The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) has captured amazingly detailed images of a dead star stealing huge amounts of matter from its larger companion. These images will hopefully help scientists to better understand the behavior of matter when subjected to extreme magnetic fields.

The system under study consists  of an ordinary star and a white dwarf -  the highly dense corpse of a burned out star. While white dwarves normally take material from their companions, this particular white dwarf has a hunger out of all proportion to its relatively miniscule size.  Even with its compressed mass taken into consideration, this star's  magnetic field is unusually strong - millions of times stronger than that of our own Sun.

This white dwarf's magnetic field is channeling matter from its partner onto its poles, which creates bright spots at each pole.  SALTICAM takes brightness measurements several times per second, so the spots appear to blink on and off as it passes behind its companion in its orbit.

These changes in brightness are practically never seen in white dwarf systems, as most of these have much weaker magnetic fields. "It's a really a remarkable light curve," says Paula Szkody of the University of Washington in Seattle. "We just didn't have this kind of information on this type of system before. It's a way of looking at what happens to matter under these extreme conditions."

A new telescope specifically designed to find Earth-sized planets around other stars  has been scheduled for a June 2008 launch.

The Kepler telescope will observe slight dips in brightness that occur when a planet passes in front of its parent star. It will spend four years focusing on one region of the galaxy, and monitor the brightness of 100,000 stars. The telescope will be stationed behind the Earth in a heliocentric orbit. Gradually, it will drift farther behind the Earth, eventually reaching a distance of 75 million kilometers (about 47 million miles).

Kepler's main mirror was made by an Pittsburgh optics company L-3 Communications Brashear. At a diameter of four and a half feet (1.5 meters), it is the largest mirror ever built for a space mission traveling beyond Earth orbit. It has been delivered to Ball Aerospace the Boulder, Colorado company responsible for the spacecraft's assembly.

Telescopes have been instrumental in helping scientists find out about the big and small of our universe and everything around us. With new developments in astronomical research and telescopy, it would also be good to look back at how people used to do things before we could use computers or take pictures of outer space.

One of the more memorable scholars of two centuries past was Etienne Trouvelot, astronomer and illustrator in the late 1800s, whose observations were not only recorded in his own hand, but also in his own art.

Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (1827-1895) started his scientific work in America as an amateur entomologist, one who unwittingly caused (and unsuccessfully tried to stop) the still-existing gypsy moth infestation in Massachusetts and other American forests. When his interests shifted to the stars, he used his talents as a portrait artists to illustrate his observations with a keen eye and a steady hand. His exploits in illustrating the stars opened doors to working on the staff of Harvard's observatory, leading to an invitation to have express use of the latest (of that time) 16-inch refracting telescope of the U.S. Naval Observatory for a year.

Over the course of his scientific career, he had around 7000 astronomical illustrations under his belt and 50 academic papers. While some people may remember him more for releasing an insect plague in America (much to his regret, that is certain), many more remember him for the beauty of his science. Even if you can't appreciate his contribution to our understanding and vision of the universe, there is certainly much to appreciate, even now, in the surreal feeling his artwork gives, especially since these are meant to be the first representations of the same things scientists see in far more detail in this day and age.

Take a look at these samples of his observations and art.

  
  

When a telescope needs an upgrade, it seems you don't need to have big words to call it.

European scientists, in an effort to find out more about the universe and the origins of life, have proposed a significant upgrade from current telescopes in use. The European Southern Observatory (ESO), based at the Cerro Paranal observatory in Chile, has a group of specialists to help create a design for the future of telescopic research, dubbed the Extremely Large Telescope or ELT. This telescope, once the design is finalized, is expected to cost 1,000,000,000 Euro (approximately $1.3B) and do things unheard of with current technology.

The ESO also manages the current titleholder for powerful telescopes. The Very Large Telescope, or VLT, is an array of four 8-meter diameter telescopes placed on the peak of the Cerro Paranal. These scopes have seen planets beyond our solar system and observed black holes, but have reached their limits, allowing only the smallest glimpse of the edge of the universe. The ELT, it is hoped, will be able to overcome these limitations with a 42-meter diameter lens, allowing it to produce information on objects the VLT was unable to cover, such as small planets, stars in distant galaxies, and other galaxies in their infancy.

With a lot of backing, scientists expect to get this extremely powerful telescope up and running for the world's benefit in 2016. Let's just hope we don't see a giant eye floating in space when we reach the edge of infinity.

For asthmatics, dust is THE enemy. But for scientists, it's an ally. That is if we're talking about  intergalactic dust. Dust found around the remains of dead stars turn out to be the "prime ingredient" of all living things.

Let us rewind 160,00 years ago.  A humongous star, about 20 times larger than the sun, exploded. In 1987, the first light from the said explosion (known as a supernova) reached our planet for several months, and was called the SN 1987A. Stardust from the SN1987A were seen through an infrared telescope at the Gemini South Observatory in Chile.

The supernova dust were fused with superheated, X-ray emitting gas found within an equatorial ring around SN 1987A, created by stellar winds 600,000 years before the supernova. This ring of gas was invisible for nearly twenty years, until shockwaves from the supernova blast caught up with it. The expansion of the shockwaves heating of the gas and normally cool dust until they glowed in the infrared.

According to Patrice Bouchet of the Observatoire de Paris, "The collision between the ejecta of supernova 1987A and the equatorial ring was predicted to occur sometime in the interval of 1995 to 2007, and it is now underway." Studies reveal that the composition of the stardust is pure silicate, and less dust than expected were seen (a star as enormous as the SN1987 star is expected to produce more dust). It's possible that shockwaves from the supernova blast sent more stellar dust to oblivion than expected. Researchers claim that this discovery may have "broad implications for determining dust origins throughout the universe".

So does the saying, from dust you come and from dust you shall return ring true? Let us await for further words from scientists to find out.

The European Southern Observatory's Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) 12-meter sub-millimeter telescope is now online and providing scientists with clear views to the "Cold Universe."

New findings include the discovery of a new interstellar molecule, and the detection of light emitted from carbon monoxide molecules as well as two forms of a charged hydrogen molecules containing fluorine. The phenomenon  was discovered near the Orion nebula, one of the most active stellar nurseries in the Milky Way - and closest to our own solar system. This adds greatly to scientists' understanding of interstellar chemistry, and indicates that hydrogen fluoride is common in interstellar gas clouds.

APEX has also detected light from charged molecules of hydrogen and deuterium in several cold clouds in the southern hemisphere, as well as the first observations of atomic carbon in the "Pillars of Creation" region of the Eagle Nebula.

APEX went on to perform a sub-millimeter study of a massive hot core, of a high-mass star forming region, and a high velocity outflow coming from a young stellar object.

Studies of molecular regions in the galaxies NGC 6822 and NGC 253 were completed successfully, proving that APEX can also contribute to the exploration of objects outside the Milky Way Galaxy.

Millimeter and sub-millimeter astronomy is a field which deals with the study of the formation processes of stars and planets. The APEX telescope will allow astronomers to study the chemistry and physical conditions of molecular clouds - dense regions of gas and dust in which new stars are born.

The upcoming issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society will contain a model that may shatter most of the established beliefs about the primordial star. Contrary to the previous "fact" that the first star soaked into existence some 155 million years after our universe exploded into life in the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, recent studies show that it may have occurred earlier when the universe was only 30 million years old.

Details on how the first star was born plus the sequence of steps that allowed other stars - and galaxies - to form have been reconstructed by astronomers with the aid of computer simulations. Looking at these models, one is lead to believe that the first star formed in a dense cloud of dark matter and gas and that many of the present-day galaxies are products of mergers between smaller galaxies found in the universe's early days.

Although it was easy to pinpoint the conditions that led to the birth of the first star, the same can't be said with regards to the date when the birth happened. Study leader Rennan Barkana, an astrophysicist at the University of Tel Aviv, said, "To estimate when the first stars formed, we must remember that the first 100,000 solar mass clumps collapsed in regions that happened to have particularly high densities early on.... There were initially only a few such regions in the entire universe, so a simulation that is limited to a small volume is unlikely to find such [regions] until much later."

The first star shone brighter than most of the stars we see today and had a life of only 2 to 3 million years, whereas present day stars have up to several billion year lifetimes.

When the primordial star spent its fuel, it exploded in a titanic stellar cataclysm (known as supernova) throwing heavy elements into space and setting the stage for later stars to appear. "After a short time, stars began appearing in greater abundance throughout the universe," Barkana explained.

Light once emitted by the first star is still till detectable, however, you'll be needing a telescope about 100 million times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope to do that.

Who knew that an iSight Camera could be combo'd with a telescope to produce a contraption that would be perfect for star gazing with your significant other? This was actually done before with the aim of taking a smoking picture of Saturn, but the problem was the camera had to be held still and holding something still for a long time, could be quite a challenge. So with that, the guys responsible for this decided to embark on a mission-- produce an iSight Telescope Mount and capture the biggest planet in the Solar System-- Jupiter.

Mounting an iSight camera is no easy and cheap task...it takes tremendous amounts of patience, time, and money. When the mounting part is over, you'd have to slave for quite a while as you locate celestial bodies that you may want to capture, and sometimes the weather is a bit uncooperative so you'd have to wait for a proper time to take 'em photos.

This is the finish product of the iSight Telescope mount. As you can see it is plugged into the PowerBook and ready to take pictures. Fortunately, their hard work paid off as they were able to take a picture of the giant planet. Kudos to these guys!

 

Stargazers on the eastern half of North America will have some sky show to look forward to on July 20, between midnight and dawn. The thin crescent moon hanging low in the east-northeast sky will cross in front the Pleiades Star Cluster, making for a very beautiful scene viewable even with binoculars or a small telescope. In this upcoming heavenly event the moon will be passing a bit off-center and will cover only the southern and eastern parts of the cluster and will completely miss the stars Electra, Taygeta and Maia.

Some stars will appear to come close to the Moon, but will not be hidden appearing to wink on and off several times as it passes behind craters, mountains and valleys right along the Moon’s edge. In order to see such a spectacle, however, you must be positioned along or within a mile of the graze path.

The Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Systems, its main eye, is expected to resume operations on July 2 if everything goes according to plan. The ACS will switch to its back-up power which will hopefully correct the electronic snafu that caused the camera to malfunction since June 19.

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Systems, or ACS, entered a "safe mode" last June 19 forcing NASA engineers to cease its operations although its other cameras continued to work. The switch to the backup power has already been made and NASA will know by today whether the reconfiguration has worked."We expect the reconfiguration will likely clear the problem with the ACS, but we do realize that it is possible that this reconfiguration will not restore the operation," said Ed Ruitberg of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "In that case, we will learn a lot more about the problem and the potential solution."

NASA officials remained optimistic that the ACS will continue to function until Hubble's next servicing mission in 2007. "The ACS was designed with a 5-year lifetime; we're well into year four and only just now are we having to begin to use the redundant capabilities. So I'm hoping it has a good long lifetime to go," Ruitberg said.