Archive for January, 2010

MESSENGER Mercury Flyby

Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 11:40 am  
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On Monday, Jan. 14, a pioneering NASA spacecraft was the first to visit Mercury in almost 33 years when it soared over the planet to explore and snap close-up images of never-before-seen terrain. These findings could open new theories and answer old questions in the study of the solar system…

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Mars Spirit Rover Stationery on Mars for Good

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 4:42 pm  
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Jan. 26, 2010: After six years of unprecedented exploration of the Red Planet, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit no longer will be a fully mobile robot. NASA has designated the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform after efforts during the past several months to free it from a …

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Mars Close Encounter

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 4:32 pm  
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It rises in the east at sunset, pumpkin-orange and brighter than a first magnitude star. You stare at it, unblinking. Unblinking, it stares right back.

It is Mars.

This week Earth and Mars are having a close encounter. On Jan. 27th, the Red Planet will be only 99 million kilometers …

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Annular Solar Eclipse Coming Up on Jan 15th

Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 11:45 pm  
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The Moon is about to pass directly in front of the sun, producing an annular solar eclipse on Jan. 15th between 05:00 and 09:00 GMT.

The zone of visibility stretches from Africa across the Indian Ocean to eastern Asia.

Onlookers in those places should be alert for crescent-shaped shadows on …

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James Webb Telescope Planet Search

Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 5:13 pm  
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An artist’s concept of an exoplanet. Image credit: ESO.

January 14, 2010: The premiere observatory of the next decade, the James Webb Space Telescope, will launch in 2014 in search of “big game”–namely, the first stars and galaxies ever formed in our Universe. But the “little game” could turn out …

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Curious Asteroid Flyby on Jan 13th

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 5:43 pm  
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A curious object is about to fly past Earth only one-third the distance to the Moon.

Cataloged as a 10m-class asteroid, 2010 AL30 has an orbital period of almost exactly 1 year. This raises the possibility that it might not be a natural object, but rather a piece of …

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Frozen Britain and Not So Frozen Ireland

Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 5:11 pm  
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This striking image taken by NASA’s Terra satellite on 7 January shows the UK deep in the clutches of the current cold snap. While the UK is completely white, Ireland, at least the half you can is still green. On the ground it’s a different story. Dublin has been affected …

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Kepler Space Telecope Discovers Five Exoplanets

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 9:04 pm  
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NASA’s Kepler space telescope, designed to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars, has discovered its first five new exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system.

Kepler’s high sensitivity to both small and large planets enabled the discovery of the exoplanets, named Kepler 4b, 5b, …

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