Space

Space

Lunar eclipse, winter solstice set for Tuesday

Washington Post

There are not many days like Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2010. Take it from people who know - astronomers. There was maybe one day like this Tuesday in the past 2,000 years.

On Tuesday morning, astronomers say, there will be - or depending on when this is read, was - a total eclipse of the moon. And on the very same day, the winter solstice arrives.

The last time the two celestial events occurred within the same calendar day was long before any of our lifetimes. The year, according to Geoff Chester, public affairs officer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, was 1638. Although the solstice does not always occur on the same date each year, the date in 1638 was the same as Tuesday's - Dec. 21.

Chester said he looked it up, because as the time of the two events drew nearer, people began to make inquiries of him. He said his research took him back to the year A.D. 1.

Global Eruption Rocks the Sun

NASA

On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.

It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity.

"The August 1st event really opened our eyes," says Karel Schrijver of Lockheed Martin's Solar and Astrophysics Lab in Palo Alto, CA. "We see that solar storms can be global events, playing out on scales we scarcely imagined before."

'Iran manned space program on course'

PressTV

Iranian Communications and Information Technology Minister Reza Taqipour says Iran is on the right track in its plan to launch its first manned mission to space after completing the study phase.

“The initial steps for the plan have been taken, and the study phase on the definition of subsystems, sub-projects, costs, and what projects need to be developed toward that end, has been conducted, which needs to be submitted to the Supreme Council on Space,” the Mehr news agency quoted Taqipour as saying on Monday.

He added that the next steps of the plan will be accelerated once the supervising body approves the programs.

Iran Majlis okays satellite activity

PressTV

The Iranian Parliament (Majlis) has ratified a bill requiring the government to enhance its efforts to design and launch satellites and satellite carriers.

On Monday, Iranian lawmakers voted in favor of Article 49 of a bill in the country's Fifth Five-Year Economic Development Plan (2011-2015), which will authorize the government to set up the infrastructure needed for the Islamic Republic's satellite projects, IRNA reported.

The new law reads, "Regarding the importance of space expertise and the attainment of related technologies, the government can take necessary action in order to meet the country's needs in the field of space."

Water on the Moon: a Billion Gallons

abcnews

Water on the moon? Scientists used to think it was as dry as, well, lunar dust.

But after a year of analysis NASA today announced that its LCROSS lunar-impact probe mission found up to a billion gallons of water ice in the floor of a permanently-shadowed crater near the moon's south pole.

That's enough, said researchers, to fill 1,500 Olympic-size swimming pools, all from one crater.

If there is ice there, it probably exists in other places on the moon as well. They also found silver, mercury, carbon monoxide and ammonia.

Space

Lunar eclipse, winter solstice set for Tuesday

Global Eruption Rocks the Sun

'Iran manned space program on course'

Iran Majlis okays satellite activity

Water on the Moon: a Billion Gallons

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