Kategorija: Arhiva

Cities needlessly shine billions of dollars directly into the sky each year and, as a result; a fifth of the world’s population cannot see the Milky Way. Malcolm Smith explains why a dark sky has much to offer everyone. Over the past six decades, professional and amateur astronomers have been pioneering efforts to curb light pollution to protect the viability of their observatories. During the 2009 International Year of Astronomy, particularly through the Dark Skies Awareness project1, astronomers can find allies in a common cause to convince authorities and the public that a dark sky is a valuable resource for everyone.

Malcolm Smith
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Casilla 603, La Serena, Chile.
Email: msmith@ctio.noao.edu
Nature 457, 27 (1 January 2009) (za cjeloviti tekst potrebna je pretplata)

By taking on a significant part of the education of high-school physics teachers, physics departments in the US can inspire their students and help ensure a scientifically educated population.

Read more…

Astronomers have observed a planet some 200 light years from Earth that, for a few hours, becomes 700 degrees Celsius (1,300 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter every time its elliptical orbit brings it close to its sun.
 Full article

Za sve one koji vole pročitati nešto iz područja astronomije, ovdje mogu pronaći nekoliko zanimljivih članaka iz Nature i Physics Nature.

 Which moon to shoot for?
Planetary scientists have a rare chance to pick the destination for their next big mission. But will it be Titan or Europa? (Special report – Nature, 22.1.2009)

 Is there life on Europa?
BOOK REVIEWED – Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter’s Ocean Moon

 Shocking start for the solar system
In the 1970s, the hypothesis arose that our solar system was formed by a passing shock wave from a supernova, which triggered the collapse of an interstellar cloud into a dense region of gas and dust that further contracted to become the Sun and its orbiting planets…

 Signs of dark matter?
Two groups of cosmic-ray observers have reported unexpectedly large fluxes of high-energy electrons and positrons. Those excesses suggest either that there are undiscovered astrophysical sources such as radio-quiet pulsars surprisingly nearby or that the positrons and electrons are annihilation products of WIMPs—weakly interacting dark-matter particles hundreds of times more massive than the proton.

Hrvatsko astronomsko društvo je strukovna udruga čiji su ciljevi i zadaci: razvijanje znanstvene, obrazovne i kulturne djelatnosti u području astronomije, astrofizike i srodnih područja znanosti u smislu podsticanja osnovnih znanstvenih istraživanja; razvijanja međunarodne suradnje; pokretanja i provođenja akcija za unapređenje nastave u osnovnim, srednjim , višim i visokim školama u Republici Hrvatskoj; populariziranje rezultata i primjene znanosti.