Archive for the ‘Space Science’ Category

Probably one of the last Moon observations in this summer 2010 (northern hemisphere).

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Unfortunatelly many places in northern hemisphere of our planet had bad weather and observers from these places could not see this beauty on the night sky. But there are places located above the clouds, especially those in high mountains, which had the perfect chance to watch this nice light theatre. One of these places is small country in central Europe – Slovakia. We are bringing you more nice photos.

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Skywatchers at high latitudes could be in for a spectacular treat of northern lights, the aurora borealis, Tuesday and Wednesday: After a relatively quiet stretch, it appears the sun is ramping up its activity. The sun’s surface erupted early Sunday, blasting  tons of plasma (ionized atoms) into space. These atoms are headed toward Earth and could create a stunning light show in the process.

“This eruption is directed right at us and is expected to get here early in the day on Aug. 4th,” said Leon Golub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “It’s the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time.”

The solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, was spotted by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory , which captures high-definition views of the sun at a variety of wavelengths. SDO was launched in February and peers deep into the layers of the sun, investigating the mysteries of its inner workings.

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The total solar eclipse of July 11, 2010 occurred over the southern Pacific Ocean. The eclipse was one of the most remote in recorded history. It was visible over much of the southern Pacific Ocean, touching several atolls in French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Easter Island, and Argentina’s Patagonian plains.

Total eclipse began 700 kilometers (440 miles) southeast of Tonga at approximately 18:15 UTC and reached Easter Island by 20:11 UTC. The global sky photography project The World At Night stationed photographers throughout the eclipse’s visibility track. Eclipse chasers photographed the event onboard a chartered airplane, cruise ships, numerous Pacific islands, and in Argentina’s Patagonia region. Totality was observed for four minutes and 41 seconds (4:41) on Easter Island, where it was observed for the first time in 1,400 years. Approximately 4,000 observers visited Easter Island for this eclipse, prompting an increase in security at its important moai archeological sites. The eclipse occurred at the same time that the final game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup was being played in South Africa, and many soccer fans in Tahiti watched the match instead of observing the partial eclipse with a high percentage of obscuring the sun by about 98 percent. The path of totality of this eclipse barely missed some significant inhabited islands, including passing just about 20 km north of the northern end of Tahiti.

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Geneva, 30 March 2010. Beams collided at 7 TeV in the LHC at 13:06 CEST, marking the start of the LHC research programme. Particle physicists around the world are looking forward to a potentially rich harvest of new physics as the LHC begins its first long run at an energy three and a half times higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator.

CERN will run the LHC for 18-24 months with the objective of delivering enough data to the experiments to make significant advances across a wide range of physics channels. As soon as they have “re-discovered” the known Standard Model particles, a necessary precursor to looking for new physics, the LHC experiments will start the systematic search for the Higgs boson. With the amount of data expected, called one inverse femtobarn by physicists, the combined analysis of ATLAS and CMS will be able to explore a wide mass range, and there’s even a chance of discovery if the Higgs has a mass near 160 GeV. If it’s much lighter or very heavy, it will be harder to find in this first LHC run.

For supersymmetry, ATLAS and CMS will each have enough data to double today’s sensitivity to certain new discoveries. Experiments today are sensitive to some supersymmetric particles with masses up to 400 GeV. An inverse femtobarn at the LHC pushes the discovery range up to 800 GeV.

“The LHC has a real chance over the next two years of discovering supersymmetric particles,” explained Rolf Heuer (CERN Director General), “and possibly giving insights into the composition of about a quarter of the Universe.”

source: CERN press release