Plenty of planets and small happy ending

Plenty of planets and small happy ending

Since November, more than 500 distant planets are now known — neither of which the earth is of course even remotely similar. But in our own solar system was a lot going on. And on the edge of the universe, astronomers discovered the most distant galaxy.

End of September knew the speculation no bounds: Gliese 581g, a newly discovered planet, should consist of rock, which have three to four times the mass of Earth, and thus be able to hold an atmosphere. And finally, it should be the same in the habitable zone of its star circling, liquid water on its surface would therefore be likely. Was a potentially habitable planet found? Unfortunately, could not confirm the existence of Gliese 581g, a second team of researchers — two weeks after the spectacular discovery was a possible interference of the supposed planet become .

Similar confusion also donated a lecture by the chief scientist of the space observatory Kepler: For he announced the discovery of about 700 exoplanets candidates — almost 300 of them with Earth-like size — brought this (at this point already weeks old) message but somewhat awkwardly to the media. So was a bit too hasty read of the discovery of over 300 actual erdgroßen planet in not a few in the following days.

Apart from these irritations, the Exoplanetenjäger made rich booty. A European research team felt as alone in the star HD 10180 at least five, maybe even seven planets. The smallest has a mass of 1.4 Earth masses perhaps only — he should really exist, he would be the exoplanet with the smallest mass at a sun-like star.

Lots going on at the front door

But in our own planetary system in 2010 did a lot. For example, the ringed planet Saturn: Back in 2004, the Cassini spacecraft reached Saturn system. Originally she was only four years remain active until July 2010 later. But then, NASA decided to extend the highly successful mission to the year 2017 — and sentenced Cassini simultaneously to an uneasy end: Through a controlled crash in the Saturn should be prevented that the probe might eventually contaminate one of Saturn’s moons with earthly microbes.

About 500 kilometers tall is Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which consists mainly of water ice. Its surface is very smooth, the visible ridge here are just a few hundred meters high.
But until then, Cassini has still time to deliver many spectacular images of Saturn’s moons. She did this in 2010: in particular, the small moon Enceladus had never previously able to study in such detail. The Cassini images show huge geysers that hurl water vapor and ice into space and thus form the fine outer E-ring of Saturn. A computer problem forced Cassini Although early November to a temporary hiatus and made a flyby of Saturn’s largest moon Titan are being missed. After 20 days, the security mode of the probe but were canceled and all instruments are revived.

Located closer to the earth, amateur astronomers were able to equal twice the crash of a small asteroid or comet fragment observed on Jupiter. Both on 3 June and on 20 August they recorded a short flash of light in the upper atmosphere of the giant planets — apart from the impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 15 years ago is something that has never succeeded.

The asteroids were probably only a few feet tall, because even with the best telescopes in the world later no impact marks in the Jupiter clouds were observed. If you believe the study by an international research team, then it could come on Jupiter per year to approximately 100 such explosions, in each of which a multiple of the energy of the Tunguska explosion over Siberia in 1908 is released.

Visiting the little brothers and sisters

But not only the major planets were in the spotlight this year. Had a whole fleet of spacecraft in 2010, the small solar system objects in sight: On 10 July, the ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft passed the 126 km asteroid Lutetia and took on during the flyby high resolution images of the craters strewn boulder. Despite the high speed of the probe of 54 000 kilometers per hour at the flyby, the Rosetta approach led to 3,100 kilometers of Lutetia, the images have a resolution of about 60 meters per pixel. Rosetta is on its way to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, where they settle in 2014 the Philae lander.

A sequence of images during the flyby of ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft on asteroid Lutetia on 10 July of 2010.
Even their second visit comet graduated from the American probe Deep Impact (now on their mission called EPOXI), as they November 4, the comet Hartley 2 visited and photographed him at a distance of only 700 kilometers. The images show a dumbbell-shaped nucleus, which spew carbon dioxide into fountains, ice and water vapor. Some of the chunks of ice are as big as footballs. The recordings are now compared with the images of the comet Tempel 1, for Deep Impact had examined five years ago — including an artificial impactor, which gave its name to the probe.

And finally in 2010 a mission had their happy ending, which was several times almost failed. Hayabusa, the “Peregrine Falcon”, came back to earth and obviously brought tiny fragments of the asteroid Itokawa with. For a long time it was unclear whether there was any recyclable material in the sample container of the Japanese probe — after all, just about everything went wrong on the year-long flight, what could go wrong. So was not even sure whether the program by emergency and auxiliary engines to Earth controlled probe had ever as planned placed on Itokawa. Meanwhile, the Japanese plan the follow-up mission Hayabusa-2, they should visit in 2018 another asteroid.

The re-entry of the Japanese Hayabusa probe was filmed from an airplane. The probe burned up in the atmosphere and broke into several pieces, which can be seen on the image as fireworks. The small light spot on the right is the landing capsule, hopefully in the material located on the surface of the asteroid Itokawa.
The sun in sight

Pitch, the Japanese had with their Venus Mission: So in December, the probe reached Akatsuki Although their goal — the Walk around the planet tore the contact but short on. The braking thrusters apparently ignited too short and could not be possible to swivel in an orbit around the Earth’s sister planet the probe. In six years, and may produce a second chance for it, until then Akatsuki revolves around the sun rather than around Venus.

The central star of the solar system has started on February 11, Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in mind: It is the most advanced space observatory to observe the dynamic processes on the sun. Mid-April began systematic observations of our home orb — since keeping the three main instruments of the satellite the sun around the clock in view and produce an amount of data per day of 1.5 terabytes. The images of the SDO achieve up to ten times higher resolution than its predecessor missions and provide fascinating insights into the origin of solar flares.

Also on other space missions, there was news: So radioed the infrared telescope WISE January millions of images in different wavelength ranges to Earth and discovered, among other countless small asteroids in the solar system. The started in the previous year Planck satellite completed end of June his first complete survey of the sky in the area of ​​millimeter waves. First half was launched in 2010 for the beginning of 2006, NASA’s New Horizons: you should happen in July 2015 the dwarf planet Pluto and the first detailed images of the spark once the ninth planet of the solar system to Earth. Even New Horizons is located more than two billion miles of Pluto.

Also known as the “Seven Sisters” of the Pleiades open star cluster in the constellation Taurus was photographed from the Space Telescope WISE in four infrared frequency ranges. Very clearly come here out the dust masses in the vicinity of the bright main star. They belong to an interstellar gas and dust cloud, through which the Pleiades star cluster just passes. The image extends over a width of about three degrees, which corresponds to 23 light-years.

But even Pluto is just around the corner, compared with the distances of distant galaxies, where astronomers observe supernovae. A new class of stellar explosions possibly discovered in 2010, Japanese researchers. The two common scenarios of a supernova are the collapse of a massive single star and the explosion of a white dwarf, which picks up matter from a companion.

But both models did not explain the properties of the supernova SN2005cz why astronomers suggested a third scenario. According to this loses a medium-sized star matter to a companion star collapses to a neutron star, what the actual supernova triggers later. So far, only eight supernovae known, which could be based on this scheme.

But even a “classic”, the supernova type Ia, the science is far from unanimous. As published in the course of two mutually contradictory studies on the formation mechanism of this supernova type: Although the researchers are largely sure that there are white dwarfs, which are in the violent explosions to an end — but how they achieve the neces- sary mass, whether by accretion from a companion star or the merger with a second dwarf star, is also a 2010 still unresolved research question. Type Ia supernovae are particularly suitable as cosmic distance Brands: They allow the distances to distant galaxies determine. In the late 1990s led to the discovery of such measurements of the accelerated expansion of the cosmos, which is attributed to the mysterious dark energy.

Astronomical Measurements

Astronomy is the science of proverbial “astronomically” large numbers. And new records were set in 2010: Astronomers found the most massive star and the most distant galaxy. The monster star R 136a1 is in the midst of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a roughly 165 000 light-years distant neighboring galaxy the Milky Way.

Using the adaptive optics of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, it was possible to determine its mass: R 136a1 is therefore 265 times as heavy as the sun. The researchers still can not exclude that there might be evidence of a close binary system, but if R 136a1 is a single star, he could by massive stellar winds already 50 solar masses have lost to the surrounding space — his “birth weight” then was probably more than 300 solar masses.

Much further away, however, is UDFy-38135539 — the most distant galaxy , astronomers have identified on the recordings of the Hubble Space Telescope. Again with the VLT could measure the redshift of this object: The galaxy is thus more than 13 billion light years away. Your light that reaches us today from this galaxy, so went on his way, when the universe was just 600 million years old. At this time, the universe was still in the so-called era of Reonisation. In this period the light of the first stars ionized the blazing fills the universe are hydrogen and made the universe so transparent again. The discovery of UDFy-38135539, astronomers can now study this period of Reonisation better.

And on the earth? There was 2010 in Oberhausen, the exhibition ‘Out of this World — Wonders of the Solar System “to the end. Originally developed for the Year of Astronomy 2009 and then extended until December 30, 2010, the exhibition attracted over 900,000 visitors in the Oberhausen Gasometer — more than any other before.