SkyWatch
http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/skywatch/
It's a big sky -- someone has to watch it. This quick, weekly audio broadcast explores the astronomy news of the day, with topics ranging from dark matter to nearby planets. Join hosts Carol Christian of the Space Telescope Science Institute and Jim O'Leary of the Maryland Science Center for the latest buzz on space. SkyWatch also includes HubbleWatch, a monthly round-up of news from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
Copyright: WPYR
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Servicing Mission 4 went off without a hitch in May, a team of astronauts successfully completing what was perhaps the most challenging Hubble mission ever. Since then, Hubble has been slowly coming awake as scientists and engineers carefully restore its many components to full power. It'll be another month before the first official new images from Hubble, but in July an unexpected astronomical event gave us a sneak preview of one of the telescope's new instruments.
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The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is shrinking, and astronomers aren't sure why. One of the largest stars we know, Betelgeuse could occupy the space from the Sun out to the Planet Jupiter, engulfing the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Since 1993, it's shrunk about 15 percent. Betelgeuse's size determines that it will die as a supernova, lighting up Earth's skies for months after the light from its explosion reaches us.
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Astronomers calculate that there's a tiny chance, a billion or more years from now, that Mars or Venus could collide with Earth. The new finding comes from simulations that show how orbits of planets might evolve. There's also a chance that Mercury could strike Venus and merge into larger planet, that Mars might experience a close encounter with Jupiter, or even that Jupiter's gravity could hurl the Red Planet out of the solar system.
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The center of our Milky Way galaxy is a chaotic, harsh place, home to shock waves, intense radiation, and a supermassive black hole. You might think all these elements would prohibit new stars from forming or rip apart any object shortly after it was formed. But a few years ago, infrared observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope indicated that clusters of stars could indeed form in this region. Now new observations have detected brand new stars near the galaxy center. The "baby" stars can be distinguished from similar-looking older stars because they are still imbedded in the molecular cloud in which they formed. Might these objects form planetary systems, since they have lots of dusty material around them?
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Astronomers are inventing new ways to find planets around other stars. Most of the methods used thus far don't involve actually seeing the planet; its presence is inferred from observations of the parent star. A large, Jupiter sized planet can be detected b y the "wobble" its gravity causes in the parent star's motion. Other planets pass in front of their host stars, making them detectable by the dimming of the stars' light. A new idea is to block out the light from a bright star so that faint planets can be detected. This technique would be used to obtain direct images of the planets that normally cannot be seen right next to the bright star.The device that blocks the starlight is called a starshade and would be placed in orbit far from the main telescope. The starshade is a clever concept, but would be tricky to engineer.
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Neutron stars are the remnants of dead stars that have collapsed into small objects with incredible density. Their crusts could be 10 billion times stronger than steel. Forces from within the star crack the crust during "star quakes," events similar to earthquakes, and blast powerful gamma rays into space.
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Asteroids - were they a boon or bane when they struck Earth billions of years ago? One would think the period of bombardment was not a good thing for a planet! But a new study shows that the bombardment may actually have created environments where microbial organisms could have survived if they were already there. The study also suggests that such environments may have existed on other planets, such as Mars.
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A former NASA astronaut is searching for signs of hardy life on Mount Everest, which could provide a window into extreme environments that organisms might inhabit on hostile-appearing planets elsewhere in universe. Scott Parazynski's mission makes him the first astronaut to scale Mount Everests.
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The Hubble Space Telescope has been restored after the hugely successful servicing mission by the Space Shuttle Atlantis astronauts and the hundreds of personnel who work on Hubble at NASA and elsewhere. Two new instruments are onboard, two instruments were repaired, and the telescope received new batteries, gyroscopes, and a computer for handling the science data.
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The Hubble Space Telescope has been restored after the hugely successful servicing mission by the Space Shuttle Atlantis astronauts and the hundreds of personnel who work on Hubble at NASA and elsewhere. Two new instruments are onboard, two instruments were repaired, and the telescope received new batteries, gyroscopes, and a computer for handling the science data.
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Astronomers capture an image of a star eight years before its explosive death, casting light on the development of supernovae. A jet of radiation and plasma caused by a black hole is starting to flicker. And recently developed techniques are being used on the Hubble archive to glean new information from old images.
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Astronomers may have solved the cosmic chicken-and-egg problem of which formed first in the early universe — galaxies or the supermassive black holes seen at their cores. Astronomers believe almost all galaxies have massive black holes at their centers, as well as smaller black holes sprinkled throughout. Evidence is piling up that black holes came first.
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Astronomers may have solved the cosmic chicken-and-egg problem of which formed first in the early universe -- galaxies or the supermassive black holes seen at their cores. Astronomers believe almost all galaxies have massive black holes at their centers, as well as smaller black holes sprinkled throughout. Evidence is piling up that black holes came first.
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The solar system might once have had another planet named Theia. Some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago and possibly collided with Earth to form our Moon. NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft are on their way to look for the debris that would be left over after such a collision.
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The solar system might once have had another planet named Theia. Some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago and possibly collided with Earth to form our Moon. NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft are on their way to look for the debris that would be left over after such a collision.
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Astronomers have searched diligently for a planet of the size of Earth. Researchers would love to find such a planet in the zone appropriate for liquid water – what they call “the habitable zone.” New observations from the European Southern Observatory indicate that the star Gliese 581 has a fourth planet in addition to the known 3. The other planets are large “super earths” and one Neptune-sized planet. But the new planet is about twice the mass of Earth, and could be close to the habitable zone as well.
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Astronomers have searched diligently for a planet of the size of Earth. Researchers would love to find such a planet in the zone appropriate for liquid water - what they call "the habitable zone." New observations from the European Southern Observatory indicate that the star Gliese 581 has a fourth planet in addition to the known 3. The other planets are large "super earths" and one Neptune-sized planet. But the new planet is about twice the mass of Earth, and could be close to the habitable zone as well.
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Hubble is celebrating its 19th anniversary by releasing new, beautiful images. One image shows a complex interaction of four galaxies in a group called Arp 194. This group's numerous star clusters formed recently as a result of the galaxies' gravitational interaction. A second image of two clusters of colliding galaxies, called 1E 0657-556, was also released for the birthday. The galaxies passed through one another, leaving large amounts of gas behind, in the center of the collision.
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Hubble is celebrating its 19th anniversary by releasing new, beautiful images. One image shows a complex interaction of four galaxies in a group called Arp 194. This group's numerous star clusters formed recently as a result of the galaxies' gravitational interaction. A second image of two clusters of colliding galaxies, called 1E 0657-556, was also released for the birthday. The galaxies passed through one another, leaving large amounts of gas behind, in the center of the collision.
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A new NASA lunar satellite planned for a May launch will send back the highest-resolution photos ever taken of the Moon's surface and provide virtual views close to the ones seen by the Apollo astronauts. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), passing 31 miles above the moon, will have cameras with resolution equal to roughly one foot of Moon surface for every pixel.
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A new NASA lunar satellite planned for a May launch will send back the highest-resolution photos ever taken of the Moon's surface and provide virtual views close to the ones seen by the Apollo astronauts. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), passing 31 miles above the moon, will have cameras with resolution equal to roughly one foot of Moon surface for every pixel.
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NASA's Kepler Mission was launched on Marcy 7, 2009 to begin its quest for earth-like planets. As the spacecraft slowly drifts away from Earth, the first order of business is calibration of the detectors and discarding the dust cover that protects the telescope. Kepler will look for the tiny dimming of light that occurs as a planet passes between us and the star it orbits. Kepler will capture this dimming effect as it “stares” at one part of the sky for three and a half years.
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NASA's Kepler Mission was launched on Marcy 7, 2009 to begin its quest for earth-like planets. As the spacecraft slowly drifts away from Earth, the first order of business is calibration of the detectors and discarding the dust cover that protects the telescope. Kepler will look for the tiny dimming of light that occurs as a planet passes between us and the star it orbits. Kepler will capture this dimming effect as it "stares" at one part of the sky for three and a half years.
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Astronomers recently found what looks like two massive black holes orbiting each other in the center of a distant galaxy. It's long been thought that twin black holes might exist, but a new, innovative search was needed to find this rare pair. The discovery may lead to a greater understanding of how massive black holes form and evolve at centers of galaxies.
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Astronomers recently found what looks like two massive black holes orbiting each other in the center of a distant galaxy. It's long been thought that twin black holes might exist, but a new, innovative search was needed to find this rare pair. The discovery may lead to a greater understanding of how massive black holes form and evolve at centers of galaxies.
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Saturn has a complex system of moons and rings. Scientists have thought that moons, or smaller bodies called “moonlets,” have something to do with the formation of Saturn's rings. Recent images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft turned up a small moonlet in the G-ring of Saturn's system. The G-ring is a diffuse ring, nearly the last ring in the system. It contains a curious arc that is probably due to material crashing into the little moonlet embedded in it.
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Saturn has a complex system of moons and rings. Scientists have thought that moons, or smaller bodies called "moonlets," have something to do with the formation of Saturn's rings. Recent images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft turned up a small moonlet in the G-ring of Saturn's system. The G-ring is a diffuse ring, nearly the last ring in the system. It contains a curious arc that is probably due to material crashing into the little moonlet embedded in it.
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Getting crisp, clear images of objects billions of light years away requires big space telescopes. But the size of telescopes sent into orbit is constrained by the size of the rockets that carry them.
NASA's new Ares V rocket may completely change rules of the game. The Ares V, which will carry the next lunar lander to the Moon, is big enough to hold eight school buses. It can haul six times more mass and three times the volume the Space Shuttle can.
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Getting crisp, clear images of objects billions of light years away requires big space telescopes. But the size of telescopes sent into orbit is constrained by the size of the rockets that carry them.NASA's new Ares V rocket may completely change rules of the game. The Ares V, which will carry the next lunar lander to the Moon, is big enough to hold eight school buses. It can haul six times more mass and three times the volume the Space Shuttle can.
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NASA's Dawn mission is on its way to the asteroid belt. Once there, the spacecraft will orbit two asteroids, Ceres and Vesta, gathering information with its two cameras. The asteroids are pieces left over from the formation of the solar system, so scientists hope the mission will help us understand how the solar system evolved.
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NASA's Dawn mission is on its way to the asteroid belt. Once there, the spacecraft will orbit two asteroids, Ceres and Vesta, gathering information with its two cameras. The asteroids are pieces left over from the formation of the solar system, so scientists hope the mission will help us understand how the solar system evolved.
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A huge celestial blast spotted 12.2 billion light years from Earth is possibly the biggest gamma-ray burst ever detected. NASA's Fermi Telescope detected a massive explosion in the southern constellation Carina that produced energies ranging from 3,000 to more than 5 billion times that of visible light.
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A huge celestial blast spotted 12.2 billion light years from Earth is possibly the biggest gamma-ray burst ever detected. NASA's Fermi Telescope detected a massive explosion in the southern constellation Carina that produced energies ranging from 3,000 to more than 5 billion times that of visible light.
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Four hundred years ago, Galileo turned a telescope toward the night sky and launched the field of astronomy. To celebrate this anniversary, 2009 has been declared the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). Events are occurring worldwide at museums, observatories, universities and more to direct attention to the study of the universe. Check your local science center or planetarium for an event near you!
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Four hundred years ago, Galileo turned a telescope toward the night sky and launched the field of astronomy. To celebrate this anniversary, 2009 has been declared the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). Events are occurring worldwide at museums, observatories, universities and more to direct attention to the study of the universe. Check your local science center or planetarium for an event near you!
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NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft are now showing us the first glimpse side of Sun that faces away from Earth, a perspective never seen before. Launched on October 2006, the twin spacecraft will eventually move until they can monitor the entire surface of the Sun — both the side facing Earth and the far side, giving us a better view of solar storms as they form and develop.
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NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft are now showing us the first glimpse side of Sun that faces away from Earth, a perspective never seen before. Launched on October 2006, the twin spacecraft will eventually move until they can monitor the entire surface of the Sun — both the side facing Earth and the far side, giving us a better view of solar storms as they form and develop.
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Young stars may get kicked out of their orbits and race through space, creating arrowhead-shaped “bow shocks” – similar to ripples in the water created by a speed boat — in the interstellar medium. The stars are plowing through the gas that drifts through space, bunching it up. Astronomers have not found many of these stars, but there's no set place to look – so there may be many more out there.
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Young stars may get kicked out of their orbits and race through space, creating arrowhead-shaped “bow shocks” – similar to ripples in the water created by a speed boat — in the interstellar medium. The stars are plowing through the gas that drifts through space, bunching it up. Astronomers have not found many of these stars, but there's no set place to look – so there may be many more out there.
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Asteroids that drift around the solar system at nearly the same distance from the Sun as the Earth's orbit, can “corkscrew” into Earth's vicinity as they pass by. These are not common but they do occur. The most recent one, 2009 BD, passed within 400,000 miles of Earth. It is corkscrewing near Earth, and then in the future may drift away.
A similar object, called 2003 YN107, came by in 2003 and departed the vicinity of the Earth in 2008. It might return in 60 years.
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Asteroids that drift around the solar system at nearly the same distance from the Sun as the Earth's orbit, can “corkscrew” into Earth's vicinity as they pass by. These are not common but they do occur. The most recent one, 2009 BD, passed within 400,000 miles of Earth. It is corkscrewing near Earth, and then in the future may drift away.
A similar object, called 2003 YN107, came by in 2003 and departed the vicinity of the Earth in 2008. It might return in 60 years.
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A new comet will likely become visible in dark skies in late February. Comet Lulin was discovered in July 2007 and should be just on the edge of naked-eye visibility in dark, moonless skies. It should be easily seen in binoculars, but note that comet brightness estimates are notoriously unreliable since comets can change their appearance dramatically and quickly.
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A new comet will likely become visible in dark skies in late February. Comet Lulin was discovered in July 2007 and should be just on the edge of naked-eye visibility in dark, moonless skies. It should be easily seen in binoculars, but note that comet brightness estimates are notoriously unreliable since comets can change their appearance dramatically and quickly.
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In 1572, a “new star” appeared in the sky, stunning astronomers and challenging ancient theories of the universe. The brilliant supernova, recorded by the astronomer Tycho Brahe, was even visible during the day. Now astronomers have been able to capture faint “light echoes” of original explosion, helping to determine the exact type of supernova Tycho saw. It was likely caused by a white dwarf star undergoing titanic, thermonuclear explosion.
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In 1572, a “new star” appeared in the sky, stunning astronomers and challenging ancient theories of the universe. The brilliant supernova, recorded by the astronomer Tycho Brahe, was even visible during the day. Now astronomers have been able to capture faint “light echoes” of original explosion, helping to determine the exact type of supernova Tycho saw. It was likely caused by a white dwarf star undergoing titanic, thermonuclear explosion.
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Our Milky Way galaxy is known to be massive, but new observations of the speed of star formation along its spiral arms indicate it is much more massive than previously thought. The observations of radio emissions from star formation regions were taken with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a suite of radio telescope scattered across the globe that work together to map details of regions in the galaxy.
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Hyperactive stars are found racing through the galaxy, creating glowing arrowhead-shaped structures in the drifting gas of the universe. Brown dwarfs, odd objects that are neither stars nor planets, prefer an exclusive club. And scientists are stumped by a flash in the sky that matches nothing on record.
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Our Milky Way galaxy is known to be massive, but new observations of the speed of star formation along its spiral arms indicate it is much more massive than previously thought. The observations of radio emissions from star formation regions were taken with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a suite of radio telescope scattered across the globe that work together to map details of regions in the galaxy.
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Hyperactive stars are found racing through the galaxy, creating glowing arrowhead-shaped structures in the drifting gas of the universe. Brown dwarfs, odd objects that are neither stars nor planets, prefer an exclusive club. And scientists are stumped by a flash in the sky that matches nothing on record.
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Those amazing Mars rovers are still at it after their 5th birthday. Although it was a dark and dusty winter for Spirit, the rover appears to still be alive and may have a new destination, since more sunlight is available to power the rover during Martian spring and summer. Opportunity is already off to its new adventure at Victoria Crater, six miles (10 km) away.
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Those amazing Mars rovers are still at it after their 5th birthday. Although it was a dark and dusty winter for Spirit, the rover appears to still be alive and may have a new destination, since more sunlight is available to power the rover during Martian spring and summer. Opportunity is already off to its new adventure at Victoria Crater, six miles (10 km) away.
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Venus has graced the evening sky for months now, and in the next few weeks it approaches its highest (Jan. 14) and brightest (Feb. 20) in evening sky. Venus is always brighter than the brightest stars — bright enough to be seen even in the middle of the day, if you know where to look. On dark nights, it can be bright enough to cause shadows. Look toward the southwest sky after sunset, and Venus appears above where the Sun has set. It will look like a brilliant white star.
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Venus has graced the evening sky for months now, and in the next few weeks it approaches its highest (Jan. 14) and brightest (Feb. 20) in evening sky. Venus is always brighter than the brightest stars — bright enough to be seen even in the middle of the day, if you know where to look. On dark nights, it can be bright enough to cause shadows. Look toward the southwest sky after sunset, and Venus appears above where the Sun has set. It will look like a brilliant white star.
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Show 199: Solar Wind Rips Up Mars Atmosphere[Duration 4:28, 4.1 MB]Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:00:00 -0500
Mars has an extremely thin atmosphere compared to Earth's. But scientists think the red planet once had a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Where did it go? Scientists now think it's possible that Mars' uneven magnetic field may have contributed to the stripping away of the atmosphere by the solar wind.
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Show 199: Solar Wind Rips Up Mars Atmosphere[Duration 4:28, 4.1 MB]Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:00:00 -0500
Mars has an extremely thin atmosphere compared to Earth's. But scientists think the red planet once had a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Where did it go? Scientists now think it's possible that Mars' uneven magnetic field may have contributed to the stripping away of the atmosphere by the solar wind.
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A series of balloon flights over Antarctica was designed to count up the kinds of cosmic rays that shower through the solar system from distant regions of the galaxy. These cosmic rays are usually produced by violent events such as supernovae explosions. The Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC) detectors did indeed find lots of high energy particles, but many more high energy electrons than expected. This is curious because it is hard for the electrons to travel over large distances — they usually hit something along the way. So they must have come from nearby. But from what?
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A series of balloon flights over Antarctica was designed to count up the kinds of cosmic rays that shower through the solar system from distant regions of the galaxy. These cosmic rays are usually produced by violent events such as supernovae explosions. The Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC) detectors did indeed find lots of high energy particles, but many more high energy electrons than expected. This is curious because it is hard for the electrons to travel over large distances — they usually hit something along the way. So they must have come from nearby. But from what?
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A proposal to learn more about Saturn's fascinating moon, Titan, involves three parts: an orbiting spacecraft, a hot air balloon, and a surface probe. The landing probe could be fitted with a helicopter rotor that would help transport it from area to area, and a scoop to pick up soil and analyze it. The orbiter would map the surface. And the balloon would examine the hazy atmosphere, potentially similar to that of primordial Earth.
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Why does a small, nearby, isolated galaxy pump out stars faster than any other galaxy in our local neighborhood? The secret is in the details. Maybe this puzzling galaxy, the loner starburst galaxy NGC 1569, is not as nearby as we thought. Hubble discovered new information about the galaxy using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. Detailed analysis is important for determining accurate distances to galaxies, and therein lies the clue to this mystery.
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Future astronauts could benefit from a magnetic “umbrella” that deflects harmful space radiation around a spacecraft. The Sun is a constant source of charged particles that stream into space and pose significant threat to astronauts on any long-duration mission, such as to Moon or Mars. Now researchers have come up with a way to avert these dangerous particles and protect traveling space crews.
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Humanity has filled the space near Earth with satellites — and debris. The flotsam, ranging from large satellite pieces to small nuts and bolts, can impact and severely damage functioning satellites and the International Space Station. What can be done? Since satellites are launched by nations, commercial companies and other private entities, all these organizations need to come together globally to look at how to map and control debris.
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Hubble has spied a planet outside the solar system for the first time. The strangely bright planet, three times as big as Jupiter, will likely be a target of future telescopes as well. Astronomers have solved the mystery of an oddly active galaxy. And Hubble is back to work after a temporary technical setback.
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In 2005, NASA's Cassini probe revealed a plume of ice particles and water vapor shooting out from the south pole region of Saturn's moon, Enceladus. It's thought the moon may hold ocean of liquid water beneath surface and be a potential habitat for extraterrestrial life. Cassini could be used to look for organic chemicals in the plume.
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Hubble recently took the first image of a planet around another star. Planets are typically found by looking for changes in their parent stars that indicate the presence of a planet — a wobble that shows a gravitational tug, a dimming that shows something is passing in front of the star. But this giant planet was bright enough, and far enough away from its star, for Hubble to capture a picture.
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Future lunar bases could be built from concrete made directly from Moon dust, which would be much cheaper than transporting materials from Earth to Moon. NASA hopes to send four astronauts to Moon for seven days by 2020. The plan is to eventually build long-term Moon bases.
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We talk about “habitable zones” around stars being confined to predictable regions, where temperatures are not too cold and not too hot, so that planets can retain liquid water and support life as we know it. But perhaps there's more leeway than we thought. A new study has discovered that some extrasolar planets that we assumed were too cold to host life could in fact be livable.
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Amino acids are organic molecules that form proteins. Proteins, essential to cells, are one of the first steps in the creation of life. Several — but not all — types of amino acids have also been found in meteorites – chunks of rock that reached Earth from space. Scientists are studying meteorites, like the Murchison meteorite that fell in Australia in 1969, to see if they can give clues to how amino acids link to form the structure of proteins.
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Game developer Richard Garriott recently paid $30 million to spend some time on the International Space Station, where he participated in NASA experiments. Creator of the Ultima gaming series, Garriott is the son of retired astronaut Owen Garriott. Part of his 12 days on the space station was spent undergoing a series of microgravity experiments, including analysis of sleep patterns.
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Astronomers using Hubble recently came across a mysterious object in the direction of the constellation Boötes that slowly brightened over 100 days then dimmed back to invisibility. Astronomers are used to supernovae — exploding stars — brightening the sky, but that flash happens quickly. This slow change in brightness doesn't match anything on the books. Nor does the object's spectrum line up with anything that could help identify it.
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Dust devils have been photographed raging across the arctic plains of Mars. They were captured by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, which saw at least six of the whirlwinds. The dust devils often occur when the Sun warms Mars' surface.
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Astronomers have found almost 300 planets outside our solar system, but they haven't been able to take pictures of any of them — the planets are too small, dim and distant. But the Gemini Observatory recently took a picture of a star and a nearby object — could it be the first picture of an extrasolar planet?
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The planet Venus is now visible very low in western sky right after sundown. This evening appearance of Venus will become even better in coming weeks as the planet rises higher and higher each night throughout the fall and winter. The brilliant “evening star” will be at its brightest on Feb. 19.
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The Milky Way galaxy is part of a group of galaxies, including several small “dwarf galaxies,” that interact with one another. The outer portion of the Milky Way, called its “halo,” is filled with clouds of gas, star clusters, dark matter and streams of stars gathered from those dwarf galaxies by the power of the Milky Way's gravity. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) revealed these multiple, previously unknown streams.
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About 54 million light-years from Earth, roughly 2,000 galaxies have ganged up in a gravitational grouping called the Virgo Cluster. Centering that cluster is a massive galaxy that is itself surrounded by many clusters-in this case, star clusters. But this massive galaxy has more of these star clusters than astronomers expected it to have. Could it be stealing from its neighbors?
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In August, the Hubble Space Telescope completed its 100,000th orbit around Earth. Understandably, the venerable observatory is due for a little maintenance. In October, astronauts will be returning to Hubble to install two new science instruments, repair two other instruments, and upgrade other critical components on the telescope.
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Hubble celebrated a new milestone in August – 100,000 orbits around the planet Earth. Scientists think they know why a certain galaxy has more globular clusters than its neighbors. And a black hole-inhabited galaxy is sending tendrils into the universe.
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The Cassini spacecraft performed a daring flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus on March 12, flying about 15 kilometers per second (32,000 mph) through a geyser-like jet spurting from the moon's surface. It captured sample molecules from the jet.
In August, it used special techniques to get pictures of the jets. Scientists want to know where the jets come from and whether Enceladus has water.
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Could Earth's Moon have water locked up inside its rocks? Samples brought back from the Apollo Moon mission may indicate that the answer is yes. Water may be locked up in volcanic glass beads within the rocks.
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The Kuiper Belt is a region past Neptune, full of icy, comet-like objects. Pluto is the most famous Kuiper Belt object. Some of these objects have odd orbits that don't fit with our knowledge of the solar system. A computer model suggests that the region may contain a really large body — 30 to 70 percent as massive as Earth — that affects the orbits of objects around it.
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The Moon may be younger than originally thought – by about 30 million years. The Moon is thought to have formed after an object hit the Earth, partially melting the planet and propelling material into space. Because the Earth and Moon formed around the same time, this also brings up questions about our planet's formation.
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The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project scans the skies for asteroids in an attempt to find 90% of all the asteroids larger than 0.6 mile (1 km) in diameter by the end of 2008. In January 2008, LINEAR found an object now called Asteroid 2008 BT18. Original calculations suggested the asteroid was going to pass nearby the earth. Asteroid orbits can be altered by the Earth's gravity, so the trajectory was uncertain. Luckily the object passed almost six times the distance between the Earth and Moon. But astronomers got a good look at the object, which turned out to be a lot more interesting than originally thought — it's a binary asteroid.
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A cluster of stars boasts no less than three different ages. Open clusters of stars are usually easy to date, but this one is confusing scientists with mixed messages.
Scientists have new information about the bars of stars that develop in the centers of galaxies. Barred spiral galaxies are common in today's cosmos, but were scarce in the universe's early history.
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A new, Earth-based radar has examined material ejected from a massive impact on the Moon. The impact early in the Moon's history, by an asteroid 20-40 miles in diameter, created the crater known as Mare Orientale, a huge basin 600 miles across. Its study may help us better understand the early impact history of both Moon and Earth, and the role these impacts played in our planet's evolution.
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Black holes incredibly dense objects that can form at the end of a massive star's life. Scientists thought that because black holes range in size from several times to several billion times the size of the Sun, their behavior would differ as well. But multiple observations of the black hole at the center of the galaxy M81 prove otherwise.
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The Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) launched on June 11. This observatory will scan the universe for the most powerful form of radiation known, possibly shedding light on dark matter, microscopic black holes and other cosmic mysteries. Gamma rays have the most energy of any type of light, and are created by some of the most violent events in universe.
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Astronauts who have visited the Moon quickly discovered that they would get covered with Moon dust whenever they left their spacecraft. NASA is putting together a team to look at the dust and figure out how it could affect a return to the Moon. NASA is concerned that the dust could pose health problems or clog machinery.
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A Russian institute is selecting macaques that may eventually fly to Mars before humans do. Twelve monkeys have flown in Russian and Soviet spaceflights, some for around two weeks. The monkey experiment is happening at same time as one simulating conditions of interplanetary flight for humans here on the ground.
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A third red spot has appeared on the surface of Jupiter, heralding the creation of a new, violent storm. Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a storm that's been whirling away through the planet's atmosphere for perhaps hundreds of years. These new storms may indicate changing weather on the gas giant. A white dwarf star is missing from the center of the nebula that should house it, according to a Hubble scientist working with a team on ground-based telescopes.
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Could microbes have developed and survived in the frigid below-ground region of Mars or other solar system bodies? New results from a team developing drilling and sampling of subsurface soil in Spain found a startling result. Very tough microbes can indeed survive underneath the ground if the conditions are right, and the Mars Astrobiology Research and Technology Experiment (MARTE) team may have found the right environment.
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NASA's SWIFT telescope monitors the sky for emission from powerful outbursts. On March 19, 2008, it glimpsed an explosion so bright it could be seen with the naked eye for 30 seconds despite being 7.5 billion light years away — the farthest object ever seen with human eyes. It was a gamma ray burst, one of the incredible explosions credited to the explosions of tremendously massive stars.
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And you think losing your car keys is a pain. Scientists have known since the 1960s that about half of the ordinary matter is missing from the universe. Now they've found some of it in an unusual location. A rare black hole may be nestled in the center of a cluster of stars. And astronomers are recalculating the Hubble Constant — the rate at which the universe is expanding.
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New radar observations from NASA's latest mission to Mars indicate that the red planet's crust and upper mantle are stiffer and colder than previously thought, which suggests any liquid water existing below surface and any organisms living in that water would have to exist deeper than suspected.
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The first footage of a solar “tsunami” has been captured by NASA's Stereo spacecraft. This tsunami, obviously, has nothing to do with water — it's a wave of pressure traveling extremely fast across the surface of the Sun. The shock wave hurtled through Sun's atmosphere at more than 620,000 mph.
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A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is speeding toward a collision with our Milky Way galaxy. When it hits, it may set off spectacular display of stellar fireworks in a tremendous burst of star formation. But not to worry, it will be 20-40 million years before its core smashes into our galaxy.
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On March 19, the most intense explosion ever recorded appeared in the night sky. It shone dimly for less than a minute, then vanished.
It was a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, but so bright it could be seen — though faintly — by the naked eye. Astronomers estimate that the burst was as bright as 10 million galaxies combined. Such bursts are thought to be caused by hypernovae, the explosion of a star much more massive than our Sun.
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Brown dwarfs are not quite stars and not quite planets. They are the missing links between the lowest mass stars and the highest mass planets possible. Scientists recently discovered the coolest brown dwarf known — an important discovery that may shed light on the development of planets beyond our solar system.
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A distant, dim flash in the sky marks the location of the biggest explosion ever recorded, as astronomers monitor a gamma ray burst brighter than 10 million galaxies combined. And astronomers have found tiny, early galaxies so thick with stars that they might never experience night as we do.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found evidence of material orbiting Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon, which means Rhea could have rings. This is the first time rings have potentially been found around any moon. Astronomers speculate that a collision in the moon's distant past led to the rings' formation.
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The Cassini space probe was launched in 1997 and flew by Earth, Venus and Jupiter. It entered orbit around Saturn in 2004. One of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, is believed to have liquid water below its crusty surface. A daring flyby of Cassini into geyser plume of Enceladus has bolstered the idea.
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Astronomers know that complex molecules are required building blocks for life, and can indicate that biological activity is present on distant worlds. Methane, which can come from volcanic eruptions, among other sources, is a key ingredient for the formation of life and also a by-product of microbial activity.
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Saturn's moon, Titan, may have a deep, hidden ocean. The second largest moon in the solar system, Titan has long been thought to have an environment similar to that of early Earth, before life began putting oxygen into atmosphere. If the ocean prediction is true, Titan will join three other solar system moons suspected of hiding underground oceans.
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For the first time, an organic molecule has been located in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our solar system. The planet itself can't sustain life, but could the molecule's presence is good news for life elsewhere.
Back on Earth, art and science merge as the Walter's Art Museum in Baltimore, Md., displays Hubble images on its walls. The special exhibit is the brainchild of a group of curating students at Johns Hopkins University, who worked with astrophysicists to create the display.
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Mars was too salty to sustain life for much of its history, new evidence from the Opportunity rover on the Martian surface indicates. Minerals deposited in sedimentary rocks suggest they formed in extremely salty water -- even saltier than oceans on Earth. Such conditions would have made it inhospitable to even the toughest micro-organisms.
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Venus is much like planet Earth its composition, but also very different in other ways -- it's bone-dry with little sign of water, experiences temperatures hot enough to melt lead, is enshrouded in a thick poisonous atmosphere of CO2 and sulfuric acid, and even rotates "backwards." Now we may have an explanation for this weirdness -- a tremendous head-on collision of two bodies may have formed our planetary neighbor.
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Gravitational lenses are like giant magnifying glasses in the sky. They occur where huge accumulations of matter, like galaxy clusters, create enough gravity to warp and magnify the light of objects beyond them. This enables us to see objects normally too far away to be viewed by even the most powerful telescopes.Gravitational lenses were once thought to be rare. But astronomers using Hubble have found several, and new sky surveys found more. Scientists are now training a "digital robot" to find additional lenses.
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A mission to the Moon will search for water. Scientists would like to know if the Moon does have residual water, as hinted at by earlier missions.The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite will send an impactor into a dark crater at the Moon's south pole. Instruments will measure the plume produced by the impact to see what materials are present, looking particularly for water. LCROSS will launch in October 2008 and the impact will take place early in 2009.
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For the first time, an organic molecule has been located in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our solar system. The planet itself can't sustain life, but could the molecule's presence is good news for life elsewhere.Back on Earth, art and science merge as the Walter's Art Museum in Baltimore, Md., displays Hubble images on its walls. The special exhibit is the brainchild of a group of curating students at Johns Hopkins University, who worked with astrophysicists to create the display.
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Gravitational lensing is highly useful quirk of the universe. When vast amounts of matter accumulate -- as in enormous clusters of galaxies -- the intense gravity created distorts and magnifies the light of objects behind the cluster. The effect is like creating a giant magnifying glass in space. Astronomers recently used the effect to find one of the youngest galaxies ever seen, and track the placement of dark matter.
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Stars were recently found forming in a long tail of gas trailing away from a galaxy. We normally would not expect to see stars being born so far from their parent galaxy. Scientists believe the pressure of the galaxy's motion through space as it plummeted toward the center of a huge cluster of galaxies stripped away the gas that formed these "orphan stars."
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NASA has a full launch schedule coming up, with something being launched nearly every month. Astronauts will make four shuttle flights to the International Space Station, as well as a critical trip to Hubble to make repairs and add new instruments to the telescope. NASA will also provide the vehicle for lifting new science spacecraft into orbit, in addition to a few military launches. Finally, in 2009, NASA will launch the Kepler mission, meant to find Earth-sized planets around other stars.
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Get ready for a total eclipse of the Moon on Feb. 20. Eclipses of the Moon only happen when the full Moon passes through the shadow cast by our planet. This eclipse is visible for most of North America, all of South America, western Europe and western Africa.
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Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, is hard to observe from Earth. We know a little about it from the Mariner 10 spacecraft that flew by Mercury in 1974, but a large part of the planet was never mapped. Messenger, launched in 2004, recently reached Mercury, taking color pictures and probing the planet's mysterious magnetic field.
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Cosmic rays consist of high-energy particles that streak through space, crashing into the Earth's atmosphere and leaving a tell-tale trail. But where do these rays come from? Experiments have turned up different results. One shows the rays originate from somewhere in the nearby universe, while another suggests the rays are left over from the Big Bang. A new experiment may help answer the question.
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In 1908, a tremendous explosion rocked a sparsely populated region of Siberia, destroying hundreds of square miles of forest. The destruction was likely caused by an asteroid colliding with Earth. Now new computer simulations point toward a smaller asteroid than was previously thought. That smaller asteroids could cause such devastation is an eye-opener for astronomers who look to protect Earth from inevitable future collisions.
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What a headache! New findings from examination of mammoth tusks and bison skull remains suggest that 30,000 to 40,000 years ago a meteorite shower peppered the Alaska region with pellets. Amazingly some of the animals may have survived this event, although they were probably severely injured.The individual who found these tusks, Allen West, later searched through over 15,000 artifacts to find the micrometeorites imbedded in some of the tusks and bones. With help from Lawrence Berkeley Lab, they were able to determine when the event happened. Is this one of the explanation for other large animal extinctions?
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An asteroid 164 feet wide could be on a collision course with Mars. The asteroid is expected to cross Mars' orbit later this month and may come as close as 30,000 miles to Mars. Astronomers calculate a one-in-20 chance of the asteroid actually striking the red planet.
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The Orion Nebula is 300 light-years closer to Earth than previously thought. Radio telescopes have obtained the most precise measure ever of distance to this giant star-forming region. Because the distance to the Nebula is shorter than expected, the stars in the nebula must also be less bright than we believed, and thus older.
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Dying red giant stars may zoom out of position as they expire. The stars may eject their mass mainly in one direction, causing the star to move in the opposite direction. Comet Holmes continues to defy understanding, shielding its secrets with a cloud of bright dust. And we bring you a special report on dark energy from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
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Sometimes those serene, rounded elliptical galaxies harbor much deeper and more interesting structures. In Hubble Space Telescope observations, one elliptical galaxy shows shells-shaped groups of stars that probably originated in a violent collision between galaxies. The material from the merger is feeding a supermassive black hole in the galaxy's center, creating a quasar that emits enough energy to be seen across the universe.
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We've found planets beyond our solar system, but nothing Earth sized. Still, astronomers are considering what such a world might look like.Computer models provide ideas of 14 different theoretical planet types, to help planet hunters spot telltale indicators. Researchers hope that the models will provide information about planet composition and similar characteristics when astronomers begin finding Earth-sized planets.
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Want to win a quick $30M? Just finance and successfully land a robotic mission on the moon! The X Prize Foundation and Google have combined to offer a prize for a lunar lander to rove around, take pictures and video and send data back to us on Earth.The foundation and Google expect private companies from around the world to compete for the prize and the achievement. About 347 inquiries have already been made!
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A tiny galactic neighbor to the Milky Way, Canis Major Dwarf, was discovered in 2003. The galaxy, 25,000 light years away from our solar system, is being torn apart by the gravity of the Milky Way as it orbits our galaxy. It was detected because it has a large number of red giant stars, detectable by the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which views the sky in infrared.
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Astronomers search for stars similar to the Sun in order to understand how the Sun formed and if it is unique. So far, the stars we've found that are like the Sun have had notable differences. The closest candidate was analyzed recently and found to have a composition that strongly resembles our Sun. The research gives us ideas about the nuclear fusion processes that take place in the cores of Sun-like stars and clues about the formation of planetary systems.
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Every 62 million years or so, a mass extinction occurs on Earth. A new theory about the motion of the solar system around the Milky Way says cosmic rays may be involved. Charged particles caused by the motion could expose the Earth to high-energy radiation, damaging the biosphere and affecting the environment.
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Astronomers are using Hubble to look at Comet Holmes, a strange comet that brightened this October to nearly a million times in less than 24 hours. Comet Holmes is the only comet ever seen to brighten so strangely and dramatically. The brightening was first witnessed 115 years ago - astronomers will be able to get a better look now that the comet is performing under Hubble's gaze.An elliptical galaxy with a supermassive black hole in its center looks like it underwent a collision in the distant past. The collision is fueling the black hole, feeding it meals of stars, gas and dust.
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A bright new comet flared into naked eye visibility a few weeks back and continues to be bright enough to see, perhaps for another few weeks. Comet Holmes went through a similar outburst that led to its discovery 115 years ago. It's acting strangely, so go outside and check out this celestial wonder.
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Water vapor is raining down on a young star system, pouring from the cloud of gas and dust around the star onto the dusty disk where planets may form.In the system known as NGC 1333-IRAS 4B, the icy material found in the cloud is dropping towards the star and vaporizing as it reaches the disk. The process could show how water first shows up on planets like our own.
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The Huygens spacecraft, which landed on Titan in 2005, encountered some unexpected turbulence as it fell through the moon's thick, planet-like atmosphere. Buffeted by winds and possible methane rain, Huygens descent provides scientists with clues about how to plan for future missions to the intriguing world.
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Tiny galaxies, hundreds to thousands of times smaller than many of the galaxies we see today, existed in the early universe, according to data from the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes. The tiny "building block" galaxies have distorted shapes that could mean they are merging together to form larger galaxies.
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Astronomers now know that that the expansion of the universe is speeding up, as though it were being pushed by kind of strange anti-gravity. Ten years after the discovery, scientists are still trying to find out what this mysterious force, called "dark energy," might be.The more scientists study the tiny galaxy I Zwicky 18, the older it looks. The galaxy has an odd combination of young and old stars, leaving astronomers puzzled about its late star formation.
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News of a meteorite landing in a remote section of Peru included accounts of hundreds of people getting sick from its noxious fumes. A prudent look at the case though suggests something a bit less otherworldly.
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A duo of robots recently surveyed a desolate part of Devon Island in northern Canada, in preparation for one day doing similar survey work on the surface of the Moon. This NASA program tested the ability of human and robotic teams working together to get best results when surveying rugged, unforgiving sites.
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The nearby Andromeda Galaxy may one day capture our Sun and planets. Now more than two million light years distant, Andromeda and our own Milky Way galaxy are approaching each other. In the far distant future, the two galaxies will collide with drastic results.
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When a star explodes, it leaves behind a glowing cloud of heated gas called a supernova remnant. Hubble recently took pictures of one of these remnants -- the Veil Nebula, 1,400 light years away. The nebula's star would have exploded thousands of years ago, leaving behind an expanding bubble of gas. Scientists are fascinated by supernovae because the explosions create and scatter certain vital elements around the universe.
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It's a puzzle - the outer atmosphere of the Sun, called the corona, is actually much hotter than the Sun itself. Now scientists using the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory think they may have found one of the reasons why: waves that run along the Sun's magnetic field and reach far into space. The ripples of plasma may transfer energy to the corona.
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As early as 527 A.D, astute observers of the Moon have reported a variety of odd events on the Moon's surface, including bright flashes, localized reddish hues and haze. Are these Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP) real? And if so what are they? Professor Arlin Crotts of Columbia suggests the changes can be traced to the emission of gas from the Moon's surface.
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Tests have begun on one of world's largest optical telescopes, located on a mountaintop on the Canary Islands. Situated 7,900 feet above sea level, the huge Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) consists of a mirror measuring 34 feet across and is made up of 36 separate hexagonal mirror segments. This Spanish-led telescope will be able to spot some of faintest, most distant objects in universe.
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Google Earth let users explore the planet through satellite imagery. Now it's letting those users turn their attention to the heavens.Google Earth, working with the Space Telescope Science Institute, now offers a feature that explores the night sky. Users can browse the cosmos and zoom in to get Hubble images, background information and links.And speaking of satellites, 2007 is the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year, declared in 1957. Sixty-seven countries participated in the coordinated attempt to observe the globe and atmosphere. Americans and the Soviet Union successfully launched satellites as part of the program. The National Academy of Sciences is celebrating the anniversary with events around the United States.