Tag: astronomy

NASA extends Chandra telescope operation to 2024

8:02 am

NASA has extended its contract with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Massachusetts to run the Chandra X-ray Observatory through 2024.

In many ways the longevity of both Hubble and Chandra as well as other space telescopes has demonstrated the robustness of much in-space engineering these days. It suggests that when we finally begin building manned interplanetary spaceships we should have confidence they will operate reliably for long periods.

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Four candidate stars identified as home for Oumuamua

8:14 am

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers have identified four stars as possible home stars for the interstellar object Oumuamua.

Bailer-Jones and his colleagues found four stars that are possible candidates for ‘Oumuamua’s home world. All four of them are dwarf stars. The one that came closest to ‘Oumuamua, at least about one million year ago, is the reddish dwarf star HIP 3757. It approached within about 1.96 light-years. Given the uncertainties unaccounted for in this reconstruction, that is close enough for ‘Oumuamua to have originated from its planetary system (if the star has one). However, the comparatively large relative speed (around 25 km/s) makes it less probable for this to be ‘Oumuamua’s home.

The next candidate, HD 292249, is similar to our Sun, was a little bit less close to the object’s trajectory 3.8 million years ago, but with a smaller relative speed of 10 km/s. The two additional candidates met ‘Oumuamua 1.1 and 6.3 million years ago, respectively, at intermediate speeds and distances. These stars have been previously catalogued by other surveys, but little is known about them.

There is much uncertainty here. None of these stars might be Oumuamua’s actual original star, but might have instead shifted its orbit from its past course.

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Historian discovers long-lost original of Galileo letter

9:41 am

An historian doing different research in the library of Great Britain’s Royal Society has accidentally discovered a long-lost original of a letter by Galileo that might clarify the events surrounding his eventual trial with the Inquisition.

The seven-page letter, written to a friend on 21 December 1613 and signed “G.G.”, provides the strongest evidence yet that, at the start of his battle with the religious authorities, Galileo actively engaged in damage control and tried to spread a toned-down version of his claims.

The question that has been bothering historians for hundreds of years is whether the letter, used as evidence against Galileo during his inquisition trail, was doctored by the inquisition or Galileo. During the trial Galileo presented a milder version that he claimed was the original. This original, with corrections in Galileo’s hand, suggests it was he that did the rewrite.

The story of how postdoctoral student from Italy, Salvatore Ricciardo, found it in a British library however is as interesting:

Ricciardo uncovered the document when he was spending a month this summer touring British libraries to study any handwritten comments that readers might have left on Galileo’s printed works. When his one day at the Royal Society was finished, he idly flicked through the online catalogue looking for anything to do with Castelli, whose writings he had recently finished editing.

One entry jumped out at him — a letter that Galileo wrote to Castelli. According to the catalogue, it was dated 21 October 1613. When Ricciardo examined it, his heart leapt. It appeared to include Galileo’s own signature, “G.G.”; was actually dated 21 December 1613; and contained many crossings out. He immediately realized the letter’s potential importance and asked for permission to photograph all seven pages.

“Strange as it might seem, it has gone unnoticed for centuries, as if it were transparent,” says Giudice [Ricciardo’s doctoral supervisor]. The misdating might be one reason that the letter has been overlooked by Galileo scholars, says Giudice. The letter was included in an 1840 Royal Society catalogue — but was also misdated there, as 21 December 1618.Another reason might be that the Royal Society is not the go-to place in the United Kingdom for this type of historical document, whose more natural home would have been the British Library.

The historians are now trying to trace how long the letter has been in the Royal Society library, and how it arrived there. They know that it has been there since at least the mid-eighteenth century, and they have found hints in old catalogues that it might even have been there a century or more earlier. The researchers speculate that it might have arrived at the society thanks to close connections between the Royal Society and the Academy of Experiments in Florence, which was founded in 1657 by Galileo’s students but fizzled out within a decade or so.

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More details about Sunspot Observatory closure confirms child porn investigation

8:49 am

News stories this morning provide further confirmation that the closure of the Sunspot Observatory in New Mexico occurred in connection with a child porn investigation. The key quote that explains why the FBI closed the facility:

The search warrant provided to a judge the justifications for agents to search computers, cellphones or tablets owned by the janitor, Joshua Lee Cope, and the house trailer where he lives. An FBI agent seized the laptop at the observatory on Aug. 21, 2018, and took it to the FBI office in Las Cruces, court documents said. FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said Thursday that no one has been charged and the investigation is ongoing.

Cope, 30, lives on property owned by his parents in La Luz, the search warrant said. A phone message left for Cope at a telephone number listed for his parents seeking comment was not immediately returned.

After Cope could not find his laptop, the court documents said, he began to act frantically and told the chief observer that there was a “serial killer in the area, and that he was fearful that the killer might enter the facility and execute someone.”

The observatory closed, without consulting FBI agents, after Cope’s comments about the serial killer and his erratic behavior, the warrant said.

My guess is that the observatory became concerned about Cope’s behavior, and closed to protect itself and its other employees, forcing everyone to leave. This also explains the cryptic nature of their closure announcement, as they also did not want to implicate anyone and risk a lawsuit.

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Astronomers detect matter falling into black hole at 30% of the speed of light

9:05 am

Using the XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope astronomers have detected matter falling into the central supermassive black hole at 30% of the speed of light in a galaxy a billion light years away.

Using data from XMM-Newton, Prof. Pounds and his collaborators looked at X-ray spectra (where X-rays are dispersed by wavelength) from the galaxy PG211+143. This object lies more than one billion light years away in the direction of the constellation Coma Berenices, and is a Seyfert galaxy, characterised by a very bright AGN [active galactic nucleus] resulting from the presence of the massive black hole at its nucleus.

The researchers found the spectra to be strongly red-shifted, showing the observed matter to be falling into the black hole at the enormous speed of 30 per cent of the speed of light, or around 100,000 kilometres per second. The gas has almost no rotation around the hole, and is detected extremely close to it in astronomical terms, at a distance of only 20 times the hole’s size (its event horizon, the boundary of the region where escape is no longer possible).

Astronomers have theorized for several decades that the reason Seyfert galaxies have such active nuclei is exactly because matter is falling into the central black hole. This observation appears to confirm that theory.

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Sunspot observatory shut down for child porn investigation?

8:56 pm

According to one New Mexico television station, the Sunspot Observatory was shut down last week in connection with a investigation into child porn.

A federal search warrant reveals that Sunspot Solar Observatory was shut down as FBI agents conducted computer forensic searches for child pornography.

The source of child pornography was traced to an IP address used at the observatory and a source within the building observed a computer with “not good” images on it, the warrant states.

An investigation by the FBI revealed that a janitor is the main suspect in the search, however he has not been charged with a crime even though his name in on the warrant.

This might also explain why the post office was searched, assuming they were trying to trace further porn material there.

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Vulcan found?

9:51 am

Scientists have found a super-earth orbiting 40 Eridani-A, a star located sixteen light years away and proposed by Gene Roddenberry in 1991 as the home star for his race of logical Vulcans.

It turns out the letter authors’ prediction was right — a world really does orbit the primary star of the three-star 40 Eridani system. (Whether it’s home to a logic-based alien society, though, is anyone’s guess!)

The world is a super-Earth, the most common type of planet in the galaxy (though a type that’s missing from our solar system). At twice Earth’s radius and eight to nine times its mass, 40 Eridani b sits on the line that divides rocky super-Earths from gaseous ones. The planet orbits its star every 42 days, putting just inside the system’s habitable zone — in other words, where it’s nice and hot. At 16 light-years away, it’s the closest super-Earth known and therefore a good potential target for followup observations.

The discovery was made by a survey taking place using a relatively small telescope right here in the Tucson area, on top of Mount Lemmon. Most cool!

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Statement about closure of solar observatory

5:05 pm

AURA, the university consortium that operates the closed Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico, issued a statement today about that closure.

AURA has been cooperating with an on-going law enforcement investigation of criminal activity that occurred at Sacramento Peak. During this time, we became concerned that a suspect in the investigation potentially posed a threat to the safety of local staff and residents. For this reason, AURA temporarily vacated the facility and ceased science activities at this location.

The decision to vacate was based on the logistical challenges associated with protecting personnel at such a remote location, and the need for expeditious response to the potential threat. AURA determined that moving the small number of on-site staff and residents off the mountain was the most prudent and effective action to ensure their safety.

In light of recent developments in the investigation, we have determined there is no risk to staff, and Sunspot Solar Observatory is transitioning back to regular operations as of September 17th. Given the significant amount of publicity the temporary closure has generated, and the consequent expectation of an unusual number of visitors to the site, we are temporarily engaging a security service while the facility returns to a normal working environment.

We recognize that the lack of communications while the facility was vacated was concerning and frustrating for some. However, our desire to provide additional information had to be balanced against the risk that, if spread at the time, the news would alert the suspect and impede the law enforcement investigation. That was a risk we could not take.

This news release, while still very vague about the criminal investigation, implies that there was a dangerous criminal suspect on the mountain that federal officials were pursuing, and they evacuated to protect their employees.

This explanation still leaves serious questions. Why for example were local police kept in the dark about this investigation? It makes no sense not to include them, unless they might be a target of the investigation, something that in this case does not appear to be true.

Also, if there was a criminal on the mountain, secrecy is not really an effective way to catch him. It might make sense, but they have not provided us any information that would explain this.

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Astronomers use radio emissions from distant galaxy to observe asteroid

9:03 am

The wonders of science: Astronomers have successfully used the faint radio emissions from very distant galaxy to roughly determine the shape and size of a nearby asteroid.

In an unusual observation, astronomers used the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to study the effects on radio waves coming from a distant radio galaxy when an asteroid in our Solar System passed in front of the galaxy. The observation allowed them to measure the size of the asteroid, gain new information about its shape, and greatly improve the accuracy with which its orbital path can be calculated.

When the asteroid passed in front of the galaxy, radio waves coming from the galaxy were slightly bent around the asteroid’s edge, in a process called diffraction. As these waves interacted with each other, they produced a circular pattern of stronger and weaker waves, similar to the patterns of bright and dark circles produced in terrestrial laboratory experiments with light waves. “By analyzing the patterns of the diffracted radio waves during this event, we were able to learn much about the asteroid, including its size and precise position, and to get some valuable clues about its shape,” said Jorma Harju, of the University of Helsinki in Finland.

The amount of information is not great, and there is an enormous amount of uncertainty in the data. Nonetheless, this is an amazing and fascinating observation.

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Is mercury release cause of New Mexico solar observatory shutdown?

1:28 am

Story here. From the link:

The issue may be related to Mercury (the metal, not the planet). On a tip from a science journalist friend who covers telescopes and who has been there, I verified the observatory uses a vat of liquid mercury as a float bearing for the giant solar telescope. According to an internal NSO/NMSU document, that bearing is “high-risk” during maintenance. If there was a major mercury spill, it might explain why the Feds are there, with FBI providing security. The amount of Mercury is said to be in the “tens of gallons” range, which is next to impossible to come by in the commercial market these days, and if it were weaponized, it would make a very nasty dirty bomb. Perhaps there’s some security issue with the mercury on-site.

This is third hand, so it should be taken with a great deal of skepticism.

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Solar observatory closed for unstated security reasons

10:38 am

The National Solar Observatory facility at Sacramento Peak in New Mexico, managed by a consortium of universities, has been shut down temporarily for unstated security reasons.

The Sunspot Observatory is temporarily closed due to a security issue at the facility that’s located 17 miles south of Cloudcroft in the Sacramento Mountains Friday, an Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) spokeswoman Shari Lifson said.

“The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy who manages the facility is addressing a security issue at this time,” Lifson said. “We have decided to vacate the facility at this time as precautionary measure. It was our decision to evacuate the facility.”

She said she cannot comment on the specifics of the security issue.

This is a very strange story, especially because of the lack of information being released. What could have happened that required them to evacuate? And why can’t they release more details?

I can’t deny that my first thought was aliens, but this is a laughable and ridiculous idea. The facility merely looks up at the Sun, and is also a somewhat minor research facility. More likely they have had a serious employee problem, and are trying to take steps to prevent anyone from getting hurt.

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