Archive
1st Photos from New Discovery Channel Telescope Unveiled
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One of the first images captured by the Discovery Channel Telescope in Arizona shows the barred spiral galaxy M109. The privately funded observatory took its first photos in May 2012.
CREDIT: Lowell Observatory
The Discovery Channel Telescope is an observatory with a 14-foot (4.3-meter) mirror built near Happy Jack, Ariz., by the Lowell Observatory and Discovery Communications, the parent company of television’s Discovery Channel. The telescope’s opening was marked with a gala on Saturday (July 21) at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff and featured a keynote speech from Neil Armstrong, the first person ever on the moon.
“The First Light Gala is a historic event in the annals of Lowell Observatory,” Jeffrey Hall, director of Lowell Observatory, said in a statement. “It marks completion of our spectacular new research facility, initiation of superb projects that will bring our research to millions through our partnership with Discovery Communications. We are honored to be part of it and grateful to all who have helped make it a reality.”
Read more: http://www.space.com/16706-discovery-channel-telescope-first-photos.html
Gliese 581g – The most habitable exoplanet
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This artist’s conception shows the inner four planets of the Gliese 581 system and their host star. The large planet in the foreground is Gliese 581g, which is in the middle of the star’s habitable zone and is only two to three times as massive as Earth. Some researchers aren’t convinced Gliese 581g exists, however.
CREDIT: Lynette Cook
The controversial exoplanet Gliese 581g is the best candidate to host life beyond our own solar system, according to a new ranking of potentially habitable alien worlds.
Gliese 581g shot to the top of the list — which was published Thursday (July 19) by researchers at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo’s Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) — after a new study marshaled support for its long-debated existence.
The exoplanet was discovered in September 2010, but other astronomers began casting doubt on its existence just weeks later. Now Gliese 581g’s discoverers have rebutted their critics’ charges in a new paper, and have done so effectively enough to get the PHL onboard.
Read more: http://www.space.com/16722-top-5-habitable-alien-planets.html
Hubble sees the needle galaxy, edge-on and up close
Image credit: ESA/NASA
This image snapped by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals an exquisitely detailed view of part of the disc of the spiral galaxy NGC 4565. This bright galaxy is one of the most famous examples of an edge-on spiral galaxy, oriented perpendicularly to our line of sight so that we see right into its luminous disc. NGC 4565 has been nicknamed the Needle Galaxy because, when seen in full, it appears as a very narrow streak of light on the sky.
The edgewise view into the Needle Galaxy shown here looks very similar to the view we have from our Solar System into the core of the Milky Way. In both cases ribbons of dust block some of the light coming from the galactic disc. To the lower right, the dust stands in even starker contrast against the copious yellow light from the star-filled central regions. NGC 4565’s core is off camera to the lower right.
Read more : http://phys.org/news/2012-07-hubble-needle-galaxy-edge-on.html
Belching Black Hole Proves a Biggie: First Known ‘Middleweight’ Black Hole
July 10, 2012
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ScienceDaily (July 9, 2012) — Observations with CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array have confirmed that astronomers have found the first known “middleweight” black hole.
Outbursts of super-hot gas observed with a CSIRO radio telescope have clinched the identity of the first known “middleweight” black hole, Science Express reports.
Called HLX-1 (“hyper-luminous X-ray source 1”), the black hole lies in a galaxy called ESO 243-49, about 300 million light-years away.
Before it was found, astronomers had good evidence for only supermassive black holes — ones a million to a billion times the mass of the Sun — and “stellar mass” ones, three to thirty times the mass of the Sun.
“This is the first object that we’re really sure is an intermediate-mass black hole,” said Dr Sean Farrell, an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sydney and a member of the research team, which included astronomers from France, Australia, the UK and the USA.
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120709102720.htm
The real Mars
July 6, 2012
Written by : Joseph P. Skipper
http://www.marsanomalyresearch.com
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Verify M0902042 at MSSS and USGS.
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Verify E0801033 at MSSS and USGS
(22 more images at http://www.marsanomalyresearch.com/evidence-reports/2012/221/real-mars.htm)
The visual evidence is presented here in two sampling blocks representing the better of the discoveries. In the first block you’ll see quite a few different bodies of water in a liquid state with some of these surrounded by the bonus of very conventional looking forests. The second block is all about samples of large form forest life Mars style none of which are by official consensus suppose to exist at all on this world.
Remember that the Mars surface is officially suppose to be completely dry and devoid of life. Further, the atmosphere is suppose to be 95.35% carbon dioxide (CO2) with only a very tiny .03% of water vapor and super hard frozen to the tune of as much as –220º Fahrenheit or –140º Celsius. In other words it would be a race as to whether an unprotected Earth human out in the open there would be speedily killed by too much poisonous CO2 gas by many times over or quickly frozen to death.
Note that, even though all of the following evidence is in the official science data and available there for verification, you have never heard a peep out of NASA or JPL as to its existence. So this amounts to the hidden Mars that it appears someone in control does not wish you and I to know about or at least also ignore. Also note that I have added a slight bit of false color to these online images to increase clarity and the viewing comfort level. In any case, the high drama visual evidence is as follows.
Read more : http://www.marsanomalyresearch.com/evidence-reports/2012/221/real-mars.htm
New Instrument Sifts Through Starlight to Reveal New Worlds
ScienceDaily (July 5, 2012) — An advanced telescope imaging system that started taking data last month is the first of its kind capable of spotting planets orbiting suns outside of our solar system. The collaborative set of high-tech instrumentation and software, called Project 1640, is now operating on the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California after more than six years of development by researchers and engineers at the American Museum of Natural History, the California Institute of Technology, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
The project’s first images demonstrating a new technique that creates extremely precise “dark holes” around stars of interest were presented July 5 at the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation meeting in Amsterdam by Ben R. Oppenheimer, a curator in the Museum’s Department of Astrophysics and principal investigator for Project 1640.
Although hundreds of planets are known from indirect detection methods to orbit other stars, it’s extremely difficult to see them directly in an image. This is largely because the light that stars emit is tens of millions to billions of times brighter than the light given off by planets.
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120705161252.htm
In a Cosmology Breakthrough, Astronomers Measure a Filament of Dark Matter
By Rebecca Boyle 07.05.2012
Invisible, cold dark matter plays a major role in the evolution of galaxies, according to modern cosmological theory. The most advanced simulations of cosmic evolution show stringy tendrils of mass — dark matter — connecting giant clusters of galaxies via a vast cosmic web. Now for the first time, astronomers have been able to detect one of these filaments, sussing out its location by watching it warp light.
Your own solar observatory
July 2, 2012
You can watch or control the scopes for yourselves live here:
http://observatory.godlikeproductions.com/ (you can watch as a guest, but you are required to login for queueing in the control line)
Learn how to use it here:
http://video.godlikeproductions.com/video/HOW_TO_VIDEO_FOR_OBSERVATORY?id=1162905b337b781e514
==> Please note that believenothing.net is not affiliated in any way with the above mentioned website and this is not some kind of advertising.
I just think that it is something worth mentioning and a good alternative to the official channels.
Meteor plunges into ocean lighting up Perth sky
METEORIC SNAP: A photo of the meteor over Cottesloe taken by PerthNow reader Gavin Trought just before sunset. Source: PerthNow
AMAZING VIEWS: This picture was posted to Twitter by Pip Moir. She wrote ” Very bizarre. View from cott. Looks like fire. What is that?!?” Source: PerthNowTHIS fiery streak in the sky amazed Perth beachgoers at sunset as a suspected meteor plunged into the ocean off the WA coast.
PerthNow reader Gavin Trought snapped the ‘fire in the sky’ as it appeared over Cottesloe just before sunset on Friday, with remnants of the phenomenon still visible in the sky this afternoon.
“The weird streak in the sky as seen from Cottesloe last night. I noticed it just before sunset,” he told us.
Perth journalist Pip Moir also posted the photo she took at Cottesloe Beach to Twitter shortly after 6pm as puzzled onlookers debated what caused the colourful phenomena.
Evidence of Life On Mars Could Come from Martian Moon Phobos
ScienceDaily (June 29, 2012) — A mission to a Martian moon could return with alien life, according to experts at Purdue University, but don’t expect the invasion scenario presented by summer blockbusters like “Men in Black 3” or “Prometheus.”
“We are talking little green microbes, not little green men,” said Jay Melosh, a distinguished professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences and physics and aerospace engineering at Purdue. “A sample from the moon Phobos, which is much easier to reach than the Red Planet itself, would almost surely contain Martian material blasted off from large asteroid impacts. If life on Mars exists or existed within the last 10 million years, a mission to Phobos could yield our first evidence of life beyond Earth.”
Read more : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120629015408.htm
Believe nothing 