Space and astronomy news
As you’re probably aware, NASA has a lot of robotic explorers out there in space, and even more the works here on Earth. I was actually surprised to learn that they have 53 mission already in operation, and another 41 missions in development. But with the human exploration of the Moon charging forward, the robotic …
While finding a planet orbiting another star is incredibly exciting, it’s almost becoming commonplace. The current exoplanet count is up to 270. So now that astronomers know where these exoplanets are located, they are currently devising new techniques in order to study the planets in detail. Using a new method similar to how polarized sunglasses …
Here’s what’s going around the astrosphere. First, I’d like to remind you that the 5th Carnival of Space is happening tomorrow. Get your entries in! Spacescan has some interesting details on India’s plans to send a mission to the Moon. The Astroprof spoke with Mars Society’s Bob Zubrin about going directly to Mars. Pamela Gay …
Astronomers have directly imaged a brown dwarf companion to the star HD 3651. This star is already known to host an extrasolar planet – less massive than Saturn, but sitting within the orbit of Mercury. HD 3651 is slightly less massive than the Sun, and is located 36 light-years away in the constellation Pisces. The …
Like shards of shattered glass caught in a spotlight, the stars appear deceptively passive in the night sky. Yet, each one is an object of extraordinary ferocity. Stellar surface temperatures can reach 50,000 degrees Celsius- over ten times hotter than our Sun – and on a few it can reach over one million degrees! The …
Continue reading “Astrophoto: The Cocoon Nebula by Dan Kowall”
An international team of astronomers have turned up two new Jupiter-sized planets orbiting distant stars. These planets are incredibly close to their parent stars; just a fraction of the distance from Mercury to the Sun. Astronomers believe these planets are being eroded by the intense radiation of their stars. The discovery was made using the …
A network of amateur astronomers has discovered an extrasolar planet located 500 light years away. This incredible discovery was made using a technique that measures the brightness of thousands of stars, watching for a periodic dimming. In this case, the Jupiter-sized planet, TrES-2, orbits its host star every 2.5 days, dimming it by 1.5%. Although …
Continue reading “Network of Small Telescopes Find a Big Planet”
Astronomers have turned up plenty of extrasolar planets, but a newly discovered binary pair of planets is quite the find. The system consists of a 7-Jupiter mass planet and a 14-Jupiter mass planet… but no star. These planets – or “planemos” – just orbit each other. Their discovery challenges the current theory that planets are …
Space telescopes designed to observe distant planets need to be powerful, but they also need some method of blocking the light from the parent star, which completely washes out any dimmer objects orbiting it. A strategy from CU-Boulder professor Webster Cash would use a large, daisy-shaped space shield to block the light from the star. …
Even though our Solar System’s gas giants vary widely in size and mass, they do have something in common. Each planet is roughly 10,000 times more massive than the combined mass of all their moons. During planetary formation, rocky moons grew out of the solid material surrounding each planet. As these moons grew larger, leftover …
Continue reading “Gas Giants Gobbled Up Most of Their Moons”