Green Campus a.k.a BOGOR EDUCARE :)

Hello Kitty, upss i mean Hello Guys :p Pertama kali saya tau kampus ini tuh dari kaka saya yang bernama Aditya Pratama Putra, dia juga alumni BEC angkatan' 13. Waktu itu saya kesini sama temen smp siang hari, jamnya berapa, jangan tanya ya soalnya waktu itu saya lagi ga pake jam jadi gatau jam berapanya :p dan pas diperjalanan, waktu itu saya naik angkot dan takut nyasar, sampe-sampe diperjalanan ga berhenti-henti liat kanan kiri, ya maklum lah, ini kan pertama kali saya kesini. Setelah sampai disana, saya masuk ke pintu gerbang dan gedung yang berwarna hijau, awalnya saya ragu, takut, dan malu, gatau kenapa nervous gimana gitu, sebenernya sih ga ada yang perlu ditakutin juga, tapi masalahnya, saya gatau dimana saya harus daftarnya dimana :( haha, tapi akhirnya dengan memberanikan diri saya bertanya ke pak satpam yang sedang berjaga di pos, kemudian dia memberitahu kalo mau daftar itu di lobi. Sambil mengucapkan terima kasih, saya dan teman saya pun berjalan ke lobi dengan perasaan yang saya juga ga ngerti itu perasaan apa. Pada akhirnya, kami disambut oleh kaka kelas yang sedang duduk di pos penerimaan mahasiswa baru yang berada di lobi, dan karena kami belum mendapatkan ijazah pada waktu itu, jadi kami membawa formulir itu dan mengisinya di rumah. Berapa minggu kemudian, saya pun mengikuti test yang diadakan oleh pihak BEC, setelah test selesai, saya pulang dengan perasaan yang campur aduk, dan saya ga yakin kalo saya akan diterima di BEC, tapi bismillah, saya harus yakin dan menyerahkan ini semua kepada Allah SWT. Hari demi hari, minggu demi minggu sayapun menunggu hasil testnya keluar, dan ternyata.......

to be continued...

Untuk informasi dan keterangan lanjut tentang kampus saya, bisa KLIK DISINI!! :)

The Sun Emits an M5.9 Solar Flare

› View larger,   › Full solar disk view
An M-class flare appears on the lower right of the sun on June 7, 2013. This image was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, a wavelength of UV light that is particularly good for seeing flares and that is typically colorized in teal. Caption: NASA/SDO

The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 6:49 p.m. on June 7, 2013. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where communications signals travel. This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is ongoing, anywhere from minutes to hours.

This flare is classified as an M5.9 flare. M-class flares are the weakest flares that can still cause some space weather effects near Earth. This flare caused a moderate radio blackout, rated an R2 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s space weather scales, which range from R1 to R5. It has since subsided.

Increased numbers of flares are quite common at the moment, since the sun's normal 11-year activity cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum, which is expected in late 2013. Humans have tracked this solar cycle continuously since it was discovered in 1843, and it is normal for there to be many flares a day during the sun's peak activity. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (http://swpc.noaa.gov) is the U.S. government's official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News060813-m5.9flare.html

Noctilucent Clouds Get an Early Start

Every summer, something strange and wonderful happens high above the north pole. Ice crystals begin to cling to the smoky remains of meteors, forming electric-blue clouds with tendrils that ripple hypnotically against the sunset sky. Noctilucent clouds—a.k.a. "NLCs"--are a delight for high-latitude sky watchers, and around the Arctic Circle their season of visibility is always eagerly anticipated.

News flash: This year, NLCs are getting an early start. NASA's AIM spacecraft, which is orbiting Earth on a mission to study noctilucent clouds, started seeing them on May 13th.

"The 2013 season is remarkable because it started in the northern hemisphere a week earlier than any other season that AIM has observed," reports Cora Randall of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado. "This is quite possibly earlier than ever before."

The early start is extra-puzzling because of the solar cycle. Researchers have long known that NLCs tend to peak during solar minimum and bottom-out during solar maximum—a fairly strong anti-correlation. "If anything, we would have expected a later start this year because the solar cycle is near its maximum," Randall says. "So much for expectations."

For sky watchers, this means it's time to pay attention to the sunset sky, where NLCs are most often seen. An early start could herald brighter clouds and wider visibility than ever before.

Noctilucent clouds were first noticed in the mid-19th century after the eruption of super-volcano Krakatoa. Volcanic ash spread through the atmosphere, painting vivid sunsets that mesmerized observers all around the world. That was when the NLCs appeared. At first people thought they must be some side-effect of the volcano, but long after Krakatoa's ash settled the noctilucent clouds remained.

"They've been with us ever since," says Randall. "Not only that, they are spreading."

When AIM was launched in 2007, the underlying cause of NLCs was still unknown. Researchers knew they formed 83 km above Earth's surface where the atmosphere meets the vacuum of space--but that's about all. AIM quickly filled in the gaps.

"It turns out that meteoroids play an important role in the formation of NLCs," explains Hampton University Professor James Russell, the principal investigator of AIM. "Specks of debris from disintegrating meteors act as nucleating points where water molecules can gather and crystallize."

Early NLCs (geometry, med) › View larger
This diagram shows why NLCs are best seen at sunset or sunrise. NLCs appear during summer because that is when water molecules are wafted up from the lower atmosphere to mix with the "meteor smoke." That is also the time when the upper atmosphere is ironically coldest.

Back in the 19th century, NLCs were confined to high latitudes. You had to go to Alaska or Scandinavia to see them. In recent years, however, they have been sighted as far south as Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska. Some researchers believe that the spread of NLCs is a sign of climate change.

One of the greenhouse gases that has become more abundant in Earth's atmosphere since the 19th century is methane. "When methane makes its way into the upper atmosphere, it is oxidized by a complex series of reactions to form water vapor," says Russell. "This extra water vapor is then available to grow ice crystals for NLCs."

The early start of the 2013 season appears to be caused by a change in atmospheric “teleconnections.”

“Half-a-world away from where the northern NLCs are forming, strong winds in the southern stratosphere are altering global circulation patterns,” explains Randall. "This year more water vapor is being pushed into the high atmosphere where NLCs love to form, and the air there is getting colder."

"All of this has come as an interesting surprise for us," notes Russell. "When we launched AIM, our interest was in the clouds themselves. But now NLCs are teaching us about connections between different layers of the atmosphere that operate over great distances. Our ability to study these connections will surely lead to new understanding about how our atmosphere works."

For more information about NASA’s AIM mission, visit:

www.nasa.gov/aim

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/

“Albert Einstein” Delivers Gear to Expedition 36 Crew

Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 (ATV-4) automatically docked Saturday at 10:07 a.m. EDT to the aft-end port of the Zvezda service module. The ATV-4, nicknamed the “Albert Einstein,” launched June 5 atop an Ariane 5 rocket delivering cargo, experiment hardware and supplies. Also aboard the ATV-4 are propellant, water and oxygen and air.

› Read more about the launch of the ATV-4

The ATV-4, which launched from a European Space Agency (ESA) launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, is ESA’s heaviest spacecraft ever. The 13-ton spacecraft delivered 5,465 pounds of dry cargo, experiment hardware and supplies. It is also carrying 1,896 pounds of propellant for transfer to the Zvezda service module, 5,688 pounds of propellant for reboost and debris avoidance maneuver capability, 1,257 pounds of water and 220 pounds of oxygen and air.

Zvezda’s docking port was opened four days earlier when a trash-filled ISS Progress 51 resupply craft undocked. As it was backing away, external cameras on the Progress took photographs of the port for ground controllers to inspect for possible damage on sensors that could have prevented Saturday’s ATV-4 docking.

When the Progress 51 launched in April a Kurs antenna failed to deploy after it reached orbit. Controllers were concerned this could have potentially damaged sensors when it docked to the Zvezda port. The Russian cargo craft is now orbiting Earth for engineering tests before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere Tuesday for a fiery disposal over the Pacific Ocean.

The “Albert Einstein” is scheduled to end its mission at the International Space Station in late October. The trash-filled vehicle will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up over the Pacific Ocean. While there, the ATV-4 will provide extra storage space and more habitable volume for the crew.

› Read more about Expedition 36

Source: http://www.nasa.gov

NASA's 2013 HS3 Hurricane Mission to Delve into Saharan Dust

NASA's 2013 Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel or HS3 mission will investigate whether Saharan dust and its associated warm and dry air, known as the Saharan Air Layer or SAL, favors or suppresses the development of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean. The effects of Saharan dust on tropical cyclones is a controversial area of science. During the 2012 campaign, NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aircraft gathered valuable data on the dust layer that swirled around Tropical Storm Nadine for several days.

The Saharan dust layer is composed of sand and other mineral particles that are swept up in air currents and whisked westward over the Atlantic Ocean. The extreme daytime heating of the Sahara creates instability in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, warming and drying the air near the surface and cooling and moistening the air near the top of the dust layer near 5 kilometers (16,500 feet). Once it exits the African coast, the dust-laden air moves over air that is cooler, and moister, and it's the temperature inversion of warm air over cold that prevents deep cloud development. This suppression of deep cloud formation along with the dry air within the dust layer is reasons why this Saharan air layer is sometimes thought to suppress tropical cyclone development. On the other hand, the southern boundary of this hot desert air essentially acts like a front whose attendant wind patterns are a major source of the African waves that are precursors to storm formation.

› View larger
NASA's Global Hawk flew five science missions into Tropical Storm/Hurricane Nadine, plus the transit flight circling around the east side of Hurricane Leslie. This is a composite of the ground tracks of the transit flight to NASA Wallops plus the five science flights. TD means Tropical Depression; TS means Tropical Storm. Credit: NASA Some Saharan dust has been known to make the journey across the Atlantic and to the U.S. east coast. But Saharan dust doesn't just cause sunrises to appear more reddish, the dust also impacts the development of clouds and precipitation. The dust particles can provide a surface for small cloud droplets and ice crystals to form within clouds. More dust particles means that a given amount of available water is spread onto more particles, creating large numbers of small drops and delaying the formation of larger raindrops. Those effects, coupled with the warm and dry air, have presented challenges to meteorologists who have been trying to understand the effect of Saharan dust on tropical cyclones.

HS3 addresses the controversial role of the Saharan Air Layer, or SAL, in tropical storm formation and intensification by taking measurements from three instruments on board the Global Hawk. These instruments include a cloud physics lidar which uses a laser to measure vertical profiles of dust; a dropsonde system that releases small instrumented packages from the aircraft that fall to the surface while measuring profiles of temperature, humidity, and winds; and an infrared sounder that measures temperature and humidity in clear-sky regions.

On Sept. 11 and 12, during the 2012 HS3 mission, the NASA Global Hawk aircraft covered more than one million square kilometers (386,100 square miles) going back and forth over the storm in a gridded fashion in what's called a "lawnmower pattern."

The SAL was present primarily during that first flight, and again on the flight from Sept. 14 to 15. "The SAL did not act to suppress development on Sept. 11 and 12, at least not in the sense of a direct intrusion into the storm circulation, but it is too early to say what role it might have played in other ways and in other flights," said Scott Braun, HS3 Principal Investigator, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "There is some evidence that it (the SAL) was getting into the storm circulation on Sept. 14 and 15, but the extent to which it impacted development is unclear."

The dust data collected by the Global Hawk is important for scientific studies on the SAL. Other data was useful operationally to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), the entity that issues forecasts for tropical cyclones. The forecasters at the NHC used data from dropsondes released from the Global Hawk in the discussion of Nadine at 11 a.m. EDT on Sept. 20, "The current intensity is kept at 45 knots (51.7 mph/83.3 kmh)…is in good agreement with dropsonde data from the NASA global hawk aircraft and AMSU [satellite instrument] estimates."

› View larger
The Global Hawk unmanned aircraft coming in for a landing at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va on Sept. 7, 2012. Credit: NASA Wallops

Valuable data from the Global Hawk dropsondes on September 22-23 provided the National Hurricane Center with information that contributed to their reclassifying the storm as a tropical storm after one day of being called a post-tropical low. Shortly after HS3’s last flight into Nadine on September 26-27, Nadine actually strengthened back into a hurricane and reached its maximum intensity.

Dropsonde data from HS3’s flight on September 26-27 showed that temperature and humidity conditions in the storm were becoming more favorable for the occurrence of deep thunderstorms. Infrared data from NASA's Aqua satellite on Sept. 28, 2012, revealed that strong convection and thunderstorms did build up again and strengthened Nadine back into a hurricane.

HS3 is a five-year mission specifically targeted to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/

Black Hole Naps Amidst Stellar Chaos

Nearly a decade ago, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory caught signs of what appeared to be a black hole snacking on gas at the middle of the nearby Sculptor galaxy. Now, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), which sees higher-energy X-ray light, has taken a peek and found the black hole asleep.

"Our results imply that the black hole went dormant in the past 10 years," said Bret Lehmer of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "Periodic observations with both Chandra and NuSTAR should tell us unambiguously if the black hole wakes up again. If this happens in the next few years, we hope to be watching." Lehmer is lead author of a new study detailing the findings in the Astrophysical Journal.

The slumbering black hole is about 5 million times the mass of our sun. It lies at the center of the Sculptor galaxy, also known as NGC 253, a so-called starburst galaxy actively giving birth to new stars. At 13 million light-years away, this is one of the closest starbursts to our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is all around more quiet than the Sculptor galaxy. It makes far fewer new stars, and its behemoth black hole, about 4 million times the mass of our sun, is also snoozing.

"Black holes feed off surrounding accretion disks of material. When they run out of this fuel, they go dormant," said co-author Ann Hornschemeier of Goddard. "NGC 253 is somewhat unusual because the giant black hole is asleep in the midst of tremendous star-forming activity all around it."

The findings are teaching astronomers how galaxies grow over time. Nearly all galaxies are suspected to harbor supermassive black holes at their hearts. In the most massive of these, the black holes are thought to grow at the same rate that new stars form, until blasting radiation from the black holes ultimately shuts down star formation. In the case of the Sculptor galaxy, astronomers do not know if star formation is winding down or ramping up.

"Black hole growth and star formation often go hand-in-hand in distant galaxies," said Daniel Stern, a co-author and NuSTAR project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It's a bit surprising as to what's going on here, but we've got two powerful complementary X-ray telescopes on the case."

Chandra first observed signs of what appeared to be a feeding supermassive black hole at the heart of the Sculptor galaxy in 2003. As material spirals into a black hole, it heats up to tens of millions of degrees and glows in X-ray light that telescopes like Chandra and NuSTAR can see.

Then, in September and November of 2012, Chandra and NuSTAR observed the same region simultaneously. The NuSTAR observations -- the first-ever to detect focused, high-energy X-ray light from the region -- allowed the researchers to say conclusively that the black hole is not accreting material. NuSTAR launched into space in June of 2012.

In other words, the black hole seems to have fallen asleep. Another possibility is that the black hole was not actually awake 10 years ago, and Chandra observed a different source of X-rays. Future observations with both telescopes may solve the puzzle.

"The combination of coordinated Chandra and NuSTAR observations is extremely powerful for answering questions like this," said Lou Kaluzienski, NuSTAR Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Now, we can get all sides of the story."

The observations also revealed a smaller, flaring object that the researchers were able to identify as an "ultraluminous X-ray source," or ULX. ULXs are black holes feeding off material from a partner star. They shine more brightly than typical stellar-mass black holes generated from dying stars, but are fainter and more randomly distributed than the supermassive black holes at the centers of massive galaxies. Astronomers are still working to understand the size, origins and physics of ULXs.

"These stellar-mass black holes are bumping along near the center of this galaxy," said Hornschemeier. "They tend to be more numerous in areas where there is more star-formation activity."

If and when the Sculptor's slumbering giant does wake up in the next few years amidst all the commotion, NuSTAR and Chandra will monitor the situation. The team plans to check back on the system periodically.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.; ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif., and with support from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Science Data Center.

NuSTAR's mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, with the ASI providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com

Alien-Planet Mappers Tackle 'Ninja' Worlds, Other Challenges

Mapping the surface features of farflung alien planets is a tough task, as a simple example illustrates.

Rapidly spin a globe with black and white regions painted evenly on its surface. These distinct sections fade to a mottled grey when seen in certain orientations.

"You don’t see it in the light curve from the planet, so I call it a stealth map or a ninja map," said Nicolas Cowan, a researcher at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics. "No one would be the wiser if they were far away. They have no sensitivity to that particular map." [The Strangest Alien Planets (Images)]

Cowan and his colleagues investigate that problem and several others in a recently completed study that, they say, could aid scientists' efforts to map out the surfaces of exoplanets in the coming years.
Mapping oceans and continents
Alien planets appear very tiny, even in the most powerful telescopes astronomers use. Many worlds are only visible through their effects on their host stars — either by changing these stars' spin slightly, or altering their brightness when passing in front of them.
As a result, few pictures of alien planets exist. Although astronomers first spotted a world beyond our solar system in 1992, it wasn’t until 2010 that the first direct image of an alien planet was confirmed. Even then, it was only a small dot.
As our understanding of extrasolar planetary systems increases, however, Cowan’s team is developing techniques to learn more about alien worlds by studying their reflected light, as well as their heat signatures.
From a distance, light coming from a planet can reveal dark oceans and brighter continents. The light changes as clouds pass across the surface, hinting at things such as wind speed. In infrared wavelengths, other information emerges: seasonal variations, planetary tilt and, possibly, hints to the underlying terrain.
For example, Cowan said, "tropical rainforests look dark from space because there are clouds in the way."
‘Hot Jupiters’ likely first target
Cowan’s team created a series of simple maps and then modeled what they would look like on a spinning planet, as seen from different orientations. Generally the maps focus on very large regions with high contrast, similar to what would be visible from a telescope peering at the world from many light-years away.
If astronomers were looking at Earth from this scale, they might be able to see Eurasia, the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, Cowan said. Infrared maps might show the difference between the day side and night side of the planet.
"Really coarse stuff," Cowan acknowledged — but a start.
The aim is to put these maps, and the analyzed light curves, in a database that astronomers can access. As a next step, they could then be applied to planets visible in telescopes today.
"Hot Jupiters" are a likely target for infrared studies, Cowan said, referring to gas giants that are close to their parent star. Astronomers have detected atmospheres around these planets but have spotted no surface features yet.
It's possible that astronomers could map out rough surface features on hot Jupiters by studying temperature differences from afar.
"What you’re hoping to measure there is the fact that this hot Jupiter has different temperatures in different locations. You’d make a climate map, a temperature map from far away," Cowan said.

Learning from light
Mapping planets in visible light would be even more challenging. The star’s brightness overwhelms the telescope and makes it difficult to see any planetary dots nearby — Earth-like alien planets included.
Cowan said there are two surveys coming online, however, that are aiming to take more pictures of alien planets: the European Southern Observatory’s SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch) instrument for the Very Large Telescope in Chile, and the Gemini Project Imager that will use adaptive optics on the Gemini South Telescope (also in Chile).
"Those sorts of experiments should detect a whole bunch more of these directly imaged planets," including worlds with relatively distant orbits, Cowan said.
"The difference between them and the [hot] Jupiters is they’re much further away from their star and they orbit slowly," he added. "In that case, you can’t really stare at them for a full orbit, as it would take decades. So we’re hoping the planet is spinning [rapidly] on an axis and as it spins around, its brightness might change."
The new study has been submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is currently available on the prepublishing site Arxiv. Other participating institutions include the University of Chile and the Center for Theoretical Physics, Luminy Campus in Marseille, France.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/

World's Largest Solar Sail to Launch in November 2014

Mapping the surface features of farflung alien planets is a tough task, as a simple example illustrates.
Rapidly spin a globe with black and white regions painted evenly on its surface. These distinct sections fade to a mottled grey when seen in certain orientations.
"You don’t see it in the light curve from the planet, so I call it a stealth map or a ninja map," said Nicolas Cowan, a researcher at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics. "No one would be the wiser if they were far away. They have no sensitivity to that particular map." [The Strangest Alien Planets (Images)]
Cowan and his colleagues investigate that problem and several others in a recently completed study that, they say, could aid scientists' efforts to map out the surfaces of exoplanets in the coming years.
Mapping oceans and continents
Alien planets appear very tiny, even in the most powerful telescopes astronomers use. Many worlds are only visible through their effects on their host stars — either by changing these stars' spin slightly, or altering their brightness when passing in front of them.
As a result, few pictures of alien planets exist. Although astronomers first spotted a world beyond our solar system in 1992, it wasn’t until 2010 that the first direct image of an alien planet was confirmed. Even then, it was only a small dot.
As our understanding of extrasolar planetary systems increases, however, Cowan’s team is developing techniques to learn more about alien worlds by studying their reflected light, as well as their heat signatures.
From a distance, light coming from a planet can reveal dark oceans and brighter continents. The light changes as clouds pass across the surface, hinting at things such as wind speed. In infrared wavelengths, other information emerges: seasonal variations, planetary tilt and, possibly, hints to the underlying terrain.
For example, Cowan said, "tropical rainforests look dark from space because there are clouds in the way."
‘Hot Jupiters’ likely first target
Cowan’s team created a series of simple maps and then modeled what they would look like on a spinning planet, as seen from different orientations. Generally the maps focus on very large regions with high contrast, similar to what would be visible from a telescope peering at the world from many light-years away.
If astronomers were looking at Earth from this scale, they might be able to see Eurasia, the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, Cowan said. Infrared maps might show the difference between the day side and night side of the planet.
"Really coarse stuff," Cowan acknowledged — but a start.
The aim is to put these maps, and the analyzed light curves, in a database that astronomers can access. As a next step, they could then be applied to planets visible in telescopes today.
"Hot Jupiters" are a likely target for infrared studies, Cowan said, referring to gas giants that are close to their parent star. Astronomers have detected atmospheres around these planets but have spotted no surface features yet.
It's possible that astronomers could map out rough surface features on hot Jupiters by studying temperature differences from afar.
"What you’re hoping to measure there is the fact that this hot Jupiter has different temperatures in different locations. You’d make a climate map, a temperature map from far away," Cowan said.

Learning from light
Mapping planets in visible light would be even more challenging. The star’s brightness overwhelms the telescope and makes it difficult to see any planetary dots nearby — Earth-like alien planets included.
Cowan said there are two surveys coming online, however, that are aiming to take more pictures of alien planets: the European Southern Observatory’s SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch) instrument for the Very Large Telescope in Chile, and the Gemini Project Imager that will use adaptive optics on the Gemini South Telescope (also in Chile).
"Those sorts of experiments should detect a whole bunch more of these directly imaged planets," including worlds with relatively distant orbits, Cowan said.
"The difference between them and the [hot] Jupiters is they’re much further away from their star and they orbit slowly," he added. "In that case, you can’t really stare at them for a full orbit, as it would take decades. So we’re hoping the planet is spinning [rapidly] on an axis and as it spins around, its brightness might change."
The new study has been submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is currently available on the prepublishing site Arxiv. Other participating institutions include the University of Chile and the Center for Theoretical Physics, Luminy Campus in Marseille, France.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/

All About Astronomy

Where are we in the universe? We live on Earth, the third planet of our solar system. Our solar system is located in the Milky Way Galaxy, a collection of 200 billion stars (together with their solar systems). The Milky Way Galaxy is located in a group of 30+ galaxies we call the Local Group. The Local Group is a part of a local supercluster of 100+ galaxies (called the Virgo Supercluster). This supercluster is one of millions of superclusters in the universe.

Our Solar System
Our solar system consists of the sun, planets, dwarf planets (or plutoids), moons, an asteroid belt, comets, meteors, and other objects. The sun is the center of our solar system; the planets, over 61 moons, the asteroids, comets, meteoroids and other rocks and gas all orbit the Sun. The Earth is the third planet from the sun in our solar system.

The Planets
The nine planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the Sun): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter (the biggest planet in our Solar System), Saturn (with large, orbiting rings), Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (a dwarf planet or plutoid). A belt of asteroids (minor planets made of rock and metal) orbits between Mars and Jupiter. These objects all orbit the sun in roughly circular orbits that lie in the same plane, the ecliptic (Pluto is an exception; this dwarf planet has an elliptical orbit tilted over 17° from the ecliptic).

The inner planets (those planets that orbit close to the Sun) are quite different from the outer planets (those planets that orbit far from the Sun).

• The inner planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. They are relatively small, composed mostly of rock, and have few or no moons.
• The outer planets include: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They are mostly huge, mostly gaseous, ringed, and have many moons (plus Pluto, which is a dwarf planet that has one large moon and two small moons).

Small Bodies
There are other smaller object that orbit the Sun, including asteroids, comets, meteoroids and dwarf planets.

• Asteroids (also called minor planets) are rocky or metallic objects, most of which orbit the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
• Comets are small, icy bodies that orbit the sun. They have very long tails.
• Meteoroids are small bodies that travel through space. They are stony and/or metallic and are smaller than asteroids. Most are very tiny.

The Milky Way Galaxy

Our solar system is located in the outer reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is a spiral galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy contains roughly 200 billion stars. Most of these stars are not visible from Earth. Almost everything that we can see in the sky belongs to the Milky Way Galaxy.

The sun is about 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is about 80,000 to 120,000 light-years across (and less than 7,000 light-years thick). We are located on on one of its spiral arms, out towards the edge. It takes the sun (and our solar system) roughly 200-250 million years to orbit once around the Milky Way. In this orbit, we (and the rest of the Solar System) are traveling at a velocity of about 155 miles/sec (250 km/sec).

To reach the center of the Milky Way Galaxy starting from the Earth, aim toward the constellation Sagittarius. If you were in a spacecraft, during the trip you would pass the stars in Sagittarius one by one (and many other stars!).

The Milky way Galaxy is just one galaxy in a group of galaxies called the Local Group. Within the Local Group, the Milky Way Galaxy is moving about 300 km/sec (towards the constellation Virgo). The Milky Way Galaxy is moving in concert with the other galaxies in the Local Group (the Local Group is defined as those nearby galaxies that are moving in concert with each other, independent of the "Hubble

Source : www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/