Universe Today : TV Review: Race to Mars

Written by Mark Mortimer

The red planet is so close we can almost taste it. Probes, landers and robots extend our reach into its exotic terrain. To tease us even more, Discovery Channel is running the show 'Race to Mars'. In it, people take the first footfall onto the Martian surface.

Succinctly blending space opera with the trials of experienced at the Devon Island analogue, the producers of this television show demonstrate the beauty, challenges and rewards of sending people to explore the Martian surface. A spacecraft tumbling through space catapults the audience into inter-planetary transit. The craft gliding soundlessly through its orbit above the Martian surface readies us for the crescendo of landing. Determination and destiny guide the occupants as would only happen for the thoroughly committed.

Within this vessel, six people from many nations represent an harmonious humanity of Earth in 2029. Three preceding craft brought infrastructure and support to the fourth planet of our solar system. Thus, for this show, all is in place for a simple and easy voyage and arrival. Yet, as to be expected with the real event, and this documentary, stuff happens. Machinery fails, tempers flare, and a whole new climate plays upon the senses of the new arrivals. The voyage, as incredible as it is on its own, is just part of the show's offerings.

But, this show is listed as a documentary. Hence, as no ones visited Mars, at least yet there is room for conjecture. Nevertheless, it's obvious much homework's been done. A false gravity, self aware computer system and transmission time delays make the sets and events seem immediate and real. We, the audience, watch over the explorers' shoulders as footfalls strike the surface, romance sparks and harm strikes. With this being a television show, such additions are necessary but they add rather than detract from the believability.

And this ring of truth is what makes this show so watchable. We expect and need drama. We appreciate the science and engineering challenges. We believe in the undertaking. Mars is an appropriate destination and we can strive for it. The show 'Race to Mars' is one more contribution to helping point the way. Next week's conclusion won't come soon enough and the ending of this show will come all too soon.

The show is currently broadcast on the Discovery Channel in Canada, but it will likely make its way into other markets soon enough.

Visit the Race to Mars site.

Universe Today : NASA Dreams Up Exotic Earth-Sized Planets

Written by Fraser Cain

Science fiction writers have been imagining other worlds for years, and now they're going to get a little scientific help, thanks to NASA. The agency recently modeled a range of roughly Earth-sized planets, from the familiar to the exotic. Instead of thinking just about planets with Earthlike characteristics, they imagined every possible kind of planet that might exist around other worlds. This should keep the writers busy.

We're not talking about familiar looking planets, with strange surface features and aliens with pointed ears here, we're talking about the very extremes of planetary formation: pure water ice, carbon, iron, silicate, carbon monoxide, and silicon carbide, and others which could be mixtures of these various compounds.

The team eventually came up with 14 different types of solid planets that might exist. "We have learned that extrasolar giant planets often differ tremendously from the worlds in our solar system, so we let our imaginations run wild and tried to cover all the bases with our models of smaller planets," said NASA's Marc Kuchner. "We can make educated guesses about where these different kinds of planets might be found. For example, carbon planets and carbon-monoxide planets might favor evolved stars such as white dwarfs and pulsars, or they might form in carbon-rich disks like the one around the star Beta Pictoris. But ultimately, we need observations to give us the answers."

They calculated how gravity should compress planets of varying composition. For example, a pure water planet would be about the same size as the Earth, while an iron planet would be a third our size.

The researchers are hoping their calculations will help future planet hunters identify new discoveries. When powerful planet finders, such as ESA's Corot mission start making discoveries, astronomers will be working hard to categorize what they're looking at, based only on the mass and size. Even more powerful observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope will let astronomers actually measure the chemical constituents of a planet, and help reveal if we're looking at a sphere of carbon or water ice.

Their paper will appear in the October 20th issue of the Astrophysical journal.

Original Source: NASA News Release

Universe Today : Searching for Objects Even Stranger Than Black Holes

Written by Fraser Cain

Black holes are already plenty bizarre. Imagine all the mass of several suns compressed down into an object of potentially infinitely small size. But what if you could find an object that's even stranger: a theoretical "naked singularity"; a black hole spinning so quickly that it lacks an event horizon. A point in space where the density is infinite, yet still visible from the outside.

Here's the current thinking on black holes. They're formed when a large star collapses in on itself, lacking the outward pressure to counteract the inward pull of gravity. Once the object reaches a certain size its pull becomes so great that nothing, not even light can escape. The black hole surrounds itself in a shroud of darkness called the event horizon. Any object or radiation that passes through this event horizon is inevitably sucked down into the black hole. And that's why they're thought to be black.

But what if that's not always correct? What if there are circumstances where black holes might not be black at all? It would take some serious spinning, however.

All the black holes discovered so far are thought to be spinning, sometimes more than 1,000 times a second. But in theory, if you could get a black hole spinning ludicrously fast, so that the angular momentum of its spin overcomes the gravitational pull of its mass, it should be able to shed its event horizon. A black hole with 10 times the mass of our Sun would need to be spinning a few thousand times a second.

And here's the cool part. According to researchers from Duke University and Cambridge, an object spinning like this should be detectable by its gravitational lensing. This is where a massive object, like a black hole, acts like a natural lens to focus the light from a more distant object. If the researchers are right, astronomers should be able to see a telltale signature on the lensed light using existing instruments (or those coming soon).

Their research was published in the September 24th issue of the research journal Physical Review D.

Original Source: Duke University News Release

Uniberse Today : Dangerous Microbes Toughen Up in Space

Written by Fraser Cain

Well this news can't be good. While human bodies tend to get weaker during long duration spaceflight, dangerous microbes just get feistier, returning to Earth even more infectious. A colony of Salmonella typhimurium, the main culprit in food poisoning, flew aboard the space shuttle Atlantis last year. They came back three times more likely to cause disease when compared to control bacteria on the ground.

The discovery was made by researchers from Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute. Back in September 2006, they included a special experiment flown during the space shuttle Atlantis' mission STS-115. Don't worry, the bacteria were placed in three layers of containment to keep the crew safe. At the same time, a control experiment was maintained here on Earth.

The microbes were activated when they were pushed into a special growth chamber containing the nutrients they needed to multiply. They grew for 24 hours, and then astronaut Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper pushed a plunger on the experiment that halted their growth, and preserved them. Another group of bacteria got fresh nutrients, so they could continue to grow and multiply.

Once the bacteria were returned to Earth, researchers measured the bacteria's gene and protein expression, and calculated their virulence. They found that the space traveling bacteria had changed expression of 167 genes. And they found that the bacteria was 3 times as likely to cause disease in animals (we probably don't want to know how they tested this) as the bacteria grown on the ground.

Why is this happening? The scientists aren't sure. They have ruled out the near zero-gravity, though. Their best explanation is a poorly understood phenomenon called fluid shear. This is the force of liquid passing over the cells. In microgravity, this fluid shear is very low, similar to the environment of the gastrointestinal track.

As frightening as this sounds, there should be a silver lining here. Salmonella is a particularly nasty strain of bacteria. Learning how it responded to spaceflight should give researchers valuable clues to how it grows and generates its dangerous toxin.

Original Source: ASU News Release

Earth Observatory : International Space Station from Space Shuttle Endeavour

Click here to view full image (105 kb)

The crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour took this spectacular image of the International Space Station during the STS118 mission, August 8–21, 2007. The image was acquired by an astronaut through one of the crew cabin windows, looking back over the length of the Shuttle. Endeavour had undocked from the International Space Station, and the crew had begun late inspection of the orbiter’s Thermal Protection System (wing leading edges, nosecap, and belly tiles) prior to landing. The late inspection is performed using sensors mounted on the Orbiter Boom Sensor System, and the goal is to assess whether micrometeorite or orbiting debris have compromised the Thermal Protection System of the Shuttle while it was docked with the International Space Station.

This oblique (looking at an angle from vertical, rather than straight down towards the Earth) image was acquired almost one hour after late inspection activities had begun. The sensor head of the Orbiter Boom Sensor System is visible at image top left. The entire Space Station is visible at image bottom center, set against the backdrop of the Ionian Sea approximately 330 kilometers below it. Other visible features of the southeastern Mediterranean region include the toe and heel of Italy’s “boot” at image lower left, and the western coastlines of Albania and Greece, which extend across image center. Farther towards the horizon, the Aegean and Black Seas are also visible.

Featured astronaut photograph STS118-E-9469 was acquired by the STS-118 crew on August 19, 2007, with a Kodak 760C digital camera using a 28 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory at Johnson Space Center. The image in this article has been enhanced to improve contrast. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

ESA : SOHO's new catch: its first officially periodic comet

SOHO's new catch: P/2007 R5

25 September 2007
It is nothing new for the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) to discover another comet – it has already found more than 1350. But the latest is a bit different - SOHO had spotted it twice before.

For the first time, SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) has found a rare type of comet called a periodic comet (which flies by the Sun at regular intervals). While many SOHO comets are believed to be periodic, this is the first one that has been conclusively proven and officially declared as such.

Astronomers have seen thousands of comets but classified only around 190 as periodic. Many more are proposed to be periodic, but they only gain this classification officially if they are seen to follow their orbits around the Sun more than twice, and have orbital periods of less than two hundred years. The most famous periodic comet is Halley’s comet, returning every 76 years, with its last close pass to the Sun taking place in 1986.

	P/2007 R5 (SOHO)

SOHO’s new catch has a much smaller orbit, taking approximately four years to travel once around the Sun. It was first seen in September 1999, and then again in September 2003. In 2005, German PhD student Sebastian Hoenig realised that the two comets were so similar in orbit that they might actually be the same object.

To test his theory, he calculated a combined orbit for the comet, and consequently predicted that it would return on 11 September 2007. Sebastian's prediction proved to be extremely accurate – the comet reappeared in SOHO's LASCO camera right on schedule, and has now been given the official designation of P/2007 R5 (SOHO).

There is a puzzling aspect, however, as the comet does not look exactly like a comet. It has no visible tail or coma of dust and gas. Initially, some scientists wondered if it were actually an asteroid, a chunk of space-rock rather than a chunk of space-ice. However, P/2007 R5 (SOHO) did exhibit some cometary characteristics. As it passed to within 7.9 million kilometres of the Sun, around 5% of the distance from the Earth to the Sun, they observed it brighten by a factor of around a million. This is common behaviour for a comet.

An artist's impression of SOHO

So P/2007 R5 (SOHO) seems to behave like a comet, even though it doesn’t really look like one. “It is quite possibly an extinct comet nucleus of some kind,” says Karl Battams, who runs SOHO's comet discovery programme. Extinct comets are those that have expelled most of their volatile ice and have little left to form a tail or coma. They are theorised to be common objects amongst the celestial bodies orbiting close to the Sun.

The comet faded as quickly as it brightened, and soon became too faint for SOHO's instruments to see it. Estimates show that P/2007 R5 (SOHO) is probably only 100-200 metres in diameter. Given how small and faint this object is, and how close it still is to the Sun, it is an extremely difficult target for observers on Earth to pick out in the sky.

Now we know for certain that P/2007 R5 (SOHO) is there, astronomers will be watching closely for it during its next return in September 2011.

NASA : Blowing a Hole in a Comet: Take 2

Sept. 26, 2007: The flash! The dazzle! The front page of the New York Times! Two years ago, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft dropped an 820 lb copper projectile onto Comet Tempel 1, unleashing an explosion that made headlines around the world.

Exploding comets tend to have that effect. But how many people know what happened after the blast? The surprising answer is none--not even NASA.

Deep Impact's prime mission was to punch a hole in Tempel 1 and look inside, giving researchers their first glimpse of a comet's internal structure. But "we were never able to see the crater because the cloud of debris was so thick," says Michael New of NASA Headquarters.

Right: Deep Impact strikes Comet Tempel 1. [More]

Why didn't Deep Impact wait until the dust cleared? It couldn't. The mission was designed from the beginning as a high-speed flyby, giving extra velocity to the "bullet." Orbiting was not an option. Carried by its own momentum, Deep Impact sailed away before the cloud had time to dissipate.

Take 2: NASA is going back for a second look.

"We're sending another spacecraft back to Tempel 1, the Stardust probe," says New.

Stardust is famous for its January 2004 flyby of Comet Wild 2. Severely buffeted by jets of gas and debris flowing from the comet, Stardust nevertheless managed to snatch thousands of samples of comet dust and return them to Earth for analysis. "Stardust is one of the great successes of NASA's Discovery program," says New. (The Discovery program launches innovative, inexpensive spacecraft every 18-to-24 months on cutting edge missions. Deep Impact is also part of this program.)

At first, Stardust was simply retired, sailing the void with nothing to do—but now it is being recycled as "Stardust-NExT," short for New Exploration of Tempel 1. Planetary science professor Joe Veverka of Cornell University is the mission's principal investigator.

"We're very excited to go back," says Veverka. "Stardust is due to reach Comet Tempel 1 in 2011. By then the debris cloud will be long gone and we should get a clear view of the crater."

Peering into the crater, however, "is only half the story," says Veverka. Before the cloud spoiled the view, Deep Impact's cameras recorded some surprising things:

Above: Surprising terrain on Comet Tempel 1. Credit: Deep Impact.

For one, the comet is ringed by a strangely-layered "sedimentary" terrain. There are no rivers on comets, so what causes these features? "Good question," says Veverka. One possibility: comets might be formed in layers. "Imagine two small proto-comets smashing into one another, sticking together and flattening like pieces of playdough," he says. Or maybe the layers are created via some form of hot erosion when the comet swings past the sun every 6.5 years. "We just don't know."

Stardust will gather important clues. "We're returning to the comet almost exactly one orbit--that is, one comet-year--after the first visit. This gives us a chance to see how solar heating might have altered Tempel 1's face."

Another surprise was landslides. "Deep Impact saw an enormous flow of smooth, powdery material" completely covering about a kilometer of underlying terrain, says Veverka. This feature is as mysterious as the layers, but it could explain one thing: why Deep Impact's debris cloud was so troublesome. "We might have hit a patch of deep powder," adds New. "Fine particles tend to make big clouds that are hard to see through."

"This is why we explore," adds Veverka. "Tempel 1 is an amazing comet."

Right: Comet Tempel 1--the view from Stardust in 2011. [Larger image] [animation]

Veverka notes that recycling a mission like Stardust is cheaper than sending a whole new spacecraft. "Stardust-NExT costs less than 15% of a full-up Discovery mission."

"Giving new assignments to veteran spacecraft represents not only creative thinking and planning, but also a prime example of getting more from the budget we have," agrees Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

Deep Impact is being recycled, too. "We're using Deep Impact for two new projects," explains New. One is called DIXI (Deep Impact Extended Investigation): "Deep Impact will fly by Comet Boethin in December 2008 for a close-up investigation of the comet's nucleus." The second is EPOCh (Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization): "Cameras on Deep Impact will target nearby stars with known giant planets. By watching these planets transit (pass in front of) their stars, Deep Impact will be able to determine whether they possess rings and/or moons." For this work, EPOCh's sensitivity will exceed that of existing ground and space-based observatories, possibly leading to the discovery of new Earth-sized planets.

No crater? No problem. Says New: "You can't keep a good Discovery mission down."

ESA : YES2 student payload released from Foton-M3

YES2 is lowered onto the Foton-M3 spacecraft ahead of the mission

25 September 2007
The Second Young Engineers’ Satellite (YES2) was activated and separated from the Foton-M3 spacecraft earlier today. The tether deployed for 8.5 km, after which the Fotino capsule was released on its way to Earth.

“We are very proud of the students' work, although we didn’t reach the full 30 km deployment” said Roger Walker, YES2 project manager for ESA’s Education Office. “The hard work of the YES2 team over the past five years has paid off with this largely successful demonstration.”

The innovative, hands-on, student mission aimed to demonstrate how a tether can be used to deliver small payloads to Earth without the use of complex, expensive attitude control systems or rocket engines.

The Fotino capsule was due to be deployed on a 30 km long tether in space, the longest ever. As the tether deployed slower than planned, it reached a length of 8.5 km before a preprogrammed command cut Fotino loose from the spacecraft.

	Animation showing deployment of the Fotino capsule

The orbit of the Fotino is currently being assessed to understand when and where the capsule will return to Earth on its parachute.

YES2 was one of the ESA-provided payloads on board the Foton-M3 orbital mission. The Foton spacecraft and the piggybacking YES2 payload were launched by a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan on 14 September. The YES2 experiment was installed on top of the battery pack of the Foton-M3 spacecraft.

Background

The ESA Education Office oversaw the YES2 educational project and is the primary contributor of funding for student organisation and spacecraft hardware. The cost of the launch was covered by the Education Office and the Agency’s Directorate of Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration.

Technical support has been given by ESTEC staff in the Directorate of Technical and Quality Management. The project also received valuable support from European industry, notably Delta-Utec Space Research and Consultancy of the Netherlands, the prime contractor. Four university Centres of Expertise contributed significantly to the project: University of Patras, University of Modena, FRC Remagen/ Krefeld University, and Samara State Aerospace University.

Bad Astronomy : Meteorite Mayhem III: solved?

According to a National Geographic news article, the meteorite that struck Peru recently (see here and here) really was a meteorite (and not a missile or anything else), and the reason people got sick in nearby villages is that it struck a location that had arsenic in the groundwater.

Yikes.

The impact site in Peru, filled with arsenic tainted water. Miguel Carrasco/La Razon/Reuters

We may finally have a story that makes sense. Samples of debris indicated it was extraterrestrial, but I wasn’t sure how much weight to give that. The crater looks odd, but it turns out to have hit near Lake Titicaca, and the soil composition and shallow water table may account for the shape. The crater is pretty substantial: note the people on the upper right of the rim in that picture for scale.

The claim now is that the meteoroid was hot when it hit (or the impact itself generated the heat), creating a steam plume tainted with arsenic — everyone who complained of illness has recovered, the report says, by the way. Given that we know it’s a meteorite now, that sounds plausible. Given the size of the crater and the eyewitness accounts, the meteoroid may have been big enough to retain quite a bit of heat when it hit. If it were, say (I am completely guessing here, but with reasonable numbers) a meter or so across and moving at 500 kph, the explosive energy at impact would be the same as 40 pounds of TNT, which actually sounds like it’s in the right ballpark to me. Impact energy is very sensitive to velocity, so if it were moving much faster the yield would be much larger.

Evidently pieces of shrapnel have been found, but I haven’t seen a picture of one! I’d love to; in general such pieces are very interesting and can be lovely.

So I guess it wasn’t a Scud missile, or a downed satellite, or an underground eruption, or or or. What we have here is potentially a lot more exciting. It will also make someone pretty wealthy, I imagine: meteorites are expensive, and ones with known falls and, better, an exciting story behind them, can fetch top dollar.

Bad Astronomy : NuSTAR revived!

by Phil Plait

I can hardly believe this: NASA has restarted and re-funded NuSTAR.

That’s the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope ARray, a small X-ray observatory. Back in my old job in California I was on the Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) team for NuSTAR, so I am very, very pleased it got the go-ahead — considering, after all, that it was canceled over a year ago! Obviously, there’s a story here.

What follows is my opinion based on events as I remember them. The Sonoma State E/PO group, NuSTAR team, and everyone else have nothing at all to do with my opinion… except that my opinion is right. Let me also add that while I am saying things about one specific person at NASA below, I do not hold all of NASA accountable for her actions. Nor should you.

In 2003, NASA put out a call for proposals for SMEXs, Small Explorer missions (meaning the cost had to be kept under $120 million, minus launch). My group was tapped to do E/PO for five proposals, out of 36 submitted. NASA then went through the proposals, culled them, and picked five for further study. We were on two of those five. One was NuSTAR.

We worked very, very hard on those proposals, and I can only imagine what it was like for the folks actually creating the scientific and engineering justification for the missions. I wrote like a madman, trying to shine up and gloss the ideas batted around by our team (I suppose you could say I was the main writer, but everyone contributed substantially to the writing, and the ideas and such were a team effort). We worked it and reworked it, honing down the essays to fit in the frustratingly small space requirements for submission. But we were excited.

For one thing, the head guy for NuSTAR was (is!) Caltech astrophysicist Fiona Harrison, and if NuSTAR got picked she would become the first ever female Principle Investigator for a NASA mission. There were more women than men in our E/PO group, and I’m a bit of a feminist myself, so we were very sensitive to the idea of encouraging girls and women to learn about math and science. Plus, the mission is pretty cool: it would look for black holes across the Universe, which is always fun. As an added bonus, the spacecraft itself is cool, with a long, extending mast that will accordian out to a length of 10 meters after launch. All of this opens up lots of possibilities for educational efforts.

We submitted the proposal, and waited. Finally, NASA culled again, from five proposals to two. IBEX was one (and we were happy; a good friend of ours was running the education effort for it), and it was given the go-ahead to start cutting metal, as they say. NuSTAR was the other, but it wasn’t quite ready to go all the way, according to NASA. There were some issues that needed to be fixed, so they gave us more time to streamline the proposal.

Well, that’s better than being told "no", right? So we worked on fixing things up.

Then the bomb dropped. We were literally days away from submitting the re-worked proposal to NASA when we were told the project was canceled. That was bad enough… but then I found out that Fiona wasn’t called and told the mission she had spent years putting together was axed. She wasn’t even sent a letter. She found out when NASA had a press conference. Mary Cleave, then the Associate Administrator at NASA for the Science Mission Directorate, was chairing it. A question was asked about NuSTAR, and that’s when Cleave announced the mission was canceled.

This was an unimaginably shameful thing to do.

You can guess how we all felt. I cannot imagine how Dr. Harrison felt. Mary Cleave: not my favorite person in the world. I haven’t been shy about saying that, either (my favorite thing she did, in a dark humor way, was when she canceled the Dawn mission after testifying to Congress about science at NASA… but we get the last laugh; Dawn was also reinstated and is due for launch this week).

Well, after learning in such an awful manner that NuSTAR was canceled, we went on our way, and started in on the usual scrambling for more funding. We got some, we lost others; the usual story. I eventually left the group to pursue my writing career (which I suppose I am postponing writing such a long entry here!), and there you have it.

And then, out of the blue, NuSTAR is back! W00t!

I should have guessed. Mary Cleave left NASA (and there was much rejoicing), and Alan Stern took over. Alan is a scientist and I knew he would do what he could to make sure good missions got what they needed to proceed.

Looking at Alan’s record so far, I am very pleased. I wouldn’t take his job for a million bucks (really), but he is doing pretty well with balancing missions science with NASA’s tight budget (you can peruse the NASA category of my blog for more on how I feel about all that).

And now, NuSTAR is back! Even though I’m no longer on the team, it’s nice to see it. I worked hard on the E/PO proposal — I even wrote quite a bit for the website(s), which will no doubt have to be updated now — so of course I’m glad to see it going ahead. But I’m also really thrilled for Fiona, who deserves this… and maybe I’m happiest for NASA itself, because this shows that even when it makes bad decisions, wiser heads can figure out how to fix things.

Sapce.com : Hidden Galaxies Detected

By Dave Mosher Staff Writer posted: 24 September 2007 06:06 am ET

Deer can't see cars at night because of blindingly bright headlights. And until now, astronomers couldn't see foreground galaxies outshined by the dazzling quasars behind them.

A new technique can pick apart the intense pattern of light emitted by quasars, finding irregularities in the image where "invisible" galaxies are absorbing some of the quasar light.

"The difficulty in actually spotting and seeing these galaxies stems from the fact that the glare of the quasar is too strong compared to the dim light of the galaxy," said Nicholas Bouche, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich, Germany.

Bouche and his team's findings will be detailed in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal.

Very large help

Quasars are small, distant and extremely bright cosmic beacons that produce more light than typically comes from an entire large galaxy. In spite of their brightness, however, some of the light is soaked up by intervening objects during its long journey to Earth's telescopes.

To locate the so-called "invisible" galaxies, Bouche and his team looked through huge catalogues of quasar data and picked out those with "dips" in their light signatures. Then, using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), located in the mountains of northern Chile, the team searched for galaxies close to the pulse of quasar light.

The astronomers capitalized on the VLT's special infrared spectrometer, called SINFONI, to pick apart 20 patches of sky around the quasars to search for galaxies from the time when the universe was about 6 billion years old, almost half its current age. Seventy percent of the time, they found a galaxy hiding in the "headlights" of a quasar.

So far, the astronomers who pioneered the technique have detected 14 hidden galaxies by targeting the VLT on unusual quasar light signatures.

Galaxy hunt

Bouche said he is surprised by not only the amount of galaxies he and his colleagues have found hiding near quasars, but also by the types of these galaxies.

"These are not just ordinary galaxies," he said. "They are ... actively forming a lot of new stars and qualifying as 'starburst galaxies.'"

These types of galaxies are forming the equivalent of about "20 suns per year," noted team member Celine Peroux, an astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge.

The team thinks their finding will spur a new hunt for galaxies in the universe.