ChandlerB

Below is a link to my Life Cycle of a Star story:



[] 10-5-11 A team of astronomers from NASA found a new planet in the galaxy using the Kepler planet hunting spacecraft. The new planet is formally called Kepler 16B and it goes along with Kepler 16A in the double-star galaxy, home to billions of other stars. The two planets are 20 million miles apart and have 2 eclipses every 41 days, yet one is a lot colder and has a temperature difference of 50 degrees in one Earth day. Dr. Sara Seager said “people don’t really know how to form this planet, and that a planet belonging to two stars at once would have to be at least seven times as far from the stars as the stars were from each other. According to that, Kepler 16b would have to be twice as far out as it is to survive. One of the two stars is 1/3 the size of the sun and the other is 1/5 the size. The Kepler mission, launched in 2009, is supposed to determine the fraction of stars in the galaxy that have Earth-like planets. It goes throw 2 constellations (Cygnus and lyra) and looking for dips of starlight when the planet crosses the base star in that cluster.

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10-5-11

European astronomers said that they have found a planet that is relatively similar to Earth about 36 light years away. The planet is named HD 85512b and is about 3.6 times larger than Earth, in the constellation Vela. The planet is at just the right orbital radius for liquid water to exist on the surface, yet it orbits its star at a quarter of the distance that Earth orbits the sun, taking only 58 days to make a year. That distance would put HD 85512b in the so called “habitable zone” for human life to exist on it, as long as it has a rocky surface and clouds to cover the skies. However, the observations of the planet would take years because the observations of the planet would need to come from different telescopes that have not even been built yet. Scientists say that the planet is habitable if over 50% of the planet is covered in clouds.

[] 10-17-11 Astronomers have cracked the Milky Way and all of the planets in the galaxy are coming out at a high rate. NASA’s Kepler Telescope has discovered over 1,200 planets in our galaxy that are orbiting other stars, possibly tripling even quadrupling the number of known planets. Of the new planets found, 68 of them are Earths size or smaller. Fifty-four of the possible exoplanets are in the so-called habitable zones of stars dimmer and cooler than the Sun, where temperatures should be moderate enough for liquid water. Scientists say that it would take many years to classify these new found planets as actual planets. Many of the planets might not ever be classified because of the dimness of their stars and the lack of telescope time and astronomers to do it all. They would have to use ground based telescopes to measure their masses and inspect them to see if stars in the background are causing an optical illusion. The tests of the telescopes show that 80-90% of the objects are real and true to form. The first look of the planets shows that not a single one has qualities of Earth. The Kepler Telescope stares at a patch of the Milky Way near the Northern Cross, measuring the brightness of 156,000 stars every 30 minutes, looking for a pattern of dips that would be caused by planets crossing in front of their suns. But in the four months of data analyzed so far, a similar telescope looking at our own Sun would have been lucky to have seen the Earth pass even once. Three qualities are required for a planet to show up in Kepler’s elaborate data-processing pipeline, which means that Kepler’s next scheduled data release, in June 2012, could be a moment of truth for the mission. For dimmer and cooler stars, the habitable, or “Goldilocks,” zone would be smaller, however, and planets in it would rack up qualities more quickly.

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11-4-11

Friday September 23, the predicted return to Earth of a NASA satellite was sometime between 11:45 p.m. and 12:45 a.m. on that Saturday. NASA had no idea of the exact crash landing spot of where this Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite would land. The researchers said that a piece of the satellite might have broken off changing its orientation or configuration in the atmosphere. The satellite weighs 6 tons and circles the Earth on a tilted orbit, and as the planet turns, different locations pass underneath. 26 pieces of the satellite are expended to survive the re entry and land in a 500 mile path. NASA has said that there is a 1-in-3,200 chance that one of the pieces might hit and injure a person. NASA has also said that there have been no previous reports of people being hit or injured from falling debris. As the law has it, if any debris is to hit your house, NASA would be responsible to pay compensation for any damages or injuries. The satellite debris is still government property and the people are urged not to touch or go near any stray debris.

[] 10-21-11 Scientists have found the youngest planet known to man. This planet called LkCa 15 b is right now is showing the processes of forming. This planet looks like a hot “protoplanet” surrounded by cooler dust and gas, which is falling into the still-forming planet. The scientist used the power of the 10-meter keck telescopes with optical sleight of hand to discover this young forming star. The discovery began as a survey of 150 young dusty stars in popular star forming areas. Also during the search, scientist said that there is more than just a single companion object in the formation.

[] 10-21-11 Astronomers have recently detected cold water vapor enveloping a ring around a young star, using the data from the Herschel Space Observatory. The data from this finding suggests that there may be other Earth like planets in the galaxy, and might be more common throughout our universe. Before this finding, scientists found warm water vapor in planet forming disks close to a central star. Evidence for quantities for water way out where comets take shape hasn’t been seen until this recent discovery. The star, TW Hydrae, is about 10 million years old located about 175 light years away and consists of mostly waterlogged disks. The star is an orange dwarf star, smaller than our sun and the disk of material is about 200 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. Scientists believe that this disk will collide and form planets, asteroids, and other bodies such as comets.

[] 11-23-11 A new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows a spherical collection of hundreds of thousands of stars in the out halo of Globular cluster NGC 1846. This is in the large Magellanic Cloud, which neighbors our Milky Way and is visible in from the southern hemisphere. Aging bright stars glow in shades of red and blue in this cluster. The stars that are middle aged glow in a whitish color. Myriad distance background galaxies are also scattered around in the image. But there is a faint green bubble that doesn’t belong in the cluster. It is a planetary nebula that is the aftermath of the death of a star. It is uncertain that this object belongs in NGC 1846 or just simply lies along the line of sight of the cluster. But due to its movement, it is believed to be a part of this cluster.

[] 12-7-11 Coronal Mass Ejections can erode some of the lunar surface says NASA scientist according to some of the expiraments conducted. Scientist worry that neighboring planets such as Mars could be harmed due to its lack of atmosphere, CMEs could erode massive amounts of the lunar surface in only 2 days, 100-200 tons. These solar winds are composed of plasma and are highly charged. The winds also carry light weight hydrogen ions which contribute to the solar winds massive electrical charge. Scientist also suspect the Coronal Mass Ejections may play a role in the northern and southern lights. CMEs should be further researched, I think that this is the biggest threat from our sun, besides what we already know.. I also think that the more we get to understand CMEs the better we can guard our planet from the growing sun.

[] 9-14-11

Launched the summer of 2003 and landing in January 2004, the Mars exploration rovers, who were only suppost to be exploring for about 90-180 days has given scientists very important information and views of the Mars main land. This exploration is one of the most revealing exploration attempts by the U.S. to date. The two rovers, spirit and oppertunity have been the main source for the discoveries of the planet, and a great investment for the U.S.