NASA’s Curiosity rover is providing vital insight about Mars’ past and current environments that will aid plans for future robotic and human missions.
In a little more than a year on the Red Planet, the mobile Mars Science Laboratory has determined the age of a Martian rock, found evidence the planet could have sustained microbial life, taken the first readings … Read the rest of this article
Enjoy views of the martian north pole from all angles in this new animation from ESA’s Mars Express.
The ice cap has a diameter of about 1000 km and consists of many thin layers of ice mixed with dust that extend to a depth of around 2 km below the cap. The prominent gap in the ice cap is a … Read the rest of this article
This montage of time-lapse photography from the International Space Station is collected from many taken in Expeditions 29, 30 and 31.
The previous sequence, ‘All Alone In The Night‘, highlighted night sequences and spectacular aurora light shows and intended to give a feeling of flying through space.
The goal with this sequence was to bring a bit more … Read the rest of this article
Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed faint remnants of a supernova explosion and helped researchers determine Circinus X-1 — an X-ray binary — is the youngest of this class of astronomical objects found to date.
As the name suggests, X-ray binaries are star systems made up of two parts: a compact stellar remnant — either a neutron star … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has obtained the highest-resolution movie yet of a unique six-sided jet stream, known as the hexagon, around Saturn’s north pole.
This is the first hexagon movie of its kind, using color filters, and the first to show a complete view of the top of Saturn down to about 70 degrees latitude. Spanning about 20,000 miles (30,000 kilometers) … Read the rest of this article
Using the powerful eye of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, two teams of scientists have found faint signatures of water in the atmospheres of five distant planets.
The presence of atmospheric water was reported previously on a few exoplanets orbiting stars beyond our solar system, but this is the first study to conclusively measure and compare the profiles and intensities of … Read the rest of this article
AAVSO Alert Notice 491Event: V556 Serpentis = Nova Ser 2013 = PNV J18090346-1112345
Discovered by: Koichi Itagaki (Teppo-cho, Yamagata, Japan), reported by S. Nakano (Sumoto, Japan)
Discovery magnitude: unfiltered CCD magnitude mag 12.3, using a 0.21-m reflector
Discovery date: 2013 Nov. 24.384 UT
Coordinates: R.A. 18 09 … Read the rest of this article
I’ve held off posting about Comet ISON’s fate following its close encounter with the Sun as conflicting reports about whether it survived the encounter or not have been flying about since last night.
The giant ball of ice and dust was initially declared dead when it failed to re-emerge from behind the star with the expected brightness. But recent pictures … Read the rest of this article
Every year in mid-December the sky fills with flashes of light shooting out of the constellation Gemini. The Geminids are fast, bright, and reliable. They never fail to show up and many observers count them as the finest meteors of the year.
But where do they come from? That is the puzzle.
Meteor showers are supposed to come from comets, … Read the rest of this article
If you have a smartphone, take it out and run your fingers along the glass surface. It’s cool to the touch, incredibly thin and strong, and almost impervious to scratching. You’re now in contact with a “smart material.”
Smart materials don’t occur naturally. Instead, they are designed by human engineers working at the molecular level to produce substances made-to-order for … Read the rest of this article
The Sun Now (Visible light)
|
The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
|
|
Aurora Oval
(Northern Hemisphere) |
Aurora Oval
(Southern Hemisphere) |
|
