Science Alert...02

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Who would have imagined a caterpillar urinating could look so beautiful? This amazing image was captured by Dennie Photo Art as part of his Macro series. We'll be sharing more of his great work on ScienceAlert over the next few weeks.

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Cities can maintain their native bird populations, but only if they become more compact, a new study has found. Researchers modelled two urban development scenarios over 20 years - one where a city sprawled outwards and another where it grew more compact - and found a much great diversity of species was lost in the sprawling scenario.

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A new training program has been shown to restore key words to dementia patients whose language and memory has been affected. The study provides hope that, even in brains affected by dementia, some recovery of function is possible.

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Don't forget the lunar eclipse on the 28th of November! It's penumbral lunar eclipse, which occurs when the Moon passes through the outer part of Earth's shadow, causing it to subtly darken. You need to be in Alaska, Hawaii, Australia or eastern Asia to catch the entire event. Observers in western Canada and the USA can also see parts of the eclipse. 

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Science Alert.... 01

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Dying to know what Curiosity has found on Mars after last week's reports that NASA has an announcement "for the history books" coming up? So are we! But don't get too carried away - whatever the discovery is, it's not life on Mars, writes Stuart Clark. Still, that doesn't mean it won't be groundbreaking for the scientific community.

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A newly discovered gene that's essential for embryo survival could hold the key to treating chronic infections such as HIV and tuberculosis. The gene, Arih2, makes critical decisions about whether to switch on the immune response and could have important implications for the treatment of infections that 'exhaust' and turn off the immune system, including autoimmune conditions.

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New research has found that Australian blue whales have surprisingly moved their habitat to Antarctica, most likely as a result of climate change or hunting. The new study used genetic testing to tell the subspecies apart, so it's possible they've always been there but were mistaken for Antarctic blue whales in the past.

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Sperm contributes more to the next generation than just its DNA, a new study in sea squirts suggests. It's currently believed sperm is simply a vessel for DNA, but the new research found that sperm which can stay alive for a few days before fertilisation produces larvae that's more likely to survive the first weeks of life. The scientists aren't sure what causes this ongoing impact or whether the same applies in humans, but they suspect epigenetics is involved.

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NASA News...

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2012: Shadow of the Dark Rift 

Thick dust clouds block our night-time view of the Milky Way, creating what is sometimes called the Dark Rift. The fact that -- from the viewpoint of Earth -- the sun aligns with these clouds, or the galactic center, near the winter solstice is no cause for concern. 

One of the most bizarre theories about 2012 has built up with very little attention to facts. This 

idea holds that a cosmic alignment of the sun, Earth, the center of our galaxy -- or perhaps the galaxy's thick dust clouds -- on the winter solstice could for some unknown reason lead to destruction. Such alignments can occur but these are a regular occurrence and can cause no harm (and, indeed, will not even be at its closest alignment during the 2012 solstice.)

The details are as follows: Viewed far from city lights, a glowing path called the Milky Way can be seen arching across the starry sky. This path is formed from the light of millions of stars we cannot see individually. It coincides with the mid plane of our galaxy, which is why our galaxy is also named the Milky Way.

Thick dust clouds also populate the galaxy. And while infrared telescopes can see them clearly, our eyes detect these dark clouds only as irregular patches where they dim or block the Milky Way's faint glow. The most prominent dark lane stretches from the constellations Cygnus to Sagittarius and is often called the Great Rift, sometimes the Dark Rift.

Another impressive feature of our galaxy lies unseen in Sagittarius: the galactic center, about 28,000 light-years away, which hosts a black hole weighing some four million times the sun's mass.

The claim for 2012 links these two pieces of astronomical fact with a third -- the position of the sun near the galactic center on Dec. 21, the winter solstice for the Northern Hemisphere -- to produce something that makes no astronomical sense at all.

As Earth makes its way around the sun, the sun appears to move against the background stars, which is why the visible constellations slowly change with the seasons. On Dec. 21, 2012, the sun will pass about 6.6 degrees north of the galactic center -- that's a distance that looks to the eye to be about 13 times the full moon's apparent size -- and it's actually closer a couple of days earlier. There are different claims about why this bodes us ill, but they boil down to the coincidence of the solstice with the sun entering the Dark Rift somehow portending disaster or the mistaken notion that the sun and Earth becoming aligned with the black hole in the galactic center allows some kind of massive gravitational pull on Earth.

The first strike against this theory is that the solstice itself does not correlate to any movements of the stars or anything in the universe beyond Earth. It just happens to be the day that Earth's North Pole is tipped farthest from the sun.

Second, Earth is not within range of strong gravitational effects from the black hole at the center of the galaxy since gravitational effects decrease exponentially the farther away one gets. Earth is 93 million miles from the sun and 165 quadrillion miles from the Milky Way's black hole. The sun and the moon (a smaller mass, but much closer) are by far the most dominant gravitational forces on Earth. Throughout the course of the year, our distance from the Milky Way's black hole changes by about one part in 900 million – not nearly enough to cause a real change in gravity's pull. Moreover, we're actually nearest to the galactic center in the summer, not at the winter solstice.

Third, the sun appears to enter the part of the sky occupied by the Dark Rift every year at the same time, and its arrival there in Dec. 2012 portends precisely nothing.

Enjoy the solstice, by all means, and don't let the Dark Rift, alignments, solar flares, magnetic field reversals, potential impacts or alleged Maya end-of-the-world predictions get in the way.

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The Splendor of Orion: A Star Factory Unveiled

This new Hubble image of the Orion Nebula shows dense pillars of gas and dust that may be the homes of fledgling stars, and hot, young, massive stars that have emerged from their cocoons and are shaping the nebula with powerful ultraviolet light.

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team .

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Cosmic Bullets Pierce Space Cloud

This composite image at infrared wavelengths shows the Orion nebula "bullets" as blue features and represents the light emitted by hot iron gas. The light from the wakes, shown in orange, is from excited hydrogen gas.

Each bullet is about ten times the size of Pluto's orbit around the Sun and travels through the clouds at up to 250 miles (400 kilometers) per second-or about a thousand times faster than the speed of sound. 

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Astronomy

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'Honey I Shrunk the Planetary System'. This artist's conception compares the KOI-961 planetary system to Jupiter and the largest four of its many moons. The KOI-961 planetary system hosts the three smallest planets known to orbit a star beyond our sun (called KOI-961.01, KOI-961.02 and KOI-961.03). The smallest of these planets, KOI-961.03, is about the same size as Mars. All three planets take le

ss than two days to whip around their star.The planets were discovered using data from NASA's Kepler mission and ground-based telescopes. The KOI-961 star is a tiny "red dwarf," just one-sixth the size of our sun. This planetary system is the most compact detected to date, with a scale closer to Jupiter and its moons than another star system.

The planet and moon orbits are drawn to the same scale. The relative sizes of the stars, planets and moons have been increased for visibility. 

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A Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 3:22 p.m. EDT Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012, a few hundred miles west of Baja California, Mexico. The splashdown successfully ended the first contracted cargo delivery flight contracted by NASA to resupply the International Space Station.The Dragon capsule will betaken by boat t

o a port near Los Angeles, where it will be preparedfor a return journey to SpaceX's test facility in McGregor, Texas, forprocessing. Returning with the Dragon capsule was 1,673 pounds of cargo, including 866 pounds of scientific research. Not since the space shuttle have NASA and its international partners been able to return considerable amounts of research and samples for analysis.

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How Paintballs Could Save Earth from Giant Asteroid Impact. An epic battle between paintballs anda giant asteroid could one day save the Earth from an apocalypticspace rock impact.

The novel asteroid-deflec ting scheme proposes that a cloud of paintballs shot into space could knock a dangerous asteroid off a collision course with Earth.
Sung Wook Paek, an MIT graduatestudent, says a spacecraft cou

ld fire two rounds of pellets full of white paint powder at an asteroidto cover as much of the rock's surface as possible. The strategy, unveiled Friday (Oct. 26), won the 2012 Move an Asteroid Technical Paper Competition, sponsored by the United Nations' Space Generation Advisory Council.The initial force from the paintballs would nudge the asteroid slightly off course, Paek says. And the palepaint job resulting from the splattered pellets would more than double the space rock's sunlight reflectivity. More photons bouncing off the asteroid's surface would enhance solar radiation pressure and bump it further off course.
The asteroid Apophis was used asa theoretical test case in Paek's proposal. The 900-foot-wide (270-meter) asteroid is perhaps the most often cited as a potentialcandidate for impacting Earth sometime in the next few decades. Observations suggest it may come close to Earth in 2029, and then again in 2036.
Five tons of paint would be required to cover Apophis, according to Paek's calculations. He also estimated that it would take up to 20 years for enough solar radiation pressure to successfully pull it off its Earth-bound trajectory.
An epic battle between paintballs and a giant asteroid could one day save the Earth from an apocalyptic space rock impact.
The novel asteroid-deflec ting scheme proposes that a cloud of paintballs shot into space could knock a dangerous asteroid off a collision course with Earth.
Sung Wook Paek, an MIT graduatestudent, says a spacecraft could fire two rounds of pellets full of white paint powder at an asteroidto cover as much of the rock's surface as possible. The strategy, unveiled Friday (Oct. 26), won the 2012 Move an Asteroid Technical Paper Competition, sponsored by the United Nations' Space Generation Advisory Council.
The initial force from the paintballs would nudge the asteroid slightly off course, Paek says. And the pale paint job resulting from the splattered pellets would more than double the space rock's sunlight reflectivity. More photons bouncing off the asteroid's surface would enhance solar radiation pressure and bump it further off course.
The asteroid Apophis was used asa theoretical test case in Paek's proposal. The 900-foot-wide (270-meter) asteroid is perhaps the most often cited as a potentialcandidate for impacting Earth sometime in the next few decades. Observations suggest it may come close to Earth in 2029, and then again in 2036.
Five tons of paint would be required to cover Apophis, according to Paek's calculations. He also estimated that it would take up to 20 years for enough solar radiation pressure to successfully pull it off its Earth-bound trajectory.
Paek, who is studying aeronauticsand astronautics, says his strategycould be used to shoot other substances besides paint at a space rock.
The pellets could be packed with aerosols that would "impart air drag on the incoming asteroid to slow it down," he said in a statement. "Or you could just paint the asteroid so you can track it more easily with telescopes on Earth. So there are other uses for this method."
Researchers have been dreaming up ways to drag asteroids off their orbits in case we're ever facing an "Armageddon"-li ke situation. Other plans that have been proposed involve gravity tractors, laser beams, impactors and even nuclear bombs.
Paek's work builds on last year's winning proposal, which involved deflecting an asteroid with a cloud of solid pellets.
Lindley Johnson, program manager for NASA’s Near Earth Objects Observation Program, described Paek's proposal as "an innovative variation" on techniques used to take advantage of solar radiation pressure. NASA's Messenger spacecraft, for example, uses solarsails to control its trajectory around Mercury.
"It is very important that we develop and test a few deflection techniques sufficiently so that we know we have a viable 'toolbox' of deflection capabilities to implement when we inevitably discover an asteroid on an impacttrajectory," Johnson said in a statement.An artist's rendering of the asteroid Apophis.
CREDIT: European Space Agency .

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FROM "NASA"...-News.....

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Mars Rock Touched by NASA Curiosity has Surprises


PASADENA, Calif. -- The first Martian rock NASA's Curiosity rover has reached out to touch presents a more varied composition than expected from previous missions. The rock also resembles some unusual rocks from Earth's interior.

The rover team used two instruments on Curiosity to study the chemical makeup of the football-size rock called "Jake Matijevic" (matt-EE-oh-vick) The results support some surprising recent measurements and provide an example of why identifying rocks' composition is such a major emphasis of the mission. Rock compositions tell stories about unseen environments and planetary processes.

"This rock is a close match in chemical composition to an unusual but well-known type of igneous rock found in many volcanic provinces on Earth," said Edward Stolper of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who is a Curiosity co-investigator. "With only one Martian rock of this type, it is difficult to know whether the same processes were involved, but it is a reasonable place to start thinking about its origin."

On Earth, rocks with composition like the Jake rock typically come from processes in the planet's mantle beneath the crust, from crystallization of relatively water-rich magma at elevated pressure.

Jake was the first rock analyzed by the rover's arm-mounted Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument and about the thirtieth rock examined by the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument. Two penny-size spots on Jake were analyzed Sept. 22 by the rover's improved and faster version of earlier APXS devices on all previous Mars rovers, which have examined hundreds of rocks. That information has provided scientists a library of comparisons for what Curiosity sees.

"Jake is kind of an odd Martian rock," said APXS Principal Investigator Ralf Gellert of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. "It's high in elements consistent with the mineral feldspar, and low in magnesium and iron."

ChemCam found unique compositions at each of 14 target points on the rock, hitting different mineral grains within it.

"ChemCam had been seeing compositions suggestive of feldspar since August, and we're getting closer to confirming that now with APXS data, although there are additional tests to be done," said ChemCam Principal Investigator Roger Wiens (WEENS) of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Examination of Jake included the first comparison on Mars between APXS results and results from checking the same rock with ChemCam, which shoots laser pulses from the top of the rover's mast.

The wealth of information from the two instruments checking chemical elements in the same rock is just a preview. Curiosity also carries analytical laboratories inside the rover to provide other composition information about powder samples from rocks and soil. The mission is progressing toward getting the first soil sample into those analytical instruments during a "sol," or Martian day.

"Yestersol, we used Curiosity's first perfectly scooped sample for cleaning the interior surfaces of our 150-micron sample-processing chambers. It's our version of a Martian carwash," said Chris Roumeliotis (room-eel-ee-OH-tiss), lead turret rover planner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Before proceeding, the team carefully studied the material for scooping at a sandy patch called "Rocknest," where Curiosity is spending about three weeks.

"That first sample was perfect, just the right particle-size distribution," said JPL's Luther Beegle, Curiosity sampling-system scientist. "We had a lot of steps to be sure it was safe to go through with the scooping and cleaning."

Following the work at Rocknest, the rover team plans to drive Curiosity about 100 yards eastward and select a rock in that area as the first target for using the drill.

During a two-year prime mission, researchers will use Curiosity's 10 instruments to assess whether the study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the project and built Curiosity. For more about the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover mission.

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Rover's 'SAM' Lab Instrument Suite Tastes Soil

Mission Status Report

PASADENA, Calif. -- A pinch of fine sand and dust became the first solid Martian sample deposited into the biggest instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity: the Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM.

Located inside the rover, SAM examines the chemistry of samples it ingests, checking particularly for chemistry relevant to whether an environment can support life. Curiosity's robotic arm delivered SAM's first taste of Martian soil to an inlet port on the rover deck on Nov. 9. During the following two days, SAM used mass spectrometry, gas chromatography and laser spectrometry to analyze the sample.

The sample came from the patch of windblown material called "Rocknest," which had provided a sample previously for mineralogical analysis by Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. CheMin also received a new sample from the same Rocknest scoop that fed SAM. SAM has previously analyzed samples of the Martian atmosphere.

"We received good data from this first solid sample," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "We have a lot of data analysis to do, and we are planning to get additional samples of Rocknest material to add confidence about what we learn."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the rover.

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Beauty of Earth from the space

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Science Alert

En busca de nuestros orígenes cósmicos

RADIO OBSERVATORIO ALMA

En lo alto del llano de Chajnantor, en la Cordillera de

los Andes, en Chile, el Observatorio Europeo Austral (ESO), está construyendo, junto con sus socios internacionales, el Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), un telescopio de vanguardia para estudiar la luz de algunos de los objetos más fríos del Universo. Esta luz tiene longitudes de onda de alrededor de un milímetro, entre el infrarrojo y las ondas de radio, por lo que se conoce como radiación milimétrica o submilimétrica. Se trata del mayor proyecto astronómico basado en tierra desarrollado hasta el momento.
¿Qué es la astronomía submilimétrica?
La luz en estas longitudes de onda proviene de grandes nubes frías en el espacio interestelar -a temperaturas sólo unas pocas decenas de grados por encima del cero absoluto- y de algunas de las galaxias más tempranas y distantes del Universo. Los astrónomos pueden usar dicha luz para estudiar las condiciones químicas y físicas que se dan en estas nubes moleculares, densas regiones de gas y polvo donde están naciendo nuevas estrellas. A menudo, estas regiones del Universo están oscurecidas y permanecen ocultas en el rango visible de la luz, pero brillan con intensidad en la parte milimétrica y submilimétrica del espectro.
La radiación milimétrica y submilimétrica abre una ventana hacia el enigmático Universo frío, pero el vapor de agua de la atmósfera terrestre absorbe las señales que nos llegan desde el espacio. Por ello, los telescopios de este tipo deben construirse en lugares altos y secos, de ahí que se escogiera la llanura de Chajnantor, a 5.000 metros de altitud, lo que lo convierte en uno de los observatorios astronómicos más altos de la Tierra.
¿Por qué construir ALMA en la zona alta de los Andes?
Aquí es donde ESO, junto a sus socios internacionales, está construyendo el ALMA, el mayor proyecto astronómico existente. El emplazamiento de ALMA, a unos 50 km al este de San Pedro de Atacama, en el norte de Chile, es uno de los lugares más secos de la Tierra. Allí imperan unas condiciones inmejorables para la observación, pero operar un observatorio de primera línea en condiciones muy duras (altura y sequedad) supone todo un reto, ya que Chajnantor supera en unos 750 metros de altura al observatorio de Mauna Kea y en unos 2.400 metros al de Cerro Paranal, donde se ubica el Very Large Telescope (VLT).
ALMA será un telescopio único con un diseño revolucionario, compuesto inicialmente por 66 antenas de alta precisión, que operará a longitudes de onda de 0,3 a 9,6 mm. Su conjunto principal tendrá cincuenta antenas de 12 metros de diámetro cada una, que actuarán conjuntamente como un solo telescopio: un interferómetro. Esto se complementará con un compacto conjunto adicional de cuatro antenas de 12 m de diámetro y doce antenas de 7 m de diámetro. Las antenas ALMA pueden configurarse de distintas maneras, y las distancias máximas entre antenas pueden oscilar entre los 150 metros y los 16 kilómetros, lo que proporcionará a ALMA un potente "zoom" variable. Podrá sondear el universo a longitudes de onda milimétricas y submilimétricas con una sensibilidad y resolución sin precedentes, con una visión hasta diez veces más nítida que la del Telescopio Espacial Hubble, lo que permitirá complementar las imágenes obtenidas por el VLT.
ALMA es el telescopio más poderoso para observar el Universo frío, desde el gas molecular y el polvo, hasta los vestigios de la radiación del Big Bang. Estudiará los componentes básicos de las estrellas, los sistemas planetarios, las galaxias y la vida misma. Proporcionará a los científicos imágenes detalladas de estrellas y planetas naciendo en nubes de gas cerca de nuestro Sistema Solar y detectará galaxias distantes en formación en los límites del Universo observable, que vemos tal y como eran hace unos diez mil millones de años. De esta forma, ALMA permitirá a los astrónomos trabajar en torno a algunas de las profundas interrogantes sobre nuestros orígenes cósmicos.
Está previsto que la construcción de ALMA finalice alrededor del año 2013, pero las primeras observaciones científicas, con parte del conjunto de telescopios, serán posibles en el 2011.
El proyecto ALMA es una colaboración entre Europa, América del Norte y Asia Oriental en cooperación con la República de Chile. ALMA está financiado en Europa por ESO, en América del Norte por la fundación Nacional de Ciencia de los Estados Unidos (NSF) en cooperación con Consejo Nacional de Investigación de Canadá (NRC) en Japón por los Institutos Nacionales de Ciencias Naturales en cooperación con la Academia Sinica (AS) en Taiwán y el consejo Nacional de Ciencias (NSC) de Taiwán. La construcción y operación de ALMA están dirigidas por ESO en representación de Europa, por el Observatorio Nacional de Radioastronomía (NRAO) -gestionado por Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI)- en representación de América del Norte; y por el Observatorio Astronómico Nacional de Japón (NAOJ) en representación de Asia Oriental.
Fuente. ESO

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New Think From NASA...

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The Eagle Nebula (M16): Peering Into the Pillars Of Creation

A new look at the famous "Pillars of Creation" with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has allowed astronomers to peer inside the dark columns of gas and dust. This penetrating view of the central region of the Eagle Nebula reveals how much star formation is happening inside these iconic structures.

The Chandra data shows bright X-ray so

urces in this field, most of which are young stars. In this image, red, green, and blue represent low, medium, and high energy X-rays. The Chandra data have been overlaid on the Hubble Space Telescope image to show the context of these X-ray data.

Very few X-ray sources are found in the pillars themselves. This suggests that the Eagle Nebula may be past its star-forming prime, since young stars are usually bright X-ray sources. However, there are two X-ray objects found near the tips of the pillars. One is a young star about 4 or 5 times as massive as the Sun, visible as the blue source near the tip of the pillar on the left. The other is a lower mass star near the top of the other pillar that is so faint it is not visible in the composite image.

The Chandra observations did not detect X-rays from any of the so-called evaporating gaseous globules, or EGGs. The EGGs are dense, compact pockets of interstellar gas where stars are believed to be forming. The lack of X-rays from these objects may mean that most of the EGGs do not contain enshrouded stars. However, infrared observations have shown that 11 of the 73 EGGs contain infant stellar objects and 4 of these are massive enough to form a star. The stars embedded in these 4 EGGs might be so young that they have not generated X-rays yet and one of them (E42) - estimated to have about the mass of the Sun - could represent one of the earliest stages of evolution of our nearest star. The Sun was likely born in a region like the Pillars of Creation.

The pillars and the few stars forming inside them are the last vestiges of star formation in the Eagle Nebula, also known as M16, which peaked several million years earlier. This contrasts strongly with the active star forming regions in other clusters such as NGC 2024, where Chandra sees a dense cluster of embedded young stars.

The results were published in the January 1st issue of The Astrophysical Journal and the research team, led by Jeffrey Linsky of the University of Colorado, includes Marc Gagne and Anna Mytyk (West Chester University), Mark McCaughrean (University of Exeter) and Morten Andersen (University of Arizona).

Fast Facts for The Eagle Nebula (M16):

Credit X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Colorado/Linsky et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/ASU/J.Hester & P.Scowen.
Scale: Image is 2.5 arcmin across
Category Normal Stars & Star Clusters
Coordinates (J2000) RA 18h 18m 51.79s | Dec -13º 49' 54.93"
Constellation Serpens
Observation Date 30 Jul 01
Observation Time 22 hours
Obs. ID 978
Color Code X-ray: Red(0.5-1.5 keV); Green(1.5-2.5 keV); Blue(2.5-7.0 keV)
Instrument ACIS
References Linsky et al. (2007), ApJ, 654, 347
Distance Estimate About 7,000 light years
Release Date February 15, 2007

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Cygnus OB2: Probing a Nearby Stellar Cradle

Cygnus OB2 is a star cluster in the Milky Way that contains many hot, massive young stars.

This composite image of Cygnus OB2 contains X-rays from Chandra (blue), infrared data from Spitzer (red), and optical data from the Isaac Newton Telescope (orange).

Astronomers would like to better understand how this and other star factories like it form and evolve.

A deep Chandra observation of Cygnus OB2 has found almost 1,500 stars emitting X-rays.

The Milky Way and other galaxies in the universe harbor many young star clusters and associations that each contain hundreds to thousands of hot, massive, young stars known as O and B stars. The star cluster Cygnus OB2 contains more than 60 O-type stars and about a thousand B-type stars. At a relatively nearby distance to Earth of about 5,000 light years, Cygnus OB2 is the closest massive cluster. Deep observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory of Cygnus OB2 have been used to detect the X-ray emission from the hot outer atmospheres, or coronas, of young stars in the cluster and to probe how these great star factories form and evolve. About 1,700 X-ray sources were detected, including about 1,450 thought to be stars in the cluster. In this image, X-rays from Chandra (blue) have been combined with infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (red) and optical data from the Isaac Newton Telescope (orange).

Young stars ranging in age from one million to seven million years were detected. The infrared data indicates that a very low fraction of the stars have circumstellar disks of dust and gas. Even fewer disks were found close to the massive OB stars, betraying the corrosive power of their intense radiation that leads to early destruction of their disks. Evidence is also seen that the older population of stars has lost its most massive members because of supernova explosions. Finally, a total mass of about 30,000 times the mass of the sun is derived for Cygnus OB2, similar to that of the most massive star forming regions in our Galaxy.

Fast Facts for Cygnus OB2:

Credit X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.Drake et al, Optical: Univ. of Hertfordshire/INT/IPHAS, Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Release Date : November 7, 2012
Scale Image is 11.8 arcmin across (16 light years)
Category: Normal Stars & Star Clusters
Coordinates (J2000) RA 20h 37m 11.00s | Dec +38° 41' 52.00"
Constellation: Cygnus
Observation Date: 39 pointings between January 2004 and March 2010
Observation Tim : 341 hours 40 min (14 days 5 hours 40 min)
Obs. ID 4501, 4511, 10939-10974, 12099
Instrument: ACIS
Color Code X-ray (Blue), Optical (Yellow), Infrared (Red)
Distance Estimate: About 4,700 light year

 

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Stellar Evolution with Type 1a Supernova Remnant

This tableau illustrates the ongoing drama of stellar evolution, and how the rate of evolution and the ultimate fate of a star depends on its weight, or mass. (Illustration: 

This graphic gives a summary of our best current understanding of the evolution of stars, showing their birth, middle age and eventual demise. The lowest mass stars are shown

 at the bottom and the highest mass stars at the top. The very top line is a relatively recent addition compelled by the detection of SN 2006gy, that describes the evolution of the most massive stars in the universe. Observational evidence for the special type of explosion shown here - which is incredibly bright and obliterates the star rather than producing a black hole - was lacking until SN 2006gy was found. 

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Pelican Nebula Close-up 

The prominent ridge of emission featured in this vivid skyscape is designated IC 5067. Part of a larger emission nebula with a distinctive shape, popularly called The Pelican Nebula, the ridge spans about 10 light-years and follows the curve of the cosmic pelican's head and neck. Fantastic, dark shapes inhabiting the view are clouds of cool gas and dust sculpted by energe

tic radiation from hot, massive stars. But stars are also forming within the dark shapes. In fact, twin jets emerging from the tip of the central, dark tendril are the telltale signs of an embedded protostar cataloged as Herbig-Haro 555. The Pelican Nebula itself, also known as IC 5070, is about 2,000 light-years away. To find it, look northeast of bright star Deneb in the high flying constellation Cygnus.

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Science Alert

Voting from space? Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are getting ready to cast their vote in the 2012 US Presidential Election. Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston will send a digital ballot to the astronauts; they will fill it out and then send it back to Earth along the same path. 

Geckos have tiny hair-like structures on their feet that work almost like Velcro, allowing them to adhere and climb vertical surfaces.

Bariatric surgery has proven to be an effective tool against obesity and obesity related diseases, but new research suggests that some types of bariatric surgery could have an impact on bone health. Scientists studied the relationship between fat, bone and nutritional restrictions and discovered that some surgery-induced changes, including rapid weight loss, may have an impact on nutrient absorption and hormone production, which affects bone strength. The researchers suggest monitoring bone health before and after the procedure.

The elusive spade-toothed beaked whale remained a mystery for marine biologists until 2010, when two specimens beached in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. After extensive DNA analysis, scientists confirmed that those complete specimens were the first animals of their kind ever seen, previous evidence of their existence consisted only of skull and jaw fragments [pictured]. The world’s rarest and most enigmatic whale could already be endangered.

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