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NASA is turning control of the Hubble Space Telescope over to the general public to give non-scientists a chance to choose which target the iconic observatory should turn its camera eyes on next.

The U.S. space agency is inviting the public to vote for one of six candidate astronomical objects for Hubble to observe in honor of the International Year of Astronomy, which began this month. The options, which Hubble has not previously photographed, range from far-flung galaxies to dying stars. Votes can be cast until March 1.

Hubble’s camera will take a high-resolution image revealing new details about the object that receives the most votes. The image will be released during the International Year of Astronomy’s “100 Hours of Astronomy” from April 2 to 5.

Everyone who votes also will be entered into a random drawing to receive one of 100 copies of the Hubble photograph made of the winning celestial body.

NASA is also inviting teachers and students to participate in a related Hubble Space Telescope classroom collage activity that integrates art, science and language arts. Students in participating classes can select their favorite Hubble images and assemble them in a collage. Students in each class will also choose their favorite object from the image voting contest and write essays about why they made their selections.

Launched in April 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has spent 18 years peering into the depths of the cosmos to return stunning images and help scientists better understand the history of the universe. NASA has launched four shuttle missions to fix and upgrade Hubble. The fifth and final overhaul by astronauts is due to launch on May 12 aboard the shuttle Atlantis.

Commanded by veteran spaceflyer Scott Altman, Atlantis’ STS-125 Hubble servicing crew plans to fly an 11-day mission and stage five spacewalks to add new instruments, batteries, gyroscopes and other gear to extend the space telescope’s mission through at least 2013.

As diners sit down to lunches of whale meat in Tokyo and elsewhere across the nation, Japan’s whaling fleet is on its annual hunt in the Antarctic, drawing protests from environmental groups, international governments and whale-lovers worldwide. So why does Tokyo persist?Why shouldn’t it, many Japanese say.

“Why do people say we can’t eat the things we’ve eaten since the end of World War II?” asked Koji Shingu, the proprietor of a whale eatery called Yushin in Tokyo, a few blocks from the city’s oldest temple, a popular tourist draw.

His feelings echo those of many older Japanese.

The country has hunted whales for hundreds of years, and the meat is a sentimental favorite of people who lived through the lean postwar years, when whale was the chief source of protein because Japan couldn’t afford pork or beef. Whale was a common family dish, and many schoolchildren ate it every day.

Whale meat is still easily found in restaurants and canned in supermarkets, but is not a part of a typical home-cooked meal.

Shingu says most of his customers are in their 40s or older, while younger diners come mainly for the novelty. At the tail end of lunch hour, his clients included several older men eating alone and a pair of younger girls at a corner table.

The calm in the restaurant belied the battle it took to bring in the whale meat it serves.

The Japanese fleet, now somewhere between New Zealand and Chile, catches mostly minke whales, which at about 25 feet (7.6 meters) long and 5 tons are smaller than many other species.

It’s dangerous work — the current expedition has lost a crew member, who fell overboard and is presumed dead.

The task is made more difficult by environmentalists who relentlessly pursue the hunters.

This year the conservationist group Sea Shepherd has chased Japan’s whaling ships for thousands of miles and thrown bottles of rancid butter to disrupt operations. In late December the group’s ship and a whaling boat collided at sea.

Commercial whaling is banned internationally, but the six-vessel Japanese fleet operates under permission from the International Whaling Commission, which allows hunting for research purposes. Japan plans to take up to 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales this year, and says it sells most of the meat for food only after conducting its research.

Minke whales are not endangered, and few dispute that there are hundreds of thousands in the wild. But many feel that Tokyo’s research operation is thinly veiled commercial hunting, and that harpooning whales at sea is a brutal way to kill them.

“We deal with a ruthless and cruel enemy whose very reason for being here is to inflict agonizing suffering and to deliver cruel death to gentle, sensitive, intelligent and socially complex sentient beings,” the founder of Sea Shepherd and captain of its ship, Paul Watson, wrote from the Antarctic last week after clashing with whalers.

Makoto Ito, the managing director of Kyodo Senpaku, the company that runs Japan’s whaling fleet, says invoking images of whales being killed at sea is unfair because killing animals for food is never a pretty sight.

“There are intense scenes of cows and chickens being slaughtered too,” he said.

Ito says the scientific whaling done by his company, in connection with the government-backed Cetacean Research Institute, is needed to prove there are enough minke whales for harvesting, and thus for the lifting of the commercial whaling ban.

He said the entire operation costs $65 million to $76 million per year, of which the government provides about $5.5 million. The rest comes from selling the whale meat, and the entire operation is “barely making a profit.”

But international allegations that it is commercial whaling in disguise abound, and Japan has been strongly criticized by a number of nations, including Australia and New Zealand, as well as the United States.

This week, Tokyo said Sea Shepherd’s activities are tantamount to terrorism and said it planned to ask Australia to bar the group’s anti-whaling ship from its ports.

Australia, which has been a leading opponent of whaling, said it wouldn’t do so.

Sea Shepherd’s aggressive save-the-whales campaign has resonated with Western audiences and is the subject of a popular series on the Animal Planet TV network, “Whale Wars,” filmed from its ship.

Images of foreigners interfering with what is seen as a traditional fishing tradition have helped stir up pro-whaling sentiment in Japan. Still, younger generations are increasingly fond of red meat and other Western food, and without a publicity boost, whaling may fade away on its own.

That, Ito said, would be a shame.

“If there are plentiful resources, and we can take some without causing whales to go extinct for future generations, what is wrong with that?” Ito asked.

The death toll from rain-spawned floods and mudslides in southern Brazil has risen to 65 people, with 17 still missing, civil defense authorities said Tuesday.Most died in mudslides that swept away homes and businesses, and officials from Santa Catarina state say they fear more mudslides because the earth is still saturated with water.

Eight cities remained isolated because of weekend rains that caused rivers to overflow their banks, civil defense officials said in a statement.

A pipeline rupture cut off the state’s sole source of natural gas from Bolivia, prompting shortages of cooking gas and fuel for cars.

Six large textile mills also shut down because they had no natural gas to generate electricity, Brazil’s Valor Economico business newspaper reported.

Seventeen highways are blocked by mudslides. Authorities say that more than 52,000 people were forced to leave their homes.

The death toll was most severe in the town of Ilhota along the banks of the Itajai River, where 15 people died after waters rose 9 meters (30 feet) above normal.

Also hard hit was the city of Blumenau, where 13 people died when they were buried by mudslides. Another 15 people suffered serious injuries, according to the civil defense statement.

More than 150,000 people in the city of nearly 300,000 had no electricity. Blumenau is a renowned tourist destination founded by German immigrants and is known for its Oktoberfest celebration.

Two astronauts face a tedious cleaning and lube job Tuesday, the first of a series of spacewalks to resurrect a massive joint that turns one of the international space station’s power-generating solar-panel wings toward the sun.The 10-foot-wide joint has been clogged with metal shavings from grinding parts for more than a year, limiting how much power the solar wing can produce.

Once in the void of space, spacewalkers Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper and Stephen Bowen have at their disposal a putty knife to scrape away the metal grit, wet wipes for cleaning and a grease gun to lubricate the area.

“We have a little cleaning and greasing to do, to see if we can make it rotate smoother,” Bowen said. “We’re going to try to make it come back to life.”

Other tasks during the 6 1/2-hour spacewalk include moving an empty nitrogen tank into the docked space shuttle Endeavour’s cargo bay for a return to Earth and taking an ammonia hose from the shuttle to store outside the station.

Tuesday’s trip outside the space station is the first of four spacewalks planned during Endeavour’s nearly two-week visit to the space station. The spacewalks are focused on cleaning and lubricating the troublesome joint and lubricating another joint that is rotating without any problems.

“Certainly the first (spacewalk) of any mission is more significant and you want it to go well,” said flight director Holly Ridings.

The spacewalkers spent the night in a depressurized airlock in an effort to purge nitrogen from their bodies and prevent decompression sickness, a painful condition in which nitrogen bubbles form in blood and tissue.

After analyzing images taken during the three days since Endeavour launched Friday from Florida, shuttle officials said there was no need for an extra inspection of the shuttle’s heat shield. Only a bit more analysis remained before they would be able to clear the shuttle for the ride home with its seven crew members, said LeRoy Cain, chairman of the mission management team.

“Endeavour is doing extremely well,” Cain said. “We don’t have any outstanding issues of any significance.”

Using a robotic arm, astronauts moved a 21-foot cargo container from Endeavour and attached it to the space station Monday. Mission Control burst into applause and cheers after shuttle astronaut Don Pettit announced that the hatch had been opened between the station and the cargo container, nicknamed “Leonardo.”

The container holds an extra toilet, refrigerator and kitchenette, exercise machine, sleeping compartments and a new system that recycles urine into drinking water. The newly delivered equipment will allow the space station to increase from its current crew size of three people to six residents next year. The orbiting outpost is on the verge of becoming a two-kitchen, two-bath, five-bedroom home and will have six full bedrooms in a few more months.

Ridings said it would take some time to get the urine recycling system operating safely.

“If you imagine doing a major project in your house, there are a lot of complicated details and it can take a while,” she said.

The Indian Space Research Organisation is ready to establish a world class facility for atmospheric studies near Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G Madhavan Nair informed Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy that ISRO would establish the facility for advanced atmospheric studies.

Nair was replying to the message sent by the Chief Minister congratulating him and his team for the successful launch of Chandrayaan-I, said a statement from the Chief Minister’s office.

The moon mission was launched from Sriharikota launch station in Andhra Pradesh.

Rajasekhara Reddy, in his congratulatory message, sought the establishment of ISRO’s human space programme (astronaut training and biomedical engineering centre) and offered the necessary land in Anantapur district close to Bangalore.

Nair, however, informed him that as part of Human Spaceflight Programme (HSP), a centre for training India astronauts is planned to be set up around Bangalore, (in coordination with Indian Institute of Aviation, Medicine, Bangalore).

The ISRO chief pointed out that the National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL) of ISRO was already functioning at Gadanki, near Tirupati since 1992. It is engaged in fundamental research related to atmospheric and space sciences and developing various types of radars and lidars for atmospheric studies.

“NARL has proposed to expand its activities towards advanced technology experiments and in this regard a laboratory for developing flight instruments is planned to be set up near Tirupati,” wrote the ISRO chairman.

Naidu urged the Chief Minister to allot 20 acres of land for establishing a world class facility for atmospheric studies which would attract the participations of many Indian and foreign researchers, who will contribute to advanced research in weather and climate.

Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is slated to reach about one km away from its final orbital home of 100 kms above the moon’s surface this evening. ISRO scientists are planning the final orbit reduction manoeuvre for about one minute at around 7 pm that would bring the lunar spacecraft to around 101 kms above the moon’s surface, ISRO sources said. The circular orbit is expected to be trimmed to 100 kms tomorrow, they added.

A storm was expected to pelt the Rockies and northern Plains with heavy snow, sleet, rain and strong winds on Thursday, while wet weather was forecast along the East Coast.

After days of stormy weather, the Pacific Northwest was expected to begin drying out, though flooding remained a concern in Washington and Oregon as showers move eastward.

Fourteen to 16 inches of snow was forecast for the northern Rockies, while the central Rockies were expected to get 4 to 6 inches. The northern Plains could see sleet, ice and snow as temperatures dip below freezing. Rain was not expected to reach the southern Plains.

Showers were forecast in many places east of the Mississippi Valley. Moderate to heavy rain was expected in the Ohio River Valley and the northern mid-Atlantic. Severe weather was possible in both regions. Light, scattered showers were forecast for New England and the Southeast.

Temperatures in the Lower 48 states on Wednesday ranged from a low of 10 degrees at Alamosa, Colo., to a high of 107 degrees at Greenville, Texas.

An American space tourist and two professional astronauts are closing in on the International Space Station as they prepare to dock at the orbiting lab early Tuesday.

Expedition 18 commander Michael Fincke of NASA, Russian flight engineer Yury Lonchakov and space tourist Richard Garriott are due to arrive at the station tomorrow at about 4:33 a.m. EDT (0833 GMT). The two professional spaceflyers are beginning a six-month mission to the station, while Garriott plans to spend about 10 days in space before returning home Oct. 23.

The trio launched Sunday at 3:01 a.m. EDT (0701 GMT) aboard a Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and will dock at an Earth-facing berth on the space station’s Russian-built Zarya module. Once they arrive at the station, the astronauts will greet the current core station crew, Expedition 17 commander Sergey Volkov and flight engineers Greg Chamitoff and Oleg Kononenko, in a welcoming ceremony.

“I’m looking forward to the guys who are coming,” Chamitoff told SPACE.com last week. “One of them is a space tourist, and I know he’s very excited and we’re definitely looking forward to seeing him.”

After the hatches between the station and Soyuz TMA-13 are opened, Volkov and Garriott will become the first second-generation spaceflyers to meet in orbit. Garriott is the son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, who flew aboard the U.S. Skylab space station and shuttle Columbia, while Volkov is the son of famed cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, a three-time spaceflyer and long-duration flight veteran.

Garriott, a computer game designer, paid $30 million to Russia’s Federal Space Agency through an agreement brokered by the Vienna, Va.-based firm Space Adventures to make his trip possible. He is the sixth space tourist to visit the space station.

Changing space station

Fincke and Lonchakov plan to spend their mission outfitting the orbital outpost to host six-person crews, double its current capacity of three astronauts. Both spaceflyers have made previous trips to the ISS: Fincke was a flight engineer on the space station’s Expedition 9 mission in 2004, and Lonchakov visited the laboratory in 2001 and 2002. The station has grown in size since both men last saw it, and will change even more during their stay.

“This time around it will be sized for six people, but there’s only going to be three of us, so I’m looking forward to having that extra room,” Fincke told SPACE.com before launch. “Myself and my crew, we’re experienced at such a level that I really think we’re the right crew to help us get to that next level of a six person crew.”

The team will install hardware and equipment for the transition, including a new kitchen, sleeping cabins, an advanced exercise device, a water recycling system and a second toilet to arrive on the space shuttle Endeavour’s November STS-126 mission.

The new toilet will be especially welcome, since the station’s current facility broke last week. In the meantime, station residents will use the toilets aboard the Soyuz vehicles docked at the ISS until they can fix the balky loo, which also broke in June.

“The problem we had just a few months ago, it really emphasized the importance of having a space potty,” Fincke said in a pre-launch interview. “This time we’ll have two, so if this one breaks, we’ll have another one.”

Bigger than a jumbo jet

The space station, now nearly completely assembled, will be a bigger destination for Garriott than it was the last time a paying visitor stopped by, when American entrepreneur Charles Simonyi came in April 2007. Since then, new rooms have been added to the station, including Europe’s Columbus module and Japan’s massive Kibo laboratory - a science facility the size of a tour bus.

“It’s coming very close to completion and I’ll be flying after, you know, 90 percent of it I think will be put together,” Garriott told SPACE.com before launch. “So I’ll get to see it in pretty close to its full glory you might say, which I think is particularly exciting. The internal volume of International Space Station is going to be, by the time I’m there, bigger than a jumbo jet.”

Garriott has planned a busy schedule for himself, packed with science experiments, educational activities and Earth observation. His father, who watched the launch from Kazakhstan, is serving as chief scientist for his son’s mission.

NASA will broadcast the Expedition 18 crew’s arrival to the International Space Station live on NASA TV beginning at 4:00 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT). ?Click here for SPACE.com’s NASA TV feed and space station mission updates.

Richard Garriott is chronicling his spaceflight training and mission at his personal Web site: www.richardinspace.com.

Facebook profiles can tell you more than just peoples’ birthdays and what movies they like - they can reveal the self-adoring, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the University of Georgia gave personality questionnaires to nearly 130 Facebook users and analyzed the content of their online profiles. They also had untrained observers look at the profiles and rate how narcissistic, or excessively egotistical, the owners of the profiles were.

The results of the study are detailed in the October issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

The researchers found that the number of friends and wall posts (messages left by the owner of the profile or friends) that a person had on their profile correlated with how narcissistic they were. Study leader Laura Buffardi, a Ph.D. student in psychology, said this is similar to how narcissists behave in the real world, forming numerous but shallow relationships with others.

Narcissistic Facebook users were also more likely to have glamorous, self-promoting pictures for their main profile photo, while others tended to use snapshots, the study found. The untrained observers also noted the differences in photos and amount of social interaction.

“We found that people who are narcissistic use Facebook in a self-promoting way that can be identified by others,” Buffardi said.

Narcissism hampers a person’s ability to form healthy, long-term relationships, said study co-author W. Keith Campbell.

“Narcissists might initially be seen as charming, but they end up using people for their own advantage,” Campbell said. “They hurt the people around them and they hurt themselves in the long run.”

In the past, research has found that personal Web pages are more popular among narcissists, but this doesn’t mean that all Facebook users are narcissists.

“Nearly all of our students use Facebook, and it seems to be a normal part of people’s social interactions,” Campbell said. “It just turns out that narcissists are using Facebook the same way they use their other relationships - for self-promotion with an emphasis on quantity over quality.”

Increasing use of folic acid and other dietary supplements by women may be one reason why the prevalence of asthma has nearly doubled in the past 25 years, U.S. researchers are suggesting.

They found that a pregnant woman’s diet can cause gene regulation (epigenetic) changes that increase an offspring’s risk of developing allergic asthma.

The study, by researchers at National Jewish Health and Duke University, found that pregnant mice fed diets high in supplements containing methyl-donors (folic acid, L-methionine, choline and genistein) had babies with more severe allergic airway disease than mice born to mothers that consumed diets low in methyl-containing foods.

The mice born to mothers fed high methyl-donor diets had greater asthma severity, more airway hyperactivity, more allergic inflammation in the airways, higher levels of IgE in their blood, and their immune system T-cells were more likely to be the type associated with allergy. Male offspring also transmitted a higher predisposition to allergy airway disease to their pups.

There was no link between high methyl-donor diets during lactation or adulthood and increased risk of allergic asthma, the researchers said.

The study was published online Sept. 18 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

“Our findings suggest that a mother’s diet that alters DNA methylation can affect the development of the fetus’s immune system, predisposing it to allergic airway disease,” senior author Dr. David Schwartz, a professor of medicine at National Jewish Health, said in a news release.

“It also suggests the dramatic increase in asthma during the past two decades may be related in part to recent changes in dietary supplementation among women of childbearing age,” he added.

“There seems to be a crucial stage, during development in utero, when a young mouse is susceptible to epigenetic changes that can alter its immune system,” study co-author John W. Hollingsworth, assistant professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, said in the news release.

“These epigenetic changes may partially explain why it has been so difficult to definitively identify genes that contribute to asthma risk; the effect of genetic variations can be masked or further complicated by epigenetic changes,” he noted.