Surprise Astronomers spot life on Earth

The moon reflects everything that is on the Earth. Michael Sterzik of the European Observatory used a telescope in Chile to study this moonshine. This will sure make our finding of life that.much harder.

Space Stations

Webrner von Brain was one of the architect of the American Space Program. He helped bring space stations into NASA (National Aeronomic and Space Association) and ESA(European Space Association) future. Articles and pictures helped bring this in the future as well.

In order to bring this idea into reality artificial gravity needed to be brought into reality as well. Ships with cargo and people would travel into the station. These ships would be a transfer from Earth as well as other planets.

The US as well as Russia have had orbiting space stations since 1941. The first was Russian Salyut program, then the US Skylab and finally the Russian Meir. Since 1988, NASA, ESA, and Russia, Canada, Japan as well as other countries have been building as well as operating the International Space Station or ISS for 10 years.

Beyond Our Solor System
The Solor System is at least two lightyears from one end to the other. In the entire galaxy there are 200 billion stars. The galaxy is estimated to be 100,000 lightyears across. There are 90 billion visible stars within the universe.

Why build Space Stations?
The most popular reasons to build a space station is for research, industry, exploration and tourism. The first space stations were made to study weightlessness long term effects. Space stations are also a place to do cutting edge in a new environment. Crystals formed within space are altogether formed within space are altogether different than the ones formed on Earth. These can increase the speed of computers as well as change the way drugs are formed and a whole lot more. Microgravity could also change the way fire is formed.

Space stations offer unique views of our planet, and also increase our chances for finding life; by searching from different angles then it is possible here on Earth. Atmospheric interferance isn't a factor in space. Advantages have already been seen from unmanned space telescopes, such as Hubble Space Telescope.

Space Stations might even be used for hotels. Virgin Galactic could transport consumers to and from Earth. Galactic Suites, which is a company based out of Barselonia, Spain; led by engineer Xavier Calramunt is planning a space hotel going up in 2012. Space stations could eventually become ports for space expeditions to planets as well as stars as well as cities which could relieve an overpopulated planet.

Comets

They are basically smaller than meteors. Comets are composed of ices, dust and rocky debris carried from the early formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago.Comets are remnants from the cold, outer regions of the solar system. They are generally thought to come from two areas - the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. Both of these are areas where materials left over from the formation of our solar system have condensed into icy objects. Both regions extend  beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto but are still part of our solar system and much closer to us than the closest star. Haley Bopp will return  Comets are composed of ices, dust and rocky debris carried from the early formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago.

Comets are remnants from the cold, outer regions of the solar system. They are generally thought to come from two areas - the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. Both of these are areas where materials left over from the formation of our solar system have condensed into icy objects. Both regions extend beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto but are still part of our solar system and much closer to us than the closest star in 4380.

The most recent comet
Mcnought, appeared September 7, 2006. In 1993 Shoemaker-Levy fragmented and dissolved in Jupiters atmosphere leaving Jupiters "Big Black Eye."

Encke-shortest orbital period 3.3 years around sun. The way this travels is an extremely elongated orbit. This may contain materials ancient to Earth. It even could have delivered water. Oort cloud is yet another group. Most comets generally have heart frozen mass of ice size of mountains. The reason why its tale is icy is because the ice melts and forms glowy tail. NASAs Stardust was the first to visit a  comet and return in 2006.

Meteors

Meteors are cosmic debris. They are the dust shed by comets as they go by. They have only been seen as going up to 45 mph, so far.

Showers that occur in August are known as Persied showers, for the fact that they take place near the Persied Constellation. 

Many meteorite make up a meteor shower. However there are meteors unlinked to the showers are called sporadics.

In December there is a shower which is known as a Geminids because it is located close to the Gemini Constellation. Some showers are like that and named after the star or constellation they.are near.

Meteor observing is ideal for people who are just beginning, but could, at the same time, get very scientific. Meteor appearance takes time, so patience is required. Their brightness, color and speed take time. They may appear by themselves or be in a group. Zenith Hourly Rate (ZHR) are the exact exact rates the meteors have traveled across the sky. The last time the Earth past through a meteor storm was 1999.

Comets
They are basically smaller than meteors. Comets are composed of ices, dust and rocky debris carried from the early formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago.

Comets are remnants from the cold, outer regions of the solar system. They are generally thought to come from two areas - the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. Both of these are areas where materials left over from the formation of our solar system have condensed into icy objects. Both regions extend  beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto but are still part of our solar system and much closer to us than the closest star.

Haley Bopp will return 2161. Comets are composed of ices, dust and rocky debris carried from the early formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago.

Comets are remnants from the cold, outer regions of the solar system. They are generally thought to come from two areas - the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. Both of these are areas where materials left over from the formation of our solar system have condensed into icy objects. Both regions extend beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto but are still part of our solar system and much closer to us than the closest star in 4380.

The most recent comet.September 7, 2006
Mcnought appeared

1993 Shoemaker-Levy fragmented and dissolved in Jupiters atmosphere leaving Jupiters "Big Black Eye"

Encke-shortest orbital period 3.3 years around sun

Travels extremely elongated orbits

Contain materials ancient to Earth

Could have delivered water

Oort cloud is yet another group

Heart frozen mass of ice size of mountains

Ice melts, forms glowy tail

NASAs Stardust was the first to visit comet and return in 2006

SETI

On August 15, 1977 there was a signal that was heard from space. It was called the WOW signal. It was heard from a telescope of SETI. SETI stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial life. This program began in 1959.

The WOW signal was recieved by Dr. Jerry Herman from Ohio State University on the Big Ear Telescope. It was a 72 second radio transmission.

Now SETI is both a movement.as well as a group. Sagon Research Institute is just one of the sites. It was where the signal was recieved.

Stars suitable for life are found about 40 times a year, and 50% of these may in habit life as we know it. However, only 10% may have the ability of intelligent life.

There are three challenges for SETI. One is to organize itself. Two, is that there is a huge sky to cover and funding is low.  Three is the limit of light at separate times.

Pluto

On August 24, Pluto was demoted as a planet. The reason was the size. They found 800 icy planets, similar to Pluto. It has a diameter of 15,000 miles, which makes it smaller then a moon.

Pluto takes 248 of Earths years to complete a rotation around the sun. It has three moons: Charon, Nix and Hydra. In 2015 NASA, New Horizon is gone to be to explore Pluto as well as the Kuiper Belt.

Neptune

On September 23,1846, Neptune was discovered by Gohann Gottfied Galle. It is 2.8 billion miles from the sun. It takes 164 years to orbit the sun. It does have some faint rings. It has two main moons called Triton and Nereid and 11 smaller ones.

Tritan is Neptunes biggest moon. Its diameter is 1680 miles. It orbit is the wrong way. This moon is circling Neptune and will eventually shatter.

Neried is the third largest moon of Neptune only 211 miles across. It is also known as Neptune II.

Uranus

Uranus was spotted in 1781 by William Hershal. It' axis has a 98 degree tilt. It is 32,000 miles wide. It is 18,000 million miles from the sun. It has an 84 year journey around the sun while its day is only 17 1/4 hours long. It has five moons which are Ariel, Umbriel, Oberon, Titania and Miranda. It has 22 smaller moons which were discovered thus far. There are rings discovered found around Uranus.

Saturn

Saturn has an 11 hour day. Its equator has a diameter of 74,898 miles. It is squashed at the poles as much as Jupiter is. Its rings are seen by any telescope as the most striking feature.

Galileo was the first to see the rings in 1610. The biggest ring has a 2,485 mile diameter. The total of the rings are unknown. They are held together by the pull of Saturn's gravity.

Saturn is the first gas giant in the Solid System. It has a great white spot differing great red spot. However its great white only appears every 30 years.

In 2004, Cassini went up and increased our knowledge greatly, it was a NASA/ESA mission. It witnessed odd storms at the poles. The southern storm is 2/3 the size of Earth. The northern storm is uniquely hexagonal shaped. While 56 satellites were discovered, six of them are studied as of yet.

The six moons of Saturn are; Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Titan. Mimas has massive craters on it. It was first observed by Hershal in 1978. Its diameter is 246 miles. The width of Enceladus is 700 miles. Its surface is of vast water-ice. Tethys is an icy world. Its diameter is 665 miles. Tethys is an icy world. It has a diameter of 665 miles. Odysseus is its largest crater with a diameter of 250 miles. Dion has only a 700 mile width, and is mostly made of water ice. Rhea is the second largest moon with a 950 mile.diameter. Titan is the second largest moon in the whole universe. It has a diameter of 32 miles, which is larger then Mercury.

Titan could have an underground sea. It has a 60 mile wide chasm, which is 1240 miles long. In essence it is like a young Earth. In pictures the atmosphere of Titan appears an orange haze.

Saturn

Saturn has an 11 hour day. Its equator has a diameter of 74,898 miles. It is squashed at the poles as much as Jupiter is. Its rings are seen by any telescope as the most striking feature.

Galileo was the first to see the rings in 1610. The biggest ring has a 2,485 mile diameter. The total of the rings are unknown. They are held together by the pull of Saturn's gravity.

Saturn is the first gas giant in the Solid System. It has a great white spot differing great red spot. However its great white only appears every 30 years.

In 2004, Cassini went up and increased our knowledge greatly, it was a NASA/ESA mission. It witnessed odd storms at the poles. The southern storm is 2/3 the size of Earth. The northern storm is uniquely hexagonal shaped. While 56 satellites were discovered, six of them are studied as of yet.

The six moons of Saturn are; Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Titan. Mimas has massive craters on it. It was first observed by Hershal in 1978. Its diameter is 246 miles. The width of Enceladus is 700 miles. Its surface is of vast water-ice. Tethys is an icy world. Its diameter is 665 miles. Tethys is an icy world. It has a diameter of 665 miles. Odysseus is its largest crater with a diameter of 250 miles. Dion has only a 700 mile width, and is mostly made of water ice. Rhea is the second largest moon with a 950 mile.diameter. Titan is the second largest moon in the whole universe. It has a diameter of 32 miles, which is larger then Mercury.

Titan could have an underground sea. It has a 60 mile wide chasm, which is 1240 miles long. In essence it is like a young Earth. In pictures the atmosphere of Titan appears an orange haze.

Jupiter

Jupiter lies 485 million miles from the sun. It is one of the brightest planets. The light from Jupiter 40 minutes to reach us.The rotation is under 10 hours.This king of planets has an equator of 88,680 miles and is the first gas giant within our Splits System. Pole to pole it is 83,260 miles, which makes it look like a pumpkin.

Jupiters colored bands are because of the winds that are on it. It's one of the noisest objects in sky. Scientists believe it is shrinking. It has 63 moons, 4 of which are huge.  Calisto, Europa, and Io are the and Ganymede. They are known as Galilean Satilities because Galileo discovered them in 1610. Ganymede is the biggest moon in the Splits System. It has a diameter of 2996 miles. It appears to be like a pizza. It's the most volcanically active world.

Venus

So poisonous, yet so like earth; Venus even has an atmosphere. Its climate went out of control. It is now heavy.with sulfur. Its temperature is just as crazy, it is 400 degrees, which is warmer then a conventional oven.

Venus is a total of 68 million miles from the sun, and rotates in the opposite direction. It has 224.7 days in a year and 243 hours within a day.

The surface is enveloped by vast clouds, that reflects 60% of both sunlight and heat. It's condition is a vast greenhouse. The atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of Earths. It mainly contains CO2 and Nitrogen.

The Soviet Union "Venera" probe in 1961, which plunged back in the atmosphere in 1994. Magellin went into orbit in 1990. This allowed maps to be made.

Ishtar Terra and Aphrodite Terra are the only two continents on Venus. In total they have 167 active volcanoes. The planet also has nearly 1000 impact craters.

In 2006 the Europe launched the Venus Express. It got many pictures of Venus, even one of the double vortex of the storm over the South Pole, which is only visible in clear skies in the daylight in clear skies.

Jupiter

Jupiter lies 485 million miles from the sun. It is one of the brightest planets. The light from Jupiter 40 minutes to reach us.The rotation is under 10 hours.This king of planets has an equator of 88,680 miles and is the first gas giant within our Splits System. Pole to pole it is 83,260 miles, which makes it look like a pumpkin.

Jupiters colored bands are because of the winds that are on it.

Asteroids

Our atmosphere is our safety net  from hundreds of millions of asteroids. We have a space in our Solor System known as the asteroid belt, which is probably the reason most of us steer clear of us. This cosmic freeway is all the way between Mars and as far as Jupiter.

This asteroid belt was discovered in the 18th century, by a group of astronomers nicknamed "celestial police," as they were in search for a missing planet. The largest asteroid found within this belt has a diameter of 590 miles and orbits the sun about every four in a half year.

The asteroid rate of detection is about 5000 a month. They do not combine because of gravitational forces. Jupiter has rings of asteroids orbiting it. Jupiters orbiting asteroid belt is known as Trojans. While the whole orbital structure is known as the Lagrangian points.

In 2006, they were renamed Solar System bodies. Ceres was promoted to a dwarf planet. Asteroids have a catalog numbers, which organizes them. Probes have given us more of a first look so far. Some asteroids can easily be seen by a telescope.

Astronomy 101

The view we have of the sky constantly changes. It is like we are in a goldfish bowl, spinning around, in constant motion. Everything seems as though it is moving, because we are on a ball that is enormous. It is known as the celestial sphere.

This creates a celestial grid. Lines that join the grid are measured in time and are known as right ascentions while parallel are known as Declinations and are measured in degrees. The line directly above the equator is the celestial equator and is 0 degrees. Northern position are positive and southern are negative and the highest degree they both have are 90.

Mercury

It's the closest planet from the sun, at only 36 million miles. Only one space probe has visited Mercury 30 year ago. It experiences a drastic contrast in temperature, the side facing the sun is a whooping 800 degrees, while the side away is a detrimental -2900 degrees.

It has some reflective areas which are probablyice from meteors.  Some of Mercurys never recieve any sunlight.

The length of its day is 59 of Earth days while its year is only 88 days. It has a ninety degree axis, which means it does only have one season.

Mercury has large amounts of iron which explains it red color. Caloris Basin is the ring of mountain, which is in many of the pictures of Mercury. The mountains are 807 miles high. Europe and Japan plan to have a joint mission to Mercury in 2013.

Mars

Mars is a much smaller, red version of the Earth. The most probes have visited it, out of all the planets in our Solor System and they still do. Mars has a diameter of 4, 222 miles.
Mars has a rocky crust as well as unbreathable methane atmosphere, which is Methane gas. The crust is red from the rust it has.

It's day is 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth. It has a year which is twice as long. Mars has a 25 degree tilt. This planet haso water reserves left from a few of the astroids. The largest mountain is called Olympia Mons. It has the biggest volcano range.

An area near the equator has a frozen sea. Water is still present on Mars. The poles hold enough water to cover the planet with 36 feet. The moons appear to be trapped by the magnetic core. One moon, Phobos, is 16.8 feet long, while the other, Deimos is 9.3 miles long.

Sun

This star is ours. It is about 854,590 miles in diameter. It is 50 times the size of Jupiter. 10 million earths could fit within it. It has 7,000 million tons of hydrogen which turns into helium every second.

This star burns like a furnace. The core could have a temperature of at least 60,000,000 degrees. The surface is called the photosphere. It gets acne which is called a Sunspots. Facvlea are bright rivers within the sun. Coronal mass ejections hurl vast amounts of energy into space.

Moon

The moon is the only natural satellite that the Earth has. Its landscape has barely changed in over one million years. It's 240,000 miles from the earth. The diameter is only 2160 miles. It has ice from comet impacts.

The moon has 6% of the amount of gravity that the earth has. Soil is on the moon. It is called "regolith." This is a Greek term, which means unconsolidated, residual and transported material that overlays solid rock.

It's rotation varys, because of its oval orbit. It varys from 25-10,000 miles from Earth. By the year 2020 NASA as well as ESA (European Space Association), plan to have a base there.

What if a blackhole formed near our Solor System?

<p>Surviving a near miss with a blackhole is like surviving the Titanic. You would freeze to death, if you survived the crash. You would be in the unknown. This would be exciting to some, and scare others to death. </p>
<p>They are the most fearsome phenomena within the universe. In essence, they a gigantic vaccum within space time. Our sun would never become one, for it is to small.