On Friday, 2008 August 01, a total eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half the Earth. The path of the Moon's umbral shadow begins in Canada and extends across northern Greenland, the Arctic, central Russia, Mongolia, and China. A partial eclipse is seen within the much broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes northeastern North America, most of Europe and Asia.

 

Professor Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge, granted an exclusive television interview to WITS Professor David Block and former Cabinet Minister Pik Botha, during his recent visit to South Africa. The interview will be televised on the programme 50/50 Monday, July 7, SABC2, at 19:30. read more... 

More than 800,000 frames from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope were stitched together to create this infrared portrait of dust and stars radiating in the inner Milky Way.
As inhabitants of a flat galactic disk, Earth and its solar system have an edge-on view of their host galaxy, like looking at a glass dish from its edge. From our perspective, most of the galaxy is condensed into a blurry narrow band of light that stretches completely around the sky, also known as the galactic plane.
In this mosaic the galactic plane is broken up into five components: the far-left side of the plane (top image); the area just left of the galactic center (second to top); galactic center (middle); the area to the right of galactic center (second to bottom); and the far-right side of the plane (bottom). From Earth, the top two panels are visible to the northern hemisphere, and the bottom two images to the southern hemisphere. Together, these panels represent more than 50 percent of our entire Milky Way galaxy.

 

NOTICE: to all members of ASSA National:
Please exercise your vote for committee members for ASSA Council by supplying your nomination (after checking with the nominee) or second a nominee,  by 15 June,  for ASSA Council by mailing ASSA Secretary Laurie Simone mail to: picodot@mweb.co.za  Review the latest nomination here

 

This image shows a ghostly ring extending seven light-years across around the corpse of a massive star. The collapsed star, called a magnetar, is located at the exact center of this image. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope imaged the mysterious ring around magnetar SGR 1900+14 in infrared light. The magnetar itself is not visible in this image, as it has not been detected at infrared wavelengths (it has been seen in X-ray light).

Magnetars are formed when a giant star ends its life in a supernova explosion, leaving behind a super dense neutron star with an incredibly strong magnetic field. The ring seen by Spitzer could not have formed during the original explosion, as any material as close to the star as the ring would have been disrupted by the supernova shock wave. Scientists suspect that the ring my actually be the edges of a bubble that was hollowed out by an explosive burst from the magnetar in 1998. The very bright region near the center of the image is a cluster of young stars, which may be illuminating the inner edge of the bubble, making it look like a ring in projection.

This composite image was taken using all three of Spitzer's science instruments. The blue color represents 3.6-micron infrared light taken by the infrared array camera, green is 16-micron light from the infrared spectograph, and red is 24-micron radiation from the multiband imaging photometer.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

 

The world’s most famous scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking, today met with former President Nelson Mandela for the first time.

Professor Hawking is in South Africa to launch the Next Einstein initiative, to discover and nurture maths and science talent all over Africa. The initiative builds on the success of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, AIMS, a pan-African centre for postgraduate training and research, based in Muizenberg, Cape Town. AIMS has so far graduated 160 young scientists from 30 African countries and an additional 53 students, including 20 women, are currently completing the programme. read more ...

The ASSA Johannesburg Centre is delighted to host the ASSA AGM on Saturday 26 July at 4pm at the Johannesburg Observatory.

After the AGM formal proceedings there will be refreshments and viewing through the Innes Telescope. 

 

A gigantic stellar explosion detected March 19 by has shattered the record for the furthest object visible with the naked eye, scientists say—halfway across the known universe.

Sadly, the show lasted only hours. But “if someone just happened to be looking at the right place at the right time, they saw the most distant object ever seen by human eyes without optical aid” on record, said Stephen Holland of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. read more ...

World renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking from Cambridge University, physics Nobel laureates David Gross and George Smoot, and NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, are among an international group of physicists and mathematicians who will visit South Africa in May 2008. read more ...

Find more information about the recent book published on 100 years of the Union Observatory in Johannesburg, called "Living Amongst the Stars", by Dirk Vermeulen. read more ...