Space Science

Doubts have been growing in China about the legitimacy of Mars One.

The Gemini 12 spacecraft floats to the ocean surface as a helicopter hovers above.

                    Chinese astronomers, actively searching for Earth-like planets using survey instruments in Antarctica, believe efforts to seek an extra-solar planet that that harbors life will soon be rewarded. "It's highly possible that human beings might find such a planet in the coming few years," said Lifan Wang, an astronomer at Texas A&M University in College Station, and director of the Chinese Centre for Antarctic Astronomy in Nanjing. "Such planets likely exist in the Milky Way, with a possible distance of thousands of light years from us. We know too little about life. Maybe there are new forms of life that do not need exactly the same environment as we have on Earth. Some can survive in very harsh environments," Wang added. Chinese astronomers installed the first of three Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3-1) at Dome Argus, located at the highest elevation on the Antarctic continent, at the beginning of 2012. One of its primary missions is to search for extra-solar planets suitable for life.  Dome A may be the best place on Earth to gaze at the Universe, says Wang. At 4,093 meters above sea level, Dome A has an extremely thin and stable atmosphere, and the pressure is only half that at sea level. The extreme cold — temperatures can drop to –80 °C — makes the air very dry and reduces background radiation when observing in the infrared. There is almost no air pollution and the long winter nights allow for four months of uninterrupted observation. "Antarctica has the best conditions on Earth for astronomical observation, as it has very flat ground, a transparent atmosphere and little turbulence. The ground-based telescopes here will bring us precious information from the universe," he said. "We will send people there to retrieve observation data. I hope we can find some likely candidates. It's hard to say precisely how many, but I hope there are no less than 10," Wang said. "So far, humans have yet to find an exact twin of the Earth." "We search through a wide range of main sequence stars, mainly sun-like stars, and then look for planets within a suitable distance around them. Stars that are smaller and darker than the sun, such as dwarfs, are also in our survey scope," he said."If the stars are particularly large, they are inclined to evolve faster. Some will explode soon, and their planets will go missing after the explosion." The second AST3 will be installed in Antarctica between late 2013 and early 2014, while the third one will be installed between late 2014 and early 2015. "These telescopes are expected to help us find at least 100 sun-like stars. We will work with Australian scientists to further study the movement of the stars to calculate their size," Wang said. Chinese scientists are also planning to set up an Antarctic observatory to further boost their research and broaden the search for habitable planets. If approved and included in the 12th Five-Year Plan, the observatory should go into operation by 2020. The Daily Galaxy via Nature and http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-08/27/c_131810648.htm Related articles "Two Water Worlds Unlike Anything in Our Solar System" --Found Orbiting a Kepler-Mission Star Alien Planets of Red Dwarf Stars --"If Life is Discovered There It May Be Older & More Evolved" The Thirty Meter Telescope --"Next Generation in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life" Astronomers find more Earth-like planets

A new view of the spectacular stellar nursery IC 2944 (ESO) This Saturday will mark 15 years that the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) first opened its eyes on the Universe, and ESO is celebrating its first-light anniversary with a beautiful and intriguing new image of the stellar nursery IC 2944, full of bright young stars and ink-black clouds of cold interstellar dust. This is the clearest ground-based image yet of IC 2944, located 6,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Centaurus. (...)Read the rest of An Amazing Anniversary Image from the VLT (283 words) © Jason Major for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: anniversary, Bok Globules, ESO, IC 2944, nebula, space, stars, telescope, VLT Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Get larger image formats The distinctive shape of the Ring Nebula, the glowing shroud around a dying Sun-like star, makes it a popular celestial object that appears in many astronomy books. New observations of the Ring Nebula by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, however, reveal a new twist on an iconic nebula.

    This new view of a spectacular stellar nursery reveals thick clumps of dust silhouetted against the pink glowing gas cloud known to astronomers as IC 2944. The image celebrates an important anniversary for the Very Large Telescope— the world's most advanced optical instrument operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Among the observations carried out using the VLT are the first direct image of an exoplanet, the tracking of individual stars moving around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and observations of the afterglow of the furthest known gamma-ray burst. It is fifteen years since the first light on the first of its four Unit Telescopes, on 25 May 1998. Since then the four original giant telescopes have been joined by the four small Auxiliary Telescopes that form part of the VLT Interferometer (VLTI). The VLT is one of the most powerful and productive ground-based astronomical facilities in existence. In 2012 more than 600 refereed scientific papers based on data from the VLT and VLTI were published. Interstellar clouds of dust and gas are the nurseries where new stars are born and grow. The new picture shows one of them, IC 2944, which appears as the softly glowing pink background. The nebula is associated with the bright star cluster IC 2948 and both of these names are also sometimes associated with the whole region. Many of the bright cluster stars appear in this picture. This image is the sharpest view of the object ever taken from the ground. The cloud lies about 6500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). This part of the sky is home to many other similar nebulae that are scrutinised by astronomers to study the mechanisms of star formation. Emission nebulae like IC 2944 are composed mostly of hydrogen gas that glows in a distinctive shade of red, due to the intense radiation from the many brilliant newborn stars. Clearly revealed against this bright backdrop are mysterious dark clots of opaque dust, cold clouds known as Bok globules. They are named after the Dutch-American astronomer Bart Bok, who first drew attention to them in the 1940s as possible sites of star formation. This particular set is nicknamed the Thackeray Globules, discovered from South Africa by the English astronomer A. David Thackeray in 1950. Larger Bok globules in quieter locations often collapse to form new stars but the ones in this picture are under fierce bombardment from the ultraviolet radiation from nearby hot young stars. They are both being eroded away and also fragmenting, rather like lumps of butter dropped into a hot frying pan. It is likely that Thackeray’s Globules will be destroyed before they can collapse and form stars. Bok globules are not easy to study. As they are opaque to visible light it is difficult for astronomers to observe their inner workings, and so other tools are needed to unveil their secrets — observations in the infrared or in the submillimetre parts of the spectrum, for example, where the dust clouds, only a few degrees over absolute zero, appear bright. Such studies of the Thackeray globules have confirmed that there is no current star formation within them. This region of sky has also been imaged in the past by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (opo0201a). This new view from the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in northern Chile covers a wider patch of sky than Hubble and shows a broader landscape of star formation. The Daily Galaxy via ESO Related articles Strange Galaxy Falling into Virgo Cluster at 1,000 KPS Reveals an Unknown Star Formation Prolific Star-Forming Galaxies of the Early Universe Detected by New Atacama Desert Large Array Image of the Day: Stunning Views of the 'Pillars of Creation' Orion's hidden fiery ribbon&

An airway splint saved the life of a baby boy.

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian court has denied parole to a member of the Pussy Riot punk group.

The administration revealed a fourth American citizen had been killed in drone strikes.

ELLENWOOD, Ga. (AP) — Federal authorities are investigating after a Boeing 747 on approach to Atlanta's airport lost parts from its right wing that landed on a woman's house.