Year of the Comet! Firebenders Unite!!! ISON and Pan-STARS

It seems this year is going to be known for having the most killer light shows as we've experienced the Russian comet and a fly-by asteroid. Luckily the comet decided to make its debut in a country with a such a high mounted-car camera per driver count. It is times like this that we are greatly thankful (but should somehow be concerned) for their "driving."

However there will also be two more celestial objects making appearances. They are comet Pan-STARRS and Comet ISON. Unfortunately, comet Pan-STARRS just past us as it was closest to Earth on March 5. However it will on March 10 it will make its closest approach to the sun! This is the magic happens. As the comet approaches the sun it will either sizzle of fizzle, creating that iconic tale. The comet is already visible through telescopes in the southern hemisphere but will then be seen in the northern hemisphere on March 8 (tomorrow!!).  The observing times should be during March 12 and 13 during sunset. It will be an awesome two days!! Now for a bit of physics: How fast is this comet going? Well, the comet was closest Earth on March 5 and will make it to the sun on March 10. The earth is approximately 150x10^9 meters from the sun. Assuming a linear (instead of curved path), the celestial object is moving at 3.5x10^5 meters/second, or 7.8x10^5 miles-per-hour!

Next up would be comet ISON, which in my opinion is going to be the main event. As of January, the comet's tail was measured to be greater than 40,000 miles!! It will make its closest approach to the sun on November 28 at 800,000 miles and it will make its closest approach to Earth in December 26 at 40 million miles. Merry Christmas... Get this: this comet will shine brighter then the full moon!!!!! There is no need to fear as this comet poses no danger.  Heres an idea of what we could see on December:

Here's a vid for further illustration: 

Chandra and the Youngest Black Hole W49B

According to Nasa's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, we have may have just discovered a newly forming black hole!! This picture shows the gasses rotating about a fixed axis, probably about the axis along the rotation of the star. From what I remember, stars eventually run out of fuel when it begins to fuse heavier elements like Iron. It becomes unable to produce enough nuclear fusion and collapses under its gravity, releasing enough potential energy to ignite an explosion. In the end, it leaves behind either a very dense neutron star (manetar?) or a black hole. Neutron stars emit x-ray impulses, however Chandra did not detect a neutron star which implies the creation of a black hole.

Another interesting fact is the anisotropic distribution of Iron. Chandra's data show its only present in half of the observed spectroscopy. According to the paper, it is consistent with "bipolar/jet-driven Type Ib/Ic SN origin [...] since heavy elements are preferentially ejected along the polar axis of the pro-genitor in these explosions" (what is a progenitor?).  Here's a picture of the distribution of gases:

Interested in reading more about this subject? Here's the link:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.0618v1.pdf

My questions for Dr. Siana: What determines whether the end result of a Supernova is a blackhole or a neutron star? Are there any other products?

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory

Chandra is an X-Ray telescope that launched in 1999 whose purpose is to detect emissions from exploding stars, or matter around black holes. It works by detecting X-rays striking the hollow shells in mirrors.  So far it has observed the region near the super massive black hole in our galaxy and is contributing to dark matter/energy studies. Chandra orbits around the Van Allen belts as it produces images with high quality resolution. The mirrors are product of painstaking work as they have to have the smoothness of a few atoms. It works with the use of four instruments: The ACIS (Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer), the HRC, and two high resolution spectrometers. The ACIS is used to make the X-ray images as well as measure their energy. According to Harvard, the HRC  focuses the telescope to see and image with detail as small as two arc-seconds. The two high resolution spectrometers diffract the incoming X-rays in a direction dependent on its energy, which is then measured by the ACIS and focused by the HRC. Here's an example of what Chandra can do:

Listening to Jupiter.... on the radio?

Apparently, we can listen in on the sound of a planet by picking up on their ultrasonic frequencies (wavelengths too short fro humans to hear). Jupiter has a strong magnetic field, about 10 times more powerful than earth's. How so? Its because of Jupiter's hydrogen content. Deep inside Jupiter the gravitational force is so strong that there lies a sea of liquid hydrogen that behaves like a metal, allowing the flow of electricity (definition of a magnetic field). This could be why we can't hear other planets without the help of satellites.
According to NASA  you tend to hear the sound of woodpeckers, whales, sounds accelerating or decelerating. They only occur during Jupiter's intense radio storms. Now the reason I mentioned Jupiter's strong magnetic field is because these radio-waves are able to be received by short-wave radios and played through our loudspeakers. Now which is more suitable to pick up these waves, AM or FM? The answer is AM because Jupiter's Magnetic Frequency goes from .01 to 40 MHz (wiki) which is not within the bandwidth of FM (88-108 MHz).
Where can we hear these sounds? I remember watching this whole documentary (where this vid comes from) and they we're able to do this in some desert. That makes sense to me because you don't want background noises hindering the quality of sound you get from Jupiter. A have a link below (radio jove) as an example of Jupiter's sounds. For me, this seems like something fun to do: go camp out overnight in the desert listening to our solar system's greatest hits while eating s'mores... That actually sounds like a good plan!!!

And lastly, for your enjoyment: the Earth singing in whale:

Links:

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/AleksandraCzajka.shtml
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/20feb_radiostorms/
http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/observing/sample_data.htm

The Power of Interdisciplinary Research - Astronomy and Medicine

Here's an interesting vid:

This video is an example of how interdisciplinary work can benefit two seemingly different fields. How could medicine be used to help astronomy (and vice-versa)? The idea of this video is to show how doctors use visual and segmentation techniques to search data and understand the course of disease. This is beneficial to astronomers as they have less advance tools to analyze their sky surveys and visualize their data. However, according to Harvard's IIC archive, astronomers are better able to share information with large group of scientists which could also benefit medicine.

Medical imaging is used to take non-invasive images inside the human body for diagnostic purposes. An example would be x-rays. Astronomical imaging (Astrophotography) is the recording of images through long time exposure to accumulate photons. It is essentially a huge camera, and to aim this camera requires the use of astronomical coordinates like right ascension, etc. One method is the use of X-rays to find objects like neutron stars or black holes (since the material being sucked in emit x-rays - perhaps more on that later...).

Seeing that both disciplines use imaging technologies and both need accurate x-ray pictures, it would be obvious to have an interdisciplinary team for the advancement research and medicine. For more on the subject, here are some links:

1) http://lhcb.ecm.ub.es/spd/pmt/Other%20sources/MedAstro.pdf
2) http://iic.seas.harvard.edu/research/astronomical-medicine

What I think Astronomers do...

This is an easy one.... astronomers are machines that convert coffee into discoveries of exoplanets, stars, galaxies and very interesting articles to read in between classes. Seriously, that's the first thing that pops into my mind when I hear the word "astronomer". But when I think further into the subject, I also see them in a labcoat. :) These people must be used to darkness. Their hours of operation make college all-nighters seem like a walk in the to them. But when I was young I thought about becoming an astronomer when I first held my first telescope (it was my brother's actually). The telescope didn't work... so there went the aspiration. So I satisfied my curiosity as to what astronomers do by simply gazing up at the sky in places where there is no light pollution. Here and there, throughout my life I did this and until college I just concluded that this is what they do: they look up at the sky just like we do, except they're paid to do so and have an interest of our universe as it was during its earliest times. Not only that but they study the formation of planets, stars, galaxies and perhaps how our sun affects our planet in a more comprehensive level. Since I'm barely taking a course in Astronomy, I expect to have a much broader perspective at the end of quarter.

So I searched online and read a bit of what they do. Among the webpages an interesting interdisciplinary video that will be mentioned next time. Their work throughout time has immensely benefited us. For example, understanding the placement of constellations was a foundation for developing navigation in ancient times.  Nowadays, organizations like NASA make it very easy to see how astronomy affects us by showing spinoff technologies that made its way to our everyday lives. In fact here's the link: http://spinoff.nasa.gov/ .

Check it out:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=156166291

Galactic Bones?!

So I read an interesting articles about a new structure that astronomers found in our solar system, called "Galactic Bones". They're long straight filaments of dust and gas that stretch out through the spiral arms of galaxies; observed at infrared wavelengths of light. The picture above is the bone named after the dust cloud nicknamed "Nessie." More specifically, this bone is part of the Scutum-Centaurus arm. This bone was observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope spans 300 light-years (length) by 1-2 light-years (wide).





What makes Nessie interesting is that it's high density sets if apart from its surroundings suggests that its a "spine-like feature that runs down the center of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm of the Milky Way."  Nessie can halp us mao the full skeleton of the Milky Way. From my understanding, it is thought as impossible to have an overhead view of the Milky Way because we pretty much live "in" the plane - as if we are flatlanders. But the sun's tiny distance above the plane helps with a 3D perspective of the the galaxy. Here's the thought experiment: 

(Straight from the Article)

Carry out the following thought experiment. Draw a rough plan of a spiral galaxy on a piece of paper. Position a vantage point a tiny distance (a few hundredths of an inch) above that piece of paper, about two-thirds of the way out from the center of the galaxy. Now give the observer at that vantage point super-sharp eyesight and ask if the observer can separate the spiral arm features you drew, as they observe them. They can–if and only if the spiral you drew has very narrow features defining its arms. If the observer were exactly in the piece of paper (living in Flatland), separating the arms would be impossible, regardless of their width. We are, like your observer, are at a tiny, tiny, elevation off of a spiral galaxy, and our visiion is good enough to separate very skinny arm-like features.

I drew some sketches of how I understood the thought experiment:

Here are the links for this subject:

http://milkywaybones.org/
https://www.authorea.com/users/23/articles/249/_show_article#fig__colon__topview
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/01/astronomers-discover-new-structure-at-milky-way-core-4.html