Terry's Astronomy Thread.

[Bluearrowll]

What's in the sky tonight?
August 16, 2013

-Antares is lower right of the Moon this evening.

-The US Air Force Space Surveillance System, a.k.a. the "Space Fence," will be shut down on Oct. 1st. This is a result of automatic cuts imposed by the US Congressional budget sequester. The Space Fence is a multi-station radar deployed across the southern USA capable of tracking satellites, space debris, and meteoroids as far as 30,000 km from Earth. This negatively impacts Space Weather Radio as well, which broadcasts echoes from the Space Fence. In October, spaceweather's radio will shift to a new type of meteor radar based on the forward scattering of VHF TV signals.

News Posted Today:
August 14, 2013
Bright Nova in Delphinus


Astro Picture of the Day:
August 15, 2013

Source:
In an astronomical version of the search for the source of the Nile, astronomers now have strong evidence for the origin of the Magellanic Stream. This composite image shows the long ribbon of gas, discovered at radio wavelengths in the 1970s, in pinkish hues against an optical all-sky view across the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Both Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, dwarf satellite galaxies of the the Milky Way, are seen near the head of the stream at the right. Data from Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph were used to explore abundances of elements along sitelines to quasars that intersect the stream. The results indicate that most of the stream's material comes from the Small Magellanic Cloud. The Magellanic Stream is likely the result of gravitational tidal interactions between the two dwarf galaxies some 2 billion years ago, the Small Magellanic Cloud losing more material in the encounter because of its lower mass.