Description of December 31st Radio Show: Latest Astronomy News

Long available here, below is a description of the December 31st episode of this radio show, where I discussed the major Astronomical results to come out in December 2006. They were:

• Solar System News: Recent powerful solar flare produced both neutral and charged particles, first time neutral particles detected from such an event; ESA's Venus Express detects hydrogen leaving Venus's atmosphere from the day-side for the first time - gas appears to be result of water being broken down into hydrogen and oxygen in upper atmosphere, and might explain why there is so little water on Venus; NASA's THEMIS satellites detect the opening of a large hole in the Earth's magnetic field due to the interaction with a clump in the solar wind; NASA instrument on India's Chandrayaan-1 Lunar spacecraft measures changes in chemical composition of lunar surface on small physical scales (link, image); next NASA mission to the Moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Oribter; completes major milestone before April 2009 launch (website); evidence for climate change on Mars resulting from regular changes in the tilt of its orbit around the Sun - deduced from studying patterns of rock layers in a large crater (link); results from ESA's Mars Express satellite suggests that peculiar light-toned deposits result on ground water bursts onto the surface (link); NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter completes primary mission (website), releases new 3D images of surface (link), and found evidence for carbonite on Martian surface which requires the past presence of neutral or basic water on Mars's surface (article); evidence that site of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is currently going through a "dry" phase; next NASA mission to Mars - the Mars Science Laboratory - delayed until late 2011 due to cost over-runs, delay expected to have implications for future planetary missions; ongoing debate whether future joint NASA/ESA Solar System mission should be to Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Titan; recent flybys of Saturn's moon Enceladus by Cassini show continuing activity and of Titan show evidence for volcanos spewing ice in to this moon's atmosphere; Swift satellite detects X-ray emission from Solar System comets (link)
• Wednesday Morning Astronomer: Yes, an ice cream carton hurtling towards the Earth at 99% the speed of light would be a very bad thing (article); no, the astronomical theory for what Voorwerp might be is not an attempt to upstage the Dutch schoolteacher who found it, but is an attempt to understand a still very bizarre object (link); star formation in the universe is actually on a decline, and if the current thinking on the universe is correct, the ultimate fate is a starless night sky - a very depressing prospect indeed (link); and I think it is definitely a good thing that the more we look, the less we understand (link).
• Calendar of upcoming Astronomy/Science events in the greater Poughkeepsie/New York area.
• More News: Evidence that brown dwarfs form like stars not planets (link); up and coming sub-mm radio interferometer ALMA gets its first telescope; astronomers discover the two faintest brown dwarfs known (link); analog to young Sun identified by CoRoT satellite (link); turbulence in proto-planetary disk important in determining how planets form (link); Spitzer images massive stars destroying proto-planetary disks of their neighbors (link); Dutch undergrads discover first extrasolar planet orbiting a fast-rotating star (link); Hubble Space Telescope discovers carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet (link) and measure the size of a different extrasolar planet (link); proposal to look for moons around extrasolar planets through the "wobbles" they create in their orbits (link); new technique proposal to look for water in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet; direct imaging of extrasolar planets is Science magazine's #2 breakthrough of the year; Kepler spacecraft - which will search for Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars - shipped to Florida (just launched last week!!!)

As always, please post below or email any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening!