October 4

Quasars Far Away. Really.

Another report from the "what we know is true" camp. Two weeks ago, Dr. John Calstrom, who declared that "we're stuck with this preposterous universe", announced findings that confirmed the Big Bang and dark energy theories. Now, British astronomers have concluded that quasars are distant cosmic objects, as most scientists believe, and not nearby.

Using the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales, Australia, graduate student Ed Hawkins and his partners surveyed 200,000 galaxies and 25,000 quasars. They identified over 1500 quasars that appear to be located close to galaxies. Those who believe quasars are nearby argue that some quasars seem to travel at speeds similar to relatively close galaxies, so they are probably located at similar distances. But Hawkins and his colleagues did not find any correlation in speed between the identified quasars and their apparent galactic neighbors, concluding that in fact, quasars are distant objects.

"It's a shame, as it would have been great to find that the conventional view of quasars is all wrong," Hawkins said. "However, it's also something of a relief to know that most astronomers have not been barking up completely the wrong tree for the last thirty years."

October 3

Russia Offers To Provide Information, Advance Warning About Space Launches
 
MOSCOW (AP) _ Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov offered Wednesday to give other countries information and advance notice about Russian space launches and renewed Russian calls for a ban on weapons in space.

``We are ready for a new level of openness and confidence-building in the field of space exploration by providing advance information'' about Russian space launches, including their ``purposes and basic parameters,'' Ivanov said.

Ivanov repeated Russia's call for an international agreement banning the stationing or use of weapons in space, noting that Russia had proposed such a treaty at last year's United Nations General Assembly meeting.

The United States withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow in June, citing the need to develop a national missile defense system, which was prohibited under ABM rules.

October 2

Report: Russia Test Fires Missile From Kazakhstan
 
MOSCOW (AP) _ Russian space forces on Wednesday successfully test-fired an anti-missile missile from a testing ground in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, Interfax news agency reported.

The missile was fired from the Sary-Shagan testing ground to test its reliability, Russian Space Forces said, according to Interfax.

No one answered the phone at Russian Space Forces to comment on the report Wednesday night. Interfax news agency said they had no more details about the type of missile.

Maj. Gen. Oleg Gromov, deputy commander of the space troops, told Interfax that the missile had been on combat duty for more than 20 years and was brought to the testing range to ensure that it was still functioning. He provided no other information.

Russia periodically tests combat duty missiles to see if their lifetime can be extended.

First Test Photo from Mars Rover's Pancam

With space photography, you have to start humbly. Yesterday, NASA released the first test picture from one of the Pancams that will ride to Mars aboard the MER rovers. The photo looks across the room at the cruise stage vehicle for the other of the twin MER spacecraft.

Okay, the image is boring, but get this: A full Pancam panorama of Mars (with luck, in 2004) will be four of these images tall, and twenty-four of these images around.

Mars Odyssey Data Released to Scientists

NASA has released the first set of data taken by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft to the Planetary Data System, which will now make the information available to research scientists through a new online distribution and access system.

"This release is a major milestone for Mars scientists worldwide, since the first validated data from our instruments are now available to the entire scientific community," said Stephen Saunders, the Odyssey Project Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "There are fundamentally new kinds of information in these data sets, including day and night infrared images, maps of hydrogen in the soil, and radiation hazard data for future Mars missions."

The information includes the first six weeks of mapping data through the end of March, as well as the observations made during the cruise phase to Mars. The archive consists of formatted instrument data from the gamma-ray spectrometer and high-energy neutron spectrometer; Mars maps from the neutron detectors; about 800 visible and infrared images taken by the camera system; and radiation measurements from the Martian radiation environment experiment. New data will be released to the science community every three months here. 

October 1

Ozone Hole Splits in Two

We told you in a Sept. 23 Astronote that the ozone hole would soon break apart. We're still trying to figure out exactly how a hole breaks up. Anyway, it happened, according this week to scientists from NASA and NOAA, who say the hole -- a region relatively bereft of ozone over Antarctica -- has split into two holes.

This breakup is about two months earlier than usual. In addition, the hole was much smaller than in the past two years, the researchers say. This is due to "peculiar stratospheric weather patterns," they say, not to any long-term trend.

Paul Newman, an ozone researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, provided this explanation: Warmer-than-normal temperatures around the edge of the polar vortex that forms annually in the stratosphere over Antarctica are responsible for the smaller ozone loss. It is this loss that creates the hole.

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