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Category Archives: Astronomy

Astronomy – Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (36 of 37) Determining the Mass of of a Binary Star: Example – Video

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Astronomy - Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (36 of 37) Determining the Mass of of a Binary Star: Example
Visit http://ilectureonline.com for more math and science lectures! In this video I will calculate the masses of the binary stars. Next video can be seen at:...

By: Michel van Biezen

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Astronomy - Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (36 of 37) Determining the Mass of of a Binary Star: Example - Video

Astronomy – Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (37 of 37) Mass-Luminosity Relationship – Video

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Astronomy - Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (37 of 37) Mass-Luminosity Relationship
Visit http://ilectureonline.com for more math and science lectures! In this video I will graphically examine the mass-luminosity relationship. First video in...

By: Michel van Biezen

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Astronomy - Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (37 of 37) Mass-Luminosity Relationship - Video

Astronomy first: 'Super Saturn' rings

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In 1610, after he built his telescope, Galileo Galilei first spotted enormous Saturn's gigantic rings. More than 400 years later, astronomers have in a sense dwarfed that discovery with a similar first.

Using powerful optics, they have found a much larger planet-like body, J1407b, with rings 200 times the size of Saturn's, U.S. and Dutch astronomers said.

It lies some 400 light-years away from Earth.

For decades, scientists have believed that many moons around large planets formed out of such ring systems. But this is the first one astronomers have observed outside of our solar system, they said.

It was discovered in 2012, but a detailed analysis of its data was recently completed and published.

Dominating the sky

If J1407b were in our solar system, it would dominate Earth's nightly sky.

"If we could replace Saturn's rings with the rings around J1407b, they would be easily visible at night and be many times larger than the full moon," said Matthew Kenworthy from the Netherlands' Leiden Observatory.

Unlike Galileo peering a relatively short distance through his simple telescope, today's astronomers can't eyeball the rings hundreds of light-years away.

But using two very powerful optical devices with eight cameras each, they can observe the effect the rings have as they pass across nearby star J1407 -- written without a 'b' at the end.

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Astronomy first: 'Super Saturn' rings

Nobel Laureate and Laser Inventor Charles Townes Does at 99

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Charles Hard Townes, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for invention of the laser and subsequently pioneered the use of lasers in astronomy, died early Tuesday, Jan. 27. He was 99 and in failing health, and died on his way to the hospital.

Charles Townes embodies the best of Berkeley; hes a great teacher, great researcher and great public servant, said UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks on the occasion of a campus-wide celebration of Townes 99th birthday last July 28. As we celebrate this 99-year milestone and a career spanning nearly 80 years, we can only be impressed by the range of his intellectual curiosity, his persistence and his pioneering spirit.

Until last year, Townes visited the campus daily, working either in his office in the physics department or at the Space Sciences Laboratory.

Charlie was a cornerstone of the Space Sciences Laboratory for almost 50 years, said Stuart Bale, director of the lab and a UC Berkeley professor of physics. He trained a great number of excellent students in experimental astrophysics and pioneered a program to develop interferometry at short wavelengths. He was a truly inspiring man and a nice guy. Well miss him.

Charlie Townes had an enormous impact on physics and society in general, said Steven Boggs, professor and chair of the UC Berkeley Department of Physics. Our department and all of UC Berkeley benefited from his wisdom and vision for nearly half a century. His overwhelming dedication to science and personal commitment to remaining active in research was inspirational to all of us. Berkeley physics has lost a true icon and our deepest sympathies go out to his wife, Frances, and the entire Townes family.

The passing away of Professor Charles Townes today marks the end of an era, said astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel, a professor of physics at UC Berkeley and director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. He was one of the most important experimental physicists of the last century. To those who knew him as colleagues or students, he was a role model, a wonderful mentor and a deeply admired person. His strength was his curiosity and his unshakable optimism, based on his deep Christian spirituality.

Townes, a longtime member of the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, often emphasized the importance of faith in his life, and was honored with the 2005 Templeton Prize for contributions to affirming lifes spiritual dimension.

Revelation

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Nobel Laureate and Laser Inventor Charles Townes Does at 99

Astronomy – Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (31 of 37) Determining Stellar Radii – Video

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Astronomy - Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (31 of 37) Determining Stellar Radii
Visit http://ilectureonline.com for more math and science lectures! In this video I will explain the 3 methods (interferometry, lunar occultation, and eclips...

By: Michel van Biezen

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Astronomy - Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (31 of 37) Determining Stellar Radii - Video

SN "Impostor" 1997bs: LOSS First Supernova. Adams & Kochanek (2015) OSU Astronomy Coffee Brief – Video

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SN "Impostor" 1997bs: LOSS First Supernova. Adams Kochanek (2015) OSU Astronomy Coffee Brief
This is an OSU Astronomy Coffee Brief for Adams Kochanek (2015) paper "SN "Impostor" 1997bs: LOSS #39; First Supernova", posted on astro-ph in January 2015. Vi...

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SN "Impostor" 1997bs: LOSS First Supernova. Adams & Kochanek (2015) OSU Astronomy Coffee Brief - Video

Capturing Asteroids On The Cheap

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While NASA continues debating the final architecture for its planned Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), a couple of European researchers hope that theyve hit upon a means to drastically reduce the energies and velocities needed to overtake, grapple and gravitationally-capture such near-Earth objects.

If so, over-the-horizon asteroid capture missions not unlike ARM could someday be done on the cheap (or at least for less than their current projected billion dollar plus costs).

In a paper being published in the Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics, co-authors Patricia Verrier and Colin McInnes propose using a loophole in celestial mechanics that would allow for the artificial capture of an asteroid in an irregular, sticky orbit. That is, an orbit that wanders in a chaotic and ill-defined way. The idea is to use less energy by catching an asteroid in a chaotic sticky orbit rather than a regular and more well-defined and periodic orbit.

Capturing an asteroid around the Earth is usually done by reducing its energy to the point where it has less kinetic energy than needed to escape Earths gravity, Patricia Verrier, an astrodynamicist formerly at the University of Strathclyde in the U.K., told Forbes.

An artists concept of a NASA astronaut preparing to take samples from an asteroid that has been re-located into a stable Earth-Moon orbit. Credit: NASA

For a spacecraft to actually capture such an asteroid can require a high delta-v (or the amount of effort needed to change an objects orbit). This inherently presents quite a challenge for aerospace engineers actually designing capture mission spacecraft. But the authors found that the so-called irregular moon theory originally proposed by a separate group of researchers in 2003 to explain the chaos-assisted capture of our giant planets irregular moons could in theory also be used by mission engineers to aid in the capture of nearby asteroids.

The authors work, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), indicated that the energy that would be needed to capture an asteroid using their chaos-assisted method would be approximately only 10 percent of that needed for capture of an asteroid that is on an ordinary non-sticky orbit.

To demonstrate the concept, we looked at an asteroid trajectory that is not trapped around the Earth, but temporarily passes close to a regular region, said Verrier. We then calculated the point that requires the smallest energy change to apply an instantaneous impulse, or kick to move it into the regular region, so that its bound to Earth.

How different is this from previously proposed methods?

Other methods ensure that the asteroid is captured in such a way that it has less energy than it needs to escape again, so its permanently trapped, Colin McInnes, an astrodynamicist at the University of Glasgow in the U.K., told Forbes. With this method, in principle, the asteroid still has enough energy to escape, but cant since its orbit is sticky.

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Capturing Asteroids On The Cheap

Rediscovered Astronomy – Space Rocket Launch Fireballs Updates – Video

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Rediscovered Astronomy - Space Rocket Launch Fireballs Updates
Rediscovered Astronomy will treat you with information about astronomy, space, and aerospace -aeronautics and astronautics alike. We especially focus on news from astronomers, astrophyscists,...

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Rediscovered Astronomy - Space Rocket Launch Fireballs Updates - Video

Myth of Orion: Constellation Quest – Astronomy for Kids, FreeSchool – Video

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Myth of Orion: Constellation Quest - Astronomy for Kids, FreeSchool
Have you ever seen the constellation Orion in the night sky? Find out how to identify it, when to see it, the myth of Orion the Hunter, and a little bit about the great Orion Nebula in this...

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Myth of Orion: Constellation Quest - Astronomy for Kids, FreeSchool - Video

Astrophysicist Ruth Murray-Clay Receives 2015 Warner Prize

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The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has awarded UC Santa Barbaras Ruth Murray-Clay the 2015 Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy for her theoretical studies of star and planet formation.Presented annually in recognition of a significant contribution to observational or theoretical astronomy during the five years preceding the award, the Warner Prize is given to an astronomer who is under 36 years of age in the year designated for the award, or within eight years of receiving his or her Ph.D.We are proud of Ruth for winning the 2015 Warner Prize, said Philip Pincus, chair of UCSBs Department of Physics, where Murray-Clay is a newly appointed assistant professor. We were delighted for her to join our faculty. She brings a wealth of expertise to UCSB, not only in the area of planet formation, but also in the evolution of their atmospheres and how they migrate.I feel very honored to win the Warner Prize, said Murray-Clay. I really like doing this work partly because there are all sorts of different physics involved. What really drew me to this subject is that its about where we came from and how the Earth formed -- and, by extension, how we came to be.The prize committee also cited Murray-Clays substantial contributions to numerous other areas of astrophysics. Her citation states that she has advanced models of planet formation by clarifying the role of gravitational instabilities, illuminating how orbital migration leads to short-period hot Jupiters and exploring photoevaporation of close-in exoplanets.According to the AAS, Murray-Clay follows up testable predictions of her theoretical models by delving directly into the observational data. The committee noted that she also has made outstanding contributions to the theoretical interpretation of G2, an ionized gas cloud plunging toward the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.In addition to planet and star formation, Murray-Clay is interested in the extrasolar planetary systems recently discovered by NASAs Kepler spacecraft and by ground-based direct imaging. One place where we can really learn a lot about planet formation right now is by studying planets that orbit far from their stars -- farther than our most distant planet, Neptune, she explained. In particular, there is the first directly imaged planetary system, HR 8799, which has at least four very large planets with very wide separations. We know that this kind of system is the tip of an iceberg. Is it the tip of star formation on a small scale? Or could it be that the processes that we think formed Jupiter and Saturn, our giant planets, actually do work at very large distances and that we havent figured out how yet?This is an exciting place to be looking because there are several big direct imaging surveys ramping up now, Murray-Clay continued. So were really going to be able to study these giant planets and their wide separations, which will help us distinguish between different types of models.Murray-Clay received her bachelors degree in physics and astronomy and astrophysics from Harvard University in 2001 and her masters degree and Ph.D. in astrophysics from UC Berkeley in 2004 and 2008, respectively. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvards Institute for Theory and Computation from 2008 to 2010, at which time she became a federal scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and an astronomy lecturer and then an affiliate of Harvards Department of Astronomy. She is a Kavli fellow of the National Academy of Sciences.At UCSB this past fall, Murray-Clay taught a graduate seminar on magnitude estimation; in the spring quarter, she will teach Astronomy 1. Im excited to be at UCSB and on the faculty of an excellent physics department, she said. Murray-Clay is UCSBs second recipient of the Warner Prize. Lars Bildsten, director of the campuss Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, received the award in 1999.Contacts:Julie Cohen+1 (805) 893-7220julie.cohen@ucsb.eduGeorge Foulsham+1 (805) 893-3071george.foulsham@ucsb.eduRuth Murray-Clay+1 (805) 893-5489murray@physics.ucsb.edu

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Astrophysicist Ruth Murray-Clay Receives 2015 Warner Prize


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