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Well it looks like Beagle 2 may have been lost, 6 attempts from NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter have revealed no communications, however what it has found it a crater, 1 km wide just in the landing zone of Beagle 2. If Beagle 2 has landed there then I think it is time to say bye bye to yet another spacecraft going to Mars. At least we have ignorance on our side, a 1 km wide crater is just too small to have been noticed until the recent high resolution images have been taken by Odyssey.

Image: http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/marsexpress/images/031229craterclose.jpg

Credit: Malin Space Science Systems

Mars is a plagued planet for our probes, I can't believe people are speculating about sending people there when we can not even land a toy car!

The Galaxy of M81 has been imaged via the new Spitzer (previously SIRF) infared telescope.

In my opinion this a fantastic image and its looks like this new telescope will definitely deserve the title as one of NASA's great observatories,the others being: Chandra, Compton and Hubble which are all fantastic. I love looking at this images and finding out what they are - expect more here! I will not go into detail about what this image is as this can be found on the page I saw it first.

On Sunday morning (UK) the 'Spirit' rover landed on Mars and has started to send pictures back to the Earth. At last some look with the space probes going to Mars!

For more info see: http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/

I have had enough today at Uni in lab. Again I have not made any progress, I am really having a problem getting IRAF to do what it should do, I think there must be an error with the server I am using. This is the same problem I had before Christmas, hopefully the academic staff will be able o fix this by the end of the week otherwise I do not think I will be able to get all my lab done, argh!

NASA's Spirt probe is making continued progress in its mission and earlier today it presented Mars for the first time during this mission in wonderful technicolour!

Now this is shocking, last night I spent a few hours going through what the program was doing and tried to figure out what was going wrong. I came up with a solution. Now I did not think this would work, never does, but it did! Unbelievable! This now means that we can now do the appropriate fitting of our data that should allow us to calculate the orbital parameters of the stars under study.

On another point, I heard of some interesting research today. It seems that a team at the University of Hawaii have detected a star which has survived the supernova of its companion. This is the first to be detected and is a vindication for some theoretical models. The really interesting part is that by observing this over the next few years it may be able to detect a neutron star or black hole form in 'real time'.

Tonight Porrima (Gamma Virginis - ZC 1821) passes behind the Moon and then reappears later on. So I have decided with a friend of mine to see if we can get it. This is going to take some good work with the telescope but we should and if we don't (which I doubt) it will still be good fun.

If anyone would like anymore information on this then please just ask and more information on Lunar Occultation's can be found at: http://www.lunar-occultations.com

Well all I can say is that I had fun last night! As I predicted at 3am just before the event occurred the sky was filled with cloud! Argh. It wasn't all bad because at just before 2am we did actually see (we believe we did) Porrima disappear behind the Moon. We then whilst waiting looked at Jupiter and Saturn which like always was brilliant and I even saw a meteor! The meteor fell through Cancer and was blue in colouration and lasted about 2 seconds.

Being up so late has left me feeling exhausted today but I still had enough energy to go and see "The Last Samurai" starring Tom Cruise which was surprisingly good.

The Carina Nebula (NGC 3372, also known as the 'Keyhole Nebula') has recently been observed via the Hubble Space Telescope and has revelead some mysterious details that indicate a complex structure within this Nebula.

See: http://www.esa.int/export/esaSC/SEMAJS374OD_sensations_2.html for more information.

This is starting to become an annoyance, its not that I am not enjoying it (well I am not at the moment), it is just that we are now approaching our deadline and still we are having software problems. One day I am sure it will all be fixed but at that point I will no longer be using this system. Well I guess that's life, at least I have had a decent week of Astronomy.

I am currently investigating the possibility of measuring the Astronomical Unit (AU - the distance between the Earth and the Sun) when the transit of Venus occurs, it will on the 8th June this year, an astronomical event no one should miss.

Astromers from the Harvard - Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics using the STIS instrument onboard the Hubble Space Telescope have whilst observing Betelgeuse (a super giant star in Orion) detected hot gas escape its atmosphere at much larger distances than they have before.

The distance that they have observed this hot gas is 50 times the visible radius and this is 5 times the orbit of Neptune. The hot gas is contained within the Chromosphere of the star, this is the region between the photosphere and the corona. The photosphere itself is of a similar orbit to that of Jupiter's orbit around the Sun!

See: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0401/15atmosphere/ for more info

Well it seems it might almost be time to say goodbye to possibly the most scientifically productive spacecraft ever launched.

This is due to a final planned shuttle mission to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, being cancelled, primarily because of post-Columbia safety concerns and a new directive to retire the shuttle by 2010. The decision means an advanced camera and light-splitting spectrograph - both already built - will not be installed. A bit of a waste but well I guess you can not put people's lives in danger over a few parts! It could go on to 2007 but this is unsure. The next optical telescope the James Webb is not likely to be in operation till 2011 thus leaving a gap that NASA is not happy about.

For more info, see:

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0401/16hubblesm4/ and http://hubble.gsfc.nasa.gov/servicing-missions/

Seeing as I am doing a project on extra solar planets and it started today how cool is it that a planet with a magnetic field may have been found yesterday!

See: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0401/19planet/ for more info.

Credit: Shane Erno

Also I have seen some fantastic results from ESA's Mars Express, lets hope it can put the American's to shame (gonna be hard to after Beagle 2).

See: http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/marsexpress/040119image.html

Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Wow! White a day, water on Mars in the form of ice (see here)- communications reestablished with Spirit (see here) and the impending landing of Opportunity I guess any Martians will have seen a decrease in their home value, all of a sudden their quite little part of the Universe has been invaded by the noisy humans. At least they didn't have to put up with Blur.

I can just imagine it a big poster: Live on Mars: Blur (because no bugger want's to listen to them on Earth).

On a more personal note, Group Studies is going well my subgroup got everything we need to do sorted and then we arsed around in the coffee lounge of our physics department for about 4hours while we calculated the mass of our binary stars (only took five mins) and discussed our errors (20 mins!), well it was nice just to chill and listen to music (that's all we did)! It was funny as we are poor students but we still had 3 laptops present - I guess an essentially part of most students lives now.

The fight back has begun, I thought it might - we want to save Hubble!

See: http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1158_1.asp

2 or 3 depending on if you include Beagle having landed or not.

Oppourtinty has landed and is hopefully going to work properly.

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3427045.stm

Supernova blast bonanza in nearby galaxy:

Credit: ESA, NASA and P. Anders (Gottingen University Galaxy Evolution Group, Germany)

This image is just beautiful - reminds me why I do what I do. One day I will get to take these images and then play around with them in IRAF.

Also the well-known extrasolar planet HD 209458b, provisionally nicknamed 'Osiris' has had Oxygen and Carbon found in it's atmosphere! See here for more info.

This news fits in quite well with my group project at the moment!

The debate continues, is there life on Mars? Well the way Beagle was taken out before it got to play that Blur track I reckon there is. I bet they all had their baseball bats ready to smack it apart as it landed! :-)

On to more serious issues of this, new research has come out to suggest that the meteorite ALH84001 (see below) is actually proof of life on Mars! See here.

On a more personal note, I have had a busy day - working very hard on my group studies, I might actually start to understand what we are doing soon!

Tonight was Astrosoc and we had a fantastic talk of Prof. Cruise (Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of Birmingham), he did a talk titled "Gravity - massive problem". Lots of fun. I have not had lectures off him since the 1st year and he is such a great speaker and a very nice guy. Nice to have him back.

I got home quite early in the afternoon, but haven't had chance to do much. I decided to go observing tonight got some good stuff done, saw the cloud belts of Jupiter and Saturn - wonderful as ever.

I had fun this weekend it was good but tiring at Astrofest. I will definitely try and get down their again next year - hopefully not having to carry so many publications back with me , actually I did not have too many but still it was tiring. I had a great day in London in fact. It was actually the fist time I had traveled into London on my own. I have to say the tube is idiot proof - no way I was going to get lost. It was lots of fun and really quite quick - could do with one in Birmingham. The only problem I have with it is how filthy it is.

M64: The Sleeping Beauty Galaxy

Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI), S. Smartt (IoA) & D. Richstone (U. Michigan) et al.

M64 is the famous Black Eye galaxy, sometimes also called the "Sleeping Beauty galaxy". The conspicuous dark structure is a prominent dust feature obscuring the stars behind. This feature also enables one to determine, or at least estimate, which of the galaxy's sides is nearer and which more remote; in case of M64, it seems that the southern side is nearer to us.

How beautiful is this? Now this is one of the reasons I love astronomy, the absolute fantastic beauty of objects.

Recent results from the Chandra and XMM Newton telescopes indicate that a star that they have observed is being ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. This is the first observational proof of the well excepted theory. It is always good that theory is proven occasionally, you don't want it to happen all the time as you don't want to give the theorists a big head.

Credit: Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/MPE/S.Komossa et al.; Optical: ESO/MPE/S.Komossa

For more see: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0402/18starblackhole/

Last night at Astrosoc we finally managed to get a clear night. Great! Did some good observing. However the highlight of the night was that we were able to take astronomical images using our electronic eyepiece. It was lots of fun and something that the society has been planning to do for the past two years, but haven't! Another first for Astrosoc under our belt this year - great!

Earlier this week I managed to get the electronic eyepiece to work again, don't exactly know what was going wrong but after a little bit of playing around it started working. I then spoke to my fired Matt who works at Maplin about how to capture the images on to a laptop and he suggested I could get a USB video capture card. The conversation then went onto how he had an old one we could use in his old computer, so he brought it along and we managed to get it to work last night, lots of fun.

It was quite windy and so was hard to get any decent results as we could not magnify the image very much as the objects were bouncing around a lot.

Below are a few of the pictures including possibly the best one:

Saturn:

Jupiter:

For more of the images taken last night see http://students.bugs.bham.ac.uk/astrosoc/pictures/eyepiece.htm

Last night (and tonight, but haven't put them online yet) I went observing and managed to get, with the help of my friend Eleanor (in fact she did the hard work) some quite interesting images of the Moon.

For more see http://students.bugs.bham.ac.uk/astrosoc/pictures/eyepiece220204.htm

Hopefully we can only get better and better with the pictures.

On another note I have had a nightmare of a day with my Uni work, I spent 6hours on the questions today! Think I did them ok, but took way too long - am shattered!

Something about this makes me laugh! <insert Pac Man eating noise>

Courtesy: http://www.britastro.org/picture/arc04/index07.html

By Peter Carson.

NGC 281 "the Pac Man nebula" in Cassiopeia RA 0h52m Dec +56d38m

A 30 minute exposure on Kodak Elitechrome 200 film, at the f5.4 prime focus of a 100mm Televue refractor, autoguided using an ST4, on a G11 Losmandy mount. The photograph was taken in late last year.

The slide was scanned and slightly contrast stretched with Adobe Photoshop. North is to the left of the image.

Last night I went along with Eleanor, Steve and Barry to the Uni observatory to show a group of Brownies around. The weather was not great, it was not bad, but not the best. We also could not get the main camera to work but well the Brownies did not seem to mind. We used Eleanor's telescope to show them a few objects in the sky such as Saturn. We also showed them a few constellations around the sky which they all enjoyed.

It was good to be back at the observatory and was lots of fun. Was shattered when I got home though!

Me and Steve looking confused!

The brilliant telescope:

The object shows a similar orbit to Pluto and is thought to be half the size of Pluto!

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3506329.stm so does this mean that Pluto's classifiaction as a planet should be re considered. If this object is put down to being a Kuiper belt object then surely Pluto should be!

Interesting question: is Pluto a planet or not? - we may finally have an answer.

What resembles the head and torso of a human and will be attached outside the International Space Station! No it is not some strange human symbolism or some modern art. It is actually an experiment to study the levels of radiation experienced by spacewalkers.

For more information see: http://www.esa.int/esaHS/SEMBM02PGQD_index_0.html

What a sight, the sunset on Earth is a beautiful thing - something which takes away the science about what is going on and inserts the "wow" factor, but on Mars "WOW". The scenery is not as good and it is not a great image but "WOW" anyways.

For more info see: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/040226status.html

a movie of this can be seen at: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/video/movies/spirit/10-jb-1-sunset.mov

Four months before its scheduled arrival at Saturn, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft sent this brilliant image back to the Earth, it is expected to do this on a weekly basis as it approaches the gas giant.

What a beautiful photo!

For more on Cassini see: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

The NASA press release can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_137.html

I think this is what is used to bleach hair - guess the Martians like the blonde look! :-)

Now to be serious, if I can ever do that, the reason I mentioned Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) is because astronomers have detected it on the Red (well maybe bleach blonde in parts) planet.

This is important because it is the first time that a chemical catalyst of this sort has been found in a planetary atmosphere other than the Earth's. Catalyst are very important in the chemical cycles on the Earth and so means that theories about the Earth can be applied to Mars (and other bodies) with some sort of observational backing.

For more info see: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0403/01marsatmosphere/

Now for a wonderful image of Mars!

Image courtesy: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2003/22/image/a

Rosetta is in space at last - no earlier morning firework show this time off the Ariane launcher!

See: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/ariane/v158/040302launch.html for more info.

Rover confirms past liquid water on Mars!

The Opportunity Rover appears to be in a region which was soaking wet in the past. This is a great discovery and was determined from the chemical composition of rocks within the region.

See: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2004/mar/HQ_04077_water_on_mars.html for more.

On a more personal note today I have had a good day, one problem - I did some calculations of exoplanets I believe that TPF (Terrestrial Planet Finder) can find, guess what I don't agree with NASA. Well there is obviously one answer - they are wrong! Only joking - guess I better look into it to see what I am missing out on. Damn interferometer!

This is the latest image (taken on the 8th February) of the expanding light halo around the distant star V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon). The illumination of the interstellar dust comes form the red supergiant star in the centre which gave off a pulse of light two years ago. This object is at the outer edge of the galaxy some 20,000 light years away from the Earth.

Credits: NASA, the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) and ESA

A bill has just been passed in the USA that awards amateur astronomers who find Earth crossing asteroids $3,000 (- just like the Kings used to do!). This will mean that amateurs who are spending their time protecting the planet will get something back (and not just life / satisfaction but hard cash!)

The bill directs the NASA Administrator to make awards, of $3,000 each, based on the recommendations of the Smithsonian Minor Planet Center.

For more information see the House Committee on Science News Release.

With all the amateurs on the case then maybe below will not happen!

Yes they have done it, they have gone further back in time. No I am not talking about some strange time machine involving a car going at 85mph harnessing the power of the flux capacitor but of the realistic Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team

Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the million-second-long exposure reveals the oldest galaxies ever seen and there are some 10,000 galaxies in it, wow! It is actually two separate images put together.

On closer inspection some of the beauty can be seen better!

Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team

For more info see: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/hubble_UDF.html

Argh! I'm busy - well not that busy - decided to take a break to write on here!

It is the Astrosoc Annual Dinner tonight - I have everything prepared, my shirt is ironed, my speech is done (sort of!) and all I have to do now is get changed. Getting changed is quite hard - how the heck do you do this bow tie - I'm sure I will figure this out in the next five minutes though.

This is a joyful occasion however I moment should be spent thinking about all the families who lost loved ones today after the bombings in Madrid. Somber thoughts but sometimes necessary to remind us that the world we live in is not safe and so we should be ever vigilant and never underestimate the power of a lunatic or a group of lunatics.

For more info see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3502218.stm

Moving on though you should also not dwell on the point otherwise you will become a paranoid person and walk around with Aluminium foil on your head!

Look at this wonderful picture which is the BAA's website picture of the week, wow! I love looking at the Orion Nebula and this picture just shows the raw beauty of this nebula.

M42 in Mapped Colour By Russell Croman

For more info about the picture see: http://www.rc-astro.com/nebulae/m42_2004-01-27.htm

A new planet has been 'discovered', is this actually a new planet or just a Kuiper belt object (like Pluto in my opinion)? Well the NASA funded scientists believe they have found one - named Sedna.

Artists concept Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Credit: NASA/Caltech

It is estimated Sedna is approximately three-fourths the size of Pluto. Sedna is likely the largest object found in the solar system since Pluto was discovered in 1930.

For more info see: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0403/15sedna/

See the following about the orbit of Sedna: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA05569

See the following for a size comparison: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA05567

It's that time of year, the time of year when I get up early everyday and guess what today was the first day. If you have not guessed it is the time of year approaching examinations so it is that glorious revision period. Luckily this is my last but one set of exams and for some of my friends their last. I can't wait until I have no more exams! Guess I still have 14 months to wait but hey when that day comes life will be less stressful.

Today I am doing Interstellar Medium (ISM) revision and am making good progress which I am pleased about as I didn't even think I would make sense out of the notes but I am! :-)

And now for a picture of the beautiful ISM:

This picture is of the Rosette nebula

I am gonna have to get used to this, revision is not looking good. Before anyone says anything I have been working for an hour so am now taking a break, don't want to overload the old mind!

This morning is more Interstellar Medium revision, I am not having fun with it. Since I am going on about emission I thought I would post a nice picture of an emission nebula so here we go, NGC 6164-5:

Top left is NE. Image width is about 9 arc min
Image and text © 1980-2002, Anglo-Australian Observatory, photograph by David Malin. For more info see: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/AAO/images/captions/aat021.html

Now isn't that another beautiful picture, not only does space fascinate me but it never stops stunning me of its raw beauty.

I received a wonderful picture in my inbox last night. It was a picture of the Moon taken by my friend Eleanor and her 5" Newtonian Telescope, wow it came out well.

Some of the Lunar seas can be seen well. I am not the best with these but I think they are the following: Mare Serenitatis, Mare Crisium, Mare Tranquillitatis, Mare Nectaris, Mare Fecunditatis in order from top to bottom.

I big well done to Eleanor and her steady hands as now T mount was used! :-)

Ok now I think I am starting to obsess as the only revision I have done is of ISM (Interstellar Medium) and am not having fun with the questions - think I will move on to Quantum Mechanics at least that is logically!

Below is a picture that shows evidence for the ISM (click on the image for a much larger version).

A molecular cloud, Barnard 68; courtesy the FORS team at the VLT and ESO.

Well after a whole day spent doing notes - stuff I really should have already done, but didn't have time due to obs lab running over and then the epic of group studies. Well I could have made time but frankly thought it would be best to wait till now so is fresh in my mind.

I have to say observational cosmology is really interesting, just after a while a little tedious - especially having to make sure what I am reading is up to date since the field is continually changing.

Well at least it gives me an excuse to post a wonderful picture:

This is the Universe in the microwave region, this is known as the Cosmic Microwave background and occurs at 2.72 K wow! This is light that has just reached us from the early universe and clearly shows that the Universe though very isotropic in its earlier stages still had slight fluctuations - the idea is these fluctuations are what caused the growth of structure that we see within our Universe - but then again that is probably wrong, as no one actually knows it is just one of various interpretations! Still it is still wonderful that the whole sky is full of this light from the early Universe, wow!

See: http://www.astro.ubc.ca/people/scott/cmb.html for more on the CMB and http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101Flucts.html.

ESO's (European Southern Observatory) Very Large telescope is now entering its 5th year of service and with the breath taking images already accomplished only better can be hoped for, especially once it starts acting at the VLTI (Very Large Telescope Interferometer) - no I will not start on interferometry could be here all day going on about that!

Here are some of the wonderful pictures taken by the VLT so far:

For more see: http://www.eso.org/outreach/gallery/vlt/images/Top20/Top20/topvlt.html

And here it is:

SOHO is the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, it a satellite which orbits around the Sun observing it. For more about SOHO see: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/120373_index_0_m.html

The 750th comet was seen on 22 March 2004. For more see: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMSJV57ESD_index_0.html

Last night I wondered if I could take a picture of Jupiter by just pointing my girlfriends camera at it. The answer yes I could, I was surprised since there is lots of light pollution around Selly Oak. I am going to try more and more astrophotography over time - obviously using a better setup but just was interested on this case. Here is what I got (better than Matt who I believe took a picture of a lamp post!):

Maybe I was a bit harsh towards Matt and saying he managed to take a picture of a lamp post! Well he did but here is a better, un-magnified picture - it is better than mine (by far!)

This was taken using a Kodak EasyShare DX6440 with 4s exposure

Well I for one after what I had read recently didn't think that the extrasolar planet finding technique of gravitational microlensing was as close as it was to finding extrasolar planets - guess what I was wrong. It has, see: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0404/15planet/

I have to say I do find the topic of extrasolar planets very interesting as there is so much that we can learn about ourselves from it, it may even help us answer the question of why? But I doubt it - I don't think that one is answerable.

Well revision is still on the menu and will be for a while at least I am starting to understand a few things especially with Stellar Evolution but like everything it seems this year the answer to the question is never as short as I would like - I wonder if I am not been concise enough. Time to go ask the lecturer I think.

As for Stellar Evolution here is a nice artists impression of accretion flow between a massive star and a neutron star - something that I have been going over recently: (click on image for better resolution image)

Also see: http://www.ricksternbach.com/ss433.jpg for another wonderful picture.