Check out
Dedicated hosting in Europe
Are you looking for quality dedicated hosting in Europe? Our company has two datacenters in Prague and Brno. Check out our dedicated hosting service ...
Search
Calendar
| Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa | Su |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 | |||||
Navigation
71 articles from SUNDAY 15.1.2012
-
SUNDAY 15. JANUARY, 2012
-
23:30
Starwatch: The astronomical year of 2012
The brilliant planet Venus stands some 20° above Britain's SW horizon at nightfall at present and features in perhaps the highlight astronomical event of the 2012. However, if this is Venus's year then Mars comes a close second.
Nasa's ambitious Curiosity rover is due to touch down on the Red Planet's rusty surface on the morning of 6 August, UK time. Mars doubles in brightness this month as it approaches opposition in the constellation Leo on 3 March. It then lies on the opposite side of the sky to the Sun so that it rises in the ENE at sunset, stands highest in the S at midnight and sets in the WNW at sunrise. It is also at its closest (101 million km) and brightest (magnitude -1.2, just inferior to Sirius).
Mars rises at about 21:30 tonight, passes 40° to 45° high in the S at 04:00 and is approaching a stationary point against the stars just across the border in Virgo. As our chart shows, it soon loops back through Leo as it is overtaken by the Earth. After a second stationary point in April only 4° from Regulus, it tracks eastwards again towards Virgo's leading star Spica. Saturn, meanwhile, executes its own loop just a few degrees E and N of Spica, reaching its own opposition on 15 April at magnitude 0.2. We lose Saturn in the evening twilight in October, but Mars lingers as an evening object into 2013.
Venus's transit across the face of the Sun on 6 June is the first since 2004 and the last until 2117. Only the final hour or so of the transit is observable from Britain after the Sun rises in the NE in the early hours of the morning. As in 2117, areas around the Pacific fare much better. Venus is a spectacular evening star until just before its transit and emerges immediately as a dazzling morning star for the rest of 2012. Mercury is best placed as an evening star in February/March and June, and before dawn in August and November/December.
Jupiter is high bright and conspicuous in the S evening sky at present, edging westwards each day until it disappears into our evening twilight in April. We catch it again before dawn in June and it reaches opposition close to Aldebaran in Taurus on 3 December.
Only one of 2012's four eclipses is visible at all from Europe. That exception, a penumbral lunar eclipse at moonrise on 28 November, could hardly be less exciting, certainly in comparison with the only total solar eclipse which tracks across the S Pacific 15 days earlier.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
-
23:27
Dead Russian Mars Probe Reenters Over the Pacific
Any surviving components of the doomed Phobos-Grunt spacecraft plunged into the ocean on Sunday. -
22:15
Celestial Triangle Visible in Night Sky Early Monday (SPACE.com)
SPACE.com - Skywatchers who are out and about after 1 a.m. local time Monday (Jan. 16) will have an interesting celestial array to admire, composed of the moon, a bright planet and a bright star. -
21:09
Researchers use sugar to halt esophageal cancer in its tracks
Scientists have identified changes in the patterns of sugar molecules that line pre-cancerous cells in the esophagus, a condition called Barrett’s dysplasia, making it much easier to detect and remove these cells before they develop into esophageal cancer. These findings have important implications for patients and may help to monitor their condition and prevent the development of cancer.
-
21:00
-
20:24
Good parents are predictable -- at least when it comes to corn
In order to breed new varieties of corn with a higher yield faster than ever before, researchers at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany, and other institutions are relying on a trick: early selection of the most promising parent plants based on their chemical and genetic makeup, as well as on new statistical analysis procedures. The work has now been published in the authoritative journal Nature Genetics on Sunday evening, Jan. 15. -
20:24Hundreds of times during a baseball game, the home plate umpire must instantaneously categorize a fast-moving pitch as a ball or a strike. In new research from the University of Chicago, scientists have pinpointed an area in the brain where these kinds of visual categories are encoded.
-
20:24A new technology developed by neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) transforms the way highly detailed anatomical images can be made of whole brains. Until now, means of obtaining such images – used in cutting-edge projects to map the mammalian brain -- have been painstakingly slow and available only to a handful of highly specialized research teams.
-
20:24From tracking activities within bacteria to creating images of molecules that make up human hair, several experiments have already demonstrated the unique abilities of the revolutionary imaging technique called multi-isotope imaging mass spectometry, or MIMS, developed by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH). MIMS can produce high-resolution, quantitative three-dimensional images of stable isotope tags within subcellular compartments in tissue sections or cells.
-
20:24Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have developed a novel strategy to protect the liver from drug-induced injury and improve associated drug safety. In their report receiving advance online publication in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the team reports that inhibition of a type of cell-to-cell communication can protect against the damage caused by liver-toxic drugs such as acetaminophen.
-
20:24Scientists working at the Medical Research Council have identified changes in the patterns of sugar molecules that line pre-cancerous cells in the esophagus, a condition called Barrett's dysplasia, making it much easier to detect and remove these cells before they develop into esophageal cancer. These findings, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, have important implications for patients and may help to monitor their condition and prevent the development of cancer.
-
20:24Russia believes fragments of its Phobos-Grunt probe which spiralled back to Earth after failing to head on a mission to Mars crashed Sunday into the Pacific Ocean, a spokesman for its space forces said.
-
20:24Killer T-cells in the human body which help protect us from disease can inadvertently destroy cells that produce insulin, new research has uncovered.
-
20:08
Russian space agency had previously said that the stricken planetary rocket was most likely to fall into the Atlantic
Debris from a failed Russian spacecraft fell into the Pacific Ocean far off Chile on Sunday, the state-run RIA news agency has quoted a Russian military official as saying.
Pieces of the Phobos-Grunt craft, which never made it out of orbit after its launch on a mission to probe the Martian moon Phobos, fell into the sea 775 miles (1,250 km) west of the coastal island of Wellington, aerospace defence forces spokesman Colonel Alexei Zolotukhin said.
It was not immediately clear whether all of the debris from the craft fell at that location. Russia's space agency Roscosmos had previously said debris was most likely to fall in the Atlantic Ocean.
Many of the major cities in the world had been waiting to see where the space hardware would fall.
The launcher, the largest planetary rocket built by Roscosmos, was intended to land on Phobos and bring samples back to Earth. The mission also included a Chinese-built orbiter and containers of bacteria to test their survival in space.
The rocket boosters failed to ignite after it had been launched into a parking orbit around Earth in November. Despite repeated attempts to contact it from the ground, Phobos-Grunt remained stuck in orbit and the Russian authorities decided to abandon the mission.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
-
20:00SPACE.com - A failed Russian Mars probe came crashing back to Earth Sunday (Jan. 15) in a death plunge over the Pacific Ocean, according to Russian news reports.
-
20:00Hundreds of times during a baseball game, the home plate umpire must instantaneously categorize a fast-moving pitch as a ball or a strike. Scientists have now pinpointed an area in the brain where these kinds of visual categories are encoded.
-
20:00Investigators have developed a novel strategy to protect the liver from drug-induced injury and improve associated drug safety. The team reports that inhibiting a type of cell-to-cell communication can protect against damage caused by liver-toxic drugs such as acetaminophen.
-
20:00New technology transforms the way detailed anatomical images can be made of whole brains and will greatly facilitate systematic comparison of neuroanatomy in mouse models of human brain disorders, e.g., autism and schizophrenia.
-
20:00Killer T-cells in the human body which help protect us from disease can inadvertently destroy cells that produce insulin, new research has uncovered.
-
19:59Scientists have identified changes in the patterns of sugar molecules that line pre-cancerous cells in the esophagus, a condition called Barrett’s dysplasia, making it much easier to detect and remove these cells before they develop into esophageal cancer. These findings have important implications for patients and may help to monitor their condition and prevent the development of cancer.
-
19:04LiveScience.com - Parasitic worms may be useful in treating lung disease and healing wounds, according to a study published online today (Jan.15) in Nature Medicine.
-
19:00
Sit. Stay. Scratch.
Skin disease in humans and golden retrievers may have common origin -
18:30
-
17:35
Russian space probe to crash within hours
A failed Russian probe will come crashing down within hours, likely in a shower of fragments that survive the fiery re-entry, but Canada is outside the risk zone.
-
17:30
Naposledy aktualizované zdroje
-
-
TIME (dnes, 11:00)
-
BBC Science/Nature (dnes, 10:01)
-
NYT > Science (dnes, 10:00)
-
-
-
-
EurekAlert (dnes, 06:00)
-
-
-
-
National Geographic News (22. 2, 23:03)
-
Sci-Tech Today (22. 2, 22:01)
-
NASA (22. 2, 17:36)
-
Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories (16. 1, 22:07)
