The first lunar eclipse of 2010 occurs at the Moon’s ascending node. It is visible from much of the Americas, the Pacific and eastern Asia. The Moon’s contact times with Earth’s shadows are listed below.

Penumbral Eclipse Begins:               08:57:21 UT
Partial Eclipse Begins:                        10:16:57 UT
Greatest Eclipse:                                   11:38:27 UT
Partial Eclipse Ends:                           12:59:50 UT
Penumbral Eclipse Ends:                  14:19:34 UT

At the instant of greatest eclipse the umbral eclipse magnitude will reach 0.5368. At that time the Moon will be at the zenith for observers in the South Pacific. In spite of the fact that barely half of the Moon enters the umbral shadow (the Moon’s northern limb dips 16.2 arc-minutes into the umbra), the partial phase still lasts 2 2/3 hours.

New England and eastern Canada will miss the entire eclipse since the event begins after moonset from those regions. Observers in western Canada and the USA will have the best views with moonset occurring sometime after mid-eclipse. To catch the entire event, one must be located in the Pacific or eastern Australia.

The June 26 partial lunar eclipse belongs to Saros 120, a series of 83 eclipses in the following sequence: 21 penumbral, 7 partial, 25 total, 7 partial, and 23 penumbral lunar eclipses (Espenak and Meeus, 2009).

Galaxies are vast gravitationally bound systems that consists of stars and
stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but
poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter. The name is
from the Greek root galaxias, meaning “milky,” a reference to our own Milky
Way galaxy.

Typical galaxies range from dwarfs with as little as ten million stars up to giants
with over one trillion stars, all orbiting the galaxy’s center of mass. Galaxies
can also contain many multiple star systems, star clusters, and various
interstellar clouds.

There are probably more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
Most galaxies are 1,000 to 100,000 parsecs in diameter and are usually
separated by distances on the order of millions of parsecs (or megaparsecs).

The majority of galaxies are organized into a hierarchy of associations called
clusters, which, in turn, can form larger groups called superclusters. These
larger structures are generally arranged into sheets and filaments, which
surround immense voids in the universe.

Although it is not yet well understood, dark matter appears to account for upto
90% of the mass of galaxies. Observational data suggests that supermassive
black holes may exist at the center of many, if not all, galaxies. Our very own
Milky Way galaxy appears to harbor at least one such object within its nucleus.
Historically, galaxies have been categorized according to their apparent shape
(usually referred to as their visual morphology). A common form is the elliptical
galaxy, which has an ellipse-shaped light profile. Spiral galaxies are
disk-shaped assemblages with dusty, curving arms. Galaxies with irregular or
unusual shapes are known as peculiar galaxies, and typically result from
disruption by the gravitational pull of neighboring galaxies. Such interactions
between nearby galaxies, which may ultimately result in galaxies merging, may
induce episodes of significantly increased star formation, producing what is
called a starburst galaxy. Small galaxies that lack a coherent structure could
also be referred to as irregular galaxies.

Current cosmological models of the early Universe are based on the Big Bang
theory. About 300,000 years after this event, atoms of hydrogen and helium
began to form, in an event called recombination. Nearly all the hydrogen was
neutral (non-ionized) and readily absorbed light, and no stars had yet formed.
As a result this period has been called the “Dark Ages”. It was from density
fluctuations (or anisotropic irregularities) in this primordial matter that larger
structures began to appear. As a result, masses of baryonic matter started to
condense within cold dark matter halos. These primordial structures would
eventually become the galaxies we see today.

SSTL has been selected by ESA to supply 14 navigation payloads for the deployment phase of the Galileo satellite navigation system which was announced by the European Commission (EC) today, 7th January. SSTL is teamed with OHB–System of Bremen, Germany for the provision of these fully operational Galileo satellites. The two companies agreed to work together as a “core team” on Galileo at the end of 2007, with OHB taking the role of prime contractor and builder of the spacecraft “bus” and SSTL taking full responsibility for the navigation payloads onboard the satellite that will form the heart of the Galileo navigation system.

Each satellite will carry two different types of highly accurate atomic clocks which are used to generate navigation messages that are broadcast by the satellites directly to the users’ Galileo receivers. Under the contract, SSTL will be responsible for the design, manufacture and test of these navigation payloads using equipment procured mainly from European suppliers. SSTL will also manufacture some of the electronics to interface the satellite bus built by OHB-System and the navigation payload.

Commenting on the award SSTL Group CEO Dr Matt Perkins stated “The award of this contract is an important step for SSTL. Our satellites are already providing operational services for many government and commercial customers and we are pleased to have a major role within Europe’s flagship Galileo programme. The experience gained on GIOVE-A will help us to ensure the contract will be a success for the EC and ESA. This programme will also help to establish SSTL as a provider of communications and navigation satellites into other markets.”

SSTL’s Executive Chairman, Sir Martin Sweeting, added “This award is great news for the UK space industry and once again confirms SSTL as a world leader in sophisticated satellites and payloads, building on its 25-year history pioneering small satellites with 34 already launched, truly changing the economics of space”.

SSTL’s pioneering work as prime contractor for the GIOVE A satellite and in testing the Galileo signals will prove invaluable for the execution of this contract. GIOVE-A was the first part of the in-orbit validation programme for Galileo, broadcasting the first signal to successfully secure the critical Galileo frequency filing with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) at 17:25 GMT on the 12th January 2006. On the 2nd May 2007 GIOVE-A successfully transmitted the first Galileo navigation message from space, containing the information needed by users’ receivers to calculate their position. GIOVE-A was required to work for 27 months and has greatly exceeded this – it is now in its fifth year of operations and continues to perform well.

The first Galileo satellites produced under this contract will be launched from 2013. To help improve the overall schedule the team was authorised by the EC and ESA to initiate the procurement of long lead items for the full system during 2009 which will enable the team to make a quick start towards an operational Galileo constellation.

As the Hubble telescope looks deeper into space it to looks further back in time. With Hubble Astronomers are able to see galaxies as they were 13 billion years ago, just 600-800million years post the Big Bang.

The existence of these newly found galaxies pushes back the time when galaxies began to form to before 500-600 million years after the Big Bang. This is good news for astronomers building the much more powerful James Webb Space Telescope (planned for launch in 2014), which will allow astronomers to study the detailed nature of primordial galaxies and discover many more even farther away. There should be a lot for Webb to hunt for.

The Images and data were captured using Hubble’s new instrument, the Wide Field Camera 3. Taken in August 2009 astronomers from more then five international teams have been analyzing the data and have produced papers relating to the findings. Early analytic results are to be presented on Jan 6, 2010 at the 215th AAS meeting in Washington DC.

Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, leader of the survey team that was awarded the time to take the new WFC3 infrared data on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (imaged in visible light by the Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2004)  quoted, “With the rejuvenated Hubble and its new instruments, we are now entering uncharted territory that is ripe for new discoveries, The deepest-ever near-infrared view of the universe — the HUDF09 image — has now been combined with the deepest-ever optical image — the original HUDF (taken in 2004) — to push back the frontiers of the searches for the first galaxies and to explore their nature.”

Rychard Bouwens of the University of California, Santa Cruz, a member of Illingworth’s team and leader of a paper on the striking properties of these galaxies, says that, “the faintest galaxies are now showing signs of linkage to their origins from the first stars. They are so blue that they must be extremely deficient in heavy elements, thus representing a population that has nearly primordial characteristics.”

James Dunlop of the University of Edinburgh, agrees and says, “There must be a substantial component of galaxies beyond Hubble’s detection limit.”

These newly found objects are crucial to understanding the evolutionary link between the birth of the first stars, the formation of the first galaxies, and the sequence of evolutionary events that resulted in the assembly of our Milky Way and the other “mature” elliptical and majestic spiral galaxies in today’s universe.

The HUDF09 team also combined the new Hubble data with observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to estimate the ages and masses of these primordial galaxies. “The masses are just 1 percent of those of the Milky Way,” explains team member Ivo Labbe of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, leader of two papers on the data from the combined NASA Great Observatories. He further noted that “to our surprise, the results show that these galaxies at 700 million years after the Big Bang must have started forming stars hundreds of millions of years earlier, pushing back the time of the earliest star formation in the universe.”

Previous research had suggested that there was a possibility that Mars was
once warm and wet early in its history, but it was believed that between 3.8 – 4
Billion years ago it became cold and dry and unable to sustain liquid water.

The new study carried out using images from NASA’s MRO ( Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter ) which is currently in orbit of Mars, concluded that
there were periods of a wetter warmer climate more recently the previously
believed.

Researchers on the study believe there may have been an increase in volcanic
activity, a shift in Mars`s orbit or Meteorite impacts, any of which could have
warmed the atmosphere sufficiently enough to melt the ice. The result from this
would have created gasses which thickened the atmosphere temporarily
trapping more sunlight and keeping things warm enough to sustain liquid
water.

Lead author of the study, Dr Nicholas Warner, from the Department of Earth
Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, says:
“Most of the research on Mars has focused on its early history and the recent
past. Scientists had largely overlooked the Hesperian Epoch as it was thought
that Mars was then a frozen wasteland. Excitingly, our study now shows that
this middle period in Mars’ history was much more dynamic than we previously
thought.”

Researchers used the images from NASA to analyse flat floored depressions
located above Ares Vallis, a Giant Gorge 2000km in length which runs arcoss
the equator of Mars.

Scientists had previously believed that the depressions were created by
Sublimation, a process where ice changes directly from its solid state to gas
bypassing the liquid stage.

During this new study, researches have found a network of channels running
from depression to depression which could only be formed by running water.
Scientists backed up this theory by making comparisons to images of
Thermokarst Landscapes which are found on earth today in places such as
Alaska. Thermokarst Landscapes are areas where the permafrost is melting
creating lakes and channels.

Professor Jan-Peter Muller, Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Department of
Space Climate Physics at University College London, was responsible for
mapping the 3D shape of the surface of Mars. He adds:
“We can now model the 3D shape of Mars’ surface down to sub-metre
resolution, at least as good as any commercial satellite orbiting the Earth. This
allows us to test our hypotheses in a much more rigorous manner than ever
before.”

This research is believed to be of future benefit to teams of astrobiologists
looking for evidence of life on Mars as the areas indicated would have possibly
been suitable for microbial life.

Newer ground-based telescopes are using technological advances to try to
correct atmospheric distortion, but there’s no way to see the wavelengths the
atmosphere prevents from even reaching the planet. The most effective way to
avoid the problems of the atmosphere is to place your telescope beyond it.

The idea for the space telescope arose in 1923,
when German scientist Hermann Oberth, suggested blasting a telescope into space
aboard a rocket. In 1946,Lyman Spitzer Jr., an American astrophysicist, wrote a
paper proposing a space observatory. He would spend the next 50 years working to make
the space telescope a reality.

Spitzer was one of the main forces behind several of the orbiting observatories
of the time, including the Copernicus satellite and the Orbiting Astronomical
Observatory. His diligent advocacy helped spur NASA to approve the Large
Space Telescope project in 1969.

In 1974, the group working on the project suggested a telescope with a number
of interchangeable instruments. They would be able to resolve at least
one-tenth of an arcsecond and study wavelengths that ranged from ultraviolet
to visible and infrared light. The Space Shuttle would be used to put the
telescope in orbit and either return it to Earth for repairs and replacement
instruments, or service it in space. In 1975, the European Space Agency began
to work together with NASA on a plan that would eventually become the Hubble
Space Telescope.

In 1977, Congress approved funding for the telescope and shortly after
proposals for science instruments began to pour in. Five winners were chosen.
Meanwhile, contractors, universities and NASA centers plunged into the effort.
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., would handle design,
development and construction of the telescope and its support systems.
Goddard Space Flight Center would take care of the design, development and
construction of the science instruments, and also perform ground control.

The Perkin-Elmer Corporation was contracted to tackle the telescope assembly,

including the mirrors and Fine Guidance Sensors, needed to point and direct the telescope.

Lockheed Missiles (now Lockheed Martin) was hired to build the structure and supporting

systems, put the telescope together, and test it.

In 1981, the Space Telescope Science Institute was established in Baltimore,
Md., to evaluate proposals for telescope time and manage the science program.
The space telescope was named the Hubble Space Telescope, after American
astronomer Edwin Hubble, who showed that the fuzzy patches of light in the
night sky were actually other galaxies, far distant from our own, and went on to
prove that the universe was expanding.

After some delays, Hubble’s launch was scheduled for October 1986. But on
January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just over a minute into
its flight. Shuttle flights ceased for two years. The finished telescope parts were
moved into storage. Hubble workers continued to tweak the telescope during
the delay, improving the solar batteries and upgrading other systems.
On April 24, 1990, Hubble finally launched into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle
Discovery.

Almost immediately after Hubble went into orbit, it was clear that something
was wrong. While the pictures were better than those of ground-based
telescopes, they weren’t the pristine images promised. They were blurry.

Hubble’s primary mirror, polished so carefully and lovingly over the course of a
full year, had a flaw called “spherical aberration.” It was just slightly the wrong
shape, causing the light that bounced off the center of the mirror to focus in a
different place than the light bouncing off the edge. The tiny flaw — about
1/50th the thickness of a sheet of paper — was enough to distort the view.

Fortunately, scientists and engineers were dealing with a well-understood
optical problem and they had a solution. A series of small mirrors could be
used to intercept the light reflecting off the mirror, correct for the flaw, and
bounce the light to the telescope’s science instruments. The Corrective Optics
Space Telescope Axial Replacement, or COSTAR, could be installed in place of
one of the telescope’s other instruments in order to correct the images
produced by the remaining and future instruments. Astronauts would also
replace the Wide Field/Planetary Camera with a new version, the Wide Field and
Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), that contained small mirrors to correct for the
aberration. This was the first of Hubble’s instruments to have built-in corrective
optics.

Astronauts and NASA staff spent 11 months training for one of the most
complex space missions ever attempted. In addition to the critical nature of the
mission, it would be the first test of the telescope’s vaunted ability to be
serviced and repaired in space.

On December 2, 1993, the Space Shuttle Endeavor carried a crew of seven into
orbit for a mission that would involve five days of spacewalks and repairs. They
removed the High Speed Photometer and replaced it with COSTAR. They
replaced the original Wide Field/Planetary Camera with the newer WFPC2. They
performed a host of other tasks, replacing solar panels, fuse plugs, and other
hardware. By December 9, they were finished.

NASA released the first new images from Hubble’s fixed optics on January 13,
1994. The pictures were beautiful; their resolution, excellent. Hubble was
transformed into the telescope that had been originally promised.
Hubble would be successfully serviced and repaired several times afterwards.

In February 1997, astronauts replaced the Goddard High Resolution
Spectrograph and the Faint Object Spectrograph with improved instruments,
the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer and the Space
Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. In December 1999, they replaced a
transmitter, all six gyroscopes, and one of three Fine Guidance Sensors, which
allow fine pointing and keep Hubble stable during operations.

In February 2002, astronauts added the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS),
the first new instrument to be installed in Hubble since 1997. ACS doubled
Hubble’s field of view, using a much more sensitive detector than WFPC2.
Each time astronauts performed a servicing mission, they also performed
routine repair work — fixing solar panels and thermal blankets, and upgrading
equipment.

Hubble’s next servicing mission was scheduled for 2006. But on February 1,
2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia, returning from a research mission, broke
apart while re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.
Shuttles were grounded. Then-NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe called the
Hubble mission off, citing the safety guidelines that had been developed
following the Columbia tragedy. The next NASA Administrator, Mike Griffin,
revisited the cancellation upon his appointment in 2005 and expressed support
for another mission. On October 31, 2006, he announced that Hubble would be
serviced again.

Servicing Mission 4 took place in May 2009. Astronauts upgraded the telescope
with the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, and
repaired the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Space Telescope Imaging
Spectrograph. They replaced Hubble’s batteries with new versions, and a Fine
Guidance Sensor with a refurbished one; installed six new gyroscopes; and
added new insulating panels to areas where Hubble’s blankets had broken
down. They replaced the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling unit
(SIC&DH), which helps command the science instruments and control the flow
of data within the telescope, and had suffered an electrical problem in 2008.
Finally, they attached a ring-like structure that will allow a robotic module to
connect itself to Hubble in the future, in order to guide the telescope through
its de-orbit.

Astronauts returned to Earth with a special piece of removed technology:
COSTAR. All of Hubble’s instruments since its initial launch have been
constructed with built-in corrections for the flawed mirror, eventually making
COSTAR unnecessary.

Servicing Mission 4 is expected to extend Hubble’s life into at least 2013. A
rejuvenated telescope will continue to beam images of the heavens back to
Earth, transferring about 120 gigabytes of data every week.

Years ago, when solar physicists first witnessed a towering wave of hot plasma racing along the sun’s surface, they doubted their senses. The scale of the thing was staggering. It rose up higher than Earth itself and rippled out from a central point in a circular pattern millions of kilometers in circumference. Skeptical observers suggested it might be a shadow of some kind—a trick of the eye—but surely not a real wave.

The twin STEREO spacecraft confirmed their reality in February 2009 when sunspot 11012 unexpectedly erupted. The blast hurled a billion-ton cloud of gas (a “CME”) into space and sent a tsunami racing along the sun’s surface. STEREO recorded the wave from two positions separated by 90°, giving researchers an unprecedented view of the event as seen in the pictures shown above.

“It was definitely a wave,” says Spiros Patsourakos of George Mason University, lead author of a paper reporting the finding in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. “Not a wave of water,” he adds, “but a giant wave of hot plasma and magnetism.”

The technical name is “fast-mode magnetohydrodynamical wave”—or “MHD wave” for short. The one STEREO saw reared up about 100,000 km high, and raced outward at 250 km/s (560,000 mph) packing as much energy as 2.4 million megatons of TNT.

Solar tsunamis were discovered back in 1997 by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). In May of that year, a CME came blasting up from an active region on the sun’s surface, and SOHO recorded a tsunami rippling away from the blast site.

“We wondered,” recalls Gurman, “is that a wave—or just a shadow of the CME overhead?”

SOHO’s single point of view was not enough to answer the question—neither for that first wave nor for many similar events recorded by SOHO in years that followed.

The question remained open until after the launch of STEREO in 2006. At the time of the February 2009 eruption, STEREO-B was directly over the blast site while STEREO-A was stationed at right angles —”perfect geometry for cracking the mystery,” says co-author Angelos Vourlidas of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC.

Solar tsunamis pose no direct threat to Earth. Nevertheless, they are important to study. “We can use them to diagnose conditions on the sun,” notes Gurman. “By watching how the waves propagate and bounce off things, we can gather information about the sun’s lower atmosphere available in no other way.”

“Tsunami waves can also improve our forecasting of space weather,” adds Vourlidas, “Like a bull-eye, they ‘mark the spot’ where an eruption takes place. Pinpointing the blast site can help us anticipate when a CME or radiation storm will reach Earth.”

STS-131

Launch Target: March 18, 2010,
at 1:34 p.m. EDT
Shuttle: Discovery
Duration: 13 days

Crew:
Commander Alan Poindexter
Pilot Jim Dutton
Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio, Clay Anderson,
Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson and Naoko Yamazaki/Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency

Mission:

Deliver a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module filled with science racks to be transferred to laboratories on the International Space Station.

Info:

Three spacewalks will include work to attach a spare ammonia tank assembly outside the station and return a European experiment from outside the Columbus module. This will be the 33rd shuttle mission to the station.

During a new moon the moon is between us and the sun, so we only see only the shadowed half.

During a full moon the Earth is between the sun and moon, so the lighted side of the moon faces us. When the sun, Earth, and moon line up so that the moon is in Earth’s shadow, then we have a lunar eclipse. These occur somewhere on Earth a couple times per year on average.

The rest of the phases are simply what portion of the lighted half of the moon we see from Earth.

A ‘lunation’ i.e. the cycle from each new moon to the next one takes  29.5305882 days, but the actual orbital period of the moon is only 27.3217 days. That is the time it takes the moon to return to approximately the same position among the stars.

A ‘moon day’  the time interval between two successive earth meridian crossings, is approximately 24 hr. and 50 min.

A meredian crossing is also called ’southing of the moon’

• Waxing means growing.
• Waning means shrinking.
• Gibbous is more than half but less than fully illuminated.
• Crescent is less then half but more then a new moon.