Space News Headlines for January 12, 2005

Old Meets New in the Cosmos

According to USATODAY, "An ancient star atlas lost for centuries and a cutting-edge atlas of the modern universe were unveiled Tuesday by scientists at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

"Hidden in plain sight for centuries, the star atlas was found on a statue in Italy's National Museum of Archaeology in Naples. Called the Farnese Atlas, the 7-foot-tall marble statue depicts one of the titans of Greek mythology, Atlas, holding a 2-foot-wide globe on his shoulders. The sphere is covered with 41 star constellations, from Aries the Ram to Andromeda."

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NASA Setting Off on First-Ever Collision Course With Comet

Also from USATODAY, "For the first time ever, NASA is setting off on a collision course with a comet, in hopes of blasting a huge hole in the celestial snowball and gazing upon the original ingredients of the solar system preserved inside.

"It all begins with a planned Wednesday launch of Deep Impact, a copper-fortified, comet-busting spacecraft."

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Astronomers Identify Trio of Supergiants

CNN says, "A trio of supergiants -- red, cool, bright stars at the end of their lives -- may be the biggest stars ever identified, astronomers reported on Monday.

"All three have diameters of more than 1 billion miles (1.61 billion km), or 1,500 times the sun's girth. If they were in the same location as the sun, they would completely engulf Earth and their outer layers would extend to a point between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn."

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Sky Surveys Reveal Cosmic Ripples

An article from the BBC reports, "The unimaginably big of today has its explanation in the fantastically small of 13 billion years ago. Astronomers have shown how the present pattern of galaxies in the cosmos grew from tiny fluctuations in the density of matter just after the Big Bang.

"The work draws on results from two scientific teams conducting sky surveys based in Australia and the US."

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Some Levels of Rocket Fuel Pollution Safe

Yahoo! News quotes a National Academy of Sciences committee report as saying, "Some levels of rocket fuel pollution are safe, but not as much as industry had argued.

"At least two environmental groups accused the government of trying to influence the report's findings, but disagreed on whether the attempts had succeeded."

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