European Association for Astronomy Education

Source: ESO Science Release eso1227

Artist’s impression of the exoplanet Tau Boötis b.
Image credits: ESO/L. Calçada

For the first time a clever new technique has allowed astronomers to study the atmosphere of an exoplanet in detail — even though it does not pass in front of its parent star. An international team has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope to directly catch the faint glow from the planet Tau Boötis b. They have studied the planet’s atmosphere and measured its orbit and mass precisely for the first time — in the process solving a 15-year old problem. Surprisingly, the team also finds that the planet’s atmosphere seems to be cooler higher up, the opposite of what was expected. The results were published in the 28 June 2012 issue of the journal Nature. (read more)

Source: ESA

Artist's imoression of Titan's interior.
Image credits: Angelo Tavani.

Nothing like it has been seen before beyond our own planet: large tides have been found on Saturn’s moon Titan that point to a liquid ocean – most likely water – swirling around below the surface. (read more)

Source: NASA Science News

Artist's impression of the evaporation of HD 189733b's atmosphere.
Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Working in tandem, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Swift satellite have caught a distant star blasting one of its own planets with a powerful stellar flare. The eruption stripped thousands of tons of material from the planet's atmosphere. (read more)

Source: NASA

NASA has released a new online game called "Build it Yourself:" Satellite!". With this interactive tool  anyone can be an engineer or astronomer and build a satellite. Thjis is a unique oportunity to to discover planets orbiting distant stars, searche for  black holes  or try to observe the faint glow of the early Universe.

 
The website's layout

This Flash-based game, is magnificente learning tool for students and adults and  is just a click away at http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/build.html.

Source: Mars Today

Mars Today, created by Howard Houben of the Mars Global Circulation Model Group, is a poster produced daily by the Center for Mars Exploration at NASA's Ames Research Center. The updated poster depicts current conditions on Mars and its relationship to Earth in six panels. (learn more)

Source: NASA Science Casts

Source: ESA

Artist’s impression of Euclid.
Credits: ESA - C. Carreau.

ESA’s Euclid mission to explore the hidden side of the Universe – dark energy and dark matter – reached an important milestone today that will see it head towards full construction. (read more)

Source: NASA Science News

Laser elevation map of Shackleton crater in false colors.
Image credit: NASA/Zuber, M.T. et al., Nature, 2012.

According to data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in Shackleton crater at the Moon's south pole.(read more)

Source: ESO Photo Release eso1226

Close-up view of NGC 6357. Image credit: ESO/VLT.

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has taken the most detailed image so far of a spectacular part of the stellar nursery called NGC 6357. The view shows many hot young stars, glowing clouds of gas and weird dust formations sculpted by ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds. (read more)

Source: ESA

Saturn and Titan viewed from Cassini.
Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/J. Major.

Titan appears to be strung like a bead on Saturn’s rings, which cast shadows onto the southern hemisphere of the gas giant in this beautiful image from Cassini. (read more)

Source: NASA Science Casts

A question has been troubling astronomers: Why won't the supernova explode? While real stars blow up, computer models of massive dying stars do not result in much of a bang. NASA has launched a new observatory named "NuSTAR" to seek out the missing physics of stellar explosions.

Source: NASA Kepler

Artist's impression of planet formation.
Image credits: Credit: University of Copenhagen/Lars Buchhave .

The formation of small worlds like Earth previously was thought to occur mostly around stars rich in heavy elements such as iron and silicon. However, new ground-based observations, combined with data collected by NASA's Kepler space telescope, shows small planets form around stars with a wide range of heavy element content and suggests they may be widespread in our galaxy.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble Photo Release heic1208

Hubble view of NGC 3314.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)
ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and W. Keel (University of Alabama)

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a highly detailed image of a pair of overlapping galaxies called NGC 3314. While the two galaxies look as if they are in the midst of a collision, this is in fact a trick of perspective: the two just happen to appear in the same direction from our vantage point. (read more)

Source: Chandra

Galaxies NGC 4342 and NGC 4291.
Image credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/A.Bogdan et al;
Infrared: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/ NASA/NSF.

New evidence from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory challenges prevailing ideas about how black holes grow in the centers of galaxies. Astronomers long have thought that a supermassive black hole and the bulge of stars at the center of its host galaxy grow at the same rate -- the bigger the bulge, the bigger the black hole. However, a new study of Chandra data has revealed two nearby galaxies with supermassive black holes that are growing faster than the galaxies themselves.(read more)

Source: ESO Organisation Release eso1225

Artist's impression of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) .
Image credits: ESO/L. Calçada.

ESO is about to build the largest optical/infrared telescope in the world. At its meeting in Garching today, the ESO Council approved the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) Programme, pending confirmation of four so-called ad referendum votes. The E-ELT will start operations early in the next decade.(learn more)

Source: Cassini Solstice Mission

The atmosphere of Titan.
Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

On June 7 Cassini made flyby to Titan at a distance of 959 km and imaged portions of the moon’s northwest quadrant with its radar instrument and continued investigations of areas near the equator where surface changes were detected in 2010. It also made some raw images images where the atmosphere can be seen like the image above taken in September 2011. (learn more)

Source: ESA-Mars Express

Danielson and Kalocsa craters.
Image credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum).

ESA’s Mars Express has provided images of a remarkable crater on Mars that may show evidence that the planet underwent significant periodic fluctuations in its climate due to changes in its rotation axis (read more).

Source: ESA Space Science

Blowing bubbles in the Carina Nebula.
Image credits: ESA/PACS/SPIRE/Thomas Preibisch,
Universitäts-Sternwarte München and the
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Giant bubbles, towering pillars and cascading clouds of dust and gas fill the star-forming nursery of the Carina Nebula seen here in a stunning new view from Herschel Spacee Telescope (read more).

Close to the 2012 Spring Equinox students from several schools all around Europe have built pinhole cameras by themselves. The pinhole cameras were made of matt-black cardboard and other simple material using a design scheme that was provided by Sakari Ekko the project coordinator.

The pictures from these observations have now been released and are presented next. All images are copyright of the authors.

Photo 1

Location: Muonio, Finland 67.95º N 23.65º E
Date: 23.-28.3.2012
Teacher: Manu Vuontisjarvi
e-mail: manu.vuontisjarvi(at)pp.inet.fi

Photo 2

Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia 46.05º N 14.53º E
Date: around 21.3.2012
School: Trnovo Primary School
Team: Astro Trnovo
Teacher: Igor Gajser
Team members: Jakob Robnik, Vid Rotvejn Pajič, Benjamin Kušar
e-mail: igor.gajser(at)ostrnovo.sl

Photos 3 - 5

Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia 45.97º N 14.66º E
Date: 27.3.2012
School: Jože Plečnik Grammar School Ljubljana
Team: PLEČNIK ASTRONOMY
Teacher: Boris Kham
Team members: Rok Pučnik, Jurij Šteblaj, Gal Gračanin, Jan Šmalc
e-mail: astroboris(at)khamikaze.net

Photo 6

Location: Belfiore, Verona, Italy 45.37º N 11.00º E
Date: around 21.3.2012
School: IC PISANO – SM BELFIORE
Team: Quarks
Teacher: Massimo Bubani
Team members: ZAPODEUANU FLAVIO CARLO, RODELLA MARCO, KUQI MATEO
e-mail: massimo.bubani(at)gmail.com

Photo 7

Location: Chorzow, Poland 50.30º N 18.95º E
Date: 23.-27.3.2012
School: ZESPÓŁ SZKÓŁ TECHNICZNYCH NR 2
Team: GRUPA Z BATKO
Teacher: Iwona Gawor, Malgorzata Nicewicz
Team members: Mariusz Ciesielski, Kamil Karkowski, Dominik Kołodziejczyk
e-mail: zstnr2(at)zstnr2.pop.pl

Photo 8

Location: Bytom, Poland 50.34º N 18.00º E
Date: 23.-28.3.2012
School: ZESPÓŁ SZKÓŁ TECHNICZNYCH NR 2
Team: GRUPA Z BATKO
Teacher: Iwona Gawor, Malgorzata Nicewicz
Team members: Mariusz Ciesielski, Kamil Karkowski, Dominik Kołodziejczyk
e-mail: zstnr2(at)zstnr2.pop.pl

Photos 9 – 10

Location: Haskovo, Bulgaria 41.9º N 25.5º E
Date: around 21.3.2012
School: Astronomical Club “Helios”
Team: Helios
Teacher: Yoanna Kokotanekova
Team members: Yovelina Vasileva Zinkova, Radostina Boykova Velevska, Ivana Dimitrova Yankova,Dimitar Pavlov Kanaliev, Alexander Sashev Milchev, Bayryam Mustafa Bayryamali, Victoria Slavcheva Milcheva, Plamen Krasenov Dinev, Kristina Rumenova Daneva, Vanesa Rumenova Dimitrova, Petya Atanasova Atanasova, Nikoleta Dimitrova Nikolova, Evelina Kostadinova Dimitrova, Yordanka Ivanova Stoyanova, Elitsa Georgieva Dimova, Anton Angelov Angelov, Stamo Nikolaev Valchev
e-mail: jkokotanekova(at)gmail.com

Photos 11 - 12

Location: Haskovo, Bulgaria 41.9º N 25.5º E
Date: around 21.3.2012
School: Astronomical Observatory by Youth Center Haskovo
Team: Haskovo Stars
Teacher: Tsveta Stefanova Paranova
Team members: Mariela Dragomirova Dragieva, Dimitriya Yordanova Vasileva, Stefani Mladenova Dimitrova, Tanya Stanimirova Mihaylova, Daniela Galinova Dimitrova, Tsvetelina Yurieva Nardova, Elena Ivanova Nikolova, Dimitar Rumenov Kolev
e-mail: astrokonkurs(at)gmail.com

Some Information about the schools' work

You can find a report of the work developped by Jože Plečnik High School of Ljubljana in Slovenia here.

The images bellow show teachers Iwona Gawor and Malgorzata Nicewicz's team and some of their students working during the project.

Source: NASA Spitzer

The constellation Boötes, dubbed the "Extended Groth Strip."
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC

The faint, lumpy glow given off by the very first objects in the universe may have been detected with the best precision yet, using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. These faint objects might be wildly massive stars or voracious black holes. They are too far away to be seen individually, but Spitzer has captured new, convincing evidence of what appears to be the collective pattern of their infrared light.

The observations help confirm the first objects were numerous in quantity and furiously burned cosmic fuel. (read more)