Shuttle finally launches

This article is featured from www.bbc.co.uk

The US space agency Nasa has successfully launched the space shuttle Endeavour - at the sixth attempt.

Earlier launches at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida were called off because of bad weather and fuel leaks. The crew will spend 11 days on the International Space Station, finishing work on a Japanese research laboratory. If the shuttle had not taken off by Thursday, it would have had to have waited until the end of the month to make way for a Russian cargo ship.
"The weather is finally co-operating so it is now time to fly," said launch director Pete Nickolenko. "Persistence pays off, good luck and God speed."

The seven crew members will spend 11 days on the space station

Mission commander Mark Polansky replied: "We're ready to go, and we're going to take all of you with us on a great mission." The orbiter is taking a seven-strong crew into space, made up of six Americans and one Canadian - Julie Payette - who will operate the shuttle's robotic arm during the mission. Their arrival, on Friday, will bring the total crew on the outpost to 13 - a record for the International Space Station (ISS).

On the first of five spacewalks, a platform will be added to the Japanese laboratory complex, Kibo, which can be used for experiments that require materials to be exposed to the harsh environment of space. The crew will also install new batteries to one of the solar arrays, which provide power to the space station, and perform other maintenance tasks.

Astronaut Julie Payette is to operate the shuttle's robotic arm
In addition, Endeavour will deliver a new long-stay US crew member, Tim Kopra, to the ISS and bring back Japan's Koichi Wakata, who has lived aboard the platform for more than three months. The $100bn space station, now about the size of a four-bedroom house, has been under construction for more than a decade. This is the 127th space shuttle flight, the 29th to the station, the 23rd for Endeavour and the third in 2009.

Seven further flights to the platform remain before the shuttles retire in 2010.

A video clip of the launch can be watched at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8153091.stm

How do I find my way?

One very common question in the field of astronomy is How do I find way around the night sky? and How do I know whats what on the moon?

These are two common questions and very relevant ones. Obviously finding your way around the night sky can be done by star hopping and also by using a planishere...a great free online planishere known as Stellarium can be found at http://www.stellarium.org/

Finding your way around the way is simple and easy with the Virtual Moon Atlas. Again 100% free of charge and can be downloaded direct to your PC/Laptop by visiting this website http://www.ap-i.net/avl/en/start

Hope these help and we will look forward to hearing what you thought about these two great software packages

Herschel Scope see first light

By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News

Europe's Herschel space observatory is set to become one of the most powerful tools ever to study the Universe. The "first light" data from its three instruments demonstrates a remarkable capability even though their set-up is still not complete. Galaxy images released on Friday by the European Space Agency show detail previously unseen in the objects.

The pictures - and the thousands that will follow - should give new insights on star formation and galaxy evolution. "We have some excellent images; they're not calibrated, but they look spectacular," said Dr Göran Pilbratt, Esa's Herschel project scientist. "They tell you we are working; it's just fantastic," he told BBC News.
Herschel is sensitive to light at long wavelengths - in the far-infrared and sub-millimetre range (55 to 672 microns). Observations at these longer wavelengths do not produce the "pretty pictures" obtained at shorter wavelengths, such as the visible light detected by the famous Hubble telescope.

What they can do, however, is see features in celestial objects that are invisible to Hubble; and with Herschel's giant 3.5m mirror, the detail becomes extremely rich.
Friday's release includes the first two galaxy observations using the European telescope's SPIRE (Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver) instrument.
SPIRE has pictured M74 (also known as NGC 628), a face-on spiral galaxy located about 24 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pisces; and M66 (also known as NGC 3627), a barred spiral galaxy located about 36 million light-years away in the constellation Leo.

What Herschel sees in these objects is not their stars but the dusty clouds of gas that give rise to stars.

SPIRE's view of M74 at progressively shorter wavelengths (from left to right)

The shortest wavelengths will always produce the sharpest images
A range of wavelengths are needed to see all the features of a galaxy
"We're seeing the hidden life of the galaxy that never shows up in visible light images," explained Professor Matt Griffin, the principal investigator on the UK-led SPIRE consortium.
"We see the dust which is a tracer for all the gas and dust which are the raw materials from which star formation occurs. These are fairly normal galaxies where star formation is going on in a continuous cycle; and the red [freckles] you see in the images are very distant galaxies, probably undergoing intense bursts of star formation."

The Cardiff University researcher added: "This really was take off the blindfold, point and shoot, and see what we see. These were the very first observations; and there is a long way to go in terms of the way we set up the instrument, do the image processing and the map making. But it's incredible."

Also in the release are new images from Herschel's Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS); and data from its Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI).
PACS, which produced the very first Herschel image last month, has been used to look at a well-known planetary nebula - the Cat's Eye Nebula. The object has nothing to do with planets but is in fact an ageing star surrounded by a shell of ejected material.
The new PACS images illustrate the complex structure of the shell.
HIFI has a fine ability to detect the presence of particular chemical species in gas clouds that are birthing new stars. In a test observation of a star-forming region known as DR21 in the constellation Cygnus, the instrument could pick out charged carbon, carbon monoxide, and water.

Scientists expect Herschel to be able to address many such questions
Herschel was despatched into space along with Esa's Planck telescope on 14 May.
Over the course of the past two months, both astronomical satellites have been moving to observation positions some 1.5 million km from Earth, on its "night side".
The long journey has been used by engineers to switch on and check out all of the telescopes' systems.

This past week, a major review of the observatories' status was held in Darmstadt, Germany. The meeting marked the formal handover of the facilities from the industrial manufacturers - a pan-European industrial consortium led by Thales Alenia Space.
"We're now going to start to tune the instruments for maximum performance," explained Dr Pilbratt. "We're going to try them out in many different observing situations in order to learn how to get the best out of them."

This verification period will then be followed by a six-week demonstration phase in which the operations team hope to show the world the full power of a perfectly prepared, fully mature Herschel space observatory.
Routine operations should begin towards the end of the year.
Herschel is expected to continue working through to 2013, by which time the super-fluid helium that keeps its instruments and detectors in the necessary ultra-cold state to make observations will have boiled off.

AR1024 - Is this the end?

Well, after five days of enjoyable observation sunspot Ar1024 appears to be decaying quite quickly. The group is nearing the eastern limb of the sun so will vanish soon regardless. The group shall continue to monitor the group until its demise or disappearance and we will keep you posted every step of the way.

All observations of AR1024 have so far been submitted to the Society for Popular Astronomy and the British Astronomical Association

AR1024 still active

The sunspot AR1024 that burst forth onto the solar surface two days ago has already changed somewhat and is moving along the sun at a steady rate. A video of the group has been created and is below, courtesy of spaceweather.com

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2009/06jul09/1024_anim.gif?PHPSESSID=4pq8365umrls5c55h2sob6pvk6

Finally....a Sunspot!

Today, July 5th 2009, members of the Romsey Astronomical Society were able to observe a sunspot on the sun, something that has been quiet rare in recent months what with the Maunder Minimum being in full swing. AR1024 comprises of a large sunspot surrounded by at least six smaller spots that all gather together to form quiet an appealing looking little collection. The photo to the left shows the Sunspots as seen with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

Romsey Astronomical Society launches Blog!

Well we have finally done it and got a blog going.

We hope this blog will grow and grow and relate the most upto date information and news from the group as a whole and serve as an extra source of information in addition to our website at www.freewebs.com/romseyas