The National Optical Astronomy Observatory Deep Wide-Field Survey used the
National Science Foundation's 13-foot telescope at Kitt Peak National
Observatory southwest of Tucson, Ariz. WASHINGTON, New results from NASA 's Chandra X-ray
Observatory about the Orion Nebula imply super-flares torched our young solar
system .
The Orion Nebula provides an unparalleled view of 1,400 young stars, 30 of
which are prototypes of the early sun., Italy, France, Germany,
Taiwan, Japan and the Netherlands., was the prime development contractor for the
observatory.

digitised nvss

In the last seven months, the scientists have been
studying the planet to better estimate its size and its motions. Quasars, like
giant light bulbs at the centers of galaxies, are powered by huge black holes.5
billion years.edu.

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The planet is a typical member of the Kuiper belt, but its sheer size in
relation to the nine known planets means that it can only be classified as a
planet, Brown said.
The size of the planet is limited by observations using NASA's Spitzer
Space Telescope, which has already proved its mettle in studying the heat of
dim, faint, faraway objects such as the Kuiper-belt bodies.edu/~mbrown

For information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit:

http://www. James
Houck , lead author of the study.

He is the principal investigator for the international
Chandra Orion Ultradeep Project.

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gov/home/index

Dan
Weedman of Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Galaxies similar to these in dustiness, but much closer to
Earth, were first alluded to in 1983 via observations made by the joint NASA-
European Infrared Astronomical Satellite. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center.
By focusing on the Orion Nebula almost continuously for 13 days , a team of
scientists used Chandra to obtain the deepest X-ray observations ever taken of
any star cluster. This difference may specifically affect
the fate of planets that are relatively small and rocky, like the Earth.

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, on January 8.

For more information see:

http://www. "We can break apart the light from a distant
galaxy using a spectrograph, but only if we see a recognizable signature from
a mineral like silicate, can we figure out the distance to that galaxy,"
Soifer said."
According to recent theoretical work, X-ray flares can create turbulence
when they strike planet-forming disks, and this affects the position of rocky
planets as they form.
Additional information and images pertaining to this research is available at:

http://chandra.

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"We are
getting a unique look at stars between one and 10 million years old -- a time
when planets form. "Stars with smaller flares, on the other
hand , might end up with Earth-like planets plummeting into the star.

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Scientists can infer the size of a solar system object by its brightness,
just as one can infer the size of a faraway light bulb if one knows its
wattage.

NASA'S Spitzer Space Telescope Exposes Dusty Galactic Hideouts

Another mystery is the exceptional brightness of the
galaxies. "This large area took us many months to survey from the ground," said
Dr.
JPL is a division of Caltech.

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The reflectance of the planet is not yet known.nasa., co-author of the study detailing
the discovery. Finding silicate dust at this very early epoch is important for
understanding when planetary systems like our own arose in the evolution of
galaxies," said Dr.

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Another question astronomers would like to address is whether dusty ,
bright galaxies like these eventually evolve into fainter, less murky ones
like our own Milky Way. Such X-ray flares likely affected the planet-forming disk around the
early sun, and may have enhanced the survival chances of Earth."
A key finding is the more violent stars produce flares one hundred times
as energetic as the more docile ones. Specifically, this turbulence can help prevent planets
from rapidly migrating towards the young star.

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"It will be visible with a telescope over the next six months and is
currently almost directly overhead in the early-morning eastern sky , in the
constellation Cetus," said Brown, who made the discovery with colleagues Chad
Trujillo , of the Gemini Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and David
Rabinowitz, of Yale University, New Haven , Conn. It will be published in today's issue of the Astrophysical
Journal Letters.
"This is the furthest back in time silicate dust has been detected around
a galaxy. It
took Spitzer's improved sensitivity, 100 times greater than past missions, to
finally seek out the dusty galaxies at great distances.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., manages the
Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington.
The numerous results from the Chandra Orion Ultradeep Project will appear
in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal Supplement., manages the Chandra
program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate.edu
+
http://chandra.

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Brown, Trujillo and Rabinowitz first photographed the new planet with the
48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope on October 31, 2003.
Where is all this dust coming from? The answer is not quite clear. Astronomers speculate a new breed of unusually dusty quasars, the
most luminous objects in the universe, may be lurking inside. The team compared the thousands of galaxies seen in this
infrared data to the deepest available ground-based optical images of the same
region, obtained by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory Deep Wide-Field
Survey. The team
contains 37 scientists from institutions in the U.

nvss extragalactic

gps. But, they are so far
away and so drenched in dust, it took Spitzer's highly sensitive infrared eyes
to find them. The Orion Nebula is the nearest rich stellar nursery,
located just 1,500 light years away from Earth.
"Big X-ray flares could lead to planetary systems like ours, where Earth
is a safe distance from the sun," said Eric Feigelson of Penn State University
in University Park.

qso isas

Thomas Soifer , study co-author and director of the Spitzer
Science Center, Pasadena, Calif. "These flares may be acting
like a planetary protection program.nasa.

iue faint

"It's definitely bigger than Pluto," said Brown, who is a professor of
planetary astronomy.
"Even if it reflected 100 percent of the light reaching it, it would still
be as big as Pluto," says Brown.
Silicates are sand-like planetary building blocks.caltech.S. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls science and
flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Mass.

redshift elodie

Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena, Calif. "It's possible stars like our sun grew up in dustier,
brighter neighborhoods, but we really don't know. This led to the identification of 31 galaxies that can be seen only by
Spitzer.spitzer.

elodie isas

Because Spitzer is
unable to detect the new planet, the overall diameter must be less than 2,000
miles, said Brown."
Further observations using Spitzer's infrared spectrograph revealed the
presence of silicate dust in 17 of these 31 galaxies.

NASA'S Chandra Observatory Catches X-Ray Super-Flares

"
About half of the young suns in Orion show evidence of planet -forming
disks including four lying at the center of proplyds (proto-planetary disks)
imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

iue ecf

WASHINGTON, A planet larger than Pluto has been
discovered in the outlying regions of the solar system. By studying these galaxies,
we'll get a better idea of our own galaxy's history," said Cornell's Dr. Later, the European Space Agency's
Infrared Space Observatory faintly recorded comparable, nearby objects.
"Although these flares may be creating havoc in the disks, they ultimately
could do more good than harm," said Feigelson. Northrop Grumman,
Redondo Beach, Calif.

spectrograph qso

Y. We had to
wait for Spitzer to peer far enough into the distant universe to find these ,"
he said.

shopbell utr

This charge, combined with motion of
the disk and the effects of magnetic fields, should create turbulence in the
disk.

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WASHINGTON, How do you hide something as big and
bright as a galaxy? You smother it in cosmic dust.
These strange galaxies are among the most luminous in the universe,
shining with the equivalent light of 10 trillion suns. "Past infrared missions hinted at the presence of similarly
dusty galaxies over 20 years ago, but those galaxies were closer. This particular dust
grain is significant, because it is a planetary building block, and it also
helped astronomers determine how far away the galaxies are from Earth.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.

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"I'd say it's probably one and a half times
the size of Pluto, but we're not sure yet of the final size.
"We are 100 percent confident that this is the first object bigger than
Pluto ever found in the outer solar system," Brown added.caltech.
"We are seeing galaxies that are essentially invisible," said Dr.

stsci isas

The planet was discovered using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar
Observatory near San Diego, Calif.
The Cornell-led team first scanned a portion of the night sky for signs of
invisible galaxies using an instrument onboard Spitzer called the multiband
imaging photometer.
Artist's conceptions, images and additional information about the Spitzer
Space Telescope are available at: http://www.gov

supernovae isas

The discovery was announced today by
planetary scientist Dr. Buell Jannuzi, co-principal investigator for the Deep Wide-Field Survey,
"so the dusty galaxies Spitzer found truly are needles in a cosmic haystack.harvard.

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NASA Scientists Discover Tenth Planet

, whose research is partly funded by NASA. However, the object was
so far away that its motion was not detected until they reanalyzed the data in
January of this year.
A name for the new planet has been proposed by the discoverers to the
International Astronomical Union, and they are awaiting the decision of this
body before announcing the name. NASA's Spitzer Space
Telescope saw through the cosmic dust to uncover a hidden population of
monstrously bright galaxies approximately 11 billion light-years away. Dust is
churned out by stars, but it is not known how the dust wound up sprinkled all
around the galaxies.
In this case, the galaxies were dated back to a time when the universe was
only three billion years old, or one-quarter of its present age of 13. Scientists have discovered these young
stars erupt in enormous flares that dwarf, in energy , size and frequency,
anything seen from our sun today.

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Currently about 97 times further from the sun than the
Earth, the planet is the farthest-known object in the solar system, and the
third brightest of the Kuiper belt objects. Scientists can not
yet tell how much light from the sun is reflected away, but the amount of
light the planet reflects puts a lower limit on its size.
"We don't have a time machine to see how the young sun behaved, but the
next best thing is to observe sun-like stars in Orion," said Scott Wolk of
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge , Mass. X-ray flares bombard these disks,
likely giving them an electric charge.