Lawyer Marilyn Gardner Milton's Blogger: 2014

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Hubble Sees an Ancient Globular Cluster

This image captures the stunning NGC 6535, a globular cluster 22,000 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens (The Serpent) that measures one light-year across.

Globular clusters are tightly bound groups of stars which orbit galaxies. The large mass in the rich stellar centre of the globular cluster pulls the stars inward to form a ball of stars. The word globulus, from which these clusters take their name, is Latin for small sphere.

Globular clusters are generally very ancient objects formed around the same time as their host galaxy. To date, no new star formation has been observed within a globular cluster, which explains the abundance of aging yellow stars in this image, most of them containing very few heavy elements.

NGC 6535 was first discovered in 1852 by English astronomer John Russell Hind. The cluster would have appeared to Hind as a small, faint smudge through his telescope. Now, over 160 years later, instruments like the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on the NASA/ European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope allow us to marvel at the cluster and its contents in greater detail.

European Space Agency

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Gilles Chapdelaine via NASA http://ift.tt/1vsB3tl

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Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Space Simulation Chamber Prepared for Testing Webb Telescope

This photo was captured from outside the enormous mouth of NASA’s giant thermal vacuum chamber, called Chamber A, at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Previously used for manned spaceflight missions, this historic chamber is now filled with engineers and technicians preparing a lift system that will be used to hold the James Webb Space Telescope during testing.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

> Related: Amazing View of Engineers Preparing NASA’s Gigantic Space Simulation Chamber for Massive Test

Image Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn via NASA http://www.nasa.gov/content/space-simulation-chamber-prepared-for-testing-webb-telescope

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Monday, December 29, 2014

View of the Alps From Space

Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency (ESA) took this photograph of the Alps from the International Space Station, and posted it to social media on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2014. She wrote, “I’m biased, but aren’t the Alps from space spectacular? What a foggy day on the Po plane, though! #Italy”

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Samantha Cristoforetti via NASA http://www.nasa.gov/content/view-of-the-alps-from-space

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Saturday, December 27, 2014

Food Hubs Link Consumers With Locally Farmed Food by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Move over farmers’ markets. More than 300 food hubs around the country are also providing small farms another outlet to sell locally raised food to consumers.

Published: December 27, 2014 at 05:24AM

from NYT U.S. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/12/27/us/ap-us-food-and-farm-food-hubs.html

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Friday, December 26, 2014

Colleges Reinvent Classes to Keep More Students in Science by RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

A small but growing number of universities have adopted a more engaging, demanding form of the standard introductory courses, and research suggests the new style works better.

Published: December 27, 2014 at 12:00AM

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Massachusetts: Boston to Extend School Day by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mayor Martin Walsh of Boston said that public school officials and teachers’ union leaders had agreed to add 40 minutes to the school day.

Published: December 27, 2014 at 12:00AM

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Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Frosty Slopes on Mars

This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater.

At this time of year, only south-facing slopes retain the frost, while the north-facing slopes have melted. Gullies are not the only active geologic process going on here. A small crater is visible at the bottom of the slope.

The image was acquired on Nov. 30, 2014, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, one of six instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

> More information and image products

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Caption: Livio Tornabene, Ryan Hopkins, Kayle Hansen and Eric Pilles via NASA http://ift.tt/1zfflLr

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Monday, December 22, 2014

Labor Ruling Could Allow More Faculty to Unionize by TAMAR LEWIN

By TAMAR LEWIN

The National Labor Relations Board has issued a broad ruling that could potentially bolster organized labor on campuses at a time when unions are pushing to represent the growing number of adjunct professors.

Published: December 23, 2014 at 12:00AM

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Friday, December 19, 2014

University of Virginia Officials Blast Media Coverage by RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

A month after Rolling Stone magazine published a now discredited account of a gang rape at a fraternity house, University of Virginia officials pushed back against damage done to its reputation.

Published: December 20, 2014 at 12:00AM

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Hubble Sweeps a Messy Star Factory

This sprinkle of cosmic glitter is a blue compact dwarf galaxy known as Markarian 209. Galaxies of this type are blue-hued, compact in size, gas-rich, and low in heavy elements. They are often used by astronomers to study star formation, as their conditions are similar to those thought to exist in the early Universe.

Markarian 209 in particular has been studied extensively. It is filled with diffuse gas and peppered with star-forming regions towards its core. This image captures it undergoing a particularly dramatic burst of star formation, visible as the lighter blue cloudy region towards the top right of the galaxy. This clump is filled with very young and hot newborn stars.

This galaxy was initially thought to be a young galaxy undergoing its very first episode of star formation, but later research showed that Markarian 209 is actually very old, with an almost continuous history of forming new stars. It is thought to have never had a dormant period — a period during which no stars were formed — lasting longer than 100 million years.

The dominant population of stars in Markarian 209 is still quite young, in stellar terms, with ages of under 3 million years. For comparison, the sun is some 4.6 billion years old, and is roughly halfway through its expected lifespan.

The observations used to make this image were taken using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, and span the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared parts of the spectrum. A scattering of other bright galaxies can be seen across the frame, including the bright golden oval that could, due to a trick of perspective, be mistaken as part of Markarian 209 but is in fact a background galaxy.

European Space Agency

ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgement: Nick Rose via NASA http://ift.tt/1H01dtM

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Rating Plan for Colleges Is Unveiled by the U.S. by RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

A report will offer the first glimpse into the Obama administration’s plan to grade colleges, placing them into three categories of performance.

Published: December 19, 2014 at 12:00AM

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Thursday, December 18, 2014

75th Anniversary of NASA Ames

December 20, 2014 marks NASA Ames Research Center’s 75th Anniversary. The center was established in 1939 as the second laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and was named for the chair of the NACA, Joseph S. Ames. It was located at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California, now at the heart of Silicon Valley. The Laboratory was renamed the NASA Ames Research Center with the formation of NASA in 1958.

This June 2, 1943 photograph shows the construction of the Ames full-scale 40- by 80-foot wind tunnel, with a side view of the entrance cone and a blimp in the background.

Image Credit: NASA via NASA http://ift.tt/1zADZKu