Using new tools to look at the universe, says Patrick Brady, often has led to discoveries that change the course of science. History is full of examples. Galileo was the first person to use the telescope to view the cosmos, says Brady, a UWM professor of physics. His observations with the new technology led to the discovery of moons orbiting Jupiter and lent support to the heliocentric model of the solar system……..
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Researchers scouting potential landing sites for NASA’s next Mars rover mission are using new data from a powerful mineral-mapping camera to narrow the site selection. When NASA Mars Program officials and members of the Mars science community gather in California next week to pare down the list of candidate landing sites for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), they can refer to 125 new images from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM). The images and accompanying analysis products are available on the CRISM Web site at http://crism.jhuapl.edu/msl_landing_sites/……..
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As the rings of Uranus swing edge-on to Earth – a short-lived view we get only once every 42 years – astronomers observing the event are getting an unprecedented, glare-free view of the rings and the fine dust that permeates them. The rings were discovered in 1977, so this is the first opportunity astronomers have had to observe a Uranus ring crossing and perhaps to discover a new moon or two……..
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The Origin of Galaxies remains one of the big questions in astrophysics, primarily because births of the first galaxies is largely hidden by (astrophysical) dust, tiny fragments of solid material in interstellar space. This dust hides the fundamental processes responsible for galaxy formation from traditional optical telescopes, as much of the optical light generated by the stars forming in the first galaxies is absorbed by the dust. However, this light is then re-radiated at longer wavelengths, mostly in the sub-millimetre (sub-mm) and far-infrared (far-IR) part of the electromagnetic spectrum……..
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