2003 Feature of the Month Archive

"Star of the Week" Adds Number 300!

Professor Emeritus James Kaler's Skylights webpage added the star 6 Cas in the constellation Cassiopeia (indicated by the yellow circle) as its 300th "Star of the Week" on Friday, November 7th. Skylights offers those interested in astronomy information on what is visible in the heavens this week, from the Moon to the planets and beyond.

Previous Stars of the Week are archived on Prof. Kaler's Stars webpage, a site "dedicated to showing that all stars are not same". In addition to the old Stars of the Week, you can also find information about the lives of stars, labeled pictures of the constellations (such as the one of Cassiopeia above), amazing photos, and much more at the Stars webpage.

Be sure to make Skylights and Stars required stops before you go out stargazing!

Dr. David Morrison Delivers The Sixth Icko Iben Jr. Distinguished Lecture

Dr. David Morrison of the NASA Astrobiology Institute delivered the sixth Icko Iben Jr. Distinguished Lecture on Wednesday, November 5th at 4PM in Foellinger Auditorium. His talk was entitled "Cosmic Collisions: How Astronomers are Saving the World".

An alumnus of the University of Illinois, Dr. Morrison is currently the Senior Scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Among his many accomplishments and honors, he was awarded the Presidential Meritorious Rank in 1999 for his work as Director of Astrobiology and Space Research at NASA Ames Research Center. He also has an asteroid named in his honor, Asteroid 2410 Morrison.

The Iben Lecture Series was founded in 1997 and named in honor of Distinguished Professor Emeritus Icko Iben Jr.

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Mars: Bringer of the Fall Semester!

Mars has intrigued humanity since pre-historic times. In the ancient world, its orange-red color invoked an association with blood and the god of war. In the late 19th century, the great myth of the Martian canals was born, which spurred imaginations across the globe to dream up vivid tales of invaders from another world and "little green men", including Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds radio hoax.

On August 26th-27th, Mars made its closest approach to Earth since before the last Ice Age, just in time to usher in the Fall 2003 semester! In fact, Mars reached an astonishing magnitude of -2.9 (brighter than any star in the sky!). So, as you're walking around campus in the evening this semester, look to the south for a brilliant orange-red point of light in the sky.

Image Credit: MSSS, JPL, NASA

Celestial Fireworks

Resembling the puffs of smoke and sparks from a summer fireworks display, The Hubble Heritage Project's July release gives us an awe-inspiring image, just in time to celebrate the 4th of July. The delicate filaments pictured are actually debris from a supernova remnant (stellar explosion) in a neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Denoted N 49, this supernova remnant is from a massive star that died in a tremendous blast whose light would have reached Earth thousands of years ago. Today, it is the target of investigations led by Illinois professor You-Hua Chu with Illinois PhD alumna Rosa Williams and Illinois professor emeritus John Dickel.

For more information, check out the Hubble Heritage Project.

Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: Y.-H. Chu (UIUC), S. Kulkarni (Caltech) and R. Rothschild (UCSD)

Explore The Stars This Summer

It's summertime; with warm nights and often clear skies, this is a great time of year to go stargazing. You can learn all about the sky and the stars at Prof. Jim Kaler's Stars website. Each week, Prof. Kaler features a new "Star of the Week", including where to find it in the sky. You'll also find labeled pictures of the constellations, amazing photos, and much more. Be sure to make Stars a required stop before you go out stargazing!

Radio Images of the Large Magellanic Cloud

A team of researchers, including Illinois professor John Dickel, have used the Australia Telescope Compac t Array to construct radio continuum images of the Large Magellanic Cloud at wavelengths of 6 and 3.5 cm with resolutions of 35 and 20 arcsec, respectively ( 9 and 5 pc at the 50 kpc distance of the LMC). A total of 6336 mosaic positions were used to cover an area of 6 degrees on a side. At right, the merged 6-cm wavelength image is shown.

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The Flow of Magnetized Gas into a Rotating Black Hole

Illinois researchers Charles Gammie and Jonathan McKinney, together with Hungarian computational physicist Gabor Tóth have recently developed a new numerical method that allows them to study the flow of magnetized gas into a rotating black hole. The details of this work are described in a paper that will soon be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

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Subsun and Halo

A photograph by Professor James Kaler capturing both the Sun's 22^o halo and the subsun was featured as the Earth Science Picture of the Day for March 4th, 2003. See the full image and read more about it here.

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