Poison Star?

European Space Agency; Oct. 11, 2001; Press Release: "Toxic Compound in Space Signals Starbirth"

ISO, pre-launch -- ESA

According to the dictionary, Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN) is an "extremely" poisonous substance used in the plastics and metallurgical industries. As a poison, it can block the ability of cells to use oxygen -- causing rapid fatality in humans. Most people would want to avoid encountering such a substance -- but not some astronomers.

Dutch and German researchers have hit on seeking this substance in space in order to determine the age and evolutionary stage of newly forming stars. This technique was pioneered by studies of an object designated LG 2591 -- a protostar cocooned in a nebula of dust and gas. Starting out at several hundred degrees below zero, such nebulae warm up as the star forming process occurs. Increased temperature leads to molecular interactions and the formation of complex molecules. So, the detection of certain molecules in the stellar cocoon indicates the stage of star formation deep inside the cloud. This work was done using the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), a pioneering instrument in the study of the chemistry of the Universe.

"We chose hydrogen cyanide because it is one of the few molecules we detected with ISO that is also observable from the ground and present in large amounts in the hot gas. Then we used ground-based observations to exclude the possibility that this compound had been formed by other high temperature phenomena that can occur throughout the cloud and are not related to the hot core," explains Annemieke Boonman of Leiden University.

Analysis of the HCN in GL 2591 indicates it is between tens of thousands and a hundred thousand years old. In a few hundred thousand years, a star ten times as massive in the Sun will emerge from the nebula cloud.

Round-and-Round on Mars

NASA/Ames; Oct. 10, 2001; Press Release: "Antarctic/Alaska-like Wind Turbines Could be used on Mars"

Cold turbine.

NASA is working on a scheme to station electricity producing wind turbines in Alaska and the Antarctic. In the long dark polar and near-polar winter, solar power is not an option and conventional fuel supplies can't reach the Antarctic interior bases. Maintainability is key in this environment: the equipment must tolerate low temperature, ice, and abrasive material like sand.

Some think the same technology that can power Polar bases will do the same for bases on the planet Mars. Researcher David Bubenheim, of NASA's Ames Research Center, believes that "Wind power and solar power may complement each other on Mars. When you have a large dust storm blocking the sunlight on Mars, a wind turbine can still generate electricity." Such a dust storm is currently enveloping Mars and could last a month.

According to current knowledge, the turbines could not work year-round because there ordinarily isn't enough wind on the planet to generate electricity. "Only during dust storms on Mars is there enough wind energy to operate a wind turbine," said NASA Ames scientist Michael Flynn.

It's All Right Now -- In Fact it's a Gas!

Jodrell Bank Observatory; Oct. 09, 2001; Press Release: "Discovery Helps To Solve Mystery In Globular Clusters"

Core of 47 Tucanae, by Hubble -- STScI

Globular cluster 47 Tucanae is one of 140 such objects associated with our galaxy. At 16,000 light years distance, it is the size of the full Moon and the second brightest globular cluster in the sky. Composed of up to a million stars in a tight grouping, anybody at the center of the cluster would experience a continuous, shadow-less daylight. Because of the number of old stars found in Globular clusters, many must have evolved to the supernova stage and strewn copious amounts of materials into the interstellar globular space. Astronomers have been looking for this material without success for 40-years.

Observations of neutron stars -- the remains of a star that blasted gas into the cluster -- with the Parkes 64-meter radio telescope in Australia, have led to the detection of the missing gas. And the quantity of gas found has a density of 100 times that the interstellar medium outside the cluster.

Rapidly rotating neutron stars have intense magnetic fields. Often the spin axis of the neutron star is not the same as the magnetic field axis. This offset causes the magnetic field pole to trace a circle as it sweeps across the sky. Electrons in the magnetic field emit radio waves during each sweep. When detected by radio telescopes, these waves are received as pulses with each rotation of the neutron star. Hence the object is called a "pulsar". Because of the large mass and rapid rotation of the pulsar, hundreds of pulsations per second -- at highly consistent intervals -- are common.

The Parkes telescope detected 20 pulsars in 47 Tucanae and pinpointed their position in the cluster. Measurement of the Doppler shift indicated the amount of gas between the telescope and the Pulsar. By comparing the gas amounts detected from Pulsars on the near and far side of the cluster, the gas density of the whole cluster was determined.