The Starry Messenger
The StarrySkies Network Newsletterhttp://StarrySkies.com
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Final Separation From International Space Station Complete
Atlantis made the final separation from the
International Space Station about 1:05 p.m. clearing the way for the
vehicle’s final flight home.
Ariane 5 breaks five-month hiatus with successful launch
During its landmark 50th launch, Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket successfully blasted off from the South American coast Friday evening with a commercial broadcasting satellite and a payload to link commanders and troops in the German military.
NASA Practices Astronaut Rescue on Sea Floor
It’s a scenario NASA hopes to never to face: An astronaut in distress in a hostile environment in need of a rescue. But in this emergency, the victims are mannequins and the rescuers are professional divers and astronauts on the ocean floor practicing exactly how such a scene might play out on the moon or asteroid.
Secret X-37B Space Plane Spotted by Amateur Skywatchers
While the U.S. Air Force is mum about the orbital whereabouts of its X-37B mini-space plane, a dedicated band of amateur skywatchers has got its cross-hairs on the spacecraft.
A New Type of Supernova?
Things have been going well in my high-school class. I’ve recently taught them about supernovas, and how there are only two kinds. So I beg you: Please don’t show my students this week’s issue of Nature, in which observers describe a recent pair of stellar explosions that don’t fit the existing categories.
Work continues on Constellation
Project Constellation is not canceled. Far from it. NASA and its contractors continue working — and spending taxpayers’ dollars — on the development of rockets and other components of the return-to-the-moon program that the White House wants to replace with a new strategy.
MEGAMASERS: DISTANT WATER AND PRECISION COSMOLOGY
Measuring the distances
to objects in space is surprisingly hard. When you look up at night,
can you really tell anything about the distances to various stars?
Formation-Flying Satellites Could Create Artificial Eclipses
A solar eclipse with the moon blocking the sun may look eerie on Earth, but scientists hope to achieve something similar using two free-flying satellites, with one always flying in its robotic partner’s shadow.
Probe sets off toward Venus
An H-2A rocket carrying Japan’s first Venus climate probe and five other satellites successfully blasted off from Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima island, Kagoshima Prefecture, early Friday.
Opportunity: Nasa rover ‘breaks Mars planet probe record’
A Nasa robot buggy, Opprtunity, has become the longest operating space probe on the surface of Mars.
Astronomer Copernicus reburied as hero
Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.
White-Light Solar Flares Finally Explained
The flashes of white light accompanying some solar flares are caused by the sun’s acceleration of electrons to speeds greater than half the speed of light.
Unpaid lobby goes to bat for NASA
Rice University doctoral candidate Laurie Carrillo flew to Washington, D.C., on her own dime to stump for NASA, one of 152 students and other unpaid citizens who have taken up the call to save space agency programs by knocking on the doors of Capitol Hill.
JUPITER’S CLOUD BAND VANISHES FROM VIEW
One of these things is not like the other. Can you
see the difference between these two photos of Jupiter?
Jupiter has lost one of its trademark “stripes.”
Orion Lifeboat Making Waves for Boeing’s Commercial Crew Plans
Boeing
is willing to build a crew capsule for NASA on a commercial fixed-price
basis but is troubled by the agency’s plans to continue funding
development of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle to serve as a space
station lifeboat, according to a Boeing executive.
Dancing With the Meteorites
“We’ve always wanted to come,” Ms. Kang said. “It’s educational and there’s really good music. You can’t get much better than that.” Then, after a pause: “We’re a little nerdy, yes.” Mr. Chiu chimed in: “It’s a place where nerds can dance.”
From bad to worse: Hard-luck planet gradually being devoured by its host star
New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope appear to confirm a dour prognosis for a scorching hot extrasolar planet—the distant world is being consumed by its host star.
Brightest galaxies tend to cluster in busiest parts of universe, study finds
For more than a decade, astronomers have been puzzled by bright galaxies in the distant universe that appear to be forming stars at phenomenal rates. What prompted the prolific star creation, they wondered. And what kind of spatial environment did these galaxies inhabit?
Hershel telescope unveils icy debris ringing sunlike stars
A flying observatory
has taken the first ultrasharp images of rings of cold debris around
sunlike stars. The doughnut-shaped rings appear to be extrasolar
analogues of the Kuiper belt, the outer solar system’s reservoir of
comets and other frozen bodies.
Most Stars May Be Born as Twins
Break out the cigars! Astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope have caught the first evidence that many—possibly most—binary stars hatch from the same cloud of dust, just as identical twins on Earth split from a single embryo.
Archaeologists unearth Metal Age furnaces
Ancient copper furnaces recently unearthed at an archaeological site in Dong Anh, in the north of Ha Noi, have shed important light on the Metal Age, according to archaeologists.
New pyramid discovered in Peru linked to ancient copper industry
A team of archaeologists who uncovered a 1,400 year old pyramid in Peru say that the finding is particularly unusual. The flat-topped pyramid, which was built by the Moche culture, was used for the living rather than just for the dead, and contains a wealth of artefacts, murals and human remains.
So where are Anthony and Cleopatra?
Cleopatra’s curse hung over the ancient city of Taposiris Magna, 50km west of Alexandria, where excavators combed the sand last Saturday looking for her resting place with her beloved Mark Anthony. Nevine El-Aref witnessed the search
The Mysteries of Meroe
Agatha Christie could have invented the story. Imagine another Egypt, with a marked black African component. This is Meroe, in present-day Sudan.
George Washington’s library book returned 221 years late
A library book borrowed by the first U.S. president, George Washington, has been returned to a New York City’s oldest library, 221 years late.
Headless Egypt King Statue Found; Link to Cleopatra’s Tomb?
A massive, headless statue of a Greek king has been found in the ruins of an ancient Egyptian temple, adding to evidence that the structure could be the final resting place of Marc Antony and Cleopatra, excavation leaders say.
Where the ancients studied the moon and stars
Macedonia is the youngest ancient country in the
world and is full of relics of times past.
It has been part of all the great empires of history, from Roman to
Ottoman to Byzantine and they have all left their mark with thousands
of ancient sites.
Cyprus: crews stumble on 2-millennia-old coffins
Work crews in Cyprus have accidentally unearthed four rare clay coffins estimated to be some 2,000 years old, the country’s Antiquities Department director said Wednesday.
Pyramid Tomb Found: Sign of a Civilization’s Birth?
After sheltering jeweled royals for centuries, the oldest known tomb in Mesoamerica—ancient Central America and Mexico, roughly speaking—has been uncovered, archaeologists announced Tuesday.
KING TUT’S LEFTOVER BANDAGES YIELD NEW CLUES
The scraps of ancient bandages — some with dirty fingerprints of Tut’s embalmers — had been contained in long forgotten jars at a New York museum.
New Study Reveals Link Between ‘Climate Footprints’ and Mass Mammal Extinction
An international team of scientists have discovered that climate change played a major role in causing mass extinction of mammals in the late quaternary era, 50,000 years ago.
Synchrotron probes Egyptian beads
Not content with managing the household it appears women in Ancient Egypt were also keeping the budget in the black with some home-based manufacturing.
TEMPLE OF TUT’S GRANDFATHER MAY HIDE AVENUE OF STATUES
An avenue of colossal granite statues representing an ancient deity could lie by the funerary temple of Tutankhamun’s grandfather Amenhotep III, according to Egyptian archaeologists who have unearthed one of these statues at Kom el-Hettan on Luxor’s west bank.
Prehistoric ‘footprints’ falsified by science
Human footprints frozen in time, lodged in
volcanic ash in a Mexican valley, seemed poised to rock history.
In the current Journal of Human Evolution, a study tells the story of
how they didn’t — and how science checks out extraordinary claims.
America’s architectural heritage: Chaco Canyon, New Mexico – Part 1
Was Chaco Canyon culturally related to the Pacific
Coast of South America?
And part 2
And part 3