RAMADAN STARTS ON AUGUST 1

Astronomers predicts that Ramadan starts from Aug 1.

An Abu Dhabi-based astronomy expert has predicted that the month of Ramadan will begin on August 1. Islamic Crescent Observation Project (ICOP) Mohamed Shawket Oudah based his prediction on the calculation that moon will set before sunset on July 30. It will be virtually impossible to sight the crescent moon on that day. Months in the lunar calendar start only after the sighting of the new moon and Islamic tradition makes it mandatory that the crescent should be sighted after sunset to announce the beginning of the holy month. Oudah said, " the crescent would be clearly sighted on Sunday, July 31 evening, which means that Ramadan will fall on August 1."

METEOR SHOWER OF PERSEIDS WITNESS IT'S PEAK AT ABU DHABI SKY

Meteor shower will be witness over Abu Dhabi sky as it's peak appear on August 12, 2011. The active dates include from 23 of July to 20 of August. The average zenithal hourly rate at maximum 80.  The best place for meteor shower observation remain outside the city where the environmental light is minimized or eliminated. 

The Perseid meteor shower is named after the constellation Perseus, which is located in roughly the same point of the night sky where the Perseid meteor shower appears to originate from. 

The Parent body of the Perseid meteor shower is actually the comet Swift-Tuttle. Every year, the earth passes through the debris cloud left by the comet when the earth's atmosphere is bombarded by what is popularly known as "falling stars."

Australia Plan to Involved India in Building World's Largest Telescope - SKA project

            Australia wants Indian scientists to join them in building the "world's biggest" telescope, its minister for innovation, industry, science and research senator Kim Carr said on Monday. "We want Indian scientists to participate in the prestigious project of world's largest telescope - Square Kilometre Array (SKA)," Carr told media.

Australian astronomers are regularly using India's Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) located near Pune for observation for the last few years.

The SKA would be a new generation radio telescope having a discovery potential 10,000 times greater than the best present day instruments. It will give astronomers remarkable insights into the formation of the early Universe, including the emergence of the first stars, galaxies and other structures, he said. Carr will be talking to the Department of Science and Technology in New Delhi for Indian participation in the SKA project.

Earlier this month, the Australian Government had announced $40.2 million to support the country's bid to host the world's biggest telescope.

The amount will be provided over four years to support Australia's bid to host SKA, in partnership with New Zealand. This funding will assist Australia's bid and support pre-construction design and development work if the bid is successful, Carr said.

Recently, South Africa has agreed to join the project, he said. Scientists and engineers from leading institutions in the world will work together on the SKA, estimated to be a USD 2.1 billion project, Carr said.

Talking about Australia-India cooperation on innovation, science and R&D, he said the recently established Australia India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF) of $130 million ($65 million from each country) has already worked on 90 different projects using $31 million in the fields of agriculture, water, energy, nanoscience, biotechnology to improve the standard of living of people.

"We are also trying to create a new broadband network for research students," he said adding 600 Indian students are doing PhD in different universities in Australia.

Black Hole Holds Universe’s Biggest Water Supply

Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever found in the universe. A 12 billion light year distance from the earth and holding at least 140 trillion times the amount of the water in the entire earth. It shows as a colossal of water vapor, hidden in the distant APM 08279+5255 quasar. A quasars are bright and violent galactic nuclei fueled by a super massive black hole at their center.


The water vapor is spread around the black hole in a gaseous region spanning hundreds of light years. “The environment around this quasar is unique in that it’s producing this huge mass of water,” says Matt Bradford from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

“It’s another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times,” adds Bradford in the release. As the light from this watery quasar took 12 billion years to reach Earth, the observations come from a time when the universe was only 1.6 billion years old.

The water reservoir was discovered by astronomers, led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology, and using the Z-Spec instrument at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory in Hawaii and the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy (CARMA) in the Inyo Mountains of Southern California.

Both instruments observe in the millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, which lie between infrared and microwave wavelengths. Over the last two to three decades, this technique has allowed astronomers to find trace gases, including water vapor, in the earliest universe.

Astronomers are now building a new telescope that specializes in these wavelengths. The proposed 25-meter telescope is called CCAT (Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope) and would be plopped on the Cerro Chajnantor lava dome, more than 5,600 meters above sea level.

By measuring the presence of water and other important trace gases, it would allow cosmic researchers to hunt out  primordial galaxies and more accurately study their composition. CCAT should start construction in 2013 and be completed in 2017.

Image: ESA/V. Bechmann (NASA-GSFC)

Man’s Name in Sand Visible from Space

By Claudine Zap | The Upshot – Wed, Jul 20, 2011

Here's a big idea: Writing your name in the sand so large that it can be seen from space. Of course, you're much better position to carry off this sort of vanity project if you're Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, a super-rich Arab sheikh who is the president of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. He also happens to own an island--an ideal canvas for what is essentially the world's largest self-referential graffiti tag.
The letters were crafted by a crew who worked for weeks to create them. The inscription measures half a mile high and two miles long--and the letters are dug so deep that they form waterways. The writing won't be immediately washed away, but even Hamad--whose fortune is only surpassed by his monarchial rival in the region, Saudi King Abdullah--can only defy the elements for so long.
Did we mention his name can be seen from outer space?
Hamad, according to Forbes, is a guy who lives large. A member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, the man known as the Rainbow Sheikh owns 200 cars that are stored in a giant pyramid. (What, you use a garage?) Forbes also noted that Hamad also hand-built a motor home in the shape of a giant globe "one-millionth the size of the Earth."
It should also be noted that the 63-year-old sheikh also has deep pockets when it comes to philanthropy. But don't worry about thanking him -- it seems he's come up with a perfectly good way to give himself a shout-out.

Atlantis' Last Approach

For the last time, the US Space Shuttle has approached the International Space Station (ISS). Following a dramatic launch from Cape Canaveral last week that was witnessed by an estimated one million people, Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-135 lifted a small crew to a welcome rendezvous three days ago with the orbiting station. Although NASA is discontinuing the aging shuttle fleet, NASA astronauts in the near future will be able to visit the ISS on Russian space flights. Pictured above, Atlantis rises toward the ISS with its cargo bay doors open, showing a gleaming metallic Raffaello Multi-Purpose Logistics Module. Over 200 kilometers below lie the cool blue waters of planet Earth. The much-anticipated last glide back to Earth for the Space Shuttle is currently scheduled for next Thursday, July 21.

Image credit: ISS Expedition 28 Crew, NASA

Neptune's first orbit: a turning point in astronomy

Astronomers will celebrate a remarkable event on 11 July. It will be exactly one year since the planet Neptune was discovered. Readers should note a caveat, however. That year is a Neptunian one. The great icy world was first pinpointed 164.79 years ago – on 23 September 1846. And as Neptune takes 164.79 Earthly years to circle the sun, it is only now completing its first full orbit since its detection by humans. Hence those anniversary celebrations.

And there is much to commemorate – for Neptune's discovery marked a turning point in astronomy. Its existence was revealed, not through a serendipitous observation by an astronomer but by the careful work of mathematicians. They calculated that perturbations in the orbit of Uranus, then thought to be the sun's most distant planet, could only be explained by the existence of another, even remoter world whose gravity was affecting Uranus's path.

The mathematicians – Englishman John Adams and Frenchman Urbain Le Verrier – made their calculations separately. Both agreed, however, where in the sky astronomers would pinpoint the planet causing those perturbations. But they dealt with the information very differently, says historian Allan Chapman of Wadham College, Oxford.

"Adams made a mismanaged attempt to interest the then astronomer royal George Airy while Verrier went public, announcing his prediction in the journal Comptes Rendus. Astronomers in Berlin then turned their telescope to the part of the sky he highlighted – and spotted Neptune."

What followed was equally dramatic. "Society was then undergoing a communications transformation every bit as profound as today's digital revolution," says Chapman. "Packet ships, railways and telegraphs allowed newspapers and journals to be sent across Europe in days. As a result, the Liverpool brewing magnate William Lassell turned his own powerful telescope towards the new planet 10 days later. In fact, only bad weather stopped him doing so earlier. The planet appeared as a blue disc with a white 'star' near it. He had discovered Neptune's moon Triton."

Astronomy was becoming a fast-moving international science – though identifying the exact roles of Adams and Verrier in making the discovery was controversial. France was indignant when Britain demanded retrospective recognition for Adams's part in Neptune's discovery.

As to the nature of the planet, this was only revealed in full in 1989 when the US probe Voyager 2 swept past it and sent back images of a seemingly serene blue world – though later analysis revealed dark spots on its surface that are vast cyclonic storms.

But the real surprise came from Triton, says Professor Carl Murray of University College London. "We found it had a thin atmosphere and huge streaks of black material across its surface. These are created by geysers of dust and nitrogen erupting from under Triton's icy surface as it is heated by the sun. In other words, even at the edge of the solar system, where temperatures are more than -200C, sunlight can still drive distinctive weather systems. It is quite extraordinary."

BASIC ASTRONOMY COURSE NEW BATCH

New batch who take the basic astronomy course 

ASTRONOMY 101

Stellar evolution is the process by which a star undergoes a sequence of radical changes during its lifetime. Depending on the mass of the star, this lifetime ranges from only a few million years (for the most massive) to trillions of years (for the least massive, which is considerably more than the age of the universe).

Stellar evolution is not studied by observing the life of a single star, as most stellar changes occur too slowly to be detected, even over many centuries. Instead, astrophysicists come to understand how stars evolve by observing numerous stars at the various points in their life, and by simulatingstellar structure with computer models.