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    Category Astronomy/Space

    NASA’s Van Allen probes Revolutionize View of Radiation Belts

    January 20, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    (Illustration) At the highest electron energies measured — above 1 megaelectron volt (Mev) — researchers saw electrons in the outer belt only. Credits: NASA Goddard/Duberstein

    (Illustration) At the highest electron energies measured — above 1 megaelectron volt (Mev) — researchers saw electrons in the outer belt only. Credits: NASA Goddard/Duberstein

    600 miles from Earth’s surface is the 1st of 2 donut-shaped electron swarms, Van Allen Belts, or radiation belts. Understanding the shape and size of the belts, which shrink and swell in response to incoming radiation from the sun, is crucial for protecting technology in space. Scientists wish to know just which orbits could be jeopardized in different situations.

    “The shape of the belts is actually quite different depending on what type of electron you’re looking at,” said Geoff Reeves . “Electrons at different energy levels are distributed differently in these regions...

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    Highest-Resolution Color Look yet at Haze Layers in Pluto’s atmosphere

    January 19, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    NASA image: Pluto’s haze in bands of blue

    Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI This processed image is the highest-resolution color look yet at the haze layers in Pluto’s atmosphere. Shown in approximate true color, the picture is constructed from a mosaic of four panchromatic images from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) splashed with Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) four-color filter data, all acquired by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015. The resolution is 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) per pixel; the sun illuminates the scene from the right.

    Scientists believe the haze is a photochemical smog resulting from the action of sunlight on methane and 4 molecules in Pluto’s atmosphere, producing a complex mixture of hydrocarbons such as acetylene and ethylene...

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    The Properties of Pre-Stellar Cores

    January 18, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The Properties of Pre-Stellar Cores

    A false-color infrared image of a young, star-forming dust cloud with several embedded cores (identified in red). A new infrared study of 3218 cores in various stages of development has enabled astronomers to categorize the temperatures, densities, and evolutionary characters of young stellar nurseries. Credit: NASA/Spitzer and P. Myers

    Stars like the Sun begin their lives as cold, dense cores of dust and gas that collapse under the influence of gravity until nuclear fusion is ignited. These cores contain hundreds to thousands of solar-masses of material and have gas densities ~1000X greater than typical interstellar regions (the typical value is ~1 molecule/cubic cm)...

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    ‘Space Warps’ and other Citizen Science Projects reap major dividends for Astrophysics

    January 18, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The Zooniverse citizen science project Space Warps recently reported that its online volunteers have helped to discover 29 new gravitational lenses.

    The Zooniverse citizen science project Space Warps recently reported that its online volunteers have helped to discover 29 new gravitational lenses, and 30 other possible lenses from the Canada France Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey. Not only are these important discoveries in their own right but they also prove just how good citizen scientists are at hunting down unusual objects. Credit; http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/hunting-%E2%80%98halos%E2%80%99-universe-0

    Thanks to the Internet, amateur volunteers known as “citizen scientists” can readily donate their time and effort to science–in fields ranging from medicine to zoology to astrophysics...

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