Studies using X-ray and ultraviolet observations from NASA’s Swift satellite provide new insights into the elusive origins of an important class of exploding star called Type Ia supernovae.
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Three types of systems, illustrated here, may host Type Ia supernovae. The first two panels depict a white dwarf in a binary system accumulating matter transferred from a red supergiant companion many …
Vega, ESA’s new launch vehicle, is ready to operate alongside the Ariane 5 and Soyuz launchers after a successful qualification flight this morning from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
On 13 February 2012, the first Vega lifted off on its maiden flight from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Credits: ESA – S. Corvaja, 2012
With Vega extending the family … Read the rest of this article
Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is en route to intercept a comet– and to make history. In 2014, Rosetta will enter orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenkoand land a probe on it, two firsts.
Rosetta’s goal is to learn the primordial story a comet tells as it gloriously falls to pieces.
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Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is en route to intercept a comet– and to make …
No team of reindeer, but radio signals flying clear across the solar system from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have delivered a holiday package of glorious images. The pictures, from Cassini’s imaging team, show Saturn’s largest, most colorful ornament, Titan, and other icy baubles in orbit around this splendid planet.
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Titan and Dione: Saturn’s third-largest moon Dione can be seen through the …
NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun.
NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require … Read the rest of this article
ESA’s Herschel infrared space observatory has found water in a comet with almost exactly the same composition as Earth’s oceans. The discovery revives the idea that our planet’s seas could once have been giant icebergs floating through space.
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This illustration shows the orbit of comet Hartley 2 in relation to those of the five innermost planets of the Solar System. …
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a new moon circling Pluto. P4, as it is currently called, is the smallest moon yet found orbiting Pluto, with an estimated size of 13–34 km. By comparison, Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, is 1043 km across, while Nix and Hydra are 32–113 km wide. The tiny, new satellite popped up in a Hubble … Read the rest of this article
Two small NASA probes that had been used to study space weather now are orbiting the moon to study its interior and surface composition.
The spacecraft, called Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun (ARTEMIS), began their journey away from Earth’s orbit in July 2009. The first spacecraft entered lunar orbit on June 27, and … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will begin a prolonged encounter with the asteroid Vesta today (July 15), making the mission the first to enter orbit around a main-belt asteroid.
The main asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Dawn will study Vesta for one year, and observations will help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system’s history.… Read the rest of this article
The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
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Aurora Oval
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