Terms: astronomers
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- Astronomers (Hamilton)
Provides short descriptions of contributions of key astronomers.
- Astronomers Discuss Changing Earth's Orbit (CNN)
Describes a plan, which must be put into place within 3.5 billion years, to move the Earth's orbit gradually away from the sun as the Sun becomes hotter. Talk about planning ahead... 2-01
- Astronomers (Discovery.com)
Provides biographies of nine persons who made strong contributions to astronomy, including Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Georges Lemaître, Arno Penzias, and Robert Wilson. 3-02
- Astronomers Capture First Images of New Planets (CNN News)
"The first-ever pictures of planets outside our solar system were released today in two studies."
"According to the the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, there have been 322 planets found outside our solar system. The latest findings bring that total to 326." 11-08
- -04-28-09 Astronomers Find Most Distant Object (CBS News)
"Astronomers have spotted a burst of energy from a dying star, setting a record for the oldest and most distant object seen by Earth yet." 04-09
- Astronomy Societies (Astronomical League)
Provides contact information on the Astronomical League, "the world's largest federation of amateur astronomers." 1-01
- Planetlike Body Seen Orbiting a Star (CNN.com)
"Astronomers have taken optical images of a giant planetlike body orbiting near a sunlike star, making it the closest ever observed around a star through direct imaging." 1-02
- Penzias, Arno and Robert Wilson (Discovery.com)
Provides a picture and a short biography of the astronomers. 3-02
- Solar Systems Similar to Ours Found (USAToday.com - Fergano)
"European and U.S. astronomers Thursday announced the discovery of two solar systems with planets in orbits similar to our own, a finding that boosts the odds that they harbor extraterrestrial life." One orbits the star 55 Cancri. 6-02
- Star Magnitudes or Brightness (NCats.net)
Lists the magnitudes of the brightest stars, including Sirius -1.54, Canopus -0.73, Rigel Kent -0.10, Arcturus -0.06, Vega 0.04, Capella 0.08, Rigel 0.11, Procyon 0.35, Achernar 0.48, Hadar 0.60, Altair 0.77, Betelgeuse 0.80, Aldebaran 0.85, Acrux 0.90, Spica 0.96, Anteres 1.00, Pollux 1.15, Fomalhaut 1.16, Deneb 1.25, and Mimosa 1.26.
"Magnitudes were first placed on stars by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, more than two thousand years ago. He listed stars from first magnitude (the brightest) to sixth magnitude (the faintest) with a one magnitude increase corresponding to a star one-half as bright. In the mid-1800's astronomers made a more precise definition of magnitude, determining that the intensity difference between magnitudes was 2.512." "The most important thing to remember is that as magnitude decreases a star's brightness increases." (The four stars with a negative value are brighter than the first magnitude, for example.) 7-02
- Right Ascension and Declination of Stars (NCats.net)
"Right ascension and declination are what astronomers use to precisely locate objects on a celestial map, and are equivalent to the imaginary lines of longitude and latitiude used in maps of the earth." 7-02
- Planets of the Solar System (NCats.net)
Provides a short description of each planet, stating how it is distinct from the other one. Editor's Note - Some astronomers no longer consider Pluto to be a planet. 7-02
- Dramatic New Evidence of a Planet in Another Solar System (The Scotsman)
"Astronomers said there was an 'odds-on' chance of intelligent life in space after new observations produced the best evidence yet of planets circling stars outside our solar system."
"A team led by the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (ATC) in Edinburgh announced yesterday that they had found the dusty wake of a Saturn-like planet around one of the brightest stars in the sky."
Professor Ian Robson said that the new tool used, with specially-cooled camera called SCUBA, 'will revolutionize our search for evidence of planetary systems.' "10-02
- Black Hole Pulls a Star in Orbit of Galaxy (USA Today - Vergano)
"Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have captured evidence of a black hole hurtling through our Milky Way galaxy with gravity so strong it's dragging a star with it." 11-02
- Evolution of the Universe (NASA)
"The myriad galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field represented the first big step for Hubble astronomers to understand galaxy evolution. But studying galaxy evolution in the Hubble Deep Field is like trying to understand the population of a country by sampling a small village. Astronomers don't know if the galaxies in that village are representative of the universe's galactic population. The GOODS survey, on the other hand, is akin to sampling the population of a large city to make inferences about galaxies in the cosmos." 6-03
- 07-12-03 Oldest Planet "Mind-Boggling" (ABC News)
"Astronomers have discovered the oldest known planet, a primeval world 12.7 billion years old that will force them to reconsider how and when planets form. The discovery raises the prospect that life may have begun far sooner than most scientists ever imagined. A leading planet-formation expert not involved in the work called the discovery mind-boggling." 7-03
- Oldest Planet "Mind-Boggling" (ABC News)
"Astronomers have discovered the oldest known planet, a primeval world 12.7 billion years old that will force them to reconsider how and when planets form. The discovery raises the prospect that life may have begun far sooner than most scientists ever imagined. A leading planet-formation expert not involved in the work called the discovery mind-boggling." 7-03
- Facts and Myths About Mars (CNN News)
"We know a great deal about the red planet from centuries of work by astronomers and from decades of data beamed back from unmanned spacecraft like the twin Viking landers, which in 1976 became the first spacecraft to land successfully on the planet." 12-03
- Dark Matter (Space.com - Weinstock)
"Eighty-four years after Albert Einstein introduced the world to his theory of general relativity, scientists are seeing that he was right all along about measuring what we now call dark matter."
"Astronomers supported by the National Science Foundation have found the first evidence of an effect called cosmological shear, a phenomenon predicted by Einstein’s theory, in which light from distant cosmic objects bends due to gravitational forces. What’s more, the detection of cosmological shear has allowed astronomers to track down significant amounts of dark matter, non-luminous matter whose presence in the universe has been predicted, but scantly detected until now." 12-03
- New Planets Forming (Scientific American)
"Astronomers have gotten the best view yet of a potential planet-forming disk around a young star." 8-04
- "Earth-Like" Planet Found (CNN News)
"In a discovery that has left one expert stunned, European astronomers have found one of the smallest planets known outside our solar system, a world about 14 times the mass of our own around a star much like the sun." "The star, mu Arae, is visible under dark skies from the Southern Hemisphere." 8-04
- Galaxies Collide with a Stellar Bang (CNN News)
"Astronomers have found what they are calling the perfect cosmic storm, a galaxy cluster pile-up so powerful its energy output is second only to the Big Bang."
"The cluster collision is the most powerful ever recorded and a fresh glimpse of the cluster merging process, where great swarms of galaxies smash into one another to form a single galactic structure."
"Researchers said the Abell 754 observations match closely with those predicted by computer models and are a sign that astronomers are on the right track with theories of galactic evolution and the structure of the universe."
"NASA researcher Richard Mushotzky, U.S. project scientist for the XMM-Newton observatory, told reporters that the research also adds to the understanding of dark matter and dark energy, two invisible phenomena that can determine the rate of merging galactic clusters."
" 'In some ways, galaxy clusters are the universe in a box,' Mushotzky said. 'If we can understand them with some detail, we can apply those findings to the universe as a whole." 9-04
- Leonid Meteor Shower (The Leonids)
"The annual Leonid meteor shower is set to rain space dust over Earth for the next few days, putting on a show for night skygazers. Astronomers disagree as to when the shower will peak -- some say Wednesday, others Friday."
Every year at this time, Earth passes through the dusty debris trail of the comet Tempel-Tuttle. As the tiny meteors -- most no bigger than a grain of sand -- hit earth's atmosphere, they burn up in a fiery streak. They are also known as shooting stars." 11-04
- First Exstrasolar Planet Sighted (Nature.com)
"The hunt for direct images of planets outside our Solar System has bagged its strongest candidate yet."
"Recent observations from the Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed a previous sighting made in April 2004. Astronomers say they are now 99% certain that the dim and distant blob is indeed a planet." 1-05
- -06-27-05 NASA: Possible Fireworks on the Fourth (CBS News)
"NASA hopes to shoot off its own celestial sparks in an audacious mission that will blast a stadium-sized hole in a comet half the size of Manhattan. It would give astronomers their first peek at the inside of one of these heavenly bodies." 6-05
- -08-01-05 Possible 10th Planet Found (International Herald Tribune)
"Astronomers announced Friday that they had found a lump of rock and ice that is larger than Pluto and the farthest known object in the solar system."
"The discovery will probably rekindle debate over the definition of what is a planet and whether Pluto still merits the designation. The new object - as yet unnamed, but temporarily known as 2003 UB313 - is now 9 billion miles, or almost 14.5 billion kilometers, away from the Sun, or 97 times as far away as the Earth and about three times Pluto's current distance from the Sun. Its 560-year elliptical orbit brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles. Pluto's orbit ranges between 2.7 billion and 4.6 billion miles." 7-05
- -09-04-05 Fastest Space Traveler Located (Scientific American)
"Superman may be faster than a speeding bullet, but there is a neutron star in our galaxy that can compete for the title of fastest space traveler. Astronomers have tracked the movement of a pulsar, making the first direct measurement of its impressive speed." 9-05
- -09-10-05 New Planet Discovered (ScienceDaily.com)
"A team of researchers from the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, the California Institute of Technology, and Yale University have discovered a new planet."
"Officially designated 2003 UB313, scientists said the planet is located in the outer area of the solar system is intrinsically brighter than Pluto and three times further away."
"Astronomers said assuming the reflectivity of the surface is the same as Pluto's, it is the largest object detected in the solar system since the discovery of Neptune and its moon Triton in 1846." 9-05
- -11-23-05 Supernovae Back Einstein's Constant (Scientific American)
"Now new observations from an international team of astronomers seem to show that dark energy is like the cosmological constant, unvarying throughout space and time. By measuring the distances to 71 far-off supernovae, the scientists were able to ascertain with a high degree of confidence that the effect dark energy exerts on supernovae light does not vary with distance. The researchers also plugged this data into a so-called equation of state, which measures the relationship between pressure and density, and found that dark energy must be less than -0.85--awfully close to Einstein's cosmological constant at -1. 'Our observation is at odds with a number of theoretical ideas about the nature of dark energy that predict that it should change as the universe expands and, as far as we can see, it doesn't,' says team member Ray Carlberg of the University of Toronto." 11-05
- -12-15-05 Oddball Object Discovered Beyond Neptune (ABC News)
"A distant object named Buffy has been spotted circling the sun far beyond Neptune in a strange tilted orbit that is making some astronomers question how the outer reaches of the solar system formed."
"Officially called 2004 XR 190 by the International Astronomical Union but code-named Buffy, the object is now about 58 times as far from the sun as Earth, and twice as far from the sun as Neptune."
"The Kuiper Belt is a ring of space objects that may be remnants from the early solar system. Most of these objects orbit the sun between 30 and 50 times the distance that Earth orbits. The distance from Earth to the sun — 93 million miles — is known as one astronomical unit." 12-05
- Questions About the Pluto (ASK and Astronomer for Kids)
Provides questions and answers for kids and adults.
Editor's Note: Because Pluto is mostly made of ice and has an orbit different from the planets, some astronomers no longer consider Pluto to be a planet. 01-06
- -01-25-06 Earth-Like Planet Discovered (Times Online)
"The most Earth-like planet yet discovered beyond the solar system has been detected orbiting a distant star, boosting the chances that life exists elsewhere in the galaxy."
"The icy, rocky world is just five times larger than our own, making it the smallest and most similar to Earth of all the 160 "exoplanets" around other stars that astronomers have found so far." 01-06
- -02-01-06 10th Planet Bigger than Pluto (Scientific American)
" When astronomers announced the discovery of UB313, the so-called tenth planet, a little more than a year ago, they had a hunch it might be bigger than Pluto because of its brightness. But despite several attempts to observe more closely the mysterious object orbiting the sun at a distance of more than 14 billion kilometers, accurate estimates of its size remained elusive. Now German astronomers working in Spain have determined that UB313 has a diameter of roughly 3,000 kilometers--roughly 700 kilometers larger than Pluto's.”
"Outside the range of visible light, the scientists could measure the amount of light the object absorbs and then radiates back as heat. By combining the infrared and visible measurements, they could then determine the object's size and its overall reflectivity, or albedo." 01-06
- -04-25-07 Potentially-Habitable Planet Found (Christian Science Monitor)
"The quest to find Earth-like planets around other stars appears to have taken a significant step forward. Astronomers in Europe have detected a "super Earth" orbiting a dwarf star 20.5 light-years away."
"The planet appears to be the most Earth-like of any of the more than 200 planets yet found outside the solar system." 04-07
- -05-28-07 28 New Planets Discovered (MSNBC News)
"Astronomers have discovered 28 new planets outside of our solar system, increasing to 236 the number of known exoplanets, revealing that planets can exist around a broad spectrum of stellar types — from tiny, dim stars to giants." 05-07
- -05-28-07 10 Intriguing Exoplanets (Space.com)
"Astronomers have discovered 28 new planets outside of our solar system, increasing to 236 the number of known exoplanets, revealing that planets can exist around a broad spectrum of stellar types — from tiny, dim stars to giants." 05-07
- Black Holes Galore (Time.com)
"Theory says that most of the galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang should have giant black holes lurking in their cores--but until now, astronomers haven't seen much evidence." 10-07
- Hubble Survey Finds Missing Matter (HubbleSite.org)
"Although the universe contains billions of galaxies, only a small amount of its matter is locked up in these behemoths. Most of the universe's matter that was created during and just after the Big Bang must be found elsewhere."
"Now, in an extensive search of the local universe, astronomers say they have definitively found about half of the missing normal matter, called baryons, in the spaces between the galaxies. This important component of the universe is known as the 'intergalactic medium,' or IGM, and it extends essentially throughout all of space, from just outside our Milky Way galaxy to the most distant regions of space observed by astronomers."
"Astronomers caution that the missing baryonic matter is not to be confused with 'dark matter,' a mysterious and exotic form of matter that is only detected via its gravitational pull." 06-08
- -09-06-08 Scientists Create Virtual Telescope 1000 Times Finer Than Hubble (Science Daily)
"An international team, led by astronomers at the MIT Haystack Observatory, has obtained the closest views ever of what is believed to be a super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy." 09-08
- -06-08-09 Measuring the Universe (MSNBC News)
"How far away is that galaxy? The more precise your answer is, the more you can find out about mysterious dark energy. In the past, astronomers have used variable stars and a special kind of supernova to make their distance estimates - and now two new measuring sticks are being added to the toolbox." 06-09
- Hubble Telescope Fixed and Improved (BBC News)
"Astronomers are celebrating the release of remarkable new images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)." Some of the pictures are included in the article.
Hubble discoveries to date include:
"In what was a prime mission objective, Hubble fixed the Universe's age at about 13.7 billion years - later confirmed by other instruments"
"Hubble's ability to detect faint supernovae contributed to the discovery that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating"
"Hubble was one of two telescopes to make the first direct images of planets orbiting another star - historic images made public last November"
"Hubble provided the first direct measurements of the three-dimensional distribution of dark matter in space"
"Hubble has shown that monster black holes, with masses millions to billions times the mass of our Sun, inhabit the centres of most galaxies" 09-09
- Runaway Climate Change (Wikipedia.org)
"The phrase 'runaway climate change' is used to describe a situation in which positive feedbacks result in rapid climate change.[7] It is most commonly used in mass media and popular science literature and by environmental organizations,[8][9] is occasionally used in the social sciences.[10] It is particularly used in the popular media and by environmentalists with reference to concerns about rapid global warming.[7][8] Some astronomers use the similar expression runaway greenhouse effect to describe a situation where the climate deviates catastrophically and permanently from the original state - as happened on Venus.[11][12]. 11-09
- -12-07-09 Distant Planet-Like Object Viewed Directly, a First (Time.com)
"Astronomers have been finding planets around distant stars for more than a decade now, and the count is currently around 400. But the vast majority of these so-called exoplanets have been seen indirectly — by their gravitational effects or by the dimming caused when they pass in front of their parent stars. To really understand what a planet is like in detail, you have to see it directly, and that's incredibly hard to do with today's technology."
"But an international team has done it." 12-09
- Magnetic Field of a Gamma-Ray Burst Measured for the First Time (ScienceDaily.com)
"A specialized camera on a telescope operated by U.K. astronomers from Liverpool has made the first measurement of magnetic fields in the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst (GRB)." 12-09
- Star Afterglow Viewed at the Edge of the Universe (ScienceDaily.com)
"An Italian team of astronomers has observed the afterglow of a Gamma-Ray Burst that is the farthest known ever. With a measured redshift of 6.3, the light from this very remote astronomical source has taken 12,700 million years to reach us. It is thus seen when the Universe was less than 900 million years old, or less than 7 percent its present age." 12-09
- -01-05-10 Hubble Photographs Early Galaxies at Birth (USA Today)
"Hubble astronomers unveiled a panoramic view Tuesday of the universe's youngest galaxies, offering the earliest look yet at the puny predecessors to our own Milky Way."
"Galaxies are the islands of stars filling the cosmos. Large ones such as our own Milky Way galaxy span more than 100,000 light-years (nearly 600,000 trillion miles) and contain hundreds of billions of stars."
"The few faint earliest galaxies that emerge from the survey of about 7,500 galaxies are much smaller and filled with young, massive stars. They shine from only 600 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang, which took place about 13.7 billion years ago." 01-10
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[Dr. Jerry Adams at jadams@awesomelibrary.org.]
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