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Home , 2013 TV135, 2 Pallas, 3 Juno, List of ring galaxies

1 Volume MMXIII No. 10

October 2013

President: Mark Folkerts (425) 486-9733 folkerts at seanet dot com The Stargazer VP and Programs: Ron Mosher ron.mosher69 at gmail dot net P.O. Box 13272 Librarian: Chris Dennis chrisandlinda at frontier dot net Mill Creek, WA 98082 Treasurer: Cindy Perkins Web assistance: Cody Gibson cgibson41 at austin dot rr dot com Publicity Bill Ferguson / Mike Kozak Intro Astro Classes Jack Barnes jackdanielb at comcast dot net See EAS website at: Public Outreach coord. Mike Tucker scalped_raven at yahoo dot com http://everettastro.org for directions if they never have been out here.” EAS BUSINESS… Call Ron about unscheduled spur-of-the-moment observing. Please also join the EAS e-mail list, and then send mail to the mail list TH at [email protected] to coordinate spur-of-the-moment NOVEMBER EAS MEETING – SATURDAY NOV 14 , 3:00 PM, observing get-togethers, on nights when the sky clears. We try to hold AT EVERGREEN BRANCH LIBRARY, MEETING ROOM informal close-in parties each month during the spring, summer, and fall months on a weekend near the New at a member’s The next EAS monthly meeting will be 3:00 pm property or a local park. Also watch the EAS Facebook page ! Saturday November 14th. EAS meetings have speakers or presentations, and updates on calendar events and Other Western US Star Parties in 2013 upcoming activities, and are open to the public at no charge. Meeting is at the Evergreen branch of the Everett Public Library 2013 Regional Star Parties located at 9512 Evergreen Way. - Website · Directions Completed for this year. PREVIOUS (OCTOBER) EAS MEETING RECAP Other Star Parties http://www.amsky.com/calendar/events/ Constellations – the history, purposes and contents of constellations in the sky. 2013 ASTRO CALENDAR

NEW MEMBER / BEGINNERS CLASS WITH JACK BARNES October 2013 Astro Calendar Classes are as requested, please contact Jack Barnes to set up a date Oct 01 - NASA's 55th birthday (1958) and time. Email - jackdanielb at comcast dot net Oct 03 - at Oct 04-10 - World Space Week  STAR PARTY INFO  Oct 06 - occults TYC 5436-00385-1 (9.7 magnitude star) Oct 09 - Juno,  Scheduled EAS Star Parties at Ron Tam’s:  Oct 09 - at its greatest eastern (25 degrees) evening sky Currently planned for Sat Nov 2nd at Ron Tam’s place. Oct 09 - Draconids peak Oct 10 - Mercury passes 5.4 degrees from EAS member Ron Tam has offered a flexible opportunity to EAS Oct 13 - Moon occults Asteroid members to come to his home north of Snohomish for observing on Oct 15 - Dwarf 136199 at opposition (95.48 AU) Oct 18 - Penumbral lunar clear weekend evenings and for EAS star parties. Anyone wishing to do Oct 21 - Orionids meteor shower peak so needs to contact him in advance and confirm available dates, and let Oct 25 - Asteroid 1 occults TYC 0865-00911-1 (10.0 magnitude star) him know if plans change. “Our place is open for star parties any Oct 28 - Mercury passes 4.1 degrees from Saturn Saturday except weekends of the Full Moon. People can call to get Oct 29 - Asteroid 8958 Stargazer closest approach to Earth (1.61 AU) weather conditions or to confirm that there is a star party. Our phone Oct 31 - Object 55637 (2002 UX25) at opposition (40.17 AU) number is (360) 568-5152. They can e-mail me too (tam1951 at frontier dot net) but I don't check my email daily. They can email me November 2013 Astro Calendar 2 Nov 01 - at Its greatest eastern elongation (47 degrees) is in Leo with a magnitude of +1.4, a phase of 92%, Nov 02 - Asteroid 2 Pallas occults TYC 6028-00309-1 (9.6 magnitude star) and a diameter of 5". It rises at 01:14, transits at 07:57, and Nov 02 - Asteroid 3 Juno occults 2UCAC 27007662 (12.5 magnitude star) sets at 14:39. It is visible in the morning sky. Nov 03 - Hybrid solar eclipse Nov 03 - Daylight Saving ends - Set clock Back 1 Hour (United States) is in Gemini with a magnitude of -2.5 and a Nov 03 - Taurids meteor shower peak diameter of 43". It transits at 04:17, sets at 12:32, and rises Nov 15 - 's 275th birthday (1738) again at 19:58. It is visible in the morning sky. Nov 17 - Leonids meteor shower peak Saturn is in Libra with a magnitude of +0.5 and a diameter Nov 18 - Mercury at its greatest western elongation (19 degrees) morning sky of 15". It rises at 06:56, transits at 11:39, and sets at 16:22. Nov 18 - Alan Shepard's 90th birthday (1923) Nov 26 - Asteroid 2007 VW83 Near-Earth Flyby (0.066 AU) It is currently too close to the to be observed. Nov 28 - C/2012 S1 (ISON) perihelion (0.013 AU) Uranus is in Pisces with a magnitude of +5.7 and a diameter of 4". It sets at 03:43, rises again at 15:01, and December 2013 Astro Calendar transits at 21:20. It is well placed for observation Dec 01 - Moon occults Saturn throughout the night. Dec 07 - Kuiper Belt Object 174567 (2003 MW12) at opposition (48.2 AU) is in Aquarius with a magnitude of +7.9 and a Dec 08 - Kuiper Belt Object 2004 XR190 at opposition (56.67 AU) diameter of 2". It sets at 00:10, rises again at 14:04, and Dec 09 - Kuiper Belt Object 19521 Chaos at opposition (40.54 AU) transits at 19:05. It is visible in the evening sky. Dec 13 - Geminids meteor shower peak Dec 21 - Winter Solstice, 17:11 UT is in Sagittarius with a magnitude of +14.2. It rises at Dec 21 - 45th anniversary (1968), Apollo 8 launch (Borman, Lovell and Anders) 11:23, transits at 15:27, and sets at 19:32. It is visible in Dec 22 - Ursids meteor shower peak the evening sky. Dec 27 - Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) closest approach to Earth (0.429 AU) (times listed are in local time for Everett PST) Dec 27 - Asteroid occults HIP 95168 (3.9 magnitude star) Dec 29 - Moon occults Saturn EAS MEMBER NEWS January 2014 Astro Calendar IMPORTANT CHANGE - If you have NOT paid your dues yet this year Jan 03 - Quadrantids meteor shower peak (2013), you should pay $24 now, as everyone’s dues are expected in Jan 04 - Earth at perihelion (0.983 AU from Sun) January. Please send check to EAS P.O. Box 13272, Mill Creek WA, Jan 05 - Jupiter at opposition 98082, or bring to meeting. Jan 07 - Mercury passes 6.5 degrees from Venus Jan 16 - Kuiper Belt Object at opposition (42.72 AU) MEMBER NOTE: See the great EAS member TMSP report and astro- Jan 19 - Kuiper Belt Object 208996 (2003 AZ84) at opposition (44.03 AU) photos, featured at the end of this month’s newsletter ! Jan 31 - Chinese New Year $$ - FINANCIAL HEALTH - $$ OBSERVER’S INFORMATION… The club currently maintains a $850+ balance. We try to keep approximately a $500 balance level to allow for contingencies. LUNAR PHASES FOR OBSERVING Funds obtained from membership dues allows the EAS to publish the Stargazer newsletter, pay Astronomical League dues, pay insurance, host a web site, and Oct 18 Full Moon maintain our library. Oct 26 Last Quarter Moon Nov 03 New Moon UW Speakers Colloquium Schedule Nov 09 First Quarter Moon Astronomy Department weekly colloquium meets Thursdays at 4:00 Nov 17 Full Moon pm in PAB A102 - the classroom part of the Physics/Astronomy Building Nov 25 Last Quarter Moon complex. http://www.astro.washington.edu/pages/colloquium.html Dec 02 New Moon Dec 09 First Quarter Moon EAS MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS & INFORMATION Dec 17 Full Moon EAS Benefits - Membership in the Everett Astronomical Society (EAS) includes Dec 25 Last Quarter Moon invitations to all of the club meetings and star parties, and entitles members to Jan 01 New Moon the monthly newsletter, The Stargazer. Only members may vote in EAS Jan 07 First Quarter Moon elections, or be eligible for EAS drawings. Magazine Discounts – In addition you will be able subscribe to Sky and for $7 off the normal subscription rate, contact the treasurer (Jerry UP IN THE SKY THIS MONTH - THE (AND PLUTO) Galt) for more information. http://everettastro.org/application.htm (When renewing your subscription to Sky & Telescope you should send your S&T The Sun is in Libra. It rises at 07:28, transits the meridian renewal form along with a check made out to Everett Astronomical Society to at 11:54, and sets at 16:19. the EAS address. EAS treasurer will renew your Sky and Telescope subscription for you. Astronomy magazine offers a similar opportunity to club members. Mercury is in Virgo with a magnitude of +0.2, a phase of Membership in the Astronomical League - EAS is a member of the 33%, and a diameter of 8". It rises at 05:46, transits at Astronomical League and you will receive the Astronomical League's quarterly 10:51, and sets at 15:57. It is visible low in the east before newsletter magazine, The Reflector. sunrise. EAS Library - Membership will give you access to all the material in the lending Venus is in Sagittarius with a magnitude of -4.5, a phase of library. The library, consists of VCR tapes, DVDs, many books, magazines, and software titles. The EAS has a library of books, videotapes, and software for 44%, and a diameter of 28". It rises at 12:01, transits at members to borrow. We always value any items you would like to donate to 15:13, and sets at 18:25. It is visible in the evening sky. this library. You can contact club librarian to borrow or donate any materials. See library items list here: http://everettastro.org/eas_library.htm 3 Joining or Renewing with the EAS - 8-INCH DOBSONIAN CURRENTLY ON LOAN 10-INCH KEN WARD DOBSONIAN AVAILABLE FOR LOAN EAS dues are $24 / year per family, payable in January. If you have not paid 10-INCH SONOTUBE DOBSONIAN AVAILABLE your dues yet for 2013, please send or bring a check to our Treasurer to re- 13-INCH THIN-MIRROR DOB FINISHING REHAB subscribe, to keep the club financially solvent, and to continue to receive great A 25-inch mirror has been donated to the club, and investigation is under way to membership benefits. http://everettastro.org/application.htm determine what would be required to turn it into a large club telescope. If you >> Members – Your dues are payable each January if you have not have interest or skills in mirror testing or telescope making, please let us know. paid for this year, please do so as soon as possible. If you become EAS members: contact Ron Tam, to borrow a scope for up to 60 days. more than three months past due, the club will officially assume that you no longer wish to be a member, and remove you from the ‘IT’S OVER YOUR HEAD’ – ASTRONOMY PODCASTS distribution of newsletters and rolls for club elections. << Web page with lots of archives and other info is available at http://www.celestialnorth.org/radio/index.php podcasts Send your annual dues renewals to http://www.celestialnorth.org/radio/index.php Everett Astronomical Society P.O. Box 13272, Mill Creek, WA 98082. KPLU 88.5 FM National Public Radio has daily broadcasts of "Star Date" by the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas at Austin, Mon - Fri 6:30PM; Those who have subscriptions to Sky and Telescope can now pay their own Sat - Sun 6:00PM. The short 2 minute radio show deals with current topics of subscription as long as they are EAS members in good standing. Members will interest in astronomy. The University of Washington TV broadcasts programs now be able to renew directly via mail or phone and still obtain the club from NASA at 12:00 AM Monday through Friday, 12:30 AM Saturday, and 1:30 discount. The subscribers may mail in the renewal notices with their payment, AM Sunday on the Channel 27 cable station. or renew via phone at (800) 253-0245. Payment at the time of renewal is required. Once a year, Sky and Telescope will check with the EAS club treasurer Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon to see that the subscribers are still members in good standing to qualify for the The Lunar and Planetary Institute has created a digital version of Lunar Orbiter discount. New members will continue to subscribe through the club treasurer. Photographic Atlas of the Moon, and Consolidated Lunar Atlas available at: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/cla/menu.html HOW YOU CAN HELP THE EAS http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/lunar_orbiter Observing Jupiter’s – Java tool Help the sidewalk astronomy committee with events: Plan and http://skytonight.com/observing/objects/javascript/jupiter conduct urban/suburban sidewalk astronomy events to allow passers- by to experience astronomy. We are looking for multiple volunteers times for Jupiter’s Great Red Spot in 2012 who could help with a series of Sidewalk Astronomy sessions at a local http://skytonight.com/observing/objects/planets/3304091.html park or public venue. Special events like eclipse or (ISON, for NOAA SUN CALCULATOR example?) especially draw the interest of the public. Need to know exactly what time the sun will set on Sep 26, 2065? Other volunteers? Find a way to help and contribute. Come up with Or when it rose in 565 BC? How about the length of daylight a week from a new idea to promote the EAS and astronomy in your community. Tuesday in Albuquerque, N.M.? Just go to NOAA's solar calculator, available on the Web. http://www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/gen.html CLUB SCOPES INTERNATIONAL – VISIBLE SEATTLE PASSES ISS Visibility – Heavens Above: http://www.heavens-above.com/PassSummary.asp?lat=47.979&lng=- 122.201&alt=0&loc=Everett&TZ=PST&satid=25544

ASTRONOMICAL NOTES -- ON & OFF THE WEB...

CARBON WORLDS MAY BE WATERLESS, SAYS NEW STUDY Planets rich in carbon, including so-called diamond planets, may lack oceans, according to some recent theoretical research. Our sun is a carbon-poor star, and as result, our planet Earth is made up largely of silicates, not carbon. with much more carbon than the sun, on the other hand, are predicted to make planets chock full of carbon, and perhaps even layers of diamond.

EAS Club Telescope Borrowing – (Ken Ward 10” club telescope shown) Being an EAS member also allows you the use of the club's , including an award winning 10 inch Dobsonian mount reflector, a second 10” dob, or and 8” Dobsonian. Contact Ron Tam, (360) 568-5152 to borrow a telescope. SCOPE LOAN STATUS NEW 8-INCH SKYQUEST DOB AVAILABLE FOR LOAN A Tale of Two Worlds: Silicate Versus Carbon Planets (Artist Concept) - This 4 artist's concept illustrates the fate of two different planets: the one on the left is this stately view of the golden-hued planet and its main rings. The similar to Earth, made up largely of silicate-based rocks with oceans coating its observation and resulting image mosaic were planned as one of three surface. The one on the right is rich in carbon -- and dry. Chances are low that images for Cassini's ‘2013 Scientist for a ’ essay contest. The life as we know it, which requires liquid water, would thrive under such barren contest challenges students to study three possible targets and write conditions. New theoretical findings show that planetary systems with carbon- rich stars would host waterless rocky planets. On Earth, it is believed that icy about which one they think will yield the best science. Today is the and comets are the main suppliers of Earth's ocean. But, in star last day for U.S. submissions, and the Cassini mission has already systems rich in carbon, the carbon would snag up oxygen to make carbon started working on picking the best essays. monoxide, leaving little oxygen to make water ice. In those systems, the asteroids and comets would be dry. The most extreme carbon-rich stars, with This natural-color view -- seen as human eyes would have seen it - was much more carbon than our sun, are thought to create carbon-based planets, as obtained on Oct 10, 2013. It shows off the differently colored bands depicted in this illustration. Those planets would lack oceans due to a lack of icy of weather at Saturn. A bright, wavy stream of clouds around 42 asteroids and comets serving as water reservoirs. degrees north latitude appears to mark some of the turbulent aftermath of a giant storm that reached its violent peak in early 2011. By modeling the ingredients in these carbon-based planetary systems, The mysterious six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon is also the scientists determined they lack icy water reservoirs thought to visible around Saturn's north pole. supply planets with oceans. "The building blocks that went into making our oceans are the icy asteroids and comets," said Torrence When Cassini arrived in 2004, more of the northern hemisphere Johnson, a team member of several planetary missions, including sported a bluish hue and it was northern winter. The golden tones Galileo, Voyager and Cassini, has spent decades studying the planets in dominated the southern hemisphere, where it was southern summer. our own . "If we keep track of these building blocks, we But as the seasons have turned and northern summer has begun, the find that planets around carbon-rich stars come up dry," he said. colors have begun to change in each hemisphere as well. Golden Johnson and his colleagues say the extra carbon in developing star tones have started to dominate in the northern hemisphere and the systems would snag the oxygen, preventing it from forming water. bluish color in the north is now confined to a tighter circle around the "It's ironic that if carbon, the main element of life, becomes too north pole. abundant, it will steal away the oxygen that would have made water, the solvent essential to life as we know it," said Jonathan Lunine, a collaborator on the research. One of the big questions in the study of planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, is whether or not they are habitable. Researchers identify such planets by first looking for those that are situated within the "habitable zone" around their parent stars, which is where are warm enough for water to pool on the surface. Kepler has found several planets within this zone, and researchers continue to scrutinize the Kepler data for candidates as small as Earth. But even if a planet is found in this so-called "Goldilocks" zone, where oceans could, in theory, abound, is there actually enough water available to wet the surface? Johnson and his team addressed this question with planetary models based on measurements of our sun's carbon-to-oxygen ratio. Our sun, like other stars, inherited a soup of elements from the Big Bang and from previous generations of stars, including hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, silicon, carbon and oxygen. The view is in natural color, as human eyes would have seen it. "Our has its own top 10 list of elements," said Johnson, Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Cornell referring to the 10 most abundant elements in our universe. Cassini is currently in a special set of tilted known as "inclined These models accurately predict how much water was locked up in the orbits" that allow the spacecraft to swing up over the north pole and form of ice early in the history of our solar system, billions of years ago, below the south pole. Cassini was tilted as much as 62 degrees from before making its way to Earth. Comets and/or the parent bodies of the plane of Saturn's equator in April of this year and will continue to asteroids are thought to have been the main water suppliers, though work its way back down again till early 2015. Much of Cassini's tour researchers still debate their roles. Either way, the objects are said to has involved orbits around the equatorial plane, where most of Saturn's have begun their journey from far beyond Earth, past a boundary called rings and moons are located. http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and the "snow line," before impacting Earth and depositing water deep in http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov the planet and on its surface. When the researchers applied the planetary models to the carbon-rich stars, the water disappeared. GHOSTLY SHAPE OF ‘COLDEST PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE’ "There's no snow beyond the snow line," said Johnson. "All rocky At a cosmologically crisp one K (-458 F), the Boomerang Nebula planets aren't created equal," said Lunine. "So-called diamond planets is the coldest known object in the Universe – colder, in fact, than the the size of Earth, if they exist, will look totally alien to us: lifeless, faint afterglow of the Big Bang, which is the natural background ocean-less desert worlds." of space. Astronomers using the ‘Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array’ (ALMA) telescope have taken a new CASSINI SWINGS HIGH ABOVE SATURN FOR A PORTRAIT look at this intriguing object to learn more about its frigid properties A swing high above Saturn by Cassini spacecraft revealed this stately and to determine its true shape, which has an eerily ghost-like view of the golden-hued planet and its main rings. It's a view as good appearance. As originally observed with ground-based telescopes, as gold. A loop high above Saturn by the Cassini spacecraft revealed this nebula appeared lopsided, which is how it got its name. Later 5 observations with Hubble revealed a bow-tie-like structure. The new streams of high-speed gas being jettisoned from the star. The jets ALMA data, however, reveal that the Hubble image tells only part of then excavate holes in a surrounding cloud of gas that was ejected by the story, and the twin lobes seen in that image may actually be a trick the star even earlier in its lifetime as a red giant.” of the light as seen at visible wavelengths. Observations with single-dish millimeter wavelength telescopes, “This ultra-cold object is extremely intriguing and we’re learning much however, did not detect the narrow waist seen by Hubble. Instead, more about its true nature with ALMA,” said Raghvendra Sahai, a they found a more uniform and nearly spherical outflow of material. researcher and principal scientist, and lead author of a paper on the ALMA’s unprecedented resolution allowed the researchers to reconcile observations. “What seemed like a double lobe, or ‘boomerang’ this discrepancy. By observing the distribution of carbon monoxide shape, from Earth-based optical telescopes, is actually a much broader molecules (CO), which glow brightly at millimeter wavelengths, the structure that is expanding rapidly into space.” The Boomerang astronomers were able to detect the double-lobe structure that is seen Nebula, located about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation in the Hubble image, but only in the inner regions of the nebula. Centaurus, is a relatively young example of an object known as a Further out, they actually observed a more elongated cloud of cold gas planetary nebula. Planetary nebulae, contrary to their name, are that is roughly round. The researchers also discovered a dense lane of actually the end-of-life phases of stars like our Sun that have sloughed millimeter-sized dust grains surrounding the star, which explains why off their outer layers. What remains at their centers are white dwarf this outer cloud has an hourglass shape in visible light. The dust grains stars, which emit intense ultraviolet radiation that causes the gas in the have created a mask that shades a portion of the central star and nebulae to glow and emit light in brilliant colors. The Boomerang is a allows its light to leak out only in narrow but opposite directions into pre-planetary nebula, representing the stage in a star's life immediately the cloud, giving it an hourglass appearance. preceding the planetary nebula phase, when the central star is not yet “This is important for the understanding of how stars die and become hot enough to emit enough ultraviolet radiation to produce the planetary nebulae,” said Sahai. “Using ALMA, we were quite literally characteristic glow. At this stage, the nebula is seen by starlight and figuratively able to shed new light on the death throes of a Sun-like reflecting off its dust grains. star.” The new research also indicated that the outer fringes of the nebula are beginning to warm, even though they are still slightly colder than the cosmic microwave background. This warming may be due to the photoelectric effect -- an effect first proposed by Einstein in which light is absorbed by solid material, which then re-emits electrons.

CASSINI GETS NEW VIEWS OF 'S ‘LAND OF LAKES’ With the sun now shining down over the north pole of Saturn's moon Titan, a little luck with the weather, and trajectories that put the spacecraft into optimal viewing positions, Cassini spacecraft has obtained new pictures of the liquid methane and ethane seas and lakes that reside near Titan's north pole. The images reveal new clues about how the lakes formed and about Titan's Earth-like "hydrologic" cycle, which involves hydrocarbons rather than water. New images at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/index.html While there is one large lake and a few smaller ones near Titan's south pole, almost all of Titan's lakes appear near the moon's north pole. Cassini scientists have been able to study much of the terrain with radar, which can penetrate beneath Titan's clouds and thick haze. And until now, Cassini's visual and mapping spectrometer and imaging science subsystem had only been able to capture distant, oblique or partial views of this area. Several factors combined recently to give these instruments great observing opportunities. Two recent flybys provided better viewing

Image: The Boomerang Nebula, called the “coldest place in the Universe,” geometry. Sunlight has begun to pierce the winter darkness that reveals its true shape with ALMA. The background blue structure, as seen in shrouded Titan's north pole at Cassini's arrival in the Saturn system visible light with Hubble, shows a classic double-lobe shape with a very narrow nine years ago. A thick cap of haze that once hung over the north pole central region. ALMA’s resolution and ability to see the cold molecular gas has also dissipated as northern summer approaches. And Titan's reveals the nebula’s more elongated shape, as seen in red. Credit: Bill Saxton; beautiful, nearly cloudless, rain-free weather continued during Cassini's NRAO/AUI/NSF; NASA/Hubble; Raghvendra Sahai flybys this past summer. The images are mosaics in infrared light The outflow of gas from this particular star is expanding rapidly and based on data obtained during flybys of Titan on Jul 10, Jul 26, and Sep cooling itself in the process. This is similar in principle to the way 12, 2013. The colorized mosaic from the visual and infrared mapping refrigerators use expanding gas to produce cold temperatures. The spectrometer, which maps infrared colors onto the visible-color researchers were able to take the temperature of the gas in the nebula spectrum, reveals differences in the composition of material around by seeing how it absorbed the cosmic microwave background radiation, the lakes. The data suggest parts of Titan's lakes and seas may have which has a very uniform temperature of 2.8 degrees K (-455 F). evaporated and left behind the Titan equivalent of Earth's salt flats. Only at Titan, the evaporated material is thought to be organic “When astronomers looked at this object in 2003 with Hubble, they saw chemicals originally from Titan's haze particles that once dissolved in a very classic ‘hourglass’ shape,” commented Sahai. “Many planetary liquid methane. They appear orange in this image against the nebulae have this same double-lobe appearance, which is the result of greenish backdrop of Titan's typical bedrock of water ice. 6 ASTEROID 2013 TV135 - A REALITY CHECK Newly discovered asteroid 2013 TV135 made a close approach to Earth on Sep 16, when it came within about 4.2 million miles (6.7 million km). The asteroid is initially estimated to be about 1,300 feet (400 m) in size and its carries it as far out as about three quarters of the distance to Jupiter's orbit, and as close to the sun as Earth's orbit. It was discovered on Oct 8, 2013, by astronomers working at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Ukraine. As of Oct 14, asteroid 2013 TV135 is one of 10,332 near-Earth objects that have been discovered. With only a week of observations for an that spans almost four years, its future orbital path is still quite uncertain, but this asteroid could be back in Earth's neighborhood in 2032. However, the ‘Near-Earth Object Program Office’ states the probability this asteroid could then impact Earth is only one in 63,000. The object should be easily observable in the coming months and once additional observations are provided to the Center in Cambridge, ., the initial orbit calculations will be improved and the most likely Titan's Northern Lakes: Salt Flats? - This false-color mosaic, made from result will be a dramatic reduction, or complete elimination, of any risk infrared data collected by Cassini, reveals the differences in the composition of of Earth impact. surface materials around hydrocarbon lakes at Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Idaho "The view from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer gives us a holistic view of an area that we'd only seen in bits and pieces before and at a lower resolution," said Jason Barnes, a participating scientist for the instrument. "It turns out that Titan's north pole is even more interesting than we thought, with a complex interplay of liquids in lakes and seas and deposits left from the evaporation of past lakes and seas." The near-infrared images from Cassini's imaging cameras show a bright unit of terrain in the northern land of lakes that had not previously been visible in the data. The bright area suggests that the surface here is unique from the rest of Titan, which might explain why almost all of the lakes are found in this region. Titan's lakes have very distinctive shapes -- rounded cookie-cutter silhouettes and steep sides - The orbit of asteroid 2013 TV135 (in blue). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech - and a variety of formation mechanisms have been proposed. The "To put it another way, that puts the current probability of no impact in explanations range from the collapse of land after a volcanic eruption 2032 at about 99.998 percent," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's to karst terrain, where liquids dissolve soluble bedrock. Karst terrains Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL. "This is a relatively new on Earth can create spectacular topography, such as the Carlsbad discovery. With more observations, I fully expect we will be able to Caverns in New Mexico. significantly reduce, or rule out entirely, any impact probability for the "Ever since the lakes and seas were discovered, we've been wondering foreseeable future." NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids why they're concentrated at high northern latitudes," said Elizabeth and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based (Zibi) Turtle, a Cassini imaging team associate. "So, seeing that there's telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly something special about the surface in this region is a big clue to help called "," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of narrow down the possible explanations." them and identifies their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet. Launched in 1997, Cassini has been exploring the Saturn system since 2004. A full Saturn year is 30 years, and Cassini has been able to CURIOSITY CONFIRMS MARS ORIGIN OF SOME observe nearly a third of a Saturn year. In that time, Saturn and its Examination of the Martian atmosphere by Curiosity Mars rover moons have seen the seasons change from northern winter to northern confirms that some meteorites that have dropped to Earth really are summer. from the Red Planet. A key new measurement of the inert gas argon "Titan's northern lakes region is one of the most Earth-like and in Mars' atmosphere by Curiosity's laboratory provides the most intriguing in the solar system," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project definitive evidence yet of the origin of Mars meteorites while at the scientist. "We know lakes here change with the seasons, and Cassini's same time providing a way to rule out Martian origin of other long mission at Saturn gives us the opportunity to watch the seasons meteorites. The new measurement is a high-precision count of two change at Titan, too. Now that the sun is shining in the north and we forms of argon -- argon-36 and argon-38 -- accomplished by the have these wonderful views, we can begin to compare the different ‘Sample Analysis at Mars’ (SAM) instrument inside the rover. These data sets and tease out what Titan's lakes are doing near the north lighter and heavier forms, or isotopes, of argon exist naturally pole." throughout the solar system. On Mars the ratio of light to heavy argon is skewed because much of that planet's original atmosphere was lost to space. The lighter form of argon was taken away more readily because it rises to the top of the atmosphere more easily and requires 7 less energy to escape. That left the Martian atmosphere relatively does not interact or exchange with the Martian surface or the interior. enriched in the heavier isotope, argon-38. This was a key measurement that we wanted to carry out on SAM." Years of past analyses by Earth-bound scientists of gas bubbles trapped The Curiosity measurements do not directly measure the current rate inside Martian meteorites had already narrowed the Martian argon of atmospheric escape, but the next mission to Mars, the ‘Mars ratio to between 3.6 and 4.5 (that is 3.6 to 4.5 atoms of argon-36 to Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission’ (MAVEN), is designed to do every one of argon-38). Measurements by the Viking landers in the so. That mission is being prepared at Kennedy Space Center for a 1970s put the Martian atmospheric ratio in the range of four to seven. launch-opportunity period that begins on Nov 18. Curiosity landed The new SAM direct measurement on Mars now pins down the correct inside Gale Crater on Mars in Aug 2012 and is investigating evidence argon ratio at 4.2. about habitable environments there. http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity "We really nailed it," said Sushil Atreya, lead author of an paper Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity . reporting the finding. "This direct reading from Mars settles the case with all Martian meteorites." SPACE TELESCOPES FIND PATCHY CLOUDS ON EXO-PLANET Astronomers using data from Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have One reason scientists have been so interested in the argon ratio in created the first cloud map of a planet beyond our solar system, a Martian meteorites is that it was -- before Curiosity -- the best measure sizzling, Jupiter-like world known as Kepler-7b. The planet is marked of how much atmosphere Mars has lost since the planet's wetter, by high clouds in the west and clear skies in the east. Previous studies warmer days billions of years ago. Figuring out the planet's from Spitzer have resulted in temperature maps of planets orbiting atmospheric loss would enable scientists to better understand how other stars, but this is the first look at cloud structures on a distant Mars transformed from a once water-rich planet, more like our own, world. "By observing this planet with Spitzer and Kepler for more into today's drier, colder and less-hospitable world. Had Mars held than three years, we were able to produce a very low-resolution 'map' onto all of its atmosphere and its original argon, its ratio of the gas of this giant, gaseous planet," said Brice-Olivier Demory, lead author of would be the same as that of the sun and Jupiter. Those bodies have a paper on the research. "We wouldn't expect to see oceans or so much gravity that isotopes can't preferentially escape, so their argon continents on this type of world, but we detected a clear, reflective ratio -- which is 5.5 -- represents that of the primordial solar system. signature that we interpreted as clouds." Kepler has discovered more than 150 exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system, and Kepler-7b was one of the first. The telescope's problematic reaction wheels’ failures prevent it from hunting planets any more, but astronomers continue to pore over almost four years' worth of collected data.

This self-portrait of Curiosity combines 66 exposures taken by the rover's ‘Mars th Hand Lens Imager’ camera (MAHLI) during the 177 Martian day, or ‘sol’, of Partially Cloudy Skies on Kepler-7b (Artist's Concept) - Kepler-7b (left), which is Curiosity's work on Mars (Feb 3, 2013). The rover is positioned at a patch of flat 1.5 times the radius of Jupiter (right), is the first exoplanet to have its clouds outcrop called "John Klein," which was selected as the site for the first rock- mapped. This artist's concept shows what those clouds might look like. The drilling activities by Curiosity. The self-portrait was acquired to document the cloud map was produced using data from NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space drilling site. The rover's robotic arm is not visible in the mosaic. MAHLI, which telescopes. The map shows that clouds cover the western side of the gaseous took the component images for this mosaic, is mounted on a turret at the end of planet, leaving the east cloud-free. Researchers speculate the clouds are made the arm. Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to up of minerals containing silicates. Kepler-7b is one of the puffiest, or least acquire the mosaic's component images. The arm was positioned out of the dense, planets known. While it is 1.5 times the size of Jupiter is has only about shot in the images or portions of images used in the mosaic. It indicates the half the mass. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT location of a rock target called "Knorr" near the rover. Scientists used Curiosity's ‘Mast Camera’ (Mastcam) to study spectral characteristics of Knorr. Kepler's visible-light observations of Kepler-7b's moon-like phases led to a rough map of the planet that showed a bright spot on its western While argon makes up only a tiny fraction of the gas lost to space from hemisphere. But these data were not enough on their own to Mars, it is special because it's a noble gas. That means the gas is decipher whether the bright spot was coming from clouds or heat. inert, not reacting with other elements or compounds, and therefore a The Spitzer played a crucial role in answering this more straightforward tracer of the history of the Martian atmosphere. question. Like Kepler, Spitzer can fix its gaze at a star system as a "Other isotopes measured by SAM on Curiosity also support the loss of planet orbits around the star, gathering clues about the planet's atmosphere, but none so directly as argon," said Atreya. "Argon is the atmosphere. Spitzer's ability to detect infrared light means it was able clearest signature of atmospheric loss because it's chemically inert and to measure Kepler-7b's temperature, estimating it to be between 1,500 8 and 1,800 degrees F (1,100 and 1,300 K). This is relatively cool for a solid crust that impeded outgassing. Observations of comet Tempel 1 planet that orbits so close to its star -- within 0.06 astronomical units by 's spectrometer instrument showed that water was (one is the distance from Earth and the sun) -- and, arising primarily at longitudes near noon and peaking near the equator, according to astronomers, too cool to be the source of light Kepler whereas most of the carbon dioxide was arising from far southern observed. Instead, they determined, light from the planet's star is latitudes, not too far from comet Tempel 1's south pole. This could bouncing off cloud tops located on the west side of the planet. be due to seasonal effects (southern hemisphere just going into winter darkness) or due to differences in the chemical composition in different "Kepler-7b reflects much more light than most giant planets we've parts of the nucleus. During the mission extension, the EPOXI found, which we attribute to clouds in the upper atmosphere," said observations of comet Hartley 2 showed that the comet's smooth waist Thomas Barclay, Kepler scientist. "Unlike those on Earth, the cloud was emitting pure water, while the small end was emitting excess patterns on this planet do not seem to change much over time -- it has a carbon dioxide, regardless of time of day. This was a clear sign that remarkably stable climate." The findings are an early step toward chemical diversity was the important factor in a comet's chemical using similar techniques to study the atmospheres of planets more like makeup. Earth in composition and size. "With Spitzer and Kepler together, we have a multi-wavelength tool for getting a good look at planets that are For many years we have known that a handful of comets (fewer than trillions of miles away," said Paul Hertz. "We're at a point now in 10 percent) produced more water vapor than should be possible by exoplanet science where we are moving beyond just detecting sublimation of nucleus of water ice, in which the sizes of the nuclei are exoplanets, and into the exciting science of understanding them." known. The flyby of comet Hartley 2 showed a large number of icy grains in the coma are driven out of the nucleus by the outgassing of Kepler identified planets by watching for dips in starlight that occur as carbon dioxide. These icy grains are plausibly the source of much of the planets transit, or pass in front of their stars, blocking the light. the water coming from the comet. This technique and other observations of Kepler-7b previously revealed that it is one of the puffiest planets known: if it could somehow be placed in a tub of water, it would float. The planet was also found to whip around its star in just less than five days. Explore all 900-plus exoplanet discoveries with NASA's "Eyes on Exoplanets," a fully rendered 3D visualization tool, available for download at http://eyes.nasa.gov/exoplanets. The program is updated daily with the latest findings from Kepler mission and ground-based observatories around the world as they search for planets like our own. The technical paper is online at http://www.mit.edu/~demory/preprints/kepler-7b_clouds.pdf

DEEP IMPACT PRODUCED DEEP RESULTS Launched on a clear winter day in Jan 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft spanned 268 million miles (431 million km) of deep space in 172 days, then reached out and touched comet Tempel 1. The collision between the coffee table-sized impactor and city-sized comet occurred on Jul 4, 2005. This hyper-speed collision between space-borne iceberg and copper-fortified, rocket-powered probe was the first of its kind. It was a boon to not only comet science, but to the study of the evolution of our solar system. The mission of Deep Impact was supposed to conclude within weeks of this Jul 4 cometary smackdown. Then, NASA approved a mission extension, re-enlisting the Deep Impact spacecraft for two distinct celestial targets of opportunity. ‘EPOXI’, as the mission was renamed, was a combination of the names for the two extended mission components: the extrasolar planet observations, called ‘Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization’ (), and the flyby of comet Hartley 2, called the ‘Deep Impact Extended Investigation’ (DIXI). The Deep Impact spacecraft, history's most traveled deep-space comet hunter, provided many significant results for the science community. Here are the top five, according to the mission's principal investigator, Michael A'Hearn. Studies of imagery showed that that the luminous flash created within a fraction of a second after Deep Impact's impactor was atomized by comet Tempel 1 was much fainter than expected. Comparison with First Contact - The depicts the first moments after Deep Impact's probe experimental impacts at the Vertical Gun Range at NASA Ames, showed interfaced with comet Tempel 1. The illuminated -- and possibly incandescent -- that such a faint flash was consistent only with a surface layer (depth debris is expanding from the impact site. The rough-hewn edges at the top and a few times the diameter of the impactor) that was more than 75 bottom of the flash are a result of light given off at impact saturating some of percent empty space. This surprisingly high porosity was in contrast the pixels in the camera's imager. The pixels "bleed" excess electronic charge with theories that predicted comets were armored with a stronger, 9 onto adjacent pixels in the same column. This image was taken by Deep Impact's “We were thrilled to see this ,” Finkelstein said. “And then our high-resolution camera. next thought was, ‘Why did we not see anything else? We’re using the Observations of Hartley 2 by the Deep Impact spacecraft showed the best instrument on the best telescope with the best galaxy sample. importance of carbon-dioxide ice relative to carbon-monoxide ice in We had the best weather — it was gorgeous. And still, we only saw comets, and led to reexamination of all previous observations of these this emission line from one of our sample of 43 observed , when two ices in comets. The relative abundances in short-period and long- we expected to see around six. What’s going on?’” period comets imply that the short-period comets formed under The researchers suspect they may have zeroed in on the era when the warmer conditions than did the long-period comets. Thus, the short- universe made its transition from an opaque state in which most of the period comets must have formed closer to the sun than their longer- hydrogen is neutral to a translucent state in which most of the period brethren. This is contrary to popular belief in the astronomical hydrogen is ionized. So it’s not necessarily that the distant galaxies community (for many decades) that the short-period comets formed in aren’t there. It could be that they’re hidden from detection behind a the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune, while the long-period comets formed wall of neutral hydrogen fog, which blocks the hydrogen emission in the vicinity of the giant planets. The new model fits well with signal. Tilvi notes this is one of two major changes in the fundamental measurements by other astronomers of heavy water in Hartley 2, and essence of the universe since its beginning — the other being a with the newest dynamical studies of . transition from a plasma state to a neutral state. He is leading the The excavation of a crater on Tempel 1 was the trigger that allowed the effort on a follow-up paper that will use a sophisticated statistical proposal for the NExT mission to succeed. In addition to analysis to explore that transition further. searching for the crater formed by Deep Impact, a key goal of that Stardust-NExT mission was to measure changes in the surface of the comet over an orbital period. This second set of measurements of Tempel 1 surface features showed that much of the evolution was in discrete, large areas, i.e., there was not a small, uniform erosion of the all parts of the surface, but rather large changes in a few places. Thus, comets evolve in a manner analogous to erosion - most erosion takes place in discrete events (floods that make large, local changes) rather than as a slow, continuous process.

ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER MOST DISTANT GALAXY TO DATE Texas A&M and the University of Texas at Austin may be former football rivals, but the Lone Star State’s two research giants have teamed up to detect the most distant spectroscopically confirmed galaxy ever found — one created within 700 million years after the Big Bang. “It’s exciting to know we’re the first people in the world to see this,” said Vithal Tilvi, a Texas A&M postdoctoral research associate and co-author of the paper, available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12657 “It raises interesting questions about the origins and the evolution of the universe.” The paper’s lead author is Steven Finkelstein, who previously was a postdoctoral research associate under the mentorship of Texas A&M astrophysicist Casey Papovich, who is second author, as well as current mentor to Tilvi. The galaxy, known by its catalog name ‘z8_GND_5296’, fascinated the researchers. Whereas our home, the , creates about one or two Sun-like stars every year or so, this newly discovered galaxy forms around 300 a year and was observed by the researchers as it was 13 billion years ago. That’s the time it took for the galaxy’s light to travel to Earth. Just how mind-boggling is that? A single light year, which This image highlights the most distant galaxy in the universe with a measured distance, dubbed z8_GND_5296. The galaxy's red color is the distance light travels in a year, is nearly six trillion miles. alerted astronomers that it was likely extremely far away and, thus, seen Because the universe has been expanding the whole time, the at an early time after the Big Bang. A team of astronomers measured the researchers estimate the galaxy’s present distance to be roughly 30 exact distance using Keck I with the new ‘MOSFIRE’ spectrograph. They billion light years away. found that this galaxy is seen at about 700 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was just 5% of its current age of 13.8 billion “Because of its distance we get a glimpse of conditions when the years. Image credit: V. Tilvi, Texas A&M University; S.L. Finkelstein, universe was only about 700 million years old — only 5 percent of its University of Texas at Austin; C. Papovich, Texas A&M University; current age of 13.8 billion years,” said Papovich. Papovich notes that CANDELS Team and /NASA researchers are able to accurately gauge the distances of galaxies by “Everything seems to have changed since then,” Tilvi said. “If it was measuring a feature from the ubiquitous element hydrogen called the neutral everywhere today, the night sky that we see wouldn’t be as Lyman alpha transition, which emits brightly in distant galaxies. It’s beautiful. What I’m working on is studying exactly why and exactly detected in nearly all galaxies that are seen from a time more than one where this happened. Was this transition sudden, or was it gradual?” billion years from the Big Bang, but getting closer than that, the hydrogen emission line, for some reason, becomes increasingly difficult The paper is the result of raw data gleaned from a powerful Hubble to see. imaging survey of the distant universe called CANDELS, or ‘Cosmic 10 Assembly Near-Infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey’. Using that data, the team was armed with 43 potential distant galaxies and set out to confirm their distances. On a crisp, clear April night, Tilvi, Finkelstein and his graduate student, Mimi Song, sat behind a panel of computers in the control room of the Keck Observatory, which is perched atop the summit of Hawaii’s dormant Mauna Kea volcano and houses the two largest optical and infrared telescopes in the world, each standing eight stories tall, weighing 300 tons and equipped with 10-meter-wide mirrors. They detected only one galaxy during their two nights of observation at Keck, but it turned out to be the most distant ever confirmed. It was at a redshift 7.51 — or created about 13 billion years ago. Because the universe is expanding, the space between galaxies also is increasing. And as objects move away, they become redder. In essence, the higher the redshift, the farther away the object. Only five other galaxies have ever been confirmed to have a redshift greater than 7, with the previous high being 7.215. Finkelstein credits technological advancements in recent years for allowing astronomers to probe deeper into space and closer to the Big Graphical sketch of the Kepler-56 system. The line of sight from Earth is Bang. For instance, a powerful new spectrometer called ‘MOSFIRE’ illustrated by the dashed line, and dotted lines show the orbits of three detected (‘Multi-Object Spectrometer For Infra-Red Exploration’) that is 25 times companions in the system. The solid arrow marks the rotation axis of the host more light-sensitive than others of its kind was installed at Keck in star, and the thin solid line marks the host star equator. Image Credit: Image 2012. And the Hubble Space Telescope is powered by a new near- Credit: NASA GSFC/Ames/D Huber infrared camera installed by astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle in Nearly 20 years after the discovery of the first hot Jupiter, the giant 2009 that sees farther into the universe. http://astronomy.tamu.edu/ misalignment in the Kepler-56 system marks an important step towards http://mitchell.tamu.edu/ a unified explanation for the formation of hot-. "We now know A GIANT MISALIGNMENT IN A MULTIPLE PLANET SYSTEM that misalignments are not just confined to hot Jupiter systems," said A long-standing puzzle in the study of exoplanets is the formation of Huber. "Further observations will reveal whether the tilting hot-Jupiters, planets that snuggly orbit their host star. To mechanism in Kepler-56 could also be responsible for misalignments explain their short orbital periods, theory suggests that hot-Jupiters observed in hot Jupiter systems." form in long orbits and then quiescently migrate through the DISTANT GRAVITATIONAL LENS HELPS WEIGH GALAXIES protoplanetary disc, the flat ring of dust and debris that circles a newly fashioned star and coalesces to form the planets. This theory was An international team of astronomers has found the most distant challenged when the orbital plane of hot-Jupiters were discovered to gravitational lens yet - a galaxy that, as predicted by Albert Einstein's be frequently misaligned with the equator of their host stars. general theory of relativity, deflects and intensifies the light of an even Scientists interpreted this as evidence that hot-Jupiters are the result of more distant object. The discovery provides a rare opportunity to chaotic close encounters with other planets. directly measure the mass of a distant galaxy. But it also poses a mystery: lenses of this kind should be exceedingly rare. Given this A decisive test between the two theories are systems with more than and other recent finds, astronomers either have been phenomenally one planet: if misalignments are indeed caused by dynamical lucky - or, more likely, they have underestimated substantially the perturbations which lead to the creation of hot Jupiters, then multi- number of small, very young galaxies in the early Universe. planet systems without hot Jupiters should be preferentially aligned. What new research reveals is quite different. Using data from the Light is affected by gravity, and light passing a distant galaxy will be Kepler space telescope, an international research team led by Daniel deflected as a result. Since the first find in 1979, numerous such Huber, studied Kepler-56, a red giant star four times larger than the sun gravitational lenses have been discovered. In addition to providing located at a distance of approximately 3,000 light years from Earth. tests of Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravitational lenses have By analyzing the fluctuations in brightness at different points on the proved to be valuable tools. Notably, one can determine the mass of surface of Kepler-56, Huber and his collaborators discovered that the the matter that is bending the light – including the mass of the still- star's rotation axis is tilted by about 45 degrees to our line of sight. enigmatic dark matter, which does not emit or absorb light and can only be detected via its gravitational effects. The lens also magnifies "This was a surprise because we already knew about the existence of the background light source, acting as a "natural telescope" that allows two planets transiting in front of Kepler-56. This suggested that the astronomers a more detailed look at distant galaxies than is normally host star must be misaligned with the orbits of both planets," explains possible. Gravitational lenses consist of two objects: one is further Huber. "What we found is quite literally a giant misalignment in an away and supplies the light, and the other, the lensing mass or exoplanet system." gravitational lens, which sits between us and the distant light source, and whose gravity deflects the light. When the observer, the lens, and The culprit for the misalignment is suspected to be a third, massive the distant light source are precisely aligned, the observer sees an companion in a long period orbit, revealed by observations obtained Einstein ring: a perfect circle of light that is the projected and greatly with the Keck telescope. "Computer calculations show the outer magnified image of the distant light source. companion may have torqued the orbital planes of the transiting planets in concert, leaving them co-planar but periodically misaligning Now, astronomers have found the most distant gravitational lens yet. them with the equator of the host star," said Daniel Fabrycky, co- Lead author Arjen van der Wel explains: "The discovery was author, and a professor of astronomy. completely by chance. I had been reviewing observations from an earlier project when I noticed a galaxy that was decidedly odd. It 11 looked like an extremely young galaxy, but it seemed to be at a much astronomers have been phenomenally lucky, or star-bursting dwarf larger distance than expected. It shouldn't even have been part of our galaxies are much more common than previously thought, forcing observing program!" Van der Wel wanted to find out more and astronomers to re-think their models of galaxy evolution. started to study images taken with Hubble as part of the CANDELS and Van der Wel concludes: "This has been a weird and interesting COSMOS surveys. In these pictures the mystery object looked like an discovery. It was a completely serendipitous find, but it has the old galaxy, a plausible target for the original observing program, but potential to start a new chapter in our description of galaxy evolution in with some irregular features which, he suspected, meant that he was the early Universe." looking at a gravitational lens. Combining the available images and removing the haze of the lensing galaxy's collection of stars, the result The two objects are aligned to better than 0.01 arcseconds – equivalent was very clear: an almost perfect Einstein ring, indicating a to a one mm separation at a distance of 20 km. This time gravitational lens with very precise alignment of the lens and the corresponds to a redshift z = 1.53. This can be compared with the background light source. total age of the Universe of 13.8 billion years. The previous record holder was found thirty years ago, and it took less than 8 billion years The lensing mass is so distant that the light, after deflection, has for its light to reach us (a redshift of about 1.0). For comparison, the travelled 9.4 billion years to reach us. Not only is this a new record, Milky Way is a large with at least one thousand times the object also serves an important purpose: the amount of distortion greater mass in the form of stars than this . caused by the lensing galaxy allows a direct measurement of its mass. This provides an independent test for astronomers' usual methods of COMET ISON APPEARS INTACT - LOOKING INTO HUBBLE'S estimating distant galaxy – which rely on extrapolation from NEW ISON IMAGE their nearby cousins. Fortunately for astronomers, their usual methods by Tracy Vogel, NASA HubbleSite blog pass the test. A new image of the sunward plunging Comet ISON taken by Hubble on Oct 9, suggests that the comet is intact despite some predictions that the fragile icy nucleus might disintegrate as the Sun warms it. The comet will pass closest to the Sun on Nov 28.

Thumb_ison-ratio-model-only In this modeled image of ISON, the coma has been subtracted, leaving behind the nucleus. Credit: Jian-Yang Li (Planetary Science Institute) Hubble's new image of Comet ISON shows the comet streaking across space on its course toward the Sun. It's a beautiful picture, and it lets us know that a.) ISON doesn't appear to be shattering and b.) ISON's jet seems to have vanished. But how do we get that information from the picture you see below? The most distant gravitational lens yet discovered. - This picture from Hubble shows the most distant gravitational lens yet discovered. The glow at the center of this picture is the central regions of a normal galaxy. By chance it is precisely aligned with a much more remote, young star-forming galaxy. The light from the more distant object is bent around the nearer object by its strong gravitational pull to form a ring of multiple images. The chance of finding such an exact alignment is very small, suggesting that there may be more star- forming galaxies in the early Universe than expected. Image credit: NASA/ESA/A. van der Wel It's best explained with a metaphor. Imagine you have a hill. The hill But the discovery also poses a puzzle. Gravitational lenses are the has an overall shape, but it also has bumps that may be difficult to see. result of a chance alignment. In this case, the alignment is very Now imagine you could create a hill that is the same shape, but without precise. To make matters worse, the magnified object is a star- the bumps. If you could use that model of the hill to subtract the bursting dwarf galaxy: a comparatively light galaxy (it has only about overall shape of the hill, all that would be left behind are the bumps, 100 million solar masses in the form of stars), but extremely young which are then quite obvious. We then exaggerate the bumps — or (about 10-40 million years old) and producing new stars at an scale up the data — to make the difference more obvious. This is enormous rate. The chances that such a would be essentially what we do with the computer model and Hubble data. gravitationally lensed is very small. Yet this is the second star- We're looking for differentiations, places where the comet's coma bursting dwarf galaxy that has been found to be lensed. Either deviates from the model coma — one in which no radiation pressure 12 from the Sun or solar wind plays a role. We're looking for the "bumps" that would indicate shattering or a jet once we subtract the model from the reality. But what we see here is nothing out of the ordinary. There's no jet, no fragmentation.

The bottom inlay shows the star prior to the supernova. The top inlay shows the latest image a day after the star exploded. Image credit: CalTech Cues from the spectroscopic camera images led researchers to classify their discovery as a type Ib supernova, which are thought to be the explosions of these massive stars that have lost their outer layers right before their death due to a stellar wind. Exact details of what happens in these supernovae are murky, he said. When they do explode, they burn roughly as bright as five billion of our . The ‘Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory’ project, which is a scientific collaboration with CalTech, Los Alamos, University of Comet expert Dr. Jian-Yang Li created a mathematical computer model Wisconsin and several others, is an automated survey of night sky of Comet ISON's coma — the fuzzy, spherical cloud of material that dedicated to finding transient supernova events. The survey finds forms around a comet's nucleus when it nears the Sun — using the hundreds of new supernovae annually, and scientists here try to latest Hubble data. By subtracting that model from the reality of the understand what types of stars become which types of supernova. data, we can see where the two differentiate. Sand led the development and operations of the special camera, the NEW SPECTROSCOPIC CAMERA CAPTURES ONE-DAY-OLD FLOYDS spectrograph, which was used to help identify the specific kind SUPERNOVA 73 MILLION LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH of supernova. Taking a spectroscopic image helps scientists to tell what kind of supernova they’re looking at by splitting the supernova’s With the help of a special spectroscopic camera, researchers captured light up into the colors of the rainbow. A normal photograph isn’t rare images of a star in another galaxy going supernova within a day of enough to tell, he said. The FLOYDS spectrographs, of which there are the star’s explosion. This is the first time scientists have pinpointed a only two in the world, are attached to two-meter telescopes located in star that eventually exploded as a stripped-envelope supernova, called Hawaii and Australia. The cameras operate completely robotically a type Ib, said David Sand, an assistant professor who developed the allowing scientists to confirm supernova earlier than ever before. In camera. The global team of astrophysicists, led by Yi Cao, found the the last six months, Sand and others have confirmed 25 different supernova on Jun 16. “It is very rare to catch a supernova within a supernovae with the new camera. This particular supernova is one of day or two of explosion,” Sand said. “Up until now, it has happened at the first published results. “This is where FLOYDS comes in, and its most about a dozen times. It is equally rare that we actually have robotic nature, which lets us study supernovae young,” Sand said. Hubble Space Telescope imaging of the location of the supernova “That’s the first story. The second story is this lucky Hubble imaging before it happened, and we were able to see the star that eventually from 2005. Someone took an image with Hubble of the galaxy where exploded.” Sand said it took 73 million light years for the illumination this supernova happened. Just sheer luck – nothing to do with the from the star’s explosion to travel to Earth. “This star was quite far supernova or seeing into the future or anything. Zoom to 2013, and away in the galaxy NGC 6805, although we would consider it a ‘local’ we discover the supernova within a day of its explosion. We look in galaxy,” he said. “There is no way of knowing if something so far the Hubble data archive and notice the image from eight years prior, away has any planets around it. However, it is unlikely. We found and we just match it up with our most recent data to see if there is a that the supernova came from what is called a Wolf-Rayet star. It is star in the old image at the exact same position as the supernova today. very massive and very young. It likely did not live long enough to form “The second story really is luck, but it is happening more and more planets.” these days as the Hubble telescope collects more images of nearby Wolf-Rayet stars are known to have stellar winds where they eject galaxies.” Sand said scientists can take another Hubble image at the some of the material off their surface and spew it out into space. location of the supernova after it has faded away. If the star that he Observations indicate they are devoid of hydrogen, but contain helium and others identified as the progenitor to the supernova has in the remaining outer layer of the star. Their massive size leads to a disappeared, then they will know which star died. Otherwise, if the speedy demise, Sand said. Where our sun is roughly 5 billion years star is still there, then the supernova came from some other object too old, this star was only in the tens of millions of years old. Wolf-Rayet faint for researchers to see, and the mystery continues. stars tend to burn up all of their fuel quickly in order to support their own weight because the nuclear burning balances out gravity. 13 AURORA VIEWED FROM THE ISS purple. Orbits after Cassini's 15th anniversary of launch, on 15 Oct Astronaut Mike Hopkins, aboard the ISS, shared this picture of the 2012, appear in dark grey. These include orbits that pass inside northern lights on Oct 9, 2013, saying "The pic doesn't do the northern Saturn's innermost ring, which start in Apr 2017. lights justice. Covered the whole sky. Truly amazing!" The northern Flybys are a major element of Cassini's tour. The spacecraft's looping, lights are caused by collisions between fast-moving particles (electrons) elliptical path around Saturn is carefully designed to enable occasional from space and the oxygen and nitrogen gas in our atmosphere. These visits to the many moons in the system. All flybys provide an electrons originate in the magnetosphere, the region of space opportunity to learn more about Saturn's icy satellites, and encounters controlled by Earth’s magnetic field. As they rain into the with giant Titan are actually used to navigate the spacecraft, changing atmosphere, the electrons impart energy to oxygen and nitrogen its orbit or setting up future flybys. Many of the most exciting molecules, making them excited. When the molecules return to their encounters are "targeted" flybys, for which Cassini's flight path is normal state, they release photons, small bursts of energy in the form steered so the spacecraft will pass by a specific moon at a of light. Astronauts have used hand-held cameras to photograph the predetermined distance, referred to as "closest approach". Cassini's Earth for more than 40 years. Beginning with the Mercury missions in targeted flybys have yielded incredible close-up views and many the early 1960s, astronauts have taken more than 700,000 photographs groundbreaking science results. of the Earth. Today, the space station continues the NASA tradition of Earth observation from human-tended spacecraft. SOFT SHELLS AND STRANGE STAR CLUSTERS The beautiful, petal-like shells of galaxy PGC 6240 are captured here in intricate detail by Hubble, set against a sky full of distant background galaxies. This cosmic bloom is of great interest to astronomers due to both its uneven structure, and the unusual clusters of stars that orbit around it - two strong indications of a galactic merger in the recent past.

Image Credit: NASA

CASSINI'S EPIC JOURNEY This picture traces Cassini's orbits from Saturn orbit insertion, on 1 Jul 2004, through the planned end of the mission, on 15 Sep 2017. Saturn is in the center, with the orbit of its largest moon Titan in red and the orbits of its six other inner satellites in white.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt PGC 6240 is an that resembles a pale rose in the sky, with hazy shells of stars encircling a very bright center. Some of these shells are packed close to the center of the galaxy, while others are flung further out into space. Several wisps of material have been thrown so far that they appear to be almost detached from the galaxy altogether. Astronomers have studied PGC 6240 in detail due to this structure, and also because of its surrounding globular clusters – dense, tightly packed Cassini's tour of the Saturnian system - Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech groups of gravitationally bound stars that orbit galaxies. Over 150 of Cassini's ‘prime mission’, completed in 2008, is shown in green. Its these clusters orbit our own galaxy, the Milky Way, all composed of old first mission extension, which was known as the ‘Equinox Mission’ and stars. All the globular clusters around a certain galaxy form at ended in 2010, is shown in orange. The completed orbits of its approximately the same time, giving them all the same age. This is second mission extension, known as the ‘Solstice Mission’, are shown in echoed within the clusters – all the stars within a single cluster form at 14 around the same time, too. Because of this, most galaxies have or pure helium atmospheres. The "polluted white dwarf" scenario cluster populations of pretty similar ages, both in terms of overall was bolstered by Spitzer Space Telescope observations in 2011, which cluster, and individual stars. However, PGC 6240 is unusual in that its showed that the star has a tightly orbiting disk containing debris that clusters are varied – while some do contain old stars, as expected, falls onto the star and contaminates the otherwise pristine others contain younger stars which formed more recently. The most atmosphere. The only way to obtain a more precise measurement of likely explanation for both the galaxy's stacked shell structure and the the amount of oxygen in the debris around GD 61 requires observations unexpectedly young star clusters is that PGC 6240 merged with another in the ultraviolet, which can only be carried out above Earth's galaxy at some point in the recent past. Such a merger would send atmosphere. The team used COS aboard Hubble to obtain the required ripples through the galaxy and disrupt its structure, forming the data. The COS observations were then analyzed by Detlev Koester, concentric shells of material seen here. It would also ignite a strong using a computer model of the white dwarf atmosphere to derive the burst of in the galaxy, which would then trigger similar elemental abundances. Combing their results with a previous study activity in nearby space – leading to the creation of new, younger that used the Keck Observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, globular clusters around PGC 6240. PGC 6240 is an elliptical galaxy in the team also detected magnesium, silicon, and iron, which, together the southern constellation of Hydrus (The Water Snake). Also visible with oxygen, are the main components of rocks. By counting the in this region are numerous background galaxies, speckled across the number of these elements relative to oxygen the researchers were able sky behind PGC 6240. Even though these bodies are at such vast to predict how much oxygen should be in the atmosphere of the white distances from us, it is possible to make out the structure of many of dwarf. They found significantly more oxygen than should have been the galaxies, especially the small spirals that stand out colorfully against carried by rocky minerals alone. the dark sky. A version of this image was entered into the ‘Hubble's Hidden Treasures’ image processing competition by contestant Judy Schmidt. Hidden Treasures is an initiative to invite astronomy enthusiasts to search the Hubble archive for stunning images that have never been seen by the general public. The competition is now closed.

WATER-RICH PLANET BUILDING BLOCKS FOUND AROUND WHITE DWARF Astronomers using Hubble have found the building blocks of solid planets that are capable of having substantial amounts of water. This rocky debris, currently orbiting a white dwarf star called ‘GD 61’, is considered a relic of a that survived the burnout of its parent star. The finding suggests that the star system — located about 150 light-years away and at the end of its life — had the potential to contain Earth-like exoplanets, the researchers say. "These water-rich building blocks, and the terrestrial planets they assemble, may in fact be common. A system cannot create things as big as asteroids and avoid building planets, and GD 61 had the ingredients to deliver lots of water to their surfaces," according to Jay Farihi. Though Artwork Credit: NASA, ESA, M.A. Garlick (space-art.co.uk), Univ of Warwick, and it's hard to predict exactly what types of planets there might have Univ of Cambridge. Science Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Farihi (Univ of Cambridge), been, Farihi emphasized that, "Our results demonstrate that there B. Gänsicke (Univ of Warwick), and D. Koester (Univ of Kiel) was definitely potential for habitable planets in this exo-planetary "The oxygen excess can be carried by either water or carbon monoxide system. The system almost certainly had (and possibly still has) or carbon dioxide. In this star there is virtually no carbon, indicating planets, and it had the ingredients to deliver lots of water to their there must have been substantial water," said Boris Gnsicke. He surfaces." added that the small amount of carbon seen in the white dwarf rules Observations made with Hubble's ‘Cosmic Origins Spectrograph’ (COS) out comets as the source of water. Comets are rich in both water and allowed the team, led by Farihi, to do a robust chemical analysis of the carbon compounds. In their Hubble survey the team observed nearly debris falling into GD 61. The discovery complements other leading 100 white dwarfs. Analysis is still ongoing, but the team estimates that astronomical observations that measure the size and of planets, at least 20 percent of the dwarfs show ongoing of planetary but not their actual composition, say researchers. "The only feasible debris, and it could possibly be as high as 50 percent. way to see what a distant planet is made of is to take it apart, and How do the asteroids fall into the stellar remnant? The best model at nature does this for us using the strong gravitational tidal forces of present is based on how Jupiter perturbs members of our main white dwarf stars," said Farihi. "This technique allows us to look at the . The Kirkwood Gaps in the asteroid belt represent areas chemistry that builds rocky planets, and is a completely independent where asteroids lose energy to Jupiter and sometimes fall into the Sun. method from other types of exoplanet observations." Infrared observations using the Spitzer telescope show that Sun-like The white dwarf GD 61 is a relic of a star that once burned hotter and stars that are similar to the parent star of GD 61 have inner debris belts brighter than our Sun. The star exhausted its fuel in just 1.5 billion analogous to our main asteroid belt. And, interestingly, these years. (Our Sun will last roughly ten times as long.) The ‘Far systems appear to have a gap just outside their inner belts that may be Ultraviolet Space Explorer’ (FUSE) first found an abundance of oxygen caused by one or more planets, say the investigators. "It looks like a in the dwarf's atmosphere in 2008. Eventually astronomers realized pattern of a planet next to an asteroid belt whose members get thrown that this was the telltale signature of material falling into the star and into the star may be a common feature of solar systems," said Farihi. polluting its atmosphere. White dwarfs typically have pure hydrogen 15 Earth is essentially a "dry" planet, with only 0.02 percent of its mass as showed that Vesta's color and surface composition changed as it surface water. So oceans came long after it had formed, most likely rotated around its axis. Astronomers using the ‘Infrared Telescope when water-rich asteroids in the solar system crashed into our planet. Facility’ (IRTF) at Mauna Kea in Hawaii saw distinct compositional units. The new discovery shows that the same water "delivery system" could It wasn't until arrived at Vesta that scientists determined the fine have occurred in this distant, dying star's solar system — as this latest details and the exact distribution of these color variations, and the evidence points to it containing a similar type of water-rich asteroid difference in composition between these regions. "A generation of that would have first brought water to Earth. scientific questions framed on the basis of lower-resolution data have been resolved by visiting Vesta with Dawn," said Dawn Principal Six billion years from now an alien astronomer measuring similar Investigator Christopher Russell. "We chose to go to Vesta because abundances in the atmosphere of our burned-out Sun may reach the the ground-based telescopes and, later, Hubble told us it was an same conclusion that terrestrial planets once circled our parent star. interesting place. That was true, but we needed Dawn to discern the Though the progenitor star was different from our Sun, nevertheless, mineral distribution and history of Vesta's surface. We now know how "it's a look into our future," said Gänsicke. these data sets tie together and complement each other. This will help FULL VIEW OF ASTEROID VESTA us in our telescopic studies of other members of our solar system." As the Dawn spacecraft travels to its next destination, this mosaic One particularly useful comparison for future work on asteroids or synthesizes some of the best views the spacecraft had of the giant other solar system objects involves comparing Dawn's framing camera asteroid Vesta. Dawn studied Vesta from Jul 2011 to Sep 2012. data to data from Hubble. With Hubble, astronomers first saw the The towering mountain at the south pole - more than twice the height giant impact basin near the south pole of Vesta and also identified of Mount Everest - is visible at the bottom of the image. The set of numerous bright and dark features on Vesta that correspond to three craters known as the "snowman" can be seen at the top left. different compositional units. It wasn't until Dawn's framing camera provided high-resolution views of Vesta that scientists were able to see the detailed contours of the giant impact basin that came to be called Rheasilvia, and saw how bright the brightest materials were, and how dark the dark materials were. Dawn's observations also showed that there was an older, overlapping giant impact basin under Rheasilvia. The bright materials appear to be pristine rocks native to Vesta, while the carbon-rich dark material appears to have been brought to Vesta from afar. "When Dawn got to Vesta, it showed us how accurate Hubble's data were about Vesta," said Planetary Science Institute research scientist Jian-Yang Li, the Dawn participating scientist who mapped out the surface of Vesta using Hubble data. "And it also showed us how Vesta was so much more interesting up-close." Launched in 2007, Dawn orbited Vesta for more than a year, departing in Sep 2012. Dawn is now on its way to the Ceres and will arrive there in early 2015.

NEUTRON STAR UNDERGOES WILD BEHAVIOR CHANGES Astronomers have uncovered the strange case of a neutron star with the peculiar ability to transform from a radio pulsar into an X-ray pulsar Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCAL/MPS/DLR/IDA and back again. This star's capricious behavior appears to be fueled by These images are the last in Dawn's ‘Image of the Day’ series during the a nearby companion star and may give new insights into the birth of cruise to Dawn's second destination, Ceres. A full set of Dawn data is millisecond pulsars. "What we're seeing is a star that is the cosmic being archived at http://pds.nasa.gov/ equivalent of 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,' with the ability to change from one form to its more intense counterpart with startling speed," said Tantalized by images from Hubble and ground-based data, scientists Scott Ransom, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy thought the giant asteroid Vesta deserved a closer look. They got a Observatory (NRAO). "Though we have known that X-ray binaries -- chance to do that in 2011 and 2012, when the Dawn spacecraft orbited some of which are observed as X-ray pulsars -- can evolve over millions the giant asteroid, and they were able to check earlier conclusions. A of years to become rapidly spinning radio pulsars, we were surprised to new study involving Dawn's observations during that time period find one that seemed to swing so quickly between the two." Two demonstrates how this relationship works with Hubble and ground- images from Chandra X-ray Observatory show a large change in X-ray based telescopes to clarify our understanding of a solar system object. brightness of a rapidly rotating neutron star, or pulsar, between 2006 "Since the vast majority of asteroids can only be studied remotely by and 2013. The neutron star − the extremely dense remnant left ground-based and space-based facilities, confirming the accuracy of behind by a supernova − is in a tight orbit around a low mass star. such observations using in-situ measurements is important to our This binary star system, ‘IGR J18245-2452’ , is located about 18,000 exploration of the solar system," said Vishnu Reddy, the lead author of light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius in a globular a paper published recently. In the paper, Reddy and other members cluster of stars known as ‘M28’. IGR J18245-2452 provides important of Dawn's framing camera team describe how up-close observations of information about the evolution of pulsars in binary systems. Pulses Vesta have confirmed and provided new insights into more than 200 of radio waves have been observed from the neutron star as it makes a years of Earth-based observations. Vesta, the second most massive complete rotation every 3.93 milliseconds (an astonishing rate of 254 asteroid in the main asteroid belt, differs from most garden-variety times per second), classifying it as a "millisecond pulsar." The widely asteroids in having a crust, mantle and core like our Earth. Early accepted model for the evolution of these millisecond pulsar objects is ground-based observations of Vesta, which was discovered in 1807, that matter is pulled from the companion star onto the surface of the 16 neutron star via a disk surrounding it. During this so-called accretion as astronomers theorized. The new data support this link but also phase, the system is described as a low-mass X-ray binary, because show for the first time that the evolution process, which was thought bright X-ray emission from the disk is observed. Spinning material in to take perhaps millions of years, is actually more complex and can the disk falls onto the neutron star, increasing its rotation rate. The occur in episodic bursts that can last just a few days or weeks. "This transfer of matter eventually slows down and the remaining material is not only demonstrates the evolutionary link between accretion and swept away by the whirling magnetic field of the neutron star as a rotation-powered millisecond pulsars," said Ransom, "but also that millisecond radio pulsar forms. The complete evolution of a low-mass some systems can swing between the two states on very short X-ray binary into a millisecond pulsar should happen over several billion timescales." "With its twofold behavior, this millisecond pulsar has a years, but in the course of this evolution, the system might switch similar role to that of the platypus or the echidna in the animal world, rapidly between these two states. which lay eggs but also produce milk to feed their offspring – a living evolutionary link between reptiles and mammals," says Papitto. The source IGR J18245-2452 provides the first direct evidence for such drastic changes in behavior. In observations from Jul 2002 to May 2013 there are periods when it acts like an X-ray binary and the radio pulses disappear, and there are times when it switches off as an X-ray binary and the radio pulses turn on. The latest observations with both X-ray and radio telescopes show that the transitions between an X-ray binary and a radio pulsar can take place in both directions and on a time scale that is shorter than expected, maybe only a few days. They also provide powerful evidence for an evolutionary link between X-ray binaries and radio millisecond pulsars. Neutron stars are the super-dense remains of massive stars that have exploded as supernovas. IGR J18245-2452 was first identified as a millisecond radio pulsar in 2005 with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and then later rediscovered as an X-ray pulsar by another team of astronomers in 2013. The two teams eventually realized they were observing the same object, even though it was behaving very differently depending on when it was observed. Additional observations and archival data from other telescopes confirmed the on-again, off-again cycle of X-ray and radio pulsations. "Various observations of one particular star over the years and with different telescopes have revealed vastly different things -- at one time a pulsar and the other an X-ray binary," said Alessandro Papitto, lead author of INTEGRAL detection at X-ray wavelengths of the millisecond pulsar IGR J18245- a paper on the research. "This was particularly intriguing because 2452 with the IBIS/ISGRI instrument. This image shows two images of the same radio pulses don't come from an X-ray binary and the X-ray source has portion of the sky, taken at hard X-ray wavelengths with the wide-field IBIS/ISGRI to be long gone before radio signals can emerge." imager on board INTEGRAL. The image shown in the upper panel is based on data gathered on 18 Feb 2013, whereas the one shown in the lower panel is The answer to this puzzle was found in the complex interplay between based on data gathered from 28 Mar and 6 Apr 2013. In the later image, the the neutron star and its nearby companion. X-ray binaries, as their source IGR J18245-2452 is visible (highlighted with a blue label), whereas it is not name implies, occur in a two-star system in which a neutron star is in the earlier image. Image credit: ESA/INTEGRAL/IBIS accompanied by a more normal, low-mass star. The smaller but considerably more massive neutron star can draw off material from its companion, forming a flattened disk of gas around the neutron star. Gradually, as this material swirls down to the surface of the neutron star, it becomes superheated and generates intense X-rays. Astronomers believed that this process of accretion continued, mostly unabated, for millions of years. Eventually, the material would run out and the accretion would stop, along with the X-ray emission. Without the influx of new material, the neutron star's powerful magnetic fields are able to generate beams of radio waves that sweep across space as the star rotates, giving the pulsar its characteristic lighthouse-like appearance. Most radio pulsars rotate a few tens of times each second and -- if left to their own devices -- will slow down over many thousands of years. If the neutron star begins life as an X- ray binary, however, the matter accumulating on its surface causes the An X-ray bright pulsar accreting matter from a companion star - This illustration shows an artist's impression of an X-ray bright pulsar in a binary neutron star to "spin up," increasing its rate of rotation until it spins system with a low-mass star as a companion. When the gravitational pull of hundreds of times each second. When this accretion process stops, the pulsar – which is a very dense object – starts drawing matter from the the result is a millisecond pulsar. During their observations, the companion star, the pulsar starts accreting matter via an accretion disc, and researchers detected outbursts of X-ray pulsations that went on for emitting X-rays. This emission, supported by the accretion process, is shown as approximately one month and then abruptly stopped. Within a few wide, white beams. As the pulsar accretes matter, it also gains angular days, the radio pulses once again emerged. These wild swings momentum and its rotation becomes faster. indicated that the material from the was falling onto the neutron star in fits and starts, rather than in a long and constant stream 17 smaller because they have stars ripped away from them. Large black holes are not found in star clusters, so if the X-ray source is in fact due to a massive black hole, it was likely produced by collisions between the galaxy and one or more nearby galaxies. The mass of the galaxy and the Sun-like abundances of elements also favor the idea that the galaxy is the remnant of a much larger galaxy. "We think nearly all of the stars have been pulled away from the exterior of what once was a much bigger galaxy," said co-author Duncan Forbes. "This leaves behind just the very dense nucleus of the former galaxy, and an overly massive black hole." If this stripping did occur, then the galaxy was originally 50 to 200 times more massive than it is now, which would make the mass of its black hole relative to the original mass of the galaxy more like the Milky Way and many other galaxies. It is possible that this stripping took place long ago and that M60-UCD1 has been Radio-bright pulsar in a binary system with a low-mass star as a companion -- During the accretion process, the high density of accreted matter inhibits the stalled at its current size for several billion years. The researchers acceleration of particles that cause radio emission, so the pulsar does not emit estimate that M60-UCD1 is more than about 10 billion years old. The radio waves but only X-rays. When the accretion rate decreases, the density of stars in the galaxy is so high astronomers do not expect to magnetosphere expands and pushes matter away from the pulsar , the X-ray find a signature of dark matter in the motion of stars. However, these emission becomes weaker and weaker, while the radio emission intensifies. The galaxies are considered likely to contain some dark matter. If they do, two narrow beams of radio emission are shown in purple. they are important for making comparisons with computer simulations This bouncing behavior is caused by a rhythmical interplay between the of the formation of galaxies, which typically predict a larger number of pulsar's magnetic field and the pressure of accreted matter. When clumps of dark matter than observed. M60-UCD1 is located near a accretion is more intense, the high density of accreted matter inhibits massive elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, also called M60, about 60 million the acceleration of particles that cause radio emission, so the pulsar is light years from Earth. not visible in radio waves but only through the X-rays radiated by the accreted matter. When the accretion rate decreases, the magnetosphere expands and pushes matter away from the pulsar: as a consequence, the X-ray emission becomes weaker and weaker, while the radio emission intensifies. "In spite of the long time required for this detection, we believe that pulsars in such binary systems are fairly common, so we're looking forward to finding more," concludes Norbert Schartel, XMM-Newton Project Scientist.

HUBBLE/CHANDRA FIND DENSEST NEARBY GALAXY The densest galaxy in the nearby part of the Universe may have been found. Packed with an extraordinary number of stars, this unusual galaxy is providing astronomers with clues to its intriguing past and how it fits into the galactic evolutionary chain. The galaxy, known as ‘M60-UCD1’, is a type of “ultra-compact dwarf galaxy”. It was discovered with Hubble and follow-up observations were done with Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes. Observations from the Keck Observatory, characterized it as the most luminous known galaxy of its type and one of the most massive, weighing 200 million times more than our Sun. What makes M60- UCD1 so remarkable is that about half of this mass is found within a radius of only about 80 light years. This would make the density of stars about 15,000 times greater than found in Earth’s neighborhood in the Milky Way, meaning that the stars are about 25 times closer.

"Traveling from one star to another would be a lot easier in M60-UCD1 than it is in our galaxy," said Jay Strader, first author of a new paper            describing these results. "But it would still take hundreds of years [The EAS welcomes newsletter articles, photos, observing reports, and news using present technology." The 6.5-meter MMT in Arizona was used to contributions and submissions of all types from its members.] study the amount of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium in stars in M60-UCD1. The values were found to be similar to our Sun. FROM THE EDITOR'S TERMINAL "The abundance of heavy elements in this galaxy makes it a fertile The Stargazer is your newsletter and therefore it is best when it is a environment for planets and, potentially, life to form," said co-author cooperative project. Any content you have, such as ads, ASTRO- Anil Seth. Another intriguing aspect of M60-UCD1 is that the Chandra PHOTOs, observing reports, announcements, suggestions, or literary data reveal the presence of a bright X-ray source in its center. One works, etc., should be e-mailed to the editor for inclusion into the explanation for this source is a giant black hole weighing in at some 10 Stargazer. If you wish to contribute an article or suggestions to The million times the mass of the Sun. Astronomers are trying to Stargazer please contact Mark Folkerts by e-mail (folkerts at seanet dot determine if M60-UCD1 and other ultra-compact dwarf galaxies are com) or by telephone (425) 486-9733. either born as jam-packed star clusters or if they are galaxies that get 18 The Star Gazer P.O. Box 13272 Mill Creek, WA 98082

In October’s StarGazer: **** Astro Calendar -- Upcoming Astronomy and EAS Events **** Observer's Information - Sun, Moon, and Planet Visibility **** ‘Up In The Sky’ - The Planets (and Object 134340 Pluto…) **** EAS Member News **** Carbon Worlds May be Waterless, Says New Study **** Cassini Swings High Above Saturn For a Portrait **** Ghostly Shape of ‘Coldest Place in the Universe’ **** Cassini Gets New Views of Titan's ‘Land of Lakes’ **** Asteroid 2013 TV135 - A Reality Check **** Curiosity Confirms Mars Origin of Some Meteorites **** Space Telescopes Find Patchy Clouds on Exo-Planet **** Deep Impact Produced Deep Results **** Astronomers Discover Most Distant Galaxy **** A Giant Misalignment in a Multiple Planet System **** Distant Gravitational Lens Helps Weigh Galaxies **** Comet ISON Appears Intact - Looking Into Hubble's New ISON Image **** Aurora Viewed From the ISS **** New Spectroscopic Camera Captures One-Day-Old SN 73 million Light Years from Earth **** Cassini's Epic Journey **** Soft Shells and Strange Star Clusters **** Water-rich Planet Building Blocks Found Around White Dwarf **** Full View of Asteroid Vesta **** Neutron Star Undergoes Wild Behavior Changes **** Hubble/Chandra Find Densest Nearby Galaxy*

Next EAS Mtg. is Sat Nov 14th 3:00 pm at Evergreen Branch Library.