This incredible photograph shows Saturn’s potato-shaped Janus, posing above the planet’s cloudy atmosphere. Janus is only 181 kilometers (113 miles) across, and it shows the scars of many impacts with other objects in the Solar System. Like Saturn’s other smaller moons, Janus could be covered with a layer of fine, dust-sized icy material. Cassini took this photo on September 25, 2006 when it was only 145,000 kilometers (90,000 miles) from Janus.
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Echos of Light
The strange variable star V838 Monocerotis flared up nearly 5 years ago, and astronomers have been trying to figure out what’s going on ever since. As the light from the flare up propagates out from the star, it illuminates the surrounding cloud of dust. This light reflects off the dust, and we see this echo here on Earth. This latest photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the changes that have happened over the last year. One interesting feature are the whorls and eddies in the dust, which could be caused by powerful magnetic fields.
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New Planet Hunter Prepares for Launch
A powerful new instrument for finding extrasolar planets is about to launch: COROT (Convection Rotation and planetary Transits). Developed by the European Space Agency, COROT will search for planets using the transit method; it will be able to detect the slight drop in brightness as a planet moves in front of its parent star. If the observatory performs as expected, it should be able to detect rocky worlds just a few times larger than the Earth. COROT is scheduled to launch in December, 2006.
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Progress 23 Docks with the Station
An unpiloted Progress 23 cargo ship docked with the International Space Station on Thursday, delivering a new load of supplies. On board the ship is more than 2 tonnes of food, air, fuel, water and additional equipment. There was a bit of a glitch with the docking, however. Flight controllers weren’t able to confirm if an antenna on the spacecraft was fully retracted before it docked. After a 3-hour delay, they finally gave the command to partially dock the spacecraft. Further latches will be closed on Friday to complete the docking operation.
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Successful Liftoff for NASA’s STEREO Spacecraft
NASA’s solar-observing STEREO spacecraft were carried into space Wednesday evening, atop a Boeing Delta II rocket. STEREO, aka the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories, are two nearly identical observatories that will help construct 3-dimensional views of the Sun and its stormy environment. Over the next few months, the spacecraft will perform a series of maneuvers so that one travels ahead of the Earth in orbit, and another trails behind the planet. This will give a view of the Sun from two different vantage points.
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Stellar Explosion Has Many Layers
A new photograph from the Spitzer Space Telescope shows how supernova remnant Cassiopeia A evolved over time. The original star contained 15 to 20 times the mass of our Sun, and was made up of concentric shells of elements. The lightest elements, like hydrogen, were in the outermost shell, while the heaviest elements sunk to the centre. The shells of exploded material match up quite well with the original layers in the star before it detonated as a supernova.
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It Took More than an Asteroid to Kill the Dinosaurs
How did the dinosaurs die? It’s a question scientists have been trying to figure out since their fossils were first discovered. Most believe that it was a giant asteroid that stuck the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago, and ended the dinosaurs’ reign on Earth. But evidence is mounting that the asteroid strike might have just been the final killing blow. The previous 500,000 years were unpleasant too, with multiple meteor strikes, severe volcanism, and rapid climate change.
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Bacteria Found Deep Underground
Princeton researchers have discovered a colony of bacteria that lives more than 3 km (2 miles) underground. This bacteria lives completely cut off from the biosphere on the surface of the Earth, and derives its energy from the radioactive decay of rocks underground. By finding life in these extreme conditions, scientists are expanding their understanding of what kinds of habits can support life.
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Gaps in Saturn’s Rings
This Cassini image shows the dark gaps in Saturn’s A ring, which are caused by a collection of moons. Even though these moons max out at a few dozen kilometres across, they have enough gravity to pull particles out of the ring orbit as they pass by. Cassini took this photograph on September 11, 2006 from a distance of 1.1 million kilometers (700,000 miles) from Saturn.
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Baby Galaxies Weighed by Spitzer
Astronomers have discovered two of the most distant galaxies ever seen, when the Universe was only 700 million years old. The galaxies were first discovered as part of the Hubble Space Telescope’s Deep Field Survey, which looked into the distant Universe. Astronomers then did follow-on observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope to confirm their distance and age. The galaxies are thought to be between 50-300 million years old, and have only 1% of the mass of our own Milky Way.
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