Hubble 25 Anniversary Space Today Online -- Solar System Planet Earth -- Ancient Astro A European researcher has interpreted carvings in a 32,500-year-old ivory tablet as a pattern of the same stars that we see in the sky today in the constellation Orion. The tablet is a sliver of ivory from the tusk of a mammoth — a large woolly animal like an elephant. Mammoths are extinct today. Carved into the ivory is what appears to be a carving of a human figure with outstretched arms and legs. The ivory tablet has notches carved on its sides and back, which are not understood but might be an ancient pregnancy calendar to estimate when a woman would give birth. The tiny piece of ivory was in a cave in the Ach Valley in the Alb-Danube region of Germany when it was discovered in 1979. Stone Age people. Neanderthals were the original Stone Age "cavemen" who occupied Europe and parts of Asia and north Africa for 150,000 years before modern humans arrived. The Orion constellation is known to stargazers today as "the hunter." Pregnancy calendar. Summer Triangle. Cro-magnon man. Learn more:
Science - HowStuffWorks Association Planète Mars Astronomie Quel jour sommes-nous ? Les quatre jours particuliers de l'année : équinoxe de printemps, solstice d'été, équinoxe d'automne, solstice d'hiver. La durée des jours varie, la hauteur du soleil dans le ciel aussi, l'endroit où il se lève et il se couche aussi. Une activité intéressante au préalable, c'est de distribuer les éphémérides de l'année aux élèves (on les trouve sur le calendrier des postes) et de rechercher : * les jours où le soleil se lève le plus tard (7 h 46, du 27 décembre au 5 janvier) * les jours où le soleil se couche le plus tôt (15 h 52, du 6 décembre au 16 décembre) * les jours où le soleil se lève le plus tôt (3 h 49, du 11 juin au 21 juin) * les jours où le soleil se couche le plus tard (19 h 56, du 19 juin au 1er juillet) [ les heures sont données en temps universel, selon le méridien de Paris : il faut ajouter 1 heure en hiver, 2h en été ; ajouter encore quelques dizaines de minutes si l'on habite à l'Est du méridien de Paris, en enlever si l'on est à l'Ouest !
Kepler Mission To Find Earth-like Planets By Studying Planetary Transits Earlier this week we spoke about finding Earth-like planets, and how hard it is to find them. We would like to see other planets similar to Earth, and we have a few absolutely necessary conditions: the planet must be rocky, solid, dense like Earth, a source of power like a Sun, chemicals resulted from volcanic activity, and liquid water. The most important thing however, is that the planet must be located in the Goldilocks zone, the area where the planet is not too far and not too close from a star. In order to find such planets NASA has begun the Kepler Mission which will last four year. The Kepler Mission consists of observing 100,000 Sun-like stars, and to be more accurate: scientists will study the so-called planetary transits. In the search of alien life scientists will have to be pay a lot of attention to the planetary transits because the changes of the brightness are very, very small. via Physorg
Homepage - Large Hadron Collider Deep Impact NASA's Deep Impact probe hits Comet Tempel 1 (NASA) Deep Impact is the name of a NASA space mission whose primary objective was to study Comet Tempel 1 (a.k.a. 9P/Tempel). It was launched on 12 January, 2005, and the smart impactor crashed into the comet on 4 July, 2005. Oh, and yes, Deep Impact is also the name of a movie … but the two have no connection (the science team came up with their name independently of the Hollywood studio), other than that they both concern a comet! Comets had been the focus of several space probes before Deep Impact, perhaps the most famous of which is the ESA’s Giotto flyby of Comet Halley. The space probe consisted of two parts, a 370 kg copper Smart Impactor – that smashed into the comet – and the Flyby section, which watched the impact from a safe distance. The mission was a great success in that the heavy copper section did, in fact, smash into the comet, and the other section did observe the impact up-close-and-personal, but safely. Source: NASA Related
Site officiel de Hubert Reeves Un nouveau télescope pour révolutionner l'astronomie amateur Un nouveau télescope développé par la start-up française Unistellar peut mettre l'univers profond à la portée de tout le monde, et même transformer chaque utilisateur en assistant pour l'astronomie professionnelle. Directeur scientifique de cette entreprise et membre de l'institut Seti, partenaire de cette innovation, l'astrophysicien Franck Marchis nous parle de ce télescope révolutionnaire. Ce qu'il faut retenir Malheureusement, plusieurs vocations naissantes d'astronomes amateurs se sont brisées face au mur de la réalité. En effet, on ne peut qu'être charmé par les images somptueuses de nébuleuses et de galaxies publiées dans les magazines d'astronomie ou sur Internet. L'amateur découvre que du travail et du temps sont nécessaires pour s'offrir de belles observations à l'œil nu. Une présentation réaliste de la performance réalisée avec l'eVscope. © Unistellar SAS Les ambitions de ses fondateurs dépassent ce cadre. Franck Marchis : Par hasard. Quel est votre rôle dans cette aventure ?
NASAs 'Curiosity' Search for Life Targets Water-Altered Rock This rock's composition is unlike any other Opportunity has investigated during nine years on Mars -- higher in aluminum and silica, lower in calcium and iron. "Based on our current solar-array dust models, we intend to reach an area of 15 degrees northerly tilt before Opportunity's sixth Martian winter," said JPL's Scott Lever, mission manager. "Solander Point gives us that tilt and may allow us to move around quite a bit for winter science observations." Northerly tilt increases output from the rover's solar panels during southern-hemisphere winter. Daily sunshine for Opportunity will reach winter minimum in February 2014. The first drive away from Esperance covered 81.7 feet (24.9 meters) on May 14. "There appears to have been extensive, but weak, alteration of Whitewater Lake, but intense alteration of Esperance along fractures that provided conduits for fluid flow," Squyres said. The Daily Galaxy via NASA/JPL Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.
LHC Machine Outreach The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is built in a circular tunnel 27 km in circumference. The tunnel is buried around 50 to 175 m. underground. It straddles the Swiss and French borders on the outskirts of Geneva. The first beams were circulated successfully on 10th September 2008. Unfortunately on 19th September a serious fault developed damaging a number of superconducting magnets. First collisions took place on 30th March 2010 with the rest of the year mainly devoted to commissioning. 2011 was the first production year with over 5 inverse femtobarns delivered to both ATLAS and CMS. 2012 started well with over 6 inverse femtobarns delivered by the time of the summer conferences - these data paved the way for the announcement of a/the Higgs on 4th July 2012. The LHC is designed to collide two counter rotating beams of protons or heavy ions. The beams move around the LHC ring inside a continuous vacuum guided by magnets.