telescope •

Green Comet Will Be Visible in the Northern Hemisphere

March 27, 2016 By Joe Hennessey Leave a Comment

Comet Linear isn’t the only one emitting the warm color. Lovejoy (portrayed above) shares the tint.

(Mirror Daily, United States) – Comet Linear will emerge in the night sky next week, and it will be a hundred times brighter than the astronomers first expected. The green comet will be visible in the northern hemisphere.

Those living in the southern hemisphere were privileged enough to witness the bright celestial occurrence this week after the object passed our planet from a safe 3.3 million miles distance.

At the present moment, the Comet Linear is rapidly moving into view in the northern hemisphere. The only downside to all of this is the fact that sky gazers will need at least a pair of binoculars to witness our visitor since the sky will be illuminated by the moon.

Moreover, individuals who are eager to witness the event must find a dark place, unpolluted by any sources of light. The best time to be out and comet gazing is around an hour and a half before sunrise.

Each morning the green comet will be observed higher in the sky than in the previous one. It will pass right by where Mars and Saturn are visible. People will also be able to see Antares near the other two, forming a sort of small triangle.

The Comet Linear will climb left of this triangle. On Tuesday, it will be approximately on Saturn’s line, while on Thursday it will be visible along the line that connects Saturn and Antares.

The senior editor of the Sky & Telescope magazine, Kelly Beatty, is advising any enthusiasts to expect to see only a bright spot. According to him, Comet Linear will not have an obvious long tail as people would presume.

The lack of a tail is caused by the way in which light is concentrated on the surface of the comet. Instead of being focused on just one point, it is spread out in a sort of round glow. While it’s size is larger than the moon, the light emitted is considerably dimmer.

The diatomic carbon molecules from its componence react with the sunlight and create a greenish, fluorescent color. Unfortunately, the green shade will only be visible through a telescope.

The astronomers are not sure how long the comet will remain on orbit given its unexpected surge. On Monday, it passed the closest point near the Earth, and it is currently heading away from the sun and our planet. The green comet will be visible in the northern hemisphere until the end of the week.

On Tuesday, the PanSTARRS comet passed near the Earth at a distance of only 2.2 million miles.

Image source: Wikimedia

Most Powerful Space Telescope Ever Will Be Launched In 2018

April 22, 2015 By John Birks Leave a Comment

NASA and its international colleagues are constructing an even more powerful tool than the Hubble telescope, whose 25th anniversary is this week, in order to see deeper into the universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be 100 times more powerful than Hubble, and its mission will launch in 2018. Its purpose is to offer astronomers an unprecedented look at the first galaxies that came to be in the early universe.

“JWST will be able to see back to about 200 million years after the Big Bang. The telescope is a powerful time machine with infrared vision that will peek back over 13.5 billion years to see the first stars and galaxies forming out of the darkness,” NASA said on its website.

The project has meant huge costs, now at around $8.8bn, far higher than the first estimate of $3.5bn. NASA has promised to limit the expenses with its next-generation telescope before the October 2018 launch.

“We will be able, with these capabilities, to look in very dark parts of the universe where stars are being born,” said Webb telescope observatory project scientist Mark Clampin.

The James Webb Space Telescope is a joint project of NASA, the Canadian and European space agencies. It will carry four instruments, like spectrometers and high-tech cameras which can capture extremely weak signals.

Infra-red will aid it observe distant celestial structures, and its camera has the ability to remain open for long periods, said Matt Greenhouse, JWST project scientist for the science instruments.

The new telescope should contribute to the search for life in the universe by analyzing planets outside the solar system, called exoplanets, that could have water and be at a suitable distance to prevent boiling or freezing.

Kepler Space telescope, launched by NASA in 2009, has aided astronomers to discover thousands of exoplanets. JWST is expected to extend that research even further.

“Webb is quite big enough to have a high probability of finding bio signatures in the atmosphere of exoplanets, evidence of life,” Greenhouse explained, adding that the equipment on board will examine the exoplanets and their atmosphere.

Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, which is orbiting the Earth, the JWST head to a place named LaGrange point 2, which is 1.5 million kilometers away in space.

That distance will help to keep the telescope cold, and also prevent it from being blinded by its own infra-red light and protect it from radiation.

“It will follow the Earth around the Sun over the course of the year. So it’s in a Sun center orbit instead of an Earth center orbit,” added Greenhouse.

The revolutionary telescope will be launched on board of Ariane 5 rocket, made by the European Space Agency, from French Guiana in October 2018.

Image Source: Twitter

Scientists Get Clearer Insight On Milky Way’s Evolution

April 10, 2015 By John Birks Leave a Comment

The evolution of our galaxy, the Milky Way, has been pieced together from pictures taken by NASA and ESA telescopes, according to a research by Texas A&M students.

Lead author Casey Papovich, said in a press release that by looking at distant galaxies, the researchers managed to observe how they looked when their light left for Earth.

“Because the galaxies are billions of light-years distant, we can see how they looked billions of years in the past”, added Papovich, who, together with postdoctoral researchers Vithal Tilvi and Ryan Quadri and almost 25 astronomers around the world spent a year examining distant galaxies similar in mass to the Milky Way.

Two programs were used to discover the most suitable galaxies, the deep sky surveys of the universe called FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey (ZFOURGE) and Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS).

The group studied more than 24,000 galaxies from the combined catalog to identify representative galaxies that had an evolving pattern similar to our Milky Way. In the next step, the scientists made a projection of how those galaxies expanded over time, which could be used just like a “film” of the Milky Way’s life from youth to middle age.

“Most stars today exist in galaxies like the Milky Way, so by studying how galaxies like our own formed, we have come to understand the most typical locations of stars in the universe. We now have the best picture of how galaxies like our own formed their stars,” said Papovich, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Papovich mentioned the research data clearly shows that the Milky Way got trough its most rapid phase of growth around 9.2 and 10 billion years ago, producing new stars at an incredible rate, approximately 30 times faster compared to today’s rhythm. In present times, the Milky Way churns out one new star per year, compared to a production of 30 each year 9.5 billion years ago. The study revealed a strong bond between star formation and growth in galaxy size.

Papovich explained that our Sun is one of the more recently formed stars, born around 5 billion years ago, a period when star formation within the Milky Way had toned down to a level that is also found today. The Sun’s late appearance may have been a good thing, allowing the growth of the planets within our solar system.

The study was supported by funding from National Science Foundation and NASA, who allowed the use of its Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. In order to carry out the research, the scientists also used ground-based telescopes, including the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and the Magellan Baade Telescope, but also European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory.

Image Source: The Next Web

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