Hubbles new images

Hubbles new images

The newly installed Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been beaming back spectacular images of our universe. Here is a stunning view of a colliding galaxy dubbed the "Tadpole" (UGC10214). Set against a rich tapestry of 6,000 galaxies, the Tadpole, with its long tail of stars, looks like a runaway pinwheel firework. Another picture depicts a spectacular collision between two spiral galaxies — dubbed "The Mice" — that presages what may happen to our own Milky Way several billion years from now when it collides with the neighboring galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. Looking closer to home, ACS imaged the "Cone Nebula," a craggy-looking mountaintop of cold gas and dust that is a cousin to Hubble's iconic "pillars of creation" in the Eagle Nebula, photographed in 1995. Peering into a celestial maternity ward called the Omega Nebula or M17, ACS revealed a watercolor fantasy-world of glowing gases, where stars and perhaps embryonic planetary systems are forming.

Chandrayaan Mission - A.P. J. Abdul Kalam Visits Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu village

Every Indian should be proud of Chandrayaan, says Kalam

Bangalore Bureau

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

BANGALORE: Byalalu village near Bangalore had a high profile visitor on Saturday. The former President, A.P. J. Abdul Kalam, visited the Indian Deep Space Network and the giant antenna here and expressed his desire to see an Indian scientist land on the moon by 2021. “I would be 90 years old then,” he told a gathering of senior scientists.

G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) presented Mr. Kalam with a picture of the Earth taken by the Terrain Mapping Camera on board Chandrayaan-1 from an altitude of 70,000 km.

Earlier in the day, speaking to reporters after launching an emergency response service in the city, Mr. Kalam said he believed that every Indian should be proud of the Chandrayaan, the country’s first moon mission programme taken up by ISRO.

The images captured by the spacecraft were of high resolution and quality and therefore “an indication of what it holds for the future,” he added. On November 8, when Chandrayaan leaves the Earth’s gravity and enters the moon’s orbit, will be the next milestone for the mission, Mr. Kalam said.  source 

India and the moon.

Back to the India and the moon. The country will be the fourth to place its flag on the moon, there have been 60 launches before Chandrayaan, so what is the euphoria about? The Indian space programme, Newsweek says, can't claim to be a space leader but is far ahead of other countries on one count: its use of space technologies to solve problems of everyday people on the ground. India's investment in Earth observation satellites is a tenth of what the West invests but it has managed to build and launch 46 satellites in 20 years.  more 

Chandrayaan blasts off at 6.20 am on Wenesday 22 October 2008

Scientific community celebrates successful launch of Chandrayaan-1

Bangalore (IANS): It is a time for jubilation for the scientific community of India and they are cherishing every moment of it with the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1 early Wednesday.

The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, India's first unmanned scientific mission to the moon, blasted off successfully towards destination moon from Sriharikota, about 80 km from Chennai.

With the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1, India now has joined an exclusive club of nations including the US, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency, China and Japan to have sent missions to moon.

more 

New Scientist

October 10, 2008 12:11 PM

$7.5 trillion for a 'transitional' fossil?

Palaeontologists: this could be your lucky day. Turkish creationist Adnan Oktarhas just offered ten trillion lira - a mouth-watering $7.5 trillion - to "anyone who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution".  more 

U.S. video game magnate Richard Garriott starts space travel

U.S. space tourist blasts off in Russian rocket 

Enlarge Photo U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott gives a thumbs-up after donning his spacesuit at Baikonur cosmodrome...

Sun, Oct 12 02:37 PM

By Maria Golovnina

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - blasted off into space aboard a Russian rocket on Sunday watched by his father, a NASA astronaut who went into space at the height of the Cold War.

The Russian Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft lifted off in clear weather from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the Kazakh steppes just after 1.00 p.m. (0700 GMT).

A video game developer from Texas, Garriott paid $35 million to fly into space alongside U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov.

Garriott's father, Owen, watched the blast off through binoculars on an observation platform and Garriott's girlfriend, Kelly Miller, burst into tears. more 

Shark in ‘virgin birth’

The Hindu Oct 11, 2008 

RICHMOND: Scientists have confirmed the second case of a “virgin birth” in a shark.

In a study reported on Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Centre contained no genetic material from a male.

The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Nebraska, zoo.

The aquarium sharks that reproduced without mates each carried only one pup, while some shark species can produce litters numbering in the dozen or more. The scientists cautioned that the rare asexual births should not be viewed as a solution to declining global shark populations.

“It is very unlikely that a small number of female survivors could build their numbers up very quickly by undergoing virgin birth,” Mr. Chapman said.

The medical mystery began 16 months ago after the death of the Atlantic blacktip shark named Tidbit at the Virginia Beach aquarium. No male blacktip sharks were present during her eight years at the aquarium. In May 2007, the 152-cm, 43-kg shark died of stress-related complications related to her unknown pregnancy after undergoing a yearly checkup. The 25.4-cm shark pup was found during a necropsy of Tidbit, surprising aquarium officials. They initially thought the embryonic pup was either a product of a virgin birth or a cross between the blacktip and a male of another shark species — which has never been documented, Chapman said. Tidbit’s pup was nearly full term, and likely would have been quickly eaten by “really big sand tiger sharks,” he said.  more