Stanford University:
http://www.stanford.edu/

Full Course Available on Stanford on iTunes U [iTunes Link]:
http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/itunes.stanford.edu.1524698736.01524698739

Stanford University Channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/stanford

Duration : 1:26:28

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MrNEPTUNEMADNESS I know YOU will enjoy it man – your enthusiasm about space and astronomy is infectious

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This video is the second in a series on Planetary Ascension and follows “Planetary Ascension – The Birth of the Sacred” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94a1J5UyTMI

Duration : 0:8:19

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Paroles et chat de Ridan, album : Objectif Terre

Elle pleure, elle pleure,
elle pleure ma planète!
Elle sent que sa fin est proche
et ça la rend folle!
dites-leur, dites-leur,
dites-leur qu’ils sont fous!
La terre en a ras le bol un point c’est tout!

Pourquoi tu pleures?

Aujourd’hui j’ai de la chance
Je suis encore là
J’vais pouvoir voir le ciel encore une fois.
L’air pur ici aussi se fait si rare,
que même les clébards disent
qu’il y en a marre!
De respirer cette merde à pleins poumons,
tout ça pour qu’un petit con
gagne des millions.
Tu sais que notre vie de chien nous suffit bien,
pas besoin de choper
le cancer des êtres humains.
Nous paierons cher sans doute votre insolence,
vous jouez avec ce monde par négligence.
Les frontières de vos cartes n’y feront rien !
Cette terre n’est pas à nous
vous le saurez bien …

Duration : 0:4:7

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The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered an extrasolar planet, for the first time using direct visible-light imaging. The strange world is far-flung from its parent star, is surrounded by a colossal belt of gas and dust, and may even have rings more impressive than Saturn’s.

HUBBLE DIRECTLY OBSERVES A PLANET ORBITING ANOTHER STAR

WASHINGTON — NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star.

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter’s mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the “Southern Fish.”

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by NASA’s Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS.

In 2004, the coronagraph in the High Resolution Camera on Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys produced the first-ever resolved visible-light image of the region around Fomalhaut. It clearly showed a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 21.5 billion miles across and having a sharp inner edge.

This large debris disk is similar to the Kuiper Belt, which encircles the solar system and contains a range of icy bodies from dust grains to objects the size of dwarf planets, such as Pluto.

Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkeley, and team members proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring’s inner edge.

Circumstantial evidence came from Hubble’s confirmation that the ring is offset from the center of the star. The sharp inner edge of the ring is also consistent with the presence of a planet that gravitationally “shepherds” ring particles. Independent researchers have subsequently reached similar conclusions.

Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring’s inner edge. The results are being reported in the November 14 issue of Science magazine.

“Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off,” Kalas says.

“Fomalhaut is the gift that keeps on giving. Following the unexpected discovery of its dust ring, we have now found an exoplanet at a location suggested by analysis of the dust ring’s shape. The lesson for exoplanet hunters is ‘follow the dust,’” said team member Mark Clampin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Observations taken 21 months apart by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys’ coronagraph show that the object is moving along a path around the star, and is therefore gravitationally bound to it. The planet is 10.7 billion miles from the star, or about 10 times the distance of the planet Saturn from our sun.

The planet is brighter than expected for an object of three Jupiter masses. One possibility is that it has a Saturn-like ring of ice and dust reflecting starlight. The ring might eventually coalesce to form moons. The ring’s estimated size is comparable to the region around Jupiter and its four largest orbiting satellites.

Kalas and his team first used Hubble to photograph Fomalhaut in 2004, and made the unexpected discovery of its debris disk, which scatters Fomalhaut’s starlight. At the time they noted a few bright sources in the image as planet candidates. A follow-up image in 2006 showed that one of the objects is moving through space with Fomalhaut but changed position relative to the ring since the 2004 exposure. The amount of displacement between the two exposures corresponds to an 872-year-long orbit as calculated from Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

Future observations will attempt to see the planet in infrared light and will look for evidence of water vapor clouds in the atmosphere. This would yield clues to the evolution of a comparatively newborn 100-million-year-old planet. Astrometric measurements of the planet’s orbit will provide enough precision to yield an accurate mass.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2013 will be able to make coronagraphic observations of Fomalhaut in the near- and mid-infrared. Webb will be able to hunt for other planets in the system and probe the region interior to the dust ring for structures such as an inner asteroid belt. For more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

http://hubblesite.org/news/2008/39

-end-

Duration : 0:5:2

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4th February 2010- http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100204/tsc-blushing-pluto-dwarf-planet-takes-on-e123fef.html

Pluto, the dwarf planet on the outer edge of our solar system, has a dramatically ruddier hue than it did just a few years ago, NASA scientists said Thursday, after examining photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

They said the distant orb appears mottled and molasses-colored in recent pictures, with a markedly redder tone that most likely is the result of surface ice melting on Pluto’s sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole.

The remarkable color shift, which apparently took place between 2000 and 2002, confirms that Pluto is a dynamic world undergoing dramatic atmospheric changes and not simply a ball of ice and rock, according to scientists at the US space agency.

They said they will compare Hubble pictures taken in 1994 with some from 2002 and 2003, as they search for more signs of seasonal change, including evidence that Pluto’s northern polar region has gotten brighter, while the southern hemisphere has darkened.

“The Hubble observations are the key to… showing how it all makes sense by providing a context based on weather and seasonal changes, which opens other new lines of investigation,” said the leader of the study, principal investigator Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in the western US city of Boulder, Colorado.

Pluto — declassified as a full-fledged planet in August 2006 — has a 248-year orbit and an axial tilt which, unlike Earth, alone drives the seasons. The icy orb’s seasons are asymmetrical because of its elliptical orbit.

Spring transitions to polar summer quickly in the northern hemisphere, because Pluto is moving faster along its orbit when it is closer to the sun, NASA said.

Scientists are hoping to collect additional riveting snapshots of Pluto when NASA’s next space probe, dubbed New Horizons, flies by the dwarf planet in 2015.

Hubble underwent repair during a space shuttle mission last year that left it with a new camera and spectrograph, as well as spruced up scientific instruments.

The repair job marked the end of NASA’s human missions to the beloved Hubble. Launched in 1990, the telescope was repaired and upgraded in 1993, 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2008.

Last year’s final upgrade extended the life of Hubble another five years.

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In this spell-binding series, Professor Brian Cox visits some of the most stunning locations on Earth to describe how the laws of nature have carved natural wonders across the Solar System.

Duration : 0:2:30

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Clip from COSMOS: A Personal Journey.

Duration : 0:5:53

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