Документ взят из кэша поисковой машины. Адрес оригинального документа : http://www.aaa.org/EyepieceFiles/aaa/2007_10_October_Eyepiece.pdf Дата изменения: Sun Feb 22 20:31:03 2015 Дата индексирования: Sun Apr 10 03:42:38 2016 Кодировка: Поисковые слова: spiral galaxy

Journal of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York October 2007 Volume 55 Number 10, ISSN 0146-7662

EYEPIECE

City Stargazers Can Pierce the Glare to Glean Wonders
By John Delaney
At a recent gathering of college friends in Vermont, I spent a lot of time marveling at a spectacle that's become quite a rarity for me in 10 years as a city dweller: a clear night sky. Fantastic, but also a bit disorienting. I almost didn't recognize the Summer Triangle with the jarring distraction of the Milky Way running through it, so foreign to my eyes was a profusion of stars.
It strikes me (and others) as somewhat odd that I've become a full-fledged stargazer in New York City, perhaps the worst place for seeing and appreciating the beauty of the night sky. Only the brightest objects can cut through the glare, and finding a place to gaze upwards is tricky with so much diversion on the ground. While city residents can be especially picky about how to spend their time, watchers of the skies have learned to make do with less. We have come to appreciate and learn more about what you can see despite light pollution. I've always had an interest in astronomy, but it wasn't until I started hearing and reading about the historic perihelic opposition of Mars in 2003 that I became an active observer. I was hooked by a big colorful ad for a 6 -inch, F8 reflecting telescope on a equatorial mount in Sky & Telescope, which implor ed the potentia l buyer to seize the opportunity to see Mars. My former living quarters--a room on Central Park West overlooking trees and the eastern sky--also solidified my new avocation. I could simply open the window and point the instrument through the opening. In the weeks before the appearance of Mars, viewing the Moon at 120x magnification was an exhilarating experience. When Mars appeared, I viewed it for about an hour every clear night, enough time to experiment with various fil-

ters to tease out the southern polar cap and prominent features like Syrtis Major and Hellas. And, when one observes from the comfort of one's living space, one can listen to Gustav Holst's "The Planets" and observe maps of Mars on the Internet. But the living arrangement didn't last, and I may never know such convenience again.
Other bright objects became sources of discovery. Solar observation was next, first with a projection plate, then solar filter. This skill came in handy for the 2004 transit of Venus, when I lugged both of my scopes to Carl Schurz Park. It was quite an effort, but I figured that if Captain Cook could travel to Tahiti for such an event, I could get out of bed at 4 a.m. and manage a 10-block cab City Stargazers continued on page 12

Annual Starfest is November
The AAA, in conjunction with the Urban Park Rangers, will present its annual Urban Starfest in the Central Park Sheep Meadow Saturday, November 10 from 6:30 to 10 p.m. Rain date is the following evening. The main attraction, and why Starfest is later this year, is Mars. It will reach opposition on Christmas Eve, when it will be closest to Earth and up all night. While Mars won't be as big or bright November 10, we should be able to see its polar ice cap and other markings. Early in the evening, the Summer Triangle of the bright stars Vega, Altair and Deneb will be prominent. The Ring Nebula, beautiful double star Albireo and the Andromeda Galaxy will be among our scopes' targets. By 9 p.m., the winter stars will have risen, and we will see the Pleiades and Hyades, two beautiful star clusters. Coming into view will be the famed Orion Nebula.


What's Up
By Tony Hoffman The Sky for October 2007
The Ascent of Mars. O ver t h e p a st few m on t h s, Mars has steadily brightened, but few have seen it as it's been confined to the morning sky. Now, though, it rises before midnight and spends the month in Gemini. By month's end, Mars will blaze at magnitude -0.6. Its gibbous disk will then be 12 arc-seconds wide, large enough to reveal dark markings. Syrtis Major, Mars' most prominent feature, will face Earth around midnight late in the month. Orionid Meteor Shower. T h e M oon will b e ou t of the way on the morning of October 21, when the Orionid meteor shower is due to peak. Rates can reach 20 or more per hour near maximum. Orionid meteors, debris left behind by Halley's Comet, are very fast and often leave persistent trains. Moon Occults the Pleiades. W h en t h e b r igh t Moon, a day past full, rises at dusk on October 27, it will lie amid the Pleiades star cluster. Because of the Moon's brightness, low altitude, and sky brightness, you'll need a telescope to observe this event. The Moon will occult Alcyone and a number of fainter stars. October 2 October 3 Moon lies near Mars. Last-quarter Moon at 6:06 a.m.; Mars lies

On the morning of October 7, Regulus, Saturn, Venus and the Moon will take part in a spectacular conjunction. near open cluster M35. Moon lies near Venus. Moon lies near Regulus and Saturn. Draconid meteor shower peaks; Venus lies near Regulus. New Moon at 1:01 p. m. Ven u s lies n ea r Sa t u r n ; M oon lies n ea r Antares. Moon lies near Jupiter. First-quarter Moon at 4:33 a.m. Orionid meteor shower peaks. Moon at perigee, 221,676 miles from Earth, 7:51 a.m.; full Moon at 12:52 a.m. Moon occults the Pleiades. Venus at greatest elongation in morning sky. Moon lies near Mars.

October 6 October 7 October 9 Octcber 11 October 15 October October October October 16 19 21 26

October 27 October 28 October 30

Less than Perfect View of Perseid Meteors and Lunar Eclipse
By Joseph A. Fedrick
I went to Inwood Hill Park August 11 to see the Perseids. Jupiter came out almost immediately after sunset. Jupiter revealed a dark, well-defined North Equatorial Belt and a faint, blotchy South Equatorial Belt. The M22 globular cluster in Sagittarius was barely visible in the haze near the horizon. The M13 globular cluster in Hercules was easier to find with the 3-inch telescope and appeared as a round, fuzzy, slightly granular patch of light. The Ring Nebula in Lyra looked like a ghostly glowing smoke ring in the same scope. The double star Alberio in Cygnus was spectacular with topaz
2

yellow and sapphire blue stars. The double cluster in Perseus also looked spectacular, like two close groups of sparkling diamonds. However no meteors were visible that night. I saw ruddy Mars already rising approximately 5 degrees almost directly below the Pleiades. Two nights later, I saw one reddish bright meteor crossing Orion just before dawn; it might have been a Perseid. On the morning of August 28, I saw a partially eclipsed Moon looking like a crescent moon near the west horizon. A crescent moon normally appears in the east in the morning. The Moon was entering Earth's Perseid Meteors continued on page 6


A Message from AAA President Richard Rosenberg
Hello, members: One benefit of being AAA president is meeting well-known astronomers I've long admired. Recently, out of the blue, I received an e-mail from Jay Pasachoff, professor at Williams College and author or co-author of a number of astronomy books including one of my favorites, the Peterson Field Guide to S tars and Planets. Jay, an AAA member from 1956 to 1959, recently visited Pulkovo Observatory near St. Petersburg, Russia, and noticed in its museum the Amateur Astronomers Medal we awarded the observatory! He took photos of the award as well as the famous large refractor and main observatory and sent copies to us. They're now in the gallery of our website.

Since he was in town the weekend following Rosh Hashanah, Tom Haeberle and I met him for breakfast. We had a fine time discussing the AAA then and now, eclipses (Jay had just returned from a solar eclipse in South America) and other astronomical topics.
Jay participated in the Moonwatch program 50 years ago as a 14-year-old. Members of the AAA gathered at the roof of the RCA building before sunrise to see if they could spot Sputnik, the first man -made satellite, just launched, and help determine its orbit. Jay is preparing a talk on Moonwatch, so if any of you were involved, or know people who were, he'd like you to contact him: Jay.M.Pasachoff@williams.edu or 33 Lab Campus Drive, Williamstown, MA 01267. I hope Jay will speak at our 2008-09 lecture series, and you all will have a chance to meet him.

Rich Rosenberg, AAA President, pr esident @a a a .or g, (718) 522-5014

Talk on the Hubble Will Begin AAA's '07-'08 Lecture Series
Dr. Mario Livio, senior astrophysicist and head of the Office of Public Outreach at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Baltimore, will open the AAA's 2007-08 lecture series when he discusses "Achievements of the Hubble Space Telescope" on Friday, October 5. The free public lecture is at 6:15 p. m. in the Kaufmann Auditorium of the American Museum of Natural History. Livio's talk will be the AAA's annual John Marshall Memorial Lecture. Marshall, who served as president and executive director of the club, is considered a seminal figure in the AAA's growth. He died in 1997. Livio joined STScI, which conducts Hubble's scientific program, in 1991. Livio has done much fundamental work on accretion of mass onto black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs, as well as on the formation of black holes and the possibility of extracting energy from them. In recent years, Livio's research has focused on supernova explosions and their use in cosmology to determine the rate of expansion of the universe, and the nature of dark energy. The 2007-08 AAA lecture series will feature these other speakers: November 2: Laurence Marschall, Gettysburg College, "Pluto Deconstructed"; December 7: Michael Allison, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, "Planetary Time and Seasons--Space Clocks and Extraterrestrial Climates"; January 4, Jerry Bonnell, NASA, "Astronomy Picture of the Day"; February 1: Nergis Mavalvala, MIT, "Detecting Gravitational Waves: LIGO and the Search for the Elusive Wave"; March 7: Arlin Crotts, Columbia University, "Liquid Mirror Telescopes Are Looking Up"; April 11: Eric Myers, LIGO Hanford Observatory, "Searching for Ripples in Space-Time with your Home Computer."; May 2: Eric Gotthelf, Columbia University, "Juvenile Neutron Stars and their Outbursts."
3


AMNH, Others Shed New Light on Planet Formation
A new computer-modeled theory shows how rocky boulders around infant stars team up to form planets without falling into stars. The modeling was developed by astrophysicists from the American Museum of Natural History, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, the University of Virginia and the University of Toronto. Efforts to understand how planets form have been stymied by a fundamental question: How can large boulders avoid being swept into the central star by the effects of gas surrounding the star or being pulverized by other objects before gravity can bind them into asteroid-size planetesimals too big for gas to influence or collisions to destroy? Planets are believed to form from the collision and accretion of smaller planetesimal bodies. The research sheds new light on this fundamental part of the planet-forming process and shows that the forces that appear to prevent planetesimals' formation-gas drag and turbulence--can actually promote it. In early stages of planet formation, dust grains in the diffuse cloud surrounding a young star collide and stick together to build up ever-larger bodies. Earlier planet-formation models showed the slower-rotating gas disk surrounding the central star appeared to impart a drag on boulders larger than a few feet in diameter, causing them to slow and spiral into the star after only a few hundred orbits. In addition, fast-moving boulders don't stick together well but collide violently and break apart. The planet-formation process, first shown more than 30 years ago, said that boulders tend to fall into a star in a celestial blink of an eye. Some mechanism had to be found that prevents them from being dragged into a star. The answer came from recent studies of boulders moving through gas that showed two effects. First, turbulence in the gas causes them to clump in high -pressure regions. Second, gas drag causes further clumping as boulders in the densest regions start pulling gas and nearby debris with them. When the team included this behavior in simulations of gas and gravitationally interacting boulders, they found orbiting boulders concentrated so strongly that gravitational attraction between boulders
4

caused them to collapse into large planetesimals unaffected by gas drag. Therefore, many boulders can join to fight a cosmic headwind that otherwise would doom them. Over time, dust particles in an accretion disk bunch together and form large boulders, but eventually they meet resistance from the disk's mist of gas that drags them into the star. But modeling the turbulence within the gas showed that boulders can team up and form planets. "Turbulence in the disk concentrates boulders in regions of higher pressure," says Mordecai-Marc Mac Low, curator and chair of the AMNH's Department of Astrophysics. Such disturbance is enough to enable boulders to fight the dooming headwind. "If the gas is sped up, the boulders don't see a headwind. By getting the gas going with them, they conserve energy and stay in orbit. Enough boulders gather together, gravity takes over and they collapse into planet-like bodies," Mac Low says. Although Mac Low and his colleagues kept planetforming boulders safe from the gravitational clutches of stars in their simulation, he notes that many questions remain. "There are enough uncertainties that [planet formation] isn't going to be an open-and-shut case any time soon. We don't know how that collapse into a planet actually occurs. You've got thousands, millions of boulders swarming together. In my nightmares I imagine that they grind each other down to dust and it all goes away." Despite the problem, Mac Low is confident the theory will hold up to scrutiny. "All that material is gravitationally bound together, so we think it's likely it will form large objects." Running the computer simulation, in fact, formed tight boulder clusters as large as the dwarf planet Ceres. How giant planets form is another question. One idea is that gas coalesces around a rocky planet. "Of course, this work raises new questions about how planet formation occurs in protoplanetary disks. Still, we believe the fundamental properties of gasboulder interactions we describe will provide the ultimate solution to this longstanding problem. Our work provides the first scenario that appears capable of answering this gap in our basic understanding of planet formation."


Review: The Exciting, Varied Search for Extrasolar Planets
By Thomas Haeberle
The discovery and study of extrasolar planets hold the promise of finding life on other worlds and may be key to understanding how our solar system formed. In the solid "The New Worlds: Extrasolar Planets," Fabienne Casoli and ThИrХse Encrenaz provide plenty of color illustrations, graphs and charts, giving the feel of a textbook. Their book (Springer Praxis Books, $29.95) is a translation of the original (but updated) French version. The book attempts to answer whether our solar system is common or unique. Why is ours so stable while in other star systems chaos reigns, with giant planets migrating inwards? There's a need to understand why "cessation of planetary migration stops at a short distance from the star. There must be an effective mechanism at work or there wouldn't be so many planets detected." Our observations may be biased because shorter orbital periods are easier to detect.

The authors first look at early searches for extrasolar planets: the first failures, the first discoveries and observational techniques. In 1964, Piet van de Kamp announced finding planets orbiting Barnard's star, a small red dwarf some eight light-years away. Using the astrometric method, van de Kamp recorded wobbles in the star's motion for 20 years. Although his planets were disproved, van de Kamp was a pioneer in planet hunting.
In 1995, the velocimetric or radial-velocity method bore fruit in extrasolar-planet discovery. By studying shifts in the absorption lines in the stellar spectra, an astronomer can deduce a star has an unseen companion. Although this method has discovered a majority of the exoplanets, it has its limitations, such as being "suited to the study of massive, short-period planets close to the parent star. The main factor against the discovery of `outer' (more distant) planets is that the duration of the study should be at least equal to its orbital period." Another method transit method. The greater the chance it disk. This method is the transiting object mass. used in exoplanet detection is the nearer the planet to its star, the will be seen crossing the stellar an improvement since the size of can be ascertained, not just the

The Holy Grail will be to find Earth-like planets, particularly those that indicate the presence of life. Testing possible methods to be used, the Galileo spacecraft studied Earth's spectrum in the near infrared. Besides detecting water and carbon dioxide signatures in the readings, there was "the unambiguous presence of ozone and methane." Methane is a good indicator for life; "it can persist in the Earth's atmosphere only by being constantly renewed." Observing exoplanets will require using the transit or the microlensing methods.
Using our solar system as a model, the book examines a wide range of extrasolar planetary systems discovered during the past decade and looks to what we can learn about these planets. Another important field of research besides the search for life is planetary formation. Future projects in the search for new worlds and many space missions will include these objectives. The Atacama Large Millimeter Array is a new generation of giant ground-based telescopes. It will be in service in 2010, with 50 telescopes studying planetary formation. The Europeans launched the Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits (COROT) satellite in 2006 to study exoplanet transits of 12,000 stars. In 2008, NASA will launch Kepler, a space telescope that works the same way as COROT, but which will be able to detect the first Earth-sized planets in habitable zones around stars similar to the Sun. Advanced missions to follow will be Europe's Darwin and NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder missions. Both will involve multiple telescopes in space to achieve unprecedented angular resolution of exoplanets. "Given the similar challenges involved...the two projects may fuse into one, which could be ready by 2020."
5

A fourth technique is based upon an "application of Einstein's theory of general relativity, according to which light rays are bent in the vicinity of very massive objects." Four planets have been found this way, yielding one six times the mass of Earth. "Through a careful survey of compact star fields, a temporary increase in brightness of a faint star [indicates that] the unseen companion is crossing the line of sight; this is the gravitational microlens effect."


Review: Three Useful New Astronomy Books
Two new books discuss astronomy with a broad sweep. They're "The Handbook of Astronomy" by Clare Gibson, from Barnes & Noble Publishing, in arrangement with British firm D&S Books Ltd. ($7.98), and "Astronomy: The Definitive Guide to the Universe" by Duncan John, from Parragon Publishing in Britain ($19.98). The John book is more impressive as to completeness, up-to-the-minute content, and impressive photos and other artwork. It also has a clearer table of contents and impressive charts on the solar system. Each book, however, offers a solid range of information for amateur astronomers seeking to broaden their knowledge. Also useful in that regard is "The 50 Best Sights in Astronomy and How to See Them: Observing Eclipses, Bright Comets, Meteor Showers, and Other Celestial Perseid Meteors continued from page 2 Wonders" (Wiley, $19.95, paper) by Fred Schaaf. The author, well-known to many for his columns in S k y & Telescope, not to mention other books, deter mined the order in which the sights are discussed by width of field of view necessary to enjoy the sight best. The order is from the widest to the narrowest view: 180 degrees (the whole sky) to 100 degrees (naked-eye scan); 100 degrees to 50 degrees (the widest fixed nakedeye field); 50 degrees to 15 degrees (moderately wide naked-eye field); 15 degrees to 1 degree (narrow nakedeye field, binoculars field and wide telescopic field); and 1 degree to 0.1 degree or less (medium-to-narrow telescopic field). There are useful appendices and a glossary. The writing is clear and informative, although I wish there had been more than 11 color photos--a cost consideration, I assume. ­ Dan Harrison

Custer Seeks Help on Exoplanets
The Custer Institute in Southold, N. Y., is embarking on an extensive search for exoplanets. Team members have obtained encouraging results from preliminary testing. They captured the transit of HD-189733, a Jupitersized exoplanet near M27 (Dumbbell Nebula), and achieved millimagnitude light-curve accuracy. These data provided information needed to extrapolate noise level, sensitivity and other variables. More data is required and help is needed. Participants will need a good CCD camera, at least an 8-inch telescope and imaging experience. The task: take highquality images of specified areas of the sky. While equipment will work the entire time, participants will only be required to set up and periodically check it. To sign up: katz@scientific-consultants.com.

shadow. The shadow was quite dark, allowing no view of the lunar maria or craters as I viewed with a 7x50 pair of binoculars. In the opposite direction from the Moon, rising in the east, was Venus. During the first two weeks of September, Jupiter dipped lower in the southwest each evening and major changes in the Jovian cloud belts continued. Orion appeared higher in the sky each morning. By September 12 I had seen Saturn reappear in the morning far below Venus. The rings were at a shallow angle, more nearly edge -on than in recent years as seen at 50x in my 60mm refractor. Venus was a dazzling thin crescent.

Corrections
Last month's book review of "The Telescope: Its History, Technology, and Future" misspelled the last name of the author. He is Geoff Andersen, not Anderson. And we apologize for anyone who was inconvenienced by the wrong date for the Recent Advances in Astronomy seminar in the Events on the Horizon column. It was Thursday, September 20, not Tuesday.
6

Apollo Astronaut Documentary
A new documentary tells the human stories of the Apollo astronauts, from when we sent men around the Moon during the 1968 flight of Apollo 8 through six more landings, to 1972 (Apollo 17), and the aborted Apollo 13. "In the Shadow of the Moon" was filmed with the aid of "Apollo 13" director Ron Howard.


Tyson Explains Why the U. S. Needs to Explore Space
Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote the cover story in the August 5 P a r a de on "Why America Needs to Explore Space." Excerpts: [The U. S.'} ambitious investment in science and technology drove a half-century of unprecedented wealth and prosperity that we take for granted. Now, as our interest in science wanes, America is poised to fall behind the rest of the industrialized world in every measure of technological proficiency. tumors in mammograms. The medical community adopted new techniques being used for the Hubble to assist early detection of breast cancer. Countless women are alive today because of ideas stimulated by a design flaw in the Hubble Space Telescope. You cannot script these kinds of outcomes, yet they occur daily. The cross-pollination of disciplines almost always creates innovation and discovery. And nothing accomplishes this like space exploration, which draws from the ranks of astrophysicists, biologists, physiologists, chemists, engineers and planetary geologists. Their collective efforts have the capacity to improve and enhance all that we value as a modern society. How many times have we heard: "Why are we spending billions of dollars in space when we have pressing problems on Earth?" Let's re-ask the question: "What is the total cost in taxes of all spaceborne telescopes, planetary probes, the rovers on Mars, the space station and shuttle, telescopes yet to orbit and missions yet to fly?" Answer: less than 1% on the tax dollar-7/10ths of a penny, to be exact. I'd prefer that it were more, perhaps 2 cents on the dollar. Even during the Apollo era, peak NASA spending amounted to no more than 4 cents on the tax dollar. At that level, NASA's current space-exploration program would reclaim our preeminence in a field we pioneered. Right now, the program paddles along slowly, with barely enough support to ever lead the journey. So, with 99 out of 100 cents going to fund the rest of our nation's priorities, the space program is not now (nor has it ever really been) in anybody's way. Instead, America's former investments in aerospace have shaped our discovery-infused culture in ways that are obvious to the world. We are a sufficiently wealthy nation to embrace this investment for tomorrow--to drive our economy, our ambitions and, above all, our dreams.

Science and technology are the greatest engines of economic growth the world has ever seen. Without regenerating interest in these fields, the comfortable lifestyle to which Americans have become accustomed will draw to a rapid close.
In October 2003, China became the third spacefaring nation. Next step, the Moon. Meanwhile, Europe and India are redoubling their efforts to conduct robotic science on spaceborne platforms. There's also growing interest in space exploration from a dozen other countries. This emerging community of nations is hungry for a slice of the aerospace universe. In America, contrary to our self-image, we are no longer leaders but simply players. We've moved backward just by standing still. The greatest explorer today is not even human. It's the Hubble Space Telescope, which for nearly two decades has offered us all a mind-expanding window to the cosmos. But when the Hubble was launched in 1990, a blunder in the design of its optics generated hopelessly blurred images. Corrective optics were installed during the telescope's first servicing mission in 1993, which enabled the sharp images we now take for granted. But for three years the images were fuzzy. What to do? We kept taking data, hoping some useful science would nonetheless come of it. Eager astrophysicists wrote suites of advanced image-processing software to help identify and isolate stars in otherwise crowded, unfocused fields. These novel techniques allowed some science to get done while the repair mission was planned. Meanwhile, medical researchers at the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., recognized that the challenge faced by astrophysicists was similar to that faced by doctors in their visual search for

Connolly Takes Louisville Post
Rachel Berger Connolly, former astrophysics education manager at the AMNH's Rose Center for Earth and Space, has accepted a position at the University of Louisville as professor of science education and director of the university's Rauch Planetarium.
7


Briefs: Universe Has 6 Billion Trillion Miles of Emptiness
Astronomers have found a tremendous hole in the universe 1 billion light-years across or nearly 6 billion trillion miles long. It has no stars, no galaxies, no black holes, not even dark matter. Such patches in the universe have long been known, but this is far bigger than ever imagined. Observations of cosmic microwave background radiation showed a cold spot empty of matter. There's a remarkable drop in the number of galaxies in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus. The void is 5 -billion-to-10-billion light-years away. Holes in the universe probably occur when gravity from areas with bigger mass pull matter from less-dense areas. Astronomers have spotted a planet that's survived the massive ballooning of its parent star, providing the first optimistic evidence for the long-term survival of Earth. The discovery could spur searches for similar redgiant survivors and answer whether Earth will survive the Sun's swelling when it becomes a red giant in a few billion years. The parent star, V 391 Pegasi, belongs to a rare class of red giants, B-type subdwarfs, that have prematurely expelled their outer shells of hydrogen. For reasons unclear, V 391 Pegasi expelled its outer envelope early, before the core even began fusing helium, exposing a compact, dense star that hasn't fully died. More unusual, V 391 Pegasi pulsates, dimming and brightening for several minutes at a time. This is the first planet found after the red-giant phase of its star. The planet is about three times the mass of Jupiter and orbits its star from a distance of some 158 million miles. Scientists think that during the star's red-giant phase, only about 1 AU separated star and planet. The planet's presence may relate to V 391 Pegasi's premature shell ejection. Some crucial ingredients for life on Earth may have formed in interstellar space rather than on Earth's surface. Computer modeling indicates clouds of adenine molecules, a basic component of DNA, can form and survive the harsh conditions of space, and possibly sprinkle onto planets as the stars they orbit travel through a galaxy. Using computer simulations of space, scientists found that hydrogen cyanide gas can build adenine. Einstein's predicted warping of space-time has been discovered around neutron stars, the universe's densest observable matter. The warping shows up as smeared
8

lines of iron gas whipping around the stars. The finding indicates neutron stars can't exceed 20.5 miles across. Astronomers surveyed three neutron-star binaries. They also studied the spectral lines from hot-iron atoms that whirl around in a disk just beyond the neutron stars' surfaces at up to 40% light speed. Normally, the spectral line for superheated iron atoms would show up as a symmetrical peak. But results showed a skewed peak indicating distortion due to relativistic effects. Very fast motion of the gas and related powerful gravity cause the line to smear, shifting it to longer wavelengths. The measurements allowed determination of maximum star size. Astronomers using Swift have detected a neutron star 250-to-1,000 light-years away in Ursa Minor, the closest neutron star known. It's only the eighth known isolated neutron star, one without supernova remnants, binary companions or radio pulsations. It's an unusual example of a known type of neutron star or some new type of neutron star. Its location high above the plane of the Milky Way is a mystery, but researchers think it's the remnant of a star before it exploded as a supernova.

Tiny meteors, typically no larger than a grain of sand, frequently bore hot tunnels through Earth's air to leave behind thin, glowing trails of gas sometimes seen as "shooting stars." The trails were estimated to be narrower than a meter, but until now, more precise measurements were impossible. Meteor trails begin about 75 miles above Earth, an area not usually focused on by ground telescopes or satellites. Astronome