On Monday, 20 January, 807 million km away, Rosetta is set to wake up from 31 months of deep-space hibernation. Here on Earth, the mission control team will be waiting to catch its signal in the Main Control Room, at ESOC, ESA’s Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany.
As Europe’s centre of excellence for mission operations, the European Space Operations Centre … Read the rest of this article
The placid appearance of the Sun’s surface belies a hot fireball of plasma in constant turmoil. A granular network invisible to the naked eye pervades the solar disc, with cells of hotter and colder plasma popping up, merging and disappearing within only a few hours.
The boundaries between these constantly moving cells are hectic places. Powerful jets of plasma are … Read the rest of this article
More than three-quarters of the planet candidates discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft have sizes ranging from that of Earth to that of Neptune, which is nearly four times as big as Earth. Such planets dominate the galactic census but are not represented in our own solar system. Astronomers don’t know how they form or if they are made of rock, … Read the rest of this article
The vibrant magentas and blues in this Hubble image of the barred spiral galaxy M83 reveal that the galaxy is ablaze with star formation. The galactic panorama unveils a tapestry of the drama of stellar birth and death. The galaxy, also known as the Southern Pinwheel, lies 15 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra.
This image is a composite … Read the rest of this article
A new planetarium show, Journey to a billion Suns, premieres today in Hamburg, Germany, to tell the fascinating story of mapping the Milky Way, from ancient times to ESA’s recently launched Gaia mission.
The 45-minute, 360 degree full-dome planetarium spectacular was produced by Stargarten in cooperation with ESA and planetariums across Europe.
Gaia was launched on 19 December and … Read the rest of this article
Swirling, stormy clouds may be ever-present on cool celestial orbs called brown dwarfs. New observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that most brown dwarfs are roiling with one or more planet-size storms akin to Jupiter’s “Great Red Spot.”
“As the brown dwarfs spin on their axis, the alternation of what we think are cloud-free and cloudy regions produces a … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft has spotted a never-before-seen asteroid – its first such discovery since coming out of hibernation last year.
NEOWISE originally was called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), which had made the most comprehensive survey to date of asteroids and comets. The spacecraft was shut down in 2011 after its primary mission … Read the rest of this article
One of the largest sunspots in years, AR1944, has turned toward Earth and it is crackling with strong flares. On Jan. 7th (yesterday), the active region produced M7- and X1-class eruptions, and more appear to be in the offing. As this alert was being issued, analysts were waiting for more data from solar observatories to clarify the possibility of CME … Read the rest of this article
The first of a set of unprecedented, super-deep views of the universe from an ambitious collaborative program called The Frontier Fields is being released today at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C.
The long-exposure image taken with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is the deepest-ever picture taken of a cluster of galaxies, and also contains images … Read the rest of this article
The BBC’s annual Stargazing Live event returns tonight on BBC2 at 8PM for its 4th series and is followed by a half-hour Q&A session where viewers can get answers on various astronomy questions from a panel of experts.
The event runs over 3 nights, Tue, January 7th to Thursday, January 9th, 2013.
Episode 1 (Tuesday – tonight):
In the most … 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
(Northern Hemisphere) |
Aurora Oval
(Southern Hemisphere) |
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