“I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.” Continue reading
The title of this post in portuguese is a funny allitaration, that I bet no one can repeat more than ten times without produce a knot on the tongue (Estrelas Extremófilas Estremecem Estruturas do Estudo de Evolução Estelar). Astronomers at GALEX project (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) found stars forming in regions of low gas concentration, where we thought there could never be star formation Our knowledge of stellar evolution seems very good. We easily identify regions of intense star formation and starbursts. We Observe star formation in the disks of spiral galaxies, where we also found a large quantity of gas and dust, ingredients needed to produce stars. Outside the disk, in the halo, we find old stars, which indicates that there we don’t have star formation. Elliptical galaxies are gas-poor and have old stars, which indicates that these galaxies have produced stars with its original gas, and stars are no longer produced at current time. However … The GALEX is a space telescope that sees in the ultraviolet range, and is specially sensitive to a kind ultraviolet rays closely related to stars in the early stages of its formation. The telescope observed young stars in places where we didn’t expect … Continue reading
We’ll have in the next few nights the meteor shower known as Orionid. The so-called meteor showers happen when Earth crosses the trail usually left by a comet. There is a rain associated with the dust left by asteroid, but the major causes of this phenomenon are comets. When a comet approaches the Sun, their volatile material enters into a process of evaporation, which leads to the coma and the dust tail. This causes the dust particles and small grains to be left in space. This material orbit the Sun and, eventually, the Earth passes through this trail of dust. The grains entering the atmosphere produce the so-called meteor showers. During a meteor shower we see that all meteors seem to come from a specific point in the sky that we call the radiant. The constellation where the radiant is located gives name to the rain. The radiant of the shower we have these days, Orionid, is in the constellation of Orion, the great hunter, where are the super famous Orion’s Belt, known in Latin America as The Three Marys. The maximum activity of this Orionid should happen in october 22, with between 15 and 20 meteors per hour. But since … Continue reading
Finally, NASA announced the fall of satellites UARS (Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite). It happened between 3h23m and 52h09m (GMT) over the Pacific Ocean without a more specific location known. The satellite was launched in 1991 by the Discovery space shuttle and its mission was to understand the chemistry of the upper layers of the atmosphere. It was deactivated in 2005, and NASA lost all contact with the satellite, so that their destruction in the atmosphere could not be done in a controlled manner. The good news was that it would probably be destroyed in the path, and the bad new wast that some pieces could reach the sea level. Despite the mass of the UARS be about 530Kg, no mass with that value could come from the sky, but it would still be worrying if some piece reaches a populated area. The chances of one of these pieces fall into someone’s head have been estimated at 1 in 3200 (calculated by NASA itself). Well … it would have been easier to win a piece of UARS in mind that winning the Megassena, a popular Lottery in Brazil, whose probability is about one in fifty million (for a single try). Well, UARS … Continue reading
“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it for himself.” Continue reading
It was speculated and now it is observed. Many thing in Astronomy happened this way, first we speculate the existence, with or without the support of mathematics, and then we observe it. It was like that with the expansion of the Universe and with the existence of planets orbiting a double star system. The Kepler mission aims to discover extrasolar planets, and it’s accuracy allows to observe Earth-sized planets. Before the mission, one could only observe planets comparable to the size and mass of Jupiter. Kepler is a space telescope, which revolves around the Sun in an orbit almost identical to that of Earth. In one of his most interesting findings, the mission found a planet orbiting a double star system. This observation shows that, indeed, planets can form around double stars. And, since most stars in our galaxy belong to double star systems, it is something very encouraging to know, concerning the search for possible inhabited planets. The planet, that received the catalog name Kepler-16b, orbits the Kepler-16 system, and is about 200 light years from us. The distance was inferred by analysis of the magnitude of the brightest star. The discovery was made by observing the brightness variations … Continue reading
Original Title: Melancholia Director: Lars Vin Trier With: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgård, Cameron Spurr, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt as Dexter, Jesper Christensen, Stellan Skarsgård, Brady Corbet, Udo Kier. This movie has one of the cinema’s most favorite links with astronomy: a disaster caused by the impact of a huge object with Earth. And the catastrophe in this case is nothing less than the total destruction of Earth. But very different from other movies by Hollywood, Melancholia does not portray the drama from an impersonal, global, point of view, exploring the effect of an imminent end of the world over all the people on the planet. In contrast, it focuses on the human drama of a family group before and during an imminent impact. It is a beautiful film and got a nice finesse. The different personalities evolve gradually from before any suspicion of a tragedy to the time when they are sure about it. This was the second film I watched by von Trier, the other one was the Antichrist (which has no astronomical detail, and I will not comment here on the blog), and both have aesthetic similarities as division into chapters and an introduction … Continue reading
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