NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has weighed the largest known galaxy cluster in the distant universe, catalogued as ACT-CL J0102-4915, and found it definitely lives up to its nickname — El Gordo (Spanish for “the fat one”).
By measuring how much the cluster’s gravity warps images of galaxies in the distant background, a team of astronomers has calculated the cluster’s mass … Read the rest of this article
Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus has an underground sea of liquid water, according to the international Cassini spacecraft.
Understanding the interior structure of 500 km-diameter Enceladus has been a top priority of the Cassini mission since plumes of ice and water vapour were discovered jetting from ‘tiger stripe’ fractures at the moon’s south pole in 2005.
Subsequent observations of the jets … Read the rest of this article
Satellites, astronauts and experiments are constantly observing our planet and beaming information back to us. Navigation satellites tell us where we are, observation satellites can tell us what’s under our feet, and sensors on the International Space Station monitor the positions of ships at sea.
Combining this wealth of information in new ways requires imaginative thinking – and the International … Read the rest of this article
My thanks to Terry Moseley of the Irish Astronomical Association for letting me know about this.
All astronomers know that Planetary Nebulae have absolutely nothing to do with planets: the name is an unfortunate legacy from the 19th century when poorer quality telescope optics failed to resolve these objects properly, making them look like planets. The best known example is … Read the rest of this article
Media are invited to a formal dedication ceremony to mark the renaming of NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, formerly the Dryden Flight Research Center, on Tuesday, May 13 at the center’s campus at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
The renaming ceremony is scheduled for 10 a.m. PDT in Hangar 4802. It is expected to include comments from NASA Administrator Charles … Read the rest of this article
A state-of-the-art ‘Mars yard’ is now ready to put the ExoMars rover through its paces before the vehicle is launched to the Red Planet in 2018.
ESA, the UK Space Agency and Airbus Defence and Space opened the renovated test area in Stevenage, UK, today.
ExoMars is a joint endeavour between ESA and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency. Comprising two missions … Read the rest of this article
How do you grow a supermassive black hole that is a million to a billion times the mass of our sun? Astronomers do not know the answer, but a new study using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has turned up what might be the cosmic seeds from which a black hole will sprout. The results are … Read the rest of this article
ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has caught a first glimpse of its destination comet since waking up from deep-space hibernation on 20 January.
These two ‘first light’ images were taken on 20 and 21 March by the OSIRIS wide-angle camera and narrow-angle camera, as part of six weeks of activities dedicated to preparing the spacecraft’s science instruments for close-up study of comet … Read the rest of this article
Comet Siding Spring is plunging toward the Sun along a roughly 1-million-year orbit. The comet, discovered in 2013, was within the radius of Jupiter’s orbit when the Hubble Space Telescope photographed it on March 11, 2014. Hubble resolves two jets of dust coming from the solid icy nucleus. These persistent jets were first seen in Hubble pictures taken on Oct. … Read the rest of this article
About 50 people from 11 U.S. states will attend a two-day NASA Social, to be held April 1 at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and April 2 at NASA’s Deep Space Network complex in Goldstone, Calif.
The attendees, who follow NASA and JPL on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks, will be provided a unique, in-person … 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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