February 2011 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

Details and comments about Kepler's discoveries
by Joe Bauman 04 Feb '11

04 Feb '11

Hi, I just had to blog about the exciting Kepler findings. Please take a look and comment, if you will: http://www.deseretnews.com/blog/47/10011341/Nightly-news-astronomy-Millions… -- Thanks, Joe

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Misc science happenings
by Canopus56 04 Feb '11

04 Feb '11

Clear Skies - Kurt Misc astro and science happenings >From a poster at the UofU Brigham City Museum Gallery - Traveling Smithsonian Institution’s Exhibit - Earth from Space Jan. 29 through March 27, 2011 http://www.brighamcity.utah.gov/page.php?n=museum_current_exhibit Museum Directions - Hours http://www.brighamcity.utah.gov/page.php?n=museum_directions >From UofU Calendar Darwin Week Lectures To celebrate Charles Darwin's 202nd birthday anniversary, which is on 2/12/11, the University of Utah student group SHIFT (Secular Humanism, Inquiry and Freethought) will be hosting a series of University of Utah professors to talk about how evolutionary science influences their area of study. These professors include Dr. Mario Capecchi (biology/genetics/neuroscience), winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The event will also feature talks by Dr. Henry Harpending (anthropology), coauthor of The 10,000 Year Explosion, Dr. Matt Haber (history/philosophy), Dr. Mark Loewen (paleontology), and Dr. Anya Plutynski (philosophy). The talks will occur each evening from 6:30 to 7:45, from 2/7 through 2/11. Date: Monday, February 7, 2011, 6:30 pm - Friday, February 11, 2011, 6:30 pm Time: 6:30 p.m. - 7:45 p.m. Contact: Zach Stevenson 801-599-4328 Location: Aline Wilmont Skaggs Biology building (ASB) Room 220 - (view map) Parking: Parking will be free on campus after 6:00 p.m., with President's Circle being the nearest parking area. The stadium parking lot will also be available. Cost: Free and open to the public Website: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=62898580089&v=app_2344061033&ref=ts Monday's 2-7 lecture is by Dr. Henry C. Harpending - acceleration of evolutionary change Tuesday's 2-8 lecture is by 2007 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Mario R. Capecchi

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The new planets
by Joe Bauman 02 Feb '11

02 Feb '11

Hi Friends, I'm putting together a blog about the discovery of new planets by Keplar. This is a profound finding, and who in Utah would have a better sense of the implications than members of the UtahAstronomy discussion group? If you have a thought about it that you wouldn't mind seeing in my blog, could you please drop me a line in the next short while? Just send it to my email address, josephmbauman(a)yahoo.com. Thanks! Joe

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On this day in astronomy
by Chuck Hards 02 Feb '11

02 Feb '11

On this day in 1975, in an ironic twist, Bruce actually repaired a toilet using a part scavanged from an old equatorial mount.

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Kepler Gone Wild
by Jay Eads 02 Feb '11

02 Feb '11

In case you haven't seen it, Kepler doubled the number of exoplanets found today including the number in the habitable zones of their stars and the number of earth like planets. Earth like doesn't mean life as Venus and Mars are Earth like and in the habitable zones. Biggest take away for me, the number of Earth like planets outnumber the number of Jupiter or giant Jupiter like planets. Planets have to be confirmed. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler_data_release.html http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/02/02/motherlode-of-pot… Kepler also found a mini solar system of 7 planets, close in to their stars but one I believe is close to the earth in terms of mass and composition. Cool stuff! Looks like if there is that many planets in such a small survey of the sky, 105 degrees I believe, then the chance for life out there is pretty great and if you multiply that by not only the Milky Way but the other Spiral galaxies out there, the chance for intelligent life looks to be pretty good. I guess the question will come down to does intelligent life overlap or is it not so common enough so it doesn't? It's an exciting time to be alive and I think Kepler brings excitement in a time and day when many things are dark in our world.

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Fw: NASA Finds Earth-Size Planet Candidates in Habitable Zone, Six-Planet System
by Joe Bauman 02 Feb '11

02 Feb '11

WAH-HOO! --- On Wed, 2/2/11, JPL News <Jplnews(a)jpl.nasa.gov> wrote: From: JPL News <Jplnews(a)jpl.nasa.gov> Subject: NASA Finds Earth-Size Planet Candidates in Habitable Zone, Six-Planet System To: Date: Wednesday, February 2, 2011, 12:14 PM MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICEJET PROPULSION LABORATORYCALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYNATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATIONPASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE 818-354-5011http://www.jpl.nasa.gov Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.whitney.clavin(a)jpl.nasa.gov Trent Perrotto 202-358-0321Headquarters, Washington trent.j.perrotto(a)nasa.gov NEWS RELEASE: 2011-036 Feb. 2, 2011 NASA FINDS EARTH-SIZE PLANET CANDIDATES IN HABITABLE ZONE, SIX-PLANET SYSTEM PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system. "In one generation we have gone from extraterrestrial planets being a mainstay of science fiction, to the present, where Kepler has helped turn science fiction into today's reality," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "These discoveries underscore the importance of NASA's science missions, which consistently increase understanding of our place in the cosmos." The discoveries are part of several hundred new planet candidates identified in new Kepler mission science data, released on Tuesday, Feb. 1. The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter. Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter. The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009, of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately one four-hundredth of the sky. "The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission's science principal investigator. "We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of which could have moons with liquid water." Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of multiple planetary candidates. Kepler-11, located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth, is the most tightly packed planetary system yet discovered. All six of its confirmed planets have orbits smaller than Venus, and five of the six have orbits smaller than Mercury's. The only other star with more than one confirmed transiting planet is Kepler-9, which has three. The Kepler-11 findings will be published in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Nature. "Kepler-11 is a remarkable system whose architecture and dynamics provide clues about its formation," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist and Kepler science team member at Ames. "These six planets are mixtures of rock and gases, possibly including water. The rocky material accounts for most of the planets' mass, while the gas takes up most of their volume. By measuring the sizes and masses of the five inner planets, we determined they are among the lowest-mass confirmed planets beyond our solar system." All of the planets orbiting Kepler-11 are larger than Earth, with the largest ones being comparable in size to Uranus and Neptune. The innermost planet, Kepler-11b, is 10 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. Moving outward, the other planets are Kepler-11c, Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e, Kepler-11f, and the outermost planet, Kepler-11g, which is half as far from its star as Earth is from the sun. The planets Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e and Kepler-11f have a significant amount of light gas, which indicates that they formed within a few million years of the system's formation. "The historic milestones Kepler makes with each new discovery will determine the course of every exoplanet mission to follow," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Kepler, a space telescope, looks for planet signatures by measuring tiny decreases in the brightness of stars caused by planets crossing in front of them. This is known as a transit. Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take three years to locate and verify Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars. The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations on planetary candidates and other objects of interest the spacecraft finds. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations help determine which candidates can be validated as planets. Ames manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data.?Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler . More information about NASA's planet-hunting efforts is online at: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/ . -end-

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One good thing about tonight's temps
by Patrick Wiggins 02 Feb '11

02 Feb '11

For my astroimaging I alway cool the imager to -10. I picked that since going colder doesn't really help with the kind of work I do and because I can achieve that even on hot summer nights so I have consistency through the year. So tonight I opened the observatory and turned on the camera and found it was already at -10. I ran the cooling circuits anyway but tonight it's the ambient air temps doing most of the work cooling the chip. So I guess that's one good the (the only good thing?) about it being so cold. patrick

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Universe 250+ Times Larger
by stormcrow60＠xmission.com 02 Feb '11

02 Feb '11

Cool Article Troy... thanks for sharing. Interesting read: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26333/ Universe could be MUCH bigger than we think it is. Now, this is using statistics and the old phrase: There are liars, damn liars, and then there are staticians. comes to my mind. YMMV

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Univers 250+ Times Larger
by Troy Davidson 01 Feb '11

01 Feb '11

Interesting read: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26333/ Universe could be MUCH bigger than we think it is. Now, this is using statistics and the old phrase: There are liars, damn liars, and then there are staticians. comes to my mind. ;) YMMV ++++++++++++++++++ Troy Davidson, KF7MTE www.istroyworking.com

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A Sad 40th
by Joe Bauman 31 Jan '11

31 Jan '11

Hi Friends, This is a 40th anniversary, one that is sad for me -- no, not our wedding anniversary! That 40th anniversary was on Jan. 7. Here's my new blog: http://www.deseretnews.com/blog/47/10011303/Nightly-news-astronomy-A-Sad-40…

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