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Features study consucten and a duraive Back powder-coated nish Utly Tray and Adapter Plate ‘ean bo purchased soparaty Festus: + Guide Pin for Safe Mounting of Telescone + Bue Lovelfor Accurate Taescope Sat Up * uit in Handle or Easy Transportation + 85 1.25" Eyepiece Holders ‘Three 2" Eyepioe Holders - Design for Large ode Eyepieces ' RG" 11 Table for Star Chats, Note Pade and Other Acessories A121 18" Adaptor Plato tat Swivels 230° + Reversible Design fr Cusiom Ft and Feet ‘uty Tay System - $190.95 uly Tay = $119.95 ‘dager Pte $9.95, 750 Easy Street, Simi Valley, CA 93065 805/520-0047 + 800/420-0255| Poe aie cover stoRY The Science Behind the Solar Corona The Sun’s tenuous crown is shaped by magnetic forces that can affect our | lives on Earth. | By Carolus J. Schrijver | mews & reaTunes | 16 News Notes « Polaris Companion Imaged + Oblong Vega «New Uranus Rings sand more ‘ANew Breed of Black Hole Astronomers debate whether they have found the elusive midsize black holes, By Davide Casteloocchi Rambling Through the Skies: Fooled by the Moon April Fools" Day or not, the Moon illusion is a tricky subject. By E. C. Krupp intermedi black he {6 Apri 2008 Sky & Telescope oN rie cover: This extreme-ultraviolet image shows million degree coronal plasma confined by ever-changing magnetic fields — the jorces behind space weather. TRACE sarllite image courtery Stanjord-Lockheed Institute for Space Research and NASA. OBSERVING & EXPLORING Northern Hemisphere’s Sky Secrets of the Lion's Heart By Fred Scheaf Northern Binocular Highlight ‘The Beehive Cluster By Gary Seronil Southern Binocular Highlight NGC 3532: Best of the Best? By Les Dalrymple Southern Hemisphere’s Sky Sailing Along the Galactie Plane By Greg Bryant Sun, Moon, and Planets Planets Flirt with Star Clusters By Fred Schaaf Exploring the Moon Little Lunar Voleanoes By Charlee A. Wood Celestial Colendar A Spectacular Pleiades Occultation By David Dunham Eye on the Sky ‘An Eclipse Timetable By Stephen James O'Meara Deep-Sky Wonders Leo’s 11th Hour By Sue French Observer's Log ‘A Look Back at Mars in 2005 By Edin L. AguirreCompared with free space, the Moon offers dust and gravity PRODUCTS & REVIEWS, ACTIVITIES & PEOPLE ‘ASO IN TMS ISSUE 74 S&T Test Report 85 The Astronomy Scene 8 Spectrum Two New Binos Solar Eclipses on Stamps Clouded Vision Recent entries in the binocular By Edwin L. Aguirre ‘By Richard Tresch Flenberg market give observers a greater range of choices than ever before. 90. Star Trails 12 Letters | By Gary Seronik Asteroid Alerts: A Risky Business * GALEX Lives By David H. Leey + Lowell's Legacy 78 S&T Test Report + and more. Starry Starry Night 92 Hobby Q&A A popular planetarium package + When did the galactic equator 24 50 & 25 Years Ago gets a big upgrade to dramatically cross the ecliptic atthe solstices? By Lf J. Robinson improve our view of the virtual sky + How long is a ligne? | By David Ratledge + and more 24 Mission Update | By Jonathan McDowell 82 Books & Beyond 94 Astrophotography + A Fresh Look at the Classics f Color and Composition 88 Event Calendar + and more By Tony Hallas 109 Index to Advertisers 98 Gallery 110 Focal Point Here’s Dirt in Your Bye By Dan Lester The famous Horsehead Nebula is silhouetted by the glow of IC 4 ONLINE. Visit SkyandTelescope.com for late breaking news reports, helpful tips oon observing and photographing the sky, and expert advice on choosing and using telescopes and accessories The site also features our interactive sky chart, a searchable index to Sky & Telesope, and many other useful tools. spraescore 0037400 pee oy yy Usa Bhone soo Ss.0m05 rnmér ere Gr 9368 a hee eye ce etal av Sas osetia, ErSecSt lane) beste yadenepece: ob atl hetone a ‘hy & Telescope Apri 2006 7Itremains to be seen if the Vision for Space Explo- ration will be good for astronomy. 8 Apt Clouded Vision IF You WANT to spark some animated conversation among astronomy and space enthusiasts, ask for their opinions of President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration. Unveiled in January 2004, i calls on NASA to return the Space Shuttle to flight, to fish building the International Space Station USS), and then to phase out the shuttle by the end of this decade, More important, the Vision (*VSE" in NASA-speak) directs the ageney to develop a new spacecraft that can ferry astronauts to and from the ISS, return people to the Moon by the end of the next decade, and eventually land them on Mars. Because the lion’s share of US astronomi cal research is funded by NASA, astron ‘omers can't help but pay attention to how the agency spends its money. In reaction to the Vision, they've split mainly into two ‘camps. Some reflexively oppose the plan because of its em: phasis on human space light. They worry that NASA will di vert funding from planetary probes and space telescopes, which invariably pay huge scientific dividends, to piloted missions, which may not ‘Others support the Vision because it might (just might) fulfill a dream left over from the Apollo era: to build pow- erful telescopes on the Moon. But as Dan Lester argues in this month's Focal Point essay (page 110), the Moon — despite its airlessness and two.weeklong nights — isn't such a great place to put telescopes afterall Does this mean there’s not a single reason for astronomers to endorse the Vision? Not at all. Lester suggests, and I agree, that if NASA develops the capability to send astro ‘Shy & Telescope nauts on roundtrips to the Moon and Mars, the agency will also gain the ability to build and maintain large observato ries in deep space ~ though there's no guarantee Congress will actually fund such facilities. Think of how wonderful it would be if high-flying suecessors to the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope could be refurbished with state-ofthe-art detectors and computers the way Hubble has been upgraded for the past 15 years — and the way many older ground-based telescopes have been ‘maintained at the scientific leading edge for decades. Unfortunately, only two years into the plan and less than ‘year into the tenure of NASA administrator Michael Grif fin, the Vision is in trouble. Getting the shuttle flying again, is taking a lot longer, and costing a lot more, than anyone anticipated. The only 18S worth having in the context of the Vision, according to the prestigious National Research Council, is one on which lifescience research prepares NASA to send astronauts on long-duration missions to Mars. Yet such studies are being cut back dramatically to save money. And following Griffin's not-very-encouraging speech at January's meeting of the American Astronomical Society, astronomers fear that some of their high-priority projects will be sent to the chopping block too. In truth, quite a few incipient astronomy missions are embarrassing ly over budget and behind schedule, making them tempt ing targets at a time when the US economy is straining against the mounting costs of the war in Traq, disaster re lief, and other challenges.) [still think it would have been better to kill the ISS and let the shuttle fade away — perhaps after one last mission to ser vice Hubble. That would have freed up billions of dollars to speed the development of new space vehicles and to advance space exploration in the broadest sense, in: cluding studies of Earth and the Sun; human and robotic expeditions to the Moon, Mars, potentially threatening asteroids, and the outer solar system and the construction and servicing of telescopes in high orbits that give them nearly continuous access to the entire sky. Ironically, President Reagan's long-forgotten National Commission on Space suggested just such ‘wide-ranging, balanced approach in 1986. But its report was overshadowed by the Challenger disaster and was ignored while the country turned its aten: tion to getting the shuttle flying again so that we could build a space station, ht FiA HUBBLE FOR YOUR BACKYARD. JOR” the .d research telescope on earth omes with che most advanced optical system in space. Meade’s all ne Advanced Ritchey-Chrétien optics within reach of astronomers everywhere. 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Sinn [ASSOCIATE a1TOES Eewin Agu, Tony Flonder, Sta |. aidan, Gory Sra Baw Tytel o1TOR EHERITUS Leif. Robinson «Greg Bryon, Las Dolrymple, Thames A. Dobbins, David W. Dunham, Alan Oye Foust, eater, Ken Hewit mite, Johnny Horne, EC pp avd, LevyJonathen MeDowel OMear, Dovid Rate, Fed Schoo Govet Shing, Willan Sheehan, Ceres A Wood Tontanurine roctantas PK. Chen, Air Fujis Tony nd Dope Hels, Dovié Mali sx ute stove A Simpson ston oeztnex Patria Gli Coppeta LUSTATION RECTOR Gregg indermon ‘stron Casey Reed sesineriustises Susan Ut stots a vennssionswanAste Selly Moc Giiveay ‘PRODUCTION a EEHNOLOGY Derek W. Corson cron wauacen Domini, Teermine SYSTEMS ENGINEER Kevin 8 Mooney soverising sas oiRECOX Peter. Hor J saveisine scnvieceuanacen Ueto). Stacenan ACCOUNT ERECT Amand hens Acgutstins torn oul Deane Son nant wanace Benji Jackson cusrouce service ont Jone € Ot {Customer sevice suremison Anna Tone! SHS HEPRESeATIVE Serb Bulger Account AommasteaTOn Connie A Palmer oveearions manasen Eovard W. Mera “Shri surnvisos Jefe 1. aishop. Dacia WAKER Soron Clapp Founded in 1943 by Chales A Feder. ane Helen Spence Fever ine, anconmeria personal as) wiht Sonny woes Camoc $08.95 Gmlang GST) stateroom tL)I have yet to take a bad image with my DSI Pro Il. ~ sack sibote . > me = — : ae, 3 * we Sp Pt Ce CCC ris) cit 22 bella cr alent treet td) Saeed enact ‘The user-friendly astrophotography revolution continues, Introducing the new DSI Il It combines ease-of-use with a larger chip, greater sensitivity, higher resolution, and dramatically lower thermal noise. Meade engineers have invented a remarkal way to reduce noise without a cooler. This n josures for hours at a time, And the new thermal monitoring « aut lym dark frames to ambient temperature so it’s nearly impossible ro take an uncalibrated picture. The sc ware includes a new zoom feacure for easier focusing and the squared pixels of che ne larger chip make processing simpler and images more beautiful than ever. The DSI IT is the world’s first un-cooled camera with low thermal noise, And that’s as cool as itVS TUTE MM, CRAYPORD POCUSERS, SPIDERS & ROTATORS FOR ALL SCOPES AND ALL “AMERAS GIANT 3 Macrae ALPIAOMEGA fiers WITH EVERYTHING: OR NOT - YOUR CHOICE TEMP COMP ‘Autofocus from $399 to $1950 7” MasterGlide Focusers with (uad-Focus fin OMICRON Mini Fese, << DESIGNED FOR ASTROIMAGING core mat ea ae CYCLOID: trad Disk Rotators 3/4” PROFILE! yourrocusen on mcic Marval Aco Rain Your SCOPE HERE EEE VAN SLYKE INSTRUMENTS 12815 Porcupine Lane, Colorado Springs, CO 80908 Voice: 719.495.3828, FAX 719.495.6465 WWW.OBSERVATORY.ORG 12 Apri 2006 Shy & Telescope letters GALEX Lives We enjoyed your special report on NASA's other" space telescopes and would like to share with your readers an update on the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mis: sion (January issue, page 40). Shortly after ‘your magazine went to press last October, ‘the farultraviolet detector resumed normal, full-time operation. The deteetors contin. ue to perform unimpaired, returning about 24 gigabits per day of data that pro: vide superb images of nearby galaxies and slobal sky surveys. According to plan, the rission will begin its extended phase next fall (pending NASA approval) and will continue to map the heavens through September 2008 or longer. GALEX is in excellent health and will likely exceed its original goals, Prrer G. Frreoman Krrny Erickson D. Curistormer MARTIN, Caltech, MC 403-47 1200 East California Bled. Pasadena, CA 91125 Moon Illusion Inhis letter, Anthony Ayiomamitis claims that the Moon seems bigger near the hori zon because of familiar landmarks (Novem: ber 2005, page 12). But the Moon illusion ‘occurs on the open sea and on the flat- lands, too. There is a better explanation, First, when we see a bird or a cloud fly ing near the horizon, we notice that it looks much farther away than if it were flying directly overhead — even though both instances might be at the same alt ‘tude, Our brain has an inner map of the sky that is shaped like a flattened hemi- sphere. Our knowledge of the Moon's real near-constant distance should be able to replace the inner map, but since we trust our eyes for survival, this is not the case Second, our brain is very good at meas. uring sizes and angles. On any given day the distance to the Moon doesn’t vary Wire to Letters to the Editor, Shy & Telescope, ‘49 Boy State Re., Cambridge, MA 02138, or send e-mal to [email protected]. Please limit your comments to 250 words, ‘uch, Hence with the Moon appearing ‘much farther away at the horizon (as our {nner map tells us) yet still covering the same angular diameter of sky, our brain can't help but interpret this scenario as if the Moon really is larger atthe horizon, ‘No landmarks are needed. Lars ENGSTROM Stockholm, Steeden suslars@tdliacom EpIToR’s NOTE: For more on thi tople, see this month's Rambling Through the Skies cal- umn on page 43. Lowell's Legacy Tread with interest William Shechan’s arti cle on my great-uncle’s activities in Japan, “To Mars by Way of Noto" (December 2005, page 108), “Uncle Percy? as the cor. porate soul of the Percival Lowell Obser- vatory is now referred to by its staff, was a ‘man of great importance to the future of astronomy, though many of his confreres did not think so at the time, In 1987 [too visited Anamidzu on the Noto Peninsula of Japan, ate “Lowell cakes,’ sailed down the bay to Nanao, and attended civie gatherings. A couple of years ago we entertained a delegation from the Noto area here on Mars Hill in Flagstaff. In short, we do everything we can to maintain the cordiality that the town of Anamidzu has shown toward the ‘memory of our founder, We appreciate Shechan’s bringing to light Lowell's travels to Japan before he founded Lowell Observatory. Today we are still furthering Uncle Percy's vision — he was a man who put all his money where his mouth was, We feel that Unele Perey ‘would be proud of our new relationship with Discovery Communications, which is constructing a 4.2-meter telescope at the nearby Happy Jack Hill. WrttraM L. Puram Lowell Obsereatory Flagstaff, AZ se.purnamlovel. du For the Record Wn the January tse, page 54, the Hyades star labeled Beta (fi) i aetually EpsilonThe NEW LX90GPS" can do more than track satellites. It can communicate with them as well. Tura it on and the built-in Sonye GPS sensor immediate mines your precise date, ¢ location. Meade’s patented Auto Align” then uses this info to align your scope for a tour of the most spec tacular sights in the universe. With all che features of the legendary LX90 Schmidt-Cassegrain plus the ability co communicate wich satel LX90GPS now hasit all. When it comes to industry-leading American-made optics, depth of features, and value for your dollar, the LX90GPS is the Schmidt-Cassegrain elescope you can find that can find itselfBefore you dive into the technical details, PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO ENJOY THAT FIRST RUSH OF PURE DESIRE. Cae ITV aC sto aTotal instrument capacity | 250 Ibs. Aperture * Ea Optical design Shc =a Optical coatings s Mount |[_ Robotic Equatorial 24mm Gear piteh diameter | 13.625" ULTRA WIDE ia alec TE rc: Pointing aocureey Sub are nin, Latitude 090° Wo. of die gear teeth | 652 (RA & DEO) MAX Mount $14,999 wan 1 $21,998 MAK 20" $29,999 SERVICE Sear rene etcetera You could piece together a lesser system for 3 times the price. But why? piece at i THE LAST MOUNT YOU'LL EVER NEED MEE Laser-ligned fed oversized primary mir Cooling fn & built-in at-dew heater Cn Computer-optimized tafting raat Cltcles,flly-enveoped, pormanontlyprectson-leaded warm die com Eztrane fret fecuiag system Carbon fiber Kevlar optcl tube a US cn MEADE Electronic ellmation Built like a tank crafted by Swiss watchmakers M7First magnitude Vega is by far te bright est strin Lyra. The star i ectuely ob- long becouse ofits fast rotetion. ts polar axis points olmost directly toward Eoth 6 Apri 2006 Shy & Tle Astronomers are gaining new insights on stars by measuring their diameters with telescope arrays. USING A mioM-TEECH telescope array with resolution better than Hubble's, astrono- mers have finally solved the long-standing mystery of why Vega, the fifth-brightest star in the night sky, is 50 percent more Juminous than other stars of its Ao spec- ‘ral type. But another group using the same facility has uncovered a new mystery. red dwaris, the most common stars in the universe, are usually larger than scientists ‘thought they were. Both groups used Georgia State Univer. sity's Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array a Y-shaped layout of six meter telescopes on Mount Wilson in California, The CHARA Array is an interferometer ~ a grid of telescopes linked so that individual light waves from cach instrument ean be combined to Pea eee achieve extremely high resolution. The two CHARA telescopes farthest from each other are separated by 331 meters (1,086 feet), which gives the array nearly the res- olution of a hypothetical 3s1-meter optical telescope. CHARA can resolve details as small as 200 mieroareseconds ~ the angu lar size of a nickel seen from 20,000 kilo meters (12,000 miles) away. ‘A team led by Jason Aufdenberg (Na tional Optical Astronomy Observatory, ‘Tueson) used the CHARA Array to meas ure the angular size of Vega, located 25, light years away in Lyra, With CHARA'S sharp resolution, Aufdenberg and his col- leagues confirmed long-standing susp cions that Vega is oblong because it rotates rapidly, and that we happen to view the star nearly pole-on. This geometry is the key that unlocks the luminosity mystery ‘Vega rotates every 12.4 hours, of 92 per- cent of its calculated breakup rate. ‘Rapid rotation means a star's poles will be hot ter? explains Aufdenberg. In fact, the ob servations show that Veg's poles are about 9,900°C (18,000°F), a whopping 2,200°C (4,000°F) hotter than the equator. A civilization whose planet is aligned with Vega's equator would see a much cooler and less luminous star. Vega looks like a star with 60 solar lu minosities, but it should be about 40; says Aufdenberg. When the team correct- ed for the reduced equatorial ight output, the astronomers calculated that VegaThe Helix Exposed SOME 650 LIGHT-YEARS away in Aquar ius lies the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293). In this combined visible and infrared image from the Hubble and Spitzer space tele- scopes, the planetary nebula reveals a seemingly countless number of “comet ary knots." Although superficially resem: bling comets, these compact blobs of gas are each about twice as large as our solar system, ‘The image shows how the cometlike streamers are energized by ultraviolet ra diation from the hot core of the dying star emits 37 times more light than the Sun — a close match to other Ao stars. CHARA may have closed the books on the Vega mystery, but it has thrown stellar models for a loop regarding red dwaris — that spawned the Helix. There is a very strong transition from ionized, very hot gas (oxygen TIT, colored blue as seen by Hubble}, to mostly atomic gas (hydrogen alpha, colored green as seen by Hubble’, to warm, mostly molecular gas (4.5- and 8.0-micron molecular hydrogen, colored red as seen by Spitzer). Indeed, the red: dish tails are relatively well shielded from the central star's radiation. In time the nebula will become redder and fainter as it expands and dissipates into the black: ness of space Davip Tyret conventional telescopes of red dwarfs in eclipsing binary systems. “If we don’t un derstand this result, we don't understand low-mass stars,’ says Berger TH) berger and his colleagues sus "pect that the models fail to ful small, cool, dim stars that com- |” wy account for the presence of prise about three-fourths of Syondfelescope molecules such as water vapor the stars in our galaxy. [eomlsens | — in ared dwarfs upper atmos A team led by David Berger (Cniversity of Michigan) precisely measured the diameters of six Mtype red dwaris. Five tured out to be 15 to 20 percent larg: cx than theoretical models predict. The CHARA observations confirm red-dwart measurements made by other interierom- ters, as well as determinations made with phere. These molecules would tend to darken a star slightly, therefore requiring the star to be larger in order to emit the amount of observed light. Berger and Anfdenberg presented their respective results at January's American Astronomical Society conference in Wash ington, DC. — Ronent Narve Probing Polaris Of the countless stars that grace the night sky, among the most fomous is Poloris, the North ta. But this 2nd-mognitude star holds secrets not visible to the naked eye: it's actually otriple-star system, ond, at a distonce of just 430 light-years, it's the brightest Cepheld variable in the sky. Polaris's larger but fainter sibling, Po- Joris B, has been known for centuries. Some 48 areseconds from the North Star, it was fist spotted by Wiliam Herschel in 4780 ‘nd can be seen through modest amateur instruments. But the much closer partner Polaris Ab, had been recorded anly by spec- ‘trometers ond had managed to avoid being photographed ~ until now. Nancy Evans (Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and her team used the Hubble Spoce Telescope to cap- ture the firstever picture ofthis otherwise nonde- script Sun-like companion. With that information and the orbit, they determined one of the most occurate ‘mass measurements ever for a Cepheid variable: Polaris weighs in at 4.3 £141 solor masses. Polaris Ab was tricky to spot. While spectroscopic studies had told astronomers ‘much about the object, including its orbit, ‘those same observations foiled to reveal the separation between it and the primary. The ‘new Hubble images show the companion to be a scant 0.2 arcsecond away, translating to just 3.2billion kilometers (2 billion miles), ‘comparable tothe distance from the Sun to Uranus. Further hampering the detection was the brightness difference betwoen the two, as the faint light from much smaller Polaris Ab is overwhelmed by its supergiant big brother. While not completely understood, Cepheid variables are well known in astro- omical circles for acting es standard condles. Because the period of a Cepheid’s voriabilty is tightly reloted to its laminos- y,ostronomers can study how its bright- ness rises ond falls to measure its distance, Learning more about these unique stars Is critical since they play a key role in de- termining the universe's expansion rote and age. =r | ‘Shy & Telescope April 2005 $7news notes Uranus’s New Rings WHEN PeorLe THINK of the best Hubble Space Telescope targets, planets might not come to mind, Yet the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys continues to make unexpected discoveries within cour solar system. Mark Showalter (SETI Institute) and Jack Lissauer (NASA/Ames Research Center) looked at Uranus four times between July 2003 and August 2005 and recovered a satellite (now named Perdita first observed in Voyager 2 images shot in 1986. They also found two new moons (S&T: January 2004, page 3), which go by the names Mab and Cupid More interesting were two new tenuous xings girdling the planet. The new rings, found in the initial 2003 campaign and confirmed in subsequent observations, side far beyond Uranus's other rings. The planet apparently sports two separate ring ro 8 Apri 2006 Shy & Tlecope systems — an “inner* group of 11 and the newly discovered outer pais. Mab “almost certainly is the [outermost] ring's primary source body report Showalter and Lis sauer in a December 22, 2005, Internation al Astronomical Union (LAU) Circular. The second ring is trickier to explain because it peaks in brightness where no known ‘moons are present, Without a source of dust to replenish the supply, rings like these survive only centuries or less. The IAU assigned names to three other Uranus moons in December 2005. As is customary for Uranian satellites, the new names (Francisco, Margaret, and Fer dinand) refer to figures mentioned in Shakespearean plays. Uranus now has 27 confirmed, named moons. The new rings have been designated R/2003 U 1 and R/2003 U 2. D.T. AColder Pluto Astronomers using the Smithsonian Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea in Hawaii have measured the temperature of Pluto and have confirmed that the planet's surface is colder than scientists ‘would expect given its distonce from the Sun, The iy surface is only ~230°C (-382°P) Pluto's temperature should match thot of its largest moon, Charon, hich is about 10°C warmer. Mark Gurwell (Horvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) attributes this long-suspected discrepancy to. kind of reverse greenhouse effect. Rather than heating the surface, the cant bits of sun- light thot reach the plonet convert Pluto's nitrogen ice to gas. Because evaporation {sa cooling process, the ground chills a bit os o result, just as evaporating per- spiration cools your skin. =D. One Weird Kuiper Belt Object Kuiper Belt discoveries are becoming rather mundane. Unless they rival Pluto in size, the public pays them little mind, Except for the weled ones, Lost December Lynne Allen ond Brett Glad: n (University of British Columbia, Canada) ‘announced 2004 XRigo, an object they affec- tionately dubbed “Buffy.” But cute nomes aside, this one has caught even jaded astron- comers’ attention. its 40-year orbit stretches ut to $7.2 Sun-Earth distances, and its incli- nation is a whopping 46.6". But most curious is its eccentricity — Buffy's orbit is practically circular! Dynamicist Scott Kenyon (Harvard-Smithson- ert ron corte orn ecliptic ian Center for Astrophysics) suggests thot a fly by from a passing star early in the solar system's life could have disrupted objects in the Kuiper Belt enough to fing them into bizarre orbits. The ‘gravitational effect this would have on Kuiper Belt bodies would vary. Many would be ejected {rom the system, some would be captured by the possing star, ond others would have huge ener- ies transferred into their orbits. The numbers allow for a wide range of resulting orbits — objects with 90° inclinations and even ones thot circle the Sun backward. But astronomers need to discover more objects like Bufy to test the models. “Once we have 12 or more, we'll hove e better ideo,” soysKenyon, —D.T. Deer eyre 77x /-04)) Ree ar eed eet Pere, eee ee ses Mel Re Soe eR rao neers ete cl me Peet neM ee at) ee et eee ee ene ae Ce eC ae Ret tes il eer NCU Enno eer e nse! Pence eee pam ee Beane . er ree een eee ene er cota ae Deets See ts serie atte ee petit lee seeoperinmy oa a eee aie Seetist2ONnews notes Cosmic “Twister” Tornados might be fomilior sights on the Kansas plains but notin the frigid depths of interstellar space. That's why astran- ‘omers were stunned when they saw this new color-coded image from the Spitzer ‘Spoce Telescope’s Infrared Arroy Camera (RAC). “In the thousands of Spitzer images we've looked at, we've never seen anything lke this before,” says IRAC lead scientist Giovanni Fazio (Harvard-Smithsonion Cen- ter for Astrophysics). The 0.3:light-year-long “tornado,” an ‘object in Chamaeleon known as Herbig- Haro 49/50, is not actually spinning It probably formed when a protostar just ‘above the field of view lounched a jet “downward” through an interstellar dust ‘loud. The jet is ramming nto the cloud at 160 kilometers (100 miles) per second, hheating the moterial and causing it to ‘low in infrared light. The cause of the helical shope remains unknown, but it ‘might have to do with magnetic felds or instabilities generoted by the shock front. In this Spitzer image, which was pre sented by John Bally (University of Col- ‘orado) and his colleagues at January's ‘American Astronomical Society meeting, blue represents short infrared wave: lengths and red longer ones. The star in the center of the blue emission at the bot- tom of the “tornado” is probably a chance superposition. =R.N. 120 April 2000 Sky & Telescope Je since Big Bong (millions of years) ns of light-years) 10 Exponcing region of space we Galo ic ey Jokes ay... a ‘Average photon travel distance (1 oa Using a new sample of extremely distont quasars es prabes of the intergolactc medium, astronomers have Pinpoint the so-olle reionization era, o period, just billion years after the Big Bong, during which the universe became lorgaly transparent to photons of utravi Reionization Revealed A NEWLY ANALYZED sample of 19 ex tremely distant quasars has documented a key cosmic transformation — one that cleared away a fog of intergalactic hydro: gen atoms left over from the Big Bang, ‘The lifting of the fog enabled light from some ofthe first galaxy-like objects to tra- verse the visible universe and reach tele scopes on Earth. Finding out what caused this transfor. ‘mation — known as reiontzation — remains ‘one of cosmology's Holy Grails. Whatever the cause (starforming galaxies are lead ing contenders), astronomers are increas ingly confident that it finished its work by a redshift of 6, just 950 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only 7 percent of its present age. Observations from the past few years hhad suggested that the farthest known quasars shone through partially opaque material. But it wasn't until late last year that Xiaohui Fan (University of Arizona) and nine colleagues analyzed an unprece- dentedly large sample of high-redshift quasars. They discovered the 19 hypertu- minous galactie nuclei in data taken as pact of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (S&T: February 2005, page 34). 6 5 4 Quosor redshift ight. ‘As Fan's team explains in its submission to the Astronomical Journal, followaup spee- tra taken of the quasars revealed that at a redshift of 5 (1.2 billion years after the Big Bang), the universe had become 200 times more transparent to ionizing pho tons than it had been just a quarter billion years earlier. ‘This result, says Princeton University theorist Jeremiah Ostriker, is precisely | what one would expect of a universe sprin- | Ked with luminous objects, each carving an ever growing bubble in the intergalactic ‘medium with hydrogen-busting ultraviolet light. “At some point, they grow and over: lap and merge" says Ostriker of these bub bles, The spreading reionization fronts changed the equivalent of thick pea soup with afew transparent bubbles into a per forated chunk of Swiss cheese. ‘The new Sloan study, says Ostriker, “makes it absolutely conclusive? that reionization took place. Even so, finding out when it began will have to wait until observers capture infrared spectra of quasars or gamms-ray bursts with red. shifts around 7 oF higher, says Fan, and no such objects have been conclusively identified. — Josnva RornTAT ETI FOR THOSE WHO ARE CURIOUS ENOUGH TO LOOK UP AND We O. NDE. ok ONAN gare sie eee the highest grade materials available. The high Re ee er ese once) Peete ee Cee enn ones a Coie Name eee eer) Cee Rice ene h tien ete) ere Mme Cae eet mem oa ced PERE Re ome eo the ambient temperature is kept at a consistent Pel et eee neice Pee eR eal eg) Be eee ot Ee Me aes er erg ia * cher’ Ld KOSS HEIST wvw.skywatchertelescope.netnews notes Binary-Star Planets Common ANYONE ESTIMATING the number of lf. bearing planets in our galaxy must con: front the question of whether planets can exist in binary or higher-order multiple-star systems. Afterall, about two-thirds ofall Sun-like stars reside in multiple systems. ‘New observational and theoretical stud {es announced at January's American AS: tronomieal Society meeting in Washington, This computer simulation shows 0 protoplonetary isk around one member ofa binary system. Jupiter: mass clumps of gas (red and blue regions) form easily and lter collapse to form gos-giont plonets. Extreme Parallax ‘The surest way to measure the distance to 0 star is by the star's trigonometric parallax: how much it oppears to shift from side to side ‘agoinst distant background stors as Earth ‘moves from one side ofits orbit tothe other every six months. The parallax shift gives the star’s distance by simple geometry, with no troublesome unknowns or hidden assumptions. However, most stars ore so far awoy that their porallax shifts are extremely small and hard to measure. A major breakthrough came in 1997 withthe European Space Agency's Hip- porcos satellite. It measured the parallaxes of 118,218 bright stars to the extraordinary prec ion of about 4 milliarcsecond. As 0 result, the distances of these stars are known to 1 percent ‘curacy out to few dozen light-years, and 10 percent accuracy out to a few hundred. ‘But astronomers are coming up with tech- 22 April 2006 Sky & Telescope DG, offer good news for astrobiologiss These results build on and help explain earlier discoveries of 21 exoplanet host stars in binaries and 2 in triple systems (S&T: November 2005, page 20) A group of Georgia State University astronomers led by Deepak Raghavan and ‘Todd Henry scrutinized modern and archival images of 131 stars known to har borat least one planet. The team was Jooking for stars in a field that share the planet host star's motion across the sky {proper motion, strong indicator that the stars are gravitationally bound. Follow-up photometry and spectroscopy were used to confirm whether potential stellar compan fons lie atthe same distance from Earth. Henry and his colleagues found that 29 of the 131 planet host stars have stellar companions. The results include the dis covery of five new binaries (for a total of 26) and one new triple fora total of 3) ‘These 29 stars have a combined 36 known planets. Three of the hosts have stellar companions at projected separations as close as 20 astronomical units (Uramus's distance from the Sun}, and two of the stars are accompanied by white dwvarts, ‘meaning thatthe planet endured the com: panion’s evolution into a red giant. “Our results show that planetary systems ean niques for doing much better. Radio observers ‘re using the worldwide Very Long Baseline Ar- ray (VLBA) to measure parclloxes ofa few ob- jects to 10 microarcseconds, beating Hipparcos by @ foctor of 100. Two groups recently used this technique to measure the paralloxes of water ‘and methanol clouds inthe nebula W3(OH), part ‘of IC 1795 in Cassiopeia. The nebula is located inthe Perseus spiral orm of the Milky Way, the ‘ext arm out from ours. The researchers find that the nebula is 6,470 light-years away with ‘on uncertainty of only 2 percent. This resolves a factor-of-2 discrepancy in ‘wo other measurements of the nebul tance, based on the assumed luminos! stars and on the assumption that it along ac moving ular orbit around the galaxy. W3(O#) turns out not to be on a circular orb itis moving toward the golectic center by 22 kilometers per second. This refinement gives ‘on indication ofthe density ofthe Perseus Arm form and survive in a variety of envieon: ments,’ says Raghavan, ‘Theoretical studies also show thet plan- ts can readily form in binary systems, de- spite the gravitational tug-of-war between competing stars. Alan Boss (Camegie In- stitution of Washington) presented com- puter simulations demonstrating that a distant stellar companion’s gravity can ac tually induce planet formation by trigger- ing the formation of dense ges clumps within a protoplanetary disk. The clumps quickly collapse to form gas-giant planets. Jack Lissauer (NASA/Ames Research Cen- ter) presented his group's findings that Earth size planets can form in wide orbits around two stars in a tight binary and in close orbits around one of the two stars in widely separated binary. “The take-home message is that half of all wide binary-star systems can harbor planets because the separation is great enough to permit both the formation and the subsequent stability of the resulting planetary orbits? says Geoff Marcy (Uni- versity of California, Berkeley), coleader of the team that has discovered more than half of the 170-plus known exoplanets, “There are surely tens of billions of Sun like stars in the galaxy that can easily har bor planets” -R.N. ‘compared to the inter-orm regions, and gives hints bout the distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way. A poper on this work appears in the January 6th Science, Additional extreme parallaxes oe on the way. “We've just recently figured out how to do this Well with the VLBA,” says Mark Reid (Horvard- ‘Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), © mem- ber of both teams. “We're looking at about 14 ‘objects now, including the Orion Nebula. We hope to get « distance tothe Orion Nebula that’s better than 4 percent accurate.” ‘Much more ison the horizon. Hipparcos's ‘successor, the European Space Agency's Gola satelite, is due to launch in 2044. By 2015 it should be producing tens of millions of stor parallaxes as accurate as the handful of VLBA radio parallaxes being acquired now — bring ing o precision revolution that will advance procticaly every branch of astronomy. = ALAN MACROBERTElliptical Mergers: Caughtin the Act WITH THEIR NEARLY FEATURELESS pro- files and uniformly ancient stellar popula: tions, elliptical and lenticular (So) galaxies are the epitome of cosmic stasis in many astronomers’ minds. But when Yale as- ‘ronomer Pieter van Dokkum studied ex tremely deep images of 126 luminous red galaxies — many of which were ellipticals and lenticulars ~ he was in for a surprise. ‘As he reported in the Astronomical Journal last December, more than half of those galaxies are distended, surrounded by faint asymmetric envelopes, or paired with lesser systems — compelling ev: dence that they have interacted or merged with other galaxies. ‘And this, says van Dokkum, resolves a ‘major conundrum. Reigning cosmological models dictate that massive objects eon- tinuously accrete new matter. Yet earlier generations of astronomers had concluded that elliptical and lenticular galaxies stopped bulking up billions of years ago. For one thing, shallower photographs showed litle evidence for interactions with other galaxies. Furthermore, these massive galaxies contained uniformly an cient stars, which are relatively red, while well-documented galaxy collisions inevit ably seem to spawn young, blue stars. But van Dokkum says he has resolved the discrepancy. In his view, the ellipticals and lentieulars that he eaught in flagrante ddicto are obviously absorbing or tussling with other galaxies, but they contain little interstellar gas — the raw material for mak ing new stars “The galaxies that result from these mergers are relatively young, he explains, but their stars are old. This resolves the age discrepancy and allows structure formation to proceed apace in Einsteinian Energy By repeatedly imaging 1-square-degree fields with the 3.6-meter Conada-Fronce-Howail Telescope, participants in the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) are ontrack to detect hundreds of Type la supernovae billions of light-years distont. These “stondard candles” will enoble the astronomers to chronicle the history of the cosmic battle between gravity the modem universe, as expected. Francois Schweizer (Carnegie Observa: tories) isn’t convinced that van Dokkum's study has really settled the issue. Not that Schweizer disputes the idea of today's el lipticals interacting with other galaxies: in fact, he photographed dozens of eases in the 1980s and early 1990s. But Schweizer thinks that by focusing on very red objects van Dokkum has fooled himself into giv ing primacy to so-called “dry mergers” smashups of gas-poor galaxies that can't fuel starbirth. For his part, van Dokkum retorts that in ‘many cases, it's apparent that two obvious: ly bulge-dominated galaxies are interact ing, while in others, the glowing leftovers of a gobbled-up galaxy are rather diffuse — in stark contrast to the narrow tails created when spinning, gas-rich spirals collide. Furthermore, says van Dokkum, prelim nary spectra of many of his systems show litle evidence for star formation. On one point Schweizer and van Dok- kum agree: Hubble Space Telescope im: ages would shed the most light on the nature of the enigmatic ellipticals. In January van Dokkum asked for permis- sion to use the orbiting observatory to ward this end. LR Then bythe &-meterrefectorson Kit Peok in Ar 20n0 ond Cero Tool in Chile, these color-composite imoges show 15th- and 16-mognitude goloxes roughly 1 bition light-years distant in BoStes ond Virgo. Each rae depicts whot astronomers thik is diferent stage in the merge of two goloxies. (Pone A spons 5 pores B through 0 ore 2.5 wide) Iftwo merging galaxies re gos-poor eipticals or lenticulrs, they can coolese in as lite as 200 milion yers without forming new stor. Bolstered (hich slows the universe's expansion) and “dark energy” (which speeds it up). The first year of SNLS data turned up 74 Type la super- novoe, some of which exploded when the universe was only 6 billion years old (at red- shift 1.0). By combining information on these ‘supernovae with data from the Sloan Digital ‘Sky Survey, Pierre Astier (National Energy Re- ‘search Scientific Computing Center, France) ‘ond his numerous SNLS colleagues have strengthened the case that dark energy tokes its simplest possible form: Albert Einstein's cosmological constant, « mysterious kind of vacuum energy whose density remains un- changed throughout space and time (S87: ‘March 2005, page 32). IR. Shy & Telescope Apri 2005 23news notes by jonathan medowell New Horizons On January 19th the $650 million New Horizons probe launched to the ninth planet, Pluto. The 465-kilogram (1,025- pound) spacecraft carries three cameras an -centimeteraperture (inch) instru- ‘ment for visible and infrared imaging, an ultraviolet spectrometer, and a 20.8 cm telescope for long-range pictures. A dust sensor, an energetie-particle spec- trometer, and a solar-wind instrument complete the small payload comple- ‘ment, together with the high-gain radio antenna (also used for science measure: rents). Unlike larger probes such as ‘Voyager, the New Horizons instruments are fixed on the spacecraft instead of ‘being mounted on a moving scan arm, s0 the whole vehicle must be pointed to aim the cameras, As atribute to Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto, a small amount of his cremated remains was placed onboard. The spacecraft will fly by Jupiter for a gravity assist in Feb- rruary 2007. In July 2a15 the New Hori- ons flyby of Pluto and its three known ‘moons will complete humanity's initial reconnaissance of all the traditional major planets in the solar system. But now there's 2003 UB, and maybe ‘more to come. by leif j. robinson APRIL 1956 Good Counsel “Changes inthe angles of illum nation and observation alter the appearance of lunar scenery somewhat os a kalel- doscope redesigns its potterns. Mountain walls that tower tonight ‘may appear insignificant tomorrow. ‘Small craters that dat floors of larg- er rings under one illumination moy be absent under others. Long clefts, cleorly marked ot times, van- Ish with the shifting of light and shadow. “sit surprising, then, that so mony dubious things have been seen on the moon? Among the oddities reported are snow, hoarfost, vanishing 24 Api 2006 Shy & Telescope Stardust ‘The Stardust capsule land- ‘ed successfully on January 45th in the highest-velocity ‘spacecraft reentry ever. Its safe landing onto the Utah Test and Training Range marked the end of the probe's seven-year trek around the inner solar system. Stardust launched in February 1999 and o year later deployed its aerogel collectors to soak up inter- 2 planetary and interstellar particles. Dust collection continued through the November 2002 flyby of asteroid '5535 Annefrank. In January 2004 Stardust reached its prime target, Comet 81P/Wild 2, and collected cometory particles on the back side of its aerogel samplers. Soon after it landed, scientists examined the oerogel collectors and deemed the ‘mission a triumphant success. According to lead scientist Donald Brownlee (Universi- ‘ty of Washington), Stardust may have collected more than a million microscopic specks of dust. The samples are undergoing analysis in Houston, Texas. | ‘Stardust isn't the first vehicle to return to Eorth from beyond lunar orbit. Most recent- | ly, in 2004, Genesis crash-landed at the Utah range atthe end of its mission (S87: December 2004, page 26). Fortunately, Stardust’s parachutes deployed perfectly ond 4ida’t repeat Genesis’ hard lending. JONATHAN MCDOWELL, a staff scientist forthe Chandra X-ay Observotory, provides up- ‘dates of space missions on his Web site at ww planet4589.0re/space/fsrjs.Atml. craterlets and light streoks, gray or black areas of vegetation, and shad: wy masses of moving animals... “Observers should distinguish be- ‘tween fact and fancy, moonlight ond moonshine.” ‘A frequent contributor to this magazine, Leland Copeland could not have presented a hetter case = especially in thot innocent era — for caution in interpreting what one sees on the Moon. “There is now a frm bridge con- necting studies red with ones ot the shortest radio ‘wavelengths. These studies, com- bined with spectrogrophic observe- tions of objects that were out of reach 10 years ‘090, are giving us a fascinotingly complete picture ofthe physical conditions and process es at work inside the clouds of gas and dust. We suspect these clouds of harboring proto- stars and, in several cases, we hove found some very young stars.” ‘So wrote Bart Bok, one ofthe great pioneers in the study of star formation’s early stoges. Thanks fo technology, our understanding of the process has continued to explode. the farthest infae APRIL 1981 Star Building “During the past decade the (quest to understond star formation has become ‘one ofthe most active endeavors in Milky Woy research,@ MEADE PRMIUM Accessories arov Waele Set 200 Sperm anglet Tw Bole + hana kc ey, etngs wth 934 tec Invermere ce Tema abe Per as * Ss G on aire ony QED W 1 Smeheene: 9 (Colon) 299 an tarereeciond i od Meade telexope 0S Powis 509 Each Series 4000 Set includes: Pepa ae eee ew tee 2: os ome: ‘more info at meace coms ace aa ae "mp Soo SES {Seen Super Piss! oe $49.00 g sar etarystmecter eeI)) Senseo om eeicnae fsa peal ‘om uramnateg 2x Barlow Lens W126) $4795 SE ret ‘moon and nets tke ro Cor Fite Set #1 iyetowrodoonbe) =--- $4295 Rrghteute he boxe ‘Delgned and manufactured to eacting standards Seiesi00) Monier = : one 1695 ‘ecisin onuresli Ea Super Pos eepieces delve 52° AFOW (a forthe Saran) wth Anam Hard Cry Cae sass fh Meodes Drax Tecnology, alg ‘vandedinthe most advanced i appa $518 rote info at mene. comi Cee Cras ee Reet ee SSomocanscntse — score env oy 1 a0 iSBIG distinguish: TRONOMICAL. i j f 5 pn (Ono KCNC MOT to cncce Ta 2 After counting pixels and comparing prices, what are the things that the best Pree ee eno ree en een Nan See tet SER cee une oe ene Ma se cera eke ent PATENTED, DUAL CCD SELF-GUIDING From the early days of the venerable ST-4, SBIG has en Sere enn eran sane eet COE Ancol eet a one tance vem aE auiding CCD takes short exposures ofa guide star through the same opca system In order to make Leer rere ene trey een art Setar eee epee oan guide inthe vast majority of eases: NAM For those other times when nn external guider may be desired, such as imaging though dim or narrow filters, a new Remote Gulde Head can now be rere mcnte nre rti ieee thn naene een ten Aen cn ee rt reser nr ene tr eer ener nT Poneto nce eae en ee ieee arn pera pap ar i s ADAPTIVE OPTICS: The dual sensor design of SBIG's self-guiding cameras, as well as the new remote guider, also makes it possible to use the first affordable Adaptive Optics device currently available to amateur astronomers. 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Cr ee ee eS a es NF CL en nee ee Da eT Ne nna ee oe ae ae Ne cameras, Include MSY improved TE cooling, ee ee CO eee ee an autonomous autoguider, and you begin to see why the ST-402 has become the camera of ‘choice for those just getting into CCD imaging.Per OORT RS RC Pee ents er eset RCN ene ee nesta Rom eee ces eens mere ene ett Dern Se A eee eaten et te are Pen etc eee eet eaeennt te Paes et Siren nen DDR ace ee ea USO er aT Ere OORT NST OM ee An offer a choice of cameras and detectors to fit nearly any budget or application. hoose from no less than eighteen different CCDs (22 including ABG options), including full-frame monochrome, interline and color detectors: Nee REET Sem eRe eres Nea aOR UEE SUSE mene erat Ae DESDE Ree een rien ER PET Terre eee reer OXME. 2184 x 1472 at 6.8u Re Ne DOVES SST Reter ter TCR ELIE STL-11000CM_ 4008 x 2475 at 9u eer includes CCDOPS version 5, professional planetarium and telescope contrat — | image processing software, and the latest DSoftVS with added camera control features, image processing, astrometry fe \ integrated operation with TheSky. In addition to the software provided with the ern Sere Pent een aCe ONS ene ot ese ete ea nc tific research. Our Self-Guided Spectrograph makes it possible to measure gal shifts with apertures as small as 8 inches (20 cm). Our cameras have been employed measure extra-solar plinet transits and variable stars by many users. Numerous aster ids, supernovae, and now even a new nebula have been discovered with SBIG cameras UGC CR eon core encore re 2004 from his backyard using a 3" telescope and ST-10XME camera). The Time Delay Integration (TDI) drift sean technique now becoming popular makes it possible to search huge areas of the sky, or pieee together large mosaics, a result impossible with mass tic applications, and have now released a new, low cost, Deep Space Spectrograph (DSS-7) and software optimized for Prec ann etn ee ee eer net tee Levent a Perea een fate Gonder SESE distinguished: "..amarked by eminence, distinction, or excellence." Nie et Ne Ce ee Ree See ogame re SANTA BARBARA INSTRUMENT GROUP ey 147-A Castilian Dr. Santa Barbara, CA 9311 Pere EB ELLsthee acpoClENCe Solar the By Carolus J. Schrijver Orona If you are one of the fortunate people with the means to see the next total solar eclipse, you'll catch a glimpse of the Sun’s corona (weather permitting); if not, you'll see pictures of the event on this magazine's pages shortly afterward. What makes up the corona that you see during the all-too-brief totality? What shapes it? What makes it glow? Extreme ultraviolet Visible light Cer ee) Le) ro ro om a Bree fos Magnetograph ‘Only by observing the Sun in many ways have astranomers been able to {ully oporeciote how electrical currents and magnetic elds shape the corona while powering far-eaching space storms. 28 April 2006 Sky &Tloeope The amazing spectacle that we see when the Moon covers the bright solar disk is the Sun’s outer atmosphere. That atmosphere has two clearly distinct components. Eclipse watchers may see the lower component, the chromosphere, just beyond the Moon's limb. Some 4,000 kilometers thick, the chromosphere is a wispy coating that glows at tempera tures of about 10,000°C (18,000°F) with the reddish light of hydrogen atoms. Above that reddish band lies the corona, spreading its tentacles into interplanetary space. ‘A blistering multimillion-degree plasma of shattered atoms, the corona is a dynamic environment, often dis- turbed by explosions that rock its very structure and throw material into interplanetary space. These explosions cause storms within the solar wind, a stream of electrons, protons, and partially ionized atoms that ceaselessly emanates from deep within the corona and courses beyond the farthest planets in our solar system. ‘The interaction of the solar wind with Earth's outer atmos phere and magnetic field affects our society in many ways, One crucial issue that arises when we study this “space weather’ is how the Sun couples to its surroundings. That coupling is dramatically revealed in the shape of the corona during a total solar eclipse. ‘We have learned much about the solar corona in the past few decades. But much remains mysterious, for while theWhat forces shape the (pol sterenCore VaSiaublodunneri(croleMeAbnun ated total solar eclipses? Cees ‘enabled professionals ene ee ee eee eee ’ derto make this mosoic of the July 13, 199, total solar eclipse, Photographs by Dennis di Ciceo and Gary Emerson. Peetethe science behind the solar corona Jaws of physics apply everywhere, coronal conditions are 0 different from those on Earth that many phenomena are thoroughly unfamiliar. Fortunately, inereasingly sophisti cated telescopes, each a technological marvel, are rapidly advancing our knowledge of the Sun's capricious crown, CeCe Above: Each of these photographs by eclipse ocionado Fred Espenak iso, 2second exposure on Kodak Royal Gold 100 flm witha 90-mm refractor tf/8. The February 26, 1998, view reflects the corono's typical appear- cance during solar minimum, when sunspots are few or obsent: the longest steamers extend along an oxs defined by the Sun's equator. By contrast the June 21,2001, view typifies the solr-maximum coron, with streamers rioting in ll directions. 30 April 2006 Sky & Telescope Introducing the Solar Corona ‘To appreciate what we see during a total solar eclipse, we must first realize that even though the corona spans a huge ‘volume of space itis a lot of almost nothing. At visual wavelengths, the corona is only one-millionth as bright as the Sun, a quivering candle next to a blinding searchlight. ‘That explains why we don’t see it unless the Sun's photo- sphere, or “surface? is blocked. The Moon performs this ser vice most effectively because it appears to have very nearly the same size as the photosphere when seen from Earth — remarkable coincidence. Not quite as bright as a full Moon, the eclipse corona slows as faintly as it docs in large part because there is very litle of it to light up. In fact, what we see of the eclipse co- rona with the unaided eye is not even its own glow. Rather, ‘we see light from the photosphere that is seattered toward us by free electrons in the corona. This phenomenon forms a halo much like that around a streetlight in a fog. We see that halo only because the corona is so vast that its eerie emptiness can add up to something when viewed asa whole. Even at its base, where it is thickest, the corona, is 100 billion times less dense than Earth's atmosphere at sea level. Earth's atmosphere isn't this thin until you go somewhat above the highest Space Shuttle orbit, which many eall outer space. Perhaps the most striking features that we see during a to tal eclipse are the so-called streamers that extend more or less radially outward from the Sun. Their overall pattem depends on how magnetic the Sun is at the time. When magnetic activity is low and its telltale sunspots are few (as isthe case this year), the corona looks relatively featureless, with just a few streamers on opposing sides of the Sun's equatorial belt During sunspot maximum, by contrast, more than a dozen streamers usually exist, each going in a different direction. ‘The Mognetic Corone This change in guise with the coming and going of sunspots hints at what is the corona’s most important defining char: acteristic: its ubiquitous magnetic field. On Earth, we tend to ignore magnetic fields in our every. day lives. But they are critically important in the Sun’s atmosphere. This Is especially true in the corona, where atomic nuclei have been almost entirely stripped of their electrons, making for an electrically conducting gas, or Left Token on April 1st inthe indicates years, these {alse-clor Images from the Solar and Heliospheric Ob seevatory (SOHO) spacecraft show how the Sun's degree ‘of sunspot activity offects coronal streamer (seen at visual wavelengths inthe top row) and the 2.5-milion- agree Celsius gases associated wth ectve regions in the lower corona (seen in extreme ultraviolet, or EUY, Tight inthe bottom row). Sunspot activity reached 0 minimum in 1996 ond peoked a half decade later before eclning toward its next minimum, which s expected in 2007 oF 2008. The blank central zone within the visible- light imoges represents the 1-wide fel (twice the ‘um’ apparent diameter) blocked by the occulting csk {in SOHO's LASCO coronagraph,‘plasma, Like all charged particles, the electrons and ions that ‘make up this plasma are readily deflected by magnetic fields ‘And while in most of the corona the Sun's magnetic field is, not much stronger than Earth's, coronal gases are exceed- ingly rarefied. Consequently, the solar corona is shaped according to the rules of magnetism rather than of gravity. ‘The Sun’s magnetic field fundamentally differs from Earth's. On human time seales, the Earth's field is essen tially a stationary single magnetic dipole, like that of a bar ‘magnet. But the Sun’s magnetic field is made up of many such dipoles, with multiple strong “bar magnets," known as actce regions, strung around its circumference in numbers that wax and wane with the 11-year sunspot cycle. The ac. tive regions emerge from the deep solar interior and break through the photosphere at unpredictable locations, where they often form sunspots Although Gorge Ellery Hale discovered the Sun's mag: netic field at Mount Wilson in 1908, it took more than six decades for solar astronomers to understand how it shapes the corona. Why 80 long? One reason is that until 76 years ago we could observe the corona only during infrequent, brief total solar eclipses. ‘Then, in 1930, French astronomer Berard Lyot built a coronagraph: a special-purpose instrument that used a disk to block the Sun's direct light. This opened a new chapter in solar astronomy, as one no longer needed to await a total eclipse to view the Sun's tenuous outer atmosphere. Even 0, visble-light observations couldn't show the corona’s transparent structures one by one. Rather, these structures were seen projected on top of each other, and this tremen: dously complicated their interpretation. Compounding the puzzle further, magnetic fields could not be properly ‘mapped near the Sun's limb, Hence, learning how field and corona were connected was initially very dificult, ‘That remained 80 until the early 1970s, when X-ray tele- scopes onboard the Skylab space station allowed astron comers at last to routinely see those parts of the corona that lie between Earth and the photosphere, where magnetic fields could be mapped. To do this, we exploited the coro ras high temperature, which is typically 10,000 times hotter than a comfortable room. A gas this hot emits light primarily at X-ray and extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths, while the much cooler solar “surface" emits essentially no such light. An X-ray or EUV telescope therefore shows bright, Token on Februory 8, 2001, these panels show how the corona appeared to the Tronsition Region and Coronel Explorer (TRACE) setelite, which observed EUV emission from 1,000,000°C gas (a), and how it appeared ‘when seen by the now-defunct Yoho satelite, whose soft Xray tle: scope detected plasma ot temperatures between 2 and 5 millon degrees € (0) SOHO's magnetograph(c) colr-codes the strengths ond polertios ‘of mognetic fields within the underlying photosphere, which it measures inivetly using visible ight. Each image spans 700,000 kilometers {one solar radius) from side to sie, “Token on May 11, 2005, these simultoneous EUV (far left) ‘nd visible-ight views show to active regions anchoring 1 plethora of coronal loops. Intriguingly, the lower (eastern) region, with its “sunflower” potter of relatively cool coronal loops lacks mojor sunspots — despite its obviously magnetic nature, Goth ofthe images were made with the TRACE spacecraft cond show the same small prt of the Sun, ‘Shy & Telescope Apri 2005 34the science behind the solar corona coronal material enveloping a dark sphere. In order to take advantage of this fortui- tous state of affairs, we had to launch telescopes above Earth's protective atmos- phere, which blocks X-ray and EUV light. Rocket borne instruments and the Earth orbiting Skylab paved the way during the carly years of the Space Age. But coronal X-ay and EUV imaging became an every: day experience only with the 1991 launch of Japan's Yohkoh satellite, the 1995 launch of the SOHO satelite (a joint Euro pean Space Agency and NASA project), and the 1998 launch of NASA's TRACE, satellite. (Yohkoh fell to Earth last year, but SOHO and TRACE remain in service.) ‘Thanks to these successful missions, we have been able to compare X-ray and EUV images of the corona to maps of photospherie magnetic fields. And that has revealed the corona's magnetic nature, for where mag- netic fields are strongest, the corona is hottest and brightest just as one would expect if magnetic fields were confini the plasma and increasing its temperature and density. ‘Yohkoh, SOHO, and TRACE have discovered many of the corona's curious properties. With their 1 to 5-aresecond resolution, the sharp images from these spacecraft have re vealed a variety of intriguing structures. Those that stand ‘out most prominently are thin, bright strands that arch through the corona, each connecting two photospheric regions with opposite magnetic polarities. We now under stand these so-called coronal lps as a natural consequence of ‘the magnetic forces dominating the corona. The magnetic field lines tracing these loops trap hot coronal gases, which can flow only from one end to the other, losing energy in the form of Xray or EUV light. Comet ety eet ea Tis folsecolr composite Image com Dlses three SOHO exposures ot ie. ‘ent wevelengths, each cepresentative of plasma ato different temperature Blue represents 171-0 light (rom ‘material at 10.5 milion degrees C sgr00n,19.5-nm light (from material between 15 ond 2 milion degrees C); ‘and red, 28.41 ight (from mterial at temperatures hotter than 2.5 mil Vion degrees C). The dtferont filters twonsmit emissions fom iron atoms that have been ionized by varying amounts Token together, they cllow astronomers to characterize the physical stat of the lower corone The Explosive Coron In addition to their sharp opties, Yohkoh, SOHO, and TRACE also have given us the ability to take long series of rapid exposures. With this “moviemaking” capability we have learned to appreciate the corona as a place of utter Impermanence, in which every structure changes its appear ance within a matter of hours ‘One long-standing mystery has been the source of the energy that heats the corona to million-degree tempera tures. Large numbers of small-scale explosions certainly contribute to this heating, with strong winds often blowing up or down the magneticield lines as coronal gases adjust to them, However, SOHO and TRACE observations suggest that the corona is heated primarily by electrical currents These currents are generated by convective bubbles that seethe tirelessly just beneath the photosphere Heating the corona is but one of the roles played by the clectrical eurrents coursing through coronal loops. When the largest of these immense currents become unstable, they cause solar flares: giant explosions that can outshine the entire X-ray corona 1,000 times over. We are far from understanding how solar flares release their energy 80 ex: plosively. We do know that much, if not most, of a flare’s energy first goes into generating large numbers of ions and electrons, which are accelerated to speeds that are 2 good fraction of the speed of light. These charged particles race along the magnetic field away from the flare-initiation sites, which often appear to lie between sets of coronal loops Many of these particles quickly crash into the upper layers of the chromosphere, where they form bright ribbons visible in hydrogen-alpha and ultraviolet images. The kinetic energy of these particles is then transformed into heat. The heated chromospheric matter responds by evaporating into the co- rona, where it can increase the gas density within a flaring loop a thousandfold. And since dense gas radiates far more efficiently than rarefied gas, the heat is quickly ost into space in the form of bright X-ray radiation, ‘That energetic radiation has real-world consequences when it reaches Earth. It can puff up the outermost (ionospheric) layers of the atmosphere, thereby affecting long-range radio communications. It also increases the atmospheric drag that steadily works to bring down lov Earth orbit satellites and rocket debris. ee eaten ne Dee ent Pee ling back 32 Apri 2006 Shy & TlexcopeThe Interplanetary Corona Energetic X-rays aren't the only emanations to reach Earth from the solar corona. We are gradually learning to appre- ciate all the ways in which magnetic activity within the Sun’s atmosphere spreads into interplanetary space, causing phe- nomena that we now know as space weather. ‘Space weather, like Earth's, has two components. One is background “seasonal” state that changes on time scales of days, months, or years. The other is made up of highly perturbed states that behave like dangerous storms. Space weather changes day by day as active regions emerge, age, and disintegrate ‘The hot coronal gases trapped above an active region are permeated by a variety of waves. The coronal gases and those waves exert pressure on the magnetic field. In most of the corona, the magnetic field is strong enough to resist these forees, and the gas remains trapped in closed loops. However, where the field is weak, ityields to these forces, which then drag it into interplanetary space. Those parts of the magnetic field that just manage to remain unbroken are stretched, like taffy, into the tendril-like shapes that we see as streamers during a total eclipse. Next to them, rivers of gas are pushed into the solar wind, where they are too in. substantial to be observed among the streamers. ‘We can reproduce the general appearance of the eclipse corona with state-of the-art computer calculations. We therefore believe that we are on the right path to under- standing how the streamers and the solar wind form. How- ever, the coronal eruptions that eause dangerous space storms are much harder to comprehend. ‘A few times each day, such events force the magnetic field to snap open above as much as 10 percent of the upper corona. Particles accelerated by these events can find them selves on the road to interplanetary space. Some may be guided toward Earth by open-ended magneticfield lines. Known as coronal mass qections, or CMEs, such eruptions can propel a billion tons of hydrogen and helium outward, ‘The particles accelerated during a CME's initial eruption reach nearlight speeds. However, most of the gas that a CME ejects travels at speeds of “only” about 500 kilometers per second. But its bulk more than compensates for its relative sluggishness: when a CME carries plasma and magnetic field lines past Earth, it can eause power outages and dam age satellites, With human affairs increasingly dependent uupon power grids and global communication networks, the corona in a real sense touches nearly everyone's lif. Forecasting Spoce Weather ‘The origin, evolution, and consequences of explosive phe nomena in the solar corona are at the forefront of science today: we need to learn what powers these explosions, why they happen when they do, and how we can forecast them. We have made good progress in knowing which active regions are likely to produce the largest flares: these gener ally occur in regions into which new twisted magnetic-ield lines emerge from below the photosphere. But we still can i 9 ttober28, 2003 the ‘seen — 0 dromatic reminder ofthe vi _atmosphere’s electrical currents. This ‘TRACE’ visibletight (yellow) ond EUV ed) ex Uv-enitting materi! cbove the solr mb reached te {rom 15 020 milion degrees Celsius tional Solar-B mission will begin to provide high-resolution optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray views of the Sun's photo: sphere, and the twin spacecraft of NASA's STEREO mission will use binocular vision to watch coronal mass ejections travel through the heliosphere, In 2008, the Solar Dynamics Observatory will enable us to continuously observe all of the visible photospheric magnetic fields and coronal gases with unprecedented temporal resolution, ‘Complemented by existing facilities in space and on the ground, this fleet of solar observatories will move us into a new era of research: we will be able to observe the entire progression of solar activity, from the Sun’s interior through the solar atmosphere and into the heliosphere, where the Sun connects with the planets in more ways than one, With luck, we soon will fully understand the Sun's dangerous crown, which we so rarely get to sec with the unaided eye. * A solar physicist withthe Stanford:-Lockheed Institute for Space Re- search, Kane Scicetivex plays a key role in the TRACE mission ‘an inthe upcoming Solar Dynamics Observatory. not forecast exactly when an eruption will occur or how much energy it will release. "New observatories will help us answer the many questions that past generations have raised. Later this year, the interna Although the real solar corona (lef), as observed during the Februory 26,1998, eclipse, shows many details that ore not yet captured in simulations, its large scale structure was reproduces uite nicely by o recent computer model ight) ‘Shy Telescope Api 2006 33AaStrOnOMiICs \_. our 27th year. We've been helping people ctioase the right telescope since 1978. We have the experience (a staf total of over 150 years of experience using and seling telescopes) to help youpick the telescope that fis your needs (and your budge). Celestron’s SkyScout tells you about the sky while it shows you the night's sights. ‘he Celestron SkyScout issn avard-— and graphs. 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"Just ignite sly areal younawd § gomttstary tres atime Csgcton GPC Setar eg wth 30 brmest igs he evering you needs sat soreng ao Shy (otro tarsand laratorthe icon and s1999° PA he Cee wi tind over 1208 45,000 tassinating oop sin Re BPN ee jena tt you at She GPcsa6K remy Boge sm Hetowstatevuren, "18" GPEHOO.sugncag. 2599" 3 “Thores no need to 11" GPCHODK T= ioe Big Colestron 11” scopes start at only $1699. ie Celestron Advanced Series 11” Ger man mount Scat rag are B¥alescopa, They show you more Soop space wonders than an 8 SCT en fk ‘mount "Yor about he same price, “the 11" Advanced Sree telescopes The Starbright XLT mut coatings om tne C145 Gxttygwve you 1esengrer lghtiranemeston orlongex posure asirophotoprann. An pon dua axie motor devo Iva or bth scopes. C11S-GT(KLT) gore. xt conn 2279" maticallyfinds andiracks over . "Thobacio G11 S and C118 (LT) ha heaw-autyenuatora moun an adjustable height po tthe age alow mation Contos sting cites, 40mm eyepiece, ‘anda big 9x Son tinerscopo. Starbright ‘ultiaetedopics sresindardonthe CTS. ‘A only 29s. fr the heaviest compo- ‘nent eats easy to Wanspert and sat, ‘avs seat tate aro a very afore, ‘ig telescope na longer costs fortune, thanks to Coeston eer Reece Me Reena anette Se te ae ey Cease tenceASTRONOMERS HAVE FOUND BIG BLACK HOLES AND rae Soe _ ene | CCRC OCU eee eet en es eT ane ee ume of space, and gravity will make a black hole of any size | solar masses. Re oe ee nee ae ete en eer eee erent ect of black holes: + to 20-solarmass corpses of massive stars, | have been discovered since then with Japan's ASCA, ee en ec OCCT OM Me an ee ae Strangely, black holes seemed to avoid a huge range of pos Seren een en a nets a eee gaping chasms in her creations, After all, the distributions Newton X-ray observatories. In 1999 Chandra spotted an unusually energetic ULX in a den: Bees eee ny Tater aee a eee eet ay osc tnt eer nee) rete ene nen ents Why should black holes violate this universal principlee | much energy per second as the Sun, Many astronomers Then, starting in 1979 with NASA's Einstein Xray Obser- | surmise that it ean’t be anything but an accreting black ee ae oa ee eet en rears eee ene cnn ee ae eer ee ee a eg See ean cy other galaxies that were orders of magnitude more luminous | What fraction are intermediate-mass black holes? Are See ene es ir inte IMBHs numerous enough to constitute a new class of cos Cn en nee ee eee ea ee TT ‘Shy & TelescopeSMALL BLACK HOLES.1 new breed of black hole making midsize black holes has set theorists into feverish activity as they try to imagine exotic new ways that nature could create these objects. Perhaps they form through run, away stellar mergers in crowded clusters. Understanding these processes could help answer the eritical question of how supermassive black holes formed in the early universe. Meanwhile, observers are trying to refine their ULX mass estimates in order to satisfy the skeptics. Weighing Black Holes Even though astronomers can’t see black holes directly, they ean detect X-rays radiating from matter that heats up before it falls into the abyss. Actively acereting black holes can be relatively easy to detect with X-ray observatories such as Chandra. But measuring blackhole masses is a much trickier proposition. In the case of some stcllarmass black holes in binary sys tems, such as the famous source Cygnus X:, observers can study a companion’s orbit. This provides a reliable estimate of the hole's mass. But most black holes lack binary com panions. And even for those black holes that are members cof a binary, astronomers rarely can detect orbital motion, Unless orbital motion can be measured, the most obvi- ous clue to the black hole’s mass is its X-ray luminosity Unfortunately, luminosity has les to do with a black hoe’s mass than with how fast it swallows nearby material. For example, the monster in the Milky Way's nucleus is sur prisingly dim (emitting less than 10* ergs per second) given its 3.7 million solar masses. Many smaller black holes may be all but invisible as they wander alone with no nearby ‘material to averete. But if two black holes have the same food supply, the heavier beast will devour matter faster, and thus emit more X-rays, than its lighter counterpart Astronomers commonly deem an X-ray source “ultra minous' ff shines with a huminosity above about 5 x 10” ‘ergs per second — the maximum energy output of a 20-solar det 38 Apri 2006 Shy & Tlexcope r imass black hole that radiates uniformly in all directions. Astrophysicists have long thought that the largest stars forming in the modern-day universe, after exploding as su: pernovae or gamma-ray bursts, cannot leave behind black holes greater than 20 solar masses. A heavier black hole in 4. ULX must have formed by a different process or found some way to gobble additional mass, Beam Me Out The discovery of so many ULXs indicated a new, exotic class of black holes — leading to the ongoing flurry of ze search. But not ll astronomers agree that these ULXs are powered by midsize black holes. Several different teams, including one led by Andrew King (University of Leicester, England), have noted that a black hole's X-ray luminosity could appear anomalously high if beams its radiation preferentially in our direction. Such beaming is typical of stellarmass and supermassive black holes, as observed in sgamma-ray-burst and quasar jets. A stellarmass black hole could casily masquerade as an IMBH by beaming most of its radiation toward Earth, which could fool astronomers Into overestimating its luminosity Given the possibilty of beaming, only one known X-ray source falls safely into the IMBH category. *MB2 X seems Aifficuk to ill’ says Fabbiano, Several conservative est mates put that black hole between 100 and 3,000 solar mass 8. No one has demonstrated how beaming could make a stellarmass black hole appear to emit 10* ergs per second. ‘Astronomers have tried to rule out beaming for several other ULXs, which would push their black holes into the intermediate-mass regime. Richard Mushotzky (NASA/ Goddard Space Flight Centex) and his collaborators used archival data from the Very Large Array and found radio halos around several ULXs. All these sources exhibit un form, round glows, bearing no obvious signs of beaming Tn March 2005 Mushotzky and two colleagues published Se eethe first of these results, on a source in the galaxy Holm. berg II. ‘If there's a jet there, it's totally different from any. thing we have ever seen,” says Mushotzky But King insists that such results don't completely rule out beaming. The uniform glow could be the result of a spherical wind emanating from the black hole that blows a large bubble in the surrounding gas. Such bubbles have been seen around several ULXs, including M82 Xa, and the sizes of these structures can exceed those of supernova remnants. As King explains, ‘A black hole that’s trying to acerete at its upper limit will blow out a lot of material” (Other Lines of Attack Observers would prefer to obtain direct mass measure- ‘ments by tracking the orbits of binary companions. Most ULXs probably have stellar companions that were captured by the black hole’s gravity, with the star being the source of accreted matter that makes the black hole visible inthe first place. For example, recent observations by Philip Kearet (University of Towa) and two colleagues with NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite indicate that M82_Xa has an ‘evolved companion star on a 62-day orbit Observers have tried to measure Doppler shifts derived from spectra of these binaries — the same method astrono mers have used to detect extrasolar planets. But finding optical counterparts to such distant X-ray sources is prob- lematic at best. I an observer tries to overlap Chandra and Hubble shots of the same swath of sky and match up point- like sources, the pairing is subject to @ baresecond angular error, and in that diameter one usually finds several stars for each Xray source. Astronomers have tried to single out, a star with an unusual spectrum or one whose variability correlates to that of the X-ray source, but few convincing optical counterparts have yet been found. “We have 2 grand total of two," says Mushotzky, and no one has man aged to detect orbital motion in either object. Despite the lack of conclusive results so far, this method could some- day prove that at least some ULXs harbor IMBHs. ‘Astronomers have also pursued various indirect lines of attack to estimate ULX masses. One idea is to compare ULX spectral features or time-variation patterns to similar prop- erties of better-known X-ray sources. The huminosity of an accretion disk surrounding a stellar mass black hole is ‘quasi-periodic,’ meaning it flickers at not-quite-periodic aera ee Seen intervals as orbiting blobs of hot gas disappear behind the black hole and then reappear. The timing of these oscilla tions is indicative of orbital periods, so they should correlate roughly with the black hole’s mass. Mushotzky and Tod. Strohmayer (also at NASA/Goddard) found that M82 X's quasi-periodic behavior stretches over long intervals, indi- cating an intermediate mass for the black hole, But mass estimates of other ULXs remain more controversial. ‘An entirely different confirmation of intermediate-mass black holes could come from gravitational waves. Cole Miller (University of Maryland) calculates that a star merg. Ing with an IMBH, two colliding TMBHs, or an IMBH ialling into a supermassive black hole would produce intense waves with a recognizable signature. If one of these rare events takes place close enough to our galaxy (within a few million light-years for the first type of event, a few billion light-years for the latter two), future ground-based observa, tories and the planned NASAJESA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna will pick them up. Birth of a Middleweight While observers busily dissect ultraluminous X-ray sourees, theorists have tried to concoct plausible mechanisms for IMBH formation. In principle, a stella-mass black hole could swallow gas from its vicinity until it accretes hun- dreds or thousands of solar masses. But Miller calculates that a stellarmass black hole would take longer than the age of the observable universe to grow to midsize. “The ones that might be 1,000 solar masses should have a qualitatively, different history One possibility is that the early universe was populated by megastars containing hundreds of solar masses. The most massive of these so-called Population TMI stars would have lived extremely short lives. With no elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, such massive stars behaved dit ferently from stars in the modern-day universe. At the ends of their lives, their cores collapsed into black holes with several hundred solar masses. As the universe's chemical composition changed, such massive stars might no longer form, But the blackhole remnants of the original popula tion might still be around today. IMBHs could also be forming today in dense, young star clusters, Observational support for this idea comes from the fact that most of the 200 known ULXs inhabit starforming he says, Shy & Telescope Apr 20