Being Global: The World at Your Front

An international team of astronomers has mapped the density and temperature of X-ray-emitting gas in the outskirts of a distant galaxy cluster. The results, obtained with the orbiting Japanese X-ray telescope Suzaku, give the first complete X-ray view of a galaxy cluster, and provide insight into how such clusters come together. “These Suzaku observations are exciting because we can finally see how these structures, the largest bound objects in the universe, grow even more massive,” said Matt George, the study’s lead author at the University of California, Berkeley. The team trained Suzaku’s X-ray telescopes on the massive galaxy cluster PKS 0745-191, which lies 1.3 billion light-years away in the southern constellation Puppis. Between May 11 and 14, 2007, Suzaku acquired five images of the million-degree gas that permeates the cluster. The X-ray images of the cluster helped astronomers measure the temperature and density of the gas. These provide clues about the gas pressure and c...

In 1919, the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) launched an expedition to the West African island of Príncipe, to observe a total solar eclipse and prove or disprove Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Now, in a new RAS-funded expedition for the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009), scientists are back. Astronomers Professor Pedro Ferreira from the University of Oxford and Dr Richard Massey from the University of Edinburgh, along with Oxford anthropologist Dr Gisa Weszkalnys, are paying homage to the original expedition led by Sir Arthur Eddington and celebrating the 90th anniversary of one of the key discoveries of the 20th century. Einstein first proposed his General Theory of Relativity in 1915. It describes how any massive object, such as the Sun, creates gravity by bending space and time around it. Everything in that space is also bent: even rays of light. Consequently, distant light sources, behind the massive object, can appear in a different position or look brighter t...

The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs has congratulated staff and students on the successful conclusionn of the Sixth Postgraduate Course on Space and Atmospheric Science at the UN-affiliated Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific (CSSTEAP). The Course is a contribution to IYA2009, and emphasises the importance of education and research in astronomy and space science. The Course was run from the Physical Research Laboratory at Ahmedabad, India, which is one of the world's leading institutions engaged in astronomy and space science research. The organisation has brought many benefits to India, and in true IYA2009 spirit is generously making research and applications available to the local region and beyond through long-term training and courses which began in 1995. The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs has wished all participants a very bright future and hopes their enthusiasm will continue to inspire them to explore humanity's place within the...

O. Richard Norton(1937 - 2009 A.D.) passed away at Hospice House in Bend, Oregon, on May 17 after a long illness. A life-long educator and the author of popular books and articles about meteorites, astronomy and planetariums, Richard discovered his life’s passion when he built his first telescope at 14. His love for the sky and all things astronomical led him from an after-school job at Cave Optical Company in Long Beach, California, to a career in public science education. While studying astronomy and meteoritics at UCLA, he was a lecturer at Griffith Observatory and Planetarium in Los Angeles. In 1957 he worked at the Nevada Test Site as a field researcher for the Atomic Energy Commission. There he witnessed the last 10 above-ground nuclear explosions and conducted research at the test site on the ecological effects of radiation. After graduation in 1960, he worked briefly as an optical engineer at Northrop Corporation and Tinsley Laboratories. But he soon returned to his beloved pla...

After the difficult one month of preparations and weather concerns the StarPeace event between Macedonia and Serbia finally came true on the weekend between 22nd and 24th May. The event was held on the peak “Odvrakjenica” on the mountain Golija, near the city Novi Pazar in Serbia. On this event there were participants from 5 astronomy clubs from Macedonia and Serbia: Skopje Astronomical Society from Skopje - Macedonia, AD Novi Pazar from Novi Pazar - Serbia, Astronomy club Aristarh from Kraguevac - Serbia, Astronomy club Univerzum from Backa Palanka - Serbia and Astronomical Society Ruger Boshkovic from Belgrade – Serbia. In total there were 11 participants on the event from all the clubs and we had one special guest from Brazil that also participate in the event. The weather on both of the observation nights was good and we had good conditions for observations and for astrophotography. There were 7 telescope setups, from which 4 were used for making astrophotography, and 3 for observa...

In 2009, the planet Jupiter will experience an equinox (it occurs only every six years) allowing the observation from Earth of mutual occultations and eclipses between the Galilean satellites. We will take the opportunity of the "International Year of Astronomy 2009" to encourage every one to look at these satellites and to make astronomical observations. These satellites are very easy to observe and the mutual phenomena are accessible to amateur astronomers, to students and to anyone using even a small telescope. These phenomena are not only spectacular and easy to see, they are also rich in scientific information. Observations will allow us to improve our knowledge of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter, objects as large as the planets Mercury or Mars: Io and its volcanoes, Europa and its ice crust, Ganymede and Callisto. Then we call for more than observations only for fun: we also call for some more serious observations to be made according to some rules, simple but rigor...

Two global projects of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, The World at Night and Dark Skies Awareness jointly organize the International Earth and Sky Photo Contest. Participating photographs should focus on TWAN style. Therefore the photos must combine some elements of the night sky (e.g., stars, planets, the Moon or celestial events) set against the backdrop of a beautiful, historic, or notable location or landmark somewhere in the World. They must show both the Earth and the Sky. This style of photography is called “landscape astrophotography”. The special theme of the contest is “Dark Skies Importance”, so the image should try to impress people about how important and amazing the starry sky is, how it affects our life, and how bad the problem of light pollution has become. The contest organizers encourage participants to view examples of such photos on TWAN galleries. A special photo gallery entitled “Dark Skies Importance” is available on TWAN website. Educational article ...

The remarkably successful Servicing Mission 4 — the fifth and final visit of the Space Shuttle to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope — came to an end with a picture-perfect landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Sunday,24th May,2009 at 21:24 Hrs NST(Nepal Standard Time). Astronauts Andrew Feustel (partially obscured at top) and John Grunsfeld work to install the new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on the third spacewalk of Servicing Mission 4. (Credit: NASA) Servicing Mission 4 was an intense, 13-day undertaking that revitalised Hubble, making the telescope more capable than ever. All mission objectives were accomplished during five spacewalks that totalled 36 hours, 56 minutes. During the spacewalks the astronauts delivered two new instruments. The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which replaced the workhorse WFPC2, is the first single instrument on Hubble to be able to image across the infrared, visible and ultraviolet wavebands. ...

We’ve been following former astronaut Scott Parazynski’s attempt to climb Mt. Everest, and now comes the news that he has successfully reached the summit, one year after a back injury forced him to give up his climb. “It was a wonderful experience, though and through,” Parazynski said in a Skype interview with Miles O’Brien, “and certainly the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life, both physically and mentally.” Parazynski brought several objects with him to the world’s highest summit, including rocks from the Moon, and remembrances of fallen astronauts. Parazynski is the first astronaut to summit Mt. Everest. During the climb, Parazynski was doing research. “We’ll be collecting data for astrobiologists, looking for extremophile life,” Parazynski told Universe Today in an interview before he left for Mt. Everest. “If you understand how extremophiles live, you might be able to understand how life may have once evolved on Mars, or may still exist on Mars.” Scott Parazynski on ...

The competition focuses on students and young professionals to develop unique and innovative concepts for how to deflect an asteroid or comet that could impact the Earth. The Move an Asteroid Team is looking for sponsors to support the winners. The competition calls for individuals or team of minimum 3 individuals under the age of 33 to write and submit a 3-10 page original technical paper on their innovative concept for mitigation. The 1st place winner is awarded with a trip to present the winning paper at this year’s Space Generation Congress (SGC) and International Astronautical Congress (IAC) which will take place in Daejeon, South Korea from 9th October 2009 to 19th October 2009. Entries are due on 26th June 2009. The winners will be announced on 26th July 2009. The contest calls for papers to describe in technical detail a concept to move an asteroid or comet that is at least 50 meters in diameter. The contestants should make their own reasonable assumptions on asteroid compositi...

In the May sky, we have the ringed planet Saturn in the evening, mighty Jupiter before dawn and some shooting stars early in the month. As far as stars are concerned, at 8PM you can easily identify the bright constellation Leo the lion just overhead?it looks like an inverted question mark. At the base of the question mark, locate the bright star Regulus, which falls directly in the Ecliptic, the imaginary path of the planets. The bright star-like object to the east of Regulus is Saturn. To the west from Leo, the faint constellation Cancer the crab, can be seen only from a dark location. If you can identify it, don't miss the Bee-hive star cluster, best seen through a pair of binoculars. Further to the west, you may find the constellation Gemini the twins above the western horizon. To the east of Leo, there is another faint constellation Virgo the virgin, with the bright star Spica. To the north of Virgo, is the small constellation Coma Berenices and the fuzzy Coma Cluster of stars....

This year, SGC will take place in Daejeon, South Korea on 8-10 October 2009 The Space Generation Congress (SGC) is the annual meeting of the most active members of the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC), so get involved today! This year, the SGC projects will be centered around the 5 themes of the IAC: agency, industry, climate, exploration, and peace. Participants are both students and young professionals under 35 years old. SGAC aims to promote space exploration and to be the voice of youth in support of space. For information:www.spacegeneration.org

The global citizen-science campaign GLOBE at Night 2009 recorded 80 percent more observations of the world's dark skies than the program's previous record-including double the number of digital measurements-thanks in large part to active participation and publicity from the network of 140 countries currently celebrating the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009). Now in its fourth year, GLOBE at Night encourages people everywhere to observe the prominent constellation Orion at least once over a two-week period and compare the number of stars that are visible using their unaided eyes with a series of charts that show how Orion would appear in skies ranging from very dark to very bright skies. The program is designed to aid teaching about the impact of excessive artificial lighting on local environments, and the ongoing loss of a dark night sky as a shared natural resource for much of the world's population. The 2009 campaign, held from March 16-28, garnered 15,300 g...

The International Conference of Young Astronomers (ICYA) is a scientific meeting of undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students of astronomy and physics as well as more advanced astronomers. We, as young scientists, feel a big need to contribute our share to this year’s International Year of Astronomy 2009 and use this opportunity to establish global, annual conference for all scientists, researchers and advanced amateur astronomers who could meet in future and work together in projects which will develop modern astronomy. For this reason we aim to arrange an international conference to broaden our minds and to discuss challenging issues of astronomy. Furthermore, and most important, the meeting gives a chance to get in touch with other young scientists, with whom we might cooperate in the future. Our goal is to establish ICYA as a regular conference, held once a year in different countries, connecting young astronomers from all over the world. Let's make it happen! This year IC...