulsion must be mainly fusion based (i.e. Daedalus).

The spacecraft mission must be designed so as to allow some deceleration for increased encounter time at the destination.

Each week I select a paper from my news feed which I liked the most. This one is a bit more technical than most but the idea is very interesting. This is an amazing technique which was recently used in the detection of an extra solar planet in the Andromeda galaxy.  There is a proposal to use the gravitational lens of a our Sun to help image nearby exoplanets,  although the equipment would have to be approximately 550 astronomical units (AU is the distance from the Sun to the Earth) at the point of the gravitational lens.

The article I have selected describes a new paper which discusses using the gravity lens and its applications for low energy radio transmission between stars with low bit rate errors.  This basically means that a highly reliable communication link between us and another star is possible. Of course we have to get there and set up a receiver.  I’ll let you read the review for more complete details.

…the surprise is that… for the Sun-Alpha Cen direct radio bridge exploiting both the two gravitational lenses, this minimum transmitted power is incredibly… small! Actually it just equals less than 10^-4 watts, i.e. one tenth of a milliwatt is enough to have perfect communication between the Sun and Alpha Cen through two 12-meter FOCAL spacecraft antennas.

The article is a Centauri Dreams review of a paper by Maccone, “Interstellar Radio Links Enhanced by Exploiting the Sun as a Gravitational Lens,” presented at the recent IAC.

This week saw a lot of hype about the NASA Ares 1-x and how it was the next step in spacecraft technology set to improve NASA’s ability to put payloads into low earth orbit, and potentially beyond.  However, not everyone believes this is the right focus for NASA as described by the following BBC report.  Keep in mind however that Ares 1-x is due to launch this Tuesday 27th

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By Jonathan Amos

Ares 1-x on the launchpad

Science reporter, BBC News

Ares 1-X on the launch pad at KSC (Getty Images)

Ares 1-X: Work on the “program of record” continues

Experts asked to review the US human spaceflight programme have given strong support to the use of commercial services to launch astronauts.

The Augustine panel published its final report on Thursday and said America could find cheaper, faster successors to the shuttle in the private sector.

The US space agency is developing two new rockets and a crew capsule.

But the committee has told President Barack Obama that these systems no longer meet the US’s immediate needs.

Speaking at a press conference in Washington DC, lead members of the panel said that if crew transport services to the International Space Station were passed to the private sector, it would free Nasa to work on more difficult and more exciting objectives.

“We think this is a time to create a market for commercial firms to transport both cargo and humans between the Earth and low-Earth orbit,” said Norm Augustine, the panel chairman and a former CEO of Lockheed Martin.

“While that is certainly not simple, it is much easier than going to Mars. We think Nasa would be better served to spend its money and its ability – which is immense – focusing on going beyond low-Earth orbit rather than running a trucking service to low-Earth orbit (LEO).”

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Panel supports commercial space.