The International Astronautical Federation (IAF) is organising, with European Space Agency (ESA) support, a symposium entitled ‘Celebrating Ten Years of the International Space Station’, to be held at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters (7, place de Fontenoy) on 9/10 July.
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AP – Homicide detectives investigating the slaying of a NASA engineer, a woman and two children stabbed before they were burned in a Mojave Desert house fire named two “persons of interest” in the case.
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The winners of the ‘Take your classroom into space’ Call for Education Ideas have been selected. The two best experiment ideas will be performed in space by ESA astronaut Frank De Winne during his spaceflight in 2009. Pupils throughout Europe will be able to compare results obtained in their classroom to those obtained in space.
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SPACE.com – GOLDEN,Colo.
2008 June 27
M81: Feeding a Black Hole Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wisconsin/D.Pooley & CfA/A.Zezas;
Optical: NASA/ESA/CfA/A.Zezas;UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA/J.Huchra et al.;IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfAThis impressivecolor compositeshows spiral galaxy M81 across theelectromagnetic spectrum.It combines X-ray data (blue) from theChandraObservatory,infrared data (pink) from theSpitzer Space Telescope, andan ultraviolet image (purple) from theGALEX satellite,with a visible light (green)Hubble image.The inset highlights X-rays from some of M81′s black holes,includingblackholes in binary star systems with about10 times the mass of the sun, as well as the central,supermassive black hole of over 70 millionsolar masses.Comparing computer models of the giant black hole’s energyoutput to themultiwavelength datasuggests that feeding thatmonsteris relatively simple — energy and radiation is generatedas material in the central region swirls inwards forming anaccretion disk.In fact, the process otherwise appears to be just like theaccretion process feeding M81′s stellar mass black holes,even though the central black hole is millions of times more massive.M81 itself is about70,000 light-years across and only 12 millionlight-years away in the northern constellationUrsa Major.light-weekend
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SPACE.com – NASAwill start fixing a damaged Florida launch pad Friday in preparation for theOctober launch of space shuttle Atlantis in a mission to repair the HubbleSpace Telescope.
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Sea levels are rising everywhere, but in some areas they are rising quicker than others, bringing increased dangers of flooding. A new satellite – Jason 2 – has been launched to continue work to monitor the situation, providing valuable information for scientists trying to understand how ocean levels fit into the climate change puzzle.
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AP – NASA told a Senate panel on Monday that it anticipates losing 3,000 to 4,000 jobs at its launching site once the space shuttles stop flying in two more years, about half the cutback initially reported.
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event that was visible in the center of IC 2497 about 100,000 years ago. Pictured above, William Herschel Telescope
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2008 June 25 
What is Hanny’s Voorwerp? Galaxy Zoo Project, INGWhat is that green thing?A volunteer sky enthusiast surfing through online Galaxy Zoo imageshas discovered something really strange.The mystery objectis unusually green, not of any clear galaxy type, and situated below relatively normal looking spiral galaxy IC 2497.Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel, discovered the strange green “voorwerp” (Dutch for “object”) last year.The Galaxy Zoo project encourages sky enthusiasts to browse through SDSS images and classify galaxy types. Now known popularly as Hanny’s Voorwerp, subsequent observations have shown that the mysterious green blob has the same distance as neighboring galaxy IC 2497. Research is ongoing, but one leading hypothesis holds that Hanny’s Voorwerp is a small galaxy that acts like a large reflection nebula, showing the reflected light of a bright quasarevent that happened in the center of IC 2497 about 100,000 years ago. Pictured above, Hanny’s Voorwerp was imaged recently by the 4.2-meter William Hershel Telescopein the Canary Islands by Matt Jarvis, Kevin Schawinski, and William Keel.open space
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