NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features: NASA has begun development of a mission to visit and study the sun closer than ever before.
HubbleSite NewsCenter -- Latest News Releases: Get larger image formats An international team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope reports a significant brightening of the emissions from Supernova 1987A. The results, which appear in this week's Science magazine, are consistent with theoretical predictions about how supernovae interact with their immediate galactic environment.
Indiana University Astronomy and Astrophysics: Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet, will dominate the sky nearly all night during September, presenting its best appearance in almost 50 years. Glowing low in the east as evening twilight fades, Jupiter will climb high in the south before midnight and set in the west around the time morning twilight begins.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope: New research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals that asteroids somewhat near Earth, termed near-Earth objects, are a mixed bunch, with a surprisingly wide array of compositions.
Herschel News: Herschel has discovered that ultraviolet starlight is a key ingredient for making water in the atmosphere of some stars. It is the only explanation for why a dying star is surrounded by a gigantic cloud of hot water vapour.
ESO Top News: The galaxy NGC 4666 takes pride of place at the centre of this new image, made in visible light with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. NGC 4666 is a remarkable galaxy with very vigorous star formation and an unusual “superwind” of out-flowing gas. It had previously been observed in X-rays by the ESA XMM-Newton space telescope, and the image presented here was taken to allow further study of other objects detected in the earlier X-ray observations.
ESA Space Science: Cluster has spent a decade revealing previously hidden interactions between the Sun and Earth. Its studies have uncovered secrets of aurora, solar storms, and given us insight into fundamental processes that occur across the Universe. And there is more work to do.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center: Mercury's exosphere is a place of amazing activity that can tell astronomers a lot about the planet's surface and environment.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center: The latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-15 (also known as GOES-P), has been accepted into service.
ESA Top News: An unmanned aircraft system guided by satnav has been developed within ESA’s Business Incubation Centre to provide rapid monitoring of land areas and disaster zones. The planes have already helped Spanish farmers in Andalusia to fight land erosion.
University of Florida: GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Any driver who’s seen deer silhouetted by the headlights of an oncoming car knows that vital information can be conveyed by the outlines of objects. GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Any driver who’s seen deer silhouetted by the headlights of an oncoming car knows that vital information can be conveyed by the outlines of objects. Building on this concept, University of Florida astronomers have analyzed light passing through the upper atmosphere of the giant planet HD 80606 b, about 190 light years from Earth, and determined that its atmosphere contains the element potassium. “It’s wonderful that this method works so well for Jupiter-sized planets,” said Knicole Colón, a UF astronomy doctoral student. “Now, we’re working to apply this technique to observe smaller planets in an effort to pinpoint the components of their atmospheres.” Coincidentally, another team led by David Sing at the University of Exeter, in Devon, U.K., has just used the same technique to detect potassium in the atmosphere of XO-2b, another huge planet about 485 light years from Earth. Both planets, known as gas giants, have extremely high temperatures by earthly standards – HD 80606 b reaches about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and XO-2b is about 1,700 degrees. ...
ASTRON: The story of the discovery of the mysterious green gas cloud, which is discovered by school teacher Hanny van Arkel and is internationally known as 'Hanny's Voorwerp', has been made into an American comic book. Hanny van Arkel and the team of scientists, among who are ASTRON scientists, have been immortalized in the unlikely, but true story "Hanny and the mystery of the Voorwerp". The comic, which will also appear on the internet and as a book, will be presented officially on Friday 3 September in Atlanta (USA) during the world's largest science fiction meeting 'DragonCon'. Read more
Keck Observatory: Kamuela, HI - Astronomers at the University of Hawaii have measured the temperature of a young gas-giant planet around another star using the W. M. Keck Observatory, and the results are puzzling. They have found that its atmosphere is unlike that of any previously studied extrasolar planet. By obtaining a spectrum of its emitted light, the astronomers determined the temperature of the planet. As a result, they found that current theoretical models of gas-giant planets did a poor job of explaining all the data. The team suspects that the reason is dust in the planet’s atmosphere. Models with normal amounts…
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: This is a composite image of the northern part of the galaxy cluster Abell 1758, located about 3.2 billion light years from Earth.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center: A new geologic map of a lunar basin paints an instant, camouflage-colored portrait of what a mash-up the moon's surface is after eons of violent events.
ESA Space Science: Orcus Patera is an enigmatic elliptical depression near Mars’s equator, in the eastern hemisphere of the planet. Located between the volcanoes of Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons, its formation remains a mystery.
Planetary Society Press Wire: From the Ground and from Space, New Planetary Systems Unveiled
NASA Lunar Science Institute: Over the next several years, LROC will collect hundreds of more stereo pairs over key exploration targets.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features: One of the instruments on a 2016 mission to orbit Mars will provide daily profiles of the changing structure of the planet's atmosphere.
ESA Human Spaceflight and Exploration: One of the most complex space scientific instruments ever built, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) arrived today at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, escorted by the crew of astronauts who will flyshare with it onthe last flight of the Space Shuttle inscheduled for February 2011.
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