Japan launched a satellite February 11 that will work with ground-based observatories to provide the highest resolution radio images yet of the cosmos.
     The MUSES-B satellite was launched from the Kagoshima Space Center in Japan at 11:58pm EST February 11 (0458 UT February 12). The first flight of the new M-V rocket placed the satellite into an orbit that ranges from 1,000 km (620 mi.) to 20,000 km (12,400 mi.) above the Earth.
     The launch was delayed by one day when high winds forced a lunch attempt the previous day to be scrubbed. The satellite had originally been planned for launch the previous September, but was delayed when problems with the spacecraft's solar panels were discovered.
     After launch the spacecraft was renamed HALCA, for Highly Advanced Laboratory for Communications and Astronomy, according to Japanese officials. It is customary for the Japanese to rename spacecraft after they are successfully launched.
     The 830-kg (1,830-lb.) spacecraft has a 7.3-m (26-foot) mesh antenna. This antenna will be used in conjunction with antennas on the Earth to provide a baseline larger than the Earth itself. This very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) permits high-resolution observation of radio sources in this galaxy and beyond.
     "Using space VLBI, we can probe the cores of quasars and active galaxies, believed to be powered by super massive black holes," said Dr. Robert Preston, project scientist for the U.S. Space Very Long Baseline Interferometry project at JPL. "Observations of cosmic masers -- naturally-occurring microwave radio amplifiers -- will tell us new things about the process of star formation and activity in the heart of other galaxies."
     Over 40 telescopes in 15 countries will work with HALCA. NASA is providing new tracking stations at its three Deep Space Network sites and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory is adding a facility in Green Bank, West Virginia. Canada, Australia, and Europe are also participating.

The source for the mysterious gamma ray bursts which have puzzled astronomers for decades may lie in other galaxies and not within our own, a team of UCLA astronomers reported.
     Graduate student Samuel B. Larson and professors Ian S. McLean and Eric E. Becklin have found far more bright galaxies in the same areas as gamma ray bursts than expected, leading them to believe that the bursts may be directly associated with the galaxies.
     "Until recently, gamma-ray bursts were thought to originate within our own Milky Way galaxy," Larson said. "Our results suggest that other galaxies may be responsible for the bursts."
     Larson and his collaborators took highly sensitive images of the areas around which gamma ray bursts have been recorded by spacecraft. Looking in the infrared to maximize the galaxies' brightness, they found "significantly more" bright galaxies near the burst locations than they would have expected from a random distribution.
     "Although it may be coincidental, the profusion of galaxies suggests they may have been responsible for the bursts," Larson said. These galaxies are close enough to imply modest bursts of energy, yet they are far enough away to produce the random pattern of bursts that we see."
     Gamma ray bursts are sudden surges in gamma radiation that last for only a few seconds, but can potentially release more energy than a supernova explosion. Their brief duration and the fact that the Earth's atmosphere shields the surface from gamma rays has made it difficult to obtain more data on the bursts.
     The cause of gamma ray bursts have yet to be determined, although more than 100 theories regarding their origin have been forwarded since first observed by spacecraft thirty years ago. Larson said that their work does not identify a specific cause for the bursts but brings them "one step closer" to eventually finding the cause of the bursts.

A satellite in orbit around the Earth is working with scientists on the ground and in aircraft to study the mysteries of the Northern Lights -- the aurora.
     The Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer (FAST) spacecraft, launched last summer, will study the aurora over Alaska from above while scientists on the ground and in a modified jet study the aurora from below in the hope of understanding why aurorae appear as thin, wavy curtains or other similar shapes.
     "The physics governing what shapes the aurora is important because it is similar to the physics governing little-understood processes that occur throughout 99 percent of the universe," said Charles Carlson, a Berkeley physicist and a principal investigator for the FAST spacecraft.
     Scientists hope FAST can give them a new perspective on the aurora by looking down on it, providing clues on its appearance. Comparing the aurora to the picture on a TV, University of Alaska Fairbanks professor Hans Nielsen said, "The FAST satellite is designed to fly back in the inner workings of the TV, where the picture is forming. We want to find out exactly how the auroral picture forms and what processes create it."
     Scientists will combine those data with observations from a jet, which will fly under the aurora at the same time FAST flies above it, and from instruments mounted on the ground in Alaska and Canada.
     Auroras are created when electrical energy extracted from solar wind flows down Earth's magnetic field lines to form ring-shaped regions around the north and south geomagnetic poles.