The COROT space telescope, designed to search for planets not much bigger than Earth, launched into space at 1423 GMT on Wednesday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The mission is expected to provide a better understanding of planets smaller than Saturn, of which only a small number of examples are known so far. The vast majority of the more than 200 extrasolar planets found to date have been detected from the ground by watching for the slight gravitational tug they exert on their parent stars, called the radial velocity technique. Most of these planets are similar in mass to Jupiter or even heavier, because these „gas giants“ are the easiest to detect. But the new telescope, called COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits (COROT), will be able to detect much smaller planets. The COROT mission is led by France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) with participation from the European Space Agency (ESA). COROT will start its scientific observing campaign around the end of January 2007, after mission managers have tested its instruments to make sure everything is working properly. The entire mission is scheduled to last two-and-a-half years.
Solscape
COROT to be launched on the 27th
On December 27, 2006, COROT is to be launched into space on a unique astronomy mission: its twin goals are to detect exoplanets orbiting around other stars and to probe the mysteries of stellar interiors as never before. COROT is a European mission led by the French National Space Agency CNES.
Use Galactic Gravitational Lenses to Really See the Universe
To see any distance in space, you need some kind of telescope. We’ve got some pretty powerful ones here on Earth, but nature has us beat with gravitational lenses. This is a phenomenon when a relatively nearby object passes directly between us and a more distant object. The gravity from the nearby object acts like a telescope lens to bend light and magnify the more distant object. Until now, these gravitational lenses have been single stars or distant galaxies, but now a new class of lenses is being called into service: entire groups of galaxies! The research is being done as part of the Canada-France-Hawaii Legacy Survey which will devote 500 nights of telescope time over the next 5 years.
R. A. Cabanac et al.: The CFHTLS strong lensing legacy survey (PDF)
Discovery is home for the holidays
Space shuttle Discovery made a safe and successful sunset landing at Kennedy Space Center today to complete its two-week mission that prepared the space station to power the international expansion of the complex. Landing occurred at 5:32 p.m. EST.
(Source: NASA)
Matters of Size
An animation showing relative sizes of planets and notable stars.
Ruby from a red giant
A speck of crystal that fell to Earth in a meteorite has been traced back to a red-giant star.
It’s not the same as having a sample return mission to, say, Aldebaran, but it’s still pretty awesome: mounted on a gold pedestal in a laboratory in the Carnegie Institute of Washington and then bombarded by ions, a grain of less than a micrometer has confessed that it came from a different star. According to research published in the December issue of „Astronomy & Astrophysics“, the crystal probably formed near a star of intermediate mass, 4 to 7 times that of our Sun, which was nearing the end of its life and had entered the red-giant stage. Lead author Maria Lugaro, an Italian astronomer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, says finding and analyzing similar specks could yield important information about the conditions inside red giants. The speck in question has been christened OC2. No one knows precisely how it got to Earth. It was found in residue left after pieces of three stony meteorites (chondrites) were dissolved in acid to analyze their contents.
https://astronomy.com/News-Observing/News/2006/12/Ruby%20from%20a%20red%20giant.aspx
White dwarf shreds and vaporizes asteroid
An asteroid has been ripped to shreds and vaporized after straying too close to a hot white dwarf star, observations suggest. The asteroid was probably flung towards the white dwarf by the gravity of one or more unseen planets. The evidence comes in the form of a hot ring of metallic vapour around a white dwarf called SDSS 1228+1040. Researchers led by Boris Gänsicke of the University of Warwick, UK, found signs of the disc in light spectra from the white dwarf acquired by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s 2.5-metre telescope at Apache Point, New Mexico, US, the 4.2-metre William Herschel Telescope on the Canary Islands, and by Caltech’s orbiting Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX). The spectra indicate that a disc containing calcium, magnesium, and iron gas is orbiting the white dwarf at a distance 100 times closer than Mercury’s orbit around the Sun. At this distance, intense radiation from the white dwarf heats the gas to 5000 K. The spectra also shows that the white dwarf’s atmosphere is enriched in magnesium. That indicates material from the disc is falling onto the star, since the star’s own surface gravity is so great that its own heavy elements should have already sunk towards its centre and out of sight.
New Lunar Orbiter Photo Archives
The Lunar Orbiters of the 1960’s returned a treasure trove of high quality photos of the Moon. These haven’t been available in digital format until recently. Now the USGS and the Arizona State University have converted some of the Lunar Orbiter images and their products can be found at
Lunar Orbiter Image Scans
STEREO Sends Back First Solar Images
NASA’s twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories (STEREO) sent back their first images of the sun this week and with them a view into the sun’s mounting activity. One image shows the first coronal mass ejection (CME) observed by STEREO’s Ahead spacecraft, taken December 9. The other two images show the sun’s super-hot atmosphere. They were taken on December 4, the first day of imaging observations for the Ahead spacecraft. The false color images show a number of bright magnetic active regions, including one on the far left edge of the sun which later produced a series of high energy flares and CMEs.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/first_light.html
Astronauts Fold Up a Solar Panel on the Final Spacewalk
On their fourth and final trip outside the International Space Station, US astronaut Robert Curbeam and Sweden’s Christer Fuglesang convinced a misbehaving solar panel to fold up nicely. The team suited up and began their spacewalk on Monday at 2:10 p.m. EST. With the solar panel safely folded away, the station’s new panels are free to rotate to face the Sun and generate the maximum amount of electricity.
Discovery undocks with the ISS at 5:10 p.m. EST Tuesday. The landing in Florida is scheduled for 3:36 p.m. EST Friday.
(Source: NASA)