September sees the first RAS lunchtime lecture of the autumn season, conferences on meteors and short-lived astronomical events, the best view of Jupiter for some years and another (likely) launch of a private spacecraft.

This release summarise these and other astronomy and space science events taking place during the month, particularly those with UK involvement. It is not intended to be fully comprehensive and dates and times may be subject to change.

14 September: RAS lunchtime lecture: Comets: Ghostly wanderers in space

At 1300 BST on Tuesday 14 September, astronomy writer Ian Ridpath will give the latest public lecture at the Royal Astronomical Society. Mr Ridpath will discuss how our ideas about the appearance and nature of comets has changed, from the historical perception of comets as omens of death and destruction to the modern view of them as dirty snowballs that are remnants of the early history of the Solar system. His lecture will talk through the ongoing efforts to understand the origin of comets and how they shaped life on Earth.

RAS Public Lectures

Contact
Dr Robert Massey (details above)

16-19 September: International Meteor Conference 2010, Armagh, N. Ireland

Amateur and professional astronomers alike will gather at Armagh Observatory for the 29th annual conference of the International Meteor Organisation (IMO) from 16-19 September. Delegates will discuss the latest research on meteors, including visual and radio observations, modelling of meteor streams, and meteors and meteorites on the Moon and other planets.

IMC 2010 home page

Contact

Dr Apostolos Christou, Armagh Observatory

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A true-colour image of Jupiter, composed from 4 images made with the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft as it flew by the giant planet in December 2000. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

21 September: Jupiter at opposition

On 21 September, Jupiter will be opposite the Sun in the terrestrial sky, a position known as opposition. This is the most favourable time to view the giant planet, as it remains visible throughout the night. From Europe Jupiter will be high in the south at local midnight, in front of the stars of the constellation of Pisces. This opposition is especially favourable as Jupiter is also near its closest point to the Sun in its orbit (perihelion) and the distance between Jupiter and the Earth is near the minimum possible, making the planet appear unusually bright.

BAA Jupiter section

Contact
Dr Robert Massey (details above)

23-24 September: The transient universe: from exoplanets to hypernovae: Dublin, Ireland

On 23 and 24 September, scientists will gather at the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) for a specialist discussion meeting on transient phenomena in the universe. The meeting, jointly supported by the RIA, RAS and Astronomical Group of Ireland, will bring together delegates to discuss short-lived astronomical events, from immensely powerful gamma ray bursts and hypernovae mostly seen in the distant universe to more local phenomena associated with the Sun.

Conference home page

Contact

Gilly Clarke, Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2

Tel: +1 353 1 609 0672

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Late September: next launch of Falcon 9 rocket

Late September should see the next launch of the Falcon 9 commercial space vehicle, when it is set to carry a prototype Dragon spacecraft into Earth orbit. Earlier this year the rocket, built by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) placed its first payload in orbit. The Falcon 9 rocket and its successors, designed with reusable launch stages, are eventually intended to carry the Dragon with astronauts and / or cargo on board, to the International Space Station.

SpaceX home page

September's night sky

Information on stars, planets, meteor showers and other celestial phenomena is available from the British Astronomical Association (BAA).

BAA home page

BAA Sky Notes (August and September)

Notes for editors

The Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS, www.ras.org.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organizes scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognizes outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 3500 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

Dr Baojiu Li of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of the University of Cambridge has won the 2009 RAS Michael Penston Prize in recognition of his outstanding PhD thesis.

Baojiu worked on the physical and cosmological implications of modified gravity theories, a key area of interest in astronomy and cosmology.

The runner up for this year's award was Dr Emily Curtis of the Astrophysics Group in the University of Cambridge for her thesis 'A submillimetre survey of clustered low-mass star formation'.

List of thesis prize winners

Using a combination of instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, a UK-led international team of astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, one which at birth had more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, twice as much as the currently accepted limit. The existence of these monsters — millions of times more luminous than the Sun, losing mass through very powerful winds — may provide an answer to the question “how massive can stars be?” The new results appear in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A team of astronomers led by Paul Crowther, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield, used ESO’s Very Large Telescope, as well as archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, to study two young clusters of stars, NGC 3603 and RMC 136a in detail. NGC 3603 is a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula’s extended clouds of gas and dust, located 22 000 light-years away from the Sun (eso1005). RMC 136a (more often nicknamed R136) is another cluster of young, massive and hot stars, which is located inside the Tarantula Nebula, in one of our neighbouring galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud, 165 000 light-years away (eso0613).
 
The team found several stars with surface temperatures over 40 000 degrees — more than seven times hotter than our Sun — and a few tens of times larger and several million times brighter. Comparisons with models imply that several of these stars were born with masses in excess of 150 solar masses. The star R136a1, found in the R136 cluster, is the most massive star ever found, with a current mass of about 265 solar masses and with a birth mass of as much as 320 times that of the Sun.

In NGC 3603, the astronomers could also directly measure the masses of two stars that belong to a double star system, as a validation of the models used. The stars A1, B and C in this cluster have estimated masses at birth above or close to 150 solar masses. (The star A1 is a double star, with an orbital period of 3.77 days. The two stars in the system have, respectively, 120 and 92 times the mass of the Sun, which means that they formed as stars of 148 and 106 solar masses respectively).

Very massive stars have such high luminosities with respect to their mass that they produce very powerful outflows. “Unlike humans, these stars are born heavy and lose weight as they age,” says Paul Crowther. “Being a little over a million years old, the most extreme star R136a1 is already ‘middle-aged’ and has undergone an intense weight loss programme, shedding a fifth of its initial mass over that time, or more than fifty solar masses.”

If R136a1 replaced the Sun in our Solar System, it would outshine the Sun by as much as the Sun currently outshines the full Moon. “Its high mass would reduce the length of the Earth's year to three weeks, and it would bathe the Earth in incredibly intense ultraviolet radiation, rendering life on our planet impossible,” says team member Raphael Hirschi from Keele University.

These super heavyweight stars are extremely rare, forming solely within the densest star clusters. To distinguish the individual stars for the first time required the exquisite resolving power of the VLT.

The team also estimated the maximum possible mass for the stars within these clusters and the relative number of the most massive ones.  “The smallest stars are limited to more than about eighty times more than Jupiter, below which they are ‘failed stars’ or brown dwarfs,” says team member Olivier Schnurr from the Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam. “Our new finding supports the previous view that there is also an upper limit to how big stars can get, but raises the limit by a factor of two, to about 300 solar masses.”

Within R136, only four stars weighed more than 150 solar masses at birth, yet they account for nearly half of the wind and radiation power of the entire cluster, comprising approximately 100 000 stars in total! R136a1 alone energises its surroundings by more than a factor of fifty compared to the Orion Nebula cluster.

An observer on a (hypothetical) planet in the R136 cluster would have a dramatic view. The density of stars in the cluster is about 100 000 times higher than around our Sun. Many of these stars are incredibly bright, so the planet’s sky would never get dark.

Understanding how high mass stars form is puzzling enough, due to their very short lives and powerful winds, so that the identification of such extreme cases as R136a1 raises the challenge to theorists still further. “Either they were born so big or smaller stars merged together to produce them,” explains Crowther.

Stars between about 8 and 150 solar masses explode at the end of their short lives as supernovae, leaving behind exotic remnants of either a neutron star or a black hole. Having now established the existence of stars with between 150 and 300 solar masses, the astronomers’ findings raise the prospect of the existence of exceptionally bright, “pair instability supernovae” that completely blow themselves apart, failing to leave behind any remnant and dispersing up to ten solar masses of iron into their surroundings! A few candidates for such explosions have already been proposed in recent years.

Not only is R136a1 the most massive star ever found, but it also has the highest luminosity too, close to 10 million times greater than the Sun. “Owing to the rarity of these monsters, I think it is unlikely that this new record will be broken any time soon,” concludes Crowther.

UK membership of ESO is funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

CONTACTS

Paul Crowther
University of Sheffield, UK
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Richard Parker
University of Sheffield, UK
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Raphael Hirschi
University of Keele, UK
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Olivier Schnurr
Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, Germany
Tel: +49 331 7499 353
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Henri Boffin
ESO, La Silla, Paranal and E-ELT Press Officer
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6222
Cell: +49 174 515 43 24
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Bekky Stredwick
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Press Office
Science and Technology Facilities Council
Tel: +44 (0)1235 445 777
Mob: +44 (0)7825 861 436
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Fern Storey (RAS contact UK researchers)
Royal Astronomical Society
Tel: +44 (0)20 7734 3307 x.221
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IMAGES, ANIMATION AND CAPTIONS

These can be downloaded from http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1030/

A – The young cluster RMC 136a

Using a combination of instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, including some that at birth had more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. The most extreme of these stars was found in the cluster RMC 136a (or R136 as it is more usually named). Named R136a1, it is found to have a current mass of 265 times that of the Sun. Being a little over a million years old, R136a1 is already “middle-aged” and has undergone an intense weight loss programme, shedding a fifth of its initial mass over that time, or more than fifty solar masses. It also has the highest luminosity, close to 10 million times greater than the Sun.

R136 is a cluster of young, massive and hot stars located inside the Tarantula nebula, in one of the neighbourhood galaxies of the Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud, 165 000 light-years away. R136 has a density of stars about 100 000 times higher than in the vicinity of our Sun. Hundreds of these stars are so incredibly bright that if we were to sit on a (hypothetical) planet in the middle of the cluster the sky would never get dark.

This montage shows an image of the Tarantula nebula as seen with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope (left), with the Very Large Telescope (middle), as well as a new image of the R136 cluster obtained with the MAD adaptive optics instrument on the Very Large Telescope (right). The latter provides unique details on the stellar content of the cluster.

Credit: ESO/P. Crowther/C.J. Evans

B – The size of stars (annotated)

Using a combination of instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, including some that at birth had more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. This artist's impression shows the relative sizes of young stars, from the smallest ones called “red dwarfs”, with about 0.1 solar masses, through low mass “yellow dwarfs” such as the Sun and massive “blue dwarf’ stars with more than 8 times the mass of the Sun to the newly-discovered 300 solar mass star R136a1.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

C – The size of stars

Using a combination of instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, including some that at birth had more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. This artist's impression shows the relative sizes of young stars, from the smallest ones called “red dwarfs”, with about 0.1 solar masses, through low mass “yellow dwarfs” such as the Sun and massive “blue dwarf’ stars with more than 8 times the mass of the Sun to the newly-discovered 300 solar mass star R136a1.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Videos

A – Zoom in onto the young cluster RMC 136a

Using a combination of instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, some weighing at birth more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. The most extreme of these stars was found in the cluster RMC 136a (more often nicknamed R136).  Named R136a1, it has a current mass of 265 times that of the Sun. Being a little over a million years old, R136a1 is already “middle-aged” and has undergone an intense weight loss programme, shedding a fifth of its initial mass over that time, or more than fifty solar masses. It also has the highest luminosity, close to 10 million times greater than the Sun.

R136 is a cluster of young, massive and hot stars located inside the Tarantula Nebula, in one of the Milky Way’s neighbouring galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud, 165 000 light-years away. This video zooms in onto the R136 cluster as seen with the MAD adaptive optics instrument on the Very Large Telescope, starting from a wider view obtained with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope.

Credit: ESO/P. Crowther/C.J. Evans

FURTHER INFORMATION

This work is presented in an article published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (“The R136 star cluster hosts several stars whose individual masses greatly exceed the accepted 150 Msun stellar mass limit”, by P. Crowther et al.).

The team is composed of Paul A. Crowther, Richard J. Parker, and Simon P. Goodwin  (University of Sheffield, UK), Olivier Schnurr (University of Sheffield and Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, Germany), Raphael Hirschi (Keele University, UK), and Norhasliza Yusof and Hasan Abu Kassim (University of Malaya, Malaysia).

NOTES FOR EDITORS

The European Southern Observatory

ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and VISTA, the world’s largest survey telescope. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 42-metre European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

The Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS: www.ras.org.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organizes scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognizes outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 3500 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (www.stfc.ac.uk)

The Science and Technology Facilities Council ensures the UK retains its leading place on the world stage by delivering world-class science; accessing and hosting international facilities; developing innovative technologies; and increasing the socio-economic impact of its research through effective knowledge exchange.

The Council has a broad science portfolio including Astronomy, Particle Physics, Particle Astrophysics, Nuclear Physics, Space Science, Synchrotron Radiation, Neutron Sources and High Power Lasers. In addition the Council manages and operates three internationally renowned laboratories:
•       The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire
•       The Daresbury Laboratory, Cheshire
•       The UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Edinburgh

The Council gives researchers access to world-class facilities and funds the UK membership of international bodies such as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), the Institute Laue Langevin (ILL), European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), the European organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) and the European Space Agency (ESA). It also funds UK telescopes overseas on La Palma, Hawaii, Australia and in Chile, and the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility, which includes the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory.

The Council distributes public money from the Government to support scientific research.

Dr David Halliday of Schlumberger Cambridge Research has been awarded the Keith Runcorn prize for his 2009 PhD thesis on research at the University of Edinburgh. David's work focused on using interferometry to estimate surface waves between geophone receivers (geophones convert ground movement into voltage and are a key tool of seismologists).

During his thesis, David went on to develop the first 'optical theorem' for surface waves. His work led to ten scientific papers and two patent filings in just three and a half years. David now also works as an editor for Geophysical Journal International.

Dr Lasse Clausen of Virginia Tech, USA, was runner-up for this award for his University of Leicester thesis on ultra-low frequency waves in the magnetosphere.

List of thesis prize winners

Dr Ben Davies, Dr Caitriona Jackman and Dr Thomas Kitching will take up the 2010 RAS Fellowships. For three years from October 2010, the three scientists will respectively hold their Fellowships at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, University College London and the Institute for Astronomy at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.

The 2010 RAS Fellowship scheme was set up, partly in response to the declining support available from STFC, to allow outstanding early career scientists to pursue research in the UK in the areas that the Society advances i.e. astronomy, solar system science, geophysics and closely related disciplines.

Ben will use his Fellowship to work on a novel method for mapping the star-forming history of galaxies, Catriona will carry out research into energy release from planetary magnetospheres and Thomas will use 3D gravitational lensing to investigate neutrino mass and dark energy.

Find out more about RAS grants and fellowships

A team of astronomers from Germany, Bulgaria and Poland have used a completely new technique to find an exotic extrasolar planet. The same approach is sensitive enough to find planets as small as the Earth in orbit around other stars. The group, led by Dr Gracjan Maciejewski of Jena University in Germany, used Transit Timing Variation to detect a planet with 15 times the mass of the Earth in the system WASP-3, 700 light years from the Sun in the constellation of Lyra. They publish their work in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

 Transit Timing Variation (TTV) was suggested as a new technique for discovering planets a few years ago. Transits take place where a planet moves in front of the star it orbits, temporarily blocking some of the light from the star. So far this method has been used to detect a number of planets and is being deployed by the Kepler and Corot space missions in its search for planets similar to the Earth.

If a (typically large) planet is found, then the gravity of additional smaller planets will tug on the larger object, causing deviations in the regular cycle of transits. The TTV technique compares the deviations with predictions made by extensive computer-based calculations, allowing astronomers to deduce the makeup of the planetary system.

For this search, the team used the 90-cm telescopes of the University Observatory Jena and the 60-cm telescope of the Rohzen National Astronomical Observatory in Bulgaria to study transits of WASP-3b, a large planet with 630 times the mass of the Earth.

“We detected periodic variations in the transit timing of WASP-3b.  These variations can be explained by an additional planet in the system, with a mass of 15 Earth-mass (i.e. one Uranus mass) and a period of 3.75 days”, said Dr Maciejewski.

“In line with international rules, we called this new planet WASP-3c”. This newly discovered planet is among the least massive planets known to date and also the least massive planet known orbiting a star which is more massive than our Sun.

This is the first time that a new extra-solar planet has been discovered using this method. The new TTV approach is an indirect detection technique, like the previously successful transit method.

The discovery of the second, 15 Earth-mass planet makes the WASP-3 system very intriguing. The new planet appears to be trapped in an external orbit, twice as long as the orbit of the more massive planet. Such a configuration is probably a result of the early evolution of the system.

The TTV method is very attractive, because it is particularly sensitive to small perturbing planets, even down to the mass of the Earth. For example, an Earth-mass planet will pull on a typical gas giant planet orbiting close to its star and cause deviations in the timing of the larger objects’ transits of up to 1 minute.

This is a big enough effect to be detected with relatively small 1-m diameter telescopes and discoveries can be followed up with larger instruments. The team are now using the 10-m Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas to study WASP-3c in more detail.

CONTACTS:

Dr Gracjan Maciejewski
Astrophysical Institute
Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Phone: +49-3641-947524
Mobile: +48-691-239648
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Dinko Dimitrov
Institute of Astronomy
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Sofia
Tel: +359-979-5931
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Prof. Dr Ralph Neuhäuser
Astrophysical Institute
Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Tel: +49-3641-947500
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Prof. Dr Andrzej Niedzielski
Torun Centre for Astronomy
Nicolaus Copernicus University
Tel: +48-56-6113057 
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IMAGES AND CAPTIONS:

Images can be found on www.astro.uni-jena.de/wasp-3

1. This figure shows the variation in light (the light curve) caused by the transit of the planet WASP-3b. These data originate from observations made on 18 April 2010 with the University Observatory Jena 90-cm telescope. Individual data points are shown as dots. The brightness of the star in millimagnitudes (an astronomical unit of brightness) is plotted against observing time in hours (0.0 marks the centre of the transit). The red line is the best fit to the data showing the transit start (or ingress) from first to second tick-marks, mid-transit (3rd tick-mark) and the transit end (egress) from the 4th to the 5th tick-mark. During the ingress, the planet moves fully in front of the stellar disk and during the egress, the planet leaves the stellar disk. Credit: Gracan Maciejewski, Dinko Dimitrov, Ralph Neuhäuser, Andrzej Niedzielski et al.

2. This is the so-called O-C diagram for WASP-3b. We plot the difference between observed (O) transit time and calculated (C) expected transit time on the y-axis in minutes versus the time given as orbital periods of WASP-3b. We plot the previously published transit times as blue dots and our own new measurements as red dots. If there was only one planet around the star WASP-3, then all the points should be on one straight line. With a second planet with 15 Earth masses and a 3.75 day orbital period, the orbital period of WASP-3b is modified in the way shown by the black line. This is indirect evidence for WASP-3c. Credit: Gracan Maciejewski, Dinko Dimitrov, Ralph Neuhäuser, Andrzej Niedzielski et al.

3. This image shows the faint star WASP-3 (magnitude 10.5 or about 60 times fainter than can be seen with the unaided eye) in the centre of the image, made using the 90-cm telescope of the University Observatory Jena. The star is enlarged with better sensitivity and resolution in the inlay in the lower left. WASP-3 is at a distance of 700 light years and is located in the constellation Lyra. North is up, east to the left. The large image is a composite of three images taken using different filters (blue, visual and red) and the small inlay only uses a red filter. Credit: Gracan Maciejewski, Dinko Dimitrov, Ralph Neuhäuser, Andrzej Niedzielski et al.

FURTHER INFORMATION

The research appears in “Transit timing variation in exoplanet WASP-3b”, Maciejewski G., Dimitrov D., Neuhäuser R., Niedzielski A., Raetz St., Ginski Ch., Adam Ch., Marka C., Moulla M., Mugrauer M., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in press.

A preprint of the paper can be found at http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1006.1348

NOTES FOR EDITORS

The research is based on the collaborative effort of scientists at the Astrophysical Institute of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, the Institute of Astronomy of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the Torun Centre for Astronomy of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. The work was led by Jena post-doc Dr Gracjan Maciejewski, originally from Torun, Poland.

The TTV search for planets is funded by both Germany and Poland as a key example of scientific cooperation between the two states and on the Jena side is also supported by the European Union through a Marie-Curie project.

The University Observatory Jena is operated by the Astrophysical Institute of the Friedrich Schiller University and the Rozhen National Astronomical Observatory is operated by the Institute of Astronomy of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. On the Jena telescope, a new CCD detector was used, installed partly for this project at the telescope's so-called Schmidt focus, a project supported by the Thuringian science ministry.

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS: www.ras.org.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organizes scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognizes outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 3500 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

The July digest of forthcoming space and astronomy events, from the RAS. This month sees the Rosetta spacecraft fly past the asteroid Lutetia, a total solar eclipse and a planetary conjunction in the twilight sky.

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10 July: Rosetta encounters asteroid Lutetia

On the evening of 10 July, the European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft Rosetta will make its closest approach to the 134-km diameter asteroid Lutetia, passing the rock at a minimum distance of less than 3200 km.

Artist's impression of the Rosetta
encounter with Lutetia. Credit: ESA

Launched in 2004, Rosetta’s ultimate destination is Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which it will reach in 2014. On arrival, Rosetta will deploy the Philae lander that will stick to the Comet’s nucleus and study how it changes as it travels in its orbit around the Sun.

Further information:

ESA media event
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMC5YOZVAG_index_0.html

Rosetta home page
http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Rosetta/

Contact:

ESA media relations service
Tel: +33 1 5369 7299
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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11 July: Total solar eclipse (South Pacific)

On 11 July a total solar eclipse will take place, visible along a narrow track across the South Pacific Ocean that passes over Polynesia and then Easter Island before ending at sunset in southern Argentina.

Total eclipses happen when Sun, Moon and Earth are in a straight line and the Moon’s shadow touches the surface of the Earth. For a short time observers within the lunar shadow see a total eclipse of the Sun, where the brightest part of our nearest star (the photosphere) is covered by the Moon, leaving a clear view of the outer atmosphere or corona.

The lunar shadow is relatively small (this time it is a maximum of 259 km across) and as the Earth turns and the Moon travels in its orbit it only reaches our planet for a few hours. This time observers at greatest eclipse will see an eclipse lasting 5 minutes and 20 seconds. Most of the South Pacific and the southern half of South America lie outside the central track of the shadow, but eclipse watchers there will see some of the Sun obscured in a partial eclipse.

Further information:

HMNAO eclipse home page
http://www.eclipse.org.uk

NASA eclipse home page
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html

Contacts:

Dr Francisco Diego (will be on Easter Island for the eclipse)
University College London
Mob: +44 (0)7974 91 78 78
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Dr Robert Massey (in the UK)
Royal Astronomical Society
Tel: +44 (0)20 7734 3307 / 4582 x.214
Mob: +44 (0)794 124 8035
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Twitter: @royalastrosoc

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15 July: Saturn, Mars, Moon and Venus close together in evening sky

Just after sunset on the evening of 15 July, observers should be able to see Saturn, Mars, Venus and the Moon in the western sky. After the Moon, Venus will be easiest to spot, with Mars and Saturn higher up and to the east of the other two objects. This planetary conjunction event, visible to the unaided eye, offers the opportunity for astrophotographers to obtain images of objects which although at very different distances, for a short period appear close together in the twilight sky.

Further information (including a finder chart):

Jodrell Bank guide to planets in the July night sky
http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/astronomy/nightsky/#planets

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July's night sky

Information on stars, planets, meteor showers and other celestial phenomena is available from the British Astronomical Association (BAA) at http://www.britastro.org and from http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/astronomy/nightsky/

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Notes for editors

The Royal Astronomical Society
The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS: www.ras.org.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organizes scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognizes outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 3500 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

Many of the Milky Way’s ancient stars are remnants of other smaller galaxies torn apart by violent galactic collisions around five billion years ago, according to researchers at Durham University, who publish their results in a new paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Scientists at Durham’s Institute for Computational Cosmology and their collaborators at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, in Germany, and Groningen University, in Holland, ran huge computer simulations to recreate the beginnings of our Galaxy.

The simulations revealed that the ancient stars, found in a stellar halo of debris surrounding the Milky Way, had been ripped from smaller galaxies by the gravitational forces generated by colliding galaxies.

Cosmologists predict that the early Universe was full of small galaxies which led short and violent lives. These galaxies collided with each other leaving behind debris which eventually settled into more familiar looking galaxies like the Milky Way.

The researchers say their finding supports the theory that many of the Milky Way’s ancient stars had once belonged to other galaxies instead of being the earliest stars born inside the Galaxy when it began to form about 10 billion years ago.

Lead author Andrew Cooper, from Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology, said: “Effectively we became galactic archaeologists, hunting out the likely sites where ancient stars could be scattered around the galaxy.

“Our simulations show how different relics in the Galaxy today, like these ancient stars, are related to events in the distant past.

“Like ancient rock strata that reveal the history of Earth, the stellar halo preserves a record of a dramatic primeval period in the life of the Milky Way which ended long before the Sun was born.”

The computer simulations started from shortly after the Big Bang, around 13 billion years ago, and used the universal laws of physics to simulate the evolution of dark matter and the stars.

These simulations are the most realistic to date, capable of zooming into the very fine detail of the stellar halo structure, including star “streams” – which are stars being pulled from the smaller galaxies by the gravity of the dark matter.

One in one hundred stars in the Milky Way belong to the stellar halo, which is much larger than the Galaxy’s familiar spiral disk. These stars are almost as old as the Universe.

Professor Carlos Frenk, Director of Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology, said: “The simulations are a blueprint for galaxy formation.

“They show that vital clues to the early, violent history of the Milky Way lie on our galactic doorstep.

“Our data will help observers decode the trials and tribulations of our Galaxy in a similar way to how archaeologists work out how ancient Romans lived from the artefacts they left behind.”

The research is part of the Aquarius Project, which uses the largest supercomputer simulations to study the formation of galaxies like the Milky Way and was partly funded by the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Aquarius was carried out by the Virgo Consortium, involving scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, UK, the University of Victoria in Canada, the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, Caltech in the USA and Trieste in Italy.

Durham’s cosmologists will present their work to the public as part of the Royal Society's 350th anniversary 'See Further' exhibition, held at London's Southbank Centre until July 4th.

The highlight of their 'Cosmic Origins' exhibit is an award winning 3-D movie describing how the Milky Way formed. Visitors to the exhibit can also create their own star streams by colliding galaxies with an interactive 3-D simulation.

Contacts

Andrew Cooper
[Available for interview on Tuesday 29 June and Wednesday 30 June]
Institute for Computational Cosmology
Durham University
Tel: +44 (0)191 334 3768
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Professor Carlos Frenk
Director, Institute for Computational Cosmology
[Available for interview on Tuesday 29 June and Wednesday 30 June]
Durham University
Tel: +44 (0)191 334 3461
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Media Relations Office
Durham University
Tel: +44 (0)191 334 6075
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Dr Robert Massey
Royal Astronomical Society
Tel: +44 (0)20 7734 3307 x 214
Mob: +44 (0)794 124 8035
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Images and captions

Images are available from http://www.virgo.dur.ac.uk/aquarius/ancient_stars/index.html

Ancient stars 1 – Simulation showing a Milky Way-like galaxy around five billion years ago when most satellite galaxy collisions were happening. Credit: Andrew Cooper / John Helly / Durham University

Ancient stars 2 – Simulation showing the stellar halo around the Milky Way in the present day. Credit: Andrew Cooper / Durham University

Images are also available on request from Durham University Media Relations Office on +44 (0)191 334 6075 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

A copy of The International Virgo Consortium/Durham University Institute for Computational Cosmology “Cosmic Origins” movie is available as a MVA file via the following web link http://www.dur.ac.uk/n.s.holliman/CosmicOrigins.html

To download the file right click on the link Cosmic Origins - QHD 2D version of the 2D movie and select “save target as”. Please note this file is 257MB in size.

Further information

The work appears in the paper “Galactic Stellar Haloes in the CDM Model”, Cooper AP, et al, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.16740.x.

A copy of the paper is available from Durham University Media Relations Office on +44 (0)191 334 6075 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Institute for Computational Cosmology: www.icc.dur.ac.uk/

Durham University: www.dur.ac.uk/

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=1745-3925

Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC): www.stfc.ac.uk/

Durham University – a member of the 1994 Group
Durham University is a member of the 1994 Group of 19 leading research-intensive universities. The Group was established in 1994 to promote excellence in university research and teaching. Each member undertakes diverse and high-quality research, while ensuring excellent levels of teaching and student experience. www.1994group.ac.uk

The Royal Astronomical Society
The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS: www.ras.org.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organizes scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognizes outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 3000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

Using two of the world’s largest telescopes, an international team of astronomers have found evidence of a collision between galaxies driving intense activity in a highly luminous quasar. The scientists, led by Montserrat Villar Martin of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucía-CSIC in Spain, used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) on La Palma in the Canary Islands, to study activity from the quasar SDSS J0123+00. They publish their work in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Type 2 quasar SDSS J0123+01
Credit: Montserrat Villar Martin (IAA-CSIC)

For the first time, a team of astronomers has succeeded in investigating the earliest phases of the evolutionary history of our home Galaxy, the Milky Way. The scientists, from the Argelander Institute for Astronomy at Bonn University and the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, deduce that the early Galaxy went from smooth to clumpy in just a few hundred million years. The team publish their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Globular star cluster M80 (NGC 6093) viewed by the HST