Dusty haze between the galaxies

Space is not quite as empty as everyone believed, astronomers have discovered. Instead, the vast expanses between the galaxies appears to be filled with a smoke-like haze. It gives itself away by dimming the light of distant objects in the universe and subtly changing their colours. Astronomers discovered the haze, made up of fine dust particles, while compiling a detailed photographic album of the sky called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. They analysed the glow from around 100,000 remote quasars - the violently active hearts of ancient galaxies in the farthest reaches of the universe. The light from the quasars became slightly reddened as it passed through the space between newer galaxies closer to home. Discovery team leader Brice Menard, of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, said today: "Galaxies contain lots of dust, most of it formed in the outer regions of dying stars. The surprise is that we are seeing dust hundreds of thousands of light-years outside of the galaxies, in intergalactic space." Astronomers will now try to work out what has spread the smokey haze of dust between the galaxies. Menard said supernova explosions and "winds" from massive stars drive gas out of some galaxies. It was possible that this gas might carry dust with it. Alternatively, the dust could be pushed directly by starlight. Colleague Ryan Scranton, of the University of California, said the dimming was similar to that of the Sun at dusk when it appeared more reddened. He said: "We find similar reddening of quasars from intergalactic dust, and this reddening extends up to ten times beyond the apparent edges of the galaxies themselves." Scranton added: "Just like household dust, cosmic dust can be a nuisance. Our results imply that most distant supernovae are seen through a bit of haze, which may affect estimates of their distances." The Sloane Digital Sky Survey has been the source of the vast number of images used by volunteers to classify galaxies in the Galaxy Zoo project. Picture: Dust shows up as dark lanes within the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC4565 pictured in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The intergalactic haze may be dust which has escaped such a galaxy. (Photo: SDSS-II). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

New look at the eye in the sky

It is a celestial object we have featured before on Skymania. A distant star wreck that resembles a cosmic eye staring down at us from the depths of space. Today European astronomers released a stunning new photo they have taken of the Helix Nebula. Its bright blue pupil and the white of the eye are fringed by flesh-coloured eyelids - but this eye is so big that it light takes two and a half years to cross from one side to the other. Nicknamed the Eye of God, this cosmic wonder is actually a shell of gas and dust that has been blown off by a faint central star. Our own solar system will meet a similar fate five billion years in the future. It lies around 700 light-years away in the constellation of Aquarius, and can be dimly seen in small backyard telescopes by amateur astronomers who call it the Helix nebula. It covers an area of sky around a quarter the size of the full moon. The photo was taken with a giant telescope at the European Southern Observatory, high on a mountaintop at La Silla in Chile. It is so detailed that a close-up reveals distant galaxies within the central eyeball. Previous powerful images of the nebula have included ones taken by the Hubble telescope and an infrared view from the Spitzer space telescope. Picture: ESA. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Million-euro boost for new spaceplane

British scientists got a major boost today to help build a new spaceship that can take off from a normal runway and land at the same airport. They won a million-euro grant from the European Space Agency yesterday to help develop engines to power their revolutionary Skylon spaceplane. It could carry 12 tons of cargo - and one day astronauts - into orbit, using a unique hybrid engine called Sabre. The engine will breathe in air, like a jet, when in the atmosphere but become a rocket engine when in the vacuum of space. The project is led by Reaction Engines Ltd, of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, working with scientists from Bristol University and the British National Space Centre. It is expected to slash the cost of spaceflight to a tenth of current rates. The new spaceplane could be a leader in the new field of space tourism and a direct challenge to Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. Space giant EADS Astrium are also working on a project for a space jet. Reaction Engines' managing director Alan Bond said today: "Traditional throw-away rockets costing more than a $100 million per launch are a drag on the growth of this market. "The Holy Grail to transform the economics of getting into space is to use a truly re-usable space plane capable of taking off from an airport and climbing directly into space, delivering its satellite payload and automatically returning safely to Earth. "Years of planning and research by REL on the Skylon vehicle and its unique Sabre air-breathing engine mean that we have an inside track on realising this goal. Skylon could reduce the cost of getting into space by a factor of ten." Science minister Lord Drayson said: "This is an example of a British company developing world-beating technology with exciting consequences for the future of space. It is fantastic that Reaction Engines, the British National Space Centre and ESA have successfully secured this public-private partnership arrangement and I look forward to seeing how the project the progresses." Picture: An artist's impression of Skylon in orbit (Reaction Engines Ltd). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

SpaceX bid to fly NASA astronauts

A private space company run by one of the founders of internet bank PayPal has launched a bid to fly NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX chief Elon Musk says the company's Falcon 9 is the ideal rocket for carrying humans into orbit after the shuttle fleet is retired next year. They would fly in an attached capsule, called Dragon. NASA's own replacement craft - which will use an Apollo-style capsule atop a new Ares launch vehicle - is not due to be ready to carry astronauts until 2014. Without the shuttle, America will have to rely on Russia to fly all manned missions until Ares puts them back in the game. SpaceX has already won a competition for a NASA contract to fly cargo to the space station in Dragon once further flight tests of their Falcon 9 rocket are complete. The final test flight, scheduled for next year (2010), will demonstrate Dragon's ability to dock with the space station. Once that is successfully achieved, SpaceX will begin the first of 12 cargo flights to the orbiting outpost, 230 miles above the Earth. Musk is calling on the US government to back his bid with $300 million (£208m) of funding, arguing that he will be able to fly astronauts for less than $20 million (£14m) a seat, compared to the $47 million (£33m) that NASA would have to pay to fly them in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. He said: "Most people aren't aware that SpaceX designed the F9/Dragon system to carry astronauts as well as cargo, and even the word "cargo" here includes biological payloads like plants and mice. "F9/Dragon meets all the NASA human rating requirements through all phases of flight and abort. Dragon even has several windows and hatches that open both inwards and outwards to ensure astronauts can exit if a pressure relief valve fails." Musk said that NASA will certify Dragon as habitable for crew in any case, as it will become an integral part of the Space Station which astronauts will be able to occupy for sleep or relaxation. He added: "The only significant missing element is the launch escape rocket, which carries the Dragon spacecraft to safety in the event of a launch vehicle failure. That can be developed within two years, which means F9/Dragon can be ready to transport astronauts by mid to late 2011. "By that date, Falcon 9 will have flown a dozen times and Dragon will have done a round trip journey to the Space Station roughly half a dozen times with cargo, proving out reliability well in advance of carrying people." NASA's outgoing Administrator Mike Griffin has called for Europe's own new cargo vessel, the Automated Transfer Vehicle, to be converted to carry crew. Picture: A SpaceX impression of Falcon 9 flying a manned Dragon with escape rocket attached (Picture: SpaceX). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Star Wreck! Satellites collide in space

The first ever collision between two giant satellites in orbit has created vast clouds of debris, adding to the deadly perils facing future space explorers. A defunct Russian satellite weighing nearly a ton crashed into a half-ton communications satellite around 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday. NASA stressed that there was no immediate danger to astronauts on board the International Space Station because it is flying in a much lower orbit. But the debris could threaten the Hubble space telescope and other satellites in higher paths. And the fragments, speeding faster than a bullet, will spread out to threaten the lives of astronauts in the decades to come. It will take experts weeks to discover the extent of the wreckage. But it adds to the millions of fragments already circling the earth that have turned our patch of space into a cosmic junkyard. The drama happened when an out-of-control Russian satellite, Cosmos 2251, launched back in 1993, ran straight into a working communications satellite that is part of a constellation of dozens of spacecraft called Iridium. Travelling at many thousands of miles an hour, it smashed the comms satellite to smithereens as it broke up itself into thousands of pieces. Space scientists believe there will be dozens of large chunks, hundreds of smaller fragments and many thousands the size of grains of sand. Fragments travelling in lower orbits will eventually burn up as they descend then burn up in the earth's atmosphere. But in high orbits they can remain a real danger for hundreds of years. NASA is already monitoring 13,000 man-made objects more than four inches wide that are circling the earth. There are more than 110,000 bigger than a centimeter. And the millions of smaller pieces can be just as deadly. A tiny metal chip is like a rifle bullet which can rip a hole in a spaceship. A chunk the size of a tennis ball, speeding at 20,000 mph, packs the lethal power of 25 sticks of dynamite. In September 2006, the shuttle Atlantis landed with a hole in its cargo doors blasted by a meteor or fragment of space junk. Other shuttles have had to have their windows replaced after they were damaged by speeding flakes of paint. A TV and comms satellite, Express-AM11, was sent spinning out of control by a chunk of cosmic crud in March 2006 in a special orbit that is becoming the Piccadilly Circus of the space lanes. That is because its height of 22,240 miles means satellites will remain above a fixed point on the ground, allowing our TV dishes to stay pointed at them. The satellites that bring us satellite TV all orbit at the same altitude making it a relatively crowded patch of space. In January 2007, China used a ballistic missile to destroy one of its own satellites in an orbit about 550 miles high. That "Star Wars" test, condemned by the West, created a cloud of countless pieces of debris. A Russian booster rocket exploded over Australia in March 2007 adding around 1,100 chunks of rubbish. And around 300,000 fragments were left when the upper stage of a US Pegasus rocket blew up in 1996. Other odd bits of space jetsam include nuts, bolts, an astronaut's glove and a £70,000 toolbag lost by NASA's Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper as she was working outside the shuttle Endeavour in November last year. In August last year, Europe's Jules Verne craft, while attached to the International Space Station, fired its rockets to steer the orbiting outpost clear of the path of some Russian space junk. Picture: A NASA computer plot of the debris in low-Earth orbit (NASA). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Scopes watch a stellar firecracker

NASA spacecraft have spotted a peculiar star that is exploding like a cosmic firecracker. The object, a type of neutron star called a magnetar, has begun a string of powerful outbursts at a rate of several hundred an hour. The biggest flares are so powerful that each releases more energy than the Sun does in 20 years. Astronomers first noticed a series of modest eruptions from the star, called SGR J1550-5418 in the southern constellation of Norma, in October. Two NASA space telescopes, Swift and Fermi, were turned on it in time to see it go off like a machine gun in January. The flares, which fired streams of gamma rays into space, happened 30,000 years ago but have just reached Earth's neighbourhood. Astronomer Loredana Vetere, of Pennsylvania State University, said: "At times, this remarkable object has erupted with more than 100 flares in as little as 20 minutes. The most intense flares emitted more total energy than the sun does in 20 years." Neutron stars are the collapsed remains of supernovas - stars that blow themselves to pieces in a cosmic suicide. They are thought to be around ten miles wide but a thimbleful of its material would weigh one hundred million tons! One has been discovered in our own neighbourhood. Astronomers classify the type of neutron star being watched in Norma as a "soft-gamma-ray repeater". Only five others are known. They believe the explosions are due to violent "starquakes" in the rigid outer crust of the star, caused by the strain from the magnetar's powerful magnetic field. Picture: An artist's impression of a magnetar. (Image: Robert S. Mallozzi, University of Alabama in Huntsville, and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Hubble snaps a cosmic snowball

Space scientists have used the Hubble telescope to take a stunning photo of a galaxy that looks like a snowball in a cosmic blizzard. But this particular snowball measures hundreds of light-years from one side to the other and contains billions of stars like the Sun. The snowstorm that seems to surround it is a mixture of a few foreground stars in our own Milky Way and a background of other distant galaxies including some of the oldest in the universe. Astronomers call the snowball NGC 4921. It is a spiral galaxy lying in a cluster of these "star cities" labelled Abell 1656 in the constellation of Coma Berenices - Queen Berenice's Hair. There are around 1,000 galaxies in the cluster which lies around 320 million light-years away from us. Most are older, have lost their spiral form and become elliptical in shape. Fifty separate photos were taken to build this incredibly detailed picture using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Thousands of much more distant galaxies of all shapes, sizes and colours are visible in the picture. Many have the spotty and ragged appearance of galaxies as they appeared many billions of years ago in the early days of the universe. Hubble has previously peered 13 billion years back in time to picture one of the earliest galaxies known. Last year a collection of amazing images of colliding galaxies taken by Hubble was released. The new image was produced by a team led by Kem Cook, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, during a search for stars that would help them derive a more accurate distance for the cluster of galaxies. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Rocky world is most Earth-like yet

A planet-hunting space telescope has detected the most Earth-like world ever found around another star. The terrestrial-type planet is the smallest yet discovered outside our own solar system. It is less than twice the size of Earth and orbits a star resembling our own Sun in the constellation of Monoceros, the Unicorn. Astronomers believe the planet, dubbed COROT-Exo-7b and 457 light-years away, has a rocky surface which may be covered with lava or water vapour. It was found by the European Space Agency's COROT satellite, which was launched in December 2006 to seek out new worlds. Most of the 330 planets discovered so far in the galaxy are gas giants resembling out own giant Jupiter. This one is more like Earth, Mars or Venus and is smaller than a previous discovery revealed last year. Another world, Gliese 581c, detected two years ago, was said to be Earth-like because it lies in the habitable "Goldilocks zone" around a star. The new find, which orbits its star once every 20 hours, lies very close to its parent star, and has a high temperature, between 1,000 and 1,500°C. Astronomers detected the new planet as it passed in front of the star, dimming its light. The density of the planet is still under investigation: it may be rocky like Earth and covered in liquid lava. It may also belong to a class of planets that are thought to be made up of water and rock in almost equal amounts. Given the high temperatures measured, the planet would be a very hot and humid place. Daniel Rouan, of Paris Observatory, said: "COROT was designed precisely in the hope of discovering some of these objects. ESA's Malcolm Fridlund said: "For the first time, we have unambiguously detected a planet that is 'rocky' in the same sense as our own Earth. We now have to understand this object further to put it into context, and continue our search for smaller, more Earth-like objects with COROT." Details of the discovery will be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. NASA have said that they expect 60 per cent of stars like the Sun to have rocky planets in orbit. Picture: An artist's impression of the planet passing in front of the Sun-like star. The curved line represents the fade in the star's light as the planet passes in front of it. (Credit: CNES). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com