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Night Sky Calendar - Northern Hemisphere

November 2009

Celestial Object

02 - Full Moon at 19:14 UT
05 - Taurid (south) meteor shower peaks. Active between 25 Sept and 25 Nov.
000 Associated with Comet 2P/Encke.
09 - Moon near Mars (morning sky) at 14h UT. Mag. +0.3.
12 - Taurid (north) meteor shower peaks. May produce the occasional bright fireball.
17 - Leonid meteor shower peaks at 9h UT. Arises from debris ejected by
000 Comet Tempel-Tuttle in 1533. Expect about 25 to 30 meteors per hour under
000 dark skies. Predictions of enhanced activity between 21-22h UT on 17 Nov
000 (favours sky watchers in Asia).
21 - Alpha Monocerotid meteor shower peaks at 15:25 UT. A usually minor
000 shower active 15-25 Nov. Radiant is near Procyon. Predictions of enhanced
000 activity this year. Timing favours Far East Asia, Australia and across the
000 Pacific to Alaska.
00 0 0 0 0 0// Get the complete calendar version at skymaps.com
7 -

The photo was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows a detail of the nebula. This close-up shows a dense cloud of dust and gas, a stellar nursery full of embryonic stars. This cloud is about 8 light-years away from the nebula's central star, not shown in this picture. Located in Sagitarius, the nebula's name means "divided into three lobes".

GALLERY

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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Young Jupiter-sized Planet with Its Disk Discovered

Direct evidence that a gas giant planet forms its moons from a disk of dust and scattered rocks from a leftover of its planetary system formation was discovered by a team of astronomers. The object, called 2M1207B, was found to circle a brown dwarf and lies 170 lights year from Earth in the Constellation Centaurus. The presence of disk around the planet was inferred from the observation of temperatures of the two objects. the brown dwarf has a mass of about 25 Jupiters and a temperature of 4100 degrees Fahrenheit (2600 K). Its companion 2M1207B weighs about 8 times Jupiter and has a temperature of 2400 degrees F (1600 K). Both objects are warm due to their young age of 5-10 million years, having retained the heat of formation. Given those temperatures, the team then calculated the expected brightness of both objects. The brown dwarf matched predictions but its companion was about 8 times fainter than expected. After examining several potential causes, the team concluded that the only plausible explanation was the presence of an edge-on dusty disk that blocked most of the planet's light.

More story

Posted @ 8:01 PM by kinzi

New Potrait of Andromeda Releases by NASA

The Andromeda galaxy, named for the mythological princess who almost fell prey to a sea monster, appears tranquil in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The mesmerizing infrared mosaic shows red waves of dust over a blue sea of stars.

"What's really interesting about this view is the contrast between the galaxy's smooth, flat disk of old stars and its bumpy waves of dust heated by young stars," said Dr. Pauline Barmby of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. Barmby and her colleagues recently observed Andromeda using Spitzer.

To view the picture, click here

Barmby and her team used the Spitzer data to make drastically improved measurements of Andromeda's infrared brightness. They found that the galaxy shines with the same amount of energy as about 4 billion suns. Based on these measurements, the astronomers confirmed that there are roughly 1 trillion stars in the galaxy. Our Milky Way galaxy is estimated to house a couple of hundred billion stars.
The new false-colored portrait also provides astronomers with the best look yet at the dust-drenched spiral arms that swirl out of the galaxy's center, a region hidden by bright starlight in visible-light images. Dust and gas are the building materials of stars. They are clumped together throughout the spiral arms, where new stars are forming.

The Andromeda galaxy, also known by astronomers as Messier 31, is located 2.5 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. It is the closest major galaxy to the Milky Way, making it the ideal specimen for carefully examining the nature of galaxies. On a clear, dark night, the galaxy can be spotted with the naked eye as a fuzzy blob.

Source: JPL NewsLetter

Posted @ 7:54 PM by kinzi

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ryan kinzi
Nightsky calendar (a brief version) by Skymaps & NASA's Space Calendar | Image of FCO - credit: NASA. Design & page layout © kinzi - 2009 | Contact me? xeno@(no-spam)cougars.com

Trifid Nebula
M20 | NGC 6514

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