Help! I woke up 800 million km from home

Imagine going to sleep one night and when you wake up you are 800 million km from home. This happened to the comet-hunting Rosetta spacecraft this week after nearly three years of hibernation.

Rosetta was built by the European Space Agency and launched in 2004. It has been busy: It passed close to the Earth three times, in 2005, 2007 and 2009, and it had close encounters with Mars (2007) and two large asteroids (2008 and 2010). But its main mission is to study a comet called 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

WAKE UP! You've got work to do.
A computer generated image of the Rosetta. Public Domain image

BYO Death Ray: NASA News

Dylan is back with some recent news from NASA.

A 'creature' with large tentacles has appeared 600 km off the Australian coast. It was spotted in the south-eastern Indian Ocean by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) module on a NASA satellite. The 'creature' is more than 100 km wide and is quite bright in the ocean, sparking questions about whether there are large life-forms under the earth, like in the 2013 movie Pacific Rim.

A giant monster from the deep? Source: NASA

BYO Death Ray: Space station spotting

Dylan headed out into the field (just outside his house) to see the International Space Station. Here is his report.

On January 3, 2014 at 9:36pm, I was able to see the International Space Station for around six minutes, passing from the NNW (north-north-west) towards the ESE (east-south-east) at 50 degrees. As I was seeing it for the first time, I did not know what to expect. The skies were very clear and at around 9:38, I saw a fast moving straight white dot/line travelling in the correct direction. Using a compass and my notepad I took down some observations about the sighting.

• It travelled in the correct direction at 50 degrees from the horizon.
• It travelled faster and straighter than any other object in the sky.
• It is one of the brightest objects in the sky.
• It is far away from the stars and easy to see when you find it.

The ISS is the brighter dot in the centre of the screen as I took the photo.

BYO Death Ray: Top 10 science images of 2013

Hello everyone, Dylan here!

2013 has been out of this world... literally! Most of the top science images of 2013 were not taken on Earth. These have been hand-picked by me for Death Ray Science News. In no particular order, here are my top science images of 2013:

#1: The first image was taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004. It shows the view of the Earth and Saturn on July 19 (the Earth is a little white dot to the bottom-right of Saturn - you can see it better by clicking on the image and making it bigger). Cassini was around 1.44 billion km away from Earth at this time.

Click on the image to see a much bigger version
Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

---

BYO Death Ray: Get ready for the 'big slurp'

Our first BYO Dylan is back with a new story - the prospect of the universe collapsing on itself - possibly today!

Scientists from the University of Southern Denmark think that universe is about to implode, in what some are calling a 'Big Slurp'.

They say that something called a 'phase transition' may occur very soon. It has been "proven" (not really, but the Denmark scientists say they have proven it), that a "shift in the forces of the universe will cause every particle in it to become extremely heavy... essentially squeezing everything into an extremely hot, heavy, tiny ball", reports the Daily Mail.

A basic diagram of a 'phase transition'. Image from the University Of Denmark.

BYO Death Ray: Mount Burnett Observatory Young Observer's Night

Our newest correspondent, Magnus Bock, aged 12, has this special report from the historic Mount Burnett Observatory just outside of Melbourne, Australia.

Hello, I’m Magnus Bock, Senior Labrat and Mount Burnett Observatory Member and I’m here to tell you about what I do at Mount Burnett.

Observing sun spots reflected onto paper from a telescope

Magnus and the Mount Burnett dome

Mount Burnett is an Observatory in the Dandenong Ranges, near Cockatoo. It used to be run by Monash University, but they decommissioned it and it started to fall apart. In 2010 a group of locals and astronomically-minded people got together to restore it and make it work again. There is a big telescope in the dome and several portable Dobsonian telescopes for members to use.

Last night I went to Mount Burnett Observatory’s Young Observer’s night. It was really fun but sadly it was the last one of the year. Here are some of the things we did:

• Had a picnic.
• Looked at the sun and moon.
• Normally we would also have a speaker, but not this week.

The aims of the Young Observers Group are:

A ball of ice meets a ball of fire - AND THE FIRE WINS! OR DOES IT?

UPDATE 3: It's dead. Ison made it around the Sun but a few hours later it broke up and disappeared. You know what they say... it's better to burn out than to fade away.

UPDATE 2: Cancel the funeral. It looks like Ison might have made it after all. New pictures show the comet or what is left of it rounding the sun. As Ison gets further from the Sun we'll be able to work out what kind of condition the comet is in, but for now, ISON LIVES!

UPDATE 1: I am sorry to report that Ison didn't make it. All that appears to be left is a trail of rocks, dust and gas. The Bad Astronomy blog has all the details.

A large comet is approaching the Sun and scientists don't know if it will survive.

Comet Ison will tonight pass 1.2 million kilometres from the Sun. This seems like a long way, but it really isn't when you compare it to the Earth, which is 150 million kilometres from the Sun, or even Mercury, which is 58 million kilometres away, or the Sun itself, which is a massive 1.4 million kilometres wide.

This video from NASA shows the path of Comet Ison.

Comets are made from ice, and the Sun is rather hot. This is not a great combination for the comet. The heat from the Sun hits the surface of the comet and blasts off gasses and bits of ice and rock. This is the tail. As the comet gets closer to the Sun, the tail gets bigger, but if it gets too close to the Sun, the comet will break up and be destroyed.

Will it survive?

Find out tomorrow.

Icy links:

• Did you know that comets have two tails? Find out why from Caltech.
• Will you be able to see the comet? If you are in the Southern Hemisphere, probably not. The Sydney Observatory has the details.

Mangalyaan Mission to Mars: The Fart Probe

India has launched a rocket carrying a fart probe that is heading for the Red Planet.

The rocket blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the east coast of India on Tuesday morning. It will orbit the Earth for a few weeks and slowly build up speed before a final blast of its engine sends it rocketing towards Mars.

If all goes well the Mangalyaan (which means Mars craft in Hindi) will travel through space for 300 days and then go into orbit around Mars. When in orbit it will use a special instrument to look for farts in the Martian atmosphere.

This song explains how the Universe works, or does it?

A Canadian university student has produced a physics version of the classic song Bohemian Rhapsody.

You can watch the song, called Bohemian Gravity, by clicking read more. There is a lot of it that you won't understand, but that's OK, because the song is describing how the Universe works, and the Universe is complicated.