What’s Up This Week – November 21 – November 27, 2005
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Let's start the week off with one of the finest globular clusters for both hemispheres - M2.…
Why is Moondust So Clingy?
One of the main challenges of returning humans to the Moon will be how to deal with all that gritty,…
Radiation Resistant Computers
Modern spaceflight is dependent on reliable computers to handle navigation, life support, and other functions. The problem is that radiation…
Early Earth Wasn’t So Hellish
Most geologists believe that the early history of our planet was an extreme, "hellish" environment, under constant bombardment from asteroids,…
More Einstein Rings Discovered
Astronomers have turned up 19 new gravitationally lensed quasars using photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Sloan Digital…
Mars Express Radar Data is Coming In
After 4 months of operation, Mars Express' MARSIS radar instrument has gathered a tremendous amount of data about the Red…
M-Class Dwarfs Could Be Good For Life After All
More than half the stars in our galaxy are small, dim M-class stars. Until now, researchers looking for extraterrestrial civilizations…
Ariane 5 Lofts Record Payload into Orbit
An Ariane 5 rocket blasted off Thursday from Kourou, French Guiana carrying two satellites: Spaceway 2 broadcast satellite for DIRECTV,…
Gravity Probe B Will Tell Us If Einstein Was Right
NASA/Stanford's Gravity Probe B spacecraft recently wrapped up a year of gathering data about the Earth's gravity field. If Einstein…
Simulation Casts Doubts on One Theory of Star Formation
Astrophysicists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have developed a computer simulation that fails to support one of two major theories…