Space and astronomy news
Astronomers have found a burned out white dwarf star with the remants of an Earthlike planet orbiting it. This chemical fingerprint gives hope that terrestrial planets, like the ones in our Solar System, could be common across the Universe. Now we just need to find some that havn’t been pulverized into planet powder. The white …
Continue reading “Dead Star Found Polluted By Earthlike Planet”
Great big Jupiter-like planets are one thing, but the Holy Grail of extrasolar planetary discover is going to be another Earth – complete with life. We’re not there yet, but astronomers announced the next best thing yesterday: a roughly Earth-mass planet orbiting within the habitable zone of its parent star. In other words, liquid water …
Continue reading “Earth-Sized Planet Discovered in the Habitable Zone”
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! We’ll start off the week in living color and end it fishing for galaxies in Pices. Along the way, we’ll have a look at the dark side as we study obscuration nebula… and you won’t have to say “Betelguese” three times to study this bright star! If you were disappointed in missing …
Continue reading “What’s Up this Week: December 11 – December 17, 2006”
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 …
New images from the Japanese Subaru telescope show how a nearby young star ended its infancy rapidly. The star, called HD 141569A, has a hole in the disc of gas and dust surrounding it. Astronomers think that the star rapidly ionized its surrounding gas, and then pushed it away with its intense solar radiation. The …
NASA’s MESSENGER made its closest approach to Venus today, coming within 2,990 kilometers (1,860 miles) of its surface. The spacecraft used this close encounter with Venus’ gravity well to alter its trajectory as it travels towards its final destination: Mercury. This won’t be its final encounter with our twin planet, though. MESSENGER will meet up …
Continue reading “MESSENGER Heads Past Venus, Next Stop: Venus”
When a star flared briefly, astronomers knew it was because a dimmer star had passed directly in front, acting as a lens with its gravity to focus light. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find the star. This was important, because the brief microlensing event also turned up the fact that this lensing star has a planet. Astronomers …
Spirit and Opportunity have the Red Planet all to themselves for now, but ESA is planning to send a rover of its own to crawl the surface of Mars. The ExoMars rover is a wheeled robotic rover with a similar look to the NASA rovers, but it will have different science objectives and enhanced capabilities. …
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”
An illustration of the interior of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Image credit: NASA. Click to enlarge Saturn’s moon Enceladus has a strange hot spot at its southern pole; a region that should be one of its coldest places. Scientists think that warm material inside the moon created an instability. The moon eventually rolled over, repositioning the …