Howdy, P4! You are Pluto's moon number 4!

The Hubble Space Telescope just revealed that Pluto obviously has a fourth moon, that remained undiscovered until now. It was provisorily called "P4" by astronomers (Wiki article). This is just another sign how little we know about our own solar system so far - and how many great discoveries may remain for us out there!

Pluto Moon P4 in its orbit:

Two labeled images of the Pluto system, released on July 20, 2011, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 ultraviolet visible instrument with newly discovered fourth moon P4 circled. The image on the left was taken on June 28, 2011. The image of the right was taken on July 3, 2011. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI institute) - Full Size.

Article:

Pluto Has Another Moon, Hubble Photos Reveal

Date: 20 July 2011 Time: 09:35 AM ET - SPACE.com Staff

A tiny new moon has been discovered around Pluto, the fourth and smallest one yet found orbiting the dwarf planet, photos from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal.
The moon, which has been temporarily named P4, was spotted in a Hubble survey searching for rings around Pluto.

The tiny satellite is estimated to be between 8 and 21 miles (13 to 34 kilometers) wide. For comparison, Pluto's largest moon Charon is 648 miles (1,043 km) across. The dwarf planet's other moons, Nix and Hydra, range between 20 to 70 miles across (32 to 113 km). [Photo of Pluto's new moon]
"I find it remarkable that Hubble's cameras enabled us to see such a tiny object so clearly from a distance of more than 3 billion miles (5 billion km)," Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. said in a statement. Showalter led this observational survey with Hubble.


Illustration of the Pluto Satellite System orbits with newly discovered moon P4 highlighted. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

New moon around Pluto
Pluto's new moon is located between the orbits of Nix and Hydra, which Hubble also discovered in 2005. Charon was discovered in 1978 at the U.S. Naval Observatory and was first resolved using Hubble in 1990 as a separate body from Pluto.

The finding is a result of ongoing work to support NASA's New Horizons mission, which is scheduled to fly through the Pluto system in 2015. The mission is designed to provide new insights about worlds at the edge of our solar system.
Hubble's photos of Pluto's surface and the discovery of its satellites have been invaluable for planning for New Horizons' close encounter.
"This is a fantastic discovery," said New Horizons' principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "Now that we know there's another moon in the Pluto system, we can plan close-up observations of it during our flyby."

Pluto's moon system
The dwarf planet's entire moon system is believed to have formed by a collision between Pluto and another planet-sized body early in the history of the solar system. The galactic smashup flung material that combined into the family of satellites observed around Pluto.

Our own moon is thought to have been created by a similar collision between Earth and a Mars-sized body 4.4 billion years ago. Lunar rocks that were returned to Earth from the Apollo missions led to this theory, and scientists think material blasted off Pluto's moons by micrometeoroid impacts may form rings around the dwarf planet.
So far, Hubble's photographs have yet to show any such rings, but the detection of P4 shows that big discoveries can sometimes be unexpected.

"This surprising observation is a powerful reminder of Hubble's ability as a general purpose astronomical observatory to make astounding, unintended discoveries," Jon Morse, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.
P4 was first seen in a photo taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on June 28. It was confirmed in subsequent Hubble pictures taken on July 3 and July 18. The moon was not seen in earlier Hubble images because the exposure times were shorter.

There is a chance that P4 appeared as a very faint smudge in images from 2006, but was overlooked because it appeared obscured, scientists said.
Pluto was discovered in 1930, but its planethood was thrown into question when the International Astronomical Union came up with a new definition of "planet" in 2006. That year, Pluto was demoted to the status of "dwarf planet," a newly created category to describe many other objects in the Kiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune.

Source: space.com

The last voyage of Atlantis

The final launch, 8th of July 2011, the end of an era. In case you missed the moment Space Shuttle Atlantis spread its wings into space for one last time, here is the HD video for you:

STS-135 Space Shuttle Atlantis Final Takeoff 7/8/11 HD
Watch in HD there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8JViLbr6NE

Longer capture of the video: Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch STS-135 [07/08/2011] [STREAM HD] 

A really interesting link that allows you to follow the position of the shuttle, the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope as they orbit the Earth: Space Shuttle Tracker


The last Space Shuttle launch in history and its trail, as seen from an airplane over Miami.
The lift-off from Cape Canaveral could hardly be missed in Florida.

Source

Webb Telescope questioned - Drawback for space exploration?

The US House Appropriations Committee has made a recommendation to cancel the James Webb Telescope. That should make everyone remotely interested in space discoveries listen attentively. The recommendation alone is of course no final decision. But it is a warning shot to set priorities for science and research.
The United States might be in a miserable budgetary position. But this telescope, the main achievement for space exploration for the next decade and perhaps even further, is not even the tip of the iceberg and definitely the wrong asset to start with. Let us all hope this is not going through, otherwise mankind will suffer from a huge deficit of knowledge and remarkable discoveries for years!

The article featured at New York Times:

Panel Proposes Killing Webb Space Telescope
Published: July 6, 2011 - by Dennis Overbye

The House Appropriations Committee proposed Wednesday to kill the James Webb Space Telescope, the crown jewel of NASA’s astronomy plans for the next two decades.

The telescope, named after a former administrator of NASA, is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and it was designed to study the first stars and galaxies that emerged in the first hundred million years or so after the Big Bang.

Current Hubble telescope compared to the now almost finished Webb telescope. Source: Wikipedia

It was supposed to be launched in 2014, but NASA said last year that the project would require at least an additional $1.6 billion and several more years to finish, because of mismanagement.

Just last week, NASA announced that it had finished polishing all the segments of the telescope’s mirror, which is 6.5 meters in diameter, but the agency has still not announced a new plan for testing and launching the telescope.

The announcement of the telescope’s potential demise came as part of a draft budget for NASA and other agencies, including the Commerce and Justice Departments. In all, the committee proposed lopping $1.6 billion off NASA’s current budget, which is $18.4 billion for 2011. The Obama administration had originally requested $18.7 billion for NASA.

Astronomers reacted with immediate dismay, fearing that the death of the Webb telescope could have the same dire impact on American astronomy that killing the Superconducting Supercollider, a giant particle accelerator in Texas, did in 1993 for American physics, sending leadership abroad.

Canceling the Webb telescope would “have a profound impact on astrophysics far into the future, threatening U.S. leadership in space science,” said Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which would run the new telescope. “This is particularly disappointing at a time when the nation is struggling to inspire students to take up science and engineering,” he added.

Tod R. Lauer, an astronomer at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, echoed his view. “This would be an unmitigated disaster for cosmology,” he said. “After two decades of pushing the Hubble to its limits, which has revolutionized astronomy, the next step would be to pack up and give up. The Hubble is just good enough to see what we’re missing at the start of time.”

The Webb telescope, he said, “would bring it home in full living color.”

The Appropriation Committee’s proposal was the opening act in what is likely to be a long political drama, in which the Senate will eventually have a say. The measure is expected to be approved Thursday by the subcommittee in charge of NASA and the other agencies, according to Jennifer Hing, a spokeswoman for the committee.

Next Wednesday the full Appropriations Committee will meet again to consider the final bill.

Source: nytimes.com

Forming a galaxy

A Star-Formation Laboratory

 

Source: NASA Goddard Photo and Video, on Flickr

The dwarf galaxy NGC 4214 is ablaze with young stars and gas clouds. Located around 10 million light-years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs), the galaxy's close proximity, combined with the wide variety of evolutionary stages among the stars, make it an ideal laboratory to research the triggers of star formation and evolution.

Intricate patterns of glowing hydrogen formed during the star-birthing process, cavities blown clear of gas by stellar winds, and bright stellar clusters of NGC 4214 can be seen in this optical and near-infrared image.

Observations of this dwarf galaxy have also revealed clusters of much older red supergiant stars. Additional older stars can be seen dotted all across the galaxy. The variety of stars at different stages in their evolution indicates that the recent and ongoing starburst periods are not the first, and the galaxy's abundant supply of hydrogen means that star formation will continue into the future.

This color image was taken using the Wide Field Camera 3 in December 2009.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
Acknowledgment: R. O'Connell (University of Virginia) and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hu...-form-lab.html

Antennae Galaxies by Hubble Telescope

"Galaxies make love, not war"

Source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/

Large Image: Galaxies Collide in the Antennae Galaxies (NASA, Chandra, Hubble, Spitzer, 08/05/10)

A beautiful new image of two colliding galaxies has been released by NASA's Great Observatories. The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light years from Earth, are shown in this composite image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). 


Read more: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/antennae

Nebulae - Interstellar clouds of beauty

The infinity of space can be divinely beautiful. Some examples of stellar nebulae:

Eagle Nebula - A birthplace of endless stars

(Source and full resolution: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eagle_nebula_pillars_complete.jpg)



Cat's Eye Nebula


Cone Nebula


Helix Nebula


Source & More:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nebula