Download Giant Gathering of Galaxies @ 8.5 billion Light

Space News
looking back over
November 2015
Giant Gathering of Galaxies @ 8.5 billion Light-Years
NASA’s Spitzer Space
Telescope and Widefield Infrared Survey
Explorer have
discovered a giant
gathering of galaxies
located 8.5 billion
light-years away.
The galaxy cluster
(MOO J1142+1527)
is in a very remote
part of the universe
and is the most
massive structure yet
found at such great
distances.
Eclipse or Transit ??
Gaia (sited at L2) is conducting the most detailed census of stars in our Galaxy.
However, on 6th November, it was perfectly placed to witness a rare lunar transit
across the Sun. This was of course not an eclipse seen on Earth.
Pluto had (has?) volcanoes erupting ICE !!
Wright Mons on Pluto
photographed by New
Horizons - is a broad,
mountain, about 150
km across and 4 km
high, with a 56 km
wide, deep summit
depression. Similar in
shape to volcanoes on
Earth and Mars.
This may have been a
volcano that erupted
molten ice (=water?)
from within the ice cold
planet.
How long will Phobos continue to orbit Mars?
Phobos (=Fear) is
probably a captured
asteroid. Orbiting
only 5,800 km above
the surface (cf the
400,000 km for the
Moon) gravitational
tidal forces are
slowly dragging it
down.
The lines may be
due to gravitational
stretching – leading
to final disintegration
into a ring of dust
and rocks around
the planet.
African Taurid – plus Moon and 3 Planets
If you’d taken a trip to the Amboseli National Park, Kenya early last month you
may have caught this view of the Moon, Venus, Mars and Jupiter, plus the
occasional Taurid meteor – as seen here. This year’s Taurids, travelling at
27kps, had a high proportion of bright fireballs.
Taurid Fireball
This Taurid fireball “got in the way” of this attempt to photograph the Orion
Nebula (top left) from a site in the Swiss Alps. Rigel is on the right.
A Spooky Event for San Franciscans . . .
Hundreds of people in California reported this or a similar sight. Experienced
sky observers agreed that it was the plume resulting from a rocket launch –
which was an unpublicized test of a submarine-launched Trident II D5 missile.
Bloody Orion
We are all
familiar with the
“Orion Nebula”
- but maybe not
as good as
this…
This composite
required 212
hours camera
time and 1400
separate shots,
followed by a
whole year of
processing to get
the complete
constellation in
one view.
Can you identify
all the mains
stars?
Comet 67P-CG Jets out into Space
This animation
shows 3 shots of
‘67P’ taken at 20
minute intervals in
July as the Rosetta
spacecraft continues
to orbit the comet
and provide photo
information like this.
Rosetta will be
gently ‘crashed’ into
the surface in late
2016.
How these jets
make up the whole
‘tail’ of the comet is
still a matter for
further research.
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
November 2014
67P shows many
separate jets as it
nears the Sun.
EXO-MARS getting ready to move to launch site
The two ExoMars spacecraft of the 2016 mission are being prepared for shipping
to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan ahead of their launch in March.
A joint endeavour with Russia’s Roscosmos, ExoMars comprises two missions.
The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Schiaparelli make up the 2016 mission, while
the 2018 mission will combine a rover and a surface science platform.
Both missions will be launched on Russian Proton rockets from Baikonur.
Earth’s Magnetic Field Intensity is Double the Average
The intensity of Earth’s geomagnetic field has been dropping for the past 200
years, at a rate that some scientists suspect may cause the field to bottom out in
2,000 years, temporarily leaving the planet unprotected against damaging
charged particles from the sun. This drop in intensity is associated with periodic
geomagnetic field reversals, in which the Earth’s North and South magnetic
poles flip polarity, and it could last for several thousand years before stability.
Anything interesting during
December to:
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