Society and Space

Two new rocky ’super Earths’ found

12:50 01 September 04

NewScientist.com news service

Two Neptune-sized planets have been discovered circling stars beyond our Solar System, US astronomers reported on Tuesday. The discoveries, which come less than a week after a similar announcement by European scientists, hint at a vast new class of extrasolar planet.

The new planets are “middleweight” and may be rocky, in contrast to the massive planets whose discovery is favoured by current observational techniques. Most of the 135 known extrasolar planets have masses on a par with Jupiter, a gas giant several hundred times the mass of Earth. But the two new planets weigh in at around Neptune’s mass, which is 17 times that of Earth, and span about three times Earth’s diameter.

“We can’t quite see Earth-like planets yet, but we’re seeing their big brothers,” says Paul Butler, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, DC, who found one of the planets. He believes lower mass planets may outnumber their heftier gas giant cousins.

The two new planets each orbit their host stars in less than three days, at distances about 10 and 20 times closer than Mercury orbits the Sun. They were both discovered by the gravitational “wobbles” they induced in their stars, which lie less than 45 light-years away from Earth.

Quadruple system

Butler and his colleagues used the powerful Keck Observatory in Hawaii to find a planet 20 times the mass of Earth around Gliese 436, a type of star called an M dwarf. Relatively lightweight planets are easier to detect around these stars, which themselves boast just half the mass of the Sun.

However, M dwarfs have not been studied extensively because they are faint - only one other is known to host a planet - but they represent about 70% of nearby stars. That suggests more than 20 billion M dwarfs may harbour planetary systems in our galaxy alone, according to the team.

The new find may also signal a link between planetary masses and star types. “Perhaps these small stars typically have smaller planets,” Butler says.

The other planet was discovered circling a star called 55 Cancri, which already has three known planets. The discovery of the new planet, using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas, makes 55 Cancri the first quadruple planetary system found beyond the Solar System.

It is also the smallest-mass planet yet confirmed, as Hubble Space Telescope observations pinned down its mass at 18 times that of Earth. European astronomers did announce finding a planet about 14 times the mass of Earth on 25 August – but this discovery was not peer-reviewed, the US scientists say, citing a slightly tense “but friendly” race to find new planets.

Steam atmosphere

The new planets’ compositions are a mystery. But astronomers believe they formed at large distances from the Sun, like Neptune. They would have begun with rocky, icy cores and thick atmospheres and migrated inward.

“People have speculated that such planets could then become ocean worlds as the ice melts,” says Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. If the planets wandered too close to the star for liquid water to be stable, the planets “would instead have a massive steam atmosphere", she told New Scientist.

I thought I’d post pictures of my computers. So here you go!

Analysis: NASA’s unusual Mercury mission By Phil Berardelli United Press International Published 8/4/2004 11:00 PM

WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 (UPI) – It is a dead hunk of rock orbiting so close to the sun its surface temperature is hot enough to fry lead. Its atmosphere is so tenuous it almost is not worth mentioning. Among its few distinctions, it is the densest of the terrestrial planets, with the oldest and most pristine surface, the highest surface temperature, the greatest temperature variance, the shortest orbital period and the longest day.

Given everything known about planetary geology, atmospheric chemistry and biology, there is almost no chance the planet Mercury harbors any kind of life.

Yet on Tuesday, NASA launched – within a window that lasted only 12 seconds – its MESSENGER spacecraft on a voyage that will take seven years to end up in orbit around the innermost, second-smallest and arguably least interesting member of the solar system.

The reason, space agency scientists said, is little Mercury harbors mysteries they would very much like to unravel.

MESSENGER, which stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging, is only the second U.S. spacecraft sent to the the planet, and it will be the first to establish an orbit. It will take so long to reach its destination because its trajectory must use a series of gravity assists from Earth, Venus – and Mercury – to lower its speed enough to fall into orbit. In such a maneuver, the spacecraft flies close by a planet and either picks up or loses speed due to gravitational action.

Each of the six planned gravity assists will change the shape, size, speed and tilt of MESSENGER’s flightpath until the spacecraft only needs its onboard propellant to insert itself into Mercurial orbit, on March 18, 2011.

MESSENGER’s first close flyby actually involves a return to Earth in August 2005. Then it will fly past Venus twice, in October 2006 and June 2007. After that come three Mercury flybys, each followed about two months later by a course correction maneuver, to put MESSENGER in position to enter its final orbit, where it will operate for at least a year.

During the Mercury flybys, in January 2008, October 2008 and September 2009, MESSENGER will map nearly the entire planet in color and image much of the area unseen by Mariner 10 – which visited Mercury 25 years ago and snapped more than 1,000 photographs – and measure the composition of the surface, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

Then, following orbital insertion, the craft will begin to explore why Mercury, 65 percent of which is composed of a metal-rich core, is twice as dense as Earth, Venus or Mars.

It will also map the planet’s surface, stereoscopically, so 3D images can be constructed. Most of what was imaged by Mariner 10 is cratered and ancient, like the surface of Earth’s moon – except Mercury’s surface is older. NASA scientists are wondering why the planet contains huge, rounded escarpments nearly a mile in height and hundreds of miles long, something that is common on Mercury but rare on Mars. To date, there is no known geological mechanism for them.

One of Mariner 10’s more surprising discoveries was Mercury’s global magnetic field – the only one on a terrestrial planet other than Earth. The Earth’s field is thought to be generated by swirling motions in the molten liquid outer portions of its core. But Mercury is so much smaller – 3,030 miles in diameter (4,878 kilometers), or about the size of Saturn’s moon Titan – that its core should long ago have cooled and solidified, rendering it incapable of generating magnetism on a planetary scale.

Understanding the nature of Mercury’s core could explain much about how Earth generates its magnetic field.

Earth’s field is highly dynamic. It changes constantly in response to solar wind and flares. The effects of these phenomena are seen as they black out power grids and electronics, and interfere with radios and telephones.

Mercury’s field experiences similar dynamics, so understanding them will help scientists understand the interaction of the sun with Earth’s field. Though Mercury’s field is thought to be a miniature version of Earth’s, scientists do not know for sure because Mariner 10 did not measure Mercury’s field long enough to determine, for example, how strong it is.

Earth’s field is a called a dipole field, meaning Earth acts like a giant bar magnet, with a positive and negative side. Mercury’s field also is a dipole, but it is not certain whether it is generated as a single field or is an agglomeration of multiple, smaller fields – a phenomenon that exists on the moon and Mars.

Mercury’s axis of rotation is nearly perpendicular to the planet’s orbit, so sunlight in the polar regions strikes the surface at a constant angle. There are large craters at the poles, the interiors of which are permanently shadowed and remain perpetually cold – below minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 212 degrees Celsius).

Earth-satellite-based radar images of Mercury’s polar regions show the large crater interiors are highly reflective. The most common material that could explain this characteristic behavior is water ice. Scientists think comets and meteorites falling on the Mercurial surface at the poles could have deposited ice over billions of years, or water vapor might have migrated from the planet’s interior and frozen at the poles.

It also is possible the polar reflective areas consist of some different material, such as sulfur. In any event, MESSENGER’s instruments will be directed to investigate and see if what is lurking in Mercury’s polar craters can tell scientists something about the prevalence of water in the solar system.

As Sean Solomon, MESSENGER’s principal mission scientist said recently, in order to understand why the various planets of the solar system formed the way it did, it is important “to study the most extreme of those outcomes, and that’s Mercury.”

–

Phil Berardelli is UPI’s Science & Technology Editor. E-mail sciencemail@upi.com

Following are a series of photos I have taken of my friends. It documents our good times.

Images taken during the Cassini spacecraft’s orbital insertion on June 30 show definite compositional variation within the rings.

This image shows, from left to right, the outer portion of the C ring and inner portion of the B ring. The B ring begins a little more than halfway across the image. The general pattern is from “dirty” particles indicated by red to cleaner ice particles shown in turquoise in the outer parts of the rings.

The ring system begins from the inside out with the D, C, B and A rings followed by the F, G and E rings.

This image was taken with the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument, which is capable of resolving the rings to show features up to 97 kilometers (60 miles) across, roughly 100 times the resolution of ultraviolet data obtained by the Voyager 2 spacecraft.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph was built at, and the team is based at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo.

For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://lasp.colorado.edu/cassini.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Colorado

Saturn’s A Ring From the Inside Out 07.09.04

The best view of Saturn’s rings in the ultraviolet indicates there is more ice toward the outer part of the rings, than in the inner part, hinting at the origins of the rings and their evolution.

Images taken during the Cassini spacecraft’s orbital insertion on June 30 show compositional variation in the A, B and C rings. From the inside out, the “Cassini Division” in faint red at left is followed by the A ring in its entirety. The Cassini Division at left contains thinner, dirtier rings than the turquoise A ring, indicating a more icy composition. The red band roughly three-fourths of the way outward in the A ring is known as the Encke gap.

The ring system begins from the inside out with the D, C, B and A rings followed by the F, G and E rings. The red in the image indicates sparser ringlets likely made of “dirty,” and possibly smaller, particles than in the icier turquoise ringlets.

This image was taken with the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument, which is capable of resolving the rings to show features up to 97 kilometers (60 miles) across, roughly 100 times the resolution of ultraviolet data obtained by the Voyager 2 spacecraft.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph was built at, and the team is based at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo.

For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://lasp.colorado.edu/cassini.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Colorado

A Gas Giant with Super-Fast Winds 05.26.04

The sixth planet from the sun, Saturn formed more than four billion years ago. With a diameter of 120,536 kilometers (almost 75,000 miles) it is the second largest planet in the solar system. While almost as big in size as Jupiter, Saturn’s density is the lowest in the solar system and its mass only 30 percent that of Jupiter. Saturn’s specific gravity (0.7) is less than that of water. In fact, Saturn’s density is so low that it could float in an imaginary gigantic bathtub.

Like Jupiter, Saturn is made up mainly of hydrogen and helium gases. However, it is twice as far from Earth as Jupiter, and from Saturn the Sun appears about 10 times smaller than how we see it from Earth. On average, an area on Earth receives 90 times the amount of sunlight than the same area would on Saturn. Scientists believe Saturn’s interior is similar to Jupiter’s, consisting of a rocky core much like the size of Earth, a liquid metallic hydrogen layer and a molecular hydrogen layer. Traces of various ices are also present. Saturn’s interior is hot. At the core, the temperature is about 12,000 degrees Kelvin (21,150 degrees Fahrenheit). Saturn radiates more energy into space than it receives from the Sun.

Winds in Saturn’s upper atmosphere can reach speeds of 1,800 kilometers (1,118 miles) per hour near its equator. In contrast, the strongest hurricane-force winds on Earth top out at about 396 kilometers (246 miles) per hour. These super-fast winds, combined with heat rising from within the planet’s interior, cause the yellow and gold bands visible in Saturn’s atmosphere.

Because of its distance from the center of our solar system, the ringed planet takes almost 30 years to orbit the sun. Saturn, however, spins on its axis very quickly. A Saturnian day only lasts 10 hours and 15 minutes. The fast rate of rotation and the planet’s gaseous composition create unusually flat poles, and result in bulges at the equator which are noticeable even by a small telescope.

When it is in the nighttime sky, Saturn is easily visible to the naked eye. Though it is not nearly as bright as Jupiter, it is easy to identify as a planet because it doesn’t “twinkle” like stars do. The planet’s rings and its larger satellites are visible with a small astronomical telescope.

Piercing the ubiquitous layer of smog enshrouding Titan, these images from the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer reveals an exotic surface covered with a variety of materials in the southern hemisphere. Visible is a circular feature that may be a crater in the north.

Using near-infrared colors–some three times deeper in the red visible to the human eye–these images reveal the surface with unusual clarity. The color image shows a false-color combination of three previous images. The yellow areas correspond to the hydrocarbon-rich regions, while the green areas are the icier regions. Here, the methane cloud appears white, as it is bright in all three colors.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The Cassini spacecraft has sighted tiny Pan, a body only 20 kilometers (12 miles) across. Pan is responsible for parting the Encke Gap in Saturn’s outer A ring. The 22 narrow angle camera images making up this movie and taken in visible light were part of a sequence designed specifically to search for Pan and for small moonlets near Saturn’s F ring.

The Encke Gap is a relatively narrow gap, approximately 270 kilometers (168 miles) wide. Pan was discovered in 1990 in images returned by the Voyager spacecraft in 1980 and 1981. This is the first time Pan has been seen since Voyager days.

In order of appearance beginning with the upper left, the movie shows the moons Prometheus (102 kilometers or 63 miles across), Pandora (84 kilometers or 52 miles across), Pan and Atlas (32 kilometers or 20 miles across). A separate Cassini movie release (see PIA06076) highlights Cassini’s recent recovery of Atlas.

Cassini’s closeness to Saturn makes it possible to now see that the F ring shepherd moons, Prometheus and Pandora, are not spherical. Also of note is the faint, discontinuous ring material in the Encke Gap ahead of Pan at the movie’s start, and a great deal of complex knotted structure in the F ring.

The view is upward from Cassini’s southern vantage point beneath the ring plane. The moons visible here are orbiting Saturn in a plane that is tilted 66 degrees away from the viewer.

These images were taken on June 21, 2004, from a distance of approximately 6.5 million kilometers (4 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is approximately 39 kilometers (24 miles) per pixel. Contrast was enhanced in order to make Pan and Atlas more visible; as a result, the rings have a somewhat washed-out appearance.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This image shows three density waves in Saturn’s A ring. It was taken by the narrow angle camera on the Cassini spacecraft after successful entry into Saturn’s orbit. The view shows the dark, or unlit, side of the rings.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

After becoming the first spacecraft to enter Saturn’s orbit, Cassini sent back this image of a portion of the planet’s rings. It shows the sunlit side of the rings.

Image credit: NASA/JPL

This posting is from http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/.

Captain’s Log

Star Date: 2004.346

Today, we have reached a turning point in our travels on approach to the ringed planet.

We have at last glimpsed the surface of the fabled world, Titan, Saturn’s largest moon and the greatest single expanse of unexplored territory remaining in the Solar System today. What wondrous sights now await us on this remarkable journey we can only imagine.

Titan has long intrigued those who watch the planets. It is a Mercury-sized icy body whose surface environment may be, in some respects, more like Earth’s than any other in the Solar System. Like Earth’s, its atmosphere is thick and largely molecular nitrogen. Unlike Earth’s, it is lacking free oxygen and is suffused with small but significant amounts of gaseous methane, ethane, propane, and other simple and not-so-simple organic materials containing hydrogen and carbon. Some of these compounds, methane and ethane, may be liquid at the surface, despite the unimaginable cold of -300 degrees Fahrenheit. And though there is no liquid water, what water does on Earth, methane does on Titan. The presence of this simple hydrocarbon as a liquid on the surface and a gas in the atmosphere gives Titan a terrestrial-like greenhouse cycle and a boost in temperature, warming its lower atmosphere. If present-day Titan could be warmed enough to melt its icy exterior, its atmosphere would bear a striking resemblance to that of early Earth, billions of years ago, prior to the emergence of life. Might Titan be a frozen, pre-biotic Earth, telling a tale littered with clues to the origins of terrestrial life long ago?

Despite the Voyager explorations of the early 1980s, the details of Titan’s story remain unknown, hidden beneath an atmosphere impenetrable to the Voyager cameras. At the moment, what lies on its surface exists only in the mind’s eye.

And in the mind’s eye, it is a strange place indeed.

Patchy methane clouds float several miles above the icy ground. In places, large, slow-moving droplets of methane mixed with other liquid organics fall to the surface in cold but gentle rains, cutting gullies, forming rivers and cataracts, carving canyons, and filling basins, craters and other surface depressions. Imagine Lake Michigan brimming with paint thinner.

Above the methane clouds and rain lies two hundred kilometers worth of globe-enveloping red smog, making the Titan nights starless and the days eerie dark, where high noon is as dim as deep Earth twilight. Over eons, smog particles have drifted downwards, growing as they fell, to coat the surface in a blanket of organic matter. On high, steep slopes, methane rains have washed away this sludge, revealing the bright bedrock of ice. Could Xanadu, the brightest feature on Titan, be a high, methane-washed, mountain range of ice?

Occasional bolts of lightning momentarily brighten the gloomy landscape, and wind-blown waves lap the shores of hydrocarbon lakes and seas dotting the scene.

This is a rich and complex environment, where oddly familiar terrain is carved by odd and unfamiliar substances … a fascinating, virgin world whose only rival may be the Earth itself, with sights still unseen by human eyes.

Anticipation is at its greatest. The pulse quickens, the mind races, the soul is grateful. It is a singular privilege to be standing on the threshold separating ignorance and knowing.

And that’s exactly where we are.

This is exploration at its finest and is precisely why we have come to this strange and far-away place.

Step aside, Captain Kirk. This one belongs to us.

Carolyn Porco Cassini Imaging Team Leader CICLOPS/Space Science Institute Boulder, CO cpcomments@ciclops.org

This posting is from http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia05413.html

In this image, dark regions represent areas where Cassini is seeing into deeper levels in Saturn’s atmosphere. The dark regions are relatively free of high clouds and the light at these particular near-infrared wavelengths (centered at 727 nanometers) penetrates into the gaseous cloud-free atmosphere and is absorbed by methane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on May 15, 2004, from a distance of 24.7 million kilometers (15.4 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 147 kilometers (91 miles) per pixel. Contrast in the image was enhanced to aid visibility.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org .

—————————–

Below is a November 9, 2003 image.

Here are photos of various places and things.

This is referenced from http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/planetlikebody.html

Planet-Like Body Discovered at Fringes of Our Solar System 03.15.04

What’s bigger than an asteroid, smaller than a planet, red all over and far, far away? The answer – a mysterious planet-like body orbiting our Sun – has been discovered by NASA-funded researchers led by an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.

Image above: These three panels show the first detection of the faint distant object dubbed “Sedna.” Imaged on November 14th from 6:32 to 9:38 Universal Time, Sedna was identified by the slight shift in position noted in these three pictures taken at different times. Image courtesy: NASA/Caltech.

The object is three times farther away from Earth than Pluto, making it the most distant known in the solar system.

“The Sun appears so small from that distance that you could completely block it out with the head of a pin,” said Dr. Mike Brown, Caltech associate professor of planetary astronomy and leader of the research team. The object, unofficially named “Sedna,” is 13 billion kilometers (8 billion miles) away from Earth.

This is likely the first detection of the long-hypothesized “Oort cloud,” a faraway repository of small icy bodies that supplies the comets that streak by Earth.

Image above: An artist’s concept of the newly discovered planet-like object, dubbed “Sedna.” The Sun appears as an extremely bright star instead of a large, warm disc observed from Earth. In the distance is a hypothetical small moon, which scientists believe may be orbiting this distant body. Image courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Other notable features of Sedna include its size and reddish color; it is the second reddest object in the solar system, after Mars. At an estimated size of three-fourths the size of Pluto, it is likely the largest object found in the solar system since Pluto was discovered in 1930.

Brown, along with Drs. Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and David Rabinowitz of Yale University, New Haven, Conn., found the “planetoid” on November 14, 2003, using the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory near San Diego. Within days, the object was observed by telescopes in Chile, Spain, Arizona and Hawaii, and soon after, NASA’s new Spitzer Space Telescope looked for it.

Sedna lies extremely far from the Sun, in the coldest known region of our solar system, where the temperature never rises above minus 240 degrees Celsius (minus 400 Fahrenheit).

The planetoid is usually even colder, because it approaches the Sun this closely only briefly during its 10,500 year orbit around the Sun. At its most distant, “Sedna” is 130 billion kilometers (84 billion miles) from the Sun. That is 900 times Earth’s distance from the Sun.

Scientists used the fact that even the Spitzer telescope was unable to detect the heat of the extremely distant, cold object to determine that it must be no more than 1,700 kilometers (about 1,000 miles) in diameter, smaller than Pluto. By combining all available data, Brown estimates the size at about halfway between that of Pluto and Quaoar, the planetoid discovered by the same team in 2002. Until “Sedna” was detected, Quaoar was the largest known body beyond Pluto.

Image above: The artist’s rendition shows “Sedna” in relation to other bodies in the solar system, including Earth and its Moon; Pluto; and Quaoar, a planetoid beyond Pluto that was until now the largest known object beyond Pluto. Image courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The extremely elliptical orbit of Sedna is unlike anything previously seen by astronomers; however, it resembles that of objects predicted to lie in the hypothetical Oort cloud. The cloud is thought to explain the existence of certain comets. It is believed to surround the Sun and extend outward halfway to the star closest to the Sun. But Sedna is 10 times closer than the predicted distance of the Oort cloud. Brown says this “inner Oort cloud” may have been formed by gravity from a rogue star near the Sun in the solar system’s early days.

Brown explained, “The star would have been close enough to be brighter than the full Moon, and it would have been visible in the daytime sky for 20,000 years.” Worse, it would have dislodged comets farther out in the Oort cloud, leading to an intense comet shower that could have wiped out any life that existed on Earth at the time.

Rabinowitz says there is indirect evidence that “Sedna” may have a moon. The researchers hope to check this possibility with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Trujillo has begun to examine the object’s surface with one of the world’s largest optical/infrared telescopes, the 8-meter (26-foot) Frederick C. Gillett Gemini Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. He said, “We still don’t understand what is on the surface of this body. It is nothing like what we would have predicted or what we can currently explain.

“Sedna” will become closer and brighter over the next 72 years before it begins its 10,500-year trip to the far reaches of the solar system and back again. “The last time “Sedna” was this close to the Sun, Earth was just coming out of the last ice age; the next time it comes back, the world might again be a completely different place,” said Brown.

More information and images are available at http://spitzer.caltech.edu. Caltech owns and operates the Palomar Observatory. The Spitzer Space Telescope is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL is a division of Caltech.

The following is from http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995106

Images of Saturn’s battered, icy moon Phoebe have been captured by the Cassini spacecraft.

Phoebe was snapped by Cassini on Friday evening as the craft flew within 2000 kilometres of the moon. Before these sharp images were taken, the best pictures of Phoebe were no more than a blur. The new shots are already giving planetary scientists some hints about Phoebe’s origins and its role in making new moons.

Phoebe may be a captured comet. The mysterious moon is an outsider, lying further out than any of Saturn’s other major moons, and being the only major moon to orbit backwards. Because of these quirks it has been suggested that Phoebe was either an asteroid or comet captured by the giant planet’s gravitational field.

The new pictures show that most of the moon is dark, but impacts have blasted holes in the surface to reveal much brighter material underneath, which is probably a mixture of ices. So Phoebe looks like a dirty snowball - the term coined to describe comets.

“If this really is ice underneath, it fits in with what we saw of [comet] Halley’s nucleus,” says imaging team member Carl Murray of Queen Mary, University of London.

The images back the theory that Phoebe probably formed in the chilly outer Solar System, perhaps in a reservoir of comets beyond Neptune called the Kuiper belt, and was later captured by Saturn. “This may be our first encounter with a Kuiper belt object,” says Murray.

The moon is only a light-middleweight, among Saturn’s 31 known moons, just 220 km across, but it carries more than its share of scars. There are craters within craters. Some of them are gigantic, supporting the idea that Phoebe may have spawned a litter of smaller moons.

Craters may give clues to Phoebe’s history.

There are four outer moonlets, less than 10 km across, that have similar orbits to Phoebe. When they were discovered in 2001, scientists suggested they might have been chipped off the moon by violent impacts. If so, they predicted that the impacts would have blasted out huge craters 50 km across - and now Cassini’s images have borne that prediction out.

The following paragraph is a summary of the article below.

This overall purpose of the Oneness Celebration of birthing a new field of telepathic communication has consequences for the type of meditation that we should conduct during this occasion. If we are open to letting Gaia develop a new field of telepathic contact, then the focus of the meditation should be to open ourselves up to this. Given that it is the right brain half, in resonance with the Eastern Hemisphere, that primarily will mediate this new field then this fact must be taken into account in shaping your meditation. If we, in a meditative alpha state with eyes closed, visualize Light, Cosmic Intelligence, entering through our right brain, and then let this form an infinite loop including the left brain for a sustained period during the Venus transit, then this would mean that we could enter the new field of telepathic contact. If this happens we will eventually come to live in a completely open and honest world, free of conflicts. This love may be ours if we are open to the harmonizing effects of the new field!

This was a nice shot at 4:40 am on the 8th of June 2004.