It’s been almost a year (anniversary is on Aug. 6) since the Curiosity Rover touched down on Mars. In the last year, we’ve seen jaw-dropping full-color panoramas of our closest galactic neighbor, a Martian moonrise, a LEGO Curiosity rover and much, much more thanks to the futuristic expedition
To celebrate a full year of successful Mars exploration, NASA’s JPL released … Read the rest of this article
AAVSO Alert Notice 488Dr. Hans Moritz Guenther (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) has requested nightly observations of the classical T Tauri star AA Tau in order to schedule x-ray observations with XMM-Newton that have been planned for between 2013 August 15 and September 15.
The purpose of the AAVSO … Read the rest of this article
Check out this infographic about NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) – click the image for a larger view.
Now that the Space Shuttle program is over, NASA is remodeling the VAB where they were built. It’s a huge building, one of the largest in the world. How huge? Here’s some info to help put it into perspective:
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NASA has completed the first step toward a mission to find and capture a near-Earth asteroid, redirect it to a stable lunar orbit and send humans to study it.
In preparation for fiscal year 2014, a mission formulation review on Tuesday brought together NASA leaders from across the country to examine internal studies proposing multiple concepts and alternatives for each … Read the rest of this article
The Saturn moons Mimas and Pandora remind us of how different they are when they appear together, as in this image taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Pandora’s small size means that it lacks sufficient gravity to pull itself into a round shape like its larger sibling, Mimas. Researchers believe that the elongated shape of Pandora (50 miles, or 81 kilometers … Read the rest of this article
ESA’s Sun-watching Proba-2 satellite has been in orbit since November 2009, demonstrating a range of technologies and serving as a platform for scientific observations.
The 130-kg satellite carries two solar monitors. One is SWAP (Sun Watcher using Active Pixel System detector and Image Processing), a small telescope that captures the solar corona at wavelengths corresponding to temperatures of about a … Read the rest of this article
In astronomy, there’s nothing quite like a bright meteor streaking across the glittering canopy of a moonless night sky. The unexpected flash of light adds a dash of magic to an ordinary walk under the stars.
New research by NASA has just identified the most magical nights of all.
“We have found that one meteor shower produces more fireballs than … Read the rest of this article
Using data from a NASA satellite, scientists have discovered a massive particle accelerator in the heart of one of the harshest regions of near-Earth space, a region of super-energetic, charged particles surrounding the globe and known as the Van Allen radiation belts.
New results from NASA’s Van Allen Probes show the acceleration energy is in the belts themselves. Local bumps … Read the rest of this article
The true identity of centaurs, the small celestial bodies orbiting the sun between Jupiter and Neptune, is one of the enduring mysteries of astrophysics. Are they asteroids or comets? A new study of observations from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) finds most centaurs are comets.
Until now, astronomers were not certain whether centaurs are asteroids flung out from the … 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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