New Moon, Supermoon ring in the New Year

The first night of 2014 also brings with it the first lunar phenomenon of the year: a new moon that’s also a supermoon. It’s one of two supermoons in January (the other is January 30) and one of five for the whole year.

What is a supermoon? When the moon orbits slightly closer to Earth than on average, NASA states. Typically, it’s most visible when the moon is full, but that’s not the only time it can occur. In fact, given that the upcoming event is a new moon, we’ll barely be able to see its light at all — no matter how late we celebrate into the night.

People in parts of North America farthest west and those on islands in the Pacific may have some visibility, but only through binoculars. Tides in some places will also be higher. “When the sun, moon and Earth are in alignment (at the time of the new or full moon), the solar tide has an additive effect on the lunar tide,” according to NOAA, “creating extra-high high tides, and very low, low tides — both commonly called spring tides.” Unless a severe weather event accompanies the high tides, however, don’t expect anything dramatic to happen from the lunar effect.

Sadly, the January 30 supermoon is also a new moon, so same deal: no viewing pleasure. On August 10, however — the closest supermoon of the year — the lunar event coincides with a full moon, creating what will look like a huge, low ball of light in the sky.

Click here to read more. You can also know more about the supermoon if you click here.

Birth of Black Hole kills 'exploding' radio star

Astronomers have found a new population of exploding stars that "switch off" their radio transmissions before collapsing into a Black Hole.

These exploding stars use all of their energy to emit one last strong beam of highly energetic radiation - known as a gamma-ray burst - before they die.

Until now, it was thought all gamma-ray bursts were followed by a radio afterglow - a premise that a team of Australian astronomers of the Centre for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) at Curtin University and the University of Sydney originally set out to prove correct.

Lead researcher and Curtin research fellow Dr Paul Hancock said that after studying an ultra-sensitive image of gamma-ray bursts with no afterglow, we can now say the theory was incorrect and our telescopes have not failed us.

It allowed for the stacking of 200 separate observations on top of each other to re-create the image of a gamma-ray burst in much better quality - yet, no trace of a radio afterglow was found.

Click here to know more about the research and its results.

Asteroid-hunting telescope orbiting Earth sends first images

NEOWISE, a repurposed infrared telescope orbiting Earth, has returned its first test images in preparation for its new task: hunting for and characterizing asteroids – especially those that could represent a hazard to Earth.

The images are a milestone for NASA's first mission dedicated to the hunt for near-Earth objects (NEOs) from space. In addition to discovering additional NEOs, the telescope will help refine estimates of the hazards presented by objects already discovered via optical telescopes. Beyond its immediate objectives, the mission is serving as training wheels for a more ambitious mission, NEOCAM, that a team is preparing to propose to NASA.

NASA recently released initial images from NEOWISE. The team, led by Amy Mainzer, is pleased with the results. "The image quality looks excellent," says Dr. Mainzer, who is also leading the NEOCAM effort. "It looks pretty much like we left it about 31 months ago." That's when NASA put the craft to sleep when its initial mission ended.

All-sky catalog

NEOWISE launched in 2009 as NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The exquisitely sensitive telescope spent about six months building an all-sky catalog of objects ranging from brown dwarfs to distant galaxies. NASA's James Web Space Telescope, currently slated for launch in 2018, and other observatories will use the catalog to pick targets for detailed observation.

By end of September 2010, however, the craft had exhausted the coolant that helped the infrared detectors reach the sensitivity needed to build the catalog. Within a month, NASA opted to extended the mission through February 2011 to see how the craft, with warmer detectors, worked as an NEO observatory.

During both phases of the craft's initial mission, it observed more than 158,000 asteroids. Of those, it discovered some 35,000 objects; 135 were NEOs. It picked up 155 comets, including 21 new ones.

Importantly, during the craft's warm phase, the team observed 6,500 asteroids in the main asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter, as well as 88 NEOs, according to a study the researchers published in November 2012 in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

To know more about NEOWISE, click here.

Gaia space probe blasts off on five-year mission to map a billion stars

A £2 billion European probe has blasted into space on a five-year mission to map more than a billion stars. The Gaia space telescope was launched by a Russian Soyuz rocket from Europe's space port in Kourou, French Guiana, shortly after 9 a.m. UK time.

It is en route to a gravitationally stable parking place called the L2 Lagrangian point almost a million miles from Earth. Gaia is designed to create the most accurate map yet of our galaxy, the Milky Way, by pinpointing millions of stars in 3D with unprecedented accuracy.

It is also expected to discover thousands of previously unknown objects, including exploding stars, planets orbiting other suns, and nearby asteroids. Scientists hope Gaia will yield clues about two of the universe's biggest mysteries, Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

Situated with the Earth shielding it from the Sun, the craft will be perfectly placed to observe the wider universe. As it spins slowly, two telescopes will sweep across the entire sky and simultaneously focus their light on the largest digital camera ever put into space.

More than a billion stars will be observed an average of 70 times each over the five-year period.Gaia will measure the position and key physical properties of every star, including its brightness, temperature and chemical composition. The flood of data beamed back to Earth will be enough to fill more than 30,000 CD-ROMs.

To read more about the exploration, click here.

Molecule of Argon Hydride discovered in space

A molecule containing a noble gas has been discovered in space by a team including astronomers from Cardiff University.

The find was made using a Cardiff-led instrument aboard Europe's Herschel Space Observatory. The molecule, argon hydride, was seen in the Crab Nebula, the remains of a star that exploded 1,000 years ago. Before the discovery, molecules of this kind have only been studied in laboratories on Earth.

The noble gases, which include helium, argon, radon and krypton, usually do not react easily with other chemical elements, and are often found on their own. In the right circumstances, however, they can form molecules with other elements. Such chemical compounds have only ever been studied in laboratories on Earth, leading astronomers to assume the right conditions simply do not occur in space.

"The Crab Nebula was only formed 1000 years ago when a massive star exploded", said Dr Haley Gomez of Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy.

"Not only is it very young in astronomical terms, but also relatively close, at just 6,500 light years away, providing an excellent way to study what happens in these stellar explosions."

Further measurements of the Crab Nebula were made using Herschel's SPIRE instrument. Its development and operation was led by Professor Matt Griffin, from the School of Physics and Astronomy.

As molecules spin in space, they emit light of very specific wavelengths, or colours, called "emission lines". The precise wavelength is dictated by the composition and structure of the molecule. Studying the emission lines observed by the SPIRE instrument allows astronomers to study the chemistry of outer space.

The team, led by Professor Mike Barlow from University College London, did not set out to make the discovery, but stumbled upon it almost by accident.

"We were really concentrating on studying the dust in the filaments with SPIRE, and out pops these two bright emission lines exactly where we see the dust shining", says Dr Gomez. "The team had a hard time figuring out what these lines were from, as no-one had seen them before."

Professor Barlow said, "At first, the discovery of argon seemed bizarre. With hot gas still expanding at high speeds after the explosion, a supernova remnant is a harsh, hot and hostile environment, and one of the places where we least expected to find a noble-gas based molecule."

It now seems the Crab Nebula provides exactly the right conditions to form such molecules. The argon was produced in the initial stellar explosion, and then ionised, or energised, with electrons stripped from the atoms in resulting intense radiation as shockwaves.

These shockwaves led to the formation of the network of cool filaments containing cold molecular hydrogen, made of two hydrogen atoms. The ionised argon then mixed with the cool gas to provide perfect conditions for noble gas compounds to form.

To read more, click here.

Geminid meteor shower lights up Alabama skies

The Geminid Metor shower peaked between 9 p.m. Friday and the break of dawn on Saturday. Arizona got a preview on Tuesday. A loud one as a meteor exploded over the state. The meteor that shook windows was not part of the Geminids.

Sky & Telescope says the Geminid meteor shower is the "richest reliable shower of the year." Skywatchers should bundle up and bring a flask for the annual Geminid meteor shower. You will be rewarded with meteors appearing at a rate of about 100 to 120 an hour. Space experts say the peak will be right after the moon sets and just before dawn.

The Geminid meteor shower was named for the stellar constellation Gemini. The Geminid meteors arrive in mid-December when the Earth passes through debris from a small asteroid called 3200 Phaethon.

Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, said "This year, there will be a magic hour starting at about 4 a.m. up until dawn that there will be no moon and you'll be able to see the Geminids in their full glory,"

To read more, click here.

Five exoplanets show evidence of water vapour

The Hubble Space Telescope and some new imaging techniques have helped scientists detect traces of water vapour on five massive planets in our galactic backyard. However, despite the presence of water molecules in their atmospheres, none of these five planets is suitable to life. They are all gas giants, sometimes called hot-Jupiters, and they are all too close to their suns to sustain liquid water on their surfaces.

The planets -- WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b -- are tidally locked with their stars so that the same side of the planet always faces the star and is constantly bombarded with a powerful stream of solar radiation. The heat from the star is distributed around the planet via strong winds that move faster than the speed of sound.

To find traces of water vapor in their atmospheres, L. Drake Deming, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, and his colleagues used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, which measures near-infrared light. The scientists waited until each planet was about to pass in front of its sun, then pointed Hubble at it. Because water molecules absorb certain wavelengths of light, the scientists could detect the presence of water vapour during the planet's transit across its sun if those wavelengths were not picked up by Hubble.

Hubble is only strong enough to see the signs of water vapor on the gas giant planets, but Deming said that Hubble's successor -- the James Webb Telescope, slated to launch in 2018 -- will be strong enough to find water signatures in the atmospheres of smaller, rockier planets more like Earth.

To know more about the exoplanets and the findings, click here.