| New Spectral Class Dwarf, Charged Moon and More... |
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| Written by Nathaniel Whitehead | |
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This edition we have news of some interesting insights coming through the wire. A knew type of spectral class of dwarf might have been identified, bombardment of electrons from the Earth’s magnetotail does strange things to the moon, observations of globular clusters indicate that they may be still developing, there is evidence for geologically recent glacial activity on Mars and incredible pictures of interacting galaxies taken by the Hubble space telescope have been released. A Type-Y Dwarf? Astronomers with the infrared Canada-France Brown dwarf survey (CFBDS) have discovered the coolest brown dwarf ever seen. A brown dwarf is an object that is in between the mass of a giant planet, like Jupiter and a star. They don’t have enough mass to drive the process of fusion that powers stars, like our Sun, and so gradually cool down after formation.
The brown dwarf that has been discovered has a temperature of about 660 degrees F, which is not all that hot. It is located in the constellation Cetus about 40 light years away and has an estimated mass of about 15-30 Jupiter masses. The interesting thing about this discovery is that the brown dwarf, dubbed DFBDS J005910.83-011401.3, is cool enough to show ammonia in its spectrum. Spectral classifications have more to do with temperature than they do mass so the discovery of this brown dwarf may just merit a spectral class of Y. To read more about this discovery visit the following link and our original source; http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/04/11/coldest-dwarf-star.html Strange Things on the Moon: Researchers looking into the Moon’s environment are discovering that there are some strange and previously unknown processes going on up there. Once a month when the Moon is full it goes through the Earth’s magnetotail, which is caused by the solar wind stretching out the Earth’s magnetic field, and when the Moon passes through this it is bombarded with electrons.
Electrons have a negative charge and so give the Moon a negative charge, more on the night side than the day side. This could cause moon the build up of voltages of hundreds or thousands of volts, as well as cause the lunar dust to hover above ground and float around the surface. This might explain just why that moon dust was so troublesome on the Apollo missions. All of this is of course is in many ways still just theory but more tests should bring more light to the issue soon. To read more about this story visit the following link and our original source; http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/magnetotail_080416.html Are Globular Clusters Still Developing?: Globular clusters have long been held to be some of the universe’s oldest objects, laying on the outskirts of galaxies these tightly packed star clusters can be home to millions of individual stars and until recently were all believed to be well into old age.
A study that has been conducted by John Fregeau of Northwestern University looking at 13 globular clusters in our galaxy, the Milky Way, has observed that most have a large number of x-ray binaries, which is a trait usually indicative of middle age, but Fregeau suggests that some of these clusters may still be well younger than middle age. The importance of this finding is that is can shine new light on the processes of stellar evolution and stellar interaction. Models will have to be adjusted and theoretical framework will need to adapt to these new findings if they hold true and that means an adjustment of our understanding of some of the oldest objects in the universe. For more information on this story visit the following link and our original source; http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx Recent Glacial Activity on Mars?: Researchers at Brown University have been looking at high resolution images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and have found evidence that Mars has been more active than previously thought in the recent past, well geologically recent anyway, 10 to 100 million years ago. The researchers focused on a particular region of Mars and looked at a box canyon in that region; there they found moraines which are deposits of rock that indicate where a glacier has been.
The team looked into the markings and has determined that the glacier that caused them could have been very thick, from at least 1 kilometer to possibly 2.5 kilometers. These glaciers would have existed in Mars mid-latitude belt and that is surprising. More and more we find that the once held static environment of Mars has been much more active than we believed. To find out more about this story visit the following link and our original source; http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2008/04/martian-glaciers Incredible Shots of Interacting Galaxies: The Hubble Space Telescope has released stunning images of galaxies interacting in honor of the 18th anniversary of the Hubble launch. The pictures show us just how dynamic galaxies are, with mergers and gravitational interactions galore. However active they may be we will only be here for part of the show because galactic mergers and interactions happen over astronomical time scales, which means millions upon millions upon millions of years.
The images show galaxies at various stages of interactions and collisions, bringing us beautiful detail and sublime views. To see and read more on these images just follow the link; http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/16/ |
