Astronomy Point of View Reviewed

     My first post was about what I believed Astronomy was all about and I expressed how it was more than just seeing things and labeling stars.  I went on to describe what benefits it brought to us and its importance in our lives.  However, after taking a course and seeing exactly everything one must do in the field of astronomy, it is clear that it is not one simple task.  Yes looking up at the sky is important but just getting the chance to do that is a challenge by getting proposals and ideas passed.  From the outside we see nothing of what an astronomer has to do to get that precious time to study a single spot in space.
     Beyond getting time, the actual study itself can last months with very little or a lot of data retrieved depending on conditions of the days.  Through all the data collected still having to get the right set needed out of the mountain of information.  It all sounds tedious but exciting at the same time when making a discovery can get you in the hot seat of the space world.  I truly enjoyed learning about every aspect of Astronomy and will continue to enjoy it without ever feeling bore.

IMMA FIRING MY LASAARRR!

     The NIF has fired its most powerful set of lasers creating the biggest blast ever seen before with lasers in fusion.  When fired for brief moment, it produced enough energy to power the United States about 1,000 times at any moment throughout the day.  The final energy level measured was 411 trillion watts of power!

192 lasers were used to shoot a beam of 2.03 megajoules, producing a blast of 1.875 megajoules providing the 411 trillion watts of energy.  "The power of the Sun, in the palm of our hands"  not quite but it is one step closer to finding new ways of dependable energy without affecting a large quantity of natural resources.

For full story:
http://news.discovery.com/tech/world-most-powerful-laser-120322.html

Mercury Gives the Perfect Picture of Nine

     After more than ten years of researching and studying the inner most planet, through tremendous solar heat, a year was taken to photograph the entire surface of the planet Mercury; from pole to pole; all around.  Giving us a clear picture of the last planet needed to obtain a picture of every planet in the solar system.
 

     Even though it is the closest planet to our Sun, scientist have seen that near the poles there are areas which get no sunlight throughout the planets orbit.  The most intriguing discovery of all was its core being 85% of the planets radius in size.  This put the surface of the planet extremely close to all of the energy and gravity coming from its interior unlike on Earth.

For more on this story visit: http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=2677

Kaaa-BLAAM! Goes the Supernova

     The supernova that had gone off last week has now been named 2012 aw, located near by the path of the orbit of Mars (however not on the orbit of Mars).  The type of the supernova is that of a supergiant star collapsing and exploding outward.  This indicates the stars mass was between 8Mo<Ms<20Mo before it burst into a supernova.  

After the shine disappears from the blast  and dust clears, what will remain of the star will be a neutron star having a mass Ms<3Mo and about ~10 km in radius.  Some may ask, "why not a blackhole?"  Well, in order for a blackhole to be the final remnant of a star, its mass has to be 8Mo<Ms.  When the star burst, instead of just blowing out its out layers, it completely obliterates itself  releasing a large gamma-ray burst or hypernova.  The pressure at the core becomes extremely unstable and begins to collapse of itself.  This is the creation of a blackhole which will being to swallow light it traps and matter it encounters.

That's no moon...Chewy hit the reverse thruster!

Could the Empire be stealing our light from right under our noses!?

Or is it just a burst of solar plasma?

http://news.discovery.com/space/is-that-the-death-star-suckling-on-solar-plasma-120315.html

In a spectacular and intriguing sight, a solar prominence reaching high into the corona layer of the Sun.  The blast coming from the Chromosphere just over the Photosphere stand at about 24,000 Kelvins.  The report says "24,000 Kelvin (or degrees Celsius)" which is wrong.

degrees Celsius = Kelvin - 273.15

degrees Celsius = 24,000 - 273.15

grand total of

23,726.58 degrees Celsius!

approx.

42739.844 degrees Fahrenheit!

View by a UV filter we see the wavelengths of the corona clearly emitting while the different wavelengths of the Chromosphere appear darker due to the difference in wavelength radiation difference.

Quasars, The New "Cool" Glasses

Gravitational lensing is one of the most useful ways to view undiscovered galaxies millions of trillions of light years away which are unseen by any telescope due to being unimaginably dim to see.  Here are more examples which NASA has found of galaxies, acting as a lens to bring out unseen galaxies behind them.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and F. Courbin (EPFL, Switzerland) 

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/quasar-lens.html

In these three galaxies, it has been seen that most of the lensing is due to the quasars located at the center of each of them.  Each super massive black hole is blasting out giant gas jets from the center of the galaxy causing the center to shine brighter than the entire galaxy.  The study shows that galaxies like these are rare to find due to the characteristics stated in the previous line; however, Hubble will now look for more quasar lit galaxies in search of gravitational lensing of other galaxies located behind the host galaxy.  

What if to E.T., the Milky Way is lensing a galaxy we have yet to discover or study all the time?  It could be possible that galaxies we looked at why lens are starring right back at us as we curve around some other unknown cluster of galaxies. 

Who let Nemesis out of the basement?

This video from The Universe proposes how our Sun might have a binary star orbiting around with it. 

     Could it be that we are on the verge of being visited by a dwarf star orbiting around the Sun?  As the video explains, most of the stars in our neighboring universe are in binary systems rotating around a center of mass point.  There are billions of trillions of undiscovered binary systems throughout the universe; however, talk about our own Sun being in a binary system allows us to study closer to home.  The problem is locating the dwarf star rotating the Sun.  From Earth, when looking for binary stars, we search for signs of orbits by viewing eclipsing light intensities.  Tons and tons of data is collected and sifted through in order to find patterns of high and low intensities in periodic motion.  Years can pass by before seeing only one single orbit or on rare occasions multiple orbits.  Once detected, the sizes of both stars are measured using the time period from the start of the eclipse to the end of the eclipse, allowing us to see what stage of life each star is found at.  Why is this a problem for our solar system?  

Oort cloud animation

     The proposed idea of a binary Sun named Nemesis was brought forth by astronomer Richard Muller after geologist found a pattern in extinction events of massive proportions.  The 26 million year pattern let him com to the conclusion that something must be orbiting our Sun and disrupting comets around our solar system in the oort cloud.  We can think about it as a dust devil moving along the ground and hitting a patch of dead leaves.  The leaves are spun around sent in different directions before falling back down on a different location.  In space similar affects happen with the giant comet like rocks, the only difference is gravity is not much of a barrier when spun to a different direction.  Could life be in danger of having a visit by a disturb comet(s) due to Nemesis coming back?  How do we prepare for such an event?  Questions like these lead us to think that conspiracy's brought forth about "doomsday" or "Nibiru"  or the infamous "Mayan Dec. 21, 2012"  might be standing a bit taller than they were yesterday...unfortunately.