Japan's Mission to the Moon Blasts OFF!!

If you think the Americans are going to be dominating lunar exploration, think again. Many countries are considering our heavenly companion, helping to unlock its secrets. The next mission to head off is the Japanese lunar probe Kayuga, which blasted off from the Tanegashima space center at 10:31:01 Japan Standard Time (01:31:01 UTC) on September 14th - after an initial delay due to weather. The spacecraft is currently in Earth orbit, and will leave for the moon on October 3rd. It'll start making scientific observations on October 21st.Once near the moon, Kayuga will split into three satellites; a 3-ton main orbiter which will orbit the planet at an altitude of 100km, and the smaller Relay and VRAD Satellites, which will orbit and gather information about the poles.
There are three main goals for the mission:
Kayuga will be on the moon to study how it evolved and where it came from by looking at the topography and the abundance of elements in the lunar soil, and measuring the Moon's gravity and weak magnetic field. Hopefully, it'll help explain the question: was the Moon captured by the Earth, did it solidify out of the same material and at the same time as our planet, was it somehow fissioned or secreted by the Earth, or is the result of a massive collision by another object.
It'll also study the plasma, energetic particles and electromagnetic field surrounding the Moon.

Finally, the probes will turn their electromagnetic eyes towards our planet to study the plasma surrounding the Earth, and allow us to better understand how our own magnetosphere and ionosphere protect us from the deadly radiation of the solar wind. One of the neatest aspects of the Kayuga mission is its inclusion of a High Definition Television camera to send back movies of the Earth from the Moon. This means that we will be able to see the Earth-rise from the Moon's horizon!

Hubble detects ring of dark matter!!

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a ghostlyring of dark matter that formed during a titanic collision between twomassive galaxy clusters. Because ordinary matter in the cluster showsno evidence of such a ring, this discovery is among the strongestevidence yet for non-baryonic dark matter. Clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bound structuresin the universe. They typically contain hundreds or thousands ofgalaxies, forming at the knots of the filamentary sponge-likedistribution of matter on very large scales. Numerical simulationsshow how the accretion of matter from the filaments to the knots makegalaxy clusters grow in size. This one-dimensional accretion (along afilament) results in frequent, near head-on collisions among clustersor groups of galaxies, whereas interactions between individualgalaxies usually occur only when there is significant rotation.

The galaxy cluster Cl 0024+17 – some 5 x 109 light-years away (z =0.4) – is supposed to have experienced exactly such a head-oncollision 1 or 2 thousand million years ago. The first evidence ofthis was obtained in 2002 by Oliver Czoske, from the University ofBonn, and collaborators. By studying the velocity distribution of thegalaxies in the cluster, they found two distinct groups with oppositevelocity, suggesting that there are two sub-clusters moving away fromeach other along the line-of-sight. Their numerical simulationsconfirm the collision scenario and suggest a sub-cluster mass ratio of2:1. In 2004, when the dark-matter distribution in Cl 0024+117 was studied there was no such a peculiar cluster of galaxies. Ring-like distribution was never seen in other clusters.It is indeed tricky to derive the dark-matter distribution in acluster from the distortion it causes on the shape of backgroundgalaxies, but the analysis of this weak gravitational lensing nowseems to be well under control, with the release of the first 3D mapof the dark matter distribution (CERN Courier January/February 2007)

Quark Star... A new Object!!

The breakdown of matter into its tiniest quark components in a star's core may have triggered the brightest supernova ever seen. If correct, this would be the first time anyone has seen the birth of an exotic object called a quark star.On 18 September 2006, astronomers observed the record-breaking supernova, called 2006gy, and were shocked to find that it was intrinsically about 100 times brighter than typical stellar explosions.
To explain its extreme power, its discoverers invoked an unusual argument based on the creation of pairings of matter and antimatter particles inside a massive star. Some physicists say that when matter is crushed to extreme densities, it settles into a soup of individual quarks. A cubic centimetre of this new type of matter – dubbed 'strange’ would weigh as much as a billion tonnes and would have the unusual property of converting any ordinary matter that touches it into more strange matter, releasing energy in the process.
The energy released by converting the core of a star into strange matter would cause an explosion called a quark nova, observed for the first time in SN 2006gy. the event begins when a massive star blasts away its outer layers in an ordinary supernova explosion. In the process, the star's core collapses to become a dense object called a neutron star. some neutron stars last only a short time because their magnetic properties cause their spin rates to drastically slow down. Because centrifugal force can no longer support the neutron star's core, it collapses even further, transforming into strange matter.The transformation releases a tremendous amount of energy, blasting the neutron star's outer layers into space at close to light speed. The layers then slam into debris from the original supernova, creating an intense glow bright enough to explain the observations of SN 2006gy.
"Strange matter may exist or it may not, It's not proven theoretically – it's an open issue.” Evidence for the quark nova scenario could come from continued monitoring of the aftermath of SN 2006gy, which could show signs of rare elements with an atomic weight greater than 130.

Burts of Gamma Rays from Blackhole...

A black hole has been spotted belching out a burst of gamma rays after gulping down part of a nearby star, something never seen before. Such violent burps may actually be the most common type of explosive "gamma-ray burst" in the universe.
The event was named GRB 070610 after the date of its discovery by NASA's Swift satellite on 10 June 2007.

At first it looked like another ordinary long gamma-ray burst (GRB) in a distant galaxy. These outbursts are thought to be the death cries of massive stars collapsing to form black holes.

But this GRB seems to have a different provenance altogether. They suspect that the black hole in the system had some kind of a giant hiccup while chowing down on matter stolen from its companion star. This gamma-ray hiccup behaviour has never been seen before and scientists are not sure how to explain it. But though the burst was much less powerful than typical long GRBs, such events are still quite violent. A similar system called V4641 Sgr set the record for spewing matter out at the highest speed ever observed in our galaxy during a similar outburst, observed in X-rays, in 1999.

It's clearly an unusual event. There's yet another way that nature found to make GRBs, which is very interesting. Low energy
"The reason we haven't seen something like this before is not because it's rare but because it's a low-energy event," Kasliwal says, explaining that this burst is intrinsically about 100 trillion times less powerful than previously observed long GRBs. Those more powerful long GRBs have only been observed in other galaxies and are thought to occur in our own galaxy less than once every 100,000 years

Four Massive Galaxies Colliding...

Four massive galaxies are colliding in the largest galactic merger ever seen, new observations reveal. The smash-up is shedding light on how the biggest galaxies in the universe form – and why many of them stopped giving birth to stars billions of years ago.

Astronomers classify mergers according to the relative sizes of the galaxies involved. Now, researchers led by Kenneth Rines of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, have found the largest major merger ever seen. It involves a quartet of galaxies at the centre of a galactic cluster known as CL0958+4702, which lies about 5 billion light years from Earth.Three of the merging galaxies are the size of the Milky Way, while the other is about three times as massive
Star plume
Using infrared observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope and optical images from the WIYN Observatory in Arizona, US, the team also discovered a colossal, fan-shaped 'plume' of old, red stars trailing about 360,000 light years from the merger, apparently tossed out of the galaxies as they spiralled towards each other. "That's the other fairly amazing thing – the number of stars in the plume is about three Milky Ways' worth. Eventually, about half of those stars will likely fall into the merged galaxies – which are expected to coalesce into a single mammoth galaxy in about 100 million years – while the other half will float freely outside it, he says. That suggests other free-floating stars previously found within galaxy clusters were also ejected from their birth galaxies during major mergers. This answers the question of how you form the most massive galaxies in the universe." That is because the most massive galaxies yet observed – weighing about 10 times the Milky Way – are found at the centres of nearby galaxy clusters, which are seen as they are now, 13.7 billion years after the big bang. Interestingly, the four merging galaxies are made of old, red stars, suggesting each had lost the gas necessary to form new stars long beforehand, within 5 billion years of the big bang. That agrees with other recent observations showing that galaxies within clusters – which typically contain hundreds of galaxies – contain fewer young stars than those lying outside clusters. The four newly discovered merging galaxies lie 5 billion light years away, meaning astronomers see them as they were 5 billion years ago!!!

Comet-like Tail of Star Mira!!

A glowing, comet-like tail has been discovered trailing behind a double star called Mira, a phenomenon never seen before. It may contain clues about the star's activity over the past 30,000 years.Mira, which means "wonderful" in Latin, is one of the best-studied star systems in the sky and lies 350 light years from Earth. One star in the pair, called Mira A, is a bloated, ageing red giant that sheds large amounts of gas and dust into space, while the other, Mira B, is a dense stellar corpse called a white dwarf.
Previous studies had shown that some of the material from Mira A's wind has collected into a disc – which could potentially form planets – around Mira B (see Dying star's wind creates planetary nursery).
Now astronomers led by Christopher Martin of Caltech in Pasadena, US, have discovered the long tail, which is visible only in far ultraviolet light. They happened upon it using NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite, which was surveying the sky at ultraviolet wavelengths.The tail extends 13 light years from Mira – if it were visible in the sky, it would span the width of four full Moons. It appears to trace the path of Mira's motion across the sky over the past 30,000 years, based on its size and Mira's speed, which has been previously measured.
Martin's team believes the tail is created as a result of Mira A's stellar wind – an outflow of gas and dust from the star – hitting ambient gas as it moves through space. Fast-moving electrons generated by the collision then strike hydrogen molecules in surrounding gas, producing ultraviolet light. This creates a glowing trail behind Mira as it travels through the galaxy at 130 kilometres per second. the tail could shed light on why some stars turn into white dwarfs and others explode as supernovae.stars such as Mira A, which start out with a few times the mass of the Sun, avoid this fate by shedding most of their mass in stellar winds to become placid white dwarfs

4 Suns in this SolarSystem!!

Here in our Solar System, we've only got one star: the Sun. That gives us nice predictable daily and annual cycles; night and day, the seasons, that sort of thing. Astronomers have found a newly forming extrasolar planetary system that has 4 stars. The discovery, made using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, revealed a dusty disk surround a pair of stars in the quadruple-star system HD 98800.The system itself is pretty complicated, so bear with me as I try to explain it. There are two pairs of binary stars; 2 + 2 = 4 stars in total. These two binary groupings are separated by 50 astronomical units (AU); approximately the distance between the Sun and Pluto. Around one of these binary pairs, astronomers discovered two belts of material.The first belt sits at approximately 1.5 to 2 AU (twice the distance from the Sun to the Earth), and seems to consist of fine grains of dust. The second belts is further out at approximately 5.9 AU and is probably made up of asteroids or comets.
The sunsets would be spectacular.