An Astronomical Timeline

Compiled by Brian Timmins

Page Five of Five

Page 1	Pre-Recorded History to 1682
Page 2	1683 - Newton's "Principia" to 16th July, 1968
Page 3	20th July, 1969 - Armstrong & Aldrin on the Moon to the end of the 20th century
Page 4	1st January 2001 to the 31st December 2007
Page 5	1st January 2008... Onwards and Upwards...

Modern Astronomy - The Twenty-First Century

2008

• 14 January:
  Messenger Report
  The image shows that previously unseen side, with a view looking toward Mercury’s south pole. The southern limb of the planet can be seen in the bottom right of the image. The bottom left of the image shows the transition from the sunlit, day side of Mercury to the dark, night side of the planet. This image was acquired about 98 minutes after MESSENGER’s closest approach to Mercury, when the spacecraft was at a distance of about 33,000 kilometers (21,000 miles).
  [Cite: NASA/Johns Hopkins/Carnegie Institute :: More… ]
  
  
• 25 January:
  Cosmic Suburbia is a Better Breeding Ground for Stars
  Observations from Spitzer show that galaxies in filaments form stars at twice the rate of galaxies in dense clusters. The picture shows a representation of galaxies in and surrounding a galaxy cluster called Abell 1763. The placement of each dot is based on the actual coordinates of galaxies in the region. Blue dots are active star-forming galaxies; red dots show galaxies that are not actively forming stars.
  [Cite: NASA/JPL-Caltech :: More… ]
  
  
• 29 January:
  Life On Frosted Earths.
  The search for life beyond the Earth is closely linked with hunting for habitable worlds. Astronomers have always hoped to find planets in the so-called "Goldilocks zone" around their parent stars, where the temperature is just right. Liquid water is a key ingredient for life as we know it, and this is one reason why the Earth is in an ideal location. Any closer to the Sun and water would boil away into space; any further out and it would freeze.
  [Cite: Astrobiology Magazine :: Image: NASA ]
  
  

• 2 February:
  Gas Geyser on Mercury
  Mercury's tail of sodium gas captured by a wide-angle telescope showing an enormous extent of the atoms escaping from the planet's surface. The insert shows the source regions of the tail gases imaged at a different time using a very narrow field of view telescope. The source regions occur at high latitudes, probably related to solar wind access to Mercury's surface along specific magnetic field lines. The impacts of the solar wind ions and electrons result in sputtering sodium from the surface. Since Mercury is close to the Sun, the sputtered atoms are pushed away by the pressure of light, with this photon radiation pressure leading to the long tail. The brightness of the source regions is about 1 million times greater than the faintest part of the distant tail. The sizes of the source regions span about a quarter of the planet's radius, while the tail extends to about 1500 times the radius of the planet, about 1.5 million miles.
  [Cite: Geophysical Research Letters - J Baumgardner, J Wilson, M Mendillo :: Image: Center for Space Physics, Boston University]
  
  
• 7 February:
  Scientists Study "Plumbing" in Plumes of Enceladus
  Scientists on the Cassini mission have become out-of-this world "plumbers" as they try to piece together what's happening inside the "pipes" feeding the plumes of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Enceladus is jetting out giant geysers three times the size of the moon, and now scientists are beginning to understand how the ice grains are created and how they might have formed. Knowing the process of how the plume forms and the path the water-ice particles have to travel is giving them an insight into what may be a liquid reservoir or lake lying just beneath the surface.
  [Cite: NASA/JPL :: More… ]
  
  
• 8 February:
  
  
  ESA's test centre welcomes its latest guest.
  The gigantic telescope of ESA’s space-based infrared observatory, Herschel, is being prepared to be assembled with its spacecraft in the next few weeks.
  [Cite: ESA :: More… ]
  
  
• 8 February:
  Name That Telescope
  Would you like to name the next great space telescope? Here's your chance: NASA is inviting members of the general public from around the world to suggest a new name for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, otherwise known as GLAST, before it launches in mid-2008. GLAST is designed to probe the most violent events and exotic objects in the cosmos from gamma-ray bursts to black holes and beyond.
  [Cite: NASA/SONOMA :: More… :: Audio :: Play :: Download ]
  
  
• 11 February:
  Light echoes whisper the distance to a star.
  Astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the Universe: Taking advantage of the presence of light echoes, a team of astronomers have used an ESO telescope to measure, at the 1% precision level, the distance of a Cepheid - a class of variable stars that constitutes one of the first steps in the cosmic distance ladder. "Our measurements with ESO's New Technology Telescope at La Silla allow us to obtain the most accurate distance to a Cepheid," says Pierre Kervella, lead-author of the paper reporting the result. Cepheids are pulsating stars that have been used as distance indicators since almost a hundred years. The new accurate measurement is important as, contrary to many others, it is purely geometrical and does not rely on hypotheses about the physics at play in the stars themselves.
  [Cite: ESO :: More… :: Video (QuickTime) ]
  
  
• 13 February:
  Titan's surface organics surpass oil reserves on Earth
  Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes. Cassini has mapped about 20% of Titan's surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves. The dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than Earth's coal reserves.
  [Cite: ESA :: More… ]
  
  
• 13 February:
  MARS: Deep valleys of Candor Chasma
  

  Nadir View	(S→N) View	(W→E) View

  Mars Express took snapshots of Candor Chasma, a valley in the northern part of Valles Marineris, as it was in orbit above the region on 6 July 2006. Valles Marineris is an approximately 3000-km-long canyon system on Mars. Candor Chasma, situated in its northern part, is part of a radial graben system. A graben is a feature bound by parallel normal faults, where the graben floor moves downward relative to the adjoining material. The grabens in the area were created radially, as the Tharsis bulge formed due to volcanic uplift.
  [Cite: ESA :: More… ]
  
  
• 20 February:
  The Moon is a busy place
  More than 500 active satellites are bustling about up there right now. Some are transmitting radio, television, and telephone signals; others are gathering information about Earth's atmosphere and weather; still others are helping people navigate down here; and the rest are conducting space research. see captionSoon the space around the moon will be busy too. China, Japan, India, Russia, and the US either have sent or plan to send satellites there for a bird's-eye view of lunar features and resources.
  [Cite: NASA :: More… ]
  
  
• 22 February:
  Brian's Birthday - reaching Senior Citizenship
  
  
  
• 22 February:
  Ulysses mission coming to a natural end
  Ulysses, the mission to study the Sun’s poles and the influence of our star on surrounding space is coming to an end. After more than 17 years in space – almost four times its expected lifetime – the mission is finally succumbing to its harsh environment and is likely to finish sometime in the next month or two.
  [Cite: ESA :: More… ]
  
  

• 3 March:
  Avalanches on Mars
  A NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars has taken the first ever image of active avalanches near the Red Planet's north pole. The orbiter's HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Experiment) camera wasn't looking for avalanches. "We were checking for springtime changes in the carbon-dioxide frost covering a northern dune field, and finding the avalanches was completely serendipitous," says JPL's Candice Hansen, deputy principal investigator for HiRISE. The full image reveals features as small as a desk in a strip of terrain 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) wide and more than 10 times that long, at 84 degrees north latitude. Reddish layers known to be rich in water ice make up the face of a steep slope more than 700 meters (2,300 feet) tall, running the height of the image.
  [Cite: NASA :: More… ]
  
  
• 5 March:
  Mars and Venus are surprisingly similar
  Using two ESA spacecraft, planetary scientists are watching the atmospheres of Mars and Venus being stripped away into space. The simultaneous observations by Mars Express and Venus Express give scientists the data they need to investigate the evolution of the two planets' atmospheres. Scientists call this work comparative planetology. Mars Express and Venus Express are so good at it because they carry very similar science instruments. In the case of the Analyser of Space Plasmas and Energetic Atoms (ASPERA), they are virtually identical. This allows scientists to make direct comparisons between the two planets. The new results probe directly into the magnetic regions behind the planets, which are the predominant channels through which electrically-charged particles escape. They also present the first detection of whole atoms escaping from the atmosphere of Venus, and show that the rate of escape rose by ten times on Mars when a solar storm struck in December 2006. By observing the current rates of loss of the two atmospheres, planetary scientists hope that they will be able to turn back the clock and understand what they were like in the past. The results can potentially help understand the evolution of planetary climates.
  [Cite: ESA :: More… ]
  
  
• 6 March:
  Messenger to Mercury - the current status
  
  [Cite: JHUAPL :: More… ]
  
  
• 7 March:
  Saturn's moon Rhea may also have rings
  The Cassini spacecraft has found evidence of material orbiting Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon. This is the first time rings may have been found around a moon. A broad debris disc and at least one ring appear to have been detected by a suite of six instruments on Cassini specifically designed to study the atmospheres and particles around Saturn and its moons.
  [Cite: ESA :: More… ]
  
  
• 7 March:
  Mercury - The surprises continue
  Scientists studying the harvest of photos from the MESSENGER spacecraft's Jan. 14th flyby of Mercury have found several craters with strange dark halos and one crater with a spectacularly shiny bottom. "The halos are really exceptional," says MESSENGER science team member Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "We've never seen anything like them on Mercury before and their formation is a mystery." The two craters at the bottom of the frame are located in Mercury's giant Caloris Basin, a thousand mile wide depression formed billions of years ago when Mercury collided with a comet or asteroid. For scale, the larger of the two is about 40 miles wide. Both craters have dark rims or "halos" and the one on the left is partially filled with an unknown shiny material.
  [Cite: NASA :: More… ]
  
  
• 12 March:
  Cassini Probe Will Dive Into Water Plume Of Enceladus
  The Cassini probe will make an extremely close flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus, today, March 12. The spacecraft, directed on its closest approach so far, will skim around the edges of the huge ice geysers erupting from cracks on the surface of the south pole of Enceladus. Cassini will sample scientifically valuable water-ice, dust and gas in the plume. The source of the geysers is of prime interest to scientists who think that liquid water, perhaps even an ocean, may exist on Enceladus. On passing through the edge of the plumes, Cassini will be approximately 200 kilometers above the surface. At its closest approach, Cassini will be at an altitude of only 50 kilometers.
  [Cite: NASA :: More… ]
  
  
• 13 March:
  The puzzling 'eye of a hurricane' on Venus
  

  Time: Zero	Time: Zero+4hrs	Time: Zero+20hrs	Time: Zero+24hrs

  Venus Express has constantly been observing the south pole of Venus and has found it to be surprisingly fickle. An enormous structure with a central part that looks like the eye of a hurricane, morphs and changes shape within a matter of days, leaving scientists puzzled. The eye of the hurricane is at the centre of a 2000 km-wide vortex. It was discovered in 1974 by the Mariner 10 spacecraft. There is a similar structure on the planet’s north pole, which was observed by the Pioneer Venus mission in 1979. Venus Express scientists have been studying the structure in the thermal infrared, the wavelength range which reveals the temperature at the cloud-tops. Seen in this wavelength, the core of the vortex appears very bright, probably indicating that a lot of atmospheric gases are moving downward in the region, which creates a depression at the cloud-tops, making the region hotter. (The "dot" in the images represent the actual position of the south pole.)
  [Cite: ESA :: More… ]
  
  
• 25 March:
  Ocean may exist beneath Titan's crust
  Cassini has discovered evidence that points to the existence of an underground ocean of water and ammonia on Saturn's moon Titan. The findings were made using radar measurements of Titan's rotation. "With its organic dunes, lakes, channels and mountains, Titan has one of the most varied, active and Earth-like surfaces in the solar system," said Ralph Lorenz, lead author of the paper and Cassini radar scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, USA. "Now we see changes in the way Titan rotates, giving us a window into Titan's interior beneath the surface."
  [Cite: ESA :: More… ]
  
  
• 26 March:
  Cassini Finds Organics on Enceladus
  The Cassini spacecraft tasted and sampled a surprising organic brew erupting in geyser-like fashion from Saturn's moon Enceladus during a close flyby on 12 March. Scientists are completely giddy as to why this tiny moon is so active, so hot and brimming with organics. New heat maps of the surface show higher temperatures than previously known in the south polar region, with hot tracks running the length of the tiger stripe fissures. Additionally, scientists say the organics 'taste and smell' like some of those found in a comet. The jets themselves harmlessly peppered Cassini, exerting measurable torque on the spacecraft, and providing an indirect measure of the plume density.
  [Cite: ESA :: More… ]
  
  

• 31 March:
  Two new star systems are the first of their kind ever found
  Astronomers at Ohio State University have spied a faraway star system that is so unusual, it was one of a kind until its discovery helped them pinpoint a second one that was much closer to home. In a paper published in a recent issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Ohio State University astronomers and their colleagues suggest that these star systems are the progenitors of a rare type of supernova. They discovered the first star system 13 million light years away, tucked inside Holmberg IX, a small galaxy that is orbiting the larger galaxy M81. They studied it between January and October 2007 with the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) on Mt. Graham in Arizona. The star system is unusual, because it’s what the astronomers have called a "yellow supergiant eclipsing binary" it contains two very bright, massive yellow stars that are very closely orbiting each other. In fact, the stars are so close together that a large amount of stellar material is shared between them, so that the shape of the system resembles a peanut. In a repeating cycle, one star moves to the front and blocks our view of the other. From Earth, the star system brightens and dims, as we see light from two stars, then only one star. The two stars in this system appear to be nearly identical, each 15 to 20 times the mass of our sun.
  [Cite: Ohio State University :: More… ]
  
  
• 31 March:
  Newly discovered galaxy cluster
  UC Irvine scientists have discovered a cluster of galaxies in a very early stage of formation that is 11.4 billion light years from Earth – the farthest of its kind ever to be detected. These galaxies are so distant that the universe was in its infancy when their light was emitted. The galaxy proto-cluster, named LBG-2377, is giving scientists an unprecedented look at galaxy formation and how the universe has evolved. Before this discovery, the farthest known event like this was approximately 9 billion light years away.
  [Cite: University of California, Irvine :: More… ]
  
  
• 4 April:
  Volcanoes on Venus?
  

  ESA’s Venus Express has measured a highly variable quantity of the volcanic gas sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus. Scientists must now decide whether this is evidence for active volcanoes on Venus, or linked to a hitherto unknown mechanism affecting the upper atmosphere. The search for volcanoes is a long-running thread in the exploration of Venus. "Volcanoes are a key part of a climate system", says Fred Taylor, a Venus Express Interdisciplinary Scientist from Oxford University. That’s because they release gases such as sulphur dioxide into the planet’s atmosphere. On Earth, sulphur compounds do not stay in the atmosphere for long. Instead, they react with the surface of the planet. The same is thought to be true at Venus, although the reactions are much slower, with a time scale of 20 million years. [Cite: ESA :: More… ]

  
  
  
• 11 April:
  KAGUYA's high vision Camera captures "Full Earth-rise!"
  The lunar explorer KAGUYA initially captured the right-side waned “Earth-rise” in November 2007 with its high-vision camera, but this time, it succeeded in capturing the “Full Earth-rise” without any wane. This is the first time that a high-vision image of the “Full Earth-rise” has been captured from space, 380,000 kilometers away from Earth. To capture the Full Earth, the Moon, Earth, Sun and KAGUYA’s circulating orbits have to fall into a straight line. This peculiar positioning occurs only 2 times a year.
  [Cite: ©JAXA :: More… ]
  
  
• 24 April:
  Galaxy collisions
  These produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures, as 59 new images from the NASA/ESA Hubble space telescope show. Interacting galaxies are found throughout the Universe, sometimes dramatic collisions that trigger bursts of star formation, on other occasions as stealthy mergers that form new galaxies. A series of 59 new images of colliding galaxies, the largest collection ever published simultaneously, has been released from archived raw Hubble images to mark the 18th anniversary of the telescope's launch.
  [Cite: ESA/NASA :: More… ]
  
  
• 2 May:
  Solar Games at Paranal
  

  Gegenschein	Cerro Paranal, home of ESO's Very Large Telescope, is certainly one of the best astronomical sites on the planet. Stunning images, obtained by ESO staff at Paranal, of the green and blue flashes, as well as of the so-called 'Gegenschein' and 'Zodiacal Light', are real cases in point. The Earth's atmosphere is a gigantic prism that disperses sunlight. In the most ideal atmospheric conditions, such as those found regularly above Cerro Paranal, this will lead to the appearance of so-called green and blue flashes at sunset. The phenomenon is so popular on the site that it is now the tradition for the Paranal staff to gather daily on the telescope platform to observe the sunset and its possible green flash before starting their long night of observations. [Cite: ESO :: More… ]	Zodiacal Light
  Green Flash		Blue Flash

  
  
  

• 19 May:
  Thirty-Meter Telescope Focuses On Two Candidate Sites
  The TMT is currently in the final stages of an $80 million design phase. The plan is to initiate construction in 2010 with first light in early 2018. This project is a partnership between the University of California, California Institute of Technology, and ACURA, an organization of Canadian universities. After completing a worldwide survey unprecedented in rigor and detail of astronomical sites for the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT), the TMT Observatory Corporation board of directors has selected two outstanding sites, one in each hemisphere, for further consideration. Cerro Armazones lies in Chile's Atacama Desert, and Mauna Kea is on Hawai'i Island.
  
  The Thirty Meter Telescope will be 50 meters tall and 56 meters wide. The moving mass of the telescope, optics and instruments will be 1430 metric tons. The 66-meter diameter "Calotte" style dome offers a full range of motion while providing maximum wind protection by virtue of the minimum opening size. In low-wind conditions, 98 vent doors can be opened to provide natural ventilation. The segmented primary mirror will have 492 hexagonal segments arranged into an f/1 hyperboloidal mirror.
  
  

  Current state of the 3 Giant Telescope Projects

  Telescope	Size	On-Line
  ESA Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL)	100m	2020
  ACURA/CIT/UC Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT)	30m	2018
  Carnegie, Smithsonian, Unis: Harvard/Austin/Australian Nat/Arizona/Texas A&M Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)	24m	2017

  [Cite: TMT :: More… ]
  
  
• 20 May:
  The Mouse That Roared: Pipsqueak Star Unleashes Monster Flare
  On April 25, NASA's Swift satellite picked up the brightest flare ever seen from a normal star other than our Sun. The flare, an explosive release of energy from a star, packed the power of thousands of solar flares. It would have been visible to the naked eye if the star had been easily observable in the night sky at the time. The star, known as EV Lacertae, isn't much to write home about. It's a run-of-the-mill red dwarf, by far the most common type of star in the universe. It shines with only one percent of the Sun's light, and contains only a third of the Sun's mass.
  [Cite: NASA Image: Casey Reed:: More… ]
  
  
• 25 May:
  NASA's Phoenix Spacecraft Reports Good Health After Mars Landing
  A NASA spacecraft today sent pictures showing itself in good condition after making the first successful landing in a polar region of Mars. The images from NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander also provided a glimpse of the flat valley floor expected to have water-rich permafrost within reach of the lander's robotic arm. The landing ends a 422-million-mile journey from Earth and begins a three-month mission that will use instruments to taste and sniff the northern polar site's soil and ice. "We see the lack of rocks that we expected, we see the polygons that we saw from space, we don't see ice on the surface, but we think we will see it beneath the surface. It looks great to me," said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, principal investigator for the Phoenix mission. Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed that the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. In the intervening time, those signals crossed the distance from Mars to Earth at the speed of light. The confirmation ignited cheers by mission team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona.
  [Cite: NASA/JPL-Calech/University of Arizona: More… ]
  
  
• 27 May:
  Permafrost on Mars and Earth
  When NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed on the Arctic plains of northern Mars on May 25, 2008, among its first looks at the planet's surface revealed a landscape familiar to polar scientists on Earth: a pattern of interlocking polygon shapes that form in permafrost that freezes and thaws seasonally. This pair of images shows the similarities between the surface of Mars where Phoenix landed (left) and permafrost on northeastern Spitsbergen, Svalbard (right). The polygon patterns form in permafrost when the upper parts of the ground thaw and refreeze from season to season. The ground contracts in the winter cold, creating small spaces that fill with melt water in the summer. When winter returns and the water freezes, it acts like a wedge, enlarging the cracks. On Earth, permafrost, glaciers, and other frozen environments can preserve organic molecules, bacteria, and fungi for hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years. The Phoenix spacecraft has scientific instruments that will drill into the frozen ground of the Martian Arctic, vaporize the soil sample, and analyze the chemistry of the vapors. Scientists hope to learn whether ice just below the surface ever thaws and whether some chemical ingredients of life are preserved in the icy soil.
  [Cite: Mars image - NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona :: Earth photograph - Olafur Ingolfsson]
  
  
• 23 June:
  Lenses To Observe Cosmic Dark Energy
  UK astronomers and astrophysicists at University College London, part of an international team, have reached a milestone in the construction of one of the largest ever cameras to detect the mysterious Dark Energy component of the Universe - the Dark Energy Survey (DES) camera. The glass blanks for the five lenses of the camera are on their way from the US to France where they will be shaped and polished into their final configuration. The largest blank will become one of the largest lenses in the world, one metre in diameter.
  [Cite: UCL More… ]