Kategorie: Allgemein

A fast, efficient image enhancement technique developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and originally applied to improving monochrome microscope images has proved itself equally effective at the other end of the scale – sharpening details on color images of distant galaxies produced by the Hubble Space Telescope.
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2006_1207.htm#apex

Sonnentsunami

Der Prototyp eines neuen Sonnenüberwachungsteleskops in New Mexico machte die zur oben gezeigten Animation verarbeiteten Aufnahmen einer tsunamiartigen Schockwelle, die nach dem großen Flare vom Mittwoch, den 6. Dezember 2006 über die Sonnenoberfläche rollte.

Geoff Anderson describes the history of the telescope, from the very beginning, to today’s space telescopes. He discusses the problems which occurred with the Hubble space telescope. Now there are plans for even bigger instruments. Current telescopes are up to 10 metres in diameter. And there are plans for instruments up to 100 metres in diameter!

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/telescopes—a-400-year-history/3380628

APOD

Trace chemicals ejected from the Sun and collected by NASA’s Genesis mission have solved a long-standing lunar mystery that threatened to rewrite our understanding of how the Sun evolved. For the last 4 billion years, energetic solar particles have bombarded the Moon. But studies of these particles in rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts have mystified scientists. That is because the ratio of two isotopes of neon have varied according to depth in the rocks, with comparatively more neon-22 than neon-20 at lower depths. That suggested that counter to theory, the Sun had once been significantly more active than it is today, shooting out higher energy particles that could travel farther into the rocks. Now, Ansgar Grimberg at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and colleagues have resolved the conundrum. When they measured the neon distribution in the exposed solar wind samples, they found the top layer had considerably higher proportions of neon-20 than observed in the lunar samples, while the underlying layers were similar to those seen in the Moon rocks. That suggests that erosion from micrometeorites and space particles removed some of the original neon from the top surface of all lunar rocks. It also shows that the solar wind alone can explain the puzzling neon variations in the Moon rocks, with the heavier neon-22 simply implanting itself more deeply than neon-20.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/genesismission/

Bakterien sind ja berühmt-berüchtigt für ihre Fähigkeit, sich an unterschiedliche Umweltbedingungen anzupassen. Wie sie dies bewerkstelligen, haben amerikanische Forscher jetzt erstmals auf Genomebene und in Echtzeit verfolgt. Dabei konnten sie beobachten, wie sich in Bakterienkulturen als Reaktion auf eine „karge Kost“ einige Gene veränderten und sich die Wachstumsrate der Mikroben mehr als verdoppelte. Diese Veränderungen wurden binnen weniger Tage erkennbar. Eine über Nacht gewachsene Bakterienkultur ist also nicht mehr die gleiche wie am Vortag.
Quelle: Herring, C. D., Raghunathan, A., Honisch, C., Patel, T., Applebee, M. K., Joyce, A. J., Albert, T. J., Blattner, F. R., van den Boom, D., Cantor, C. R., Palsson, B. O., „Comparative genome sequencing of Escherichia coli allows observation of bacterial evolution on a laboratory timescale“; Nature Genetics, Nov. 5, 2006.

Japan’s newly-launched Hinode spacecraft has captured its first images of the Sun. Formerly known as Solar-B, the spacecraft launched on September 22, and opened its instruments to space on October 23, 2006. The images show granules on the Sun’s surface, each of which is thousands of kilometres across. Over the course of the next month, mission controllers will continue to put the spacecraft through its paces. They expect to release their first scientific data in December.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/02nov_firstlight/

NASA’s twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories mission, known as STEREO, successfully launched on Wednesday at 8:52 p.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. STEREO’s nearly identical twin, golf cart-sized spacecraft will make observations to help researchers construct the first-ever three-dimensional views of the sun.
https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/oct/HQ_06340_STEREO_launch.html

As the guitar power in the legendary British rock band Queen, Brian May conquered most of our planet – and now he has his sights set on mastering the universe. The star musician, who wrote hits like „We Will Rock You“ and „The Show Must Go On“, has switched from his guitar to a pen and co-authored a book with the two leading British astronomers Sir Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott. „Bang! The Complete History of the Universe“ is telling the story of the big bang and how the universe has evolved since. Brian May, 59, earned a degree in physics at Imperial College, London, but after years of studying interplanetary dust, he abandoned work towards his doctorate when Queen, fronted by stellar performer Freddie Mercury, took off.
Source: AFP

Two miles underground, strange bacteria are found thriving