The Night Sky Guy

Meet Mysterious Makemake

Orbiting at the frozen edges of the solar system the mysterious dwarf planet Makemake is finally coming out of the shadows as astronomers get their best view yet of Pluto’s sibling.  Discovered in 2005, Makemake – pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh after a Polynesian creation god – is one of five Pluto-like objects that prompted a redefining of the term planet and the creation of the new group of dwarf planets.

Just like slightly larger Pluto, this icy world circles the Sun beyond Neptune- and was expected to have a global atmosphere too – but new evidence reveals that isn’t the case.

Find out more about this far-off dwarf planet in my latest National Geographic News story.

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Video: Weekly Space News Interview

Check out some of the cool space news coming out this week I highlight on my weekly CTV News channel interview.

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Beehive cluster has ‘B’s

Newfound alien worlds around sun-like stars nestled within nearby star cluster surprise astronomers and may help widen the net cast in the search for habitable planets.

Located some 550 light years away in the northern constellation Cancer, the Beehive cluster is home to 1000 young stars  born about 600 million years ago. It is a popular binocular target for skywatchers during winter and spring and can even be glimpsed with the naked eye from a dark location.

The new planets, dubbed Pr0201-b and Pr0211-b, are both “hot Jupiters”—gas giants that orbit extremely close to their parent stars, and while there’s little chance for life on these worlds, they are offering tantalizing new directions for planet hunters to follow…

Read the rest of my Beehive story at National Geographic news

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Hubble Spies Star Cluster Smashup (Video)

The keen eye of Hubble space telescope has glimpsed the first moments of a head-on collision between two massive star clusters located 170,000 light years away from Earth, astronomers say.

The impending cosmic crash is occurring within a 25 million year old giant star factory known as the Tarantula nebula or 30 Doradus, buried inside the Large Magellanic Cloud – a small companion galaxy of the Milky Way.

Read the rest of my story about crashing star clusters on National Geographic News

Check out this amazing computer simulation showing the gravitational interaction of two young star clusters. The three and a half million years of the encounter have been compressed into less than a minute!

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Monster Galaxy Cluster Breaks Records (Video)

Composite image of Phoenix galaxy cluster. Credit: NASA/NOAO/MIT,NSF

Seven billion light years away a newfound galaxy cluster is breaking records and may help unlock secrets related to galaxy evolution and dark energy, according to a new study released this week.

Using telescopes located in Antarctica and in space, a team of astronomers have discovered not only one of the most massive galaxy clusters known, but a massive individual galaxy at its center that is churning out newborn stars at unheard of rates.

According to the lead author of this new study, Michael McDonald an astrophysicist from MIT, this discovery will shed  light on large scale galaxy evolution in the universe.

“The prevailing idea is that the most massive galaxies in the Universe grow by consuming smaller galaxies and now we have an example of a massive galaxy which appears to be growing on its own, by forming new stars,” he said. “It appears that this starburst could account for a substantial amount of the galaxy’s stars, suggesting that this is an important ingredient for galaxy evolution.”

McDonald’s team also believes there is much more to be learned from this record-breaking cluster halfway across the Universe. The simple existence of such a massive cluster may help understand Dark energy – the mysterious force that is pulling the universe apart – and help constrain its properties.

“The number of exceptionally massive galaxy clusters like this in the Universe is very sensitive to the assumed nature of the dark energy, so even having 2 or 3 clusters of this mass can rule out various theoretical models,” added McDonald.

Here is a short video explainer of what this amazing discovery is all about…

For more details read my National Geographic story…

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Biggest Map of Universe Helps Confirm Dark Energy

Similar to how medieval maps of Earth ranged from speculations of the unknown to concrete scientific observations, cosmologists today are slowly refining our understanding of the structure and evolution of the Universe as a whole. Now a team of astronomers has announced that they have created a 12 billion light year-deep survey map that reveals the most precise makeup of the Universe to date.  Known as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III, the epic new map  targets nearly a million galaxies, which not only provides the most comprehensive view of the night sky ever made but sheds light on mysterious dark energy and history of the expansion of the universe.

Check out this amazing animation fly through of the galaxies plotted in the SDSS survey just released. Amazing to think that you can see nearly 400,000 galaxies in the animation.

Credit: Miguel A. Aragón (Johns Hopkins University), Mark SubbaRao (Adler Planetarium), Alex Szalay (Johns Hopkins University), Yushu Yao (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, NERSC), and the SDSS-III Collaboration

Read the rest of my story and find out what this new map is telling astronomers about Dark Energy and how it’s helping us understand the birth of the Universe at National Geographic News

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Mars Pic: Target Looms Ahead for Curiosity

This photo is simply awesome and I think gets all Mars buffs really excited. That’s because we not only see the rover’s own shadow on the pebbly ground, but can also spy in the distance the main science target of the 1 – ton curiosity rover a day after it touched down inside the 150 km wide Gale crater. Even though this is only the first b/w, low-res image of Mount Sharp – a central peak in the crater rising more than 6.5 km in height – we can tell that its going to be an exciting and challenging destination.

NASA hopes to drive the rover to the mountain – which sits about 10 km away from the landing site -  eventually up its slopes, to study its lower layers. To astro-geologists they look like sedimentary rocks, which they are betting may shed some light on past environmental change - ie. water drenched the area. This image was captured by the rover’s front left Hazard-Avoidance camera at full resolution shortly after it landed.  Can’t wait to see full resolution colour panoramic shots in the next week….

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Titanic Avalanches on Saturn’s Moon

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has spied the aftermath of 30 giant ice falls on Saturn’s moon Iapetus which may offer a unique insight to mechanics of landslides on Earth , according to a new study.

Sporting steep crater walls and a unique 12 mile high mountain ridge – more than twice the height of Mount Everest – that runs nearly the entire length of its equator, Iapetus has nearly a perfect setup for avalanches, says Kelsi Singer, the lead author of the new study published in Nature Geoscience this week.

Read more about these awesome events of nature on a scale never before seen and learn how they may help unlock clues to their Earthly counterparts at National Geographic News

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Preview of Upcoming Mars Rover Landing

With only 20 days to go until NASA’s car-sized rover touches down on the surface of Mars, scientists and engineers working on the mission held a news conference today laying out some of the details on why this is the most challenging and exciting mission to the Red Planet yet!   Here is the official NASA story on what all the buzz was about…

“NASA’s most advanced planetary rover is on a precise course for an early August landing beside a Martian mountain to begin two years of unprecedented scientific detective work. However, getting the Curiosity rover to the surface of Mars will not be easy.

“The Curiosity landing is the hardest NASA mission ever attempted in the history of robotic planetary exploration,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “While the challenge is great, the team’s skill and determination give me high confidence in a successful landing.”

The Mars Science Laboratory mission is a precursor for future human missions to Mars. President Obama has set a challenge to reach the Red Planet in the 2030s. To achieve the precision needed for landing safely inside Gale Crater, the spacecraft will fly like a wing in the upper atmosphere instead of dropping like a rock. To land the 1-ton rover, an airbag method used on previous Mars rovers will not work. Mission engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., designed a “sky crane” method for the final several seconds of the flight. A backpack with retro-rockets controlling descent speed will lower the rover on three nylon cords just before touchdown.

During a critical period lasting only about seven minutes, the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft carrying Curiosity must decelerate from about 13,200 mph (about 5,900 meters per second) to allow the rover to land on the surface at about 1.7 mph (three-fourths of a meter per second). Curiosity is scheduled to land at approximately 10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6).

“Those seven minutes are the most challenging part of this entire mission,” said Pete Theisinger, the mission’s project manager at JPL. “For the landing to succeed, hundreds of events will need to go right, many with split-second timing and all controlled autonomously by the spacecraft. We’ve done all we can think of to succeed. We expect to get Curiosity safely onto the ground, but there is no guarantee. The risks are real.”

During the initial weeks after the actual landing, JPL mission controllers will put the rover through a series of checkouts and activities to characterize its performance on Mars, while gradually ramping up scientific investigations. Curiosity then will begin investigating whether an area with a wet history inside Mars’ Gale Crater ever has offered an environment favorable for microbial life.

“Earlier missions have found that ancient Mars had wet environments,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Program at NASA Headquarters. “Curiosity takes us the next logical step in understanding the potential for life on Mars.”

Curiosity will use tools on a robotic arm to deliver samples from Martian rocks and soils into laboratory instruments inside the rover that can reveal chemical and mineral composition. A laser instrument will use its beam to induce a spark on a target and read the spark’s spectrum of light to identify chemical elements in the target. Other instruments on the car-sized rover will examine the surrounding environment from a distance or by direct touch with the arm. The rover will check for the basic chemical ingredients for life and for evidence about energy available for life. It also will assess factors that could be hazardous for life, such as the radiation environment.

“For its ambitious goals, this mission needs a great landing site and a big payload,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters. “During the descent through the atmosphere, the mission will rely on bold techniques enabling use of a smaller target area and a heavier robot on the ground than were possible for any previous Mars mission. Those techniques also advance us toward human-crew Mars missions, which will need even more precise targeting and heavier landers.”

View of Mt.Sharp rising 5 km above rover landing site

The chosen landing site is beside a mountain informally called Mount Sharp. The mission’s prime destination lies on the slope of the mountain. Driving there from the landing site may take many months.

“Be patient about the drive. It will be well worth the wait and we are apt to find some targets of interest on the way,” said John Grotzinger, MSL project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

“When we get to the lower layers in Mount Sharp, we’ll read them like chapters in a book about changing environmental conditions when Mars was wetter than it is today.”

Scene from Xbox Mars landing game

In collaboration with Microsoft Corp., a new outreach game was unveiled Monday to give the public a sense of the challenge and adventure of landing in a precise location on the surface. Called “Mars Rover Landing,” the game is an immersive experience for the Xbox 360 home entertainment console that allows users to take control of their own spacecraft and face the extreme challenges of landing a rover on Mars.

“Technology is making it possible for the public to participate in exploration as it never has before,” said Michelle Viotti, JPL’s Mars public engagement manager. “Because Mars exploration is fundamentally a shared human endeavor, we want everyone around the globe to have the most immersive experience possible.”  -

Adapted from NASA news Statement

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Discovery of New Moon for Pluto

This week Hubble Space Telescope spied a new moon circling the dwarf planet Pluto. Here is an interview I did Sunday July 15th on this new discovery…

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