1st Photos from New Discovery Channel Telescope Unveiled

1st Photos from New Discovery Channel Telescope Unveiled - A privately funded telescope has taken its first images, capping off a two decades-long quest to construct the facility for research and public engagement.

The Discovery Channel Telescope is an observatory with a 14-foot (4.3-meter) mirror built near Happy Jack, Ariz., by the Lowell Observatory and Discovery Communications, the parent company of television's Discovery Channel. The telescope's opening was marked with a gala on Saturday (July 21) at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff and featured a keynote speech from Neil Armstrong, the first person ever on the moon.

"The First Light Gala is a historic event in the annals of Lowell Observatory," Jeffrey Hall, director of Lowell Observatory, said in a statement. "It marks completion of our spectacular new research facility, initiation of superb projects that will bring our research to millions through our partnership with Discovery Communications. We are honored to be part of it and grateful to all who have helped make it a reality."

The $53 million Discovery Channel Telescope is the fifth largest telescope in the continental United States, and was paid for without any federal or state funding. The observatory snapped its inaugural pictures — including views of the famous Whirlpool and Sombrero galaxies, as well as the M109 barred spiral galaxy — in May using its 16-million-pixel camera.

"The Discovery Channel Telescope is emblematic of our mission to ignite curiosity and stir the imagination of audiences here and around the globe," said John Hendricks, founder and chairman of Discovery Communications, who, with his wife Maureen, was a major donor to the project. "The telescope represents 'discovery' in both word and deed and we are thrilled to see the amazing places it will take us with breathtaking images and vital new research."

Though the telescope's eyes are now open to the universe, it will undergo a testing phase for about 18 months, with its first scientific data gathering expected to begin in 2013 or 2014. Its location, in the Coconino National Forest about 45 miles (72 kilometers) south-southeast of Flagstaff, is in a dark-sky site, one of the darkest, best places from which to view the night sky in the United States.

The process of planning and building the telescope is due to be featured in a one-hour Discovery Channel documentary set to air in September 2012. ( SPACE.com )

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Is it from space?

Is it from space? - Mysterious metal cylinder lands in Siberian town: Is it from space? - The audio portion of this video may be difficult to hear, but the subject is compelling. A large, cylindrical object was caught on camera after it reportedly crashed into a tiny Siberian village. RT.com says Russian media outlets are calling the object a piece of "space debris" while other people think it might be the fuel tank of a ballistic missile.

The Russian Federal Space Agency says it's neither from space nor a rocket. At the same time, they admit they cannot verify exactly what the object is until they've had a chance to examine it more closely. If the video is authentic, is does appear to be a bit too large to be fuel tank of an Iskander or Tochka missile, two of the more common surface-to-surface missiles used by the Russian military.

Still, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility to think the mysterious object might be a piece of space debris that has fallen back to Earth. NASA estimates there are about 20,000 pieces of space debris currently in Earth's orbit, nearly all of which are capable of falling back to our planet's surface at some point. Rocket casings, broken satellites and debris jettisoned from spacecraft make up the bulk of this orbiting debris.

Even the smallest piece of fast-traveling space debris, as tiny as four inches wide, can be dangerous. Last year, Space.com reported that the astronauts aboard the International Space Station were prepared to evacuate when a piece of space debris nearly collided with the station. ( The Sideshow )

Blog : Shadow Of Death | Is it from space?

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NASA finds oxygen around Saturn's icy moon Dione

NASA finds oxygen around Saturn's icy moon Dione - A NASA spacecraft circling Saturn has discovered a wispy oxygen atmosphere on the ringed planet's icy moon Dione, but you wouldn't want to live there. For one thing, you wouldn't be able to breathe — Dione's atmosphere is 5 trillion times less dense than the air at Earth's surface, scientists say.

This view highlights tectonic faults and craters on Saturn's moon, Dione, an icy world that has undoubtedly experienced geologic activity since its formation. It is based on images from the the Cassini spacecraft taken on Dec. 24, 2005. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

Dione's atmosphere was detected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which spotted an ultra-thin layer of oxygen ions so sparse that it is equivalent to conditions 300 miles (480 kilometers) above Earth. On Dione, there is just one oxygen ion one for every 0.67 cubic inches (or one ion for every 11 cubic centimeters) of space, but it's still enough to qualify as an atmosphere, Cassini mission scientists announced Friday (March 2).

"We now know that Dione, in addition to Saturn's rings and the moon Rhea, is a source of oxygen molecules," Cassini team member Robert Tokar of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who led the new study, said in a statement. "This shows that molecular oxygen is actually common in the Saturn system and reinforces that it can come from a process that doesn't involve life."

Dione is one of Saturn's smaller moons and is about 698 miles (1,123 km) wide. It orbits Saturn once every 2.7 days at a distance of about 234,000 miles (377,400 km) — roughly the same as that between Earth and its moon, according to a NASA description.

The oxygen on Dione may potentially be created by solar photons or high-energy particles that bombard the Saturn moon's ice-covered surface, kicking up oxygen ions in the process, Tokar explained. Another idea suggests that geologic processes on Dione could feed the moon's atmosphere, researchers added.

The study is detailed in a recent issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Dione is by no means the only rocky body with an atmosphere in our solar system. Thick atmospheres cover the planets of Earth, Venus and Mars, as well as Saturn's largest moon Titan.

A thin atmosphere on Saturn's moon Rhea — one similar to that of Dione — was also detected in 2010, NASA officials said. That observation and the discovery of ozone on Dione by the Hubble Space Telescope led researchers to suspect it may host a thin atmosphere.

But it wasn't established for sure until the Cassini spacecraft used an instrument called a plasma spectrometer to detect the ionized oxygen on Dione during a close flyby in April 2011, when the probe flew within 313 miles (503 km) of the icy moon. The spacecraft detected an atmosphere made up of about 2,550 oxygen ions per cubic foot (or about 90,000 per cubic meter), researchers said.

"Scientists weren't even sure Dione would be big enough to hang on to an exosphere, but this new research shows that Dione is even more interesting than we previously thought," said Amanda Hendrix, the deputy project scientist for Cassini at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who did not participate in Tokar's study. "Scientists are now digging through Cassini data on Dione to look at this moon in more detail."

Dione was discovered in 1684 by astronomer Giovanni Cassini, after whom the Cassini spacecraft is named. The moon is named after the Greek goddess Dione, who the ancient Greek poet Homer described as the mother of the goddess Aphrodite, NASA officials explained.

NASA launched the Cassini mission in 1997 and it has been orbiting Saturn since its arrival at the ringed planet in 2004. The mission, which is a joint effort by NASA and the space agencies of Europe and Italy, has been extended several times, most recently until 2017. ( space.com )

Blog : Shadow Of Death | NASA finds oxygen around Saturn's icy moon Dione

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