Archive for January, 2011

Hubble Spots the Most Distant Object Ever Seen in the Universe

Friday, January 28th, 2011 at 1:58 pm  
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Astronomers have pushed NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to its limits by finding what is likely to be the most distant object ever seen in the universe. The object’s light traveled 13.2 billion years to reach Hubble, roughly 150 million years longer than the previous record holder. The age of …

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NASA’s NanoSail-D Solar Sail Finally Unfurls

Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 9:38 pm  
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In an unexpected reversal of fortune, NASA’s NanoSail-D spacecraft has unfurled a gleaming sheet of space-age fabric 650 km above Earth, becoming the first-ever solar sail to circle our planet.

“We’re solar sailing!” says NanoSail-D principal investigator Dean Alhorn of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. “This is …

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The European Space Agency’s Mercury Mapper Undergoes Heat Testing

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011 at 8:59 pm  
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Key components of the ESA-led Mercury mapper BepiColombo have been tested in a specially upgraded European space simulator. ESA’s Large Space Simulator is now the most powerful in the world and the only facility capable of reproducing Mercury’s hellish environment for a full-scale spacecraft.

BepiColombo’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) in …

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Comet Storm Nosedives Into the Sun

Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 2:32 pm  
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The sun has just experienced a storm—not of explosive flares and hot plasma, but of icy comets.

“The storm began on Dec 13th and ended on the 22nd,” says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC. “During that time, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) detected 25 …

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NASA Telescopes Help Identify Most Distant Galaxy Cluster

Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 1:15 pm  
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Astronomers have discovered a massive cluster of young galaxies forming in the distant universe. The growing galactic metropolis, named COSMOS-AzTEC3, is the most distant known massive “proto-cluster” of galaxies, lying about 12.6 billion light-years away from Earth. Members of the developing cluster are shown here, circled in white, in this

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Thunderstorms Create Anti-Matter Jets

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 1:20 pm  
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Scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.

Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed inside thunderstorms in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF) associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 TGFs occur daily worldwide, …

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AAVSO Alert Notice 430: Photometry Requested of Blazar-Type Quasars 3C 273 and 3C 279

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 12:44 pm  
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AAVSO Alert Notice 430
Photometry requested of Blazar-type Quasars 3C 273 and 3C 279
January 11, 2011

Dr. Kirill Sokolovsky (Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie, Bonn) has requested the assistance of AAVSO observers to obtain optical photometry of the blazar-type quasars 3C 273 and 3C 279 during 2011. The observations obtained by …

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Planck’s New View of the Cosmos

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011 at 9:24 pm  
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The first scientific results from ESA’s Planck mission were released at a press briefing today in Paris. The findings focus on the coldest objects in the Universe, from within our Galaxy to the distant reaches of space.

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This image shows the location of the first six fields used to

First Rocky Planet Discovered by NASA’s Kepler Mission

Monday, January 10th, 2011 at 8:35 pm  
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Kepler confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.

NASA’s Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is …

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AAVSO Alert Notice 429: Photometry Requested for Three Vestoid Near-Earth Objects

Saturday, January 8th, 2011 at 2:20 pm  
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AAVSO Alert Notice 429
Photometry requested for three Vestoid Near-Earth Objects
January 7, 2011

Dr. Michael David Hicks (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) contacted the AAVSO requesting precision photometry of three solar system objects in support of NASA’s DAWN mission to Vesta. These objects, called “Vestoids”, are near-Earth objects with similar reflectance …

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