Hubble Announcement

A historic first for the recently down on its luck Hubble Space Telescope. The HST has taken the very first visible light pictures of a planet orbiting a distant star.

Taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys, the image is of the planet this is known as Fomalhaut b. Formalhaut b orbits 10.7 billion miles from its primary Formalhaut, about two-thirds again farther from its sun than Pluto. It's calculated to have an orbital period of 872 years. Formalhaut b has upper limit of three (3) Jupiter masses set for it, because were it any larger, it would destroy the dust ring surrounding the star.



The white dot is the star Formalhaut. NASA and ESA scientists blocked the bright glare of Formalhaut so they could capture the planet Fomalhaut b, which is 1 billion times fainter than its star. The red dot at lower left is a background star.

The Fomalhaut system is 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis. It is white 1st magnitude star, with a mass of about 2.3 times that of our Sun and believed to be a young star. The Dusty disc is thought to be a proto-planetary disc and is offset from the center of the system by about 15 AU.

The existence of the planet was postulated because something was gravitationally modifying the bright inner edge of the dust ring that we can see here.



The planet does raise some interesting questions. It was much brighter than expected, leading some to speculate the existence of Saturn-like rings. The Formalhaut system is thought to be young, only about 200 million years old, versus 4.5 billion years for our Sun and it is expected to last only 1 billion years. Since the planet is so young, it should very hot due to gravitational contraction and very bright in the infra-red spectrum. As of today however, it cannot be picked up by any infra-red instrument pointed at it.

Those of you that live in the southern hemisphere or have access to Google Sky can see Formalhaut for yourselves, weather permitting.

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Major Hubble Telescope Announcement Coming

From Spaceref.com and Nasa.gov

On Thursday 13 November at 2:30 PM EST, NASA will be holding a Science Update press conference to announce a major discovery concerning extra-solar planets. The discovery is big enough to merit being published in the Nov. 14th issue of Science.

The discovery was made with Hubble's Advance Camera for Surveys. Keep posted for more news.

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Raise shields!

Coming to you today from Universe Today, who publishes the excellent Carnival of Space, an interesting story with an almost sci-fi twist.

Ion Shield for Interplanetary Spaceships Now a Reality

British scientists have overcome what is probably the biggest danger facing astronauts on the job: solar and cosmic radiation. There have been many different shielding solutions developed. One is building it into the spacecraft, at a huge mass penalty. Another is to build less into the structure of the craft and to have a "storm cellar" in the spacecraft where water is stored. Water is one the best passive radiation shielding materials in existence. With the work of researchers from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the universities of York and Strathclyde, a magnetic shield has been developed that offers almost total protection against charged particles. As Professor Bob Bingham of the University of Strathclyde described it, "solar storms or winds are one of the greatest dangers of deep space travel. If you got hit by one not only would it take out the electronics of a ship but the astronauts would soon take on the appearance of an overcooked pizza."

"It would be a bit like being near the Hiroshima blast. Your skin would blister, hair and teeth fall out and before long your internal organs would fail. It is not a very nice way to go."

Professor's Bingham's team is patenting their device and could have a full size prototype operational in five (5) years. Their mini-magnetosphere generator is about the size of a playground roundabout
and uses about as much power as an electric kettle. If viable, it will see its biggest use in protecting astronauts from solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME's). Earth's magnetosphere protects us from both here on the ground.


A CME is so powerful that when one hits the Earth, it will disrupt the Earth's magnetosphere, compressing it on the day side and extending the night-side tail.

When the magnetosphere reconnects on the nightside, it creates trillions of watts of power which is directed back toward the Earth's upper atmosphere. This process can cause particularly strong aurora also known as the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis (in the Northern Hemisphere), and the Southern Lights, or aurora australis (in the Southern Hemisphere). CME events, along with solar flares, can disrupt radio transmissions, cause power outages (blackouts), and cause damage to satellites and electrical transmission lines.

The designed system uses two (2) outrider satellites that can be switched on and off as needed. The only thing left is to figure out how to stop the radiation that doesn't have an inherent electric charge.

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Newton Shows Lunar Scientists How to Make Telescope

Imagine if you will, a scientific outpost on the far side of the Moon.  No light pollution, no radio interference, nothing to block your magnificent view of the heavens.  You need a telescope and you intend to do some serious imaging, so you want it to be as large as possible.  How do you get it?  You could ship it up from Earth, at a cost of thousands of dollars a pound.  If lunar industry is developed enough, one of the near-side factories could gather up a few tons of regolith, separate the glass out and melt and grind a lens for you.  Or,build your mirror out of a spinning liquid.  On Earth, the largest liquid mirror is the Large Zenith Telescope operated by the University of British Columbia in Canada.  It's 6 meters across, 20% larger than the world famous Palomar reflector in California.  However the Large Zenith Telescope didn't even cost $1 million to construct - only 1/6 of the cost to build Palomar in 1948 dollars.  Today, $1 million is only a few percent of the cost to construct a normal 6 meter telescope.

Another benefit of the liquid mirror is that it's technically simple.  It needs only remain horizontal to local gravity, and to spin smoothly to maintain a smooth reflecting surface.  On the Earth's surface, the edge of a 4 meter telescope spins at 3 miles per hour.  With gravity on the Moon 1/6 that of Earth, the required spin rate would be even lower.  The mirror can only point straight up, so no need for heavy and complicated systems for moving the mirror.  It's aim can be adjusted by using some of the same techniques as the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.  If the telescope is place in polar crater that never receives any direct sunlight, you would not need to cool the mirror, which makes it ideal for infra-red astronomy.

From NASA Science News

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