This composite image shows the central regions of the nearby Circinus galaxy, located about 12 million light years away. Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is shown in blue and data from the Hubble Space Telescope is shown in yellow ("I-band"), red (hydrogen emission), cyan ("V-band") and blue (oxygen emission). The bright, blue source near the lower right hand corner of the image is the supernova SN 1996cr, that has finally been identified over a decade after it exploded.

Optical images from the archives of the Anglo-Australian Telescope in Australia show that SN 1996cr exploded between February 28, 1995 and March 15, 1996. Among the five nearest supernovas of the last 25 years, SN 1996cr is the only one that was not seen shortly after the explosion. It may not have been noticed by astronomers at the time because it was only visible in the southern hemisphere, which is not as widely monitored as the northern.

The supernova was first singled out in 2001 as a bright, variable object in a Chandra image. Despite some exceptional properties, its nature remained unclear until years later, when scientists were able to confirm this object was a supernova. Clues in data from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope led the team to search through data archives from 18 different telescopes, both in space and on the ground, nearly all of which was from archives. This is a remarkable example of the new era of `Internet astronomy'.

The Circinus galaxy is a popular target for astronomers because it contains a supermassive black hole that is actively growing, and it shows vigorous star formation. It is also nearby, at only about 4 times the distance of M31. Therefore, the public archives of telescopes contain abundant data on this galaxy.

Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/Columbia/F.Bauer et al); Optical (NASA/STScI/ UMD/A.Wilson et al.) Read more!

The Ulysses spacecraft, launched in 1990, recently completed its third and final pass over the Sun's polar regions.

European Space Agency

Data from the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission, show the sun has reduced its output of solar wind to the lowest levels since accurate readings became available. The sun's current state could reduce the natural shielding that envelops our solar system.

"The sun's million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system. It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets the galaxy," said Dave McComas, Ulysses' solar wind instrument principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "Ulysses data indicate the solar wind's global pressure is the lowest we have seen since the beginning of the space age."

The sun's solar wind plasma is a stream of charged particles ejected from the sun's upper atmosphere. The solar wind interacts with every planet in our solar system. It also defines the border between our solar system and interstellar space.

This border, called the heliopause, is a bubble-shaped boundary surrounding our solar system where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the wind of other stars. The region around the heliopause also acts as a shield for our solar system, warding off a significant portion of the cosmic rays outside the galaxy.

"Galactic cosmic rays carry with them radiation from other parts of our galaxy," said Ed Smith, NASA's Ulysses project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the heliosphere will diminish in size and strength. If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our solar system."

Galactic cosmic rays are of great interest to NASA. Cosmic rays are linked to engineering decisions for unmanned interplanetary spacecraft and exposure limits for astronauts traveling beyond low-Earth orbit.

In 2007, Ulysses made its third rapid scan of the solar wind and magnetic field from the sun's south to north pole. When the results were compared with observations from the previous solar cycle, the strength of the solar wind pressure and the magnetic field embedded in the solar wind were found to have decreased by 20 percent. The field strength near the spacecraft has decreased by 36 percent.

"The sun cycles between periods of great activity and lesser activity," Smith said. "Right now, we are in a period of minimal activity that has stretched on longer than anyone anticipated."

Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment over the sun's poles. Data Ulysses has returned have forever changed the way scientists view our star and its effects. The venerable spacecraft has lasted more than 17 years, or almost four times its expected mission lifetime. The Ulysses solar wind findings were published in a recent edition of Geophysical Research Letters.

The Ulysses spacecraft was carried into Earth orbit aboard space shuttle Discovery on Oct. 6, 1990. From Earth orbit it was propelled toward Jupiter, passing the planet on Feb. 8, 1992. Jupiter's immense gravity bent the spacecraft's flight path downward and away from the plane of the planets' orbits. This placed Ulysses into a final orbit around the sun that would take it over its north and south poles.

The Ulysses spacecraft was provided by ESA, having been built by Astrium GmbH (formerly Dornier Systems) of Friedrichshafen, Germany. NASA provided the launch vehicle and the upper stage boosters. The U.S. Department of Energy supplied a radioisotope thermoelectric generator to power the spacecraft. Science instruments were provided by U.S. and European investigators. The spacecraft is operated from JPL by a joint NASA-ESA team.

More information about the Ulysses mission is available at http://ulysses.jpl.nasa.gov . Read more!

Dense clusters of crack-like structures called deformation bands form the linear ridges prominent in this image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed hundreds of small fractures exposed on the Martian surface that billions of years ago directed flows of water through underground Martian sandstone.

Researchers used images from the spacecraft's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera. Images of layered rock deposits at equatorial Martian sites show the clusters of fractures to be a type called deformation bands, caused by stresses below the surface in granular or porous bedrock.

"Groundwater often flows along fractures such as these, and knowing that these are deformation bands helps us understand how the underground plumbing may have worked within these layered deposits," said Chris Okubo of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz.

Visible effects of water on the color and texture of rock along the fractures provide evidence that groundwater flowed extensively along the fractures.

"These structures are important sites for future exploration and investigations into the geological history of water and water-related processes on Mars," Okubo and co-authors state in a report published online this month in the Geological Society of America Bulletin.

Deformation band clusters in Utah sandstones, as on Mars, are a few meters or yards wide and up to a few kilometers or miles long. They form from either compression or stretching of underground layers, and can be precursors to faults. The ones visible at the surface have become exposed as overlying layers erode away. Deformation bands and faults can strongly influence the movement of groundwater on Earth and appear to have been similarly important on Mars, according to this study.

"This study provides a picture of not just surface water erosion, but true groundwater effects widely distributed over the planet," said Suzanne Smrekar, deputy project scientist for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Groundwater movement has important implications for how the temperature and chemistry of the crust have changed over time, which in turn affects the potential for habitats for past life."

The recent study focuses on layered deposits in Mars' Capen crater, approximately 70 kilometers (43 miles) in diameter and 7 degrees north of the equator. This formerly unnamed crater became notable due to this discovery of deformation bands within it and was recently assigned a formal name. The crater was named for the late Charles Capen, who studied Mars and other objects as an astronomer at JPL's Table Mountain Observatory in Southern California and at Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz.

The HiRISE camera is one of six science instruments on the orbiter. It can reveal smaller details on the surface than any previous camera to orbit Mars. The orbiter reached Mars in March 2006 and has returned more data than all other current and past missions to Mars combined.

The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver built the spacecraft. The University of Arizona operates the HiRISE camera, built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corp. of Boulder, Colo.

Images of the deformation band clusters and additional information about the mission are on the Internet at: http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov .
Read more!

On September 17th, the International Astronomical Union announced that an object in the Kuiper Belt — the fifth solar-system body large enough to qualify as a "dwarf planet" — had been named. It'll be called Haumea (pronounced how-MAY-uh), after the goddess of childbirth and fertility in Hawaiian mythology.

But there's far more to the story. When it comes to naming Kuiper Belt objects, the IAU typically accommodates whatever's suggested by the discoverer(s). In the case of Haumea, formerly designated 2003 EL₆₁ and now formally numbered minor planet 136108, there's debate — controversy, actually — over who discovered it.

The shape of Haumea (formerly 2003 EL₆₁) is roughly 1,960 by 1,000 km — making it a fast-rotating squashed football. Its two satellites are Hi'iaka and Namaka.

NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

Haumea is the name suggested by Michael Brown (Caltech), who together with Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz spotted it on December 28, 2004. But Brown didn't report his team's observations right away to the IAU's clearinghouse for such discoveries, the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as he explains on his website. Instead, he and others continued to scrutinize this relatively bright and thus sizable body — learning a month later, for example, that it had a moon. (They eventually found a second moon as well.)

In July 2005, just as Brown was preparing to announce all this, Spanish astronomers Pablo Santos-Sanz and José Luis Ortiz Moreno sent the MPC some observations of the same object taken two years earlier at little-known Sierra Nevada Observatory. What's become clear since then is that the Spaniards accessed the American team's publicly accessible observing records 39 hours before submitting their discovery claim to the MPC but, they insist, after deducing the existence of 2003 EL₆₁ themselves.

To recap: Brown's team chanced upon the object first, but the Spanish observers reported its discovery first. There's still bad blood over this, and it's not likely to be resolved soon. For now, the MPC's record for asteroid 136108 lists "Sierra Nevada" as both the discoverer(s) and the discovery site, though those details are omitted from Haumea's official naming citation. But you won't find the discoverers' names listed next to Sierra Nevada (which is apparently how the Spaniards wanted it).

So why didn't 2003 EL₆₁ get christened Ataecina, the name suggested by Ortiz and his colleagues? Ataecina was a goddess worshiped by ancient inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula, and she was usually associated to Proserpina, Roman goddess of the underworld. Therein lies the problem: by IAU convention, deities of the underworld are reserved for objects in Pluto-like orbits (in resonance with Neptune), which 2003 EL₆₁ is not.

Brown's team proposed not only Haumea but also Hi'iaka and Namaka (two of Haumea's many children) for the two moons. It all fits together nicely.

But there's been plenty of behind-the-scenes rancor about how these names gained approval. Two groups, the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature and the Committee for Small-Body Nomenclature, were under pressure from IAU general secretary General Secretary Karel van der Hucht to resolve the 2003 EL₆₁ naming issue quickly. However, the CSBN's vote on Haumea ended in a tie or at best a slim majority, depending on who's doing the tallying (some of its members sit on the WGPSN as well).

Since the IAU wasn't bound to accept the name proposed by either team, one wonders why the WGPSN and CSBN didn't work harder to come up with something more politically neutral.

Oh, by the way, here's a question for any CSBN or WGPSN members who happen to read this: Is Ceres a dwarf planet? I know that was the IAU's intention when the controversial Pluto votes were cast back in 2006 — but unless I'm missing something, the approved resolutions never mention Ceres. Read more!

September 15, 2008—An image released today of a distant star and its potential planetary companion could go down in history as the first picture of a planet outside our solar system orbiting a sunlike star.

The possible planet—a hot, young body (upper left) about eight times more massive than Jupiter—sits roughly 330 times as far from its host star as Earth is from the sun. The pair lies about 500 light-years from Earth.

In 2004 a European team took the first direct snapshot of a likely planet near a brown dwarf, a dim object that astronomers think is a type of failed star. But scientists have been able to "see" extrasolar planets near sunlike stars only by looking for their gravitational effects.

Now scientists at the University of Toronto have captured infrared images of a so-called normal star and its potential orbiter using a ground-based telescope at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.

(Related: "Three 'Super-Earths' Found Orbiting Sunlike Star" [June 16, 2008].)

The researchers note that they aren't sure whether the body is really a planet or some other type of planetlike object, and it remains to be seen if it is truly orbiting the star.

"If we confirm that this object is indeed gravitationally tied to the star, it will be a major step forward," lead study author David Lafrenière said in a press release. The Toronto team describes its work in a paper recently published online.

—Victoria Jaggard Read more!

The past decade has seen so many incredible advances in astronomy that it would be hard to single out one as standing above the others. But near the top of my list is the work by Andrea Ghez (UCLA) and her colleagues to measure the mass of the Milky Way’s central black hole. In a paper posted on the Web last week, they derive a new and improved mass for our galaxy's monster in the middle.

The team’s pure measurement yields a mass of 4.1 million Suns with an uncertainty of only 0.6 million Suns. But if the black hole is assumed to be stationary with respect to the rest of the galaxy (and there's no evidence otherwise), its mass rises a bit to 4.5 million Suns with an uncertainty of only 0.4 million. This latter result is significantly higher than previous measurements made by Ghez’s team and by a European group led by Reinhard Genzel (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany).

A black hole of that mass has a diameter of 0.1 astronomical unit (about 9 million miles).

Why is this measurement so amazing? The center of the Milky Way is 27,000 light-years away, and it's hidden behind thick clouds of gas and dust along our line of sight. How do you measure the mass of an invisible object tens of thousands of light-years from Earth when even its surroundings are obscured from view?

Ghez and her team had to employ all the resources of modern astronomy: a really big telescope, detectors that operate in the infrared, and the relatively recent technology of adaptive optics (AO for short). Oh yeah, they also needed a lot of patience.

For the past decade, they have been observing the galactic center with the 10-meter Keck I and II telescopes in Hawaii. Keck gives them the brute-force light-gathering power to see stars in the galactic center. They observe at infrared wavelengths, which can penetrate the thick clouds of gas and dust. And most of all, they use AO, which involves a laser-generated artificial guide star and flexible, deformable mirrors to compensate for the rapid-fire blurring effects of Earth’s atmosphere.

The combination of these techniques allowed the group to resolve dozens of individual stars near the galactic center. Incredibly, the team could trace the curving orbital motions of several of these stars over more than a decade, and actually create a movie of these motions. Astronomers of just 25 years ago would have considered this magic.

The high mass of the Milky Way’s black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star"), made this possible. Anything orbiting near such a massive object is going to move really, really fast. These stars are whirling around the black hole at speeds exceeding 4,500 km per second (10 million miles per hour). One star in particular, dubbed S0-2, has been clocked at nearly 8,000 km/sec. By using simple orbital laws dating back to Isaac Newton in the 1600s, Ghez could use these stellar velocities to derive the mass of the central gravitating object.

In their new paper (accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal), Ghez and her team took into account various effects, such as uncertainties in star positions, ignored by in previous studies. “It’s been a bit like teenagers making emphatic but uninformed statements,” explains Ghez. “In our new paper, we try to take an honest look at where the problems are. We’ve learned that things are more complicated. We’re growing out of our teenage years!”

Besides coming up with a more precise mass measurement, the latest observations refine the distance to the Milky Way’s center: 27,400 light-years, with an uncertainty of 1,300 light-years.

In addition, the group finds no evidence that the central black hole is being gravitationally yanked around by the mass of another. This argues in favor of the team’s higher mass measurement. This new, higher mass value is also more consistent with predictions based on the famous relationship between black-hole mass and the total mass in the spherical component of large galaxies. Read more!

This illustration depicts the two jets shooting outward from the center of a collapsing star: a thin jet inside a wider one. Collisions within the jet produce a gamma-ray burst. Click on the image for a movie.

NASA / Swift / Cruz deWilde.

As if gamma-ray bursts weren't nasty enough, astronomers announced today that the brightest GRB ever seen shot a double-barrel blast toward Earth at near-light speed. One jet was incredibly narrow, and was nested inside a wider jet. It's like shooting a gun with a deadly laser beam embedded within a lethal spray of buckshot.

The evidence for this double-barrel blast comes from a gamma-ray burst detected by NASA's Swift satellite on March 19, 2008. GRBs are intense explosions that appear about once per day from random directions in space. Most GRBs occur when the core of a massive star collapses to form a black hole. Infalling stellar gas forms a disk around the black hole, and some of that material is shot away from the black hole in two jets traveling in opposite directions at near the speed of light. These jets can be likened to cosmic blowtorches whose energy boggles the imagination. For several seconds to several minutes, the gamma rays from these jets can greatly outshine an entire galaxy's worth of stars.

Normally, GRBs are detected in gamma rays and X rays. Eventually, the jets slam into surrounding gas clouds and dissipate their energy, generating an afterglow that astronomers can detect in visible light or in X rays. This optical emission is extremely faint and comes many minutes or hours after the burst itself. But in this March 19th burst, optical telescopes recorded a flaring source that peaked at about magnitude 5.3, visible to the naked eye from a dark site. If this doesn't sound particularly bright, then consider the distance — the GRB took place 7.5 billion years ago, effectively halfway across the visible universe. In other words, we are looking so far back in space and time that the star exploded several billion years before the solar system had even formed! For about 40 seconds, the GRB's optical flash was by far and away the most distant object that could be seen with the naked eye.

The immediate and obvious question was, "Why was this burst so bright?" In a paper published in the September 11th issue of Nature, Judith Racusin (Penn State University) and 92 coauthors provide an answer. The Swift satellite usually detects evidence of one jet slamming into nearby gas clouds and breaking up. But in this case, Swift found two "jet breaks," one from a very narrow jet and one from a much wider jet. The narrow jet has an opening angle of just 0.4 degrees, whereas the the wider jet had an angle of about 8 degrees. The GRB was so bright because the narrow jet was aimed exactly toward Earth. Swift's observations indicate that the particles in the narrow jet traveled at an astounding 99.99995% the speed of light.

As Racusin explains, "If the narrow jet was not pointed at us, we would not have seen its signature." A jet this narrow is so pencil thin that a satellite like Swift might see just one per decade. Since very few GRBs would be so perfectly aligned to aim their narrow jets toward Earth, this implies that most or all GRBs produce a narrow jet within a wider jet. (And since GRBs probably produce jets that shoot away in opposite directions, they are actually producing two narrow jets inside wider jets.)

GRBs were already known to contain staggering amounts of energy. But Racusin adds, "If all GRBs do have these narrow jets, it could potentially double (or more) the amount of energy that would be emitted by these explosions." Such a jet aimed at Earth from a collapsing star in our Milky Way Galaxy would seriously damage our atmosphere, perhaps triggering a mass extinction. Fortunately, only a tiny percentage of stars generate GRBs, and it's extraordinarily unlikely that one would occur in our galaxy with the perfect geometry to aim the barrel of the gun directly at Earth. GRBs are indeed nasty critters, but despite what you might have seen in sensationalist TV shows, they pose such a negligible threat to humanity that you should not lose any sleep over them. Still, we can marvel at Mother Nature's creativity and fury. Read more!

International Team of Astronomers Finds Missing Link

---

VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - Sept. 4, 2008) - Astronomers have spotted a surprising asteroid, whose unusual orbit may help explain where comets come from. The asteroid, currently named 2008 KV42, is orbiting the Sun backwards and almost perpendicular to the orbits of the planets - a 104 degree tilt. This odd orbit suggests that 2008 KV42 may have been pulled into our solar system from the Oort Cloud. Comets can originate in the Oort Cloud and this discovery may finally show how they transition from the Oort Cloud to become objects like Halley's Comet.

The orbits of asteroids in the region beyond Neptune's orbit provide important clues as to how the outer Solar System took form and evolved. Discoveries of new classes of objects have led to fresh insights into the early history of our solar system, challenging accepted theories. The discovery of 2008 KV42, the first-ever object in this region to be detected with a backwards (retrograde) orbit, promises to do just that.

"Although we've been specifically looking for highly-tilted trans- Neptunians for some time now, we didn't expect to find a retrograde one," said Dr. JJ Kavelaars of the National Research Council of Canada. "A number of theories on the formation of the outer solar system have suggested that such things might be out there, but observational searches for them are very difficult."

Part of the difficulty is that these objects are extremely rare. Despite having surveyed most of the northern sky for bright objects of this type, astronomers have found only one other that might belong to the same class as 2008 KV42. Discovered six years ago by the Deep Ecliptic Survey, 2002 XU93 has an orbit on a 77 degree tilt.

One of the great frustrations for researchers looking into the solar region beyond Neptune has been trying to pin down the source regions for various comet types. Finding objects that provide a link between the source region and the observed comet population is an enormous help in choosing between the source regions, greatly clarifying our understanding of the formation of the outer solar system.

This discovery was made using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, with follow-up observations provided by the MMT telescope in Arizona, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) 4- metre telescope in Chile, and the Gemini South telescope, also in Chile, of Canada's Gemini Observatory. The discovery team consists of scientists in Canada, France, and the United States.

"Having quick access to the MMT and Gemini South telescopes, via the generous support of the observers at MMT and the Canadian Director of Gemini South, Jean-Rene Roy, was a huge help here. Given the highly unusual orbit, the object would have been lost without the critical tracking contribution of these large telescopes," said Dr. Brett Gladman, an astronomy professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia.

The discovery team is currently planning follow-up observations of 2008 KV42 to pin down its orbit with greater precision. The exciting work of unravelling the archaeological information trapped in the orbit of this highly exceptional member of the trans- Neptunian population can then begin.

BACKGROUNDER

The discovery of 2008 KV42 was announced at the 10th triennial' "Asteroids, Comets and Meteors" meeting in Baltimore and via the Minor Planet Electronic Circular 2008-O02 on July 16, 2008, and International Astronomical Union electronic circular 8960 on July 18, 2008. Recent observations taken with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope have further refined our knowledge of the orbit, securing this as a possible link between the inner Oort cloud and the Halley- type comets.

With a semi- major axis of 46 +/- 5 AU, 2008 KV42 was discovered while at a distance of 32 AU and has a perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) at roughly the distance of Uranus Read more!

NGC 6543: The Cat's Eye Nebula Redux

07.30.08

This composite of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope is a new look for NGC 6543, better known as the Cat's Eye nebula. This famous object is a so-called planetary nebula that represents a phase of stellar evolution that the Sun should experience several billion years from now. When a star like the sun begins to run out of fuel, it becomes what is known as a red giant. In this phase, a star sheds some of its outer layers, eventually leaving behind a hot core that collapses to form a dense white dwarf star. A fast wind emanating from the hot core rams into the ejected atmosphere, pushes it outward, and creates the graceful filamentary structures seen with optical telescopes.

Chandra's X-ray data (colored in blue) of NGC 6543 shows that its central star is surrounded by a cloud of multi-million-degree gas. By comparing where the X-rays lie in relation to the structures seen in optical light by Hubble (red and purple), astronomers were able to deduce that the chemical abundances in the region of hot gas were like those in the wind from the central star and different from the outer cooler material. In the case of the Cat's Eye, material shed by the star is flying away at a speed of about 4 million miles per hour. The star itself is expected to collapse to become a white dwarf star in a few million years.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI Read more!

A competition to find a European name for De Winne's mission to the ISS

ESA looks for a name for its next long-term mission to the ISS

11 September 2008
In May 2009, ESA astronaut Frank De Winne, of Belgian nationality and a member of the European Astronaut Corps, will fly to the International Space Station for a six-month mission. ESA is holding a competition to find a name for the mission.

During his stay on the ISS, De Winne will conduct scientific experiments developed by scientists from different European countries and others worldwide. In addition he will also perform technology demonstrations and an education programme.

De Winne's ISS mission reflects the long-term commitment of Europe to human spaceflight and exploration. ESA's participation in the ISS programme is a stepping stone for Europe in human exploration of the Universe.

After delivering the Columbus laboratory and successfully launching the first ATV, Jules Verne, Europe is well placed to play an essential role in the upcoming international space exploration missions to orbital outposts, e.g. ISS, the Moon and beyond. The next long-term mission of Frank De Winne to the ISS helps to prepare space exploration and benefits life on Earth.

In preparation for De Winne's flight, ESA launches a competition to find a European name for its next long-term mission to the ISS. The competition is open to all citizens of the ESA Member States*, who are invited to propose a name for De Winne’s mission. The winning name will become the official European name of the mission and the winner will receive a frame with the mission logo signed by European astronauts.


How to participate

The name has to reflect the following aspects:

• Europe is exploring space
  Humans are explorers by nature. Europe has a legacy in exploring Earth and will live up to the expectations in exploring space.
• Europe has its own Columbus laboratory permanently in space
  Europe uses its Columbus laboratory on the ISS for science, technology and education for the benefit of life on Earth.
• From space our planet looks blue because of the water
  Water is the basis of life. Clean water is the basis for healthy life of all humans on Earth.

Conditions

• The proposal should contain the name and an explanation why this would be an appropriate name for an ESA human mission to space.
• The proposal has to illustrate the above messages.
• The proposal should be maximum one A4 page, 12 pt, single space.
• The name should be a word (or a short combination of words), not a personal name (unless it is a mythological name which has a commonly known symbolic meaning).
• The proposals should be submitted via email to mission.name@esa.int. The proposal can be written in the body of the email or in an attached Word document. The attachment should not exceed 3 MB.
• Regardless of the email address you are using for the submission, please write in your email your real full name, age, home address and phone number. This is very important – we need to be able to contact you if you win.
• Please put 'Mission Name Competition' into the subject line of the email. This would allow us to make sure that your email does not accidentally get lost in the spam filter.
• The proposals have to arrive in the mission.name@esa.int mailbox the latest by 18:00 CEST, 15 October 2008. ESA bears no responsibility for any delay or loss of email.
• The proposals should be submitted in English language. If you are having doubts about the fluency of your English writing, please go ahead and submit your proposal nevertheless. As long as the idea is interesting and understandable it will be considered. If you win, the editorial help for final publication will be provided.
• The winning proposal will be published on the ESA web site in November 2008 with the announcement of the name of the winner and possibly with the link to the winners’ web site.
• By submitting the application, the applicant gives permission to ESA to publish their name and hands over to ESA all the rights to use the proposal for the purposes outlined in this announcement and for purposes related to ESA communications.
• All submissions are individual. No group submissions will be accepted.
• By submitting the proposal, the participant declares that this is their own work and is not copied from any other original work. ESA bears no responsibility for verifying the authenticity of the proposals.
• For applicants below age of 18, by submitting the proposal they confirm that a parent/legal guardian is informed about the submission and agreed to it, taking into account the above conditions.
• ESA staff members and their relatives are not allowed to take part in this competition.

* Residents of the following states are allowed to participate in the competition: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Read more!

Archaeological Survey of Ceylon

North-Central and Central Provinces.

Annual Report

1901

by H. C. P. Bell C.C.S.,

Archaeological Commissioner

Ordered by his excellency the G

overnor to be Printed.

Colombo: LIII - 1907 CEYLON.

Printed by H. C. Cottle, Gov

ernment Printer, Ceylon.

Upon the completion of the three groups of ruined buildings situated immediately east of Ruwanveli Dagaba excavations were transferred to a fresh locality, about a mile to the south-west of the Udamaluwa (Sacred Bo Tree enclosure), containing ruins of an entirely different character from any yet exploited.
A ridge of granitic formation can easily be traced running on from the Vessagiri Rocks northwards, past Isuruminiya, below the bund of Tisavewa. Thence it crosses the Anuradhapura-Puttalam Road, and bisects the Mirisavetiya area and Basawakkulam tank; and trends ever north through the western portion ("Galge" and other rocks)+ of the Lankarama and Jetawanarama areas.
The portion of the ridge just beyond the northern confines of Isurumuniya Rock Temple lies at the very foot of the embankment of the tank (Tisavewa), and is marked by a line of rocks of less magnitude than the Isurumuniya boulders.
The rocks are mostly crowded together into two clusters (Y, Z), both resting upon the narrow ...leba.... ridge.
The ..... ...... separate entity consist of caves, structural buildings, and three exceptionally fine pokunu formed of dressed stone, the whole belonging either to the Isurumuniya sangharamaya or to a sister monastery adjoining it. The ruins at this ancient site, though comparatively isolated did not escape considerable modification by later time additions, into which brick and mortar freely entered.

Behind the pansala, south-west, is the second line of boulders (Z), separated from the bathing-house and northern cluster of rocks (Y) by 10 yards of open space. These southerly boulders, four or five in all, are both more massive and taller than those of the other group. The most southerly exhibits rectangular grooves of some building which once crowned its summit; both faces of two boulders, overhanging west and east, were adapted as cave shelters.

The Site of the Sakwala Chakraya on the bund of Tisavewa in Anuradhapura, Lanka.

Text on this page extracted from an original copy of Annual Report.

The site is unmarked and unknown to most tourist guides. Maybe it should remain that way until properly protected.

Cave No 2 lies beneath the west face of the penultimate rock forming its back and roof and floor. It was entered by a few steps leading down from the rock ridge.
A worn, and hardly recognizable asanaya of bricks rests against the rock at back. To the left (north) of this seat, or alter, is cut shallowly on the steeply projecting rock face a great chakra, or circle 6 ft in diameter, scored by rectangular divisions containing figures (mostly small circles), the whole girt, as a tyred wheel, by a band on which is displayed variant piscine and crustacean life swimming round from right to left.
The centre of the chakra is filled by a large circle comprising seven concentric rings, within a square 1 ft 2 in., to which cross lines are drawn vertically and horizontally from the encircling hand, cutting the chakra into quadrants. Further, parallel lines divide the circles vertically into ten strips, or slices, varying in width from 3 in. to 9 in., but matching to left and right of the central vertical line.
All strips but the outer two are bisected by the horizontal base line and subdivided into dual or quadripartite partitions The outermost strips, unbisected, contain a single small circle, quadrisected by cross lines, and a figure of phallic suggestion. In each of the penultimate divisions right and left is a tiny circle in line with the horizontal bisection of the chakra, but nothing else. In the third pair are shown four more quadrisected circles, two and two, one in each of the upper and lower partitions left and right. The fourth strip to right contains four more such circles, bigger, and each in a separate partition. But that to left has compressed its circles into a quadripartite panel below the horizontal base line; leaving the upper panel free for four distinct diagrams - second seven.ringed circle (differing only in size from its larger counterpart in the centre of the chakra), beneath which are two umbrella~like emblems, and a pinnated three.forked figure -the whole interwined by a fret. Each of the eight divisions of the fifth strips, which meet as one broad band, above and below the concentric ringed circle on either side of the central vertical line of the chakra holds one of the small circles with cross lines ; the two left upper partitions containing also a square and a wavy diagonal line. Outside all these divisions is the 4 in tyre or band bounding the chakra.

This weird circular diagram, incised on the bare rock -even more unique in a way than the elephant bas-reliefs of Pokuna A-may with every show of reason claim to be an old-time cosmographical chart illustrating in naivest simplicity the Buddhistic notions of the universe.
The concentric circles with their interspaces at the centre of the chakra can assuredly mean only the Sakvala, in the centre of which rises Maha Meru, surrounded by the seven seas (Sidanta) and walls of rock (Yugandhara, &c.) which shut in that fabulous mountain, l,680,000 miles in height, half below, half above, the ocean's surface. Sun and moon (in the second strips) lie on either side of the Sakvala : round about in space are scattered innumerable other worlds represented by quadrisected circles.* Below and around is the "world of waters" (i.e., the circular band) in which swarm gigantic uncouth denizens-fish, turtle, crab, chank, and other marine fauna. !
This ancient " map of the world"-perhaps the oldest in existence is of quite extraordinary interest. Its presence here, within an eremite's cave at an out-of-the way nook of ancient Anuradhapura, testifies to the antiquity of that astronomical lore still pursued in some of the Buddhist monasteries of Ceylon.

No inscriptions occur at any of the caves; nor have any been discovered anywhere among these ruins.

Read more!