Observatory

Do you see what I see? A star? Yes, in a manner of speaking: a partial eclipse of the sun. And not just any partial eclipse. This will be the first to occur on Christmas Day in nearly half a century. To mark the occasion, the Maryland Science Center will open its observatory doors (just the observatory, not the entire museum) on Christmas Day to any who are curious and who wish to observe safely this celestial phenomenon. And in the spirit of Christmas, the Science Center isn't charging admission but instead asks that visitors bring a non-perishable food or clothing items to be donated to Baltimore's St. Michael's Community Outreach Center.

In an era when scientists are lofting their best telescopes into space or building them on remote mountaintops in Chile or Hawaii, the bright lights and humidity of suburban Baltimore would seem the last place to spend $450,000 on a big research telescope. Yet that's precisely where the University of Maryland, Baltimore County has built its new, 32-inch Cassegrain reflector telescope - one of the largest optical telescopes east of the Mississippi. The Catonsville school has high hopes the new observatory will allow faculty members to produce publishable research, and help undergraduate students hone their observing skills.

Driving through Deer Creek Valley in mountainous eastern West Virginia, I came upon an amazing sight. A charming red barn with a silo stood in the foreground and a green alpine meadow spread out around it in all directions. Nothing unusual about that. But what was that huge, futuristic structure in the background towering above the tree line? I soon discovered that the titanic form looming on the horizon near the tiny farming community of Green Bank was the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world.

After a bumpy start, a Johns Hopkins-based orbiting observatory has begun to send back important new findings on the life cycles of stars and galaxies. Scientists working with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite told astronomers meeting in Atlanta yesterday they have found clouds of hot gas surrounding our Milky Way galaxy, blown there by the explosions of dying stars. FUSE has also given astronomers their first look at the vast, wispy clouds of cold molecular hydrogen -- the raw material for new stars -- long-supposed to float throughout the Milky Way. "The FUSE observatory is now open for routine business," said Hopkins physics professor H. Warren Moos, principal FUSE investigator.

WASHINGTON -- The people at the U.S. Naval Observatory don't normally get dragged into petty arguments.They run the nation's master clock. The other clocks do what they say. They calculate the position of every planet, star, galaxy and quasar in the universe. They do math.But now, with the worldwide rush to capitalize on the new millennium, this unassuming Washington agency full of astronomers is tangled up in geopolitical and academic spats.From the South Pacific to Maine, countries, towns and nearly unheard-of spits of land are vying to be the first to see the sunrise Jan. 1 -- even as ordinary Americans are arguing about whether 2000 or 2001 is the true date of the new millennium.

WASHINGTON -- Imagine trying out new spectacles in your living room and discovering furniture you'd never seen before.Astronomers calibrating the new, orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory have aimed it at the well-studied Crab Nebula -- a crab-shaped cloud of glowing dust and gas in the winter constellation Taurus -- and discovered a brilliant ring around the collapsed star at its core.The ring is providing scientists with a new understanding of the stellar explosion observed 945 years ago that created the nebula and clues to how the star's spinning cinder keeps the gas clouds in the outer nebula glowing in a torrent of atomic particles.

WASHINGTON -- They have $200 million and five years of work riding on a single rocket. But scientists at the Johns Hopkins University say they're confident about the coming launch of their FUSE orbiting observatory -- now less than two weeks away."

Mission Control is not just for Houston, the Goddard Space Flight Center, or even NASA anymore.After NASA launches its new FUSE astronomy satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in February, it will switch control of the $108 million mission to a control room in the physics building at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.There, scientists and professional operators seated at two rows of computers beneath a video wall will guide the observatory 24 hours a day on its three-year mission.

The starlings have been evicted, and the Maryland Science Center's long-neglected rooftop observatory in Baltimore is once again providing dramatic views of whatever stars and planets manage to shine through the city's nighttime glare."

The water that gushes from your taps might have been created billions of years ago during the birth of a new star.A team of scientists using the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory reports that it has detected just such a water factory in a gas cloud 1,500 light years from Earth in the Orion Nebula.The vast cloud is producing so much water vapor that, condensed into liquid form, it could fill the Earth's oceans every 24 minutes, said David Neufeld, a member of the team and a professor of physics and astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University.