Best Telescope:Телескоп Гершель,OWL, JWST, greatest views

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Deployment Animation (JWST)


Time-lapse Construction of the James Webb Space Telescope Ambient Optical Assembly Stand.


http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/webb-assembly-stand.html

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Spotlight shines on JWST after 'near-death experience'

AUSTIN, Texas -- Entering the new year with solidified political support and renewed scientific potential, some work on the James Webb Space Telescope will be accelerated this year to keep the $8.8 billion observatory on track for launch in late 2018.

But there is still concern among senior officials that major tests in the next few years could uncover hidden problems that could drive the mission's cost up even more.

Over the next three years, workers will assemble the observatory's telescope element, a complex system composed of 18 hexagonal primary mirror segments stretching 21.3 feet across, seven times bigger than the Hubble Space Telescope. The primary mirror, along with secondary, tertiary and fine steering mirrors, will be mounted to a support structure with deployable wings and booms that must function perfectly in space.

Four scientific instruments built in the United States, Europe and Canada will be housed inside a chassis called the Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM.



The first payload, the Mid-Infrared Instrument, will be shipped from the United Kingdom to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland around April, according to Eric Smith, the observatory's deputy program director at NASA Headquarters.

MIRI will look at stellar debris disks, extrasolar planets and distant galaxies.

Canada's Fine Guidance Sensor, which will allow the telescope to point precisely and study forming planets and stellar gas clouds, is undergoing cryogenic vacuum testing and should be delivered to Goddard later this year, said Matt Greenhouse, project scientist for JWST's instrument payloads.

NIRCam, JWST's primary deep-field infrared camera, is under construction at the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in California. It should begin environmental testing in March before arriving at Goddard in the second half of 2012, Greenhouse said.

The near-infrared spectrometer, built by EADS Astrium in Europe, will be transported to the United States in February 2013, officials said.

Each component, including the instruments and mirrors, is going through cryogenic testing individually, but the first time the telescope's optics will be collectively strained to their operating temperature -- an unimaginably crisp minus 387 degrees Fahrenheit -- will be in 2015 inside a massive cooling chamber at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"Mirrors need to be cold so their own heat does not drown out the very faint infrared images," said Lee Feinberg, NASA Optical Telescope Element manager for the Webb telescope. "With the completion of all mirror cryogenic testing, the toughest challenge since the beginning of the program is now completely behind us."

The Texas test facility was used to check the performance of Apollo lunar landers.



http://jwst.nasa.gov/images2/backplane4.jpg

According to Scott Willoughby of Northrop Grumman Corp., the mission's primary industrial contractor, the test in Houstin will be the "real verification" of the telescope's functionality.

JWST has already cost more than $3 billion, and a significant chunk of the money went toward developing basic technologies to enable the revolutionary telescope. Some limited technological research may still be necessary in the coming years.

"It's not complete, but it's well along the way," Willoughby, Northrop Grumman's vice president for JWST, said in an interview with Spaceflight Now. "All the major technologies have been through. We've proven out the technology to build the mirrors and things like microshutters."

Microshutters are tiny cells that measure 100 by 200 microns, or about the width of three to six human hairs. They will open and close in space to allow JWST to take spectra observations of more than 100 cosmic targets at once with the NIRSpec instrument.

"[Technology development] is not done until you run the last test, but components, technologies, parts, materials are well over 90 percent complete," Willoughby said.

The prioritized tasks this year include finishing up assembly of the telescope's support structure and outfitting an expansive cryogenic test chamber at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Texas test facility will simulate the telescope's super-cold operating conditions during a major check-up in 2015.

The telescope program is receiving $530 million this year, substantially more than the $375 million flat budget proposed by the White House. Congress agreed to raise JWST's funding after a House spending committee drew up a budget in July that would have canceled the program.

"The outcome of JWST being funded, and supported by the administration and funded by Congress, was not accidental," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science. "It was real drama. I know it was for me."

"Folks have referred to this as a near-death experience," Willoughby said.

The political battle came after an independent review panel blasted the telescope program's management and budgeting practices. NASA resolved to come up with a new, more credible plan to continue the program through launch.

"I think it's fair to say that a year ago, when we entered into this replan activity, there was doubt on the side of the administration and Congress that JWST could be brought under control," Smith said.

"It was the task of the project and the industrial partners to come up with a plan that was executable and believable, with a story behind that told folks it was different this time," Smith said. "Over the past year, that plan was put in place."



The replan set a launch readiness date for October 2018 and estimated the program's total cost at $8.8 billion. Before the review panel its report in 2010, NASA was publicizing a launch in June 2014 at a cost of $5.1 billion.

"It does put a spotlight on the project," Grunsfeld said.

The telescope's backplane, a graphite composite structure being constructed by ATK in Utah, is pacing the program's development schedule, according to Willoughby.

"The mirrors are done, so the next thing that needs to come in is the structure," Willoughby said. "That was one of the things that we had stretched out over the past couple of years as the budgets were going to be much lower. 2012 was going to be a much lower year than the $530 million."

JWST's mirrors completed cryogenic testing at the Marshall Space Flight Center in December. They will be stored at Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., the subcontractor for the mirrors, until the flight units are shipped to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland for integration with the telescope's primary structure and scientific instruments.

"All indications that will perform at [cryogenic temperatures] the way it's supposed to," Smith said. "I'm feeling confident about the image quality and the sensitivity from the telescope."

With additional money this year, Smith said the construction of the backplane structure was moved forward by more than six months. The assembly so far is beating that schedule by two months, Willoughby said.

The center section of the backplane, which will support 12 of 18 primary mirror segments, should be complete this summer. Foldable wings for the other six mirror segments will be finished in 2013.

"The proof is in the pudding this summer if things are still on track," Smith said.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1201/12jwst/

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Новые снимки туманности Орла и знаменитых "Столпов творения"
http://ria.ru/photolents/20120119/542555817.html

Revisiting the 'Pillars of Creation'
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/news/herschel20120118.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/multimedia/pia15260.html



http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/multimedia/pia15260b.html

[Salo]

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/120203-panel-endorses-euclid.html

Fri, 3 February, 2012
Panel Endorses U.S. Role in Euclid, with Qualification[/size]

By Dan Leone
 
 WASHINGTON — NASA should contribute $20 million worth of hardware to Europe's planned Euclid dark-matter observatory, but only "in the context of a strong U.S. commitment" to the proposed Wide-field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a panel of astrophysicists said.

The National Research Council's Committee on the Assessment of a Plan for U.S. Participation in Euclid was asked by NASA in November to determine whether that mission would help fulfill any of WFIRST's science objectives. The European Space Agency (ESA) wants NASA to provide near-infrared detectors for Euclid in exchange for a spot on the 12-member Euclid science team and early access to the mission's science data.

ESA has said that if the United States wants to participate, a formal memorandum of understanding must be signed by mid-May.

The panel said that while participating in Euclid would advance dark-energy research, identified as a key priority in the most recent decadal survey of proposed astrophysics missions, it is no substitute for WFIRST. Euclid, the panel said, "is not sufficient for achieving the broader decadal survey goals for the WFIRST mission, nor will it seek to accomplish the more ambitious goals for WFIRST's dark energy measurements."

At a meeting in January, some panel members voiced concerns that contributing to Euclid might make WFIRST appear redundant at a time when U.S. government agencies are facing pressure to cut spending.

Euclid, one of two ESA M-class science missions selected in October for development, is to launch in 2019 on a Europeanized version of Russia's Soyuz rocket. ESA says it wants, but does not need, a U.S. contribution to proceed with the mission. WFIRST has not yet made it off the drawing board and is not likely to launch before 2025, acting NASA Astrophysics Director Paul Hertz said Jan. 18.[/size]

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NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer in Standby Mode

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, or Galex, was placed in standby mode today as engineers prepare to end mission operations, nearly nine years after the telescope's launch. The spacecraft is scheduled to be decommissioned -- taken out of service -- later this year. The mission extensively mapped large portions of the sky with sharp ultraviolet vision, cataloguing millions of galaxies spanning 10 billion years of cosmic time.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer launched into space from a Pegasus XL rocket in April of 2003. Since completing its prime mission in the fall of 2007, the mission was extended to continue its census of stars and galaxies.

The mission's science highlights include the discovery of a gigantic comet-like tail behind a speeding star, rings of new stars around old galaxies, and "teenager" galaxies, which help to explain how galaxies evolve. The observatory also helped confirm the existence of the mysterious substance or force known as dark energy, and even caught a black hole devouring a star.

The California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., leads the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission and is responsible for science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Researchers sponsored by Yonsei University in South Korea and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France collaborated on this mission. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Graphics and additional information about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer are online at http://www.nasa.gov/galex/ and http://www.galex.caltech.edu/ .

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-034

НАСА "усыпило" орбитальный телескоп GALEX после 9 лет работы

МОСКВА, 9 фев - РИА Новости. Орбитальный ультрафиолетовый телескоп GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) 7 февраля был переведен в спящий режим, инженеры НАСА готовятся завершить в нынешнем году миссию аппарата, проработавшего девять лет, говорится в сообщении Лаборатории реактивного движения (JPL) НАСА.

Телескоп GALEX был запущен в апреле 2003 года. Основная его миссия закончилась осенью 2007 года, после чего работа телескопа, изучающего галактики в ультрафиолетовом спектре, была продлена.

За почти девять лет работы GALEX, в частности, обнаружил у быстро движущейся звезды гигантский хвост, похожий на хвост кометы, кольца молодых звезд вокруг старых галактик, а также галактики-"подростки". Данные GALEX помогли подтвердить существование таинственной темной энергии, на долю которой, как считается, приходится около 72% массы Вселенной.

http://ria.ru/science/20120209/561181139.html

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NASA's Chandra Finds Milky Way's Black Hole Grazing on Asteroids

The giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way may be vaporizing and devouring asteroids, which could explain the frequent flares observed, according to astronomers using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

For several years Chandra has detected X-ray flares about once a day from the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*, or "Sgr A*" for short. The flares last a few hours with brightness ranging from a few times to nearly one hundred times that of the black hole's regular output. The flares also have been seen in infrared data from ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile.

"People have had doubts about whether asteroids could form at all in the harsh environment near a supermassive black hole," said Kastytis Zubovas of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, and lead author of the report appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "It's exciting because our study suggests that a huge number of them are needed to produce these flares."

Zubovas and his colleagues suggest there is a cloud around Sgr A* containing trillions of asteroids and comets, stripped from their parent stars. Asteroids passing within about 100 million miles of the black hole, roughly the distance between the Earth and the sun, would be torn into pieces by the tidal forces from the black hole.

These fragments then would be vaporized by friction as they pass through the hot, thin gas flowing onto Sgr A*, similar to a meteor heating up and glowing as it falls through Earth's atmosphere. A flare is produced and the remains of the asteroid are swallowed eventually by the black hole.

"An asteroid's orbit can change if it ventures too close to a star or planet near Sgr A*," said co-author Sergei Nayakshin, also of the University of Leicester. "If it's thrown toward the black hole, it's doomed."

The authors estimate that it would take asteroids larger than about six miles in radius to generate the flares observed by Chandra. Meanwhile, Sgr A* also may be consuming smaller asteroids, but these would be difficult to spot because the flares they generate would be fainter.

These results reasonably agree with models estimating of how many asteroids are likely to be in this region, assuming that the number around stars near Earth is similar to the number surrounding stars near the center of the Milky Way.

"As a reality check, we worked out that a few trillion asteroids should have been removed by the black hole over the 10-billion-year lifetime of the galaxy," said co-author Sera Markoff of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. "Only a small fraction of the total would have been consumed, so the supply of asteroids would hardly be depleted."

Planets thrown into orbits too close to Sgr A* also should be disrupted by tidal forces, although this would happen much less frequently than the disruption of asteroids, because planets are not as common. Such a scenario may have been responsible for a previous X-ray brightening of Sgr A* by about a factor of a million about a century ago. While this event happened many decades before X-ray telescopes existed, Chandra and other X-ray missions have seen evidence of an X-ray "light echo" reflecting off nearby clouds, providing a measure of the brightness and timing of the flare.

"This would be a sudden end to the planet's life, a much more dramatic fate than the planets in our solar system ever will experience," Zubovas said.

Very long observations of Sgr A* will be made with Chandra later in 2012 that will give valuable new information about the frequency and brightness of flares and should help to test the model proposed here to explain them. This work could improve understanding about the formation of asteroids and planets in the harsh environment of Sgr A*.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/H-12-049.html

[Salo]

http://ria.ru/science/20120209/561181139.html

НАСА "усыпило" орбитальный телескоп GALEX после 9 лет работы[/size]
13:33 09/02/2012

МОСКВА, 9 фев - РИА Новости. Орбитальный ультрафиолетовый телескоп GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) 7 февраля был переведен в спящий режим, инженеры НАСА готовятся завершить в нынешнем году миссию аппарата, проработавшего девять лет, говорится в сообщении Лаборатории реактивного движения (JPL) НАСА.

Телескоп GALEX был запущен в апреле 2003 года. Основная его миссия закончилась осенью 2007 года, после чего работа телескопа, изучающего галактики в ультрафиолетовом спектре, была продлена.

За почти девять лет работы GALEX, в частности, обнаружил у быстро движущейся звезды гигантский хвост, похожий на хвост кометы, кольца молодых звезд вокруг старых галактик, а также галактики-"подростки". Данные GALEX помогли подтвердить существование таинственной темной энергии, на долю которой, как считается, приходится около 72% массы Вселенной.[/size]

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Transforming Galaxies

Many of the Universe's galaxies are like our own, displaying beautiful spiral arms wrapping around a bright nucleus. Examples in this stunning image, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, include the tilted galaxy at the bottom of the frame, shining behind a Milky Way star, and the small spiral at the top center.

Other galaxies are even odder in shape. Markarian 779, the galaxy at the top of this image, has a distorted appearance because it is likely the product of a recent galactic merger between two spirals. This collision destroyed the spiral arms of the galaxies and scattered much of their gas and dust, transforming them into a single peculiar galaxy with a unique shape.

This galaxy is part of the Markarian catalogue, a database of over 1500 galaxies named after B. E. Markarian, the Armenian astronomer who studied them in the 1960s. He surveyed the sky for bright objects with unusually strong emission in the ultraviolet.

Ultraviolet radiation can come from a range of sources, so the Markarian catalog is quite diverse. An excess of ultraviolet emissions can be the result of the nucleus of an "active" galaxy, powered by a supermassive black hole at its center. It can also be due to events of intense star formation, called starbursts, possibly triggered by galactic collisions. Markarian galaxies are, therefore, often the subject of studies aimed at understanding active galaxies, starburst activity, and galaxy interactions and mergers.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/markarian-779.html

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GALEX еще могут оживить обратно

NASA, Caltech mull over unique satellite donation

NASA cut off financial support for operations of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer this week, but the California Institute of Technology is negotiating to assume ownership of the ultraviolet space telescope to continue its survey of the cosmos, according to agency officials.
 
Also known as GALEX, the satellite was placed in standby mode Feb. 7 after collecting its last science observation for NASA. The space agency is suspending its budget for the mission after a review of operating missions by senior astronomers ranked GALEX lower than other projects seeking a limited supply of funding.

"NASA cannot accept external funding to extend missions," said Jaya Bajpayee, program executive for operating astrophysics missions at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We are, however, investigating the feasibility of transferring GALEX and its associated ground equipment to Caltech under the Stevenson-Wydler Act."

The Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act allows the transfer of government-owned excess research equipment to educational institutions and non-profit organizations.

"This would not involve compensation from Caltech," said Trent Perrotto, a NASA spokesperson. "It would be a transfer of ownership."

NASA has donated artifacts and ground hardware under the act, but the agency has never transferred ownership of an operating satellite in space. Commercial satellites, on the other hand, are often purchased and sold while in orbit.

"At this time, Caltech is performing its due diligence to determine if it will accept these assets," Bajpayee said, adding NASA expects to receive a decision from Caltech by March 31.

"At that time, we will either transfer the satellite and associated ground equipment to Caltech or decommission the satellite," Bajpayee said.

Built by Orbital Sciences Corp. and launched from a jet aircraft in 2003, the 609-pound satellite is circling 430 miles above Earth. One of its detectors, which observed in far-ultraviolet light, stopped functioning in 2009.

GALEX and its 19.7-inch telescope spent nearly eight years surveying the ultraviolet cosmos, observing more than 80 percent of the sky and peering back in time 10 billion years to learn how galaxies and stars formed and matured in the early universe.

The mission's life-cycle cost to NASA was $150.6 million, according to Perrotto.

Composed of respected independent astronomers, a senior review in 2010 ranked GALEX eighth of 11 operating projects under consideration for mission extensions. The review recommended closing out the GALEX mission in fiscal year 2013, but NASA terminated the mission early in a move to save money. The space agency continues funding data archiving and analysis through the summer of 2012.

In the final months of the mission, GALEX was working on surveys of the galactic plane, magellanic clouds, and ultraviolet observations of the same stars being studied by NASA's Kepler telescope,, which is seeking evidence of extrasolar planets in a patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

Astronomers say the observations of the Kepler field will help planet-hunting researchers narrow their focus on nearby, hard-to-see stars that could harbor easier-to-see solar systems.

GALEX never studied those regions before because of concerns bright ultraviolet emissions could damage the instrument's detectors. After relaxing those constraints late in the mission, officials began expanding the areas of the sky available for surveys.

"This constraint had limited our sky coverage, particularly in the Milky Way's galactic plane and nearby galaxies (the magellanic clouds)," said Chris Martin, GALEX's principal investigator at Caltech, in an email to Spaceflight Now. "So our future plan would include completing the all-sky survey, as well as dedicated surveys for transient objects such as the very bright and short early phase of a supernova explosion, and the UV flares from the disruption of stars by massive black holes."

Until officials make a final decision on the future of GALEX, the spacecraft will quietly orbit in a sun-pointing orientation to keep its batteries charged, according to Kerry Erickson, NASA's GALEX project manager.

"The science instrument is off and an optical wheel in the telescope has been rotated to its opaque position to protect the detectors," Erickson said. "The transmitter is off but can be turned on by ground command to obtain spacecraft status information."

Erickson said the spacecraft is in "excellent health" other than the detector failure, which was attributed to an internal short in 2009.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1202/10galex/

[Salo]

http://ria.ru/science/20120214/565293930.html

Телескоп "Планк" составил карту угарного газа во Вселенной[/size]
07:17 14/02/2012

МОСКВА, 14 фев - РИА Новости. Европейский космический телескоп "Планк" составил первую карту распределения угарного газа на всем небосводе и обнаружил, что наша Галактика содержит ранее неизвестные холодные газовые облака, где рождаются звезды, говорится в сообщении Европейского космического агентства.

Космическая обсерватория "Планк" (Planck), работающая в миллиметровом и субмиллиметровом диапазоне, была запущена в мае 2009 года. Его главной задачей было несколько раз просканировать всю небесную сферу в этом диапазоне и получить новую, значительно более полную, картину реликтового излучения - "эха" Большого взрыва.


 Фото: ESA/Planck Collaboration; NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT/D. Finkbeiner et al.
Карта неба по данным "Планка", наложенная на карту, полученную гамма-телескопом "Ферми". Отчетливо видны "пузыри", которые совпадают со структурами, обнаруженными "Планком"

На конференции в Болонье астрономы представили новые данные с борта "Планка", который впервые составил распределения молекул монооксида углерода (угарного газа, CO) для всего небосвода. Молекулы угарного газа входят в состав холодных молекулярных газовых облаков, где идут активные процессы образования новых звезд.

Такие облака состоят в основном из молекулярного водорода, однако этот водород трудно обнаружить, поскольку он почти не излучает. Угарный газ образуется в тех же условиях, что и угарный газ, и хотя облака содержат его в значительно меньших количествах, его проще заметить, поскольку молекулы CO сильнее излучают. Поэтом угарный газ можно использовать для поиска молекулярных облаков.

Поиски излучения угарного газа с наземных радиотелескопов занимает много времени, поэтому лишь небольшая часть неба была нанесена на карту в этом диапазоне.

На карте, полученной "Планком", ученые обнаружили новые, ранее неизвестные облака холодного молекулярного газа.

Кроме того, ученые обнаружили странные структуры у центра Галактики, наблюдавшиеся в диапазоне от 30 до 44 гигагерц. "Восьмерка" вокруг центра нашей звездной системы, найденная "Планком", соответствует двум "пузырям", найденным ранее гамма-телескопом "Ферми". Для объяснения природы этой структуры выдвигались различные гипотезы - включая более частые взрывы сверхновых, действие галактического ветра или даже аннигиляцию частиц темной материи. Однако ни одна из этих гипотез пока не подтверждена.[/size]

[testest]

Угарный газ образуется в тех же условиях, что и угарный газ

Кэп?

Наверное, имеется в виду водород.

[Dmitri]

Popchemy otrabotavshie kosmicheskie teleskopi ynishtogaut, a ne dostavlaut na megdynapodnuu kosmicheskuy станциy? ONa bydet rabortat do 2028 goda!

 Habbl prekratit rabotat, a ne bydet dostavlen na MKC.

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Popchemy otrabotavshie kosmicheskie teleskopi ynishtogaut, a ne dostavlaut na megdynapodnuu kosmicheskuy станциy?

 Habbl cgopit, a ne bydet dostavlen na MKC.

МКС тоже сгорит

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Большая картинка: http://www.planetary.org/image/SpaceObservatories2012.png

Взгляд во Вселенную на разных частотах (2012)

Infographic: Viewing our universe's colors

I post lots of pictures made by space enthusiasts, and they're usually photos of pretty places. This one is quite different. I'm not sure what led Daniel Machacek to create this infographic, but it's dense with information and interesting to examine.

What is this graphic? It is an answer to the question: in what "colors" of electromagnetic radiation have we been able to observe our universe, over the length of the space age? It includes all space observatories that operated for more than one month and were not interplanetary probes or Sun observing missions. (The first requirement filters out all the experiments performed from the Shuttle and probably most from the Space Station.)

The horizontal axis is time, from 1950 to 2030. The vertical axis is wavelength, on a logarithmic scale, from short (gamma) at the top to long (radio) at the bottom. There is one (or, sometimes, more than one) box for each space observatory, where the width of the box shows you the length of time that the mission operated, and the vertical span of the box shows you what wavelengths the mission's instruments were (or are) sensitive to. Color indicates the nation of the mission's origin.

What does it mean? The first thing that is obvious from the graph is the expansion, with time, of the wavelengths that we can access from space. The second, which kind of surprised me, is that there are many astronomy missions from nations and agencies other than the big ones (NASA, USSR/Russia, ESA, and JAXA). In fact, there are lots more astronomy missions that I ever knew existed.

What do you take away from this infographic? Recognizing, of course, that this is just one person's work, and that some subjective judgment calls had to be made, especially as regards the nation of origin of these missions -- Daniel comments that it's increasingly common for all demanding space missions to result from international cooperation; it's an exception, rather than the rule, when an observatory originates in only one country. Daniel is also puzzling at how to add other dimensions of information, including spectral and spatial resolution. Infographics are hazardous that way -- there's always more detail, more information that you can add!

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003376/
http://my-favourite-universe.blogspot.com/2012/01/infografika-kosmicke-observatore.html

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http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/budget_gallery_webb.html

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Телескоп "Хаббл" подтвердил существование экзопланет - водных миров
http://ria.ru/science/20120221/571539192.html

NASA's Hubble Reveals a New Class of Extrasolar Planet
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/13/full/

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NASA's Chandra Finds Fastest Wind From Stellar-Mass Black Hole
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/H-12-056.html

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Элемент теллур впервые обнаружен на звездах

МОСКВА, 22 фев - РИА Новости. Астрономы впервые обнаружили присутствие очень редкого химического элемента - теллура - в составе звезд, говорится в статье, опубликованной в журнале Astrophysical Journal Letters.

После Большого взрыва во Вселенной существовали только три элемента - водород, гелий и следовые количества лития. Однако через 300 миллионов лет, когда появились первые звезды, начали появляться более тяжелые элементы. Все элементы тяжелее железа, согласно существующим теориям, возникли в результате взрывов сверхновых. В последние 50 лет ученые изучают химический состав звезд разного возраста, чтобы выяснить пути эволюции химических элементов и понять, какие процессы порождают те или иные элементы.

Группа ученых под руководством Иэна Редерера (Ian Roederer) из Обсерватории Карнеги впервые обнаружила следы 52-го элемента таблицы Менделеева, теллура, в трех древних звездах, возраст которых составляет около 12 миллиардов лет.

Ученые исследовали полученные с помощью телескопа "Хаббл" спектры звезд, расположенных в нескольких тысячах световых лет от Земли, в гало нашей Галактики (рассеянном облаке звезд, окружающих ее плоский диск).

В результате они обнаружили полосы поглощения в ультрафиолетовой части спектра, соответствующие теллуру. Этот элемент очень редок, его содержание в земной коре не превышает миллионных долей процента. Открытие группы Редерера стало первым указанием на присутствие теллура в космосе.

Астрономы также измерили соотношение доли теллура с долями других тяжелых элементов - бария и стронция. Полученные данные стали подтверждением теории рождения этих тяжелых элементов в результате редких процессов во время взрывов сверхновых.

"Вы можете получить железо и никель при взрыве любой сверхновой, где угодно во Вселенной. Но эти тяжелые элементы, по всей видимости, производят только "специализированные" сверхновые", - говорит соавтор работы Анна Фребель (Anna Frebel) из Массачусетского технологического института.

Теллур и ряд других тяжелых элементов должны образовываться в результате так называемых r-процессов - рождения ядер при быстром захвате нейтронов ядрами-зачатками. Как считается, такие процессы происходят в результате взрывов сверхновых типа Ib, Ic и II, чьи ядра содержат большое количество нейтронов и альфа-частиц.

http://ria.ru/science/20120222/572248814.html

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http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=36170

Gamma-ray bursts' highest power side unveiled by Fermi Telescope[/size]
Source: NASA HQ
Posted Tuesday, February 21, 2012

 Detectable for only a few seconds but possessing enormous energy, gamma-ray bursts are difficult to capture because their energy does not penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. Now, thanks to an orbiting telescope, astrophysicists are filling in the unknowns surrounding these bursts and uncovering new questions.

 The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, formerly called the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, launched on June 11, 2008. As part of its mission, the telescope records any gamma-ray bursts within its viewing area.

 "Fermi is lucky to measure the highest energy portion of the gamma-ray burst emission, which last for hundreds to thousands of seconds -- maybe 20 minutes," said Peter Meszaros, Eberly Chair Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Physics, Penn State.

 Most gamma-ray bursts occur when stars that are more than 25 times larger than our sun come to the end of their lives. When the internal nuclear reaction in these stars ends, the star collapses in on itself and forms a black hole. The outer envelope of the star is ejected forming a supernova.

 "The black hole is rotating rapidly and as it is swallowing the matter from the star, the rotation ejects a jet of material through the supernova envelope," said Meszaros.

 This jet causes the gamma-ray burst, which briefly becomes the brightest thing in the sky. However, unlike supernovas that radiate in all directions, gamma-ray bursts radiate in a very narrow area, and Fermi sees only jets ejecting in its direction. This, however, is the direction in which they send their highest energy photons. Any gamma-ray bursts on the other side of the black hole or even off at an angle are invisible to the telescope.

 "We actually miss about 500 gamma-ray bursts for every one we detect," Meszaros told attendees today (Feb. 18 ) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, British Columbia.

 The gamma-ray bursts that Fermi has seen have allowed astrophysicists to clarify previous theories about gamma-ray bursts.

 "We have been able to rule out the simplest version of theories which combine quantum mechanics with gravity, although others remain to be tested," said Meszaros.

 Meszaros notes that Fermi and other programs like the SWIFT telescope have shown that gamma-ray bursts last longer than we thought they did and that there are long and short gamma-ray bursts.

 Fermi, a more specialized telescope than the SWIFT telescope that also detects gamma-ray bursts, enabled scientists to look at the very fast -- near the speed of light -- jets producing the gamma-ray emissions. While researchers are still modifying scientific theories on the nature of these bursts, thanks to Fermi, they now have actual measurements to add to the theoretical debate.

 "Fermi has done much better in measuring how close to the speed of light the jet gets," said Meszaros. "But we still don't know if it is 99.9995 percent the speed of light or 99.99995 percent the speed of light."

 Gamma-ray bursts occur in many places in the universe, but because they are a product of aging stars they may be able to shed some light on the beginnings of the universe. The bursts are visible at the longest distance from earth and therefore at the earliest time in the universe.

 "We think we can detect them at the infancy of the universe," said Meszaros.

 Wherever a gamma-ray burst exists, any planets in the vicinity suffer. Further away, the radiation from a gamma-ray burst would destroy the protective ozone in the upper atmosphere, allowing ultraviolet radiation to kill terrestrial plant life and animals would starve. Only sea life would remain unharmed. However, it is estimated that such nearby bursts can be expected only every 300 million years.

 Because scientists believe that gamma-ray bursts also emit cosmic rays and neutrinos, other observatories are also observing these phenomena. Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole is trying to capture neutrinos, while the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory in Argentina captures cosmic rays from these objects.

 NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy supports the work Fermi Telescope.[/size]

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NASA's Spitzer Finds Solid Buckyballs in Space

PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have, for the first time, discovered buckyballs in a solid form in space. Prior to this discovery, the microscopic carbon spheres had been found only in gas form in the cosmos.

Formally named buckministerfullerene, buckyballs are named after their resemblance to the late architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. They are made up of 60 carbon molecules arranged into a hollow sphere, like a soccer ball. Their unusual structure makes them ideal candidates for electrical and chemical applications on Earth, including superconducting materials, medicines, water purification and armor.

In the latest discovery, scientists using Spitzer detected tiny specks of matter, or particles, consisting of stacked buckyballs. They found the particles around a pair of stars called "XX Ophiuchi," 6,500 light-years from Earth, and detected enough to fill the equivalent in volume to 10,000 Mount Everests.

"These buckyballs are stacked together to form a solid, like oranges in a crate," said Nye Evans of Keele University in England, lead author of a paper appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "The particles we detected are miniscule, far smaller than the width of a hair, but each one would contain stacks of millions of buckyballs."

Buckyballs were detected definitively in space for the first time by Spitzer in 2010. Spitzer later identified the molecules in a host of different cosmic environments. It even found them in staggering quantities, the equivalent in mass to 15 Earth moons, in a nearby galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud.

In all of those cases, the molecules were in the form of gas. The recent discovery of buckyballs particles means that large quantities of these molecules must be present in some stellar environments in order to link up and form solid particles. The research team was able to identify the solid form of buckyballs in the Spitzer data because they emit light in a unique way that differs from the gaseous form.

"This exciting result suggests that buckyballs are even more widespread in space than the earlier Spitzer results showed," said Mike Werner, project scientist for Spitzer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "They may be an important form of carbon, an essential building block for life, throughout the cosmos."

Buckyballs have been found on Earth in various forms. They form as a gas from burning candles and exist as solids in certain types of rock, such as the mineral shungite found in Russia, and fulgurite, a glassy rock from Colorado that forms when lightning strikes the ground. In a test tube, the solids take on the form of dark, brown "goo."

"The window Spitzer provides into the infrared universe has revealed beautiful structure on a cosmic scale," said Bill Danchi, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "In yet another surprise discovery from the mission, we're lucky enough to see elegant structure at one of the smallest scales, teaching us about the internal architecture of existence."

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For information about previous Spitzer discoveries of buckyballs, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20100722.html and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20101027.html .

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20120222.html