Howdy Neighbor.

A new dwarf galaxy, about 7,000,000 light years away from the Milky Way, is the newest member of the Local Group.

Our group is a cluster of more than 50 galaxies…make that more than 51 galaxies.

The newly found dwarf galaxy, named KKs3, is located in the constellation of Hydrus and only has one ten-thousandth of the mass of the Milky Way.

KKs3 is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy that lacks features, like spiral arms, of larger galaxies.  Also, they don’t have enough material left to form new stars.  This could be caused by larger, nearby object.

The only other spheroidal dwarf galaxy, KKR 25, has been found.

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +, or by email.

Norman

Its A Dirty Universe.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope scientists have completed the largest and most sensitive visible-light imaging survey of dusty debris disks around other stars.

Its a time machine to see the past events that happened in our solar system (and to some extent are still happening) during planet formation.

The survey found that no two “disks” of material looked the same. By now it should be fairly apparent that the universe is a chaotic place that would be hard to define simply.

As more and more data is collected from distant planetary systems, the simulations and accuracy of the predictive models will increase.  With Peta-bytes of information arriving daily and needed to be sifted through, there is a bright future for any wannabe astronomers.

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +

Norman

Happy Birthday Hubble.

Can you believe that the Hubble Space Telescope was launched 24 years ago!

It seems like yesterday that we knew everything about the universe…and then Hubble rewrote (and continues to rewrite) our understanding of the universe.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field and others showed us that what we thought was empty space, was actually quite busy.  Everything in that image above is another galaxy.

Considering the size of the field of view (shown above) of the Hubble for those deep field views, there is an amazing amount of places in the universe to explore.

Using the Hubble, astronomers where able to find dark matter and fill in about 5% of the matter that is missing from the universe.

So how much longer can Hubble last?  There are no more service missions scheduled for the Hubble and the last mission was in 2009.  Eventually, the giant space telescope will run out of gas.  It’s last command will be to crash down into the Pacific Ocean in a fiery death.  That will be a sad day.  But the data and pioneering efforts of the world’s first space-based optical telescope will be around for years to come.

In honor of the 24th anniversary of the Hubble, NASA announced that it will release an infrared image of a nearby star factor known as the Monkey Head Nebula (or known as NGC 2174 and Sharpless Sh2-252).

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +

Norman

Wake Up!

The ESA’s Rosetta comet probe has woken up to make its rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Rosetta’s mission will take 10 years to complete.

During its trip Rosetta passed by two asteroids, Lutetia and Steins.  The image above shows landslide that happened on Lutetia.

When Rosetta reaches the comet, it will deploy a 220-pound (100 kilogram) lander called Philae.

Once on the comet’s surface the pair of craft will accompany the comet on its journey through the inner solar system, observing at close range how the comet changes as the Sun’s heat transforms the cold surface to a boiling gaseous mass.

Rosetta is about 500 million miles (about 800 million km) from Earth near Jupiter’s orbit.  At that distance radio transmissions take 45 minutes to reach Earth and vice versa.  What is fascinating is that, due to gravity, the radio signals don’t travel in a straight line back and forth.

Once Rosetta’s on-board alarm clock went off it took seven hours to warm up its star trackers,  fire thrusters to slow its spin, turn on its transmitter and send a message back to Earth.  And with all the advances in science the drumming monkey clock was the best we could do (just kidding, atomic clocks were used, although the monkey clock would be fabulously hilarious).

There are a lot of firsts for Rosetta, but the images from the comet as it starts out-gassing should be spectacular.  I just hope Philae doesn’t land on one of the explosive vents that many comets have.  We will know later this year as the comet passes by the Sun.

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +

Norman

Back to Life for WISE

A wise man once said: “It’s not over till the fat lady sings.”

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft has been re-activated and called up for duty by NASA.  After being placed in hibernation (a low power state) for the past three years, WISE will be fully functional again next month.

WISE’s original mission was to create infrared images of 99 percent of the sky, with at least eight images made of each position on the sky in order to increase accuracy.

WISE was placed in a 326 mi (525 km), circular, polar, sun-synchronous orbit during its original ten month mission.  During that time the spacecraft took 1.5 million images, one every 11 seconds.

NASA approached Congress in 2007 about using WISE for finding Near Earth Objects (NEO’s) and with a couple of close flyby’s and the massive bolide in Siberia a few months ago, it seemed prudent to try and find these NEO’s before they find us.

WISE will also be used to find asteroids suitable for exploration missions and NASA’s asteroid initiative, or how to catch an release an asteroid.

It shows that keeping some spacecraft operational after their mission (instead of crashing them down to Earth) can be productive.

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +

Norman

Kepler’s Dead, Long Live Kepler.

The Kepler spacecraft is no longer able to accurately point with enough accuracy to continue its exo-planet hunting mission.

So last week NASA called off attempts to fix Kepler’s frozen gyroscopes.  So now, officials are looking at what science, if any, can be done by the broken spacecraft.

As I have stated before, this doen’t mean that the mission was a failure.  Kepler has been operating on extended time since it completed its primary mission ended last November.  Kepler has  confirmed 135 exo-planets and has identified more than 3,500 candidate planets.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of more exoplanets are expected from the data collected by Kepler.  It will take at least another three years to analyze the remaining data.

Considering what a small area of space that Kepler was observing, this was a remarkable mission.

“We literally expect … the most exciting discoveries are to come in the next few years as we search through all this data,” he said.

NASA expects to know by year’s end what can be salvaged for Kepler.

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +

Norman