Space and astronomy news
Imagine if the Neptune was only a million miles from Earth. What a view we’d have! … not to mention some incredible gravitational effects from the close-by, gigantic planet. A similar scenario is taking place for real in star system in the constellation Cygnus. A newly found planet duo orbiting a sun-like star come together …
Continue reading “What a View! Exoplanet Odd Couple Orbit in Close Proximity”
[/caption] The old saying of the universe being stranger than we can imagine definitely applies to a newfound exoplanet orbiting a star about 1,500 light years from Earth. Researchers using the Kepler space observatory have detected what appears to be a planet about the size of Mercury literally turning to dust. A long tail of …
Continue reading “Doomed Mercury-Sized Exoplanet May Be Turning to Dust”
[/caption] Are we too hopeful in our hunt for extraterrestrial life? Regardless of exoplanet counts, super-Earths and Goldilocks zones, the probability of life elsewhere in the Universe is still a moot point — to date, we still only know of one instance of it. But even if life does exist somehow, somewhere besides Earth, would …
Continue reading “Alien Life May Not Be So Alien – If It Exists At All”
[/caption] The star 55 Cancri has been a source of joy and firsts for planet hunters. Not only was it one of the first known stars to host an extrasolar planet, but now the light from one of its five known planets has been detected directly with the Spitzer Space Telescope, the first time a …
Continue reading “Light From a ‘SuperEarth’ Detected for the First Time”
[/caption] Saturn’s curious moon Phoebe features a heavily-cratered shape and orbits the ringed planet backwards at a considerable distance of over 8 million miles (12.8 million km). According to recent news from the Cassini mission Phoebe may actually be a Kuiper Belt object, having more in common with planets than it does with any of …
Continue reading “Cassini Exposes Phoebe As More Planet Than Moon”
[/caption] Quick Mercury Stats Mass: 0.3302 x 1024 kg Volume: 6.083 x 1010 km3 Average radius: 2439.7 km Average diameter: 4879.4 km Density: 5.427 g/cm3 Escape velocity: 4.3 km/s Surface gravity: 3.7 m/s2 Visual magnitude: -0.42 Natural satellites: 0 Rings? – No Semimajor axis: 57,910,000 km Orbit period: 87.969 days Perihelion: 46,000,000 km Aphelion: 69,820,000 …
[/caption] Earth-sized exoplanets within a distant star’s habitable zone could still be very much uninhabitable, depending on potential tidal stresses — either past or present — that could have “squeezed out” all the water, leaving behind a bone-dry ball of rock. New research by an international team of scientists suggests that even a moderately eccentric …
Continue reading ““Tidal Venuses” May Have Been Wrung Out To Dry”
[/caption] A Phoenix-like lander that would mine the deepest hole yet into Mars– to a depth of 5 meters – and unveil the nature of the mysterious deep interior and central core of the Red Planet is under consideration by NASA for a 2016 launch and sports a nifty new name – InSight. The stationary …
Continue reading “NASAs Proposed ‘InSight’ Lander would Peer to the Center of Mars in 2016”
[/caption] The search for extraterrestrial life outside our Solar System is currently focused on extrasolar planets within the ‘habitable zones’ of exoplanetary systems around stars similar to the Sun. Finding Earth-like planets around other stars is the primary goal of NASA’s Kepler Mission. The habitable zone (HZ) around a star is defined as the range …
[/caption] As the Kepler space telescope begins finding its first Earth-sized exoplanets, with the ultimate goal of finding ones that are actually Earth-like, it would seem natural that the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program would take a look at them as well, in the continuing search for alien radio signals. That is exactly what …
Continue reading “Analysis of the First Kepler SETI Observations”