Posts for 'Astrophysics' Category

My wife told me one evening that her friend Sarah was to visit India and would be spending a day with her. There was nothing in it that alarmed me as my wife, who is a painter, has friends all over the World and somebody or the other is always visiting her. But when she told me that Sarah was an astrophysicist, my ears perked up. She had missed me during her visit last year as I was out of town.

Sarah arrived wearing a gorgeous sari looking like a senior accomplished stately woman. Indians like me are now used to a white woman in a sari with years of watching Sonia Gandhi on the TV. With Sarah was her friend Needra, a young tall dark beautiful Sri Lankan woman who too was an astrophysicist! She said she was wearing a sari for the first time at the insistence of Sarah. When I asked her about it, Sarah went on a detailed narrative how she was initiated into wearing a sari by the wife of the Director of the Institute and had thereafter adopted the sari as her preferred dress. I noted her crystal clear memory as the event had taken place at least thirty years back.

Read the complete story

Some of the most important astronomical discoveries in history were made unexpectedly, and the cosmic mysteries that puzzle scientists today are likely to be made equally as serendipitously, one astronomer says.

Kenneth Lang, an astronomer at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., recounts the importance of accidental astronomical discoveries in an essay in the Jan. 1 issue of the journal Science, beginning with the start of astronomy as we know it.

Read the complete story

Michael Kramer, Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie ( MPIfR ) in Bonn, Germany, and Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics ( JBCA ), has received one of the prestigious Marcel Grossman Awards.

Prof Kramer was recognised at the latest Marcel Grossman meeting in Paris for his fundamental contributions to pulsar astrophysics, and notably for having first confirmed the existence of spin-orbit precession in binary pulsars.

The Marcel Grossmann Meetings were founded in 1975 by Remo Ruffini and Abdus Salam with the aim of reviewing developments in theoretical and experimental general relativity ( Einstein's theory of gravity ), gravitation, and relativistic field theories. They provide an international discussion forum for physicists and astronomers. They are organized at different locations and take place every three years.

Read the complete story

As astronauts work to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope this week, another large space telescope of NASA started a new life on its own. As expected, on May 15th, 2009, the Spitzer Space Telescope ran out of its liquid helium coolant that has enabled it to observe dark, cold objects both within and outside of the solar system with ultra-high sensitivity.

This doesn't mean that the telescope is nearing the end of its life; rather, it merely switches the mission from the “cold” phase it has been in since launch to a new "warm" phase, with new scientific objectives. This is actually a big week for infrared astronomy. The European Space Agency launched two space-based IR telescopes of its own, the Herschel Space Observatory (HSO) and the Planck mission.

The HSO is armed with the largest mirror ever put into space, at 3.5m, approximately four times the size of Spitzer's. It's carrying three years' worth of coolant that will allow it to image deeper into the infrared, pushing close to radio astronomy wavelengths. With the Spitzer now shifting to the shorter-wavelength ranges of the IR, the HSO and Spitzer missions will largely complement each other.

Read the complete story

NASA has selected fellows in three areas of astronomy and astrophysics for its Einstein, Hubble, and Sagan Fellowships. The recipients of this year’s post-doctoral fellowships will conduct independent research at institutions around the country.

“The new fellows are among the best and brightest young astronomers in the world,” said Jon Morse, director of the Astrophysics Division in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “They already have contributed significantly to studies of how the universe works, the origin of our cosmos and whether we are alone in the cosmos.

The fellowships will serve as a springboard for scientific leadership in the years to come, and as an inspiration for the next generation of students and early career researchers.” Each fellowship provides support to the awardees for three years. The fellows may pursue their research at any host university or research center of their choosing in the United States. The new fellows will begin their programs in the fall of 2009.

Read the complete story

How planets form might save a heart patient. Though it might sound a bit farfetched it’s absolutely true that result from an astrophysics research might help doctors detect deadly blood clots in a human heart. Geologists studying how molten metal coagulates at the centre of planets while they are forming have discovered that their research can also be used to investigate blood flow in the human heart.

Their work has already helped surgeons find the location of a potentially life-threatening blood clot in a patient’s heartUsing sophisticated computer modelling developed to explore the flow of liquid metal through rocks.

The scientists were able to show doctors where the patient’s blood was gathering in a pool in their heart due to a blood clot. Doctors were then able to confirm the clot and treat the patient, who has not been named for confidentiality reasons.

Read the complete story

NASA has selected fellows in three areas of astronomy and astrophysics for its Einstein, Hubble, and Sagan Fellowships. The recipients of this year's post-doctoral fellowships will conduct independent research at institutions around the country.

The new fellows are among the best and brightest young astronomers in the world," said Jon Morse, director of the Astrophysics Division in NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "They already have contributed significantly to studies of how the universe works, the origin of our cosmos and whether we are alone in the cosmos.

The fellowships will serve as a springboard for scientific leadership in the years to come, and as an inspiration for the next generation of students and early career researchers."Each fellowship provides support to the awardees for three years. The fellows may pursue their research at any host university or research center of their choosing in the United States. The new fellows will begin their programs in the fall of 2009.

Read the complete story

Yale will invest $12 million towards future operations of the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii in exchange for 150 nights of observing time over the next 10 years."

This investment will give our astronomers, postdocs and students long-term access to two of the largest and best telescopes in the world," said Steven Girvin, deputy provost for science and technology at Yale.

The observatory's twin 10-meter telescopes-operated by Caltech, the University of California and NASA-ushered in a new era of astronomy when they were built in 1993 and 1996. They remain the largest optical telescopes in the world.

Read the complete story

The findings are reported in the latest issue of the journal Science (Vol. 323 No. 5912). The team included team leader Albert Zijlstra and Eric Lagadec of The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Greg Sloan of Cornell University and Mikako Matsuura of the National University of Japan.The study was based on observations with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

"Dust plays a key role in the evolution of galaxies such as our Milky Way, and is the building block for the formation of planets-and ultimately, life" says Lagadec.Stars produce dust – smoke-like particles rich with carbon or oxygen – as they die. But less is known about how and what kind of dust was created in the first galaxies as they formed soon after the Big Bang.

"All the elements heavier than helium were made after the Big Bang in successive generations of stars", explained Zijlstra. "We came up with the idea of looking at nearby galaxies poor in heavier elements to get a close-up view of how stars live and die in conditions similar to those in the early universe."

Read the complete story

Extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, a concept that refers to all planet-like celestial bodies orbiting stars in other systems, are very difficult to observe, and even when the telescopes are pointing in the right direction, it takes a certain amount of luck to spot one.Since the first ever such body was discovered, in 1999, only 55 others have been observed.

Now, publishing in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, two teams of researchers believe they may have made the first Earth-based observations of the atmosphere, or lack thereof, surrounding exoplanets.

The first team of astronomers, made up of University of Leiden scientists Ernst De Mooij and Ignas Snellen, were looking at the star TrES-3, and analyzed its planet, TrES-3b, with the help of the Canary Islands-based William Hershel 4.2 meter telescope.

Read the complete story