“US Scientist Caught Spying For ‘Israel’”

What Giant Smokescreen!

Does it mean that the traditional, well-established channels for the transfer of state secrets to Israel no longer function?

• Does the FBI monitor the telephone conversations of people like Joe Lieberman, Rahm Israel Emanuel … ? If NOT, WHY NOT?

• Are the people supposed to presume that AIPAC and the dozens of similar organizations no longer ’share’ information with Israel?

• Are the Right-Wing Rabbis presumed to be safe for confiding state secrets to?

• How about Israel-First CEO’s and top executives of arms manufacturers and multinational corporations that monitor/control the flow of electronic information in the US and EU?
  

Another Israel-First US Scientist Caught Spying For “Israel”

Stewart David Nozette, 52, an Israel-loving scientist who worked for the Defense Department, was arrested Monday on charges of attempted spying. He tried to pass on classified information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer, AP reported.

Mr Nozette was contacted in September 2009 by an undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer, whom he reportedly assured to provide classified information “in exchange for an Israeli passport.”

The scientist is reported to have provided information “classified as both ‘top secret’ and ’secret’ that concerned US satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy”, the justice department said.

“From 1989 through 2006, Nozette held security clearances as high as ‘top secret’ and had regular, frequent access to classified information and documents related to the US national defense.”

… in January of this year, Nozette allegedly traveled to another foreign country with two computer thumb drives and did not return with them. Prosecutors also quote an unnamed colleague of Nozette who said the scientist told him that if the U.S. government ever tried to put him in jail for an unrelated criminal offense, he would go to another foreign country and “tell them everything” he knows.

“The conduct alleged in this complaint is serious and should serve as a warning to anyone who would consider compromising our nation’s secrets for profit,” said US Assistant Attorney General David Kris.

Mr Nozette, who is believed to be of Jewish faith, will appear in court in Washington on Tuesday, facing a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.

The FBI affidavit gave the following sequence of events:

_Sept. 4. Nozette and the agent met again in the same hotel. The scientist allegedly said that while he no longer had legal access to any classified information at a U.S. government facility, he could, nonetheless, recall classified information by memory. Nozette allegedly asked when he could expect to receive his first payment, saying he preferred cash amounts “under ten thousand” so he didn’t have to report it.

Nozette allegedly told the agent, “Well, I should tell you my first need is that they should figure out how to pay me … they don’t expect me to do this for free.”

_Sept. 10. Undercover FBI agents left a letter in the designated post office box, asking Nozette to answer a list of questions about U.S. satellite information. The agents provided a $2,000 cash payment. Serial numbers of the bills were recorded.

_Sept. 16. Nozette was captured on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. The next day, agents retrieved the sealed envelope and found, among other things, a one-page document containing answers to the questions and an encrypted computer thumb drive.

One answer contained information classified as secret, which concerned capabilities of a prototype overhead collection system. Nozette allegedly offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, and other major weapons systems.

_Sept. 17. Agents left a second letter in the post office box with another list of questions about U.S. satellite information. The FBI also left a cash payment of $9,000. Nozette allegedly retrieved the questions and the money the same day.

_Oct. 1. Nozette was videotaped leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. FBI agents retrieved it and found a second set of answers. The responses contained information classified as both top secret and secret, on U.S. satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy.

It has also been reported that “Nozette performed some of this research and development at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Va., and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.”

In 2006, NASA’s Office of Inspector General subpoenaed a bank account of Nozette’s firm, Alliance For Competitive Technology Inc. Nozette went to federal court to fight the subpoena.

The IG  investigated reports that Nozette’s firm had submitted false claims for expenses.

Nozette’s motion to quash the subpoena was  rejected by a federal judge; however, the court records provide no further information as to what happened afterward.

From Stewart Nozette NASA Page:

Mini-RF Principal Investigator (on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) and Co-investigator (on Chandrayaan-1).

Where did you grow up? Where do you live now? I grew up in Chicago, Illinois (West Rogers Park), and currently live in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

How did you get interested in space exploration? I was born in 1957, the year of Sputnik, grew up during the Apollo years, and always had an interest in space exploration and strong science aptitude. The works of Gerard K. O’Neill, which appeared during my high school years in the early 1970s, encouraged my consideration of space exploration as a career. Up until that time I was planning to go to medical school. I was strongly encouraged by many influential people during my undergraduate years and finally closed off my medical option during my sophomore year, much to the benefit of my future patients (many people have told me).

What is your educational background? I have a B.S. in geosciences with honors and distinction from the University of Arizona (1979), and a Ph.D. in planetary science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1983).

What are your hobbies? I used to fly and scuba dive when I was younger but have not been as active recently. Now I enjoy cooking and listening to The Grateful Dead Channel on Sirius satellite radio.

What’s your job on Mini-RF? I am the principal investigator/co-investigator, so I act to oversee and document the scientific aspects of the program and translate these requirements into specific actions for the engineers and operators.

What has been the most exciting aspect of working on Mini-RF? Seeing it come to fruition after many years of thought and work. I conceived the idea of Mini-RF in 1994 while working as the deputy program manager and chief scientist of the Clementine mission, so returning to the moon with this capability is very satisfying.

What are you looking forward to the most as Mini-RF begins its lunar exploration? Finally seeing what’s at the bottom of the permanently shadowed polar craters.

What excites you about exploring the moon? The possibility that Mini-RF will provide the data that establishes whether extractable water exists on the moon and the importance of that information to the feasibility of humans eventually settling on the moon permanently.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get involved in space exploration [or the transfer of state secrets to Israel?] The most important thing is to get a very good grounding in fundamental math, basic and applied science, and engineering. Some exposure to business, management and economics would also be valuable. Then finding a career path with helpful mentors who can get you involved in real projects once you are sufficiently grounded.

Count one hole for every Israel-first “scientist,”  engineer, administrator, employee… and you’ll see why the US defense system looks like a torn fishing net.

Related Links:

• USrael/ ZOG/ White House/ False Flags/ FBI …

WND

NASA downplays Antarctic snow record, blames ozone depletion, ocean dynamics

By Chelsea Schilling

Ice melt on the world’s coldest continent was the lowest in 30 years during the 2008-2009 melt season, according to new research.

The finding was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters last month by Marco Tedesco, a research scientist at the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, cooperatively managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; and Andrew Monaghan, National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist.

“A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008–2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980-2009,” their abstract states. “Strong positive phases of both the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008–2009 melt season.”

World Climate Report posted the following line graph to illustrate the Antarctic snow melt index (October-January) from 1980-2009:

The report included a list of NASA stories that highlight record high amounts of ice melting across Greenland. In recent years, NASA has written extensively on increasing snow melt and published findings by scientist Marco Tedesco.

A May 2007 NASA report declared, “In 2006, Greenland experienced more days of melting snow and at higher altitudes than average over the past 18 years, according to a new NASA-funded project using satellite observations.”

On Sept. 25, 2007, NASA reported once again that Greenland snow melt hit record highs.

NASA also reported extensive snowmelt in Antarctica in 2007 and 2008.

“On the world’s coldest continent of Antarctica, the landscape is so vast and varied that only satellites can fully capture the extent of changes in the snow melting across its valleys, mountains, glaciers and ice shelves,” NASA reported. “In a new NASA study, researchers using 20 years of data from space-based sensors have confirmed that Antarctic snow is melting farther inland from the coast over time, melting at higher altitudes than ever and increasingly melting on Antarctica’s largest ice shelf.”

NASA warns that “Antarctica contains 90 percent of Earth’s fresh water, making it the largest potential source of sea level rise.”

In March 2008, NASA reported the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated, something it said was “an indication of warming temperatures in the region.”

But now that Tadesco and Monaghan confirm a 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record, NASA has published research from scientists who claim increasing sea ice could be due to ozone depletion, changing ocean dynamics or the flooding of sea ice.

“Since the ozone hole began developing, researchers believe the Antarctic stratosphere has cooled between 2°C and 6°C (3.6°F and 10.8°F),” NASA reports. “Such cooling changes the dynamics between the stratosphere and lower layers of the atmosphere and strengthens Antarctica’s already fierce winds.”

The fierce winds are said to produce sustained periods of freezing temperatures unlike any other place in the world.

“The new model suggests that colder, stormier, and faster winds are rushing over the waters encircling Antarctic – especially the Ross Sea, where ice growth has been the most rapid,” NASA wrote in a September report. “The winds create areas of open water near the coast – known as polynyas – that promote sea ice production.”

According to the NASA report, changes in ocean circulation may also play a role.

“If global air temperatures warm, the model indicates that the amount of rain and snowfall could increase, and surface waters could freshen,” it states. “Since fresh water is less dense and less apt to mix with the heavier, saltier, and warmer water below, the layer at the ocean’s surface could become more stratified and mix less. This, in turn, would reduce the amount of heat flowing upward, allowing surface ice to expand.”

Another possibility, according to NASA, could be that accumulating snow is pressing down on the sea ice until it’s nearly submerged.

“When that happens, waves cause ocean water to spill on top of the ice and into the snow, forming a layer that eventually freezes and becomes ’snow ice,’” NASA reported.

World Climate Report questioned why NASA wouldn’t report specifically on Tedesco and Monaghan’s findings concerning a 30-year record low for ice melt.

“[T]his time around, nothing, nada, zippo from NASA when their ice melt go-to guy Marco Tedesco reports that Antarctica has set a record for the lack of surface ice melt (even more interestingly coming on the heels of a near-record low ice-melt year last summer),” World Climate Report states. “So, seriously, NASA, what gives? If ice melt is an important enough topic to warrant annual updates of the goings-on across Greenland, it is not important enough to elucidate the history and recent behavior across Antarctica?”

As part of NASA’s  first step in returning to the Moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has successfully entered into the Moon’s orbit.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, began its journey on June 18^th when the Atlas V rocket that carried it to space was launched from Kennedy Space Center. Taking only five days to reach its destination, LRO’s lunar orbit was confirmed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. At 6:27 a.m. EDT on Tuesday.

Cathy Peddie, the LRO deputy project manager at Goddard states that “Lunar orbit insertion is a crucial milestone for this mission.” This is because the mission can not begin until the moon’s gravitational pull captures the LRO. Over the next four days the LRO will release a series of four engine burns in order to achieve its commissioning phase orbit which will last for 60 days and allow the instruments to be brought online.

The LRO will spend the next year orbiting above the moon and assist scientist in creating hi-res 3D maps of the Moon’s surface. The LRO will also explore the permanently sunlit and shadowed regions as well as search for signs of water in the deepest craters of the lunar surface.

Note: The space shuttle Endeavor next launch attempt will be targeted for July 11 at 7:39 p.m. EDT.

It is true that most Americans no longer believe in Anthroprogenic (Man-made) Global Warming. Why? Mostly because of the harsh winter that we just endured and the unusually cool spring we are looking at right now. If greenhouse gas emissions are supposed to make temperatures go up, then why are temperatures going down? That is what people are asking.

But these observations may be showing us just the beginning of things to come. Most legitimate scientists (i.e. those scientists who are not on someone’s political payroll) are coming to the conclusion that climate change, whether it be warming or cooling, is driven by our sun. NASA has recently lent it’s support to that position by acknowledging the possibility of a “deep solar minimum.”

What that means is that our sun has slipped into a period of decreased activity and decreased solar energy output.

From Science@NASA:

And to show what that means graphically:

Sunspot counts are clearly at a minimum and that means decreased solar energy output as evidenced by the solar irradiance measurement:

NASA scientists admit that they do not know what will happen next. But it is clear that the sunspot cycle and the solar irradience cycle are more closely tied to global temperature change than any greenhouse gas emissions are. We know this because thanks to the efforts of China and India, greenhouse gas emissions have increased over the years, but global temperature has gone down, not up.

Other effects:

Also, if those sunspots don’t return and solar energy output does not increase, we will be in for some very cold times ahead.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Deep Solar Minimum
Dr. Tony Phillips
Science@NASA
April 1, 2009

Cool and interesting release from NASA on its Fermi Telescope and mapping gamma rays.

The release from today:

NASA’s Fermi Telescope Reveals Best-Ever View of the Gamma-Ray Sky

GREENBELT, Md., March 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A new map combining nearly three months of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is giving astronomers an unprecedented look at the high-energy cosmos. To Fermi’s eyes, the universe is ablaze with gamma rays from sources ranging from within the solar system to galaxies billions of light-years away.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)

“Fermi has given us a deeper and better-resolved view of the gamma-ray sky than any previous space mission,” said Peter Michelson, the lead scientist for the spacecraft’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) at Stanford University, Calif. “We’re watching flares from supermassive black holes in distant galaxies and seeing pulsars, high-mass binary systems, and even a globular cluster in our own.”

A paper describing the 205 brightest sources the LAT sees has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Supplement. “This is the mission’s first major science product, and it’s a big step toward producing our first source catalog later this year,” said David Thompson, a Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The LAT scans the entire sky every three hours when operating in survey mode, which is occupying most of the telescope’s observing time during Fermi’s first year of operations. These snapshots let scientists monitor rapidly changing sources.

The all-sky image released today shows us how the cosmos would look if our eyes could detect radiation 150 million times more energetic than visible light. The view merges LAT observations spanning 87 days, from August 4 to October 30, 2008.

The map includes one object familiar to everyone: the sun. “Because the sun appears to move against the background sky, it produces a faint arc across the upper right of the map,” Michelson explained. During the next few years, as solar activity increases, scientists expect the sun to produce growing numbers of high-energy flares. “No other instrument will be able to observe solar flares in the LAT’s energy range,” he said.

To better show individual sources, the new map was processed to suppress emissions from gas in the plane of our galaxy, the Milky Way. As a way of underscoring the variety of the objects the LAT is seeing, the Fermi team created a “top ten” list comprising five sources within the Milky Way and five beyond our galaxy.

The top sources within our galaxy include the sun; a star system known as LSI +61 303, which pairs a massive normal star with a superdense neutron star; PSR J1836+5925, which is one of many new pulsars, a type of spinning neutron star that emits gamma-ray beams; and the globular cluster 47 Tucanae, a sphere of ancient stars 15,000 light-years away.

Top extragalactic sources include NGC 1275, a galaxy that lies 225 million light-years away and is known for intense radio emissions; the dramatically flaring active galaxies 3C 454.3 and PKS 1502+106, both more than 6 billion light-years away; and PKS 0727-115, which is thought to be a type of active galaxy called a quasar.

The Fermi top ten also includes two sources — one within the Milky Way plane and one beyond it — that researchers have yet to identify. More than 30 of the brightest gamma-ray sources have no obvious counterparts at other wavelengths. “That’s good news. It means we’re seeing new objects,” Michelson said. “It also means that we have lots of work to do.”

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership mission, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy and important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S.

For images related to this release and the top ten LAT sources, please visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/gammaray_best.html

For more information about the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, please visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/fermi

Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO
AP Archive:  http://photoarchive.ap.org/
PRN Photo Desk photodesk@prnewswire.com
Source: NASA
   

Web Site:  http://www.nasa.gov/

From New Scientist:

FOR most of us the universe is unimaginably vast. But not for cosmologists. They feel decidedly hemmed in. No matter how big they build their telescopes, they can only see so far before hitting a wall. Approximately 45 billion light years away lies the cosmic horizon, the ultimate barrier because light beyond it has not had time to reach us.

So here we are, stuck inside our patch of universe, wondering what lies beyond and resigned to that fact we may never know. The best we can hope for, through some combination of luck and vigilance, is to spot a crack in the structure of things, a possible window to that hidden place beyond the edge of the universe. Now Sasha Kashlinsky believes he has stumbled upon such a window.

Kashlinsky, a senior staff scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has been studying how rebellious clusters of galaxies move against the backdrop of expanding space. He and colleagues have clocked galaxy clusters racing at up to 1000 kilometres per second – far faster than our best understanding of cosmology allows. Stranger still, every cluster seems to be rushing toward a small patch of sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela.

Kashlinsky and his team claim that their observation represents the first clues to what lies beyond the cosmic horizon. Finding out could tell us how the universe looked immediately after the big bang or if our universe is one of many. Others aren’t so sure. One rival interpretation is that it is nothing to do with alien universes but the result of a flaw in one of the cornerstones of cosmology, the idea that the universe should look the same in all directions. That is, if the observations withstand close scrutiny.

All the same colleagues are sitting up and taking notice. “This discovery adds to our pile of puzzles about cosmology,” says Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Heaped in that pile is 95 per cent of the universe’s contents, including the invisible dark matter that appears to hold the galaxies together, and the mysterious dark energy that is accelerating the universe’s expansion. Accordingly, Kashlinsky named this new puzzle the “dark flow”.

Kashlinsky measures how fast galaxy clusters up to 5 billion light years away are travelling by looking for signs of their motion in the cosmic microwave background, the heat left over from the big bang. Photons in the CMB generally stream uninterrupted through billions of light years of interstellar space, but when they pass through a galaxy cluster they encounter hot ionised gas in the spaces between the galaxies. Photons scattered by this gas show up as a tiny distortion in the temperature of the CMB, and if the cluster happens to be moving, the distortion will also register a Doppler shift.

In any individual cluster, this shift is far too small to detect, which is why no one had ever bothered looking for it. However, Kashlinsky realised if he combined measurements from a large enough number of clusters, the signal would be amplified to a measurable level.

Read the rest of the article here.

Astronomers have detected a lour roar from faraway space.

ARCADE’s mission was to search the sky for faint signs of heat from the first generation of stars, but instead they heard a roar from the distant reaches of the universe.

“The universe really threw us a curve,” Kogut said. “Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted.”

Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy.

Other radio galaxies also can’t account for the noise – there just aren’t enough of them.

“You’d have to pack them into the universe like sardines,” said study team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland. “There wouldn’t be any space left between one galaxy and the next.”

The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe.

For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery.

“We really don’t know what it is,”said team member Michael Seiffert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

…

“This is what makes science so exciting,” Seiffert said. “You start out on a path to measure something – in this case, the heat from the very first stars – but run into something else entirely, some unexplained.”

The release:

AGU FEATURE: Solar Flare Surprise

GREENBELT, Md., Dec. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Solar flares are the most powerful explosions in the solar system. Packing a punch equal to a hundred million hydrogen bombs, they obliterate everything in their immediate vicinity. Not a single atom should remain intact.

At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.

“We’ve detected a stream of perfectly intact hydrogen atoms shooting out of an X-class solar flare,” says Richard Mewaldt of the California Institute of Technology. “What a surprise! If we can understand how these atoms were produced, we’ll be that much closer to understanding solar flares.”

The event occurred on Dec. 5, 2006. A large sunspot rounded the sun’s eastern limb and with little warning it exploded. On the “Richter scale” of flares, which ranks X1 as a big event, the blast registered X9, making it one of the strongest flares of the past 30 years.

NASA managers braced themselves.  Such a ferocious blast usually produces a blizzard of high-energy particles dangerous to both satellites and astronauts.   An hour later they arrived, but they were not the particles researchers expected.

NASA’s twin Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft made the discovery:  “It was a burst of hydrogen atoms,” says Mewaldt.  “No other elements were present, not even helium (the sun’s second most abundant atomic species). Pure hydrogen streamed past the spacecraft for a full 90 minutes.”

Next came 30 minutes of quiet. The burst subsided and STEREO’s particle counters returned to low levels. The event seemed to be over when a second wave of particles enveloped the spacecraft. These were the “broken atoms” flares are supposed to produce — protons and heavier ions such as helium, oxygen and iron. “Better late than never,” he says.

At first, this unprecedented sequence of events baffled scientists, but now Mewaldt and colleagues believe they’re getting to the bottom of the mystery.

First, how did the hydrogen atoms resist destruction?

“They didn’t,” says Mewaldt. “We believe they began their journey to Earth in pieces, as protons and electrons. Before they escaped the sun’s atmosphere, however, some of the protons captured an electron, forming intact hydrogen atoms. The atoms left the sun in a fast, straight shot before they could be broken apart again.” (For experts: The team believes the electrons were recaptured by some combination of radiative recombination and charge exchange.)

Second, what delayed the ions?

“Simple,” says Mewaldt. “Ions are electrically charged and they feel the sun’s magnetic field. Solar magnetism deflects ions and slows their progress to Earth. Hydrogen atoms, on the other hand, are electrically neutral. They can shoot straight out of the sun without magnetic interference.”

Imagine two runners dashing for the finish line. One (the ion) is forced to run in a zig-zag pattern with zigs and zags as wide as the orbit of Mars. The other (the hydrogen atom) runs in a straight line. Who’s going to win?

“The hydrogen atoms reached Earth almost two hours before the ions,” says Mewaldt.

Mewaldt believes that all strong flares might emit hydrogen bursts, but they simply haven’t been noticed before. He’s looking forward to more X-flares now that the two STEREO spacecraft are widely separated on nearly opposite sides of the Sun. (In 2006 they were still together near Earth.) STEREO-A and -B may be able to triangulate future bursts and pinpoint the source of the hydrogen.  This would allow the team to test their ideas about the surprising phenomenon.

“All we need now,” he says, “is some solar activity.”

For more information about this research, look for the article “STEREO Observations of Energetic Neutral Atoms during the 5 December 2006 Solar Flare” by R. A. Mewaldt et al., in a future issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

  For more information and related images, visit:
  http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/flare_surprise.html

  For more information about STEREO, please visit:
  http://www.nasa.gov/stereo

Source: NASA – Goddard Space Flight Center
 Web Site:  http://www.nasa.gov/

Really.

The release from about 30 minutes ago:

Space Has Never Been Closer: NASA Instruments Document Contraction of the Boundary Between the Earth’s Ionosphere and Space

GREENBELT, Md., Dec. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Observations made by NASA instruments onboard an Air Force satellite have shown that the boundary between the Earth’s upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes. These observations were made by the Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI) instrument suite, which was launched aboard the U.S. Air Force’s Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite on April 16, 2008.

The CINDI suite, which was built under the direction Principal Investigator Rod Heelis of the University of Texas at Dallas, includes both ion and neutral sensors and makes measurements of the variations in neutral and ion densities and drifts.

CINDI and C/NOFS were designed to study disturbances in Earth’s ionosphere that can result in a disruption of navigation and communication signals. The ionosphere is a gaseous envelope of electrically charged particles that surrounds our planet and it is important because Radar, radio waves, and global positioning system signals can be disrupted by ionospheric disturbances.

CINDI’s first discovery was, however, that the ionosphere was not where it had been expected to be. During the first months of CINDI operations the transition between the ionosphere and space was found to be at about 260 miles (420 km) altitude during the nighttime, barely rising above 500 miles (800 km) during the day. These altitudes were extraordinarily low compared with the more typical values of 400 miles (640 km) during the nighttime and 600 miles (960 km) during the day.

The height of the ionosphere/space transition is controlled in part by the amount of extreme ultraviolet energy emitted by the Sun and a somewhat contracted ionosphere could have been expected because C/NOFS was launched during a minimum in the 11-year cycle of solar activity. However, the size of the actual contraction caught investigators by surprise. In fact, when they looked back over records of solar activity, they found that C/NOFS had been launched during the quietest solar minimum since the space age began.

This extraordinary circumstance is providing an unparalleled opportunity to study the connection between the interior dynamics of the Sun and the response of the Earth’s space environment.

CINDI is a NASA sponsored Mission of Opportunity conducted by the University of Texas at Dallas. NASA’s Explorer Program at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., managed the CINDI mission. The Explorer Program provides frequent flight opportunities for world-class scientific investigations from space within heliophysics and astrophysics.

The CINDI investigation is carried out as an enhancement to the science objectives of the C/NOFS satellite undertaken by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Space and Missile Command Test and Evaluation Directorate.

  For related images to this story, please visit:
  http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/outer_atmosphere.html

  For NASA’s CINDI Web site, visit:
  http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cindi/index.html

  For the University of Texas at Dallas, CINDI web site, visit:
  http://cindispace.utdallas.edu/

  Air Force Research Laboratory Web site
  http://www.kirtland.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=12776

Source: NASA – Goddard Space Flight Center
   

Web Site:  http://www.nasa.gov/

EO-1 image of Nzoia River Basin, Kenya, via Flickr, CC2.0.

As commercialization of space technology increases, we still have a lot to learn about the ROI of space technology investments. Here’s proof: Seven years after the end of its original mission lifespan, NASA’s Earth Observer-1 satellite is still beaming images back to earth.

What other hidden assets might be floating overhead, or buried in NASA’s warehouse of technologies and patents? That’s one of the big questions faced by the Space 2.0 community. The companies that find them and monetize them will be the winners.

EO-1, launched Nov. 1, 2000 as part of NASA’s New Millennium Project, had an initial design and mission life of one year. Its primary purpose was to validate new instrumentation and spacecraft bus technology. That project complete, scientists were eager to keep the high-quality images from EO-1 flowing. So NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center cut a deal with the U.S. Geological Survey to fund EO-1’s extended mission.

Since then, according to ATK – the prime contractor on EO-1 – the workhorse satellite has collected more than 76,000 images. It now works as part of a sensor web for autonomous observation of earth images, including such extraordinary events as brush fires, volcanic eruptions and the aftermath of hurricanes, and handles more than 90 data collection events a week.

EO-1 and the entire satellite constellation have enabled other commercial companies to build their businesses around remote sensing and imaging. They’ve created true Space 2.0 companies, selling location-based applications for uses as diverse as firefighting, retail real estate development and skier tracking.

Sounds like a wicked cool project.

The release:

NSF / NASA ‘Firefly’ CubeSat Mission to Study Link Between Lightning and Terrestrial Gamma Ray Flashes

Massive energy releases occur every day in the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. Lightning may give rise to these bursts of radiation. However, unlike the well-known flashes of light and peals of thunder familiar to Earth-dwellers, these energy releases are channeled upward and can be detected only from space. Our atmosphere protects us from the effects of this radiation, but the mechanisms at work can impact Earth’s upper atmosphere and its space environment.

A new nano satellite mission, called ‘Firefly,’ sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. will explore the relationship between lightning and these sudden bursts, called Terrestrial Gamma Ray Flashes (TGFs).

NASA’s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) first discovered TGFs in the 1990s. Designed to look outward at cosmic sources of gamma rays, CGRO also caught rare but tantalizing glimpses of gamma rays coming from Earth.

TGFs are likely produced by beams of very energetic electrons, which are accelerated in the intense electric fields generated by large thunderstorm systems. Before CGRO, many scientists thought these very energetic types of radiation could be generated only near the Sun, or in black holes, large galaxies, or neutron stars.

“These electron beams are more powerful than any produced in near-Earth space, and understanding their acceleration mechanisms will shed light on a physical process that may occur on other planets, or in astrophysical environments, as well as in the sun’s corona,” said Doug Rowland, principal investigator for the Firefly mission at NASA Goddard’s Space Weather Laboratory.

Firefly will explore which types of lightning produce these electron beams and associated TGFs. In addition, Firefly will explore the occurrence rate of TGFs that are weaker than any previously been studied. The result with be a better understanding of the effect that the millions of lightning flashes that occur worldwide each day have on the Earth’s upper atmosphere and near-Earth space environment.

“This mission could provide the first direct evidence for the relationship between lightning and TGFs, and addresses an important research question in atmospheric electricity,” said Anne-Marie Schmoltner, head of NSF’s Atmospheric Sciences Division’s Lower Atmosphere Research Section. “Identifying the source of terrestrial gamma ray flashes would be a great step toward fully understanding the physics behind lightning and its effect on the Earth’s atmosphere.”

The NSF CubeSat program represents a new “low cost access to space” approach to performing high-quality, targeted science on a smaller budget than is typical of larger satellite projects, which have price tags starting at $100 million. In contrast, the CubeSat Firefly will carry out its science mission in a much smaller package and at a considerably lower cost. The nano satellite is about the size of a football (4 by 4 by 12 inches). The cost to develop, launch, and operate Firefly for three years during its science mission is expected to be less than $1 million.

The Firefly mission also emphasizes student involvement as part of the ongoing effort to train the next generation of scientists and engineers. Students at Siena College, in Loudonville, N.Y., and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, in Princess Anne, Md., will be involved in all phases of the Firefly mission.

“Integrating innovative and creative educational efforts with front-line research is what NSF is all about,” said NSF Deputy Director Kathie L. Olsen. “The new CubeSat program uses the transformational technology of CubeSats to do just that. The Firefly mission is a terrific example of a program that will pursue scientific discovery, while providing unique and inspiring educational opportunities.”

Firefly is funded and managed by the National Science Foundation, and will be developed as a collaborative effort by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Universities Space Research Association (USRA), Columbia, Md.; Siena College; University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Princess Anne, Md.; and the Hawk Institute for Space Sciences, in Pocomoke City, Md.

NASA Goddard, USRA, and Siena College will provide the instrument payload, while the Hawk Institute will build the CubeSat. NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., will provide technical oversight for the integration of Firefly to the launch vehicle.

Firefly’s launch date is likely to be in 2010 or 2011. The micro satellite will fly as a secondary payload inside a Poly-Picosatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD) provided by California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif. Firefly will utilize the excess room and lift capacity not required by the primary mission payload.

For more information about NASA’s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, visit:

http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/cgro/index.html

 

 

Laura Layton
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Sorry about the release dump today, but I haven’t done one in a while and this just hit the inbox and was way, way too cool to pass up passing it along.

The release:

Hubble Directly Observes A Planet Orbiting Another Star

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter’s mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the “Southern Fish.”

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by NASA’s Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS.

In 2004, the coronagraph in the High Resolution Camera on Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys produced the first-ever resolved visible-light image of the region around Fomalhaut. It clearly showed a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 21.5 billion miles across and having a sharp inner edge.

This large debris disk is similar to the Kuiper Belt, which encircles the solar system and contains a range of icy bodies from dust grains to objects the size of dwarf planets, such as Pluto.

Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkeley, and team members proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring’s inner edge.

Circumstantial evidence came from Hubble’s confirmation that the ring is offset from the center of the star. The sharp inner edge of the ring is also consistent with the presence of a planet that gravitationally “shepherds” ring particles. Independent researchers have subsequently reached similar conclusions.

Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring’s inner edge. The results are being reported in the November 14 issue of Science magazine.

“Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off,” Kalas says.

“Fomalhaut is the gift that keeps on giving. Following the unexpected discovery of its dust ring, we have now found an exoplanet at a location suggested by analysis of the dust ring’s shape. The lesson for exoplanet hunters is ‘follow the dust,’” said team member Mark Clampin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Observations taken 21 months apart by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys’ coronagraph show that the object is moving along a path around the star, and is therefore gravitationally bound to it. The planet is 10.7 billion miles from the star, or about 10 times the distance of the planet Saturn from our sun.

The planet is brighter than expected for an object of three Jupiter masses. One possibility is that it has a Saturn-like ring of ice and dust reflecting starlight. The ring might eventually coalesce to form moons. The ring’s estimated size is comparable to the region around Jupiter and its four largest orbiting satellites.

Kalas and his team first used Hubble to photograph Fomalhaut in 2004, and made the unexpected discovery of its debris disk, which scatters Fomalhaut’s starlight. At the time they noted a few bright sources in the image as planet candidates. A follow-up image in 2006 showed that one of the objects is moving through space with Fomalhaut but changed position relative to the ring since the 2004 exposure. The amount of displacement between the two exposures corresponds to an 872-year-long orbit as calculated from Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

Future observations will attempt to see the planet in infrared light and will look for evidence of water vapor clouds in the atmosphere. This would yield clues to the evolution of a comparatively newborn 100-million-year-old planet. Astrometric measurements of the planet’s orbit will provide enough precision to yield an accurate mass.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2013 will be able to make coronagraphic observations of Fomalhaut in the near- and mid-infrared. Webb will be able to hunt for other planets in the system and probe the region interior to the dust ring for structures such as an inner asteroid belt. For more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO
AP Archive:  http://photoarchive.ap.org/
PRN Photo Desk photodesk@prnewswire.com
Source: NASA
   

Web Site:  http://www.nasa.gov/

As the winter months approach, we begin to think warm thoughts, pile on our sweaters and scarfs, and try to stay warm! So when you are looking for something to do indoors, Prince George’s County has plenty of attractions that fit the bill!

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is the perfect outing for a chilly day! The Space Flight Center is located in Greenbelt, Prince George’s county…and admission is free! With many children’s activities, and interesting film showings, the GSFA is a great place to bring any kind of group, big or small. If you are bringing a big group, it is best to call in advance to book a tour. The center is open Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays, it is open from 12 p.m. till 4 p.m. Each first Sunday of the month, you can see an actual rocket launch! Check out the website for full details, and a listing of exhibits and things to do and see.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Credit:

Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

Description:

This image, captured by the MODIS on the Terra satellite on October 2, 2008, shows an interesting phenomena called “internal waves”. These particular waves are northeast of Brazil, out in the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean. They are highlighted by sunglint.

Internal waves are waves that occur underwater at the boundary between layers of water with different densities. Like all major bodies of water, the Atlantic Ocean is composed of layers of water with different densities: the topmost is the least dense, while each successively deeper layer is denser. Internal waves are usually caused by the lower layer being forced against a shallow obstacle, such as a ridge, by tidal action. The ridge causes a disturbance, which creates a wave in the water layer, similar to the way that the wind can cause waves on the water’s surface. Unlike normal surface waves, internal waves can stretch for tens of kilometers in length and move throughout the ocean for several days.

Internal waves alter sea surface currents, changing the overall “sea surface roughness.” Where these currents converge, the sea surface is more turbulent, and therefore brighter because it catches more of the Sun´s reflection. Where the currents diverge, the surface is smoother and darker, creating zones called “slicks.”

Additional Images:

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Credit:

NASA/S. Pineault, DRAO, Lynn Cominsky, David Harris, J.D. Harrington, 

Description:

About three times a second, a 10,000-year-old stellar corpse sweeps a beam of gamma-rays toward Earth. Discovered by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the object, called a pulsar, is the first one known that only “blinks” in gamma rays.

“This is the first example of a new class of pulsars that will give us fundamental insights into how these collapsed stars work,” said Stanford University’s Peter Michelson, principal investigator for Fermi’s Large Area Telescope in Palo Alto, Calif.

The gamma-ray-only pulsar lies within a supernova remnant known as CTA 1, which is located about 4,600 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus. Its lighthouse-like beam sweeps Earth’s way every 316.86 milliseconds. The pulsar, which formed about 10,000 years ago, emits 1,000 times the energy of our sun.

A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star, the crushed core left behind when a massive sun explodes. Astronomers have cataloged nearly 1,800 pulsars. Although most were found through their pulses at radio wavelengths, some of these objects also beam energy in other forms, including visible light and X-rays. However, the source in CTA 1 only pulses at gamma-ray energies.

“We think the region that emits the pulsed gamma rays is broader than that responsible for pulses of lower-energy radiation,” explained team member Alice Harding at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “The radio beam probably never swings toward Earth, so we never see it. But the wider gamma-ray beam does sweep our way.”

Scientists think CTA 1 is only the first of a large population of similar objects.

“The Large Area Telescope provides us with a unique probe of the galaxy’s pulsar population, revealing objects we would not otherwise even know exist,” says Fermi project scientist Steve Ritz, also at Goddard.

The pulsar in CTA 1 is not located at the center of the remnant’s expanding gaseous shell. Supernova explosions can be asymmetrical, often imparting a “kick” that sends the neutron star careening through space. Based on the remnant’s age and the pulsar’s distance from its center, astronomers believe the neutron star is moving at about a million miles per hour — a typical speed.

Fermi’s Large Area Telescope scans the entire sky every three hours and detects photons with energies ranging from 20 million to more than 300 billion times the energy of visible light. The instrument sees about one gamma ray every minute from CTA 1, enough for scientists to piece together the neutron star’s pulsing behavior, its rotation period, and the rate at which it is slowing down.

A pulsar’s beams arise because neutron stars possess intense magnetic fields and rotate rapidly. Charged particles stream outward from the star’s magnetic poles at nearly the speed of light to create the gamma-ray beams Fermi sees. Because the beams are powered by the neutron star’s rotation, they gradually slow the pulsar’s spin. In the case of CTA 1, the rotation period is increasing by about one second every 87,000 years.

“This observation shows the power of the Large Area Telescope,” Michelson said. “It is so sensitive that we can now discover new types of objects just by observing their gamma-ray emissions.”

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S.

A paper about the new pulsar appears in the Oct. 16 edition of Science Express. For images and animations associated with this release, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/fermi

Credit:

NASA/JPL-Caltech/E. Dwek and R. Arendt

Explanation:

Hot spots near the shattered remains of an exploded star are echoing the blast’s first moments, say scientists using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Eli Dwek of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. and Richard Arendt of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, say these echoes are powered by radiation from Cassiopeia A supernova shock wave that blew the star apart some 11,000 years ago.

“We’re seeing the supernova’s first flash,” Dwek said.

Previously, other Spitzer researchers discovered hot spots near the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant and recognized the spots’ importance as light echoes of the original blast. Dwek and Arendt used Spitzer data to probe this hot dust and pin down the cause of the echoes more precisely.

Six knots of silicate dust near the remnant show temperatures between -173 and -123 degrees Celsius (-280 and -190 degrees Fahrenheit). Although this might seem frigid by earthly standards, such temperatures are downright hot compared to typical interstellar dust.

Writing in the October 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, the scientists show that the only event that could make the grains this hot is the powerful and short-lived pulse of ultraviolet radiation and X-rays that heralded the death of the star. The flash was a hundred billion times brighter than the sun, but lasted only a day or so.

“They’ve identified the precise event during the demolition of the star that produces the echo we see,” said Michael Werner, the project scientist for Spitzer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Light from the explosion reached Earth in the 17th century, but no one noticed. The Spitzer find gives astronomers a second chance to study the supernova as it unfolds.

Although the explosion originally escaped detection, its aftermath — a hot, expanding gas cloud known as Cassiopeia A (Cas A, for short) — is one of the best-studied supernova remnants. The blast zone lies 11,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.

When a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, its core collapses into a superdense, city-sized object called a neutron star. As the neutron star forms, it stiffens and rebounds. This triggers a mammoth shock wave that blows the star’s outer layers to smithereens. The exiting shock creates a high-energy flash that precedes the supernova’s rise in visible light.

Evidence for a flash associated with this “shock breakout” existed only in computer simulations until January 9, 2008. That’s when NASA’s Swift satellite detected a 5-minute-long X-ray pulse from galaxy NGC 2770. A few days later, a new supernova — designated SN 2008D — appeared in the galaxy.

The infrared echoes from Cas A arise from dust clouds about 160 light-years farther away than the remnant. The supernova’s initial radiation pulse expands through space at the speed of light, then encounters the clouds and heats their dust grains. The dust, in turn, re-radiates the energy at infrared wavelengths.

The breakout radiation took 160 years to reach the clouds and, once heated, the dust’s infrared energy had to make up the same distance. This extra travel time results in a 320-year offset between the supernova’s initial outward-moving flash and arrival of the dust’s infrared echo at Earth. The researchers plan to use the echoes to paint an intimate portrait of the explosion, the star and the immediate environment.

When light from the Cas A supernova first reached Earth in the late 1600s, no one reported seeing a new star. On August 16, 1680, the English astronomer John Flamsteed might have seen the supernova without recognizing it. He recorded a faint naked-eye star near the position of Cas A, but none exists there now.

Well I must be losing it, since I forgot the 3 year anniversery of Space Photos. It’s been 3 years and one month since I have been posting images of/from space. So in that frame of mine I will repost my first post here at Space Photos. I would like to thank all of you, who have visited my site in the last 3 years and came back after some slow periods of posting.

My First Post here was an image from the Hubble Space Telescope, which happens to be on of my favorite sources of images.
Title:

Debris Ring Around a Star

Image:

Description:

NASA Hubble Space Telescope’s most detailed visible-light image ever taken of a narrow, dusty ring around the nearby star Fomalhaut (HD 216956), offers the strongest evidence yet that an unruly and unseen planet may be gravitationally tugging on the ring.

Hubble unequivocally shows that the center of the ring is a whopping 1.4 billion miles (15 astronomical units) away from the star. This is a distance equal to nearly halfway across our solar system. The most plausible explanation, astronomers said, is that an unseen planet moving in an elliptical orbit is reshaping the ring with its gravitational pull. The geometrically striking ring, tilted obliquely toward Earth, would not have such a great offset if it were simply being influenced by Fomalhaut’s gravity alone.

An offset of the ring center from the star has been inferred from previous and longer wavelength observations using submillimeter telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the Spitzer Space Telescope, Caltech’s Submillimeter Observatory and applying theoretical modeling and physical assumptions. Now Hubble’s sharp images directly reveal the ring’s offset from Fomalhaut.

These new observations provide strong evidence that at least one unseen planetary mass object is orbiting the star. Hubble would have detected an object larger than a planet, such as a brown dwarf. “Our new Hubble images confirm those earlier hypotheses that proposed a planet was perturbing the ring,” said Paul Kalas of the University of California at Berkeley. The ring is similar to our solar system’s Kuiper Belt, a vast reservoir of icy material left over from the formation of our solar system planets.

The observations offer insights into our solar system’s formative years, when the planets played a game of demolition derby with the debris left over from the formation of our planets, gravitationally scattering many objects across space. Some icy material may have collided with the inner solar system planets, irrigating them with water formed in the colder outer solar system. Other debris may have traveled outward, forming the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, a spherical cloud of material surrounding the solar system.

Only Hubble has the exquisite optical resolution to resolve that the ring’s inner edge is sharper than its outer edge, a telltale sign that an object is gravitationally sweeping out material like a plow clearing away snow. Another classic signature of a planet’s influence is the ring’s relatively narrow width, about 2.3 billion miles (25 astronomical units). Without an object to gravitationally keep the ring material intact, astronomers said, the particles would spread out much wider.

“What we see in this ring is similar to what is seen in the Cassini spacecraft images of Saturn’s narrow rings. In those images, Saturn’s moons are ’shepherding’ the ring material and keeping the ring from spreading out,” Kalas said.

The suspected planet may be orbiting far away from Fomalhaut, inside the dust ring’s inner edge, between 4.7 billion and 6.5 billion miles (50 to 70 astronomical units) from the star. The ring is 12 billion miles (133 astronomical units) from Fomalhaut, which is much farther away than our outermost planet Pluto is from the Sun. These Hubble observations do not detect the putative planet directly, so the astronomers cannot measure its mass. They will, instead, conduct computer simulations of the ring’s dynamics to estimate the planet’s mass.

Kalas and collaborators James R. Graham of the University of California at Berkeley and Mark Clampin of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will publish their findings in the June 23, 2005 issue of the journal Nature.

Fomalhaut, a 200-million-year-old star, is a mere infant compared to our own 4.5-billion-year-old Sun. It resides 25 light-years away from the Sun. Located in the constellation Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish), the Fomalhaut ring is ten times as old as debris disks seen previously around the stars AU Microscopii and Beta Pictoris, where planets may still be forming. If our solar system is any example, planets should have formed around Fomalhaut within tens of millions of years after the birth of the star.

The Hubble images also provide a glimpse of the outer planetary region surrounding a star other than our Sun. Many of the more than 100 planets detected beyond our solar system are orbiting close to their stars. Most of the current planet-detecting techniques favor finding planets that are close to their stars.

“The size of Fomalhaut’s dust ring suggests that not all planetary systems form and evolve in the same way — planetary architectures can be quite different from star to star,” Kalas explained. “While Fomalhaut’s ring is analogous to the Kuiper Belt, its diameter is four times greater than that of the Kuiper Belt.”

The astronomers used the Advanced Camera for Surveys’ (ACS) coronagraph aboard Hubble to block out the light from the bright star so they could see details in the faint ring.

“The ACS’s coronagraph offers high contrast, allowing us to see the ring’s structure against the extremely bright glare from Fomalhaut,” Clampin said. “This observation is currently impossible to do at visible wavelengths without the Hubble Space Telescope. The fact that we were able to detect it with Hubble was unexpected, but impressive.”

Kalas and his collaborators used Hubble over a five-month period in 2004 — May 17, Aug. 2, and Oct. 27 — to map the ring’s structure. One side of the ring has yet to be imaged because it extended beyond the ACS camera’s field of view. The astronomers will use Hubble again this summer to map the entire ring. They expect that the additional Hubble data will reveal whether or not the ring has any gaps, which could have been carved out by the gravitational influence of an unseen body. The longer, deeper exposures also may show whether the ring has an even wider diameter than currently seen. In addition, the astronomers will measure the ring’s colors to determine its physical properties, including its composition.

Previous thermal emission maps of Fomalhaut showed that one side of the ring is warmer than the other side, implying that the ring is off center by about half the distance measured by Hubble. This difference might be explained by the fact that Hubble’s ACS images of the ring’s structure are 100 times sharper than the longer wavelength observations, and hence, yield a much more accurate result. Or the discrepancy might imply that the ring’s size looks different at other wavelengths.

Fomalhaut’s dust ring was discovered in 1983 in observations made by NASA’s Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). The system is a compelling target for future telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Terrestrial Planet Finder, Kalas said

Credit:

NASA,ESA, P. Kalas and J. Graham (University of California, Berkeley), and M. Clampin (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

Credit:

C. Mayhew & R. Simmon (NASA/GSFC), NOAA/NGDC, DMSP Digital Archive

Explanation:

This is what the Earth looks like at night. Can you find your favorite country or city? Surprisingly, city lights make this task quite possible. Human-made lights highlight particularly developed or populated areas of the Earth’s surface, including the seaboards of Europe, the eastern United States, and Japan. Many large cities are located near rivers or oceans so that they can exchange goods cheaply by boat. Particularly dark areas include the central parts of South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. The above image is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites.

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center just recently displayed a stunning new map of Antarctica which combines 1,000 digital satellite images into a mosaic with the most geologically precise high resolution images of the frigid continent to date.  The images are in true color, depicting the hue variations of the frozen lands relief, including mountains, valleys, rivers and other geographic textures.   The map, which is a collage of images primarily taken by Landsat 7 from 1999 to 2001, has a resolution 10 times greater that its predecessors.  Robert Bindschadler, the NASA scientist who conceptualized the project, described the map:“This mosaic of images opens up a window to the Antarctic that we just haven’t had before…this innovation is like watching high-definition TV in living color versus watching the picture on a grainy black and white television.”  The map, dubbed LIMA (Landsat Image Mozaic of Antarctica) was composed by researchers from NASA. U.S. Geological Survey, the National Science Foundation, and the British Antarctic Survey.  Presenting the map was aptly timed to coordinate with the International Polar Year, a global campaign to study environmental changes in both polar regions.  Sites via NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey are available online to view these stunning images:           

 http://lima.nasa.gov                

http://lima.usgs.gov  

Sources:  NASA, U.S. Geological Survey, National Science Foundation, NY Times