Homeboy Astronomy Blog » News

NASA Was Able to Predict the Meteoroid Dropping to Sudan

Marko — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 03:38:03 +0000

Few days ago a small meteoroid dropped into the atmosphere above Sudan, and NASA was able to predict this phenomenon. 2 meters wide meteoroid that dropped into our atmosphere and burned into pieces, was no threat the life on Earth. Although this small meteoroid was no dangerous, it must have lightened up the sky over Africa. Similar bolidi was seen in Finland few months ago.

“This is the very first time we predicted an object before hitting the planet“, says Don Yeomans from NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). “We predict that this kind of object fall into our atmosphere every second month”, continues Don Yeomans.

Although it might sound not too staggering, this is an important moment in the history of asteroid collision prediction. As soon as the prediction robots get enhanced, we most probably will hear this kind of warnings more frequently.

Some newspapers have called this object a meteoroid, while others have named it an asteroid. Which one is the right name? One recommendation says that if the radius of an object is more than 10 meters, it should be called an asteroid. If it’s less than 10 meters, the object should be called as meteoroid.

Source [Nasa]

First Picture of Likely Planet – A Great Breakthrough in Astronomy

Marko — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:49:31 +0000

Probably the very first photograph of an Earth-like planet was released a couple of days ago. This is the first time scientists have managed to photograph an exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star. Although this information is not 100% sure yet, we can say this is a great breakthrough in astronomy.

The exoplanet (left corner) was photographed with the adaptive Gemini telescope of Hawaii. The big bright star in the middle is the one exoplanet is orbiting. Scientists call this star as a “mother star”. So far scientists have managed to photograph only wandering exoplanets, not those who orbit a star. In this picture the star is about the size of our own Sun, but this star is much younger.

The first photographed exoplanet is simply huge

The mass of the photographed exoplanet is staggering. This distant Earth-like planet is about eight times bigger than Jupiter, which is already very big. The exoplanet is located pretty far from its mother star. The distance from the exoplanet to the mother star is 330 AU (Astronomical Units), which is 330 times the distance from Earth to the Sun. The exoplanet is located 500 light years away from the Earth.

Scientists are not sure yet if the exoplanet is orbiting the star. It might be a wandering planet, just passing by the star, but the probability for this is very small. Future measurements will confirm this, but most likely this exoplanet orbits the mother star.

This recently photographed exoplanet would not be suitable for human beings, because the temperature on the planet is estimated to be 1500 centigrades.

Source [Gemini]

Stunning Images Of CERN’s New LHC Hadron Collider

Marko — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:22:46 +0000

CERN’s new LHC collider was started up yesterday morning. While some people were called this a kind of a doom’s day, so far we haven’t been “eaten” by a black hole. I already discussed about the possible microscopic black holes of Switzerland, so today I am not going to continue with that same topic. Instead I would like to share some stunning images of CERN’s new LHC collider I found yesterday. These pictures are all taken by the staff of LHC. Please enjoy!

CERN’s LHC collider is a huge system used by researchers. The new LHC collider will help researchers studying the first moments of the universe. How the universe was born and how it will develop? May be we will get answers later to these difficult questions.