Britain's first official astronaut

From the BBC:

It takes the "right stuff" to withstand cosmic bursts of camera light and meteoric bombardments of questions, but Tim Peake is orbit-ready and passed the test of facing the massed media this week.

As Britain's first official, government-backed astronaut, his selection for a mission in late 2015 marks a pivotal moment.

Countries as far afield as Belgium, Mexico and Vietnam have already had people in space, but so far the only Brits to make it have either had to change nationality (and become American) or win a Russian competition (as in the case of Helen Sharman in 1991).

The UK astronaut tells BBC science editor David Shukman that it is a "true privilege" to be assigned to a long duration mission.

The sensors that bring you those amazing pictures of the Sun, the rocket motors steering spacecraft, the harpoons that may help clear up space junk - many are designed and built in Britain. British space labs and companies have grown to become market leaders in key technologies and their business is valued at £9bn a year.

There are hopes that the space sector will grow - eventually to support as many as 100,000 jobs - and the figurehead of this renewed British effort in space is a former helicopter pilot from Chichester.
Science Minister David Willetts regards the £16m to secure Tim Peake's ticket as money well spent.
While Nasa wraps its astronauts in the rhetoric of fabled explorers - lots of "celestial destiny" and "bold endeavour" - the British take is far more mundane: the press release announcing Tim Peake's mission is mainly about British industry and jobs.



Awesome Power of the Sun

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22556750

Thank you BBC and Pat for our alert.

Largest CME of the year

The flare on 13 May comes as the Sun is approaching "solar maximum"

The Sun has unleashed its most powerful eruption of 2013 so far.

The solar flare - a sudden release of radiation - peaked at 1705 BST on Monday, and was associated with a huge eruption of matter.

When these eruptions reach Earth, they can interfere with electronic systems in satellites and those on the ground.

Nasa said this solar explosion - known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) - was not directed at Earth, but it could pass several US spacecraft.

The event on Monday was classified as an "X-class" flare - the most intense type - with a designation of X2.8 (higher numbers denote a stronger flare). It surpassed an X1.7-class flare that occurred 14 hours earlier.

 

Space Oddity

International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield has spent the last year charming the earthbound public with his tweets and Tumblr posts from the International Space Station. Now, it turns out he’s got pipes, too: to celebrate the end of his tenure on the I.S.S., he’s recorded a gorgeous and touching tribute to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

He’s also a veteran member of Max Q—an all-astronaut band that’s been playing with rotating lineups since 1987. When Hadfield’s on the ground, he covers bass and lead vocals. And he’s good—really good. As of this morning, the “Space Oddity” video had passed 1.5 million hits, and Bowie’s Facebook page lauded it as  “possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created.”

Large Meteor in the Sky Last Night

A large blue meteor was spotted last night (8th May) travelling across the night sky by people in many parts of England and Wales. Many observers suggested it was a fireball, a brighter-than-usual meteor. The International Astronomical Union defines a fireball as "a meteor brighter than any of the planets" (magnitude −4 or greater).

Watch amateur footage here.

Sightings of the celestial body were reported on Twitter in areas such as Cornwall, Hampshire, Lancashire, south Wales and Worcestershire.

Suzy Buttress, of Basingstoke, described witnessing the meteor as a "once in a lifetime thing".
Space scientist Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock said the phenomenon was likely to have been debris from Halley's Comet.

Dr Aderin-Pocock explained what could have caused the spectacle.

"Unfortunately I didn't see this meteor myself, but I think what's unusual is the size of this one. With meteor showers people will see a number of meteors over an hour, so let's say six or 10 an hour.
"It seems that this one was particularly large and particularly bright, which is why it's caught so much attention.
"It's quite likely to be part of the Eta Aquarids, which is the debris left by Halley's Comet.
"And twice a year we pass through the debris left behind by the comet and when this happens we see more of these shooting stars but there must have been a large lump left behind which is what caused such a bright meteor to be seen."

Herschel finds hot gas on the menu for Milky Way’s black hole

ESA’s Herschel space observatory has made detailed observations of surprisingly hot molecular gas that may be orbiting or falling towards the supermassive black hole lurking at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.

Our local black hole is located in a region known as Sagittarius A* – Sgr A* – after a nearby radio source. It has a mass about four million times that of our Sun and lies around 26 000 light-years away from the Solar System.
Even at that distance, it is a few hundred times closer to us than any other galaxy with an active black hole at its centre, making it the ideal natural laboratory to study the environment around these enigmatic objects.
Vast amounts of dust lie in the plane of the Milky Way between here and its centre, obscuring our view at visible wavelengths. But at far-infrared wavelengths, it is possible to peer through the dust, affording Herschel’s scientists the chance to study the turbulent innermost region of our Galaxy in great detail.

Molecules on the menu at the Milky Way’s black hole

Herschel has detected a great variety of simple molecules at the Milky Way’s heart, including carbon monoxide, water vapour and hydrogen cyanide. By analysing the signature from these molecules, astronomers have been able to probe some of the fundamental properties of the interstellar gas surrounding the black hole.
“Herschel has resolved the far-infrared emission within just 1 light-year of the black hole, making it possible for the first time at these wavelengths to separate emission due to the central cavity from that of the surrounding dense molecular disc,” says Javier Goicoechea of the Centro de Astrobiología, Spain, and lead author of the paper reporting the results.
The biggest surprise was quite how hot the molecular gas in the innermost central region of the Galaxy gets. At least some of it is around 1000ºC, much hotter than typical interstellar clouds, which are usually only a few tens of degrees above the –273ºC of absolute zero.
While some of the heating is down to the fierce ultraviolet radiation pouring from a cluster of massive stars that live very close to the Galactic Centre, they are not enough to explain the high temperatures alone.
In addition to the stellar radiation, Dr Goicoechea’s team hypothesise that emission from strong shocks in highly-magnetised gas in the region may be a significant contributor to the high temperatures. Such shocks can be generated in collisions between gas clouds, or in material flowing at high speed from stars and protostars.
“The observations are also consistent with streamers of hot gas speeding towards Sgr A*, falling towards the very centre of the Galaxy,” says Dr Goicoechea. “Our Galaxy’s black hole may be cooking its dinner right in front of Herschel’s eyes.”