A NEW COSMOS ON THE WEB

This screenshot from the Web-based version of WorldWide Telescope shows Venus'surface, mapped by the Magellan probe and enhanced with other imagery.A year after making its debut as a downloadable software program, Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope is going public on the World Wide Web. It's the latest move aimed at widening the "market" for free online exploration of the cosmos.

There's lots of software that gives you the universe on your computer - ranging from the kind of programs you pay good money for (such as Starry Night, Redshift and TheSky), to free programs available over the Internet (Sky on Google Earth, Stellarium and Celestia, as well as the classic WorldWide Telescope, a.k.a. WWT), to Web-based planetariums (Google Sky and Heavens-Above).

Today Microsoft took the wraps off its own Web client, based on the standalone version of WWT, at the annual MIX conference in Las Vegas. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

Many of the WorldWide Telescope's features have been carried over: You can see thousands of the night sky's coolest sights in multiple wavelengths, thanks to a rich database of imagery from space telescopes as well as ground-based observatories.

For example, you can bring up the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) in optical wavelengths, load in Spitzer's infrared view, and then use a slider button to morph one view into the other. The dark, dusty swirls in the optical view turn out to be exactly where the infrared emissions are the brightest.

You can also sit back and let someone show you around, thanks to tours that have been prepared by space fans ranging from professional astrophysicists to a 6-year-old kid. And you can load up panoramas created by probes on Mars, Apollo astronauts on the moon, or photographers visiting the Mauna Kea observatories in Hawaii (or the lobby of Microsoft Research's headquarters, for that matter).

The release is meant to make the WorldWide Telescope available to non-Windows computer users as well as Windows users who may be reluctant to install a big piece of software, said Jonathan Fay, one of WWT's co-creators at Microsoft Research. He said 2 million users have downloaded the standalone program, but for every Web site visitor who has done the download, there have been almost 100 visitors who have not.

You still need to have Microsoft's multimedia plug-in, known as Silverlight, but Fay said he hopes users won't find that to be a huge hurdle.

"If they've seen Web advertising, they've probably already installed Silverlight," he said. (The plug-in was used for NBC video streaming during last year's Olympics, and it's also playing a supporting role in this month's "March Madness" tournament.)

Also, there are some features that haven't been carried over - such as the ability to create those cool guided tours, or navigate the universe in 3-D. "If you can use the 3-D mode, that's what you want to install," Fay said.

Fay keeps a MacBook Air laptop sitting on the edge of his desk at Microsoft Research, connected to the Internet through a flaky wireless connection, just to get a sense of how the Web client works for real-world users. The graphics aren't as high-resolution as they are in the classic WWT, and the imagery is slower to load - mostly due to the connection speed - but at least it works.

Fay and the other main man behind the project, Curtis Wong, are focusing on making the high-quality version of WorldWide Telescope good enough for professional researchers to rely on. Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics are already using WWT to help keep track of their image databases, and Fay hints that more announcements are on the way. (I'll provide updates at the end of this item if and when they are announced.)

Amateur astronomers are also taking to the WorldWide Telescope, in part thanks to efforts such as the Astrometry site on Flickr. Photographs of celestial sights can be coded up so that they drop right into the WWT Web view. Fay said the WorldWide Telescope plays well with the Virtual Astronomy Multimedia Project, an effort to standardize how astronomical photos are tagged.

In the past few weeks, it seems as if the competition between Microsoft and Google has been heating up in the celestial sphere: Google Earth has added the ability to create guided tours, a la Microsoft's WWT, and rolled out an eye-pleasing array of Martian imagery. (Google's "Live From Mars" image stream, drawing upon the latest pictures from Mars orbiters, came online shortly after last week's launch.)

Now Microsoft has raised the bar for Web-based space exploration, moving into a realm where Google Sky has had the lead.

Fay said the way WWT uses Silverlight could be adapted to other applications as well, including Web-based gaming environments and experiments in geographic-based crowdsourcing. "This is a game-changer in terms of what people are going to expect from the Web," he said.

And in fact, the folks from Microsoft and the folks from Google are learning from each other. Neither Google Sky nor WorldWide Telescope are being done for the money, since both programs are free. Rather, they're helping to blaze a technological trail for other pursuits - while at the same time providing something useful and fun for scientists as well as the general public.

"The more, the better - and the science is going to benefit in the end," Fay said.

RACE TO FIND ALIEN EARTHS

NASA is gearing up for a space race that's expected to point to the first truly Earthlike worlds beyond our solar system - and, like the race to put the first human on the moon, this marathon will take several years to run.

The roots of the race go back more than a decade, as astrophysicist Alan Boss explains in his new book, "The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets." That's when pioneers in the planet-hunting field started detecting worlds around suns beyond our own.

The techniques used back then couldn't find other Earths in planetary systems like our own. The first method, pioneered by Polish astronomer Alexander Wolszczan at the Arecibo Observatory in 1991, could detect Earth-scale planets (and perhaps even the first known extrasolar dwarf planet) around radio pulsars - but those planets were thought to be burned-out cinders and not Earthlike at all.

In 1995, astronomers began reporting the detection of Jupiter-scale planets around normal stars, by precisely measuring the gravitational wobble those planets induce in the stars themselves. (Our interactive tutorial explains how it's done.) As the years have gone by, planet-hunters have gotten smarter about using that "Doppler wobble" technique, and they've also trained sensitive telescopes on faraway stars to measure the slight dimming in their light as alien planets make their transits over the stars' disks.

This transit method takes center stage in the next phase of the planet-hunting space race: The European Space Agency's Corot satellite, which was launched a little more than two years ago, has a head start. Just this month, members of the Corot science team announced the discovery of a "hot super-Earth" that is less than twice Earth's size.

Next month, NASA picks up the pace with the launch of its Kepler satellite, equipped with a planet-seeking telescope that has some advantages over Corot. Astronomers expect Kepler to turn up some true Earthlike planets, in Earthlike orbits, around sunlike stars.

"If Kepler comes up empty-handed - boy, it'll turn out to be virtual harakiri," Boss, a member of the Kepler science team, told me earlier this month. "But there's little chance of that."

The first fruits of the $550 million Kepler mission won't be the coolest alien Earths, Boss cautioned. "Often the oddballs are the earliest ones to find, for some reason," he said. Boss expects the Kepler team to announce the mission's first discoveries of hot Jupiters and hot super-Earths within a month after science operations begin.

The biggest factor behind that schedule has to do with the time scale of a planet's orbit. It takes at least three orbits for astronomers to confirm that the dimming of the star is really caused by a planet rather than, say, the brightness cycles of a variable star or a binary-star system. If the planet is extremely close to its star - which would be an oddball orbit by solar system standards - that won't take long. For example, the hot super-Earth identified by Corot completes an orbit in just 20 hours.

Farther-out planets will require more time to orbit, and therefore more time to detect.

"The earth, by definition, will take at least three years to get," Boss said. "Roughly four years from now, we will be beginning to make our claims for Earthlike planets around solar-type stars."

Boss' book traces the buildup to the Kepler mission through a series of time-stamped entries, reading almost like a diary. It's often been said that politics can get as messy as sausage-making - and based on Boss' accounts of Kepler's budgetary travails, the same can be said for pre-launch mission planning.

Along the way, Boss also delves into the deep scientific issues of the planet search:
Are new planets built from the core up, like dirty snowballs, or do they whirl into shape like stars are thought to do? (Boss says both processes come into play.)

How do you define stars, brown dwarfs, sub-brown dwarfs, planets and dwarf planets? (Boss was involved in many of those discussions, including the IAU's efforts to define planethood.)

What will it mean if (or when) Kepler finds those alien Earths? (Boss says finding out how many such planets exist among the more than 100,000 star systems that Kepler is expected to survey will reveal "the most basic parameter in any estimate of the prevalence of life in the universe.")

Kepler's primary mission is due to last three and a half years, but Boss hopes that the spacecraft will be up for some extra laps around the racetrack. Which mission will be the first to reveal just how common alien Earths are? Corot or Kepler? Considering that Boss is on Kepler's team, he's not the best person to handicap this race objectively. But in the end, it doesn't really matter who reaches the finish line first.

"Either way," he writes, "after centuries - if not millennia - of speculation and wondering, we will finally know just how crowded the universe really is."

Comet Lulin to grace night skies

During the next few weeks, a fine comet bright enough for observation in binoculars and possibly even with the naked eye will provide a fine skywatching target when weather permits. 

Comet Lulin will be closest to Earth on Feb. 24 and prime viewing will occur than and on surrounding nights. For sharp-eye viewers with dark, rural, skies, the comet is expected to be visible as a dim, fuzzy star. 

People living in cities and suburbs are not expected to see the comet with the naked eye, but binoculars and telescopes will reveal its cloudy head and perhaps a striking tail, too. Comets are unpredictable, however, so it's impossible to say how bright this one might become.
Already Lulin is a fine target for small telescopes, producing several striking photographs in the predawn sky. The object is best found using a sky map tailored to your location. 

The discovery
The comet was photographed by Chi Sheng Lin using a 16-inch telescope at the Lulin Observatory at Nantou, Taiwan on July 11, 2007. But it was a 19-year old student, Quanzhi Ye at Sun Yat-sen University in Mainland China who first recognized the new object on three images that were taken by Lin. 

Initially it was thought to be an asteroid, new images taken a week later revealed the telltale presence of a faint coma.  

The discovery was part of the Lulin Sky Survey project to explore the various populations of small bodies in the solar system, especially objects that possibly could pose a hazard to the Earth. As such, the comet has been christened Comet Lulin, more formally known to astronomers as Comet C/2007 N3. 

This comet is the brightest since the surprising outburst of Comet Holmes more than 15 months ago and in the coming weeks will become favorably placed in the evening sky. During mid-to-late February it will probably be about magnitude 5 or 6, making it perhaps visible to the naked eye in dark, rural locations and easily observable in binoculars or small telescopes. 

Unusual orbit
Brian Marsden of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has calculated that Comet Lulin passed through the perihelion point of its orbit (its closest approach to the sun) on Jan. 10, 113 million miles (182 million kilometers) from the sun. However, while the comet is now receding from the sun, its distance from the Earth is decreasing, with a minimum of 38 million miles on Feb. 24.  

R. Ligustri (www.castfvg.it) / RAS Observatory
The green ball is the comet's atmosphere, or coma, measuring about 311,000 miles (500,000 km) wide, or three times the diameter of Jupiter. The coma contains cyanogen (CN) and diatomic carbon (C2), two gases that glow green when exposed to sunlight. 

For this reason, the comet should be at its brightest during the last week of February; then it will fade fast by mid-March. 

The orbit of Comet Lulin is very nearly a parabola, according to Marsden. It is also rather unusual since it is moving through space in a direction opposite to that of the planets at a very low inclination of just 1.6-degrees from the ecliptic. As such, because it is moving opposite to the motion of our Earth, the comet will appear to track rather quickly against the background stars as one observes the object from one night to the next. 

In addition, over the next three weeks, the comet will appear to rise an average of about 20-minutes earlier each night. Right now, it is best seen in the predawn sky. 

Rapid track 
On the night of Feb. 7, for instance, Lulin will rise above the east-southeast horizon around midnight and will appear at its highest in the sky toward the south at the break of dawn. But on the night of the 24th, when it will be passing nearest to Earth, Lulin will be visible all night, rising in the east at dusk, peaking high in the south shortly after midnight and setting in the west around sunrise. 

Currently located in the constellation Libra, Comet Lulin will appear to move on a northwest trajectory, crossing over into Virgo on Feb. 11 and passing 3-degrees north of the 1st-magnitude star Spica in Virgo on Feb. 16 (for comparison, your clenched fist held at arm's length measures about 10-degrees in width).  

On the night of Feb. 23, now virtually at its peak brightness, the comet will be sitting just 2-degrees south-southwest of the planet Saturn, which you can use as a benchmark to locate the comet. Moreover, around this time, Comet Lulin will be racing at more than 5-degrees per day -- that's roughly the equivalent of the distance between the stars Dubhe and Merak, the "Pointer Stars" of the Big Dipper; so even a few minutes of watching with a telescope should reveal the comet's slow shift relative to background field stars. 

On Feb. 27, the fading comet will slip just 1-degree south of the 1st-magnitude star, Regulus in Leo. And come the night of March 5, Lulin -- by then probably between magnitudes 6 and 7 and no longer visible without binoculars or a telescope -- will pass to within 2-degrees of the famous Beehive Star Cluster in Cancer. 

Look for an Antitail
Comets are visible because radiation from the sun releases gas and dust from the comet. That material then shines with reflected sunlight, creating a cloudy head, or coma, and sometimes one or two tails. 

Even when it's at its very brightest, naked-eye observers probably see Comet Lulin as resembling only a dim, fuzzy star. In binoculars, or a small telescope the comet may resemble an apple on a stick; that is, the comet's diffuse head or coma should appear round and somewhat condensed toward its center, with perhaps a tinge of blue or green, while a narrow tail of gas extends out to the northwest.
In addition, telescopic observers should also look for a "spike" of light, pointing in a direction opposite to the tail. This strange effect, called an "antitail," is caused by a thin sheet of dust that is expelled by the comet but normally is visible for a brief interval when the Earth passes through the comet's orbital plane.  

But because Earth will remain in the comet's orbital plane through February and on into March, there will be an ongoing chance of catching a glimpse of the antitail as well.

CHANDRAYAN-1 -THE MISSION TO MOON -OBJECTIVES

Scientific Objectives
The Chandrayaan-1 mission is aimed at high-resolution remote sensing of the moon in visible, near infrared (NIR), low energy X-rays and high-energy X-ray regions. Specifically the objectives are......To prepare a three-dimensional atlas (with high spatial and altitude resolution of 5-10 m) of both near and far side of the moon.To conduct chemical and mineralogical mapping of the entire lunar surface for distribution of mineral and chemical elements such as Magnesium, Aluminum, Silicon, Calcium, Iron and Titanium as well as high atomic number elements such as Radon, Uranium & Thorium with high spatial resolution.The Simultaneous photo geological, mineralogical and chemical mapping through Chandrayaan-1 mission will enable identification of different geological units to infer the early evolutionary history of the Moon. The chemical mapping will enable to determine the stratigraphy and nature of the Moon's crust and thereby test certain aspects of magma ocean hypothesis. This may allow to determine the compositions of impactors that bombarded the Moon during its early evolution which is also relevant to the formation of the Earth.

Mission Objectives

 To realise the mission goal of harnessing the science payloads, lunar craft and the launch vehicle with suitable ground support systems including Deep Space Network (DSN) station.To realise the integration and testing, launching and achieving lunar polar orbit of about 100 km, in-orbit operation of experiments, communication/ telecommand, telemetry data reception, quick look data and archival for scientific utilisation by scientists.

EVOLUTION OF CHANDRAYAN-1:INDIA'S 1st MISSION TO MOON

"THE MOON"with the history of the early solar system etched on it beckons mankind from time immemorial to admire its marvels and discover its secrets. Understanding the moon provides a pathway to unravel the early evolution of the solar system and that of the planet earth.Through the ages, the Moon, our closest celestial body has aroused curiosity in our mind much more than any other objects in the sky. This led to scientific study of the Moon, driven by human desire and quest for knowledge. This is also reflected in the ancient verse.  Exploration of the moon got a boost with the advent of the space age and the decades of sixties and seventies saw a myriad of successful unmanned and manned missions to moon. This was followed by a hiatus of about one and a half-decade. During this period we refined our knowledge about the origin and evolution of the moon and its place as a link to understand the early history of the Solar System and of the earth. 

However, new questions about lunar evolution also emerged and new possibilities of using the moon as a platform for further exploration of the solar system and beyond were formulated. Moon again became the prime target for exploration and a new renaissance of rejuvenated interest dawned. All the major space faring nations of the world started planning missions to explore the moon and also to utilize moon as a potential base for space exploration.The idea of undertaking an Indian scientific mission to Moon was initially mooted in a meeting of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1999 that was followed up by discussions in the Astronautical Society of India in 2000. Based on the recommendations made by the learned members of these forums, a National Lunar Mission Task Force was constituted by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Leading Indian scientists and technologists participated in the deliberations of the Task Force that provided an assessment on the feasibility of an Indian Mission to the Moon as well as dwelt on the focus of such a mission and its possible configuration.

The task force recommended that given the technical expertise of ISRO it will be extreme worthwhile to plan an Indian Mission to the Moon. It also provided specific inputs such as the primary scientific objectives of such a mission, plausible instruments to meet these objectives, launch and spacecraft technologies that need to be developed and suggested the need for setting up of a Deep Space Network (DSN) station in India for communication with the lunar orbiting spacecraft. The team also provided a provisional budgetary estimate.

The Study Report of the Task Team was discussed in April 2003 by a peer group of about 100 eminent Indian scientists representing various fields of planetary & space sciences, earth sciences, physics, chemistry, astronomy, astrophysics and engineering and communication sciences. After detailed discussions, it was unanimously recommended that India should undertake the Mission to Moon, particularly in view of the renowned international interest on moon with several exciting missions planned for the new millennium. In addition, such a mission will provide the needed thrust to basic science and engineering research in the country including new challenges to ISRO to go beyond the Geostationary orbit. Further, such a project will also help bringing in young talents to the arena of fundamental research. The Academia, in particular, the university scientists would also find participation in such a project intellectually rewarding.Subsequently, Government of India approved ISRO's proposal for the first Indian Moon Mission, called Chandrayaan-1 in November 2003.