Recently in Astronomy Category

Ever since I can remember (and that is a long time ago!), Mickey Mouse's favorite dog has also been the name of the smallest planet in our Solar System. So, no matter what the International Astronomical Union says, it will always be a planet in my mind! So, join the cause and get a bumper sticker to let the world know what you think about it! All the proceeds from sales go to the Planetary Society. Thanks to Chris for keeping the fight alive!

When it came to being gay in the military, the code phrase was don't ask, don't tell. With Bush, when it comes to real science, it is don't understand it, don't need it. Hence, the decision by the budget trimmers today to throw away the Hubble Space Telescope.

A White House decision to cut funding for a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission and dump the observatory into a remote stretch of ocean waters at a future date is sure to incite debate in scientific, engineering and policy-making circles.

Since we can't put a saddle on the Hubble and gallop it off to Mars, the solution is to add a rocket to it to dump it towards Earth.

Sources said the White House plans to scuttle Hubble is part of NASA?s 2006 budget request, with some money in the budget allocated to using a propulsion module coupled to Hubble for its safe but destructive deorbiting.

I guess that they fear that scientists may discover something in deep space that will further show how unintelligent intellegent design is. And, of course, the fight to keep Hubble alive and making new discoveries is just another left-wing conspiracy led by the Democrats. Thanks to Barbara Mikulski, the Democratic Senator from Maryland, we are doing just that.

"It is essential that we have a safe and reliable servicing mission to Hubble," Mikulski said, that is consistent with the findings of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and last month?s findings of a National Academy of Sciences panel on the Hubble issue. On Dec. 8, in the NAS final report released by the Committee on the Assessment of Options for Extending the Life of the Hubble Space Telescope, a blue-ribbon group of experts said that NASA should reinstate a space shuttle mission to refurbish the Earth-orbiting telescope. "I led the fight to add $300 million to NASA?s budget last year for a Hubble servicing mission, and I plan to lead the fight again this year. This is what the American people expect and deserve," Mikulski said in a statement.

The republicans are probably saying just what does the National Academy of Sciences know about science anyway. We must instead listen to the biblical scientific experts like Dobson and Falwell. I guess they expect to find heaven on Mars. Oh and I am sure that they'll use all the money they are saving on Hubble to fund more faith-based initiatives aimed at curing all those homosexuals. Be sure to check out Space.Com's coverage of this critical issue.

Over the past several days, there has been a lot of activity on the surface of the sun. As a result of this, NOAA's Space Environment Center is predicting extensive auroral activity. overnight. So, if you are still up and about, keep a look outside towards the northern skies. More information on auroras in general, see:

• Tips on Aurora Prediction and Viewing
• NOAA Aurora Information Paper (PDF) - excellent scientific, but understandable explanation

(via Coast-to-Coast AM)

Sorry for the title, but it is true! Scientists have detected a massive space explosion that is part of an eruption that has occurring for over 100,000,000 years.

Scientists believe that this black hole is a relatively recent phenomena. This event was caused by gravitational energy release, as enormous amounts of matter fell toward a black hole. Most of the matter was swallowed, but some of it was violently ejected before being captured by the black hole. "I was stunned to find that a mass of about 300 million suns was swallowed," said Brian McNamara of Ohio University, lead author of a study on the discovery published in the latest issue of Nature.

When you consider that the galaxy where it is being observed is 2.6 billion light years (over 1.5x10²² miles away) away, this event happened when there was little life on the earth and we are just now observing what happened. It is things like this that just make me sit in awe of our universe and the great expanse of it that we can now observe.

Oh well, cancel the order for that 10-foot hoagie from Wawa for the asteroid party. It looks like we will not get a visit from Asteroid 2004 MN4 in 2029. I knew that it was just too coincidental that an asteroid would hit us on a Friday the Thirteenth. The way they determined that this would not happen is to put a call out to observatories worldwide to look through their archived sky data and look at it again to see if this asteroid was on any of it. They did, they found, they re-calculated and they canceled the asteroid's date with Earth.

Over the past week, several independent efforts were made to search for pre-discovery observations of 2004 MN4. These efforts proved successful today when Jeff Larsen and Anne Descour of the Spacewatch Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, were able to detect and measure very faint images of asteroid 2004 MN4 on archival images dating to 15 March 2004. These observations extended the observed time interval for this asteroid by three months allowing an improvement in its orbit so that an Earth impact on 13 April 2029 can now be ruled out.

Yes, I said April 13th 2029. That date is 8,875 days from now and it may just be the end of the earth as we know it. Why, you ask? I have always been interested in NEO's. No, not Neo, the character from the Matrix movies, but Near Earth Objects, those comets and asteroids that come far too close to our orbit and have the potential of impacting. NASA's Near Earth Object program is charged with gathering data about these objects, some small, some very large. Well, one of these pesky critters, called 2004 MN4, has now reached the highest hazard score to date. NASA issued a press release on Thursday saying that the odds of hitting Earth was 1:300. They updated this on Friday to 1:60! I do like how optimistic NASA is:

December 24 Update: 2004 MN4 is now being tracked very carefully by many astronomers around the world, and we continue to update our risk analysis for this object. Today's impact monitoring results indicate that the impact probability for April 13, 2029 has risen to about 1.6%, which for an object of this size corresponds to a rating of 4 on the ten-point Torino Scale. Nevertheless, the odds against impact are still high, about 60 to 1, meaning that there is a better than 98% chance that new data in the coming days, weeks, and months will rule out any possibility of impact in 2029.

The usual scientific optimism! What if it does impact? 2004 NM4 is about 0.39 km in diameter (about 1/4 mile for the metrically challenged) and weighs 83,000,000,000 kg or 182.6 trillion pounds With these dimensions and moving at us at 12.59 km/s or almost 100,000 miles per hour, it is estimated to have an impact energy of 1570 megatons of TNT. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in WWII had an estimated energy of 15,000 tons or 0.015 megatons of TNT. Do the math - we are talking the equivalent of over 104,666 Hiroshima-size bombs. With good reason, NASA has assigned it a Torino Impact Hazard Scale rating of 4 which is described as "a close encounter, with 1% or greater chance of a collision capable of causing regional devastation." Regional? Like let's devastate North America? This is the highest rating in the yellow range of the scale (orange and red are higher). This little space rock warrants watching! I'd be 77 and if I am still on this blue marble, I want to go see it hit. Well, maybe I'll watch it on TV. Maybe I'll watch it on TV from the bunker. With this entry, I am inaugurating the first category on the blog, Astronomy. More on this one as additional observations come in from observatories around the world. And, oh, did I mention? April 13 2029 just happens to fall on a Friday. Friday the Thirteenth. (from Slashdot with a very long and interesting thread following it) via Findory)