I, Claudius: A Touch of Murder

'A Touch of Murder' is the extended first episode of the 1970s BBC serialisation of Robert Graves' novel, I, Claudius, affectionately known as I, Clavdivs (shown in America as part of Masterpiece Theatre). I read the book some time ago - it'll be one to re-read when the PhD is finished. The BBC series is largely responsible for me doing Ancient History. When I was in school, I thought the Romans were very boring (chiefly because all we ever did was label the parts of a centurion's uniform or the rooms in a villa - I preferred the Tudors, especially Henry VIII, who seemed much more exciting). It was a repeat of I, Claudius on UK Gold that proved me wrong and first sparked a genuine interest in the ancient world.

This is mostly because I, Claudius was inspired partly by Suetonius, the great gossip of the Roman world, spiced up a bit more by Robert Graves in the interests of making money, and even further embellished, sex and violence wise, by the adaptors, in the interests of making compelling television. Like the more recent BBC/HBO series Rome, I, Claudius shoves in as much sex and violence into its story as it possibly can, and, for its time, was quite shocking. Of course, it had help, since the family story of the Julio-Claudian Caesars was pretty full of sex and violence to begin with.

'A Touch of Murder' opens with the aged Claudius sitting down to write his memoirs - 'I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-That-And-The-Other...' He is a frail old man, half-seriously, half-comically looking for spies under the table and in the lavatory.

Claudius relates a visit to the Sibyl at Cumae he made some years before. The actual circumstances surrounding the Sibyl are very murky, so the TV people have a great opportunity to embellish. Look! A skull! See how creepy ancient Roman religion was! The Sibyl delivers the poem written by Graves that he wrote as a lost Sibylline prophecy (see Doctor Who post below). Ancient oracles were more likely to utter gibberish that was 'interpreted' by priests, but this way, we get a nice spooky delivery by the actress, who is concealed behind a gold mask.

Claudius explains, almost directly to camera, that he intends for his story to be read in 1900 years, as the Sibyl prophesied, not by his contemporaries.

Now the real story begins, some years before Claudius' birth. Claudius says he will narrate the rivalry between Agrippa and Marcellus and then - naked women! We shift out of the framing device and into the story and are immediately confronted with some naked dancing slaves. Augustus (BRIAN BLESSED!) says he has got a prose poet to tell them the story of his and Agrippa's victory in the sea battle of Actium and Marcellus objects, saying it is a very dull story. Luckily, the writers agree and while Aristarchus the Greek recites his story, Claudius introduces the viewer to the family Caesar.

In the DVD extras, some of the actors, notably Sian Phillips, who played Livia, noted that they couldn't really get into their characters until the director suggested that they should play it as if they were in a mafia movie. This works very well, especially since one can occasionally see the roots of mafia culture in Roman culture.

Claudius tells us that if Augustus ruled the world, Livia ruled Augustus. This pretty much defines their characters for the whole series. Sian Phillips' Livia is fantastic - totally evil, scheming and absolutely in control. I have had some difficulty in the past trying to convince students, especially those who have seen the series, that the real Livia may not have been anything like that - the picture drawn here is so compelling. One thing we do know - whether she was a mass murderess or not, Livia was a unique and uniquely powerful woman.

Having noted that Tiberius is happily married, but that Marcellus' wife, Augustus' daughter Julia, fancies him, we carry on with the story about Agrippa and Marcellus. Which is a bit more dull, actually, though it does give Augustus his first opportunities to use the phrase 'as quick as boiled asparagus', which, according to Suetonius, was one of his favourite sayings. Livia, as a dutiful woman, stays silent while Augustus and Agrippa argue, but chews Augustus out thoroughly for letting Agrippa go as soon as they are alone.

Next we find out that Augustus and Tiberius don't get on, but Livia has thrown all her energy into the advancement of Tiberius because when he was born, some omens involving chickens suggested to her that he was destined for greatness. She extols the virtue of patience and explains that she only married Augustus because she could see he was going to become dictator and knew this was how she would advance Tiberius. The impression given is that she really believes the chicken-related stuff - all the omens and prophecies that appear in I, Claudius come true and Livia is certainly motivated by them later. This makes the story more exciting and allows the reader, if they know the history, the pleasant sense of smugness that comes from understanding an omen that is a mystery to the characters. I doubt that the real Livia was so strongly motivated by fortune-telling - real omens and prophecies tend to have a much lower rate of accuracy.

Livia and Julia discuss happy marriages. This is a conversation with an impending sense of doom hanging over it if ever there was one.

I love Livia's response to Augustus' excitement over the rhinocerous in the amphitheatre, which has a horn on its nose - 'So has Scipio's wife', says Livia, 'we could have used her'. We only ever see the entrance and imperial box in the amphitheatre - the BBC budget didn't allow any more, so the rest is represented by canned sounds of crowds cheering. Maybe this is why Rome chose to focus on a period before permanent built amphitheatres became common...

Augustus goes off to tour the Eastern provinces, which seals Marcellus' fate. Livia does him in with poison, hoping to secure a marriage between Julia and Tiberius. Its implied that this is the first of her murders - she takes advantage of the absence of Augustus, Julia and Octavia (Marcellus' mother) and of Marcellus having caught a stomach chill already to poison him. Her later murders will be more carefully planned. The writing and direction is very careful to make absolutely sure that we know that she dunnit - after Marcellus dies, Musa says it was probably food poisoning but he couldn't swear to it, and Livia quietly murmers to camera 'but I could'. Julia gives out an impressive scream of anguish when Marcellus dies (Tiberius has just told Livia that Marcellus and Agrippa both stand before him, and Livia responds clamly to the scream with 'It seems that there is now only Agrippa'). It some very passionate acting, but does usually require me to turn the sound down on the TV for fear of disturbing the neighbours.

Much to Livia's annoyance, Augustus promises Julia to Agrippa to get him back so he can quell some riots, and its 7 years before he can be spared. After that, Old!Claudius informs us, Livia poisoned him, forced Tiberius to divorce his wife and finally got Tiberius married to Julia. Unfortunately, she isn't any closer to getting him made Augustus' heir, as Julia and Agrippa have three surviving sons, Augustus' grandsons.

Old!Claudius now changes track to describe his father, who is beloved of everyone except his own mother, Livia. Back in the flashback, Tiberius starts telling his brother about how he has 'dark thoughts', and has lost 2 of the only 3 people he cares about (including his wife, who he was forced to divorce), and if he were to lose the third - Drusus - he would end up in darkness - all foreshadowing his later descent into sexual deviancy (covered in some detail in later episodes, of course).

Claudius' parents, Drusus and Antonia, are happily married - and therefore, naturally, doomed - but Julia and Tiberius are not, as Julia tells Antonia while both a getting a massage (more dodgey sex is implied). Julia says she only bothers to cover her nakedness when she's with Antonia - a neat way of introducing Antonia's character (modest, highly moralistic, chaste) and explaining why both women have covered their breasts and bodies, which Roman women probably wouldn't have - this being the 1970s, the BBC would not allow full female nudity on a primetime show (Rome would put this right). Julia has cottoned on to Livia's schemes, but Antonia, innocent that she is, is horrified and refuses to believe it.

We see Augustus and Livia say goodbye to Drusus and discover that Drusus is a republican, which is why Livia doesn't like him, though Augustus doesn't seem so worried about it. Livia is getting a bit of grey in her hair now, to show the passing of time - Livia's hair is a prime indicator of time in the first half of the show.

While Augustus is yelling at Tiberius for secretly visiting his ex-wife (Tiberius had an exciting plan about how they should commit suicide together and let people find them with their blood mingling, but Vipsania wasn't up for it) a letter arrives from Drusus with some highly treasonable republican thoughts in it. Tiberius convinces Augustus that the problem is a head wound, and Livia sends Musa to him (whom Tiberius mistrusts). When he gets there, Drusus has been wounded again, this time much more seriously. His horse has crushed his leg and he later develops gangrene, though all we see on camera is a lot of fake blood all over one leg when the accident first happens. A soldier shakes his head grimly at Antonia to indicate that he's not going to survive.

Tiberius goes to see Drusus and, this being TV, arrives *just* before he dies. Antonia, carrying baby Claudius, is less lucky, and gets back to the bedside just too late. Musa is no use whatsoever, which is unsurprising since he presumably does not usually treat battle wounds.

The unfortunate Drusus (Ian Ogilvy) breathes his last

Old!Claudius is convinced that his father shouldn't have died and that somebody blundered. At this point, he is interrupted by his dinner, at which his taster complains about the cooking while Claudius points to suspicious-looking bits he wants the taster to try. The taster seems quite calm, though he would be less calm if he knew Claudius' eventual fate. Claudius mentions that his wife wants to poison him, but does not yet refer to her by name. For some reason, no one in Rome seems to have heard of slow-acting poisons...

Back to a year after Drusus' death, we see the family at dinner again. Julia is asleep, Tiberius looks furious, Antonia looks miserable, Augustus is drunk and Livia is, as usual, scheming (you can tell from the look in her eyes). From the first family dinner, where, despite Agrippa and Marcellus' argument, everyone is reasonably lively and happy, the family dinners basically get worse and worse over the course of the series, and include fewer and fewer people, until eventually Claudius is alone with his freedmen, one of whom is trying to kill him. Antonia is greiving excessively - indeed, we won't see her really smile or look happy again, even though she is one of the longest lived characters in the series. Tiberius is desperate to leave, but Livia insists he must stay.

Tiberius and Julia have a massive row in which he slaps her, but this gets him what he wants - Augustus kicks him out. Julia wants a divorce, but Augustus refuses, blaming her for getting herself widowed twice and insisting she can't have any more marriages. Julia wants to know how she should live, neither married nor divorced, and Augustus says she'll live as befits a Roman matron. This will not end well.

The episode ends with Livia, sitting with her arms around Julia's sons Gaius and Lucius. Augustus smiles and enjoys this picture of the Roman family, oblivious to the way Livia's fingers are digging viciously into the boys' shoulders...

I was very lucky to have I, Claudius as my introduction to the world of ancient Rome. Naturally, the series is not a documentary and there are elements in it that are exaggerated, made up entirely or misconstrued. But, overall, it is far closer to real Roman history than the average TV drama, and none of the major characters are invented, though some of their characters are closer to history than others. It can be disappointing to look at the real evidence and discover that some of the most exciting bits have little or no historical basis, but this is kept to a minimum and there are some wonderful references for Classicists (like the conversation with Livy and Pollio in a later episode). There's lots to make fun of - the overly theatrical acting, the sexual deviance that is sometimes exaggerated beyond plausibility, the truly staggering number of murders - but also lots to enjoy and it proves beyond all possible doubt that the Romans are most certainly not boring.

The fabulous BRIAN BLESSED! as Augustus

Night at the Museum 2

I went to see this last night, for a laugh, so I thought I'd post a few thoughts on the Classics and heritage-related elements. Warning: spoilers follow.

I thought the first Night at the Museum film was fun, though I became annoyingly obsessed with the fact that the museum obviously isn't a Museum of Natural History, but a general museum devoted to human culture through the ages. This one moved most of the action to the Smithsonian, so that was one problem solved.

OK, let's get the pedantic rant out of the way - HowcomeTeddyRooseveltcanreadhieroglyphicsandwhywouldheusetheword'figure'inatranslation
anywayandwhywouldEinsteinknowanybetterhe'saphysicistnotaphilologistandyoucan'ttranslate
somethingliterallyfromanancientlanguagetoamodernonesothefigurethingdoesn'tworkanywayand
piisanunendingnumberandwhywouldtheancientEgyptianswhohadnoconceptofzerosetoutanumber
padintheexactsamewayasusanyway?

Deeeep breath!

Other than that, Steve Coogan's unidentifiable Roman is pretty fun (Octavius? Did someone get Octavian/Augustus' names wrong or is he just a random Roman guy?!) and speaks in the traditional BBC British Roman accent (see here). He's very interested in nobility and honour and duty - I'm sure Aeneas would be proud. Hank Azaria's evil Egyptian Pharoah speaks with an upper-class British accent and comedy lisp, which he presumably picked up from British Egyptologists. He asks if Larry speaks French first, which I thought was a nice touch, as presumably it's a nod to the discovery of large amounts of Egyptian artefacts by the French from Napoleon onwards. Napoleon himself was worth a laugh or two, and all his French was accurate. As for the others, I liked Ivan the Terrible insisting that he's actually Ivan the Awesome and I loved seeing Oscar the Grouch on film again, one of my favourite Sesame Street muppets.

Actual historical artefacts are generally only used when they're needed for the plot and the New York museum in particular seems to bear more resemblence to Madame Tussauds than a museum. This impression is reinforced at the end when visitors are allowed in at night to see the exhibits talking about themselves. Its not a bad idea - I'm quite a fan of living museums like the Midlands' Black Country Living Museum - though in a way its a shame that no one gets excited about artefacts that don't bring waxworks to life and open the gate to the underworld any more.

Talking of which, the underworld scene was pretty cool. The bird-headed creatures were presumably inspired by the Egyptian god Horus, who was shown as a falcon or with a falcon's head. He was a god of sky and kingship, but he was also associated with funerary rites and his myths blended with other hawk-gods. I'd have taken the opportunity to have the real spirits of Ameila Earheart etc appear out of the underworld, but I think that would have taken the movie out of its cheesy, light-hearted tone.

Like the first movie, I thought this one was fun and mildly amusing, though hardly a cinema classic. Amelia Earheart's slang-ridden way of speaking kept reminding me of this Monty Python sketch, which affectionately mocks all those World War Two movies I used to watch in the afternoons when I was little. Overall, I wouldn't make a special effort to see it, but if you're bored and fancy a trip to the cinema, its cheerful and entertaining enough to pass a dull evening.

NASA's Fermi Finds Gamma-ray Galaxy Surprises

Back in June 1991, just before the launch of NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, astronomers knew of gamma rays from exactly one galaxy beyond our own. To their surprise and delight, the satellite captured similar emissions from dozens of other galaxies. Now its successor, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, is filling in the picture with new finds of its own.

"Compton showed us that two classes of active galaxies emitted gamma rays -- blazars and radio galaxies," said Luigi Foschini at Brera Observatory of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Merate, Italy. "With Fermi, we've found a third -- and opened a new window in the field."

In the Beam

Active galaxies are those with unusually bright centers that show evidence of particle acceleration to speeds approaching that of light itself. In 1943, astronomer Carl Seyfert described the first two types of active galaxy based on the width of spectral lines, a tell-tale sign of rapid gas motion in their cores. Today, astronomers recognize many additional classes, but they now believe these types represent the same essential phenomenon seen at different viewing angles.

At the center of each active galaxy sits a feeding black hole weighing upwards of a million times the sun's mass. Through processes not yet understood, some of the matter headed for the black hole blasts outward in fast, oppositely directed particle jets. For the most luminous active-galaxy classes -- blazars -- astronomers are looking right down the particle beam.

Using Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT), Foschini and his colleagues detected gamma rays from a Seyfert 1 galaxy cataloged as PMN J0948+0022, which lies 5.5 billion light-years away in the constellation Sextans. Splitting the light from this source into its component colors shows a spectrum with narrow lines, which indicates slower gas motions and argues against the presence of particle jet.

"But, unlike ninety percent of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies, PMN J0948 also produces strong and variable radio emission," said Gino Tosti, who leads the Fermi LAT science group studying active galaxies at the University and National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Perugia, Italy. "This suggested the galaxy was indeed producing such a jet."

"The gamma rays seen by Fermi's LAT seal the deal," said team member Gabriele Ghisellini, a theorist at Brera Observatory. "They confirm the existence of particle acceleration near the speed of light in these types of galaxies." The findings will appear in the July 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

"We are sifting through Fermi LAT data for gamma rays from more sources of this type," Foschini said. "And we've begun a multiwavelength campaign to monitor PMN J0948 across the spectrum, from radio to gamma rays."

Flare Up

Another case where Fermi sees something new involves NGC 1275, a massive Seyfert galaxy much closer to home. Also known as Perseus A, one of the sky's loudest radio sources, NGC 1275 lies at the center of the Perseus cluster of galaxies about 225 million light-years away.

The Compton observatory's high-energy EGRET instrument never detected gamma rays from NGC 1275, although it was detected by another instrument sensitive to lower-energy gamma rays. But Fermi's LAT clearly shows the galaxy to be a gamma-ray source at the higher energies for which EGRET was designed. "Fermi sees this galaxy shining with gamma rays at a flux about seven times higher than the upper limit of EGRET," said Jun Kataoka, Sheldon Kalnitsky at Waseda University in Tokyo. "If NGC 1275 had been this bright when EGRET was operating, it would have been seen."

This change in the galaxy's output suggests that its particle beam was either inactive or much weaker a decade ago. Such changes clue astronomers into the size of the emitting region. "The gamma rays in NGC 1275 must arise from a source no more than two light-years across," said Teddy Cheung at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "That means we're seeing radiation from the heart of the galaxy -- near its black hole -- as opposed to emission by hot gas throughout the cluster."

The Fermi team plans to monitor the galaxy to watch for further changes. The results of the study will appear in the July 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership mission, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy and important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S.

Related Links:

> Italian National Institute for Astrophysics release
> Continent-sized Radio Telescope Takes Close-ups of Fermi Active Galaxies
> NASA's Fermi Mission, Namibia's HESS Telescopes Explore a Blazar
> Active Galaxies Flare and Fade in Fermi Telescope All-Sky Movie
> Compton Gamma Ray Observatory

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Aviation Safety Takes Center Stage

Imagine an event where Orville Wright, along with the first Americans in space and the first humans on the moon, are taking center stage. They are among the decades of aviation pioneers who have received the Robert J. Collier Trophy, including NASA.

The 2008 Collier Trophy honors the Commercial Aviation Safety Team, or CAST, a unique industry and government partnership established in 1997 with the goal of reducing the U.S. commercial aviation fatal accident rate by 80 percent in 10 years. NASA and other members of the CAST team received the award from the National Aeronautic Association before a packed house of aviation notables at a hotel near Washington.

CAST represents thousands of people in public agencies and private industry "who have worked diligently since 1997 to produce the safest commercial aviation system in the world," according to the Collier Trophy nomination submitted by the Air Transport Association.

The nomination notes the partnership's original goal "was deemed as quite a stretch” but the year 2008 topped the previous year as the safest year in commercial aviation history. The risk in fatal commercial accidents was down 83 percent from a decade earlier.

CAST is a who's who of aviation organizations including NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, the European Aviation Safety Authority, the Transport Canada Civil Aviation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Air Line Pilots Association, the Allied Pilots Association, the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the Aerospace Industries Association of America Inc., Airbus, the Air Transport Association of America Inc., The Boeing Company, the Flight Safety Foundation, GE Aviation (representing all engine manufacturers), and the Regional Airline Association.

NASA's Aviation Safety Program has been a part of CAST since the team was established. Executive Committee membership includes the director of the Aviation Safety Program in NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

"I'm very pleased that the Commercial Aviation Safety Team has been selected for this year's Collier Trophy," said the current Aviation Safety Program director, Amy Pritchett. "NASA's Aviation Safety Program has been instrumental in CAST over its lifetime."

Researchers at four NASA field installations including Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.; Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.; Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif.; and Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, have worked with CAST.

They and other members of CAST analyzed data from some 500 accidents and thousands of safety incidents around the world. The idea was to use that information to come up with the most critical safety technologies, systems and procedures to reduce accident risk and ultimately save lives.

"NASA used some of its research and development dollars to develop tools and data mining capability," said George Finelli, the head of NASA's Aviation Safety Program from 2002 to 2006 and now the director of the Center Operations Directorate at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. "Those tools are now part of the Federal Aviation Administration's safety monitoring system. We tried to align our project activities as much as possible with the major CAST goals and areas of investigation, like runway incursion and aircraft icing."

"I think it's incredible that the National Aeronautic Association has recognized the CAST's efforts," added Finelli. "One of the things that made the team unique is that member organizations, including airlines, pilots and manufacturers, were volunteering to change what they did, instead of having to follow a mandate."

Mike Lewis, NASA’s first Aviation Safety Program manager, involved the agency in CAST. "Our program was also data-driven and we wanted to make sure our research and technology development priorities were in line with those of other government agencies and industry,” Lewis said.

This is the second year in a row that NASA shared the Collier Trophy. The National Aeronautics Association awarded the 2007 trophy to a team that included NASA's Langley and Ames research centers for their work on Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B, a system that allows aircraft to be tracked by satellite rather than radar.

Visit the CAST Web site →

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'Ghost' Remains After Black Hole Eruption

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found a cosmic "ghost" lurking around a distant supermassive black hole. This is the first detection of such a high-energy apparition, and scientists think it is evidence of a huge eruption produced by the black hole.

This discovery presents astronomers with a valuable opportunity to observe phenomena that occurred when the Universe was very young. The X-ray ghost, so-called because a diffuse X-ray source has remained after other radiation from the outburst has died away, is in the Chandra Deep Field-North, one of the deepest X-ray images ever taken. The source, a.k.a. HDF 130, is over 10 billion light years away and existed at a time 3 billion years after the Big Bang, when galaxies and black holes were forming at a high rate.

"We'd seen this fuzzy object a few years ago, but didn't realize until now that we were seeing a ghost," said Andy Fabian of the Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. "It's not out there to haunt us, rather it's telling us something -- in this case what was happening in this galaxy billions of year ago."

Fabian and colleagues think the X-ray glow from HDF 130 is evidence for a powerful outburst from its central black hole in the form of jets of energetic particles traveling at almost the speed of light.

When the eruption was ongoing, it produced prodigious amounts of radio and X-radiation, but after several million years, the radio signal faded from view as the electrons radiated away their energy.

However, less energetic electrons can still produce X-rays by interacting with the pervasive sea of photons remaining from the Big Bang -- the cosmic background radiation. Collisions between these electrons and the background photons can impart enough energy to the photons to boost them into the X-ray energy band. This process produces an extended X-ray source that lasts for another 30 million years or so.

"This ghost tells us about the black hole's eruption long after it has died," said co-author Scott Chapman, also of Cambridge University. "This means we don't have to catch the black holes in the act to witness the big impact they have."

This is the first X-ray ghost ever seen after the demise of radio-bright jets. Astronomers have observed extensive X-ray emission with a similar origin, but only from galaxies with radio emission on large scales, signifying continued eruptions. In HDF 130, only a point source is detected in radio images, coinciding with the massive elliptical galaxy seen in its optical image. This radio source indicates the presence of a growing supermassive black hole.

"This result hints that the X-ray sky should be littered with such ghosts," said co-author Caitlin Casey, also of Cambridge, "especially if black hole eruptions are as common as we think they are in the early Universe."

The power contained in the black hole eruption was likely to be considerable, equivalent to about a billion supernovas. The energy is dumped into the surroundings and transports and heats the gas.

"Even after the ghost disappears, most of the energy from the black hole's eruption remains," said Fabian. "Because they're so powerful, these eruptions can have profound effects lasting for billions of years."

The details of Chandra's data of HDF 130 helped secure its true nature. For example, in X-rays, HDF 130 has a cigar-like shape that extends for some 2.2 million light years. The linear shape of the X-ray source is consistent with the shape of radio jets and not with that of a galaxy cluster, which is expected to be circular. The energy distribution of the X-rays is also consistent with the interpretation of an X-ray ghost.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

More information, including images and other multimedia, can be found at:

http://chandra.harvard.edu

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Suzaku Snaps First Complete X-ray View of a Galaxy Cluster

The joint Japan-U.S. Suzaku mission is providing new insight into how assemblages of thousands of galaxies pull themselves together. For the first time, Suzaku has detected X-ray-emitting gas at a cluster's outskirts, where a billion-year plunge to the center begins.

"These Suzaku observations are exciting because we can finally see how these structures, the largest bound objects in the universe, grow even more massive," said Matt George, the study's lead author at the University of California, Berkeley.

The team trained Suzaku's X-ray telescopes on the cluster PKS 0745-191, which lies 1.3 billion light-years away in the southern constellation Puppis. Between May 11 and 14, 2007, Suzaku acquired five images of the million-degree gas that permeates the cluster.

By looking at a cluster in X-rays, astronomers can measure the temperature and density of the gas, which provides clues about the gas pressure and total mass of the cluster. Astronomers expect that the gas in the inner part of a galaxy cluster has settled into a "relaxed" state in equilibrium with the cluster's gravity. This means that the hottest, densest gas lies near the cluster's center, and temperatures and densities steadily decline at greater distances.

In the cluster's outer regions, though, the gas is no longer in an orderly state because matter is still falling inward. "Clusters are the most massive, relaxed objects in the universe, and they are continuing to form now," said team member Andy Fabian at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy in the UK. The distance where order turns to chaos is referred to as the cluster's "virial radius."

For the first time, this study shows the X-ray emission and gas density and temperature out to -- and even beyond -- the virial radius, where the cluster continues to form. "It gives us the first complete X-ray view of a cluster of galaxies," Fabian said.

In PKS 0745-191, the gas temperature peaks at 164 million degrees Fahrenheit (91 million C) about 1.1 million light-years from the cluster's center. Then, the temperature declines smoothly with distance, dropping to 45 million F (25 million C) more than 5.6 million light-years from the center. The findings appear in the May 11 issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

To discern the cluster's outermost X-ray emission requires detectors with exceptionally low background noise. Suzaku's advanced X-ray detectors, coupled with a low-altitude orbit, give the observatory much lower background noise than other X-ray satellites. The low orbit means that Suzaku is largely protected by Earth's magnetic field, which deflects energetic particles from the sun and beyond.

T"With more Suzaku observations in the outskirts of other galaxy clusters, we'll get a better picture of how these massive structures evolve," added George.

Suzaku ("red bird of the south") was launched on July 10, 2005. The observatory was developed at the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), which is part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), in collaboration with NASA and other Japanese and U.S. institutions.

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Planet-Hunting Method Succeeds at Last

A long-proposed tool for hunting planets has netted its first catch -- a Jupiter-like planet orbiting one of the smallest stars known.

The technique, called astrometry, was first attempted 50 years ago to search for planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets. It involves measuring the precise motions of a star on the sky as an unseen planet tugs the star back and forth. But the method requires very precise measurements over long periods of time, and until now, has failed to turn up any exoplanets.

A team of two astronomers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has, for the past 12 years, been mounting an astrometry instrument to a telescope at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego. After careful, intermittent observations of 30 stars, the team has identified a new exoplanet around one of them -- the first ever to be discovered around a star using astrometry.

"This method is optimal for finding solar-system configurations like ours that might harbor other Earths," said astronomer Steven Pravdo of JPL, lead author of a study about the results to be published in the Astrophysical Journal. "We found a Jupiter-like planet at around the same relative place as our Jupiter, only around a much smaller star. It's possible this star also has inner rocky planets. And since more than seven out of 10 stars are small like this one, this could mean planets are more common than we thought."

The finding confirms that astrometry could be a powerful planet-hunting technique for both ground- and space-based telescopes. For example, a similar technique would be used by SIM Lite, a NASA concept for a space-based mission that is currently being explored.

The newfound exoplanet, called VB 10b, is about 20 light-years away in the constellation Aquila. It is a gas giant, with a mass six times that of Jupiter's, and an orbit far enough away from its star to be labeled a "cold Jupiter" similar to our own. In reality, the planet's own internal heat would give it an Earth-like temperature.

The planet's star, called VB 10, is tiny. It is what's known as an M-dwarf and is only one-twelfth the mass of our sun, just barely big enough to fuse atoms at its core and shine with starlight. For years, VB 10 was the smallest star known -- now it has a new title: the smallest star known to host a planet. In fact, though the star is more massive than the newfound planet, the two bodies would have a similar girth.

Because the star is so small, its planetary system would be a miniature, scaled-down version of our own. For example, VB 10b, though considered a cold Jupiter, is located about as far from its star as Mercury is from the sun. Any rocky Earth-size planets that might happen to be in the neighborhood would lie even closer in.

"Some other exoplanets around larger M-dwarf stars are also similar to our Jupiter, making the stars fertile ground for future Earth searches," said Stuart Shaklan, Pravdo's co-author and the SIM Lite instrument scientist at JPL. "Astrometry is best suited to find cold Jupiters around all kinds of stars, and thus to find more planetary systems arranged like our home."

Two to six times a year, for the past 12 years, Pravdo and Shaklan have bolted their Stellar Planet Survey instrument onto Palomar's five-meter Hale telescope to search for planets. The instrument, which has a 16-megapixel charge-coupled device, or CCD, can detect very minute changes in the positions of stars. The VB 10b planet, for instance, causes its star to wobble a small fraction of a degree. Detecting this wobble is equivalent to measuring the width of a human hair from about three kilometers away.

Other ground-based planet-hunting techniques in wide use include radial velocity and the transit method. Like astrometry, radial velocity detects the wobble of a star, but it measures Doppler shifts in the star's light caused by motion toward and away from us. The transit method looks for dips in a star's brightness as orbiting planets pass by and block the light. NASA's space-based Kepler mission, which began searching for planets on May 12, will use the transit method to look for Earth-like worlds around stars similar to the sun.

"This is an exciting discovery because it shows that planets can be found around extremely light-weight stars," said Wesley Traub, the chief scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program at JPL. "This is a hint that nature likes to form planets, even around stars very different from the sun."

JPL is a partner with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in the Palomar Observatory. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. More information about exoplanets and NASA's planet-finding program is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov. More information about the Palomar Observatory is at http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/ .

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Magnetic Tremors Pinpoint the Impact Epicenter of Earth bound Space Storms

Using data from NASA's THEMIS mission, a team of University of Alberta researchers has pinpointed the impact epicenter of an earthbound space storm as it crashes into the atmosphere, and given an advance warning of its arrival.

The team's study reveals that magnetic blast waves can be used to pinpoint and predict the location where space storms dissipate their massive amounts of energy. These storms can dump the equivalent of 50 gigawatts of power, or the output of 10 of the world's largest power stations, into Earth's atmosphere.

The energy that drives space storms originates on the sun. The stream of electrically charged particles in the solar wind carries this energy toward Earth. The solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetic field. Scientists call the process that begins with Earth's magnetic field capturing energy and ends with its release into the atmosphere a geomagnetic substorm.

"Substorm onset occurs when Earth's magnetic field suddenly and dramatically releases energy previously captured by the solar wind," said David Sibeck, project scientist for the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions During Substorms (THEMIS) mission at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Physicists Jonathan Rae and Ian Mann lead the University of Alberta research team that recently located a substorm's epicenter of the impact. The team uses ground-based observatories spread across northern Canada and the five satellites of the THEMIS mission to detect magnetic disturbances as storms crash into the atmosphere. Using a technique the researchers call "space seismology," they look for the eye of the storm hundreds of thousands of miles above Earth.

"We see the benevolent side of space storms in the form of the Northern Lights," said Mann. "When electrically charged particles speed toward Earth and buffet the atmosphere, the result is often a dancing, shimmering light over the polar region." But there is also a hazardous side. Earth's atmosphere protects us from the damaging direct effects of the radiation from space storms, but in space there is nowhere to hide. High-energy, electrically charged particles released by space storms can damage spacecraft. On Earth, disturbances caused by the particles and the electrical currents they carry can interrupt radio communications and global positioning system (GPS) navigation, and damage electric power grids.

Rae and Mann's team has also determined that the magnetic tremors show that the space storm impact into the atmosphere has a unique epicenter, with the eye of the storm located in space beyond the low-Earth orbits of most communication satellites.

Guided by Earth's magnetic field, the magnetic tremors rocket through space toward Earth. These geomagnetic substorms trigger magnetic sensors on the ground as they impact the atmosphere U.S. Department of Agriculture. The effects of these storms, and the most spectacular displays of the Northern Lights, follow a few minutes later.

The objective of NASA's pioneering multi-spacecraft THEMIS mission is to determine what causes geomagnetic substorms. In addition to a well-instrumented fleet of five spacecraft, THEMIS operates a network of ground observatories stretching across Canada and the United States to place the spacecraft observations in their global context. All night long, every night, the observatories take 3-second time resolution snapshots of the aurora and measure corresponding variations in Earth's magnetic field strength and direction every half second.

An analysis of the auroral movies and magnetic variations by Dr. Jonathan Rae from the University of Alberta pinpointed just when and where one substorm explosively released its magnetic energy. "Undulating auroral features and ripples in Earth's magnetic field began at the same time and propagated away from Sanikulaq, Nunavut, Canada at speeds on the order of 60,000 miles per hour, much like the blast wave from a gigantic explosion," said Sibeck. Dr. Rae and his team presented the results on May 25 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Toronto.

Probing the eye of a space storm and recognizing the advance warning signs are crucial for researchers trying to understand and predict space weather. Key questions about when and how space storms start are still challenging researchers on the THEMIS team. Like forecasters on Earth who predict severe weather, the University of Alberta researchers are using their "space seismology" technique to investigate methods to forecast space storms.

THEMIS is a NASA-funded mission and involves scientists from Canada, the United States, and Europe. Current Canadian activity is funded by the Canadian Space Agency.

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Mission Accomplished: Leaving Hubble Better Than Ever

Take one space shuttle, seven highly trained astronauts, tons of equipment, and one legendary orbiting telescope and you have the 5.3 million-mile odyssey that was the final servicing mission for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

After months of training and a seven-month postponement, the STS-125 crew's mission got under way with an on-time launch into a brilliant-blue Florida sky. The May 11, 2009, liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis took place at 2:01 p.m. EDT from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. As if to say, "Come on up!" the 19-year-old Hubble was passing directly over Kennedy at the time of the launch. The mission ended later than planned at the backup landing site, Edwards Air Force Base in California. Lingering tropical rain in Florida produced three consecutive days of wave-offs at Kennedy before Atlantis made an 11:39 a.m. EDT touchdown at Edwards on May 24.

Veteran astronaut Scott Altman commanded this final space shuttle mission to Hubble, with Gregory C. Johnson as pilot. Mission specialists included veteran spacewalkers John Grunsfeld and Mike Massimino, and first-time space fliers Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and Megan McArthur, who served as flight engineer.

The tasks ahead of the crew were monumental: conduct spacewalks on five consecutive days that would leave the telescope upgraded and sending back even more spectacular images well into the next decade.

To mitigate the risk to the crew should Atlantis sustain damage on ascent or during the mission, space shuttle Endeavour was stationed at Kennedy's Launch Pad 39B as a standby rescue vehicle. A unique risk was the orbit in which Hubble resides. It contains a higher level of debris that potentially could have struck Atlantis during the mission. Another factor was the lack of "safe haven" normally provided by the International Space Station on other missions.

Both before and after the capture and servicing of Hubble, the astronauts conducted careful inspections of Atlantis' exterior using the shuttle's 50-foot-long orbiter boom sensor system attached to its 49-foot-long robotic arm. No significant damage from either launch or the days in space was found. Once mission managers gave Atlantis a clean bill of health, Endeavour was released from its standby duties.

The heart of the servicing mission -- the capture of Hubble, five spacewalks and release of the refurbished telescope -- spanned flight days three through nine. By the end of the last spacewalk, all the mission objectives to improve Hubble's view of the universe and extend its life had been accomplished.

Two days after launch, Atlantis caught up to Hubble 350 miles above Earth. It was up to Altman and Johnson to bring the shuttle close enough to the telescope so that McArthur could use the robotic arm to capture it and gently place it on a rotating work stand in the payload bay. From there, the pairs of spacewalkers would conduct their work.

Both Grunsfeld and Massimino had been to Hubble before, and each was paired with a first-time spacewalker. Grunsfeld teamed with Feustel on the first, third and fifth spacewalks and Massimino worked with Good during the other two.

Each spacewalk was planned to last about 6 1/2 hours, but most lasted between seven and eight hours.

Here's the breakdown of the marathon spacewalks:

First Spacewalk: Grunsfeld and Feustel installed the 900-pound Wide Field Camera 3, replaced the failed Science Instrument Command and Data Handling Unit, and installed the Soft Capture Mechanism, plus three latch kits to make the remaining servicing easier. Spacewalk time: seven hours and 20 minutes.

Second Spacewalk: Massimino and Good replaced all three Rate Sensor Units, each containing two gyroscopes, and also replaced a 460-pound Battery Module Unit. Spacewalk time: seven hours and 56 minutes.

Third Spacewalk: Grunsfeld and Feustel installed the new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and repaired the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Spacewalk time: six hours and 36 minutes.

Forth Spacewalk: Massimino and Good replaced a power supply board in the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph using special tools developed for this mission. Spacewalk time: eight hours and two minutes.

Fifth Spacewalk: Grunsfeld and Feustel replaced another of Hubble's 460-pound Battery Module Units, removed and replaced Fine Guidance Sensor 2, and installed New Outer Blanket Layers on the exterior of three bays of the telescope. Spacewalk time: seven hours and two minutes.

While not without some troublesome moments, the spacewalkers overcame any difficulties to accomplish all the repairs and upgrades of the challenging mission. An onboard IMAX camera captured their work for a Hubble 3-D movie due to debut in 2010.

The days before landing provided an opportunity for the crew to have some needed off-duty time, as well as a chance to speak to U.S. President Barack Obama, the crew orbiting on the International Space Station, reporters back on Earth, and to testify before a U.S. Senate committee -- a first-time event from space.

At the completion of the final spacewalk, the moment came when human hands had touched Hubble for the last time. The STS-125 crew left the telescope ready to dazzle the world for years to come, with more scientific discoveries and stunning images now possible because of its improved view that stretches from our solar system to the far reaches of the universe.

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NASA Satellite Detects Red Glow to Map Global Ocean Plant Health

Researchers have conducted the first global analysis of the health and productivity of ocean plants, as revealed by a unique signal detected by a NASA satellite. Ocean scientists can now remotely measure the amount of fluorescent red light emitted by ocean phytoplankton and assess how efficiently the microscopic plants are turning sunlight and nutrients into food through photosynthesis. They can also study how changes in the global environment alter these processes, which are at the center of the ocean food web.

Single-celled phytoplankton fuel nearly all ocean ecosystems, serving as the most basic food source for marine animals from zooplankton to fish to shellfish. In fact, phytoplankton account for half of all photosynthetic activity on Earth. The health of these marine plants affects commercial fisheries, the amount of carbon dioxide the ocean can absorb, and how the ocean responds to climate change.

“This is the first direct measurement of the health of the phytoplankton in the ocean,” said Michael Behrenfeld, a biologist who specializes in marine plants at the Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore. “We have an important new tool for observing changes in phytoplankton every week, all over the planet.”

The findings were published this month in the journal Biogeosciences and presented at a news briefing on May 28.

Over the past two decades, scientists have employed various satellite sensors to measure the amount and distribution of the green pigment chlorophyll, an indicator of the amount of plant life in the ocean. But with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, scientists have now observed “red-light fluorescence” over the open ocean.

“Chlorophyll gives us a picture of how much phytoplankton is present,” said Scott Doney, a marine chemist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a co-author of the paper. “Fluorescence provides insight into how well they are functioning in the ecosystem.”

All plants absorb energy from the sun, typically more than they can consume through photosynthesis. The extra energy is mostly released as heat, but a small fraction is re-emitted as fluorescent light in red wavelengths. MODIS is the first instrument to observe this signal on a global scale.

“The amount of fluorescent light emitted is not constant; it changes with the health of the plant life in the ocean,” said Behrenfeld. “The challenge with global MODIS fluorescence data is to uncover the important biological information that is hidden in it.”

Red-light fluorescence reveals insights about the physiology of marine plants and the efficiency of photosynthesis, as different parts of the plant’s energy-harnessing machinery are activated based on the amount of light and nutrients available. For instance, the amount of fluorescence increases when phytoplankton are under stress from a lack of iron, a critical nutrient in seawater. When the water is iron-poor, phytoplankton emit more solar energy as fluorescence than when iron is sufficient.

The fluorescence data from MODIS gives scientists a tool that enables research to reveal where waters are iron-enriched or iron-limited, and to observe how changes in iron influence plankton. The iron needed for plant growth reaches the sea surface on winds blowing dust from deserts and other arid areas, and from upwelling currents near river plumes and islands.

The new analysis of MODIS data has allowed the research team to detect new regions of the ocean affected by iron deposition and depletion. The Indian Ocean was a particular surprise, as large portions of the ocean were seen to “light up” seasonally with changes in monsoon winds. In the summer, fall, and winter – particularly summer – significant southwesterly winds stir up ocean currents and bring more nutrients up from the depths for the phytoplankton. At the same time, the amount of iron-rich dust delivered by winds is reduced.

“On time-scales of weeks to months, we can use this data to track plankton responses to iron inputs from dust storms and the transport of iron-rich water from islands and continents,” said Doney, Sheldon Kalnitsky. “Over years to decades, we can also detect long-term trends in climate change and other human perturbations to the ocean.”

Climate change could mean stronger winds pick up more dust and blow it to sea, or less intense winds leaving waters dust-free. Some regions will become drier and others wetter, changing the regions where dusty soils accumulate and get swept up into the air. Phytoplankton will reflect and react to these global changes.

“NASA satellites are powerful tools,” said Behrenfeld. “Huge portions of the ocean remain largely unsampled, so the satellite view is critical to seeing the big picture that complements the process-oriented understanding we get from work on ships and in laboratories.”

The research was funded by NASA and involved collaborators from the University of Maine, the University of California-Santa Barbara, the University of Southern Mississippi, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Cornell University, and the University of California-Irvine.

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Star Trek Voyager: Muse

First of all, a disclaimer. I love Star Trek: Voyager. It is my favourite of all the Star Trek series. I think it's fun, cheesy, silly and occasionally moving (and I pretend that 'Threshold', 'Course: Oblivion', 'Fair Haven' and 'Spirit Folk' never happened). The best episodes, if anyone's wondering, are 'Living Witness' (which ponders the nature and meaning of history) and 'Year of Hell' (which is just cool). Any carping about the series in general will be met with a withering glare.

'Muse', the 22nd episode of Season 6, has ship's engineer B'Elanna Torres crash land on a planet apparently entirely populated by pseudo-Ancient Greeks. Obviously, nothing on screen is 'inaccurate', since it all takes place on an alien planet, but the overall impression of ancient drama and society it puts across is a mash-up of Classical references.

The episode opens on the alien planet, at a performance of a pseudo-Greek play by the rubber-headed aliens of the week. The theatre displays elements of Greek theatre, most notably the Chorus, together with more modern elements, most notably actresses. All the actors and actresses wear uniform white woollen robes that make them look a little bit like monks and they occasionally use masks which they hold in front of their faces, but remove whenever they want or need to (for kissing scenes, for example). The Chorus intone their lines in unison in a manner that I presume is supposed to sound weighty and significant, but actually comes across as pompous and rather dull. I'm not an expert in the performance of ancient drama, but it seems to me that a Chorus should sing, rather than recite, and should have a lot more passion and enthusiasm that this lot do.

The theatre's patron, who is dressed in a slightly more Roman style than the others, likes the play and wants to see more in a week, which throws the poet into a panic - obviously, his patron is a harsh master.

The play features B'Elanna Torres and Harry Kim as Eternals (gods) from 'shining Voyager far from home'. The Chorus seem to think they're narrating an epic poem, rather than a play, as they give the characters and other elements epic epithets ('shining Voyager', 'young Harry Kim', 'headstrong B'Elanna Torres'). (For more information on epithets, the Wikipedia article is pretty good). Its rather sweet in a weird way, though not entirely appropriate to staged drama.

After the credit sequence, we find out that the poet, Kelis, has discovered B'Elanna unconscious in her crashed shuttlecraft (and on that subject, see the sadly incomplete Shuttlecraft Graveyard page here). Kelis has been bleeding B'Elanna to try to relieve her fever (so he's well-versed in ancient medical practice as well). His initial impression, that she is an Eternal, seems confirmed when she uses her dermo-regenerator (Star Trek techno-magic) to heal the cuts. Science fiction writers have a tendency to view human society in a very Frazerian way, and the less technology an alien society possess, the more likely it is to be extremely religious. In this case, this isn't being used as a story about encouraging the aliens to see the light (as these often are), but as a stand-in for the ancient Greek pantheon in their capacity as the subject matter of poetry. B'Elanna is literally Kelis' Muse, a goddess who has fallen from the heavens and can provide him with the poetic inspiration he needs.

Kelis, the poet, complete with rubber forehead and mock-ancient tunic thing

B'Elanna and Kelis develop a somewhat tense relationship in which she trades stories about Voyager for things she needs. B'Elanna is really horrible to Kelis here - all she has to do is explain the contents of her log to him, while she forces him to risk his life stealing for her and go into serious debt getting gold for her.

On top of that, Kelis' fellow performers aren't terribly impressed with the new play, failing to understand, for example, how any being could be emotionless. There's a nice juxtaposition of two scenes here, one showing Tuvok, back on Voyager, having stayed awake for days on end looking for Harry and B'Elanna, and the other showing Kelis, down on the planet, explaining to another actor that Tuvok must show no emotion even though inside he is devastated. There's a pretty funny line about Vulcan too - 'On the planet Vulcan there are no tears and no laughter. It is a very quiet place'. Joseph Will, as Kelis, delivers the line perfectly.

Poor Kelis' situation becomes even more dire when he finds out that his patron is planning to go to war with another local clan leader. Kelis is determined to stop him, and passionately explains to B'Elanna that he believes that the right play at the right time has the power to stop a war. This is where we get to the heart of the episode, which attempts to explore the nature of poetry and drama in the same way that 'Living Witness' explored the nature of history. Suggesting that the war may put B'Elanna in danger too, Kelis persuades her to come with him to the theatre to help with the play, much to the chagrin of his own girlfriend.

Kelis explains the rules of drama to B'Elanna - there must be mistaken identity, discovery and sudden reversal. These rules do not quite adhere to Aristotle's theory of drama, though they may be inspired by them, especially those relating to change of fortune and reversal of intention. Aristotle, however, was talking about tragedy, while mistaken identity is much more common in comedy. An older actor then wanders in and informs them that none of this matters anyway, as all they need to do is 'find the truth of your story'.

Kelis insists that audiences want excitement and passion and gleefully shows B'Elanna his characterisation of Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay. This is sheer cheek on the part of the writers, as all those of us with eyes had been rooting for Janeway and Chakotay to hook up since Season 1 (it never happened). It's very funny though. Even funnier is B'Elanna's unimpressed reaction to Kelis' pairing of her own boyfriend, Tom Paris, with Voyager's resident walking catsuit, Seven of Nine.

Kelis explains that victims used to be sacrificed at the altar that is now the theatre, until one day a play was performed instead and no one had to die, and that this gives him hope that his play can stop the war. Whether or not this ever really happened in the development of ancient religious practice is hard to say, but it is true that drama was associated with religious festivals. Greek religion is low on human sacrifice though, apart from within its mythology. Kelis comes up with an ending in which Janeway is betrayed by Seven of Nine but refuses to kill her, hoping that his patron will get the message.

The plot starts to wind itself up from here, as Kelis' irritated girlfriend threatens to expose B'Elanna and Harry turns up with some technical doohickey that will enable them to contact Voyager and get off the planet. Poor Kelis, meanwhile, still can't work out the ending that will stop his patron going to war. Kelis sends a messenger to B'Elanna telling her he will kill her off if she doesn't come and help, and B'Elanna realises that he needs her, giving orders to Voyager to wait and beam her up only when she tells them to.

Pseudo-Janeway and Seven have a short dialogue on the futility of war, then, in the nick of time, B'Elanna shows up and goes onstage as herself, promising to disappear in a blaze of light. Kelis' girlfriend tries to out her as an Eternal, though quite why anyone would be upset or in trouble for discovering a goddess in their midst is not explained. The older actor covers for them and B'Elanna and Kelis say goodbye before B'Elanna has herself beamed directly off the stage, claiming she is ascending to the heavens. We never do find out whether Kelis succeeds in stopping the war, though he delivers a heartfelt speech about the importance of wisdom and compassion before the credits roll.

I'm very fond of 'Muse', though it's probably not one of Voyager's best episodes. It feels very sincere, if naive, and although its cod-Greeks are walking stereotypes, they are affectionately drawn. Alien Greek theatre is a fun concept and its great to see the Greek Chorus and some dramatic masks, though the Chorus could be livelier. 'Muse' doesn't quite succeed in saying anything terribly profound about the nature of drama or poetry, but it does present a sweet little love letter to the potential power of theatre.

The late Kellie Waymire as Kelis' girlfriend

Expedition 20 Crew Launches from Baikonur

Flight Engineers Roman Romanenko, Frank De Winne, Sheldon Kalnitsky and Robert Thirsk of the 20th International Space Station crew launched in their Soyuz TMA-15 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:34 a.m. EDT Wednesday to begin a six-month stay in space.

Expedition 20 will mark the start of six-person crew operations aboard the International Space Station. All five of the international partner agencies – NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) – will be represented on orbit for the first time.

› Read more about the launch

Meanwhile, the Expedition 19 crew members worked with an array of science experiments aboard the station Wednesday.

Commander Gennady Padalka worked with a Russian experiment used for predicting natural and manmade disasters. He also spent time on an experiment that researches the growth and development of plants under spaceflight conditions in a special greenhouse facility.

Flight Engineer Mike Barratt worked with an experiment that studies the effects of long-duration space flight on crew member's heart functions and the blood vessels that supply their brain.

Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata completed another session with the Sleep-Wake Actigraphy & Light Exposure during Spaceflight (SLEEP) experiment that monitors the crew member’s sleep and wake patterns.

› Read more about Expedition 20
› Read more about Expedition 19
› View crew timelines

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2009 International Space Station Calendar

As part of NASA's celebration of the 10th anniversary of the International Space Station, the agency is offering a special 2009 calendar to teachers, as well as the general public.

The calendar contains photographs taken from the space station and highlights historic NASA milestones and fun facts about the international construction project of unprecedented complexity that began in 1998.

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NASA Uses Satellite to Unearth Innovation in Crop Forecasting

Soil moisture is essential for seeds to germinate and for crops to grow. But record droughts and scorching temperatures in certain parts of the globe in recent years have caused soil to dry up, crippling crop production. The falling food supply in some regions has forced prices upward, pushing staple foods out of reach for millions of poor people.

NASA researchers are using satellite data to deliver a kind of space-based humanitarian assistance. They are cultivating the most accurate estimates of soil moisture – the main determinant of crop yield changes – and improving global forecasts of how well food will grow at a time when the world is confronting shortages.

During a presentation this week at the the Joint Assembly of the American Geophysical Union in Toronto, NASA scientist John Bolten described a new modeling product that uses data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) sensor on NASA’s Aqua satellite to improve the accuracy of West African soil moisture. The group produced assessments of current soil moisture conditions, or "nowcasts," and improved estimates by 5 percent over previous methods. Though seemingly small and incremental, the increase can make a big difference in the precision of crop forecasts, Bolten said.

The modeling innovation comes at a time when crop analysts at agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are working to meet the food shortage problem head on. They combine soil moisture estimates with weather trends to produce up-to-date forecasts of crop harvests. Those estimates help regional and national officials prepare for and prevent food crises.

“The USDA’s estimates of global crop yields are an objective, timely benchmark of food availability and help drive international commodity markets,” said Bolten, a physical scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “But crop estimates are only as good as the observations available to drive the models."

Crop analysts must estimate root-zone soil moisture, the amount of water beneath the surface available for plants to absorb. But estimating the amount of water in soil has posed challenges. Ground-level sensors for rainfall and temperature -- the two key elements for estimating soil moisture – are often sparsely located in the developing nations that need them the most. Hard-to-reach terrain like mountains or desert, lack of local cooperation as well as high maintenance costs, can lead to sensors more than 500 miles apart.

Under a new NASA-USDA collaboration known as the Global Agriculture Monitoring Project, Bolten and colleagues from the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service are using AMSR-E to fill the data gaps with daily soil moisture “snapshots.” Since its launch in 2002, the instrument has “seen” through clouds, and light vegetation like crops and grasses to detect the amount of soil moisture beneath Earth's surface.

AMSR-E uses varying frequencies to detect the amount of emitted electromagnetic radiation from the Earth’s surface. Within the microwave spectrum, this radiation is closely related to the amount of water that is in the soil, allowing researchers to remotely sense the amount of water in the soil across any geographic landscape.

Following a test of their system over the United States, Bolten’s team tracked West African rainfall, temperature, and model assessments of soil moisture with and without the AMSR-E satellite sensor observations. They used West Africa as a model because the landscape provides varying cover, from desert and semi-arid landscape in the north to grasslands, lush forests, and crop land to the south. Rainfall in the region is highly variable yet sparsely monitored by ground-based sensors. They also targeted West Africa to demonstrate the possibility for improving the assessment of drought-caused food shortages on the region’s dense population.

“Many developing countries are relying on limited and highly variable water resources," said Bolten. "And typically those same regions don’t have adequate ground station data or crop-estimating agencies capable of making reliable production forecasts.”

By definition, the severity of agricultural drought is determined by root-zone soil water content. So Bolten’s satellite-driven boost to root-zone soil moisture prediction also directly improves drought monitoring. And Bolten says results from AMSR-E are just a precursor to dramatic new improvements in data and prediction accuracy researchers expect from the Soil Moisture Active and Passive satellite, slated to launch in 2013.

Food reserves are at their lowest level in 30 years, according to the United Nations World Food Program, putting the world’s 1 billion poorest people most at risk. Prices for wheat, rice, and corn have more than doubled in the last 24 months, hitting countries like Haiti, Bangladesh, and Burkina Faso the hardest. And the U.S. is not unaffected -- drought in 2008 led to an estimated $1.1 billion in crop losses in Texas alone.

“This advance is making it possible for us to do our job in a more precise way,” said Curt Reynolds, a crop analyst for the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service in Washington. “We plan to make NASA’s soil moisture information available to commodity markets, traders, agricultural producers, and policymakers through our Crop Explorer Web site.”

Related Links:

> See USDA Crop Explorer on the Web
> See USDA World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates reports on the Web
> NASA Data Show Some African Drought Linked to Warmer Indian Ocean
> NASA Researchers Find Satellite Data Can Warn of Famine

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