New Star Formation Details from Herschel
Hello, astro-nuts!
What a wild weekend of weather here in Central PA! We started with thunderstorms and 70-degree temperatures Friday night-Saturday morning, and by Sunday it was windy with "graupel" (snow pellets) and temperatures barely made it into the 40s. If the clouds from the next storm system don't make it in here tonight I'd like to try to do some observing! Speaking of observing, the Herschel space observatory has made some interesting discoveries about star formation recently, and Atlantis is still a go for launch on Friday.
Check This Out!
Tonight and tomorrow night you can watch a waning crescent Moon as it passes under the great square of Pegasus near dawn. Jupiter will be nearby as a "morning star". Friday and Saturday, the Moon will pair up with Venus as it gets dark, and bright stars Capella (Auriga) and Betelgeuse (Orion) will be nearby as well.
The oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has of course been the big news story for awhile now, and NASA is doing its part to help monitor the situation. Using the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) aboard Terra, nighttime thermal images can be taken to give people a scope of how big a problem this really is. Members of the Expedition 23 crew aboard the International Space Station have also been capturing images.
Last week I was in Baltimore for the STScI annual symposium, and part of that included a talk by Dr. John Grunsfeld, deputy director of STScI and former Atlantis astronaut who traveled to Hubble for servicing missions three times. Here are a few pictures from his talk and from the showing of the Hubble 3D movie!
STS-132 is still a 'go' for launch this coming Friday, May 14th. The all-veteran crew of the final planned Atlantis mission will consist of Commander Ken Ham, Pilot Tony Antonelli, and Mission Specialists Michael Good, Garrett Reisman, Piers Sellers and Steve Bowen. The twelve-day mission will include three spacewalks during which solar array batteries will be replaced, and a Russion research module will be attached to the International Space Station. The crew is expected to arrive at Kennedy Space Center tonight and will begin their prelaunch training and "dress rehearsals". Countdown begins Tuesday at 4pm EDT, and launch is scheduled for Friday at 2:20pm EDT. So far, the forecast for launch looks promising, assuming an area of high pressure just off shore stays put.
The Herschel Infrared Space Observatory may have come across data about star formation that had previously been a big mystery. Herschel has been studying a star-forming cloud called RCW 120, which appears to be the home of a very young star that could become one of the largest and brightest stars in our Galaxy in a relatively short time, astronomically speaking (short = a few hundred thousand years). RCW 120 lies about 4,300 light-years away from Earth. The baby central star is estimated to be eight to ten times the mass of our sun already, and still has plenty of gas and dust from which it can grow as time goes on (at least 2000 solar masses worth!). This of course brings up the astronomical paradox which states that stars should not be any bigger than eight solar masses, because, typically, massive stars destroy their "birth clouds" before they can get much larger than eight solar masses. However, several stars of up to 150 solar masses have been discovered. Since this new star is still so young, it can only get bigger, and all the additional material surrounding it will give astronomers the chance to study star formation and evolution more closely. It is often said that massive stars adopt the mantra of a rock star--live fast, die young, and many of the largest stars we know of are well into their life cycles and harder to figure out. Therefore, the fact that such a large star has been discovered still in its infancy could help astronomers figure out how stars can, in a sense, defy known physics and become so darn big. Since its launch last May, Herschel has already helped to disprove another theory about star formation-- that galaxies have been forming stars at the same rate for the last three billion years. Herschel has also discovered a new phase of water--ionized (it is electrically charged).
Keep your eyes to the sky and enjoy the view! ~Lisa C.
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