Jupiter is the solar system's vacuum cleaner, pulling in meteors and comets.
Scientists estimate that if it was not for this amazing fact, the number of these objects hitting earth would be about ten thousand times greater....
This isn't actually true as it has also been surmised that Jupiter attracts comets & meteors towards the inner solar system and has even been known to fling a thing or more at earth.
“I really question this idea,” said Brian G. Marsden of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, referring to Jupiter as our guardian planet. As the former director of the International Astronomical Union’s Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, he has spent his career keeping track of wayward objects, particularly comets, in the solar system.
Jupiter is just as much a menace as a savior, he said. The big planet throws a lot of comets out of the solar system, but it also throws them in.
Jupiter is the solar system's vacuum cleaner, pulling in meteors and comets.
Scientists estimate that if it was not for this amazing fact, the number of these objects hitting earth would be about ten thousand times greater....
This isn't actually true as it has also been surmised that Jupiter attracts comets & meteors towards the inner solar system and has even been known to fling a thing or more at earth.
“I really question this idea,” said Brian G. Marsden of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, referring to Jupiter as our guardian planet. As the former director of the International Astronomical Union’s Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, he has spent his career keeping track of wayward objects, particularly comets, in the solar system.
Jupiter is just as much a menace as a savior, he said. The big planet throws a lot of comets out of the solar system, but it also throws them in.
both of you are correct. in the end, Jupiter has a null effect on earth. It protects from comets, but can also sling object inward.
but I'll give Jupiter the upper hand as we have witnessed and recorded multiple "earth killing" impacts during my lifetime. Considering it's been 65 million years since earth has been hit, I'm happy Jupiter exists.
Scientists estimate that if our own moon were the size of Jupiter, mankind as we know it would not be able to survive on planet earth due to extinction of the species via nightly heart attacks.
It might look like all the stars are out there, all by themselves, but many come in pairs. These are binary stars, where two stars orbit a common center of gravity. And there are other systems out there with 3, 4 and even more stars. Just think of the beautiful sunrises you’d experience waking up on a world with 4 stars around it....
Modern astronomy meets the world's oldest cultural understanding of the skies...
(The artwork and dreaming stories are absolutely beautiful and well worth a look)
lgarijiri Project
Ilgarijiri means “things belonging to the sky” in the Wajarri language.
This is a collaborative project between Aboriginal artists from or residing in the Mid West of Western Australia (Yamaji Country), via the Yamaji Art cooperative in Geraldton, and radio astronomers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), based in Perth, Western Australia.
The intent of this meeting was for Aboriginal Artists to work with scientists using the world’s leading astronomy equipment, bringing together the world’s oldest continuing cultural understanding of the sky, its stories and the world’s state-of-the-art astronomical technology.
The trip to Mullewa and Boolardy Station inspired the works on display, and captured the imagination of other artists in the region. We are pleased to present all works submitted for the exhibition on this site.
This exhibition presents two different world views of the sky, and the universe – the stars, and the space between them.
• It's Harvest Moon tonight, the full Moon closest to the fall equinox (exactly full at 11:19 p.m. EDT).
The Moon shines in dim Pisces this evening, below the Great Square of Pegasus....
• Jupiter comes up over the east-northeast horizon around 9:30 or 10 tonight, followed a half hour later by the nearly last-quarter Moon. They rise higher as night grows late...
Astronomers have found a new planet, the closest yet outside our solar system and just an astronomical stone's throw away at four light years, raising the chances of finding a habitable planet in Earth's neighbourhood.
Researchers say the new planet is too close to its sun to support known forms of life, with a surface temperature estimated at 1,200 degrees Celsius.
But previous studies suggest that when one planet is discovered orbiting a sun, there are usually others in the same system.
The new Earth-sized planet, announced in science journal Nature by Stephane Udry and Xavier Dumusque at the Geneva Observatory, orbits one of the suns in Alpha Centauri, roughly 40 trillion kilometres away.
"It's a landmark discovery because it's very low mass and it's our closest neighbour," Mr Udry said.
"Its orbit is very close to its star and it must be much too hot for life as we know it, but it may well be just one planet in a system of several."
Commenting on the find, University of California astronomer Greg Laughlin said: "This is our backyard, so to find out that planet formation occurred there is just extraordinary."
Since the discovery of the first exoplanets - those outside our solar system - in the early 1990s, more than 800 have been found but this one is the closest to Earth.
Getting there is extremely unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Mr Laughlin estimates it would take about 40,000 years to travel to the new planet with current propulsion technology.
It was detected using the HARPS instrument on a telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla site in Chile.
The device is able to pick up tiny changes in the colour of the light coming from a host star as it wobbles under the gravitational influence of orbiting planets.
Minute shifts
The gravitational effect in this case is minute, causing it to move back and forth by no more than 51 centimetres per second.
Alpha Centauri is a three-star system consisting of two stars similar to our sun and a faint red star called Proxima Centauri.
The planet orbits Alpha Centauri B.
Astronomers have speculated about planets orbiting these suns since the 19th century, but small planets like this are hard to find and instruments have only recently become sensitive enough to detect them.
"Our observations extended over more than four years using the HARPS instrument," Mr Dumusque said.
The researchers said they will make their data available to other astronomers to test their findings, but in the meantime some remain sceptical.
"Actually, I still have my doubts," German astronomer Artie Hatzes said.
He said the wobble detected in the star could be caused by a series of other factors, including sun spots, so the data need to be tested by other researchers.
"These activity variations have to be filtered from the data before one can extract the signal due to the possible planet," he said.
"It could well be that someone else analysing the same data may come up with a different conclusion.
"That is why I am not 100 per cent certain."
But Mr Dumusque is confident.
"We have considered in this analysis all the known possible explanations, including instrumental noise and stellar origin," he said.
"In the end, the planetary solution is the most likely one."
hear my name
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Have you ever wondered why stars twinkle at night?
The twinkling of stars is actually caused by the movement of Earth’s atmosphere. The light emitted by the star enters the atmosphere in a straight path, but we see stars twinkling because air movements in our atmosphere change the paths constantly, hence the twinkling...
• The crescent Moon shines in the southwest as twilight fades. If it were a bow, it would be shooting an arrow to the lower right above the Mars-and-Antares pair.
• The annual Orionid meteor shower should be getting under way in the hours before dawn Saturday morning, and it should continue in the early-morning hours for the next few days. You may see 10 or 20 Orionids per hour. The shower's radiant point is at the top of Orion's Club, which doesn't rise high until after well midnight. There will be no moonlight for the next few mornings.
The annual Orionid meteor shower should be getting under way in the hours before dawn Saturday morning, and it should continue in the early-morning hours for the next few days.
Saw a whole bunch of these last night. Two in particular were very awesome; one left a long green streak across the sky, and the other left a long orangish streak. the streaks remained for about 2 seconds after the meteor disappeared.
Comments
Scientists estimate that if it was not for this amazing fact, the number of these objects hitting earth would be about ten thousand times greater....
This isn't actually true as it has also been surmised that Jupiter attracts comets & meteors towards the inner solar system and has even been known to fling a thing or more at earth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/weeki ... erbye.html
but I'll give Jupiter the upper hand as we have witnessed and recorded multiple "earth killing" impacts during my lifetime. Considering it's been 65 million years since earth has been hit, I'm happy Jupiter exists.
8/28/98- Camden, NJ
10/31/09- Philly
5/21/10- NYC
9/2/12- Philly, PA
7/19/13- Wrigley
10/19/13- Brooklyn, NY
10/21/13- Philly, PA
10/22/13- Philly, PA
10/27/13- Baltimore, MD
Tres Mts.- 3/23/11- Philly
Eddie Vedder- 6/25/11- Philly
site your source
Scientists estimate that if our own moon were the size of Jupiter, mankind as we know it would not be able to survive on planet earth due to extinction of the species via nightly heart attacks.
It might look like all the stars are out there, all by themselves, but many come in pairs. These are binary stars, where two stars orbit a common center of gravity. And there are other systems out there with 3, 4 and even more stars. Just think of the beautiful sunrises you’d experience waking up on a world with 4 stars around it....
(The artwork and dreaming stories are absolutely beautiful and well worth a look)
lgarijiri Project
Ilgarijiri means “things belonging to the sky” in the Wajarri language.
This is a collaborative project between Aboriginal artists from or residing in the Mid West of Western Australia (Yamaji Country), via the Yamaji Art cooperative in Geraldton, and radio astronomers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), based in Perth, Western Australia.
The intent of this meeting was for Aboriginal Artists to work with scientists using the world’s leading astronomy equipment, bringing together the world’s oldest continuing cultural understanding of the sky, its stories and the world’s state-of-the-art astronomical technology.
The trip to Mullewa and Boolardy Station inspired the works on display, and captured the imagination of other artists in the region. We are pleased to present all works submitted for the exhibition on this site.
This exhibition presents two different world views of the sky, and the universe – the stars, and the space between them.
http://astronomy.curtin.edu.au/ilgarijiri/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G18jhC3b53A
• It's Harvest Moon tonight, the full Moon closest to the fall equinox (exactly full at 11:19 p.m. EDT).
The Moon shines in dim Pisces this evening, below the Great Square of Pegasus....
1) like one couldn't find the moon otherwise? :wtf: and
2) if the moon is full, It's usually impossible to see the background constellations anyway
• Jupiter comes up over the east-northeast horizon around 9:30 or 10 tonight, followed a half hour later by the nearly last-quarter Moon. They rise higher as night grows late...
Now I can grow a beautiful shell for all to see
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/ ... orm=msnrll
That is amazing -
http://www.counselheal.com/articles/311 ... nomers.htm
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogle/S ... oogle.html
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-18/n ... rd/4319592
Astronomers have found a new planet, the closest yet outside our solar system and just an astronomical stone's throw away at four light years, raising the chances of finding a habitable planet in Earth's neighbourhood.
Researchers say the new planet is too close to its sun to support known forms of life, with a surface temperature estimated at 1,200 degrees Celsius.
But previous studies suggest that when one planet is discovered orbiting a sun, there are usually others in the same system.
The new Earth-sized planet, announced in science journal Nature by Stephane Udry and Xavier Dumusque at the Geneva Observatory, orbits one of the suns in Alpha Centauri, roughly 40 trillion kilometres away.
"It's a landmark discovery because it's very low mass and it's our closest neighbour," Mr Udry said.
"Its orbit is very close to its star and it must be much too hot for life as we know it, but it may well be just one planet in a system of several."
Commenting on the find, University of California astronomer Greg Laughlin said: "This is our backyard, so to find out that planet formation occurred there is just extraordinary."
Since the discovery of the first exoplanets - those outside our solar system - in the early 1990s, more than 800 have been found but this one is the closest to Earth.
Getting there is extremely unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Mr Laughlin estimates it would take about 40,000 years to travel to the new planet with current propulsion technology.
It was detected using the HARPS instrument on a telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla site in Chile.
The device is able to pick up tiny changes in the colour of the light coming from a host star as it wobbles under the gravitational influence of orbiting planets.
Minute shifts
The gravitational effect in this case is minute, causing it to move back and forth by no more than 51 centimetres per second.
Alpha Centauri is a three-star system consisting of two stars similar to our sun and a faint red star called Proxima Centauri.
The planet orbits Alpha Centauri B.
Astronomers have speculated about planets orbiting these suns since the 19th century, but small planets like this are hard to find and instruments have only recently become sensitive enough to detect them.
"Our observations extended over more than four years using the HARPS instrument," Mr Dumusque said.
The researchers said they will make their data available to other astronomers to test their findings, but in the meantime some remain sceptical.
"Actually, I still have my doubts," German astronomer Artie Hatzes said.
He said the wobble detected in the star could be caused by a series of other factors, including sun spots, so the data need to be tested by other researchers.
"These activity variations have to be filtered from the data before one can extract the signal due to the possible planet," he said.
"It could well be that someone else analysing the same data may come up with a different conclusion.
"That is why I am not 100 per cent certain."
But Mr Dumusque is confident.
"We have considered in this analysis all the known possible explanations, including instrumental noise and stellar origin," he said.
"In the end, the planetary solution is the most likely one."
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
it's just that because of our angle, we can't tell
The twinkling of stars is actually caused by the movement of Earth’s atmosphere. The light emitted by the star enters the atmosphere in a straight path, but we see stars twinkling because air movements in our atmosphere change the paths constantly, hence the twinkling...
• The crescent Moon shines in the southwest as twilight fades. If it were a bow, it would be shooting an arrow to the lower right above the Mars-and-Antares pair.
• The annual Orionid meteor shower should be getting under way in the hours before dawn Saturday morning, and it should continue in the early-morning hours for the next few days. You may see 10 or 20 Orionids per hour. The shower's radiant point is at the top of Orion's Club, which doesn't rise high until after well midnight. There will be no moonlight for the next few mornings.
Excellent! What shall we name it?
Most Likely
PLUTO2
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
not since i was younger and found out why they do. now i just mistake them for airplanes.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
the planet's not in our solar system, btw
Saw a whole bunch of these last night. Two in particular were very awesome; one left a long green streak across the sky, and the other left a long orangish streak. the streaks remained for about 2 seconds after the meteor disappeared.
dont care where it is, its new.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say