The Starry Messenger
The StarrySkies Network Newsletterhttp://StarrySkies.com
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Photo Gallery: First, last space shuttle crews meet for ‘bookend’ photos
The first and last astronauts to fly on the space shuttle met Nov. 2 in Houston, Texas to pose for a series of historic photographs.
Battered Tharsis Tholus volcano on Mars
The latest image released from Mars Express reveals a large extinct volcano that has been battered and deformed over the aeons.
Astronomers trace galactic crash, bang, wallop!
The rate at which galaxies merge to mammoth sizes has been figured out by a team of astronomers led by Jennifer Lotz of the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, revealing that any given Milky Way-sized galaxy has merged with another of comparable size over the past eight billion years as well as two to three dwarf galaxies over the same time period.
For Copernicus, A ‘Perfect Heaven’ Put Sun At Center
Dava Sobel, who has written a new book about Copernicus, pages through a first edition copy of the astronomer’s 1543 work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres at Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Long Space Missions Can Give Astronauts Blurry Vision, Study Finds
Sending astronauts on long space missions can affect how they see once they return to Earth, a new study reveals.
NASA Aims For 2014 Orion Test Flight At Cape
NASA aims to launch an early test flight of its Orion crew exploration vehicle from Cape Canaveral in 2014 to test its heat shield and other atmospheric reentry systems, officials said today.
Edmond Halley’s birthday celebrated by Google doodle
Edmond Halley has been given the Google Doodle seal of approval to mark his 355th birthday.
Google artists have created a logo depicting planets and rockets to
celebrate the life of the man who was the first to calculate the orbit
of the comet later named after him.
The Heavy-Lift Empire Strikes Back
Readers of this space will recall that there was a leak of an internal NASA document a couple weeks ago that showed what a waste of money the Senate Launch System is, by presenting an analysis that using existing launch systems and orbital storage of propellants will cost tens of billions less and accelerate by several years the schedule under which we could be sending humans beyond earth orbit.
SOLAR ACTIVE REGION ‘LARGER THAN JUPITER’
You may be preoccupied with Tuesday’s asteroid 2005 YU55 flyby, but there’s another astronomical event currently unfolding in the solar system. Zoom out from the Earth-moon system for a moment and focus your attention to the surface of our nearest star, nearly 100 million miles away. Yes, that star: the sun.
Cassini Flyby Focuses on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus
Saturn’s moon Enceladus shows its icy face and famous plumes in raw, unprocessed images captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during its successful flyby on Nov. 6, 2011.
NASA Tracking Huge Asteroid with Radar for Tuesday Encounter
A quarter-mile wide asteroid called 2005 YU55 will slip close by Earth Tuesday (Nov. 
while astronomers around the world watch through telescopes. But some
scientists are using a different way to scan the space rock: radar.
Search for Elusive Dark Matter May Get Boost From New Galaxies
Astronomers have found two small galaxies that appear to circle our Milky Way’s galactic neighbor Andromeda, and could shed new light on the mystery of dark matter in the universe, scientists say.
White House Denies Any Contact with Alien Life
Strike one more blow against UFO conspiracy theories. The U.S. government is not in contact with any extraterrestrials from other worlds, nor has any confirmed proof of alien life been found, White House officials say.
Next Station Crew Gets “Go” For Launch
STUDY CALLS ‘DIBS’ ON SOLVING ASTRONOMICAL MYSTERY
New observations by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii could shed light on an astronomical puzzle dating back 90 years. Specifically, astronomers have identified 13 new diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) with the longest wavelengths found to date, providing possible evidence about the presence of large carbon-based organic molecules lurking in interstellar clouds of dust.
Searching for the origins of life… and our future
Hollywood is wrong about aliens. They don’t have oddly shaped heads, bulging eyes or even an eery green hue. Dimitar Sasselov is pretty convinced of that.
How to Spot the Huge Asteroid 2005 YU55′s Close Encounter With Earth
Skywatchers hoping to glimpse a huge asteroid as it flies close by Earth Tuesday (Nov.
will need the right equipment — and a little bit of luck — to spot the
faint and fast-moving space rock in telescopes, scientists say.
Deflecting Killer Asteroids Away From Earth: How We Could Do It
A huge asteroid’s close approach to Earth tomorrow (Nov. reinforces that we live in a cosmic shooting gallery, and we can’t just sit around waiting to get hit again, experts say.
Planetary probe hall of fame
We now have more than half a century of space exploration behind us. The technology and design of spacecraft has advanced massively since we first managed to send an object out of the Earth’s gravitational pull in 1959. Space Probes: 50 years of exploration from Luna 1 to New Horizons, a new book by Philippe Séguéla, tours through images taken of – or by – the robotic pioneers that have taught us so much about our neighbouring planets.
Asteroid 2005 YU55 to Pass Earth; Closer Than Moon
We have a visitor — a large asteroid called 2005 YU55 that is expected to come within approximately 201,700 miles of Earth on Tuesday, according to NASA. That’s slightly less than the distance from Earth to the moon.
Phobos sample return launches tomorrow
If all goes well tomorrow (November 9 Moscow time) a Zenit-2 rocket will send the first Russian mission out of Earth orbit since the fall of the Soviet Union. In addition to it being a first for post-Communist Russia, it carries other first hopes: the first Chinese mission to Mars and the first deliberate sending of life from Earth into the solar system
NASA prepares for moon tourism
“Looting, that would be pretty bad,” says archaeologist Beth O’Leary of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Looting is the bane of archaeological sites and O’Leary has spearheaded efforts to declare moon landing sites as historic preserves or national parks, seeking to head off similar depredations before before tourists leave Earth for the moon. “I put landing people on the moon up there with creating fire as a technological achievement.”
Planetary Scientists Hope to Bring Back Mars Moondust
Planetary scientists may soon get the dirt on a Martian moon—literally. A Russian spacecraft will soon depart for Phobos, the larger of Mars’s two tiny moons. It will attempt to land there, scoop up some soil and return it to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft, called Phobos-Grunt, launches as soon as November 8th.
Red moon around a Red Planet
Very soon—perhaps by the time you’ve read this article—Russia will launch the Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars. Whether you’re interested in planetary science or human spaceflight there is good reason to hope that this mission succeeds, but also reason to expect it to fail.
Will Russia end its curse at Mars?
The Russian space agency Roscosmos marked Halloween by publishing a photo essay of preparation work on Phobos-Grunt, the Mars probe set to launch from Baikonur on Wednesday. Although the timing was likely coincidental, the symbolism was rich. Mars has been a house of horrors for the Russian and Soviet space programs for the past 50 years.
Protecting Apollo artifacts on the Moon
Within the next few years, one of the 26 teams competing in the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) competition will hopefully claim the $20-million grand prize by successfully landing its privately funded spacecraft on the Moon, traveling at least 500 meters across the lunar surface, and transmitting video and images back to Earth
Asteroid Yu55 on course for close encounter with Earth
Astronomers around the world have readied their telescopes to catch a glimpse of a speeding ball of rock that will hurtle past the Earth on Tuesday night.
QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT TO AID GRAVITATIONAL WAVE HUNT
LIGO is essentially a giant interferometer. There is a very large mirror hung in such a way as to form an arm, with two more mirrors hung perpendicular to it to form an L-shape when viewed from above. Scientists then pass laser light through a beam splitter, thereby dividing the beam between those two arms, and let the light bounce back and forth a few times before returning to the beam splitter.
Voyager 2 to Switch to Backup Thruster Set
NASA’s Deep Space Network personnel sent commands to the Voyager 2 spacecraft Nov. 4 to switch to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft. Confirmation was received today that the spacecraft accepted the commands. The change will allow the 34-year-old spacecraft to reduce the amount of power it requires to operate and use previously unused thrusters as it continues its journey toward interstellar space, beyond our solar system.
Keys’ underwater, weightless world helps prepare astronauts for a voyage to an asteroid
At 60 feet below the ocean’s surface, alongside coral, fish and a curious goliath grouper, NASA astronauts and scientists spent seven days testing battery-powered jet packs, booms with magnets, robotic arms on one-man subs and other ways to function in zero gravity.
Castles in the desert – satellites reveal lost cities of Libya
An international team of researchers has used ancient DNA to shed new light on the realism of horses depicted in prehistoric cave paintings. The team, which includes researchers from the University of York, has found that all the color variations seen in Paleolithic cave paintings — including distinctive “leopard” spotting — existed in pre-domestic horse populations, lending weight to the argument that the artists were reflecting their natural environment.
MoDOT archaeologists find ancient Native American sites at bridge near Palmyra
What started as a routine survey of the land surrounding a historic bridge has ended up unearthing two significant sites in the region’s Native American history.
Drought is revealing historic treasures
All across Texas, the bones of history lie in watery graves. From the ribs of sunken ships to the grave sites of prehistoric Texans, uncounted treasures abound beneath the surface of rivers and lakes. For state archaeologists, these sites are untapped treasures — hard to reach but relatively protected.
Underneath Mexico City’s bustle lie Aztec wonders
In the middle of Mexico City’s historical downtown, where the modern bustle leaves most visitors in a daze, archaeologists have unearthed something altogether more serene: a potential clue in their quest to find the long sought-after tombs of Aztec emperors.
Human Ancestor ‘Family’ May Not Have Been Related
A famous trail of footprints once thought to have been left behind by a family of three human ancestors may have actually been made by four individuals traveling at different times.
Scientists Uncover Clues to How the Classic Maya Sustained Their Dense Populations
The Maya lowlands during the ancient Maya Classic period (250 – 900 A.D.) were known to have been among the densest populated areas in the world. And archaeologists have estimated that, even in places such as the southern Maya Mountains area of Belize where geographic and other environmental conditions could be assumed to have mitigated population growth, population density has been estimated to have been approximately 300 persons per square kilometer at one time.
UA scientists find evidence of Roman period megadrought
A new study at the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research has revealed a previously unknown multi-decade drought period in the second century A.D.
Byzantine-era Christian prayer box discovered in City of David parking lot
Walk through the Christian quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City and you’ll see souvenir shops selling assorted varieties of small plastic Christian prayer boxes displaying miniature icons, usually Mary and Jesus, surrounded by a gold halo.
Scientists confirm early humans were from Africa but their route out was via Arabia not Egypt
Our human ancestors did come from Africa but left the continent to spread across the world via a different route than first thought, scientists have revealed.
A six-year study mapping genetic patterns found that people who ended up
in Europe, Asia and Oceania got there by crossing the sea to Arabia
around 70,000 years ago.
lackbeard’s Cannon Lifted from Ocean Floor
Archaeologists lifted a 300-year-old cannon from the pirate Blackbeard’s ship off the coast of North Carolina today.
The eight-foot-long cannon was covered in sand and ocean debris called
“concretion,” which will take archaeologists and students at East
Carolina University as many as eight years to crack through before
getting to the metal cannon, according to Jennifer Woodward, secretary
of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, which oversees
the project.
Archaeologist Claims 12,000-Year-Old Solstice Site in Clarke County
Bear’s Den Rock has captured the attention of travelers in the northern Shenandoah Valley since colonial times and for thousands of years before by the indigenous people who hunted and fished in the region. Now, a local archaeologist believes that the prominent outcrop just south of Virginia’s Route 7 in Clarke County is a part of a larger 12,000 year old celestial calendar used by Native Americans to mark the changing of the seasons.
Sex of Egyptian Child Mummy Remains a Mystery
A 2,000-year-old child mummy visited an Illinois hospital earlier this year so researchers could use imaging technology to look for clues to the child’s life and death.
Mummy Has Oldest Case of Prostate Cancer in Ancient Egypt
Ancient affliction. A high-resolution CT scan of the lumbar spine region
of a 2150-year-old Egyptian mummy has just revealed small, round
lesions—the oldest case of metastatic prostate cancer in ancient
Egyptians.
Credit: (mummy)MNA / DDF – Instituto dos Museus e da Conservação, I.P.,
Lisbon; (CT, inset) LMP / IMI – Imagens Médicas Integradas, Lisbon
Hidden history of Greenwich revealed in university study
The hidden history of Stockwell Street has been revealed in a new archaeological study commissioned by the University of Greenwich. Over the summer, a team of up to 15 expert archaeologists excavated the town centre site, uncovering hundreds of years of human activity in the area.
Ancient Middle Eastern stone structures revealed by Google Earth
In the 1920s, Royal Air Force pilots flying airmail routes from Cairo to Baghdad noticed something bizarre in the lava fields of Syria, eastern Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Dotting the bleak, barren desert landscape, hundreds of kilometres from
anywhere, were thousands upon thousands of elaborate stone wheels,
measuring up to 70 metres wide and visible only from the sky.
Short legged Neanderthals; mystery solved?
While most studies have concluded that a cold climate led to the short lower legs typical of Neanderthals, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that lower leg lengths shorter than the typical modern humans let them move more efficiently over the mountainous terrain where they lived. The findings reveal a broader trend relating shorter lower leg length to mountainous environments that may help explain the limb proportions of many different animals.
Grisly theory for Holy Land mystery
A newly proposed solution to an ancient enigma is reviving debate about the nature of a mysterious prehistoric site that some call the Holy Land’s answer to Stonehenge.
Texas A&M professor helping to unravel causes of Ice Age extinctions
Did climate change or humans cause the extinctions of the large-bodied Ice Age mammals (commonly called megafauna) such as the woolly rhinoceros and woolly mammoth?
Technology Unlocks Secrets of Ancient Egyptian Mummy
A scientific team led by Sarah Wisseman, director of the Program on Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials (ATAM) at the Illinois State Archaeological Survey, has found answers to a series of questions surrounding the mystery of the Egyptian mummy that has resided at the Spurlock Museum of the University of Illinois for over two decades. Before that, it was maintained by private owners for about 60 years, after originally being removed from its location in Egyp
Long Pilgrimages Revealed in Ancient Sudan Art
Excavations of a series of medieval churches in central Sudan have revealed a treasure trove of art, including a European-influenced work, along with evidence of journeys undertaken by travelers from western Europe that were equivalent to the distance between New York City and the Grand Canyon.