NASA / JPL recently released Clouds, a new on-line “game” which is a part of the Milky Way Project , a science initiative which seeks to refine some of the vast quantity of observations made by the Spitzer Space telescope and ESA’s Hershel Space Observatory. One of the common emerging themes in space science is that the capacity to […]
Source: University of Hertfordshire A team of astronomers based out of the University of Hertfordshire has discovered compelling evidence that the Tau Ceti system, only 12 light years away from Earth, contains at least 5 planets, two of which are orbiting within the star’s “habitable zone.” The find, which was made using a new modelling technique which employs […]
Sometimes the most beautiful ornaments aren’t even on the tree. Another remarkable image from Cassini JPL Press Release Below: PASADENA, Calif — Just in time for the holidays, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn for more than eight years now, has delivered another glorious, backlit view of the planet Saturn and its rings. On Oct. […]
There are times when the mystery and wonder gradually being revealed in our own solar system borders on intoxicating, and no deep space probe has done a better job of pealing back the layers than Cassini. It is hard to believe that this mission, launched in 1997 from the same pad now occupied by SpaceX and the Falcon […]
NASA / JPL announced on December 6th the discovery of “long , narrow, sinuous” gullies on the asteroid Vesta. Although no one is claiming at this point that the gullies are clear evidence of water ice, the features bear a remarkable resemblance to similar water carved chasms on Earth and on Mars. The features in question differ markedly from other, short […]
In contrast to the somewhat disappointing press briefing yesterday, especially considering the bizarre and confusing buildup, on mixed findings from the Mars Curiosity Rover, another NASA briefing proved considerably more interesting. It concerned the latest, and presumably some of the last findings to come from the much older, simpler and far more distant Voyager 1 probe as it traverses through what science fiction might call an […]
Source: European Southern Observatory Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) have announced the discovery of a disc of millimeter sized material encircling a brown dwarf star. Of insufficient mass to generate hydrogen fusion like main sequence stars such as our own sun, brown dwarfs, classified as sub-stellar objects, occupy an unusual position in between the largest plants and the smallest true […]
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working with the European Space agency’s Herschel Space Observatory has announced the discovery of large concentrations of comets in two solar systems relatively close to our own. With both systems likely to contain rocky planets, the presence of so many water bearing comets, at a concentration 10 times greater than found in our own solar system, […]
The image is strangely compelling; a lone planet, drifting endlessly through the dead, cold void of space. Science fiction writers love them, one such world, Danaan, was the subject of the The Eternity Artifact, by L.E. Modesitt Jr. In that novel, the planet’s extreme velocity and a trajectory carrying it straight out of the galaxy suggested alien engineering, providing the rationale for a last moment excursion before it passed into […]
Scientists from the The University of Alabama-Birmingham, Cal-Tech and iXpressGenes Inc. have all been granted awards for research focusing on protein crystallization aboard the International Space Station by CASIS, the Center for Advancement of Science in Space. The American portion of ISS was designated a U.S. National Laboratory in 2005, and in 2011, CASIS was chosen as the […]
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