WISE Eyes: Coolest Stars

Not long after detecting the darkest planet ever by the Kepler mission, now we have the news of seeing the coldest class of stars via WISE eyes!

How cold are they? As cold as our bodies or cooler. You think that is not cold enough? It is very cold for a star, just compare it with our own Sun! Well, technically they belong to a star-like class of celestial bodies called brown dwarfs, believed to be failed stars.  They just did not make it even though they were well on their way of becoming a star.

Reference:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/news/wise20110823.html

WISE Eye!

WISE eyes have observed the first Trojan asteroid sharing Earth's orbit!
What is a Trojan asteroid? "asteroids that share an orbit with a planet near stable points in front of or behind the planet."

While the news is amazing, it tells me how little we humans know! We are still finding things in our own orbit! Yet, we expect discovering all sorts of things around Mars, Jupiter, Pluto! We have a lot to explore, to learn, to discover!

"Asteroid 2010 TK7 is circled in green, in this single frame taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The majority of the other dots are stars or galaxies far beyond our solar system."   Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA.

Reference:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/news/wise20110727.html

Vesta, the word; Or maybe back to the rock!

So, what does Vesta mean anyways? The word does remind me of the Zoroastrian's Holy book, Avesta. Today, a good friend of mine confirmed my intuition. She said Vesta is a girl's name among Zoroastrians, derived from the word Avesta. Yet, I do not know its Persian meaning. Do you?

In English, Vesta is related to the name of a Roman Goddess of the hearth! Considering that fire is holy in Zoroastrianism, the connection to Avesta makes sense. So does the complete definition: the goddess of hearth is worshiped in a temple with a sacred fire that is kept burning by vestal virgins! Similarly, Zoroastrian temples in Iran have fireplaces that have been kept burning for hundreds of years! So, where do Romans come into the picture?! It is so interesting.

Back to the Vesta of the skies now! Vesta is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. As of Saturday (July 16, 2011), Dawn became the first spacecraft orbiting such a body. Look at its image only 9500 miles away from Vesta's surface!*

Compare it to the July 9th, 2011 image! It is amazing going for a ride on Dawn, millions of miles, all the way to the Vesta!

* http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20110718.html

Vesta Fiesta!

Asteroid Vesta was discovered on March 29, 1807 by German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers [1]. Vesta is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. How large is it? 530 kilometers wide. How far is it? 211 million kilometers (131 million miles) from Earth when Hubble observed it [2]. For the first time since its discovery 204 years ago, we are able to see it so clearly via Dawn mission. Here is an image from July 9th, 2011 observation of Vesta from Dawn [3]:

It took Dawn four years to get to Vesta, on a slow and steady approach [2,5]. Dawn will enter Vesta's orbit on July 15, 2011 [4] (July 16th EST) and stays there for about a year to study this asteroid. Then, it will leave Vesta's orbit for its next destination Ceres, a dwarf planet. Ceres is in the same class of celestial bodies as Pluto! Most people note that Pluto got demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet because of the discovery of two of its moons, Nix and Hydra. However, this new classification implies to astronomers and planetary scientists that so many other celestial bodies, such as Ceres, got promoted to the same class as Pluto! Whether or not Vesta has moons, will also imply different things about our solar system and creation. Stay tuned!


[1] http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/29mar_vesta/
[2] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/pia13428.html
[3] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/dawn-image-070911.html
[4] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20110714.html
[5] http://dawn.ucla.edu/dawn/mission.html

There are signs everywhere!

It is possible to discover a moon of a celestial body by first observing its shadow on that body.

Hubble Space Telescope: One in a Million!

Did you know that Hubble Space Telescope (HST) made its One Millionth observation yesterday? I learned this today! Considering that for each observation, scientists write proposals asking for Hubble time and resources, some people review those proposals, some analyze the data, report the results, publish papers, ... can you imagine how much work, scientific discovery and exploration Hubble has contributed to? Hubble is One in a Million indeed! The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has high standards to compete with. Here are 200 of those spectacular images:



Here is the one-millionth scientific observation of the HST.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/millionth.html

Reference:
http://geeked.gsfc.nasa.gov/?p=7104