Point your telescope at the Moon, and you might see features known as Lunar Swirls. These flat features look like cream just mixed into coffee; except it’s pale moondust in swirling patterns atop darker terrain. Even stranger, these swirls have different magnetic fields than the surrounding terrain. What causes them? One theory is that the magnetic field protects the lunar soil from being darkened by solar radiation, creating an unusual dark and light pattern.
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NASA Working on Solution for Hubble’s Camera
NASA officials announced today that the malfunctioning main camera for the Hubble Space Telescope should be back online by July 3. Ground controllers first learned of a problem with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on June 19, when a voltage spike caused the camera to shut down. Officials think a bad transistor might be responsible for the voltage problem, and believe they can resolve the problem without any degradation to Hubble’s performance.
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GPS Can Predict Tsunamis
After the terrible tsunami damage caused by the Sumatra earthquake in December 2004, scientists have been searching for strategies to predict future killer waves. A team of university scientists have shown that Global Positioning System software developed at NASA can determine within minutes if an earthquake is strong enough to generate an ocean-wide tsunami. Ground stations within a few thousand kilometres of the earthquake can actually measure their displacement using the GPS satellites. If they’ve moved enough, there’s a high risk of a tsunami.
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Saturn’s Tiny Moon Polydeuces
We’re accustomed to seeing photographs of Saturn’s larger moons, like Titan, Dione and Enceladus. Here’s an image of one of its smallest: newly discovered Polydeuces. This moon is only 3 km (2 miles) across, and shares the same orbit as much larger Dione. Cassini took this photo on May 22, 2006 when it was approximately 73,000 kilometers (45,000 miles) away.
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First West Coast Delta IV Launch is Successful
A Boeing Delta IV rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Wednesday, carrying a surveillance satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. This is the first time that a Delta IV has been launched from the military’s California facility; normally they launch from Florida. The satellite has been identified as NROL-22, but no other details about its function or capabilities were announced.
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Two Dust Disks Around Beta Pictoris
Detailed photographs of nearby star Beta Pictoris by the Hubble Space Telescope show that it’s circled by two disks of dust. Astronomers believe that a planet with the mass of Jupiter is using its gravity to sweep up material from the primary disk. Additional material is attracted to the planet, and is shaped into a second disk. The dust disk was first discovered by ground telescopes in 1984, and then seen by Hubble in 1995.
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Double Vortex at Venus’ South Pole
New images from ESA’s Venus Express confirm that the cloud-covered planet has twin atmospheric vortexes at its southern pole. Previous missions to Venus saw stormy southern skies, but these images map out the shape of the double vortex in detail. High velocity winds take only 4 days to spin around Venus. This “super rotation” combines with the natural recycling of hot air to create this vortex structure. Scientists aren’t exactly sure why it’s creating a double vortex, though.
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Rotating Disk Could Contain Newly Forming Planets
Astronomers from the University of St. Andrews have found evidence that a ring of dust around nearby Epsilon Eridani is rotating. The observations were made using the Submillimetre Common User Bolometer Array (SCUBA), which images the sky in the near infrared spectrum. This gives evidence to the theory that the disks of gas we see around newborn stars will eventually go on to become planets. In fact, the clumps of material tracked by the astronomers could even be newly forming planets themselves, still embedded in a vast disk of gas and dust.
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Astrophoto: Just North of Antares by Steve Crouch
When you gaze towards a clear moonless night sky, the stars appear as points of light – most are colorless. There are a few exceptions, however: Mars, Aldebaran and the star at the heart of the constellation Scorpius, Antares, can be seen to have a very slight reddish hue. Through a small telescope, star and planetary colors become more apparent but galaxies and nebulas remain un-pigmented and monochromatic. These objects begin to take on a greenish ting when viewed through very large telescopes but rarely show the rainbow of hues seen in many deep space pictures, like the one shown here.
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Enceladus and Janus
This photograph, captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Janus. Also visible is Saturn’s F ring, including the bright core which is about 50 km wide, and contains many features of its own. Cassini took this photograph on May 21, 2006 when it was approximately 565,000 kilometers (351,000 miles) from Janus and 702,000 kilometers (436,000 miles) from Enceladus.
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