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Posted
December 5, 2011.
Kepler confirms its first planet in habitable
zone of Sun-like star
By
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. — Published:
December 5, 2011
NASA’s
Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the
region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has
discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously
known count. Ten of these candidates are near Earth’s size and orbit in the
habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to
verify they are actual planets.
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted
Novemeber 1, 2011.
Spooky
Halloween Aurora
by
Nancy Atkinson
Did
you see ghosts and goblins last night for Halloween? Jason Ahrns of Chatanika,
Alaska saw a dark shadow of a spooky ghost in the middle of a green aurora
stream during his observing run on October 31, 2011. He used a Nikon D5000 to
snap this eerie image.
Posted
April 7, 2011.
Space Telescopes Observe
Unprecedented Explosion
by
Nancy Atkinson
NASA’s Swift, Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra
X-ray Observatory have teamed up to study one of the most puzzling cosmic blasts
yet observed. More than a week later, high-energy radiation continues to
brighten and fade from its location. Astronomers
say they have never seen anything this bright, long-lasting and variable before.
Usually, gamma-ray bursts mark the destruction of a massive star, but flaring
emission from these events never lasts more than a few hours.
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted
January 23, 2011.
Will
Betelgeuse Really Become a Second Sun in 2012 ?
by:
Natalie Wolchover
Several online news
sites, including the Huffington Post, have reported that the star Betelgeuse
will undergo a supernova explosion next year — yes, that's 2012 — and shine
as brightly in the sky as a second sun.
But according to
scientists, it's all nonsense.
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted
November 4, 2010.
First
Close Images of Hartley 2: It's a Peanut with Jets.
by:
Nancy Atkinson
NASA’s
Deep
Impact spacecraft
came within 700 kilometers (435 miles) of Comet
Hartley 2 at 10:01 a.m. EDT (1401 GMT) today, imaging with several cameras. Here
are the first pictures released of the closest approach. The scientific team
watched along with viewers online and on NASA TV as the images were returned to Earth,
about an hour after the spacecraft made its closest approach. First impressions?
It is a peanut with jets . . .
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
It
is amazing to see what it really looks like, after spending hours imaging this
and making it into a movie as it flew by the double cluster.
Click
Here to
see the image, then click on the image to see the movie. - AstronomySoup.
Posted
October 18, 2010.
Planet
hunters no longer blinded by the light:
New
way to see faint planets previously hidden in their star's glare.
by
Daniel Stolte (Science Daily)
Using
new optics technology developed at the University of Arizona's Steward
Observatory, an international team of astronomers has obtained images of a
planet on a much closer orbit around its parent star than any other extrasolar
planet previously found . . .
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted
October 14, 2010.
Ghosts
of the Future: First Giant Structures of the Universe hold 800 Trillion Suns
by:
Science Daily.
Astronomers
using the South Pole Telescope report that they have discovered the most massive
galaxy cluster yet seen at a distance of 7 billion light-years. The cluster
(designated SPT-CL J0546-5345) weighs in at around 800 trillion Suns, and holds
hundreds of galaxies . . .
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted
September 30, 2010.
Chances
of life on newly discovered Earth-like planet.
"Personally,
given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would
say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100
percent," said Steven Vogt of the University of California during a press
briefing. "I have almost no doubt about it," he added.
Its
just a matter of time . . .
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted
July 10, 2010.
Sharper
than Hubble: Large Binocular Telescope achieves major breakthrough
By:
Physorg.com
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The
LBT, with its two 8.4 metre -mirrors, is the largest single optical
telescope in the world. While there have been advancements in adaptive
optics technology to correct atmospheric blurring, the LBT’s innovative system
truly takes this concept to a whole new level. The LBT’s adaptive optics
system, called the First Light Adaptive Optics system (FLAO), immediately
outperformed all other comparable systems, delivering an image quality greater
than three times sharper than the Hubble
Space Telescope using just one of the LBT’s two 8.4 metre mirrors. As soon
as the adaptive optics are in place for both mirrors and their light is combined
appropriately, it is expected that the LBT will achieve image sharpness ten
times that of the Hubble.
This
is HUGE !
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted
June 15, 2010.
One Supernova, Many Camera Angles
By: Alan MacRobert.
How often have you
wished you could get a look at some nebula or galaxy from a different angle?
It'll never happen, unless we build faster-than-light spaceships that can flit
across interstellar or intergalactic distances. But ingenious astronomers report
a partial form of success at getting new camera angles using a different method:
hunting for "light echoes" from a 330-year-old supernova . . .
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted
May 31, 2010.
Bright
galaxies like to stick together.
By
Science & Technology Facilities, UK.
The
Herschel Space Observatory has been able to see thousands of galaxies and
identify their locations, showing for the first time that they are packed
closely together in the center of large galaxy clusters. Astronomers using
the European Space Agency's Herschel telescope have discovered that the
brightest galaxies tend to be in the busiest parts of the universe. This crucial
piece of information will enable theorists to revise their theories of galaxy
formation.
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted:
April 18, 2010.
Astroboffin
says 'black holes murder galaxies' But not ours.
By
Rik Myslewski.
About
25,000 light years from earth, nestled in the center of our galaxy, lurks a super-massive
black hole. Luckily for us, our galaxy's matter-sucking hub is far less
active than those at the core of many other galaxies. If
it weren't, we'd all be dead. Or, more likely, our earth would never have
come to be in the first place.
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted:
March 1, 2010.
The Big
Question: Why are galaxies moving toward the same point, as if
pulled by an unknown force?
By
James Owen Weatherall
As if the
universe weren’t strange enough, scientists have recently discovered
that entire galaxy clusters—the largest known structures in the
universe, consisting of thousands of galaxies—are moving toward the
same area. And we have no idea what mysterious phenomenon is drawing
them along. Whatever it is, it’s huge. So far, cosmologists’ best
guess is that it’s the gravitational pull from something beyond the
visible universe . . .
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted
1:34 PM. Sat. Feb. 27, 2010
Rocket
puts 40-day trip to Red Planet in Reach
by JEAN-LOUIS
SANTINI
A JOURNEY from
Earth to Mars could eventually take just 39 days, instead of up to nine months
as currently anticipated, says a rocket scientist who has the ear of the US
space agency. Franklin Chang-Diaz, a former
astronaut and a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said a
trip to the red planet could be achieved dramatically quicker using his
high-tech VASIMR
rocket, now on track for lift-off after decades of development
. . .
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted
7:32 AM. Tues. Feb. 16, 2010
Astronomy
solves puzzles posed by artists such as Hamlet and Van Gogh
by
Jonathan Leake and Maurice Chittenden
A team of art sleuths
has turned to astronomy and mathematical formulas to crack a string of
historical conundrums posed by the works of Shakespeare, Chaucer and Van Gogh.
This week the experts
will share evidence from 50 “cases”, including the exact time at which the
Dutch artist painted Moonrise, a canvas that was once thought to have portrayed
a sunset, and details about the blood-red sky in The Scream by Edvard Munch . .
.
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Posted
2:46 PM. Sat. Feb. 13, 2010.
President Obama's
NASA budget closes the New Frontier
Syndicated Columnist
. . . By the
end of this year, there will be no shuttle, no U.S. manned space program, no way
for us to get into space. We're not talking about Mars or the moon here. We're
talking about low-Earth orbit, which the U.S. has dominated for nearly half a
century and from which it is now retiring with nary a whimper.
Our absence from
low-Earth orbit was meant to last a few years, the interval between the
retirement of the fatally fragile space shuttle and its replacement with the
Constellation program (Ares booster, Orion capsule, Altair lunar lander) to take
astronauts more cheaply and safely back to space.
But the Obama 2011
budget kills Constellation. Instead, we shall have nothing. For the first time
since John Glenn flew in 1962, the U.S. will have no access of its own for
humans into space — and no prospect of getting there in the foreseeable future
. . .
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
Updated
11:10 PM. Fri Feb 12, 2010.
Carina
shows SkyVoyager iPhone app, Telescope Controller
System
Enhances GoTo Automated Aiming
Carina
Software at Macworld 2010 showed off several of its astronomy products geared
for iPhones and Macs. The company offers SkyVoyager,
a popular astronomy app for the iPhone, along with the SkyFi
adapter that converts Wi-Fi signals into serial communication. Used together,
the products allow users to easily control their GoTo-enabled telescope directly
from the iPhone interface.
SkyVoyager
is very similar to the more-popular Pocket Universe app, as both offer views of
the sky and additional information for certain objects. Carina's app integrates
a database with over 300,000 stars and 30,000 deep-sky objects, with the planet
and moons rendered using NASA mission imagery . . .
Click
Here For Full Story . . .
