Via @newsycombinator.
by John Sonmez.
Sunday, December 02, 2012
See the Planet Mercury
Via @popastro. Society for Popular Astronomy.
Mercury reaches greatest western elongation on the 4th of December when it will rise about two hours before the Sun, shining at magnitude -0.5. Try to catch it for a few days around that date before it draws back towards the Sun again.
Venus is closing in on the Sun again too but still shining brilliantly at around magnitude -4 which makes it impossible to miss if you have a clear sky.
Saturn rises well before dawn at 4am at the start of December and nearly two hours earlier than that by the month’s end. Though much fainter than Venus, it is very bright at around magnitude 0.6. The planet’s spectacular rings are well open now making it a fine sight through a small telescope for early risers.
Image credit: Mercury, Venus and Saturn pictured on 2 December by Paul Sutherland
Taiwan engineers defeat limits of flash memory
by Nancy Owano at Phys.org. Via @physorg_com.
[Macronix] redesigned a flash memory chip to include onboard heaters to anneal small groups of memory cells. Applying a brief jolt of heat to a very restricted area within the chip (800 degrees C) returns the cell to a “good” state. They said that the process does not have to be run all that often. According to project member Hang‑Ting Lue, the annealing can be done infrequently and on one sector at a time while the device is inactive but still connected to the power source. It would not drain a cellphone battery, he added.
Macronix estimates that the flash memory cells could beat the 10,000 cycle limit by lasting for as much as for 100 million cycles
Friday, November 30, 2012
Biggest Black Hole?
Article by Elizabeth Howell for Space.com.
Via @mashable
Astronomers have discovered what may be the most massive black hole ever known in a small galaxy about 250 million light-years from Earth, scientists say.
The supermassive black hole has a mass equivalent to 17 billion suns and is located inside the galaxy NGC 1277 in the constellation Perseus. It makes up about 14 percent of its host galaxy’s mass, compared with the 0.1 percent a normal black hole would represent, scientists said.
UCLan Discovery Challenges the Cosmological Principle
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From The University of Central Lancashire
Via @doccosmos
An international team led by academics from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) has found the largest known structure in the universe – a large quasar group that challenges scientific understanding of our universe.
The Cosmological Principle is the assumption that the universe, when viewed at a sufficiently large scale, looks the same no matter where you are observing it from.
Whole clusters of galaxies can be 2-3 Mpc across but LQGs [large quasar groups] can be 200 Mpc or more across. Although, based on the Cosmological Principle and the modern theory of cosmology, calculations suggest that astrophysicists should not be able to find a structure larger than 370 Mpc.
Neil Armstrong
This is one of my favorite pictures of Neil Armstrong standing next to my favorite rocket/plane, the X-15.
Some lawmakers are considering renaming Dryden Flight Research Center after Armstrong.
Via @PTTU.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Can You See A Star Die?
(Image Link (to zoom))
My sister-in-law asked me this excellent question the other night. I completely forgot about SN 1987A.
SN 1987A was a supernova in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy. It occurred approximately 51.4 kiloparsecs from Earth, approximately 168,000 light-years, close enough that it was visible to the naked eye. It could be seen from the Southern Hemisphere. It was the closest observed supernova since SN 1604, which occurred in the Milky Way itself. The light from the new supernova reached Earth on February 23, 1987.
Of course I didn't see this one because it was only visible in the Southern Hemisphere but I followed it pretty closely. As noted above, it was the first close supernova since A.D. 1604.
From the light curve you can see it took several months for the phenomenon to brighten and dim.
Could you dig a hole all the way to the Earth’s mantle?
From @howstuffworks.
Article by Patrick Kiger.
…An international team of scientists who call themselves the 2012 MoHole To the Mantle project [are] counting upon international support for a $1 billion effort in which a Japanese deep-sea drilling vessel, the Chikyu, would burrow into the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to dig deeper than anyone has ever gone before. The plan is to go right through the Earth's crust, the rocky top layer of the planet, which is 18 to 37 miles (30 to 60 kilometers) thick on land, but as little as 3 miles (5-kilometers) thick at its thinnest spots on the ocean floor [source: Osman]. If the Chikyu's drill rig breaks through a transitional boundary called the Moho, it would reach the Earth's mantle, the mysterious 1,740-mile (2,900-kilometer) thick layer between the crust and the planet's hot, molten core [sources: USGS, ScienceDaily].
Image credit: Surachit
Friday, November 02, 2012
Nine Giga-pixel Image of the Milky Way
From The Verge.
Using images from the ESO's Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), researchers have stitched together a massive nine-gigapixel image of the Milky Way galaxy. The 108,200 x 81,500 image consists of nearly nine billion pixels, and was used to create a catalog of 84 million stars. Researchers claim that this is the largest image of its kind — the first to catalog the entire bulge of the Milky Way galaxy — and contains ten times more stars than any previous study.
My favorite part is where it says “Click to Enlarge.”
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
The Ultimate Original Series Star Trek Poster
In the fandom hall of fame, a special place is held by Star Trek devotees and Dusty Abel has earned himself a seat at the right hand of Spock for this incredible poster that includes an element for every episode of the original series.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
No real change in the 00z NAM
RT @spann
Hit on the NJ coast after midnight Mon night. Effects begin much earlier #sandy pic.twitter.com/IXEMPbaO
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Nice loop but scary scenario
of the NAM4 model for #Sandy. RT @wxbrad.
http://weatherbellmodels.com/weather/hires_uv900_slp_east_anim.gif
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Fireball - Meteorite Hits House in California
From Space.com.
Homeowner Lisa Webber, …found the space rock Saturday (Oct. 20)…. She recalled hearing a sound on her roof the night the meteor was reported and went searching behind her house, where she found a 2.2 ounce (63 grams) stone.
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