NASA's Stardust mission return capsule will land Sunday, Jan. 15, at
approximately  2:12 a.m. Pacific time

(3:12 a.m. Mountain time) on the Utah Test and Training Range.
Stardust is completing a 2.88 billion mile round-trip odyssey to
capture and return cometary and interstellar dust particles to Earth.

The spacecraft performs its last maneuver to put it on the correct
path to enter Earth's  atmosphere on Friday, Jan. 13, at 8:53 p.m.
Pacific time (9:53 p.m. Mountain time). The speed of the sample
return capsule as it enters Earth's atmosphere at 46,440 kilometers
per hour (28,860 miles per hour) will be the greatest of any human-
made object on record.  The previous record was set in May 1969 by
the returning Apollo 10 command module.

The capsule will release a parachute at approximately 32 kilometers
(105,000 feet) and descend to the salt flats. Weather permitting, it
will be recovered by helicopter teams and taken to a cleanroom at
the Michael Army Air Field, Dugway Proving Ground, for initial
processing.

Stardust launched on Feb. 7, 1999, and encountered comet Wild 2 on
Jan. 2, 2004. It flew less than 241 kilometers (150 miles) from the
comet's nucleus to capture tiny grains of dust. During the voyage,
the spacecraft captured bits of interstellar dust streaming into the
solar system from other parts of the galaxy. Scientists believe
these precious samples will help provide answers to fundamental
questions about comets and the origins of the
solar system.

Staytuned...you can watch live telecast on NASA's TV website.

Happy Sky Watching.

Ratnesh Pandit

Hello Planeteers
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted what may be comet dust
sprinkled around the white dwarf star G29-38, which died
approximately 500 million years ago.

The findings suggest the dead star, which most likely consumed its
inner planets, is still orbited by a ring of surviving comets and
possibly outer planets. This is the first observational evidence that
comets can outlive their suns.

"Astronomers have known for decades that stars are born, have an
extended middle age, and then wither away or explode. Spitzer is
helping us understand how planetary systems evolve in tandem with
their parent stars," said David Leisawitz, NASA's Spitzer program
scientist.

Astronomers believe white dwarfs are shrunken skeletons of stars that
were once similar to Earth's sun. As the stars aged over billions of
years, they grew brighter and eventually swelled in size to become
red giants. Millions of years later, the red giants shed their outer
atmospheres, leaving behind white dwarfs.

If any planets did orbit in these systems, the red giants would have
engulfed at least the inner ones. Only distant outer planets and an
orbiting icy outpost of comets would have survived.

"The dust seen by Spitzer around G29-38 was probably generated
relatively recently when one such outlying comet may have been
knocked into the inner region of the system and ripped into dust
shreds by the tidal forces of the star," said astronomer William
Reach of the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena, Calif.

Prior to the Spitzer findings, astronomers studying G29-38 noticed an
unusual and unknown source of infrared light. Spitzer, with its
powerful infrared spectrometer, was able to break this light apart,
revealing its molecular makeup. These data told astronomers the light
was coming from the same types of dusty minerals found in comets in
our solar system.

"We detected a large quantity of very small, dirty silicate grains,"
said astronomer Marc Kuchner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Md. "The size of these grains tells us they are probably
from comets and not other planetary bodies."

In our own solar system, comets reside in the cold outer fringes in
regions known as the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. Only when something
disturbs their orbits, such as another comet or an outer planet, do
they begin periodic journeys into the sun's warmer neighborhood.
However, these trips to the tropics often end in destruction. Comets
slowly disintegrate as they pass close to the sun, or they crash into
it. They also occasionally crash into planets, as comet Shoemaker-
Levy 9 did when it plunged into Jupiter.

Though the dust seen by Spitzer around the white dwarf is most likely
the remains of such a torn-up comet, there may be other explanations.
One possibility is that a second wave of planets formed long after
the death of the star, leaving a dusty construction zone.

Kuchner presented his findings today at the 207th meeting of the
American Astronomical Society in Washington. The data were also
published in the December 20, 2005, issue of the Astrophysical
Journal.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the
Spitzer Space Telescope mission for the agency's Science Mission
Directorate. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science
Center at Caltech. JPL is a division of Caltech.

For artist's concepts and graphics, visit
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2006-
04/release.shtml .

Happy Sky Watching.

Ratnesh Pandit

Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com

Hello Planeteers

Once again WelCome to AAC's Forum in the New Year 2006.
Europe launches Galileo satellite.A new era in satellite navigation
has begun with the launch of Giove-A.

I have to send you the following URL to see the details about this
mission.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4555298.stm#

Just click on this URL & enjoy the Video of  Giove-A Satellite launch.

Happy Sky Watching.

Ratnesh Pandit

Full name : Dr Mukund Vasantrao Baride
Address   : 105, tarang, Netaji SC Bose Colony, deopur, Dhule
424002,India
Bdate :14.6.56
Cell.  9226416581

--- In aac_dhule03@yahoogroups.com, "Captain Planet"
<ratnesh_pandit@y...> wrote:
>
> Hello Planeteers
>
> I am updating our group by collecting your personal details.So
> please,send me your details as I mentioned detailed below:
>
> 1. Full Name
> 2. Postal/Contact Address
> 3. Birth date
> 4. Phone Number/Cell Number
> 5. e-mail address(es)(preferable YAHOO mail) or
>    Alternate e-mail address.
> 6. Interest/Hobbies
> 7. Anything you want to add.
>
> Please send the details of the above to contact with each other as
> early as possible.
>
> Thanking You.
>
> Happy Sky Watching.
>
> Ratnesh Pandit
>

Full name : Dr Mukund Vasantrao Baride
Address   : 105, tarang, Netaji SC Bose Colony, deopur, Dhule
424002,India
Bdate :14.6.56
Cell.  9226416581

--- In aac_dhule03@yahoogroups.com, "Captain Planet"
<ratnesh_pandit@y...> wrote:
>
> Hello Planeteers
>
> I am updating our group by collecting your personal details.So
> please,send me your details as I mentioned detailed below:
>
> 1. Full Name
> 2. Postal/Contact Address
> 3. Birth date
> 4. Phone Number/Cell Number
> 5. e-mail address(es)(preferable YAHOO mail) or
>    Alternate e-mail address.
> 6. Interest/Hobbies
> 7. Anything you want to add.
>
> Please send the details of the above to contact with each other as
> early as possible.
>
> Thanking You.
>
> Happy Sky Watching.
>
> Ratnesh Pandit
>

Hello,

This email message is a notification to let you know that
a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the aac_dhule03
group.

   File        : /suryagrahan.zip
   Uploaded by : ratnesh_pandit <ratnesh_pandit@...>
   Description : Solar Eclipse

You can access this file at the URL:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aac_dhule03/files/suryagrahan.zip

To learn more about file sharing for your group, please visit:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/files

Regards,

ratnesh_pandit <ratnesh_pandit@...>

Wish you  all in the next year 2006 Good Health , Good appetiteIf you are single , wish you find your lover , and get married soon;If you are married, wish you love each other more, and have a smart little baby;If you are a man, wish you more handsome and strongerIf you are a girl, wish you more beautiful more consideratelyWish you happiness! Enjoy your life!And Keep in touch   
  
Happy New Year!

With Lov-

Ratnesh........

Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com

Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com

1. Planetary Safaris
With spacecraft at or on the way to the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, a
comet, an asteroid, Saturn, and the very edge of the solar system,
planetary discovery soared in 2005.
The high point in a year of highlights may be the landing of the
European spacecraft Huygens on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Huygens'
trip to Titan revealed a world where infrequent but drenching rains
of liquid methane shape the land and participate in a fascinating
hydrologic cycle.

2. A rich year for plants:
Several key molecular cues behind flowering and other plant mysteries
and surprises came to light in 2005. For example, plant molecular
biologists pinned down the identity of a signal that initiates the
seasonal development of flowers. Other research focused on a gene
involved in stimulating flowering, and another study highlighted a
surprising cache of RNA.

3. The nature of neutron stars:
In 2005, new instruments yielded vivid insights into the most violent
behaviors of neutron stars. A short, intense pulse of radiation from
near the centre of the Milky Way, recorded on 27 December 2004, may
be the result of a short gamma ray burst - a rapid merger of two
ancient neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole.

4. Brain wiring and disease:
Several studies in 2005 suggest that diseases like schizophrenia,
Tourette syndrome, and dyslexia are rooted in `faulty wiring' of the
brain's neural circuitry during development in the womb.

5. Where did Earth come from?
This year, researchers took another look at Earth rocks and
meteorites that resemble the starting material of the solar system
and found that their atoms were significantly different. So where did
Earth get its building blocks?
Some scientists now say early Earth materials come from a different
part of the solar system, while others say parts of early Earth are
just sunk deep in the planet, hidden from view.

6. Key protein's close-up:
The most detailed molecular portrait to date of a voltage-gated
potassium channel was unveiled in 2005. These channels, gatekeeper
proteins that usher potassium ions in and out of cells, are as key to
nerve and muscle functioning as transistors are to computers.

7. Changing climate of climate change?
In 2005, evidence linking humans to global warming continued to
accumulate and U.S. politicians began to take notice.
From the warming of deep ocean waters and increased frequencies of
the most intense tropical cyclones to continued reductions in ice
cover in the Arctic Ocean and altered bird migratory patterns,
scientific evidence for climate change built up in 2005 and non-
scientists seem to have listened.

8. Cell Signaling steps up:
Dynamic views of how cells respond to the chemical and environmental
signals all around them took hold in 2005 thanks to efforts to track
multiple inputs and outputs of cell signaling networks
simultaneously.
For example, researchers created a model of nearly 8,000 chemical
signals involved in a network leading to programmed cell death.

9. ITER lands in France:
The struggle over the location of the world's first fusion reactor
has ended — the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
(ITER) will be built at Cadarache in southern France and not in
Rokkasho, Japan. One aim of ITER is to generate fusion-powered
electricity by recreating the power of the sun on Earth.

10. Areas to watch in 2006:
According to Science's predictions for hot fields include drug and
vaccine development for avian flu, RNA-interference in humans, high-
temperature superconductors, the microbial family tree, detection of
the merging of two neutron stars and ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays.

Happy Sky Watching.

Ratnesh Pandit

6: First quarter moon
14: Full moon
22: Last quarter moon
29: New moon
Planet watch
Mercury is in the southeast about an hour before sunrise, but difficult to spot, as it is low in the sky.
Venus is low but visible in the southwest after sunset at the beginning of the month, but rapidly moves into the dawn skies after Jan. 14. It rises about two hours before the sun by the end of the month.
Mars is found high in the southeast at dusk. It will continue to be an evening planet for several months, but appears to shrink in size to telescope viewers. During the month, Mars moves eastward through the constellation Aries the Ram and into Taurus the Bull.
Jupiter rises in the southeast after midnight. Telescope viewing is best in the early hours around dawn.
Saturn is visible in the eastern sky in the early evening. It lies closest to Earth on Jan. 27 and is found in the constellation Cancer the Crab. Binoculars allow viewers to spot both Saturn and the Beehive Star Cluster in the same field of view. The stunning rings are tilted nicely for viewing with a telescope.
The moon
At dusk on Sunday and again at dawn on Jan. 27, Venus is near a crescent moon. The waxing gibbous moon shines close to Mars on the evening of Jan. 8, and observers will see one star after another of the Pleiades star cluster disappear as the moon passes in front of these stars on the evening of Jan. 9. A full moon is near Saturn on Jan. 15; Jupiter joins a waning crescent moon on Jan. 23.
Meteor shower
The quadrantid meteor shower occurs Sunday through Jan. 5, with the peak coming in the early hours of Tuesday. Find a dark sky area, away from the light of the city, dress warmly and watch as dawn approaches.

Happy Sky Watching.
Ratnesh Pandit

The Quadrantid meteor shower will put on its best show in the early
morning of January 3. Observers who escape city lights and clouds can
expect to see 100 meteors per hour.

Quadrantid meteors strike Earth's upper atmosphere at 90,000 mph.
Dust-size particles are incinerated, which creates a column of
incandescent gas we see as a meteor.

The shower's radiant — the point from which all its meteors seem to
originate — lies in the constellation Boötes the Herdsman. This
region once belonged to the now extinct constellation Quadrans
Muralis the Mural Quadrant, hence the shower's name.

Sharp-eyed observers can see meteors from this shower between January
1 and 5, but the peak on the 3rd is sharp — the numbers are low even
a day away from maximum. This year, the Moon will pose no problem,
setting before 9 P.M. local time.

An asteroid comes into view
Observers who brave winter's chill also have the opportunity to see
the asteroid Vesta without optical aid. Vesta reaches opposition
(opposite the Sun in our sky) January 5. Around this date, Vesta lies
in Gemini the Twins and glows at magnitude 6.2 — an easy target for
binoculars from the suburbs and within range of the naked eye from a
dark observing site.

With a diameter of about 320 miles, Vesta ranks third largest for
asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Vesta's
reflective surface makes it the brightest asteroid.

To find it, point your binoculars about one-third of the way from
Delta to Epsilon Geminorum. The second-brightest point you'll see is
Vesta. Once you're sure of its position through binoculars, try
locating it without optical aid. To verify that you've found Vesta,
make a quick sketch of the area and check it again in a day or two.

I am giving here a sky map for Quandrantids Meteor Shower.Just Check
it out in the "PHOTOS" Column.

Happy Sky Watching.

Ratnesh Pandit

As the winter Sun sets in the southwest, Mars glimmers high in the
southeast. You'll find it as a bright, ruddy object west of the
Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, star cluster (M45). During January, Mars
moves eastward relative to the background stars through the
constellation Aries, ending the month just 8° shy of the Pleiades. On
January 8, a waxing gibbous Moon stands beside Mars, drawing
attention to the Red Planet.

Although Mars will remain in the evening sky for many months, its
diminishing size will reduce its appeal as a telescopic target after
this month. On January 1, the planet has a respectable 12" apparent
diameter and shines at magnitude -0.6. Telescopes with apertures of 6
inches or more will capture plenty of surface features. For example,
in the early evening (8 p.m. EST) of January 1, Mars' gibbous disk
displays Meridiani Sinus prominently. At the same time January 10,
Syrtis Major - the planet's most conspicuous dark feature - lies at
the center of the martian disk.

Happy Sky Watching.

Ratnesh Pandit

Summary - (Dec 27, 2005) A team of Italian astronomers have
discovered that a pulsar racing through the Milky Way has a comet-
like trail blazing behind it. The object is called Geminga, and it
was previously found to have twin jets of material blasting from its
poles. This new, longer tail, was uncovered by studying data
archived by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Geminga is only 500
light-years away from Earth, and moving quickly across our field of
view giving astronomers a unique opportunity to study such an exotic
object.
Full Story -

A team led by Dr. Patrizia Caraveo of the Italian National Institute
for Astrophysics (INAF) in Milan discovered this cometary trail with
data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory Archive. The discovery
follows the team's discovery in 2003 using ESA's XMM-Newton of
Geminga's twin X-ray tails stretching for billions of chilometers.

Together, these observations provide unique insight into the
contents and density of the interstellar "ocean" Geminga is plowing
through, as well as the physics of Geminga itself. Not only is
Geminga close, only about 500 light years from Earth, it is cutting
across our line of sight, offering a spectacular view of a pulsar in
motion.

"Geminga is the only isolated pulsar we know of showing both a small
comet-like trail and a larger tail structure," said Dr. Andrea De
Luca of INAF's Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica,
lead author on an article about this discovery in Astronomy and
Astrophysics. "This jettison from Geminga's journey through
interstellar space provides unprecedented information about the
physics of pulsars."

A pulsar is a type of rapidly spinning neutron star that emits
steady pulses of radiation with each rotation, funnelled along
strong magnetic field lines, much like a lighthouse beam sweeping
across space. A neutron star is the core remains of an exploded star
once at least eight times as massive as the sun.

These dense stars, only about 20 kilometers across, still contain
roughly the mass of the sun. Neutron stars contain the densest
material known. Like many neutron stars, Geminga got a "kick" from
the explosion that created it and has been flying through space like
a cannonball ever since.

De Luca said that Geminga's complex phenomenology of tails and a
trail must be from high-energy electrons escaping the pulsar
magnetosphere following paths clearly driven by the pulsar�s
motion in the interstellar medium.

Most pulsars emit radio waves. Yet Geminga is "radio quiet" and was
discovered 30 years ago as a unique "gamma-ray only" source (only
later was Geminga seen in the X-ray and optical light wavebands).
Geminga generates gamma rays by accelerating electrons and
positrons, a type of antimatter, to high speeds as it spins like a
dynamo four times per second.

"Astronomers have known that only a fraction of these accelerated
particles produce gamma rays, and they have wondered what happens to
the remaining ones," said Caraveo, a co-author on the Astronomy &
Astrophysics article. "Thanks to the combined capabilities of
Chandra and XMM-Newton, we now know that such particles can escape.
Once they reach the shock front, created by the supersonic motion of
the star, the particles lose their energy radiating X-rays."

Meanwhile, an equal number of particles (with a different electric
charge) should move in the opposite direction, aiming back at the
star. Indeed, when they hit the star's crust they create tiny
hotspots, which have been detected through their varying X-ray
emission.

The next generation of high-energy gamma-ray instruments - namely,
the planned Italian Space Agency's AGILE mission and NASA's GLAST
mission - will explore the connection between the X-ray and gamma
ray behaviour of pulsars to provide clues to the nature of unknown
gamma-ray sources, according to Prof. Giovanni Bignami, a co-author
and director of the Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements (CESR)
in Toulouse, France. Of the 271 higher-energy gamma-ray objects
detected by a NASA telescope called EGRET, 170 remained unidentified
in other wavebands. These unidentified objects could be "gamma-ray
pulsars" like Geminga, whose optical and X-ray light might be
visible only because of its nearness to Earth.

Only about a dozen other radio-quiet isolated neutron stars are
known, and Geminga is the only one with tails and trails and copious
gamma-ray emission. Bignami named Geminga for "Gemini gamma-ray
source" in 1973. In his local Milan dialect, the name is a pun
on "ghe minga," which means "it is not there." Indeed, Geminga was
unidentified in other wavelengths until 1993, twenty years after its
discovery.

Summary - (Dec 27, 2005) A planet forming disk located about 375
light-years from Earth has been found to contain some of the
building blocks of life: acetylene and hydrogen cyanide. The
chemicals were discovered around "IRS 46" using NASA's infrared
Spitzer Space Telescope. When mixed with water in a laboratory,
these chemicals create a soup of organic compounds, including amino
acids and a DNA base called adenine.
Full Story -

Astronomers at W. M. Keck Observatory have found � for the first
time � some of the basic compounds necessary to build organic
molecules and one of the bases found in DNA within the inner regions
of a planet-forming disk. The object, known as "IRS 46," is located
in the Milky Way galaxy, about 375 light years from Earth, in the
constellation Ophiuchus. The results will be published in an
upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"We see prebiotic organic molecules in comets and the gas giant
planets in our own solar system and wonder, where did these
chemicals come from?" said Dr. Marc Kassis, support astronomer at
the W. M. Keck Observatory. "The Spitzer Space Telescope is letting
us study these young stellar objects in new and revealing ways,
giving us exciting clues about where life may form in the universe."

The two organic compounds found -- acetylene and hydrogen cyanide --
are commonly found in our own solar system, such as the atmospheres
of the giant gas planets, the icy surfaces of comets, and the
atmosphere of Saturn�s largest moon, Titan. Another carbon-
containing species detected, carbon dioxide, is widespread in the
atmospheres of Venus, the Earth, and Mars.

"If you add hydrogen cyanide, acetylene and water together in a test
tube, and give them an appropriate surface on which to be
concentrated and react, you'll get a slew of organic compounds
including amino acids and a DNA purine base called adenine," said
Keck Astronomer Dr. Geoffrey Blake, of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena and co-author of the paper. "Now, we can
detect these same molecules in the planet zone of a star hundreds of
light-years away."

The presence of gas-rich disks around young stars is well known, but
little is understood about the chemical structure inside. The
discovery of acetylene and hydrogen cyanide in one of these disks
will help astronomers better understand these disks, where future
solar systems may someday form and possibly result in life.

"Spitzer found something very unique -- a young protostar with a
dusty disk that, when viewed from Earth, appears tilted on the sky,
similar to how some galaxies appear," Kassis explained. "This
viewing angle let the team use Keck-NIRSPEC data to study the inner
regions of the disk. The results told the team exactly how the disk
was moving and suggest there may be a stellar wind coming from the
inner region. Keck also helped measure the high temperatures and the
particle concentration in the disk."

The dust and gas surrounding a young star blocks visible light, but
lets longer wavelengths, such as infrared light, pass through.
Astronomers can find out what this gas and dust is made of by
separating the light into its component wavelengths, or colors.

Since 2003, the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope has allowed astronomers
to use this technique to study molecular compounds in protoplanetary
disks of young stellar objects. The Spitzer "c2d legacy program" has
looked at more than 100 sources in five nearby star-forming regions
and only one � IRS 46 � showed clear evidence of containing the
organic compounds in the warm regions close to the star where
terrestrial planets are most likely to form.

"This infant system might look a lot like ours did billions of years
ago, before life arose on Earth," said Fred Lahuis of Leiden
Observatory in the Netherlands and the SRON Netherlands Institute
for Space Research. Lahuis is the lead author of the paper
describing the results.

While the precise events leading up to self-replicating nucleic
acids remains unclear, the molecules of acetylene (C2H2) and
hydrogen cyanide (HCN) have been shown to produce the base compounds
necessary to build RNA and DNA. The team found that the abundance of
hydrogen cyanide (HCN) was nearly 10,000 times higher than that
found in cold interstellar gas from which stars and planets are born.

Models of early solar-system chemistry have historically centered on
data from our own primitive solar system, but now discoveries of
protoplanetary disks have opened the field to solar systems other
than our own. Theoretical models have suggested that large
quantities of complex organic molecules would be present in the
inner-most regions of these disks, but until now, no observational
tests have been possible.

To help determine where, exactly, the organic-rich gas resides in
IRS 46, the team also used submillimeter data from the James Clerk
Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea. The faint signals observed again
suggest that the material originates from the inner disk, perhaps no
more 10 astronomical units from the parent star, similar in distance
to where Saturn orbits the Sun in our own solar system. However,
much additional work remains to be done to know this for certain.

"The gases are very warm, close to or somewhat above the boiling
point of water on Earth," said Dr. Adwin Boogert, also of
Caltech. "These high temperatures helped to pinpoint the location of
the gases in the disk."

The Keck-NIRSPEC results point to the presence of a stellar wind
emerging from the inner region of the disk orbiting IRS 46. The wind
may eventually blow away the dusty debris in the disk, perhaps
revealing the presence of rocky, Earth-like planets in several
million years.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Spitzer Space Telescope
mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science
operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech.
JPL is a division of Caltech.

I have given one photo details in "PHOTO" section.Please check it
out from there.

Happy Sky Watching.

Ratnesh Pandit

Hello Planeteers

I am updating our group by collecting your personal details.So
please,send me your details as I mentioned detailed below:

1. Full Name
2. Postal/Contact Address
3. Birth date
4. Phone Number/Cell Number
5. e-mail address(es)(preferable YAHOO mail) or
    Alternate e-mail address.
6. Interest/Hobbies
7. Anything you want to add.

Please send the details of the above to contact with each other as
early as possible.

Thanking You.

Happy Sky Watching.

Ratnesh Pandit

Dec. 26, 2005
Courtesy Ohio State University

Scientists have thought of a new way to solve an astronomical
mystery. Their plan relies on a network of amateur stargazers and a
very elusive subatomic particle.

To understand what happens inside exploding stars, or supernovae,
scientists need to study particles called neutrinos, said John
Beacom, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Ohio State
University in Columbus, Ohio.


Neutrinos are formed in the nuclear reactions that make stars like
our sun shine. Exploding stars overflow with the particles, and
flood the universe with them.

Neutrinos should be everywhere, but they're hard to detect – so hard
that even though countless neutrinos burrow through our planet every
second, scientists only capture a few every day.

Scientists know that most neutrinos they do detect probably come
from our own sun, from nuclear power plants, or from cosmic
radiation hitting our atmosphere. There has been no way to tell
whether a particular neutrino came from elsewhere, according to
Beacom.

Until now. Beacom and his team have calculated that each year, one
or two of the neutrinos detected on Earth can probably be matched to
the exploding star that made them. They can thus be used to probe
the physics of that blast.

The discovery comes at a special time, Beacom said. The method will
fully exploit the capabilities of the next generation of neutrino
detectors, which are now being planned. The finding also comes as a
growing number of amateur astronomers are capable of discovering
supernovae. They, too, can contribute to the neutrino research, by
scanning the sky for supernovae.

"Even with all our modern telescopes, the professionals can't look
at the whole sky at once," Beacom said. "But the amateurs are
everywhere.... they can see these nearby supernovae, which are very
bright – often brighter than their host galaxies."

For a study appearing in a recent issue of the research journal
Physical Review Letters, Beacom and his coauthors developed a test
for finding supernova neutrinos: If a detector on Earth registers
two of the particles within ten seconds, they probably came from a
supernova in a nearby galaxy.

Also, if someone spots a supernova, scientists at neutrino detectors
can look back through their records to see if they captured a
neutrino around that time.

Given that a few supernovae occur in nearby galaxies every year, and
given the sensitivity of neutrino detectors on Earth, the physicists
have determined that at least one of those scenarios – the two-in-
ten-seconds event or the identification of a supernova neutrino
after the fact – could happen about once a year.

The professionals need amateur astronomers to help spot new
supernovae quickly, Beacom added. This way, scientists can promptly
match captured neutrinos with the exploding stars that made them.
However, amateurs would need telescopes somewhat larger than the
average backyard telescopes, he added. But more and more amateurs
these days are getting telescopes of the required size.

Co-author Hasan Yüksel, a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State,
explained that many of today's so-called amateur astronomers aren't
really so amateur. "You can think of them more as `professional
amateurs,'" he said.

These are the semi-pro players of the hobby set – skilled folks who
build custom telescopes, Yüksel explained. They have day jobs, but
they scan the skies at night, and share their findings with other
amateurs over the Internet. Often, they have ties to professional
astronomers and know of major discoveries as soon as the
professionals do.

Yüksel also pointed out that since 2002, at least nine supernovae
were identified in galaxies within about 30 million light years of
our Milky Way, and amateurs discovered more than half of those. A
light year is the distance light travels in a year.

But the last supernova that astronomers were able to match with
neutrinos was an event designated 1987A, sighted in that year in a
close companion galaxy to our Milky Way. Because detectors on Earth
captured 20 neutrinos in only a few seconds during that event,
astronomers knew for sure that they came from 1987A, Beacom said.

But since then the neutrino matchings have been "a big fat zero," he
said. "What if using this technique, we could have been identifying
one additional supernova neutrino per year? By now, we would have
collected a sample as big as that burst in 1987." With the much
bigger neutrino detectors being devised, and the large number of
supernovae being spotted these days, it could be done, he added.

Galaxies up to 200 times farther away than the one that spawned
Supernova 1987A are still near by astronomical standards, he noted.
Amateurs would be able to spot supernovae in them. Those galaxies
may give us only one or two neutrinos per year, but that's still
more than scientists would be able to study otherwise.

"Since a supernova expends 99 percent of its energy in neutrinos,
those neutrinos tell the story of how the explosion works, and
therefore we have to find them," he added.

One sign that scientists don't understand supernovae yet, said
Shin'ichiro Ando, a visiting scholar at Ohio State, is that computer
simulations of the events always go wrong. The explosion starts, and
then it fizzles. "If we can't make a supernova blow up on the
computer, that means we're missing something. We need clues. We need
to find those neutrinos."

Beacom envisions that scientists at neutrino detectors could sound
an alarm whenever they detect two particles in ten seconds. Since
supernovae emit neutrinos at the very start of the explosion, the
particles would reach Earth hours before the supernovae would be
visible in telescopes, and the announcement would amount to a
supernova forecast.

Alternatively, when astronomers spot a nearby supernova, they could
ask the scientists at the detectors to look back through their data
from previous hours to find any particle events.

At Beacom's suggestion, he said, scientists working at the Japanese
neutrino detector Super-Kamiokande will search their records for
events attributable to nearby supernovae in past years.

"While this detector is smaller than those envisioned for the
future, it's been in operation for a decade or two, so it actually
stands a good chance of having detected the first neutrino from an
identified supernova beyond the Milky Way and its closest
companions," Beacom said.

Happy Sky Watching.

Ratnesh Pandit

NASA scientists have observed an explosion on the moon. The blast,
equal in energy to about 70 kg of TNT, occurred near the edge of Mare
Imbrium (the Sea of Rains) on Nov. 7, 2005, when a 12-centimeter-wide
meteoroid slammed into the ground traveling 27 km/s.

"What a surprise," says Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC)
researcher Rob Suggs, who recorded the impact's flash. He and
colleague Wes Swift were testing a new telescope and video camera
they assembled to monitor the moon for meteor strikes. On their first
night out, "we caught one," says Suggs.

The object that hit the moon was "probably a Taurid," says MSFC
meteor expert Bill Cooke. In other words, it was part of the same
meteor shower that peppered Earth with fireballs in late October and
early November 2005. (See "Fireball Sightings" from Science@NASA.)

The moon was peppered, too, but unlike Earth, the moon has no
atmosphere to intercept meteoroids and turn them into harmless
streaks of light. On the moon, meteoroids hit the ground--and
explode.


"The flash we saw," says Suggs, "was about as bright as a 7th
magnitude star." That's two and a half times dimmer than the faintest
star a person can see with their unaided eye, but it was an easy
catch for the group's 10-inch telescope.

Cooke estimates that the impact gouged a crater in the moon's
surface "about 3 meters wide and 0.4 meters deep." As moon craters
go, that's small. "Even the Hubble Space Telescope couldn't see it,"
notes Cooke. The moon is 384,400 km away. At that distance, the
smallest things Hubble can distinguish are about 60 meters wide.

This isn't the first time meteoroids have been seen hitting the moon.
During the Leonid meteor storms of 1999 and 2001, amateur and
professional astronomers witnessed at least half-a-dozen flashes
ranging in brightness from 7th to 3rd magnitude. Many of the
explosions were photographed simultaneously by widely separated
observers.

Since the Leonids of 2001, astronomers have not spent much time
hunting for lunar meteors. "It's gone out of fashion," says Suggs.
But with NASA planning to return to the moon by 2018, he says, it's
time to start watching again.

There are many questions that need answering: "How often do big
meteoroids strike the moon? Does this happen only during meteor
showers like the Leonids and Taurids? Or can we expect strikes
throughout the year from 'sporadic meteors?'" asks Suggs. Explorers
on the moon are going to want to know.

"The chance of an astronaut being directly hit by a big meteoroid is
miniscule," says Cooke. Although, he allows, the odds are not well
known "because we haven't done enough observing to gather the data we
need to calculate the odds." Furthermore, while the danger of a
direct hit is almost nil for an individual astronaut, it might add up
to something appreciable for an entire lunar outpost.

Of greater concern, believes Suggs, is the sprayâ€""the secondary
meteoroids produced by the blast." No one knows how far the spray
reaches and exactly what form it takes.

Also, ground-shaking impacts could kick up moondust, possibly over a
wide area. Moondust is electrostatically charged and notoriously
clingy. Even a small amount of moondust can be a great nuisance: it
gets into spacesuit joints and seals, clings to faceplates, and even
makes the air smell when it is tramped indoors by moonwalkers. Could
meteoroid impacts be a source of lunar "dust storms?" Another
question for the future....

Suggs and his team plan to make more observations. "We're
contemplating a long-term monitoring program active not only during
major meteor showers, but also at times in between. We need to
develop software to find these flashes automatically," he
continues. "Staring at 4 hours of tape to find a split-second flash
can get boring; this is a job for a computer."

With improvements, their system might catch lots of lunar meteors.
Says Suggs, "I'm ready for more surprises."

I have attached one photo here.Just see it.

Happy Sky Watching.

Ratnesh Pandit

Summary - (Dec 21, 2005) NASA's Grace Earth observation satellite has
created the first, comprehensive survey of the entire Greenland ice
sheet. The spacecraft found that the volume of ice is decreasing by
162 cubic kilometres per year (39 cubic miles), which is higher than
all previously published estimates. This ice melt is contributing 0.4
millimeters (.016 inches) per year to global sea level rise. Grace
was also able to measure detailed changes in the surface of the sea
floor after the Sumatran earthquake and resulting tsunami that
happened almost a year ago.
Full Story -
Decreasing levels of ice thickness from Greenland. Image credit:
NASA/JPL. Click to enlarge.
In the first direct, comprehensive mass survey of the entire
Greenland ice sheet, scientists using data from the NASA/German
Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) have
measured a significant decrease in the mass of the Greenland ice cap.
Grace is a satellite mission that measures movement in Earth's mass.

In an update to findings published in the journal Geophysical
Research Letters, a team led by Dr. Isabella Velicogna of the
University of Colorado, Boulder, found that Greenland's ice sheet
decreased by 162 (plus or minus 22) cubic kilometers a year between
2002 and 2005. This is higher than all previously published
estimates, and it represents a change of about 0.4 millimeters (.016
inches) per year to global sea level rise.

"Greenland hosts the largest reservoir of freshwater in the northern
hemisphere, and any substantial changes in the mass of its ice sheet
will affect global sea level, ocean circulation and climate," said
Velicogna. "These results demonstrate Grace's ability to measure
monthly mass changes for an entire ice sheet – a breakthrough in our
ability to monitor such changes."

Other recent Grace-related research includes measurements of seasonal
changes in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, Earth's strongest ocean
current system and a very significant force in global climate change.
The Grace science team borrowed techniques from meteorologists who
use atmospheric pressure to estimate winds. The team used Grace to
estimate seasonal differences in ocean bottom pressure in order to
estimate the intensity of the deep currents that move dense, cold
water away from the Antarctic. This is the first study of seasonal
variability along the full length of the Antarctic Circumpolar
Current, which links the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Dr. Victor Zlotnicki, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., called the technique a first step in
global satellite monitoring of deep ocean circulation, which moves
heat and salt between ocean basins. This exchange of heat and salt
links sea ice, sea surface temperature and other polar ocean
properties with weather and climate-related phenomena such as El
Ninos. Some scientific studies indicate that deep ocean circulation
plays a significant role in global climate change.

The identical twin Grace satellites track minute changes in Earth's
gravity field resulting from regional changes in Earth's mass. Masses
of ice, air, water and solid Earth can be moved by weather patterns,
seasonal change, climate change and even tectonic events, such as
this past December's Sumatra earthquake. To track these changes,
Grace measures micron-scale changes in the 220-kilometer (137-mile)
separation between the two satellites, which fly in formation. To
limit degradation of Grace's satellite antennas due to atomic oxygen
exposure and thereby preserve mission life, a series of maneuvers was
performed earlier this month to swap the satellites' relative
positions in orbit.

In a demonstration of the satellites' sensitivity to minute changes
in Earth's mass, the Grace science team reported that the satellites
were able to measure the deformation of the Earth's crust caused by
the December 2004 Sumatra earthquake. That quake changed Earth's
gravity by one part in a billion.

Dr. Byron Tapley, Grace principal investigator at the University of
Texas at Austin, said that the detection of the Sumatra earthquake
gravity signal illustrates Grace's ability to measure changes on and
within Earth's surface. "Grace's measurements will add a global
perspective to studies of large earthquakes and their impacts," said
Tapley.

Grace is managed for NASA by JPL. The University of Texas Center for
Space Research has overall mission responsibility.
GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, or GFZ, Potsdam, Germany, is
responsible for German mission elements. Science data processing,
distribution, archiving and product verification are managed jointly
by JPL, the University of Texas and GFZ.

Imagery related to these latest Grace findings may be viewed at:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/grace-images-
20051220.html .

Happy Sky Watching.
Ratnesh Pandit

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will give the solar system's ninth planet the up-close-and-personal treatment in January 2006. This first-ever mission to Pluto will explore the distant planet, its moon Charon, and the Kuiper Belt. The New Horizons spacecraft will then hurtle out into deep space on a one-way journey into the cosmos beyond the Kuiper Belt.Why is the New Horizons mission so important to planetary scientists? "Exploring Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is like conducting an archeological dig into the history of the outer solar system, a place where we can peek into the ancient era of planetary formation," says Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

 The mission:The 1,050-pound (476 kilograms), piano-size New Horizons spacecraft will use Jupiter's gravity to slingshot toward the Pluto-Charon system, where it will arrive in mid-2015. For 5 months, New Horizons will study the system's global geology and geomorphology, map both worlds' surface features, compositions, and temperatures, and try to identify their atmospheric structures and compositions. Also on the agenda is an examination of two smaller moons (S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2) discovered in 2005 by a Hubble Space Telescope team.

The spacecraft's science payload includes infrared and ultraviolet imaging spectrometers, two particle spectrometers, a multicolor camera, a long-range telescopic camera, a space-dust detector, and a radio experiment.

An unusual planet:Pluto is neither a terrestrial planet like Earth nor a gaseous giant planet like Jupiter. It lies at an average distance of 39.5 AU (1 AU is the average Earth-Sun distance) — a distance so great not even the Hubble Space Telescope can resolve surface features. Pluto is a small frozen world known as an "ice dwarf." While Pluto's composition remains unknown, its density suggests a combination of 70-percent rock and 30-percent water ice. Bright areas on Pluto's surface indicate the presence of frozen nitrogen, methane, ethane, and carbon monoxide. Dark surface areas are also present, but their makeup is unknown. Surface temperature on the "ice dwarf" ranges between –391° and –346° F (–235 to –210 C).

Pluto's mass, about 0.0021 that of Earth, and low surface pressure make it likely the planet can't hold much of an atmosphere; however, an ethereal, gaseous mixture of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide may be present above its surface while it is closest to the Sun (perihelion). These gases would probably be frozen throughout much of Pluto's orbit. New Horizons will attempt to measure the escape rate of Pluto's atmosphere directly, which may tell us more about how Earth's atmosphere evolved.

Scientists disagree about Pluto's classification as a planet. Some believe it should be labeled an asteroid, a comet, or a large Kuiper Belt object. Its orbit is inclined 17° above the ecliptic plane and is highly eccentric, or more elliptical than the other planets' orbits. The 2005 discovery of Sedna and other large Kuiper Belt objects poured renewed energy into this ongoing debate.

Satellite or partner?:Discovered by Jim Christy in 1978, Pluto's satellite Charon has the distinction of having the largest known satellite-to-primary-planet ratio in the solar system. Charon is nearly half the size of Pluto, which results in some ambiguity regarding whether it should be classified as Pluto's satellite or the smaller member of a binary planet.

Whatever its classification, Charon is in synchronous orbit with Pluto, which means the moon's orbital period is the same as its rotational period. Thus, the same side of Charon faces Pluto in the same way as one side of the Moon always faces Earth.

Mysterious region no more:The Kuiper Belt is a disk-shaped orbital region beyond Neptune at about 30 to 50 AU from the Sun. It's home to a bevy of small objects, possibly planetary debris left over from the solar system's formation.

New Horizons is due to arrive at the Kuiper Belt and encounter its objects by 2016. Cataloging these objects is of the utmost importance as astronomers think they're the main source of comets that occasionally impact Earth, sometimes with catastrophic results. Additionally, the mission will study organic molecules (those containing carbon) in an effort to learn more about the evolution of life on Earth.

NASA's New Horizons mission to the Pluto-Charon system is set to launch in mid-January 2006.

Happy Sky Watching.

Ratnesh Pandit

Summary - (Dec 20, 2005) NASA is in the final stage of preparations
for the launch of its New Horizons spacecraft, destined to lift off
for Pluto in January 2006. If all goes well, New Horizons will blast
off January 17, 2006 atop an Atlas V rocket; the launch window
extends until February 14, 2006. The spacecraft will make a gravity
slingshot past Jupiter in 2007, and arrive at Pluto as early as mid-
2015.

Full Story -
NASA is preparing to launch the first spacecraft to distant Pluto and
its moon Charon. The January 2006 launch of New Horizons will
complete the initial reconnaissance of the planets in the solar
system.

"New Horizons will study a unique world, and we can only imagine what
we may learn. This is a prime example of scientific missions that
complement the Vision for Space Exploration," said Mary Cleave,
associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

The Vision for Space Exploration is a bold new course into the
cosmos, a journey that will return the space shuttle safely to
flight, complete the construction of the International Space Station,
take humans back to the moon and eventually to Mars and beyond.

The National Academy of Sciences has ranked the exploration of Pluto-
Charon and the Kuiper Belt among the highest priorities for space
exploration, citing the fundamental scientific importance of these
bodies to advancing understanding of our solar system.

Different than the inner, rocky planets (like Earth) or the outer gas
giants, Pluto is a different type of planet known as an "ice dwarf,"
commonly found in the Kuiper Belt region billions of miles from the
sun.

"Exploring Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is like conducting an
archeological dig into the history of the outer solar system, a place
where we can peek into the ancient era of planetary formation," said
Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, Southwest Research
Institute Department of Space Studies, Boulder, Colo.

Designed and built at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory, Laurel, Md., pending launch approval, New Horizons is set
to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., no earlier
than Jan. 17, 2006. The launch window extends until Feb. 14, 2006.

The compact, 1,050-pound piano-sized probe will launch aboard an
Atlas V expendable launch vehicle, followed by a boost from a kick-
stage solid propellant motor. New Horizons will be the fastest
spacecraft ever launched, reaching lunar orbit distance in just nine
hours and passing Jupiter 13 months later.

Launch before Feb. 3 allows New Horizons to fly past Jupiter in early
2007 and use the planet's gravity as a slingshot toward Pluto. The
Jupiter flyby trims the trip to Pluto by five years and provides
opportunities to test the spacecraft's instruments and flyby
capabilities on the Jupiter system.

The New Horizons science payload, developed under direction of
Southwest Research Institute, includes imaging infrared and
ultraviolet spectrometers, a multi-color camera, a long-range
telescopic camera, two particle spectrometers, a space-dust detector
and a radio science experiment. The dust counter was designed and
built by students at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Depending on its launch date, New Horizons could reach the Pluto
system as early as mid-2015, conducting a five-month-long study
possible only from the close-up vantage of a spacecraft. It will
characterize the global geology and geomorphology of Pluto and
Charon, map their surface compositions and temperatures, and examine
Pluto's atmospheric composition and structure. New Horizons also will
study the small moons recently discovered in the Pluto system.

The spacecraft will "sleep" in electronic hibernation for much of the
cruise to Pluto. Operators will turn off all but the most critical
electronic systems and monitor the spacecraft once a year to check
out critical systems, calibrate instruments and perform course
corrections, if necessary.

The spacecraft will send back a beacon signal each week to give
operators an instant read on spacecraft health. The entire
spacecraft, drawing electricity from a single radioisotope
thermoelectric generator, operates on less power than a pair of 100-
watt household light bulbs.

Please refer for further details about New Horizons mission on the
Web,

visit: http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons

Happy Sky Watching.
Ratnesh Pandit

One of the year's best meteor showers - but ironically one of the
least observed - makes its appearance in early January. The
Quadrantid meteor shower remains active from January 1 to 5, peaking
on the 3rd. Two factors conspire against the Quadrantids: They come
at the coldest and cloudiest time of year, and the number of meteors
drops off dramatically from a sharp peak, so observing more than a
day away yields few sightings.

Viewing conditions should be good this year, with the waxing crescent
Moon setting before 9 p.m. local time. Earth crosses the thickest
part of the shower's stream around noon EST on the 3rd, so observers
should try viewing early that morning (the night of January 2/3). As
always, find a spot far from artificial lights if you want the best
view.

The shower's radiant lies in Boötes the Herdsman. This region used to
belong to the now-defunct constellation Quadrans Muralis, the
shower's eponym. The radiant passes nearly overhead as dawn
approaches, so lucky observers might see rates approach 100 meteors
per hour.

Quadrantid meteors hit Earth's atmosphere at 25 miles per second. The
incinerated dust particles apparently derive from debris ejected by
the near-Earth asteroid 2003 EH1.

Just see sky map for this event in the "PHOTOS" column.

Happy Sky Watching.
Ratnesh Pandit

White dwarfs are important to theories of both stellar and
cosmological evolution. New results published in the Monthly Notices
of the Royal Astronomical Society provide for the first time an
accurate measurement of the weight of the nearest white dwarf, Sirius
B, companion of the brightest star in the sky. It turns out that
Sirius's companion, despite being smaller than the Earth, has a mass
that is 98% that of our own Sun.


For astronomers, it's always been a source of frustration that the
nearest white-dwarf star is buried in the glow of the brightest star
in the nighttime sky. This burned-out stellar remnant is a faint
companion of the brilliant blue-white Dog Star, Sirius, located in
the winter constellation Canis Major.

Now, an international team of astronomers has used the keen eye of
the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to isolate the light from the
white dwarf, called Sirius B. The new results allow them to measure
precisely the white dwarf's mass based on how its intense
gravitational field alters the wavelengths of light emitted by the
star.

"Studying Sirius B has challenged astronomers for more than 140
years," said Martin Barstow of the University of Leicester, U.K., who
is the leader of the observing team. "Only with Hubble have we at
last been able to obtain the observations we need, uncontaminated by
the light from Sirius, in order to measure its change in
wavelengths."

"Accurately determining the masses of white dwarfs is fundamentally
important to understanding stellar evolution. Our Sun will eventually
become a white dwarf. White dwarfs are also the source of Type Ia
supernova explosions that are used to measure cosmological distances
and the expansion rate of the universe. Measurements based on Type Ia
supernovae are fundamental to understanding 'dark energy,' a dominant
repulsive force stretching the universe apart. Also, the method used
to determine the white dwarf's mass relies on one of the key
predictions of Einstein's theory of General Relativity; that light
loses energy when it attempts to escape the gravity of a compact
star."

Sirius B has a diameter of 12,000 kilometres, less than the size of
Earth, but is much denser. Its powerful gravitational field is
350,000 times greater than Earth's, meaning that a 68 kilogram person
would weigh 25 million kilograms standing on its surface. Light from
the surface of the hot white dwarf has to climb out of this
gravitational field and is stretched to longer, redder wavelengths of
light in the process. This effect, predicted by Einstein's theory of
General Relativity in 1916, is called gravitational redshift, and is
most easily seen in dense, massive, and hence compact objects whose
intense gravitational fields warp space near their surfaces.

Based on the Hubble measurements of the redshift, made with the Space
Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, the team found that Sirius B has a
mass that is 98 percent that of our own Sun. Sirius itself has a mass
of two times that of the Sun and a diameter of 2.4 million
kilometres.

White dwarfs are the leftover remnants of stars similar to our Sun.
They have exhausted their nuclear fuel sources and have collapsed
down to a very small size. Despite being the brightest white dwarf
known, Sirius B is about 10,000 times fainter than Sirius itself,
making it difficult to study with telescopes on the Earth's surface
because its light is swamped in the glare of its brighter companion.
Astronomers have long relied on a fundamental theoretical
relationship between the mass of a white dwarf and its diameter. The
theory predicts that the more massive a white dwarf, the smaller its
diameter. The precise measurement of Sirius B's gravitational
redshift allows an important observational test of this key
relationship.

The Hubble observations have also refined the measurement of Sirius
B's surface temperature to be 25,000 degrees C. Sirius itself has a
surface temperature of 10,000 degrees C.

At 8.6 light-years away, Sirius is one of the nearest known stars to
Earth. Stargazers have watched Sirius since antiquity. Its diminutive
companion, however, was not discovered until 1862, when it was first
glimpsed by astronomers examining Sirius through one of the most
powerful telescopes of that time.

I have given one photo in the column "Photo".Please, check that photo.

Happy Sky Watching.
Ratnesh Pandit

Following the spectacularly successful Galileo mission from 1995 to
2003, the scientific community yearns for a return to Jupiter. The
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory have issued a joint proposal for a new Jupiter probe
called Juno.

Juno would be NASA's second probe in the New Frontiers series of
medium-cost explorers and launch no later than 2010. According to
SwRI's Bill Gibson, Juno is "very simple as planetary missions go, so
we can keep the cost down. … Juno uses conventional propulsion. And
we've limited our study to Jupiter. It's a plenty big target!"

Data returned from observations made by Galileo's orbiter and probe
left many questions: Why is there so little water in Jupiter's clouds
when models predicted otherwise? Is the structure at the probe's
entry site typical of other locations on Jupiter? What is the
planet's core made of, and how extensive is it? What is the nature of
the polar regions, especially as it relates to Jupiter's immense
magnetic field?

Equipped with a plasma physics suite of instruments, Juno will
improve on Galileo's atmospheric science. "The Galileo probe was a
single-point measurement," says Gibson. "Some results were ambiguous.
With Juno, we can study the jovian atmosphere and magnetosphere over
a year, and do it planet-wide."

Juno's coinvestigator, NASA/Goddard's Jack Connerney,
explains, "Juno's orbit puts us right at the cloud tops with a series
of well-timed passes, so that we can make a grid around Jupiter.
We'll map the [magnetic] field precisely."

Juno's elliptical orbit will range from just 2,796 miles (4,500
kilometers) above the cloud tops to 40 Jupiter radii (roughly
2,856,000 km). Flight engineers will chart Juno's orbit and map
Jupiter's gravity. As the craft changes speed, the Doppler shift in
its signals will reveal the subtle tug of Jupiter's gravity on Juno.
These measurements will be the most accurate to date, enabling
researchers to determine the mass and size of Jupiter's core.

Happy Sky Watching.
Ratnesh Pandit

An important factor to consider with a set of binoculars is eye relief.
This is the distance between the viewer's eyeball and the eye lens of
the binoculars' eyepiece. For the full field of view to be seen, the
exit pupil should correspond with the dilation of the dark-adapted
pupil, which is between 5mm and 7mm. An exit pupil larger than 7mm
means that some of the light will be lost outside of the eye's entrance
pupil, no matter what the distance of the eye from the eyepiece.

The eye-relief distance is fixed by the eyepiece design and is normally
rather exact. Eyepiece designs used in binoculars mandate that the eye
relief be fairly short. This short eye relief is adequate for use
without eyeglasses, but those who must wear glasses (or wants to wear
sunglasses during the day) is forced to position their eyes where they
cannot reach the correct eye-relief point. When people look into
binoculars with their eyes outside the correct eye-relief distance, the
field of view are reduced. This reduction depends on the individual and
the design of the binoculars.

Happy Sky Watching.
Ratnesh Pandit

The Moon interferes with December's second meteor shower, although
not as badly. The Ursid shower peaks the morning of December 22, when
a waning gibbous Moon lights up the sky. The radiant lies near the
bright star Kochab (Beta Ursae Minoris), which appears below Polaris
in the evening and above it before dawn.

If 2005 is a typical year, count yourself lucky if you spot more than
five meteors per hour. Ursid outbursts have occurred, however, so it
may pay to watch. In 1988, 1994, and 2000, peak rates reached at
least 3 times normal.

Please check photo for this, given above.
Happy Sky Watching.
Ratnesh Pandit

Summary - (Dec 16, 2005) NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory has taken a
new photograph of SN 1006; a supernova that appeared in the sky in
1006, and blazed more brightly than Venus. We now know that SN 1006
announced the death of a star located approximately 7,000 light years
from Earth. It's likely that a white dwarf star was siphoning matter
away from a companion star. When its mass exceeded the limit of
stability, it exploded.
Full Story -
SN 1006. Image credit: NASA. Click to enlarge
This false-color Chandra image of a supernova remnant shows X-rays
produced by high-energy particles (blue) and multimillion degree gas
(red/green). In 1006 AD, what was thought to be a "new star" suddenly
appeared in the sky and over the course of a few days became brighter
than the planet Venus. The supernova of 1006, or SN 1006, may have
been the brightest supernova on record.

We now know that SN 1006 heralded not the appearance of a new star,
but the cataclysmic death of an old one located about 7,000 light
years from Earth. It was likely a white dwarf star that had been
pulling matter off an orbiting companion star. When the white dwarf
mass exceeded the stability limit (known as the Chandrasekhar limit),
it exploded.

The supernova ejected material at millions of miles per hour,
generating a forward shock wave that raced ahead of the ejecta.
Particles accelerated to extremely high energies by this shock wave
produce the bright blue filaments seen in the upper left and lower
right of the image. Why the bright filaments occur only in the
observed locations and do not encircle the remnant is not understood.
One possibility is that they are due to the orientation of the
interstellar magnetic field which may be roughly perpendicular to the
filaments.

High pressure behind the forward shock wave pushes back on the
supernova ejecta, causing a reverse shock that heats the ejecta to
millions of degrees. The fluffy red features seen throughout the
interior of the remnant are from gas heated by the reverse shock. The
X-ray spectrum of this gas indicates that it is enriched in oxygen
and other elements synthesized by nuclear reactions during the
stellar explosion.

Summary - (Dec 14, 2005) JAXA engineers are working hard to recover
their ailing Hayabusa spacecraft. The spacecraft has been out of
contact since December 9th, after it turned suddenly from a fuel
leak. Hayabusa was supposed to return to Earth in June 2007, but JAXA
is concerned that it won't have enough fuel to make this date, so
they'll probably push the return back to 2010. Unfortunately, they
have no way of knowing if Hayabusa actually retrieved a sample from
Itokawa during its close encounter.
Full Story -
An Orbit Synthesis Example for Hayabusa Return starting in 2007.
Image credit: JAXA Click to enlarge
Hayabusa spacecraft currently undergoes the recovery operation to
resume the communication with the ground stations. It was hit by an
abrupt disturbing torque owing to the fuel leak that occurred before,
and has been out of the ground contact since December 9th. The
project team has a good expect to have the spacecraft resume the
communication soon. However, the project is now not so sure to make
the spacecraft return to earth in June of 2007 and has decided to
lengthen the flight period for three years more to have it return to
the Earth in June of 2010.

On December 8th, Usuda station observed the sudden shifts of the
range-rate measurements at 4:13 UTC with the corresponding gradual
decrease of signal intensity AGC (Automated Gain Controller) read.
The measurement and the intensity change slowly and are currently
estimated due to the out-gassing effect that derived from the fuel
leak-out at the end of last month. The leak occurred on November 26th
and 27th. Since the beacon signal communication resumed on 29th, the
project has made an effort to exclude the vapor gas of the fuel from
the spacecraft. The project has by now identified the out-gassing has
successfully been performed, as its exponential acceleration decay
has shown so far.

On December 8th, the spacecraft was under the resume operation phase
for the chemical propulsion, and was given a slow spin whose period
is about six minutes. From the beginning of December, the project has
introduced the Xenon gas thruster control strategy for emergency,
replacing the chemical propulsion system. But the control capability
of it was not enough strong for the spacecraft to withstand the
disturbance on December 8th. Current estimation says the spacecraft
may be in a large coning motion and that is why the spacecraft has
not responded to the commands sent from the ground station.

The spacecraft has been out of communication since December 9th.
Analysis predicting the attitude property relating to both the Sun
and Earth shows that there will be high possibility counted on for
the resumption of the communication from the ground for several
months or more ahead. However, the spacecraft may have to undergo
another long term baking cycle before it starts the return cruise
operation using ion engines aboard. And it is concluded that the
commencement of the return cruise during December is found difficult.
The project has determined that the return cruise should start from
2007 so that the spacecraft can return to the Earth in June of 2010,
three years later than the original plan, as long as no immediate
resumption tales place very soon.

The spacecraft operation will shift from the normal mode to the
rescue mode for several months to one year long. Long term predict
indicates high probability of having the spacecraft communicated with
the ground station again, with the spacecraft captured well in the
beam width of the Usuda deep space antenna.

The spacecraft will take the advantage of Xenon gas attitude control
again after enough length of baking operation. The Xenon gas that
remains is adequate for the return cruise devised by the ion engines
carried by Hayabusa.

The Hayabusa web page will report anything updated, as soon as it
becomes available.

(Supplement) Hayabusa Rescue Operation

Hayabusa spacecraft is designed to allow the spin-stabilization and
the attitude will converge to a certain pure spin around its high
gain antenna axis ultimately. About the current state affected by the
disturbance on December 8th, the attitude is conceived not to meet
either of the Sun and Earth geometry requirement in terms of power
and communication.

Once the coning motion damps, there will be some high probability
that the spacecraft spin attitude satisfies both the power and
communication conditions in several months.

There will be little possibility that the spacecraft position is out
of the deep space antenna beam width for at least several months.

The Hayabusa system is designed to be initialized even once the whole
power is down. Actually, on November 29th, the Hayabusa system
restarted as these procedures functioned as prescribed.

There has been come up with a new trajectory synthesis that makes the
spacecraft return to the earth in June of 2010. Without immediate
communication resumption, the project thinks it should take this new
schedule soon.

Clues revealed by the recently sharpened view of the Hubble Space
Telescope have allowed astronomers to map the location of
invisible "dark matter" in unprecedented detail in two very young
galaxy clusters.

A Johns Hopkins University-Space Telescope Science Institute team
reports its findings in the December issue of Astrophysical Journal.
(Other, less-detailed observations appeared in the January 2005 issue
of that publication.)

The team's results lend credence to the theory that the galaxies we
can see form at the densest regions of "cosmic webs" of invisible
dark matter, just as froth gathers on top of ocean waves, said study
co-author Myungkook James Jee, assistant research scientist in the
Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy in Johns
Hopkins' Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

"Advances in computer technology now allow us to simulate the entire
universe and to follow the coalescence of matter into stars,
galaxies, clusters of galaxies and enormously long filaments of
matter from the first hundred thousand years to the present," Jee
said. "However, it is very challenging to verify the simulation
results observationally, because dark matter does not emit light."

Jee said the team measured the subtle gravitational "lensing"
apparent in Hubble images — that is, the small distortions of
galaxies' shapes caused by gravity from unseen dark matter — to
produce its detailed dark matter maps. They conducted their
observations in two clusters of galaxies that were forming when the
universe was about half its present age.

"The images we took show clearly that the cluster galaxies are
located at the densest regions of the dark matter haloes, which are
rendered in purple in our images," Jee said.

The work buttresses the theory that dark matter — which constitutes
90 percent of matter in the universe — and visible matter should
coalesce at the same places because gravity pulls them together, Jee
said. Concentrations of dark matter should attract visible matter,
and as a result, assist in the formation of luminous stars, galaxies
and galaxy clusters.

Dark matter presents one of the most puzzling problems in modern
cosmology. Invisible, yet undoubtedly there — scientists can measure
its effects — its exact characteristics remain elusive. Previous
attempts to map dark matter in detail with ground-based telescopes
were handicapped by turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere, which
blurred the resulting images.

"Observing through the atmosphere is like trying to see the details
of a picture at the bottom of a swimming pool full of waves," said
Holland Ford, one of the paper's co-authors and a professor of
physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins.

The Johns Hopkins-STScI team was able to overcome the atmospheric
obstacle through the use of the space-based Hubble telescope. The
installation of the Advanced Camera for Surveys in the Hubble three
years ago was an additional boon, increasing the discovery efficiency
of the previous HST by a factor of 10.

The team concentrated on two galaxy clusters (each containing more
than 400 galaxies) in the southern sky.

"These images were actually intended mainly to study the galaxies in
the clusters, and not the lensing of the background galaxies," said
co-author Richard White, a STScI astronomer who also is head of the
Hubble data archive for STScI. "But the sharpness and sensitivity of
the images made them ideal for this project. That's the real beauty
of Hubble images: they will be used for years for new scientific
investigations."

The result of the team's analysis is a series of vividly detailed,
computer-simulated images illustrating the dark matter's location.
According to Jee, these images provide researchers with an
unprecedented opportunity to infer dark matter's properties.

The clumped structure of dark matter around the cluster galaxies is
consistent with the current belief that dark matter particles
are "collision-less," Jee said. Unlike normal matter particles,
physicists believe, they do not collide and scatter like billiard
balls but rather simply pass through each other.

"Collision-less particles do not bombard one another, the way two
hydrogen atoms do. If dark matter particles were collisional, we
would observe a much smoother distribution of dark matter, without
any small-scale clumpy structures," Jee said.

Ford said this study demonstrates that the ACS is uniquely
advantageous for gravitational lensing studies and will, over time,
substantially enhance understanding of the formation and evolution of
the cosmic structure, as well as of dark matter.

"I am enormously gratified that the seven years of hard work by so
many talented scientists and engineers to make the Advanced Camera
for Surveys is providing all of humanity with deeper images and
understandings of the origins of our marvelous universe," said Ford,
who is principal investigator for ACS and a leader of the science
team.

The ACS science and engineering team is concentrated at the Johns
Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute on the
university's Homewood campus in Baltimore. It also includes
scientists from other major universities in the United States and
Europe. ACS was developed by the team under NASA contract NAS5-32865
and this research was supported by NASA grant NAG5-7697.