Telescope snaps most distant object

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers tracking a mysterious blast of energy called a gamma ray burst said on Tuesday they had snapped a photograph of the most distant object in the universe -- a smudge 13 billion light-years away.

Hawaii's Gemini Observatory caught the image earlier this month after a satellite first detected the burst.

"Our infrared observations from Gemini immediately suggested that this was an unusually distant burst, these images were the smoking gun," said Edo Berger of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Distortions in the light signature of the object show it is 13 billion years old -- at the speed of light, 13 billion light-years away. A light-year is 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).

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Gardens on the Moon

Groundbreaking advancements in the realm of space engineering may see the moon sown with the first gardens to grow on the lunar surface by 2012.

As part of the Google Lunar X Prize, Paragon Space Development Corporation has recently teamed with Odyssey Moon to develop a pressurized mini greenhouse to deploy on the surface of the moon, grow a plant from seed, and hopefully see it flower and seed itself. This marks a critical stage of development for extending life beyond the confines of our planet.

In order to successfully grow a plant on the moon, Paragon has developed a very specialized greenhouse that can safely contain a plant and provide it with all elements it needs to survive.

The greenhouse will need to protect the plant from the sun’s intense rays while providing it with enough water, balanced soil, and carbon dioxide while removing its waste oxygen. They are basically creating a space suit for the plant.

A world away, two planets somewhat like Earth

By Faye Flam
Inquirer Staff Writer

The most Earth-sized planet and the most temperate planet known beyond our solar system both circle a dim red star 21 light-years away. These discoveries, announced yesterday at a meeting in England, moved astronomers a step closer to their dreams of finding other planets capable of supporting life as we understand it.
Since 1995, scientists have found more than 350 planets orbiting other stars, but most suffer from the same problems that make our neighbors in the solar system so inhospitable.
Many of the so-called extrasolar planets orbit so close that their stars would sterilize their surfaces. Others are jumbo "gas giants," like Jupiter, and therefore unlikely to have solid surfaces.
Astronomers suspect that Earthlike planets are out there but that they are nearly impossible to detect with current technology.
This latest finding came from a Swiss and French team working at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. They announced this latest finding at an international conference at the University of Hertfordshire, in conjunction with the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science.
For the last four years, the team has been studying this relatively nearby solar system, called Gliese 581, named after Wilhelm Gliese, who cataloged this and other nearby stars. It now appears to have four planets. Read More.....

A Daring Pairing of Moon and Venus

Early risers in North America are in for a treat on the morning of Wednesday, April 22nd, when the waning crescent Moon passes in front of the brilliant crescent Venus.

The apparent path of Venus behind the Moon on April 22, 2009, depends on where you are. The local horizon is approximately downward; celestial north is to the upper left.
Sky & TelescopeFor much of the continent the occultation happens after sunrise in broad daylight. If the air is clear you can find the thin, dim Moon about 33° to the upper right of the early-morning Sun, with Venus near its edge. Sadly, this event will be a near miss along the Eastern Seaboard. Read More....