A better understanding of brain tumour biology will bring new treatments

Our brains are home to a staggering 86 billion or so cells that are carefully woven into the structure that lets us think, feel and live.

This awe-inspiring complexity offers a glimpse into why, after many years of research, there’s still so much to be understood about the brain.

And for brain tumours, the unknowns pose a daunting challenge.

It’s only when scientists fully understand cancers – by studying how they develop, grow and change – that progress can be made. It’s this knowledge that guides the discovery of new treatments and ways to diagnose the disease, and shapes the clinical trials that bring these developments to patients.

But according to experts, we still know very little about the biology of brain tumours.

That notion is highlighted by the disease’s devastatingly low survival. Just 14% of people diagnosed with a brain tumour in the UK survive for 10 years or more. And the way they’re treated has remained unchanged for decades. Added to this, many brain tumours don’t respond well to mainstay treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Alongside surgery, they remain patients’ only approved options.

It’s time that changed.

Research is at the heart of progress, and it’s the greater understanding that research gives that will change the outlook for people with brain tumours.

That’s why, in 2014, Cancer Research UK made brain tumours one of our top research priorities. Since then, we’ve doubled the amount of money we spend on brain tumour research, and now we want researchers to tackle some of the greatest challenges that are holding back progress.

From biology to better treatments

Today, at our inaugural Brain Tumour Conference in London, we’re announcing six research themes that we believe will help scientists focus on the gaps in knowledge about brain tumours. And there’s £18 million up for grabs for the best research ideas focused on these themes.

The themes stem from a series of meetings where Cancer Research UK assembled the world’s leading brain tumour experts, with the goal of finding out what was needed to accelerate developments for these diseases.

From better understanding brain tumour genetics to designing new drugs, these six areas of research cover the journey from lab bench to patient bedside. They’ll unpick the molecular nuts and bolts of these diseases, in the hope of using this information to improve the way they are diagnosed and treated. And from today, researchers can submit their research ideas against these themes via our website.

• Unlocking new insights into brain tumours using neuroscience.
• Unpicking brain tumours’ biology to design more effective drugs.
• Exploiting the brain tumour environment to make better treatments.
• Developing more accurate ways to study brain tumours.
• Improving brain tumour diagnosis to make treatment more personal.
• Develop kinder treatments for brain tumours.

And it’s not only brain tumours that this research may benefit. It may well be that some of the discoveries have significance in other types of cancer, too, opening up even more opportunities to help patients.

In the coming weeks, we’ll delve into the details of each of these themes, setting the scene for the hurdles that scientists are up against.

Identifying a problem is the first step towards solving it. So, by bringing these to attention, we want to spark discovery, innovation, and ultimately change for the better.

Justine 

from Cancer Research UK – Science blog https://ift.tt/2FxgXuv

Our brains are home to a staggering 86 billion or so cells that are carefully woven into the structure that lets us think, feel and live.

This awe-inspiring complexity offers a glimpse into why, after many years of research, there’s still so much to be understood about the brain.

And for brain tumours, the unknowns pose a daunting challenge.

It’s only when scientists fully understand cancers – by studying how they develop, grow and change – that progress can be made. It’s this knowledge that guides the discovery of new treatments and ways to diagnose the disease, and shapes the clinical trials that bring these developments to patients.

But according to experts, we still know very little about the biology of brain tumours.

That notion is highlighted by the disease’s devastatingly low survival. Just 14% of people diagnosed with a brain tumour in the UK survive for 10 years or more. And the way they’re treated has remained unchanged for decades. Added to this, many brain tumours don’t respond well to mainstay treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Alongside surgery, they remain patients’ only approved options.

It’s time that changed.

Research is at the heart of progress, and it’s the greater understanding that research gives that will change the outlook for people with brain tumours.

That’s why, in 2014, Cancer Research UK made brain tumours one of our top research priorities. Since then, we’ve doubled the amount of money we spend on brain tumour research, and now we want researchers to tackle some of the greatest challenges that are holding back progress.

From biology to better treatments

Today, at our inaugural Brain Tumour Conference in London, we’re announcing six research themes that we believe will help scientists focus on the gaps in knowledge about brain tumours. And there’s £18 million up for grabs for the best research ideas focused on these themes.

The themes stem from a series of meetings where Cancer Research UK assembled the world’s leading brain tumour experts, with the goal of finding out what was needed to accelerate developments for these diseases.

From better understanding brain tumour genetics to designing new drugs, these six areas of research cover the journey from lab bench to patient bedside. They’ll unpick the molecular nuts and bolts of these diseases, in the hope of using this information to improve the way they are diagnosed and treated. And from today, researchers can submit their research ideas against these themes via our website.

• Unlocking new insights into brain tumours using neuroscience.
• Unpicking brain tumours’ biology to design more effective drugs.
• Exploiting the brain tumour environment to make better treatments.
• Developing more accurate ways to study brain tumours.
• Improving brain tumour diagnosis to make treatment more personal.
• Develop kinder treatments for brain tumours.

And it’s not only brain tumours that this research may benefit. It may well be that some of the discoveries have significance in other types of cancer, too, opening up even more opportunities to help patients.

In the coming weeks, we’ll delve into the details of each of these themes, setting the scene for the hurdles that scientists are up against.

Identifying a problem is the first step towards solving it. So, by bringing these to attention, we want to spark discovery, innovation, and ultimately change for the better.

Justine 

from Cancer Research UK – Science blog https://ift.tt/2FxgXuv

Experts Share Experiences at Forum Moderated by Former Corrosion Office Deputy Director

For the first time, NACE International hosted an interactive Leadership Forum during its annual CORROSION 2018 conference.

from https://ift.tt/2KrDHjf

For the first time, NACE International hosted an interactive Leadership Forum during its annual CORROSION 2018 conference.

from https://ift.tt/2KrDHjf

Emory chemistry receives $7.5 million to lead fuel cell research

"A deeper understanding of electrochemical processes is important in the quest for more efficient, renewable forms of energy," says Emory physical chemist Tim Lian, shown in his lab. Photo by Stephen Nowland, Emory Photo/Video.

By Carol Clark

The U.S. Department of Defense awarded $7.5 million to Tianquan (Tim) Lian, professor of physical chemistry at Emory University, to lead an investigation of electrochemical processes underlying fuel-cell technology. The award comes through the DoD’s highly competitive Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, or MURI. The program funds teams of investigators from more than one discipline to accelerate the research process.

“A deeper understanding of electrochemical processes is important in the quest for more efficient, renewable forms of energy,” Lian says. His lab develops sum-frequency generation spectroscopy to selectively probe reactions on the surface of an electrode. The technique can provide insights into the fundamental steps involved in energy generation, conversion and storage technologies — ranging from solar cells, to fuel cells and batteries.

Fuel cell electric vehicles use a fuel cell instead of a battery — or in combination with a battery — to generate electricity for power. While they have lower emissions and higher fuel-efficiency than internal-combustion engines, fuel cell vehicles are currently limited to lighter fuels, such as hydrogen.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research accepted the MURI proposal from Lian, principal investigator of the project, and his colleagues from five other universities, including Yale, Cornell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California. Together, the researchers encompass the disciplines of advanced spectroscopy, electrochemical mass spectroscopy and electrochemical theory to model, test and interpret reactions.

“Bringing together experimentalists and theorists with different backgrounds gives us the expertise to tackle more challenging problems,” Lian says.

The concept of fuel cells was first demonstrated in 1801, while the invention of the first working fuel cell occurred in 1842, when William Grove showed that an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen could produce an electric current. NASA later developed fuel cell applications for the space program.

“Electrochemistry goes way back in science, and has many important applications, but our understanding of it remains largely empirical,” Lian says. “The Air Force wants to make a concerted effort to advance the field by boosting our understanding of electrochemical processes at the molecular and atomic level.”

The research team will develop software for electrochemical platforms as an experimental tool to gather data at the microscopic scale of processes such as the current-voltage curve generated in an electrochemical cell. The team will also develop theoretical tools to interpret the data. They will apply these experimental and theoretical tools to study fuel-cell technologies that use methanol and ethanol directly as fuels. These fuels are more energy dense than hydrogen, giving them the potential to greatly improve the range of fuel-cell vehicles, although their use in fuel-cell technology currently suffers from poorly understood side reactions that occur on electrode surfaces.

The software and theoretical tools that Lian’s team develops will be open source, allowing researchers in other labs to use it to simulate their own electrochemical experiments as well as interpret their data.

Providing these tools to the broader electrochemical industry will support widespread efforts for innovation and discovery, Lian says. “We hope to make a lasting impact in the field, opening doors to do things with electrochemistry that are currently out of reach.”

Over the past 30 years, DoD’s MURI program has brought significant new capabilities to U.S. military forces and opened up new lines of research. Notable examples include foundations in the fabrication of nanoscale and microscale structures by the processes of self-assembled materials and microcontact printing, the integration of vision algorithms with sensors to create low-power, low-latency, compact adaptive vision systems, and advances in fully optical data control and switching.

Related:
Chemists find new way to do light-driven reactions

from eScienceCommons https://ift.tt/2ji9abk

"A deeper understanding of electrochemical processes is important in the quest for more efficient, renewable forms of energy," says Emory physical chemist Tim Lian, shown in his lab. Photo by Stephen Nowland, Emory Photo/Video.

By Carol Clark

The U.S. Department of Defense awarded $7.5 million to Tianquan (Tim) Lian, professor of physical chemistry at Emory University, to lead an investigation of electrochemical processes underlying fuel-cell technology. The award comes through the DoD’s highly competitive Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, or MURI. The program funds teams of investigators from more than one discipline to accelerate the research process.

“A deeper understanding of electrochemical processes is important in the quest for more efficient, renewable forms of energy,” Lian says. His lab develops sum-frequency generation spectroscopy to selectively probe reactions on the surface of an electrode. The technique can provide insights into the fundamental steps involved in energy generation, conversion and storage technologies — ranging from solar cells, to fuel cells and batteries.

Fuel cell electric vehicles use a fuel cell instead of a battery — or in combination with a battery — to generate electricity for power. While they have lower emissions and higher fuel-efficiency than internal-combustion engines, fuel cell vehicles are currently limited to lighter fuels, such as hydrogen.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research accepted the MURI proposal from Lian, principal investigator of the project, and his colleagues from five other universities, including Yale, Cornell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California. Together, the researchers encompass the disciplines of advanced spectroscopy, electrochemical mass spectroscopy and electrochemical theory to model, test and interpret reactions.

“Bringing together experimentalists and theorists with different backgrounds gives us the expertise to tackle more challenging problems,” Lian says.

The concept of fuel cells was first demonstrated in 1801, while the invention of the first working fuel cell occurred in 1842, when William Grove showed that an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen could produce an electric current. NASA later developed fuel cell applications for the space program.

“Electrochemistry goes way back in science, and has many important applications, but our understanding of it remains largely empirical,” Lian says. “The Air Force wants to make a concerted effort to advance the field by boosting our understanding of electrochemical processes at the molecular and atomic level.”

The research team will develop software for electrochemical platforms as an experimental tool to gather data at the microscopic scale of processes such as the current-voltage curve generated in an electrochemical cell. The team will also develop theoretical tools to interpret the data. They will apply these experimental and theoretical tools to study fuel-cell technologies that use methanol and ethanol directly as fuels. These fuels are more energy dense than hydrogen, giving them the potential to greatly improve the range of fuel-cell vehicles, although their use in fuel-cell technology currently suffers from poorly understood side reactions that occur on electrode surfaces.

The software and theoretical tools that Lian’s team develops will be open source, allowing researchers in other labs to use it to simulate their own electrochemical experiments as well as interpret their data.

Providing these tools to the broader electrochemical industry will support widespread efforts for innovation and discovery, Lian says. “We hope to make a lasting impact in the field, opening doors to do things with electrochemistry that are currently out of reach.”

Over the past 30 years, DoD’s MURI program has brought significant new capabilities to U.S. military forces and opened up new lines of research. Notable examples include foundations in the fabrication of nanoscale and microscale structures by the processes of self-assembled materials and microcontact printing, the integration of vision algorithms with sensors to create low-power, low-latency, compact adaptive vision systems, and advances in fully optical data control and switching.

Related:
Chemists find new way to do light-driven reactions

from eScienceCommons https://ift.tt/2ji9abk

All you need to know: Eta Aquariid meteors

The 2013 Eta Aquarid meteor shower was fantastic as viewed from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere. Colin Legg of Australia created this composite of his experience. He wrote, “Composite of approximately 50 images containing 26 meteors, meteor train, 17% moon, zodiacal light and Pilbara desert.”

In 2018, the forecast calls for the greatest number of Eta Aquariid meteors to fall before dawn on May 5. Unfortunately, the waning gibbous moon will obscure the show, but hopefully a few of the brighter Eta Aquariids will overcome the moonlight. This shower favors the Southern Hemisphere, ranking as one of the finest showers of the year – in a year when no moon obscures the show. At mid-northern latitudes, these meteors don’t fall so abundantly – and the early morning twilight interferes at northerly latitudes. Follow the links below to learn more about the Eta Aquariid meteor shower.

When and how should I watch the Eta Aquarids?

Radiant point of the Eta Aquariid shower

How many meteors should I expect to see?

Why more Eta Aquarid meteors in the Southern Hemisphere?

Halley’s Comet is the source of the Eta Aquarid meteor shower.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Meteor captured over Mount Bromo, an active volcano in Indonesia, during the 2013 Eta Aquarid shower. Photo by Justin Ng of Singapore. See more photos by Justin Ng.

When and how should I watch the Eta Aquariids? The 2018 Eta Aquariid meteor shower is expected to produce the greatest number of meteors in the wee hours before dawn on May 5. However, the broad peak of the Eta Aquariid shower may present a decent showing of meteors during the predawn hours on May 4 and May 6, too. And in fact the shower extends much beyond these dates on either side. Writing for the International Meteor Organization on May 1, 2017, Robert Lunsford pointed out:

… There is no sharp peak for this shower, but rather a plateau of good rates that last approximately one week centered on May 6.

In general, the best time to watch these fast and often bright meteors is in the early morning hours, before the onset of morning twilight. Don’t know when twilight begins in your part of the world? Try one of the links on our almanac page.

Give yourself at least an hour of viewing time for watching any meteor shower. Meteors tend to come in spurts that are interspersed by lulls. Also, it can take as long as 20 minutes for your eyes to adapt to the dark.

You need no special equipment to watch a meteor shower, but a little luck always helps. Meteor watching is a lot like fishing. Sometimes you catch a good number of them and sometimes you don’t.

Radiant point of Eta Aquarid meteor shower. It’s in the constellation Aquarius, in the southeast before dawn on May mornings, as seen from mid-northern latitudes.

A Y-shaped asterism called the Water Jar marks the radiant of the Eta Aquarid meteor shower. It’s noticeable, if your sky is dark.

Radiant point of the Eta Aquariid shower If you trace the paths of the Eta Aquarid meteors backward, they all seem to radiate from a certain point in front of the constellation Aquarius the Water Bearer. This point on the sky’s dome is called the radiant of the meteor shower, which nearly aligns with the faint star Eta Aquarii. Hence, this meteor shower is named in honor of this star.

Eta Aquarii is one of the four stars making up the Y-shaped Water Jar asterism in the northern part of Aquarius. If you can find the Water Jar in the constellation Aquarius, you’ve as good as located the radiant point for the Eta Aquarid meteors. The alignment of the radiant and the star is of course coincidental. Eta Aquarii is some 170 light-years away – trillons upon trillions of miles away – while the Eta Aquarid meteors burn up about 60 miles (100 km) above Earth’s surface.

Meteor shower radiants are sometimes misunderstood by casual meteor-watchers. You don’t need to know where they are to watch a meteor shower. That’s because the meteors fly every which way across the sky, in front of numerous constellations. However, the higher a shower’s radiant appears in your sky, the more meteors you’re likely to see. For the Eta Aquarids, the radiant soars highest in the nighttime sky just before dawn. That’s why you can expect to see the most meteors in the wee morning hours.

You can see some Eta Aquariid meteors in late evening, before the radiant rises into your sky. In fact, late evening is the best time to see earthgrazers, meteors that make exceptionally long streaks across your sky. As the radiant rises higher – that is as the hours of the night tick away to dawn – you’ll see shorter meteors, but more meteors.

No special equipment is needed to watch a meteor shower. Find a dark, open sky away from artificial lights, and sprawl out on a reclining lawn chair.

How many meteors should I expect to see? In a dark sky, especially at more southerly latitudes, the Eta Aquariids can produce up to 20 to 40 meteors per hour. From mid-northern latitudes, you might only see about 10 meteors per hour.

Halley’s Comet, the parent of the May Eta Aquarid and October Orionid meteor showers. Image Credit: NASAblueshift. Dust from this comet will streak the nighttime as Eta Aquarid meteors on the mornings of May 5 and 6.

Halley’s Comet is the source of the Eta Aquariid meteor shower. Every year, our planet Earth crosses the orbital path of Halley’s Comet in late April and May, so bits and pieces from this comet light up the nighttime as Eta Aquarid meteors. This shower is said to be active from April 19 to May 20, although Earth plows most deeply into this stream of comet debris around May 5 or 6.

The comet dust smashes into Earth’s upper atmosphere at nearly 240,000 kilometers (150,000 miles) per hour. Roughly half of these swift-moving meteors leave persistent trains – ionized gas trails that glow for a few seconds after the meteor has passed.

Our planet also crosses the orbital path of Halley’s Comet at the other end of the year, giving rise to the Orionid meteor shower, which is usually at its best in the predawn hours on or near October 21.

Who knows? You still might see a few bright Eta Aquarid meteors in a moonlit sky in 2018.

Bottom line: What’s a good shower for the Southern Hemisphere? It’s usually the Eta Aquariid shower on the mornings of May 5 and 6. But this year, 2018, a bright moon is sure to obstruct this year’s presentation. Byt next year, in 2019, tthere will be no moon to ruin the show.

EarthSky’s meteor shower guide for 2017

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/157LE1Z

The 2013 Eta Aquarid meteor shower was fantastic as viewed from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere. Colin Legg of Australia created this composite of his experience. He wrote, “Composite of approximately 50 images containing 26 meteors, meteor train, 17% moon, zodiacal light and Pilbara desert.”

In 2018, the forecast calls for the greatest number of Eta Aquariid meteors to fall before dawn on May 5. Unfortunately, the waning gibbous moon will obscure the show, but hopefully a few of the brighter Eta Aquariids will overcome the moonlight. This shower favors the Southern Hemisphere, ranking as one of the finest showers of the year – in a year when no moon obscures the show. At mid-northern latitudes, these meteors don’t fall so abundantly – and the early morning twilight interferes at northerly latitudes. Follow the links below to learn more about the Eta Aquariid meteor shower.

When and how should I watch the Eta Aquarids?

Radiant point of the Eta Aquariid shower

How many meteors should I expect to see?

Why more Eta Aquarid meteors in the Southern Hemisphere?

Halley’s Comet is the source of the Eta Aquarid meteor shower.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Meteor captured over Mount Bromo, an active volcano in Indonesia, during the 2013 Eta Aquarid shower. Photo by Justin Ng of Singapore. See more photos by Justin Ng.

When and how should I watch the Eta Aquariids? The 2018 Eta Aquariid meteor shower is expected to produce the greatest number of meteors in the wee hours before dawn on May 5. However, the broad peak of the Eta Aquariid shower may present a decent showing of meteors during the predawn hours on May 4 and May 6, too. And in fact the shower extends much beyond these dates on either side. Writing for the International Meteor Organization on May 1, 2017, Robert Lunsford pointed out:

… There is no sharp peak for this shower, but rather a plateau of good rates that last approximately one week centered on May 6.

In general, the best time to watch these fast and often bright meteors is in the early morning hours, before the onset of morning twilight. Don’t know when twilight begins in your part of the world? Try one of the links on our almanac page.

Give yourself at least an hour of viewing time for watching any meteor shower. Meteors tend to come in spurts that are interspersed by lulls. Also, it can take as long as 20 minutes for your eyes to adapt to the dark.

You need no special equipment to watch a meteor shower, but a little luck always helps. Meteor watching is a lot like fishing. Sometimes you catch a good number of them and sometimes you don’t.

Radiant point of Eta Aquarid meteor shower. It’s in the constellation Aquarius, in the southeast before dawn on May mornings, as seen from mid-northern latitudes.

A Y-shaped asterism called the Water Jar marks the radiant of the Eta Aquarid meteor shower. It’s noticeable, if your sky is dark.

Radiant point of the Eta Aquariid shower If you trace the paths of the Eta Aquarid meteors backward, they all seem to radiate from a certain point in front of the constellation Aquarius the Water Bearer. This point on the sky’s dome is called the radiant of the meteor shower, which nearly aligns with the faint star Eta Aquarii. Hence, this meteor shower is named in honor of this star.

Eta Aquarii is one of the four stars making up the Y-shaped Water Jar asterism in the northern part of Aquarius. If you can find the Water Jar in the constellation Aquarius, you’ve as good as located the radiant point for the Eta Aquarid meteors. The alignment of the radiant and the star is of course coincidental. Eta Aquarii is some 170 light-years away – trillons upon trillions of miles away – while the Eta Aquarid meteors burn up about 60 miles (100 km) above Earth’s surface.

Meteor shower radiants are sometimes misunderstood by casual meteor-watchers. You don’t need to know where they are to watch a meteor shower. That’s because the meteors fly every which way across the sky, in front of numerous constellations. However, the higher a shower’s radiant appears in your sky, the more meteors you’re likely to see. For the Eta Aquarids, the radiant soars highest in the nighttime sky just before dawn. That’s why you can expect to see the most meteors in the wee morning hours.

You can see some Eta Aquariid meteors in late evening, before the radiant rises into your sky. In fact, late evening is the best time to see earthgrazers, meteors that make exceptionally long streaks across your sky. As the radiant rises higher – that is as the hours of the night tick away to dawn – you’ll see shorter meteors, but more meteors.

No special equipment is needed to watch a meteor shower. Find a dark, open sky away from artificial lights, and sprawl out on a reclining lawn chair.

How many meteors should I expect to see? In a dark sky, especially at more southerly latitudes, the Eta Aquariids can produce up to 20 to 40 meteors per hour. From mid-northern latitudes, you might only see about 10 meteors per hour.

Halley’s Comet, the parent of the May Eta Aquarid and October Orionid meteor showers. Image Credit: NASAblueshift. Dust from this comet will streak the nighttime as Eta Aquarid meteors on the mornings of May 5 and 6.

Halley’s Comet is the source of the Eta Aquariid meteor shower. Every year, our planet Earth crosses the orbital path of Halley’s Comet in late April and May, so bits and pieces from this comet light up the nighttime as Eta Aquarid meteors. This shower is said to be active from April 19 to May 20, although Earth plows most deeply into this stream of comet debris around May 5 or 6.

The comet dust smashes into Earth’s upper atmosphere at nearly 240,000 kilometers (150,000 miles) per hour. Roughly half of these swift-moving meteors leave persistent trains – ionized gas trails that glow for a few seconds after the meteor has passed.

Our planet also crosses the orbital path of Halley’s Comet at the other end of the year, giving rise to the Orionid meteor shower, which is usually at its best in the predawn hours on or near October 21.

Who knows? You still might see a few bright Eta Aquarid meteors in a moonlit sky in 2018.

Bottom line: What’s a good shower for the Southern Hemisphere? It’s usually the Eta Aquariid shower on the mornings of May 5 and 6. But this year, 2018, a bright moon is sure to obstruct this year’s presentation. Byt next year, in 2019, tthere will be no moon to ruin the show.

EarthSky’s meteor shower guide for 2017

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/157LE1Z

Watch SpaceX Dragon depart from ISS May 2

SpaceX’s Dragon cargo craft arrived at the International Space Station April 4, 2018, on the company’s 14th station resupply mission. Image via NASA.

After delivering more than 5,800 pounds of science investigation materials and cargo for NASA, a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft is set to depart the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, May 2, 2018. Dragon is the only space station resupply spacecraft able to return to Earth intact.

You can watch Dragon’s departure live on NASA TV, beginning at 10 a.m. EDT (14:00 UTC; translate UTC to your time). Watch here.

Here’s what will be happening, according to a NASA statement:

Flight controllers on Earth will use the Canadarm2 robotic arm to detach the Dragon capsule, which arrived April 4, 2018, from the Earth-facing side of the station’s Harmony module. After maneuvering Dragon into place, they will give the command to release the spacecraft as Expedition 55 Flight Engineer Scott Tingle of NASA monitors its departure at 10:22 a.m. EDT.

Dragon’s thrusters will be fired to move the spacecraft a safe distance from the station before SpaceX flight controllers in Hawthorne, California, command its deorbit burn.

The capsule will splash down about 4:02 p.m. EDT (20:02 UTC; translate to your time) in the Pacific Ocean, where recovery forces will retrieve the capsule and more than 4,000 pounds of cargo, including science samples from human and animal research, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities. The deorbit burn and splashdown will not be broadcast on NASA TV.

In the event of adverse weather conditions in the splashdown zone in the Pacific, the departure and splashdown will occur on the backup date of May 5.

Bottom line: A SpaceX Dragon cargo spaceship is scheduled to depart the International Space Station on May 2, 2018. How to watch.

Read more from NASA

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2HJFO02

SpaceX’s Dragon cargo craft arrived at the International Space Station April 4, 2018, on the company’s 14th station resupply mission. Image via NASA.

After delivering more than 5,800 pounds of science investigation materials and cargo for NASA, a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft is set to depart the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, May 2, 2018. Dragon is the only space station resupply spacecraft able to return to Earth intact.

You can watch Dragon’s departure live on NASA TV, beginning at 10 a.m. EDT (14:00 UTC; translate UTC to your time). Watch here.

Here’s what will be happening, according to a NASA statement:

Flight controllers on Earth will use the Canadarm2 robotic arm to detach the Dragon capsule, which arrived April 4, 2018, from the Earth-facing side of the station’s Harmony module. After maneuvering Dragon into place, they will give the command to release the spacecraft as Expedition 55 Flight Engineer Scott Tingle of NASA monitors its departure at 10:22 a.m. EDT.

Dragon’s thrusters will be fired to move the spacecraft a safe distance from the station before SpaceX flight controllers in Hawthorne, California, command its deorbit burn.

The capsule will splash down about 4:02 p.m. EDT (20:02 UTC; translate to your time) in the Pacific Ocean, where recovery forces will retrieve the capsule and more than 4,000 pounds of cargo, including science samples from human and animal research, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities. The deorbit burn and splashdown will not be broadcast on NASA TV.

In the event of adverse weather conditions in the splashdown zone in the Pacific, the departure and splashdown will occur on the backup date of May 5.

Bottom line: A SpaceX Dragon cargo spaceship is scheduled to depart the International Space Station on May 2, 2018. How to watch.

Read more from NASA

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2HJFO02

How Pluto got its name

The New Horizons spacecraft captured this image of one of Pluto’s most dominant features – its “heart,” now called Tombaugh Regio – about 16 hours before its closest approach to the dwarf planet. The “heart” is estimated to be about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) across at its widest point, about the same distance as from Denver to Chicago, in America’s heartland. Image via NASA.

May 1, 1930. On this date, 11-year-old Venetia Burney in Oxford, England received £5 (now $6.87 U.S.) for her clever suggestion of the name Pluto for what then was considered the solar system’s outermost and newest planet.

Clyde W. Tombaugh – an assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona – had discovered Pluto earlier that year, on February 18, 1930.

But it was the American astronomer Percival Lowell who initiated the search for a planet beyond Neptune. Lowell had believed that something large was gravitationally pulling on Neptune and the next planet inward, Uranus, affecting the shape of their orbits. He had searched from 1905 until his death in 1916. But he never found his long-sought Planet X.

Thirteen years later, in 1929, Lowell’s observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona resumed the search for Planet X. The new administrators at Lowell built and dedicated a 13-inch telescope for this sole purpose, and hired 23-year-old Clyde W. Tombaugh to take systematic, painstaking photographs generally along the ecliptic, or pathway of planets in our solar system. After a year of nightly labor, Tombaugh found an object whose orbit showed it was more distant than Neptune, but vastly closer to us than the stars.

It was the object now known as Pluto.

In 1930, it wasn’t the IAU but the Lowell Observatory – where both Lowell and Tombaugh had conducted the search for an unseen, outermost planet – that had the right to name the new object.

The observatory received 1,000 suggestions worldwide, according to the Library of Congress. Venetia Burney suggested the name Pluto in part because it kept the nomenclature for planets in the realm of classical mythology, where Pluto was a god of the underworld.

Cleverly, the name also honors Percival Lowell, as the first two letters of the name Pluto are Percival Lowell’s initials.

Percival Lowell popularized the search for a Planet X, a large planet beyond Neptune. Here he is in 1914, at the 24-inch telescope at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Clyde W. Tombaugh at his family’s farm with his homemade telescope in 1928, two years before his discovery of Pluto. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Venetia Burney, aged 11, around the time she named the dwarf planet Pluto Image via J. Weston & Son Photographers, Eastbourne, Brighton in England, UK/ Wikimedia Commons.

From its discovery in 1930 until 2006 – for over seven decades – Pluto was considered the 9th planet of our solar system. It’s now considered a dwarf planet, one of five recognized so far by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

In 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft became first-ever (and possibly only-ever, in some of our lifetimes) spacecraft to visit Pluto and its system of moons. NASA now says:

Pluto — which is smaller than Earth’s moon — has a heart-shaped glacier that’s the size of Texas and Oklahoma. This fascinating world has blue skies, spinning moons, mountains as high as the Rockies, and it snows — but the snow is red. These are details we didn’t know before NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past in July 2015.

Pluto is a complex and mysterious world of mountains, valleys, plains and craters …

Check out Pluto’s overview page at NASA

Read about New Horizons’ next target, 2014 MU69, aka Ultima Thule

This is the highest-resolution color departure shot of Pluto’s receding crescent from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, taken in July 2015 when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (200,000 km) away from the dwarf planet. Shown in approximate true color. Read more about this image from NASA.

Bottom line: Pluto officially received its name on May 1, 1930. A girl in Oxford, England – 11-year-old Venetia Burney – suggested Pluto, a classical mythological god of the underworld and in honor of Percival Lowell, whose early efforts led to Pluto’s discovery.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2JCyjIP

The New Horizons spacecraft captured this image of one of Pluto’s most dominant features – its “heart,” now called Tombaugh Regio – about 16 hours before its closest approach to the dwarf planet. The “heart” is estimated to be about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) across at its widest point, about the same distance as from Denver to Chicago, in America’s heartland. Image via NASA.

May 1, 1930. On this date, 11-year-old Venetia Burney in Oxford, England received £5 (now $6.87 U.S.) for her clever suggestion of the name Pluto for what then was considered the solar system’s outermost and newest planet.

Clyde W. Tombaugh – an assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona – had discovered Pluto earlier that year, on February 18, 1930.

But it was the American astronomer Percival Lowell who initiated the search for a planet beyond Neptune. Lowell had believed that something large was gravitationally pulling on Neptune and the next planet inward, Uranus, affecting the shape of their orbits. He had searched from 1905 until his death in 1916. But he never found his long-sought Planet X.

Thirteen years later, in 1929, Lowell’s observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona resumed the search for Planet X. The new administrators at Lowell built and dedicated a 13-inch telescope for this sole purpose, and hired 23-year-old Clyde W. Tombaugh to take systematic, painstaking photographs generally along the ecliptic, or pathway of planets in our solar system. After a year of nightly labor, Tombaugh found an object whose orbit showed it was more distant than Neptune, but vastly closer to us than the stars.

It was the object now known as Pluto.

In 1930, it wasn’t the IAU but the Lowell Observatory – where both Lowell and Tombaugh had conducted the search for an unseen, outermost planet – that had the right to name the new object.

The observatory received 1,000 suggestions worldwide, according to the Library of Congress. Venetia Burney suggested the name Pluto in part because it kept the nomenclature for planets in the realm of classical mythology, where Pluto was a god of the underworld.

Cleverly, the name also honors Percival Lowell, as the first two letters of the name Pluto are Percival Lowell’s initials.

Percival Lowell popularized the search for a Planet X, a large planet beyond Neptune. Here he is in 1914, at the 24-inch telescope at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Clyde W. Tombaugh at his family’s farm with his homemade telescope in 1928, two years before his discovery of Pluto. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Venetia Burney, aged 11, around the time she named the dwarf planet Pluto Image via J. Weston & Son Photographers, Eastbourne, Brighton in England, UK/ Wikimedia Commons.

From its discovery in 1930 until 2006 – for over seven decades – Pluto was considered the 9th planet of our solar system. It’s now considered a dwarf planet, one of five recognized so far by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

In 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft became first-ever (and possibly only-ever, in some of our lifetimes) spacecraft to visit Pluto and its system of moons. NASA now says:

Pluto — which is smaller than Earth’s moon — has a heart-shaped glacier that’s the size of Texas and Oklahoma. This fascinating world has blue skies, spinning moons, mountains as high as the Rockies, and it snows — but the snow is red. These are details we didn’t know before NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past in July 2015.

Pluto is a complex and mysterious world of mountains, valleys, plains and craters …

Check out Pluto’s overview page at NASA

Read about New Horizons’ next target, 2014 MU69, aka Ultima Thule

This is the highest-resolution color departure shot of Pluto’s receding crescent from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, taken in July 2015 when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (200,000 km) away from the dwarf planet. Shown in approximate true color. Read more about this image from NASA.

Bottom line: Pluto officially received its name on May 1, 1930. A girl in Oxford, England – 11-year-old Venetia Burney – suggested Pluto, a classical mythological god of the underworld and in honor of Percival Lowell, whose early efforts led to Pluto’s discovery.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2JCyjIP

Moon, Antares, Jupiter May 1-2

Tonight – May 1, 2018 – watch for the waning gibbous moon and the bright star Antares to climb above your southeastern horizon. The moon is now a couple of evenings past full and rising later at night. From mid-northern latitudes, the moon and Antares will be up by 10 to 11 p.m. local time (the time on your clock for much of the Northern Hemisphere). From temperate latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, the twosome will be up 8 to 9 p.m. local time. From around the world, an even brighter object than Antares – the planet Jupiter – is nearby.

Click here for recommended sky almanacs that’ll let you know the rising time of the moon, Antares and Jupiter in your sky.

And there’s yet another bright planet you won’t want to miss, Venus. It’ll be blazing low in your western sky shortly after sunset, around the same time Jupiter will be shining low in your eastern sky. In other words, these two brilliant beauties will be shining opposite of one another as dusk deepens into nighttime. These two words will be easy to see (given an unobstructed horizon) because Venus and Jupiter rank as the third-brightest and fourth-brightest celestial objects, respectively, after the sun and moon.

As evening deepens, Venus will sink westward while Jupiter will climb upward. Venus will follow the sun beneath the western horizon a few hours after sunset, at or near which time the moon and Antares will then follow Jupiter into the starry sky.

Once the moon and Antares enter the sky, they’ll be out (along with Jupiter) for rest of the night. If you live at northerly latitudes, and don’t wish to stay up late, you can always wake up early to see the moon and Antares in the predawn sky instead. If you do that, you can see two more planets, Mars and Saturn, as shown on the chart below:

This chart covers more sky than our charts normally do, spanning about 90^o of horizon. Note that the moon on our charts looks much larger than it does in the real sky.

The planet Saturn follows Antares into the starry sky about two hours after Antares rises, and then the planet Mars follows Saturn into the sky an hour or two after Saturn comes up. Unless you’re a night owl, however, you’ll probably prefer to view Saturn and Mars in the early morning hours before sunrise.

The moon will continue to watch, and it’ll continue to move eastward in front of the star background in the nights ahead. Thus the moon will inevitably inch toward Saturn and Mars in our sky, passing them around May 4 to 6, a shown below:

Watch the moon move eastward day by day, from the star Antares to the planet Saturn. The green line depicts the ecliptic – Earth’s orbital plane projected outward onto the celestial sphere – and hence the path of the sun, moon and planets across our sky.

The moon will be closest to Saturn in the morning sky on May 4 and Mars on May 6. Read more.

Bottom line: On May 1, 2018, the bright star near the moon is Antares in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. An even brighter planet, Jupiter, is nearby.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2r7IlLh

Tonight – May 1, 2018 – watch for the waning gibbous moon and the bright star Antares to climb above your southeastern horizon. The moon is now a couple of evenings past full and rising later at night. From mid-northern latitudes, the moon and Antares will be up by 10 to 11 p.m. local time (the time on your clock for much of the Northern Hemisphere). From temperate latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, the twosome will be up 8 to 9 p.m. local time. From around the world, an even brighter object than Antares – the planet Jupiter – is nearby.

Click here for recommended sky almanacs that’ll let you know the rising time of the moon, Antares and Jupiter in your sky.

And there’s yet another bright planet you won’t want to miss, Venus. It’ll be blazing low in your western sky shortly after sunset, around the same time Jupiter will be shining low in your eastern sky. In other words, these two brilliant beauties will be shining opposite of one another as dusk deepens into nighttime. These two words will be easy to see (given an unobstructed horizon) because Venus and Jupiter rank as the third-brightest and fourth-brightest celestial objects, respectively, after the sun and moon.

As evening deepens, Venus will sink westward while Jupiter will climb upward. Venus will follow the sun beneath the western horizon a few hours after sunset, at or near which time the moon and Antares will then follow Jupiter into the starry sky.

Once the moon and Antares enter the sky, they’ll be out (along with Jupiter) for rest of the night. If you live at northerly latitudes, and don’t wish to stay up late, you can always wake up early to see the moon and Antares in the predawn sky instead. If you do that, you can see two more planets, Mars and Saturn, as shown on the chart below:

This chart covers more sky than our charts normally do, spanning about 90^o of horizon. Note that the moon on our charts looks much larger than it does in the real sky.

The planet Saturn follows Antares into the starry sky about two hours after Antares rises, and then the planet Mars follows Saturn into the sky an hour or two after Saturn comes up. Unless you’re a night owl, however, you’ll probably prefer to view Saturn and Mars in the early morning hours before sunrise.

The moon will continue to watch, and it’ll continue to move eastward in front of the star background in the nights ahead. Thus the moon will inevitably inch toward Saturn and Mars in our sky, passing them around May 4 to 6, a shown below:

Watch the moon move eastward day by day, from the star Antares to the planet Saturn. The green line depicts the ecliptic – Earth’s orbital plane projected outward onto the celestial sphere – and hence the path of the sun, moon and planets across our sky.

The moon will be closest to Saturn in the morning sky on May 4 and Mars on May 6. Read more.

Bottom line: On May 1, 2018, the bright star near the moon is Antares in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. An even brighter planet, Jupiter, is nearby.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2r7IlLh