# NASA creates first cloud map of exoplanet



## Gregzs (Oct 1, 2013)

NASA Creates First Cloud Map of Exoplanet

October 1, 2013

NASA Creates First Cloud Map of Exoplanet

This week, NASA released images of the first cloud map of any planet beyond our solar system. The planet, known as Kepler-7b, is one of more than 150 exoplanets discovered by the Kepler telescope, and lies about 1,000 light years away from Earth. 

The news follows a study of the exoplanet, more than three years in the making, which utilized data from both the Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes. In its latest findings, published in this month?s Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers have produced a low-resolution map that depicts ?a remarkably stable climate? on Kepler-7b, according to Thomas Barclay from NASA?s Ames Research Center. Rather than frequently shifting cloud patterns, like those found on Earth, scientists believe the exoplanet has consistently clear skies in the east and high cloud coverage in the west.

Scientists first began looking into the planet?s climate after the Kepler telescope picked up an anomaly on the planet?s western hemisphere. Unable to determine whether the bright spot they were seeing was a heat spot on the planet or cloud coverage above it, they called in the Spitzer telescope to get an accurate reading of the planet?s atmosphere. Spitzer, capable of detecting infrared light, allowed NASA to get its first temperature readings of Kepler-7b, estimated to be between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

That?s certainly hot?but not nearly as hot as NASA would have expected, given the planet?s close proximity to its own star, far closer than the Earth is to the Sun. With a heat spot ruled out, the team was able to confirm that the western half of the planet experiences nearly continuous cloud coverage; clouds which are reflecting back much more light that most other planets of a comparable size.

This isn?t the first peculiarity scientists have discovered about Kepler-7b. They had already determined that the planet is 1.5 times the size of Jupiter?but only has half that planet?s mass?leading NASA to dub Keplar-7b one of the ?puffiest? planets ever discovered. Its low mass allows the planet to whip around its star at a dizzying speed?a year on Keplar-7b lasts less than five days?and if the planet could be placed into a massive intergalactic bathtub, it would float.

The Keplar mission was launched in March 2009, and Kepler-7b was one of the first exoplanets it discovered. Since then, it has helped NASA identify more than 150 exoplanets, including one of the darkest planets yet discovered (Kepler-1b), as well as one of the smallest (Kepler-37b). In April of 2013, NASA announced the discovery of three Earth-like ?water worlds? in the Lyra constellation, more than 1,2000 light years away, that fall into the category of ?Goldilocks? planets, where conditions may be ?just right? to support life.

Just weeks later, however, a malfunction with the Kepler telescope?s reaction wheels, which help focus its fixed field of view towards planetary bodies, caused a cessation in the collection of scientific data. After a failed attempt at fixing the two wheels, NASA remains uncertain about the mission?s fate, which was due to last until 2016. The Spitzer telescope, crucial to the latest discovery about Kepler-7b, is itself operating at partial capacity. First launched in 2003 with a mission length of 2.5 years, it more than doubled that before its onboard liquid helium supply ran out in 2009, rendering all but its infrared technology no longer usable.


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## Gregzs (Oct 10, 2013)

Astronomers Discover Lonely Orphan Planet That Doesn’t Orbit a Star

Astronomers Discover Lonely Orphan Planet That Doesn?t Orbit a Star

Astronomers have discovered a lonely planet that doesn?t orbit a star, according to a new report from the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The orphaned planet, known as PSO J318.5-22, is six times the mass of Jupiter and is located just 80 light-years from Earth. ?We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that that looks like this. It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone,? said the IfA?s Dr. Michael Liu in a press release, ?I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do.? 

PSO J318.5-22 was discovered during a search for brown dwarfs, or failed stars. The orphaned planet?s heat signature stood out when observed by astronomers using the Pan-STARRS 1 wide-field survey telescope on Haleakala, Maui. During follow-up observations, the team determined that PSO J318.5-22 likely belongs to the Beta Pictoris moving group of stars that formed about 12 million years ago. 

?Planets found by direct imaging are incredibly hard to study, since they are right next to their much brighter host stars. PSO J318.5-22 is not orbiting a star so it will be much easier for us to study. It is going to provide a wonderful view into the inner workings of gas-giant planets like Jupiter shortly after their birth,? said study co-author Dr. Niall Deacon of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.


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## Gregzs (Nov 7, 2013)

One in five Milky Way stars hosts potentially life-friendly Earths: study | Reuters

One in five Milky Way stars hosts potentially life-friendly Earths: study


One out of every five sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy has a planet about the size of Earth that is properly positioned for water, a key ingredient for life, a study released on Monday showed.

The analysis, based on three years of data collected by NASA's now-idled Kepler space telescope, indicates the galaxy is home to 10 billion potentially habitable worlds.

The number grows exponentially if the count also includes planets circling cooler red dwarf stars, the most common type of star in the galaxy.

"Planets seem to be the rule rather than exception," study leader Erik Petigura, an astronomy graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, said during a conference call with reporters on Monday.

Petigura wrote his own software program to analyze the space telescope's results and found 10 planets one- to two-times the diameter of Earth circling parent stars at the right distances for liquid surface water.

The telescope worked by finding slight dips in the amount of light coming from target stars in the constellation Cygnus.

Some light dips were due to orbiting planets passing in front of their parent stars, relative to Kepler's line of sight.

Extrapolating from 34 months of Kepler observations, Petigura and colleagues found that 22 percent of 50 billion sun-like stars in the galaxy should have planets roughly the size of Earth suitably positioned for water.

A positioning system problem sidelined Kepler in May. Scientists are developing alternative missions for the telescope. More than a year of data already collected by Kepler, which was launched in 2009, still has to be analyzed.

In another Kepler study, the telescope found 3,538 candidate planets, 647 of which are about the size of Earth, said astronomer Jason Rowe, with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

Of the 3,538 candidates, 104 are at the right distance from their parent stars for water, he said.

"When exoplanet hunting started, everyone expected solar systems to look just like ours," Rowe said. "But we're finding quite the opposite, that there's a wide variety of systems out there. If you can imagine it, the universe probably makes it."

The research was published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and presented on Monday at a Kepler science conference at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.


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## dieseljimmy (Nov 7, 2013)

^^^
If this math is right and if the same ratios can be applied to all the other galaxies in the universe, you would have to assume that there is an abundance of life out there.


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## Gregzs (Nov 10, 2013)

New-found Earth-size Exoplanet Doomed – News Watch

New-found Earth-size Exoplanet Doomed

Astronomers announced this week that they have spotted a rocky Earth-size planet beyond our solar system, the smallest alien world accurately sized by observers to date. However, the super-hot planet is no second Earth, and according to theories, the distant world some 700 light-years away from Earth shouldn?t exist.

The planet, Kepler-78b, was first discovered by its namesake NASA space telescope. The planet is about 20 percent larger than the Earth, with a diameter of 9,200 miles, and it weighs almost twice as much.

Using the world?s largest ground-based telescopes, two independent research teams have now confirmed the planet?s mass and density by measuring ?wobbles? of its sun-like host star, seen as the exoplanet orbits around it. They report the confirmations in the journal Nature.

Unfortunately, Kepler-78b is not Earth 2.0, however, because it turns out that it circles its star at a scorching distance of one million miles. A year on this fast-paced little world lasts only 8.5 hours.

?It?s Earth-like in the sense that it?s about the same size and mass, but of course it?s extremely unlike the Earth in that it?s at least 2,000 degrees hotter,? says co-author Josh Winn, an astronomer at MIT.

?It?s a step along the way of studying truly Earth-like planets.?

The problem astronomers have with their finding is that according to what we understand about planet formation, this hot lava world couldn?t have formed so close to its star, nor could it have moved there.

?This planet is a complete mystery,? says study co-author David Latham, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. ?We don?t know how it formed or how it got to where it is today. What we do know is that it?s not going to last forever.?

Astronomers have a quandary on their hands.  They don?t believe the planet could have formed in its current orbit because then Kepler-78b would have been inside the much larger, younger star. At the same time, it couldn?t have formed farther out and migrated inward, because it should have been drawn on a swirling kamikaze dive straight into the star.

?How it came to reside in its current 8.5-hour orbit is uncertain,? says planetary scientist Drake Deming of the University of Maryland in a commentary accompanying the studies. ?Among the more exotic possibilities is that it is the remnant core of a disrupted gas giant,? he writes.

Because it has the tightest orbit around a star ever seen, one thing researchers know for sure is that Kepler-78b?s days are numbered. The extreme gravitational pull from its star will draw it ever closer in, ripping the entire planet apart in about three billion years.


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## Gregzs (Nov 21, 2013)

'Monster' cosmic blast zipped harmlessly by Earth | Science Headlines | Comcast

'Monster' cosmic blast zipped harmlessly by Earth

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Astronomers call it the monster. It was the biggest and brightest cosmic explosion ever witnessed. Had it been closer, Earth would have been toast.

Orbiting telescopes got the fireworks show of a lifetime last spring when they spotted what is known as a gamma ray burst in a far-off galaxy.

The only bigger display astronomers know of was the Big Bang ? and no one, of course, was around to witness that.

"This burst was a once-in-a-century cosmic event," NASA astrophysics chief Paul Hertz said at a news conference Thursday.

But because this blast was 3.7 billion light-years away, mankind was spared. In fact, no one on Earth could even see it with the naked eye.

A gamma ray burst happens when a massive star dies, collapses into a brand-new black hole, explodes in what's called a supernova and ejects energetic radiation. The radiation is as bright as can be as it travels across the universe at the speed of light.

A planet caught in one of these bursts would lose its atmosphere instantly and would be left a burnt cinder, astronomers say.

Scientists might be able to detect warning signs of an impending gamma ray burst. But if a burst were headed for Earth ? and the chances of that happening are close to zero, astronomers say ? there wouldn't be anything anybody could do about it.

NASA telescopes in orbit have been seeing bursts for more than two decades, spotting one every couple of days. But this one, witnessed on April 27, set records, according to four studies published Thursday in the journal Science.

It flooded NASA instruments with five times the energy of its nearest competitor, a 1999 blast, said University of Alabama at Huntsville astrophysicist Rob Preece, author of one of the studies.

It started with a star that had 20 to 30 times the mass of our sun but was only a couple of times wider, so it was incredibly dense. It exploded in a certain violent way.

In general, gamma ray bursts are "the most titanic explosions in the universe," and this one was so big that some of the telescope instruments hit their peak, Preece said. It was far stronger and lasted longer than previous ones.

"I call it the monster," Preece said. In fact, one of the other studies, not written by Preece, used the word "monster" in its title, unusual language for a scientific report.

One of the main reasons this was so bright was that relative to the thousands of other gamma ray bursts astronomers have seen, the monster was pretty close by cosmic standards. A light-year is almost 6 trillion miles.

Most of the bursts NASA telescopes have seen have been twice as distant as this one. Other explosions could be this big, but they are so much farther away, they don't seem so bright when they reach Earth, the studies' authors say.

Astronomers say it is incredibly unlikely that a gamma ray burst ? especially a big one like this ? could go off in our galaxy, near us. Harvard's Avi Loeb, who wasn't part of the studies, put the chances at less than 1 in 10 million.

Our galaxy doesn't have many of the type of star that lends itself to gamma ray bursts, said Charles Dermer, a co-author of the studies and an astrophysicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

"The chance of anything happening and being dangerous is virtually nil," Dermer said.

Also, because a burst is concentrated like a focused searchlight or a death beam, it has to be pointing at you to be seen and to be dangerous.

"Either it's pointed at us or it's not," Preece said. "If it's not, yay! Civilization survives and we see maybe a supernova. If it were pointed at us, then it matters very much how far away it is in our galaxy. If it's in our local arm, well, we had a good run."

Some theorize that a mass extinction on Earth 450 million years ago was caused by a gamma ray burst in a nearby part of our galaxy, but Dermer said that's unlikely.

We don't see gamma ray bursts from the surface of Earth because the atmosphere obscures them and because most of their light is the type we cannot see with our eyes. That's why NASA has satellites that look for them.

This burst was so bright telescopes on Earth saw a brief flash in the constellation Leo.

For scientists, this was a wow moment.

"These are really neat explosions," said Peter Michelson, a Stanford physicist who is the chief scientist for one of the instruments on a NASA gamma ray burst-spotting telescope. "If you like fireworks, you can't beat these. Other than the Big Bang itself, these are the biggest there are."

The burst "is part of the cycle of birth and life and death in the universe," Michelson said. "You and I are made of the stuff that came from a supernova."


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## Gregzs (Nov 28, 2013)

Did comet ISON flame out on its trip around the sun?

Did comet ISON flame out on its trip around the sun?

Like Icarus, comet ISON appears to have flown too close to the sun and broken up in its corona.

Scientists had hoped that the comet from the farthest reaches of the solar system would be able to slingshot around the sun Thursday and emerge streaming a tail visible to the naked eye next month.

But after NASA telescopes tracked the comet plunging into the sun's corona, no evidence of it emerged on the other side. Scientists said they would continue to analyze imagery from the telescopes for signs of the comet or debris from it breaking up.

"At this point, I do suspect that the comet has broken up and died," says Karl Battams, a comet scientist for the Naval Research Laboratory, who joined a NASA and Google+ chat from Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona. "Let's at least give it a couple of more hours before we start writing the obituary."

Even if the comet broke up, it offered a very rare opportunity to see how one of the oldest objects in the solar system interacted with the sun's magnetic field.

The comet originated in the Oort Cloud, a region halfway from the sun to the next closest star. Scientists say comet ISON would have been nudged by gravity from other stars into its 5-million-year plunge toward the sun.

Although scientists have tracked other comets from the Oort Cloud, Battams said this one was the first in recorded astronomy from so far away that passed so close to the sun, passing the sun at a distance of about 1 million miles.

"This is a spectacularly rare event," Battams said. "We have no idea when we're going to see something this amazing again."

The reason scientists study comets is to find out what they contain because they were born along with the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. When comets pass close enough to the sun, their ice melts away and dust gives off signals that describe its composition.

Even if comet ISON evaporated and broke apart near the sun, its behavior in the sun's magnetic field will help scientists understand more about both comets and the sun.

"This gives us an opportunity to see and study these magnetic fields in a way we normally couldn't do," said Alex Young, a solar physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Nature is giving us this unique opportunity to study these magnetic fields."

ISON (pronounced ICE-on) stands for International Scientific Optical Network. It was discovered in September 2012 by a pair of amateur astronomers in Russia.

Two NASA telescopes that tracked the comet's approach to the sun were called SOHO, for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, and SDO, the Solar Dynamics Observatory.

SOHO has a metal coin that blocks out the sun's direct light, so that the corona of fountains of magnetic field can be seen splashing off the sun. Comet ISON was visible in SOHO's red-and-blue images as it approached the sun with a long tail.

But as it approached its closest point to the sun at 1:48 p.m. ET, the half-mile point of the comet faded and the tail thousands of miles across became fuzzier. That suggested it might have broken up.

"We're not really seeing the head of the comet," Phil Plait, an astronomer and author who writes for Slate's Bad Astronomy blog, said of a SOHO image taken at 12:24 p.m. "That to me looks like the nucleus broke up."

SDO, which showed the sun in ultraviolet light as a smoldering yellow marble, glimpsed comet ISON racing toward the sun. But as SDO shifted to watch the comet reappear on the other side, ISON never showed.

This was puzzling because Dean Pesnell, a solar physicist and project scientist for SDO, said even if the comet broke up, its remains should have been visible in the magnetic field for 45 minutes.

"I'd like to know what happened to our half-mile of material that was going around the sun," Pesnell said of the comet. "We should be able to see something."

Scientists said they would continue to review images from 11 telescopes worldwide that tracked the comet, to learn what became of it and learn more about the sun.

"I'm not very hopeful at this point," Plait said of comet ISON.


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## Gregzs (Dec 12, 2013)

NASA?s Juno spacecraft captured this amazing video of the Moon orbiting Earth as it passed by our planet on October 19th, 2013. Using a camera designed to track faint stars, Juno captured the images ? which were later assembled into a video ? at a distance of about 600,000 miles. As it passed by Earth, the spacecraft accelerated to more than 8,800 mph in order to reach Jupiter by July 4th, 2016.


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## Gregzs (Jan 1, 2014)

A Year In Space: Incredible Images Of Earth Over 2013


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## Gregzs (Jan 9, 2014)

'Hand of God' spotted by NASA space telescope - NBC News.com

'Hand of God' spotted by NASA space telescope






Religion and astronomy may not overlap often, but a new NASA X-ray image captures a celestial object that resembles the "Hand of God." 

The cosmic "hand of God" photo was produced when a star exploded and ejected an enormous cloud of material, which NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, glimpsed in high-energy X-rays, shown in blue in the photo. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory had imaged the green and red parts previously, using lower-energy X-rays. 

"NuSTAR's unique viewpoint, in seeing the highest-energy X-rays, is showing us well-studied objects and regions in a whole new light," NuSTAR telescope principal investigator Fiona Harrison, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement. 

The new image depicts a pulsar wind nebula, produced by the dense remnant of a star that exploded in a supernova. What's left behind is a pulsar, called PSR B1509-58 (B1509 for short), which spins around 7 times per second blowing a wind of particles into material ejected during the star's death throes. 

As these particles interact with nearby magnetic fields, they produce an X-ray glow in the shape of a hand. (The pulsar is located near the bright white spot in the image but cannot be seen itself, NASA officials said.) 

Scientists aren't sure whether the ejected material actually assumes the shape of a hand, or whether its interaction with the pulsar's particles is just making it appear that way. 

"We don't know if the hand shape is an optical illusion," Hongjun An, of McGill University in Montreal, said in a statement. "With NuSTAR, the hand looks more like a fist, which is giving us some clues." 

The red cloud appearing at the fingertips is a separate structure called RCW 89. The pulsar's wind may be heating the cloud to produce the low-energy X-ray glow, astronomers believe. 

The X-ray energies seen by NuSTAR range from 7 to 25 kiloelectron volts, or keV, whereas the energies seen by Chandra range from 0.5 to 2 keV. 

The Hand of God is an example of pareidolia, the psychological phenomenon of perceiving familiar shapes in random or vague images. Other common forms of pareidolia include seeing animals or faces in clouds, or the man in the moon. Despite its supernatural appearance, the Hand of God was produced by natural astrophysical phenomena.


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## Gregzs (Feb 5, 2014)

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/new-view-...source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

October 14, 2012, Felix Baumgartner ascended more than 24 miles above Earth's surface to the edge of space in a stratospheric balloon. Millions across the globe watched as he opened the door of the capsule, stepped off the platform, and broke the speed of sound while free falling safely back to Earth. Felix set three world records that day?and inspired us all to reach beyond the limits of our own realities, and reimagine our potential to achieve the incredible. 

GoPro was honored to be a part of this epic achievement, with seven HERO2 cameras documenting every moment. From the airless freeze of outer space, to the record-breaking free fall and momentous return to ground?see it all through Felix's eyes as captured by GoPro, and experience this incredible mission like never before. No one gets you closer than this.

Shot 100% on the HD HERO2? camera from http://GoPro.com.


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## Gregzs (Mar 31, 2014)

http://www.nerdist.com/2014/03/astronomers-find-a-small-world-that-could-hint-at-a-big-one/

Astronomers Find a Small World That Could Hint at a Big One

Move a few astronomical units over, Pluto, there&#146;s a new dwarf in town. Astronomers have announced in Nature that they&#146;ve discovered a new dwarf planet which, at its closest, passes about 7.2 billion miles from the sun. And what&#146;s more, the apparent movement of this new planetoid hints that a much larger planet could be orbiting even farther out, one that could be 20x bigger than Earth.

The new body has been dubbed 2012 VP-113 and measures about 280-miles across. Circling our sun at a minimum of 80 astronomical units (1 au = the distance between the earth and the sun), 2012 VP-113 is well beyond the Kuiper belt, a thick ring of frozen bodies which orbits beyond Neptune (the farthest planet out) at 30 to 55 au away.

While 2012 VP-113 is officially way the hell out there, it&#146;s still not as far out as the Oort cloud &#150; a massive expanse of icy material stretching from 50,000 to 100,000 au away. To give you a sense of how far that is, a light year is equivalent to a mere 63,240 au. If the Oort cloud hurts your brain too much to think about, you can hold out hope that its existence gets debunked someday &#150; the concept is still just a hypothesis.






It was long thought that the area between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud was entirely featureless, but this notion changed with the 2003 discovery of the 600 mile wide dwarf planet Sedna. The presence of this relatively large body in this supposedly vacant region made astronomers wonder what else might be out there. Even for super smart scientists with super powerful telescopes, seeing small stuff that&#146;s really far away is still super hard. To spot more planetoids like Sedna they&#146;d have to detect faint beams of light that manage to reach these distant worlds, reflect off of them, and then bounce all the way back to us. To accomplish such a feat, astronomers enlisted what has to be the most bad-ass sounding scientific instrument in the game, the Dark Energy Camera on the NOAO 4-meter telescope in Chile. Finally they spotted the faint, dim object they&#146;ve now dubbed 2012 VP-113

Here&#146;s what&#146;s getting scientists (and us) really excited. Sedna and 2012 VP-113 seem to be making their tightest approach to the sun at similar angles, and this could mean that they are being affected by the gravity of a much larger body. If this planet exists, scientists suspect this giant could be up to 20x bigger than Earth. Only time &#150; and the discovery of more dwarf planets like these &#150; will tell if there&#146;s a monster lurking beyond the Kuiper belt.

What do you think, Nerdist science readers?  Is there a distant mega ice planet out there affecting the orbits of Sedna and 2012 VP-2013? And more importantly, could it be Hoth!?


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## Gregzs (Apr 14, 2014)

http://laughingsquid.com/the-first-...e-visible-tonight-in-north-and-south-america/

The First Total Lunar Eclipse of 2014 Will Be Visible Tonight In North and South America

Residents of North and South America will get a chance to see the year&#146;s first total lunar eclipse late tonight / early tomorrow. The celestial event will begins at 0600 GMT (2AM ET, 11PM PT) and will last around 3.5 hours. The Earth&#146;s shadow on the moon will cause the lunar surface to appear as a burnt red color, one of four such occurrences set for the next year and a half, with the next one happening October 8th, 2014. For anyone not in viewing range or expecting bad weather, Space.com will feature a live webcast of the event.


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## Gregzs (Apr 15, 2014)

http://laughingsquid.com/blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-distilled-into-a-nine-second-animated-gif/

&#145;Blood Moon&#146; Lunar Eclipse Distilled into a Nine-Second Animated GIF

For those who were unable to view the &#147;blood moon&#148; lunar eclipse on April 14, 2014 due to global positioning, weather or timing, TIME has condensed the whole event into a nine-second animated GIF. Of particular note is the brief reddish hue caused by light refracted by the Earth&#146;s atmosphere.


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## Gregzs (Apr 17, 2014)

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/spac...ists-find-alien-planet-thats-most-home-n83131

'Earth's Cousin': Scientists Find Alien Planet That's Most Like Home

Scientists say a world that's 490 light-years away qualifies as the first confirmed Earth-sized exoplanet that could sustain life as we know it &#151; but in an environment like nothing we've ever seen.

The planet, known as Kepler-186f, is "more of an Earth cousin than an Earth twin," Elisa Quintana, an astronomer at the SETI Institute at NASA Ames Research Center, told the journal Science. Quintana is the lead author of a report on the planet published by Science this week.

"This discovery does confirm that Earth-sized planets do exist in the habitable zones of other stars," Quintana said during a Thursday news briefing at NASA Headquarters.

Kepler-186f goes around an M-type dwarf star that's smaller and cooler than our sun. But it orbits much closer to its parent star than Earth does, within what would be Mercury's orbit in our own solar system. Those two factors combine to produce an environment that could allow for liquid water on the surface, assuming that the planet had a heat-trapping atmosphere.

"The star, to our eyes, would look slightly orange-y," about a third again as big as our sun but only a third as bright, said co-author Thomas Barclay, a staff scientist for NASA's Kepler mission who is also affiliated with NASA and the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute. At midday, Kepler-186f's landscape might look similar to what we see on Earth an hour before sunset, he told NBC News.

Or it might not: If the planet lacked an atmosphere to retain and redistribute its sun's warmth, it would be a cold, dry, lifeless world.

Kepler-186f probably rates as the most potentially Earthlike planet discovered so far, said Jim Kasting, a geoscientist at Penn State University who did not play a role in the Science study. But he told NBC News that it's still "less likely to be habitable than planets around more sunlike stars." Even better prospects for alien habitability might well be identified in the months and years to come.

How the world was found

Kepler-186f is just the latest discovery to be pulled out of terabytes' worth of data collected by the Kepler mission. Before it went on the fritz last year, the Kepler space telescope stared at more than 150,000 stars in a patch of sky, looking for the telltale dimming of starlight as planets passed over the stars' disks. Nearly 1,000 exoplanets have been confirmed using Kepler data, and almost 3,000 more candidates are still awaiting confirmation.

It takes years of observation to confirm the pattern of dimming and brightening that's associated with alien planets, particularly if the planets are small and far from their parent stars. In February, astronomers reported that at least four worlds circled the dwarf star known as Kepler-186 or KOI-571. In this week's Science paper, Quintana and her colleagues confirm the existence of Kepler-186f as the fifth and outermost world.

They report that Kepler-186f is about 10 percent wider than Earth, tracing a 130-day orbit around its sun at a mean distance of 0.35 astronomical units. (An astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and our sun, which is 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers.) That would put Kepler-186f on the cooler, outer side of the star's habitable zone &#151; the range of orbital distances where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.

Astronomers have confirmed the existence of other planets in their stars' habitable zone, but those prospects are super-Earth-size. Smaller habitable-zone candidates also have been found, but they have yet to be confirmed as planets.

Barclay said Kepler-186f was particularly promising because it's less than 1.5 times the size of Earth. Planets in that size range are more likely to be rocky with a thinner atmosphere, like Earth, Mars and Venus. But worlds exceeding that size stand a better chance of retaining a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, like the giant planet Neptune.

"While those planets also could be rocky, they don't remind us of home," Barclay said.

M-dwarf stars are thought to be the most numerous stars, accounting for as much as 70 percent of the stars in the Milky Way. As a result, "the first signs of other life in the galaxy may well come from planets orbiting an M dwarf," Quintana said.

The promise of worlds to come

Could we actually detect signs of life on Kepler-186f? That's a tough one. The astronomers behind the discovery acknowledge that the planet might be just too far away for follow-up studies. The SETI Institute has been searching for radio signals from the Kepler-186 system over a wide frequency range (1 to 10 GHz), but so far nothing has been detected.

Kasting, the author of "How to Find a Habitable Planet," said worlds around M-class dwarf stars faced several disadvantages in the habitability department. For one thing, such planets generally end up being tidally locked to their stars &#151; meaning that one side of the planet is always facing its parent sun while the other is always turned away. "This is not a show-stopper for habitability, but it's a problem nonetheless," Kasting said.

Also, M-class stars tend to throw off strong stellar winds and flares that could blast away a planet's atmosphere. In Kasting's view, the most serious problem is that such stars are thought to glow much brighter early in their lifetime, and only later settle down to become dimmer than the sun.

"Thus, a planet like Kepler 186f that is within the star's habitable zone today may have been strongly heated soon after it formed, in which case it may have lost its water early by way of a runaway greenhouse," Kasting said in an email.

These are the reasons why astronomers are so interested in searching for Earth-sized planets that lie in the habitable zones around stars that are more like our sun. "We just need a lot of money and political will to do that," Kasting said.

Further analysis of the data from Kepler could produce those prospects, but scientists are also banking on future missions such as NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and James Webb Space Telescope, the European Space Agency's PLATO and CHEOPS probes, and the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile. Such observing instruments could look for the potential signatures of life in alien atmospheres.


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## Gregzs (May 7, 2014)

http://www.iflscience.com/space/meteor-explodes-over-canada

Meteor Explodes Over Canada


Yesterday on Sunday, May 4th, a meteor exploded over southern Ontario in Canada. The sighting occurred just before 4:20 pm local time and produced a flash of light that witnesses say rivaled the brightness of the sun. The explosion caused a loud crashing sound, leading many citizens to wonder if their house had sustained any damage.

The meteor was about half a meter long, causing it to explode with the force of 20-30 tons of dynamite, astronomy professor Peter Brown told CBC News. Although the Earth gets pelted with up to 78,000 tons of space debris each year, most of them occur over water or uninhabited areas. 

Check out some of these dash cam videos that caught the brief, yet incredibly bright meteor explosion:


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## Gregzs (May 21, 2014)

http://www.nerdist.com/2014/05/why-is-jupiters-great-red-spot-shrinking-ask-some-scientists/

Why is Jupiter&#146;s Great Red Spot Shrinking? Ask Some Scientists!

Last week, we learned that the Great Red Spot of Jupiter&#150;a massive storm swirling on the planet for centuries&#150;is getting much less great. But why?

The Space Telescope Science Institute will be having a &#147;Hubble Hangout&#148; tomorrow at 1 p.m. PDT to discuss this finding with actual scientists on the Hubble team. Science communicator and space enthusiast Scott Lewis will be co-hosting with Tony Darnell&#150;one of the social media managers of STScI&#150;and speaking with scientists Carol Christian and Amy Simon.

The hangout will use the Q&A app (available on YouTube and Google+) to field questions from the audience, and will respond to Twitter (#HubbleHangout), YouTube, and G+ comments.

The live-stream of the hangout is featured below and will go live when the hangout starts:


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## Gregzs (Feb 16, 2015)

NASA Releases Spectacular 5-Year Timelapse Of The Sun


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## Gregzs (Jul 25, 2015)

http://nerdist.com/heres-new-horizons-stunning-last-photo-of-pluto/

On July 14th, NASA?s New Horizons spacecraft completed a mission nearly a decade in the making and made a flyby of Pluto. It revealed Pluto?s beating heart and icy veins; it?s moon Charon has a space Mordor. But just seven hours after this historic meeting, New Horizons was a million miles away on the dark side of the dwarf planet.

Lucky, it took a picture to say goodbye.

This lovely, back-lit picture was taken by New Horizons around midnight EDT on July 15th from 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) away. Not only is it beautiful, it?s informative. It shows Pluto?s ?hazy? atmosphere extending 80 miles (130 kilometers) up from the surface. That?s several times higher than NASA scientists expected.

?My jaw was on the ground when I saw this first image of an alien atmosphere in the Kuiper Belt,? said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in a press release. ?It reminds us that exploration brings us more than just incredible discoveries ? it brings incredible beauty.?

The hazy look comes from the breakdown of methane in Pluto?s atmosphere. This breakdown allows for the formation of larger hydrocarbon gases ? gases made of longer chains of hydrogen and carbon ? that subsequently sink closer to Pluto?s surface and become frozen particles, which make up the layers of haze. When ultraviolet radiation from the Sun breaks down these hazes, tholins, or dark hydrocarbons, form and bestow the Plutonian land with a reddish color.

It was a surprise when Pluto?s hazes were found so far from the surface. So much so in fact that scientists aren?t quite sure what is going on; they will need new models of Pluto to explain it. Over the next year, New Horizons will send back the rest of the data it gathered flying by the king of the Kuiper Belt, and there are sure to be more surprises in store for us.


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## Zaphod (Jul 25, 2015)

This is cool stuff!  Thanks for posting, Gregzs!


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## Gregzs (Jul 25, 2015)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemc...ically Earths bigger and older cousin#4ldqpit

NASA Has Found Earth?s ?Bigger, Older Cousin?

Scientists say the discovery ?brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0.? 

The planet, called ?Kepler-452b,? was found during NASA?s Kepler mission.


Scientists say the planet is unique because it is the smallest planet found so far that is both in the so-called habitable zone and orbits around a sun that is similar to our own.

In simpler terms, Kepler-452b and its sun more closely resemble our planet and sun than any other planet NASA has found.

?This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0,? NASA?s John Grunsfeld said in a press release.


Kepler-452b is 60% bigger than our planet, and has a slightly longer, 385-day orbit around its sun.


It is also older than Earth by about 1.5 billion years. Scientists say they consider the planet to be Earth?s ?older, bigger cousin.?

?It?s awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent 6 billion years in the habitable zone of its star; longer than Earth,? NASA?s Jon Jenkins said. ?That?s substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet.?

But if there is another species living on the planet, it will take us a while to reach them. Kepler-452b is 1,400 light-years away from Earth.


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## Gregzs (Jul 27, 2015)

Scientists Find Something Very Bizarre Behind Pluto

http://www.iflscience.com/space/plutos-atmosphere-being-stripped-away-sun-and-forming-comet-tail

Pluto has a tail!

The path of New Horizons as it flew past Pluto on July 14 took it directly into the dwarf planet's shadow, and while this provided a fascinating opportunity to see its atmosphere lit up by the Sun, it also allowed the spacecraft to see the effects of solar wind on Pluto.

What New Horizons found is that the atmosphere is being stripped away by the solar wind, creating a huge region of cold and dense ionized gas that extends tens of thousands of miles beyond Pluto. This essentially creates a ?hole? or cavity in the surrounding solar wind, which was detected between 77,000 and 109,000 kilometers (48,000 and 68,000 miles) behind Pluto.

It is mostly composed of nitrogen ions, which form a plasma tail, although scientists aren?t yet sure what shape or size this tail is. It resembles the gaseous ion tails of comets, which extend far behind the icy rocks as they travel through the Solar System.

?This is just a first tantalizing look at Pluto?s plasma environment,? said co-investigator Fran Bagenal from the University of Colorado, Boulder, who leads the New Horizons Particles and Plasma team, in a statement.

?We?ll be getting more data in August, which we can combine with the Alice and Rex atmospheric measurements to pin down the rate at which Pluto is losing its atmosphere. Once we know that, we?ll be able to answer outstanding questions about the evolution of Pluto?s atmosphere and surface and determine to what extent Pluto?s solar wind interaction is like that of Mars.?

As mentioned by Bagenal, this tail is interesting because similar plasma tails have been found at Mars and Venus. Nitrogen ions had also been found in front of Pluto before the flyby by the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) on New Horizons, indicating that the atmosphere was being lost in all directions.

Working out the atmospheric loss rate of Pluto could be crucial in understanding how the dwarf planet has evolved over time, and what sort of world it is today. With more data expected next month, we can only wait and see what more surprises this distant world has in store for us.


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## Gregzs (Oct 20, 2015)

Don't Miss The Orionid Meteor Shower Tonight

Get the coffee on and the deck chairs out ? the Orionid meteor shower will be at its peak this week.

The Orionid meteor shower is an event that happens around this time every year when Earth crosses paths with a debris stream from the Halley?s Comet. This year, the peak of activity is expected to be just before sunrise on Thursday 22 October, when Earth travels through the densest part of this debris stream. However, there should be activity throughout the night of Wednesday 21 October.

?The Orionids will probably show weaker activity than usual this year,? said Bill Cooke of the NASA Meteoroid Environments Office at Marshall Space Flight Center, in a statement. However, he added that we should expect to see about 12 meteors per hour. The dark sky won?t just be, hopefully, full of meteors ? the night will also be an awesome opportunity to see Jupiter, Venus, the ?Dog Star? Sirius and constellations such as Orion, Gemini, and Taurus.

Despite their poetically named alias, meteors are not actually ?shooting stars.? The Orionid meteors are pieces of debris left behind by Halley?s Comet which have slammed into our atmosphere at about 66 kilometers (41 miles) per second. Halley?s Comet is a comet visible from Earth every 75-76 years, which was last seen in 1986 and won't be seen again until 2061.

In case you miss this one, more cosmic fireworks are expected on November 18 when the Leonids meteor shower peaks.

http://www.iflscience.com/space/annual-orionid-meteor-shower-will-hit-skies-wednesday-night


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## Gregzs (Jul 16, 2020)

Watch Comet Neowise Rise With The Dawn In This Stunning Time-Lapse Video

Many of you have been on comet watch as C/2020 F3, better known as Comet Neowise, has been putting on quite the sky show recently. However, for those of you not inclined to get up pre-dawn to catch a glimpse, have we got the video for you.

Not only do you get to see the comet in all its glory, but you also get to watch it rising above Earth with the Sun, thanks to spectacular footage from the International Space Station (ISS) that UK-based graphic artist Se?n Doran has edited into a beautiful time-lapse video.

Discovered back in March, the comet has been visible to the naked eye for most of July, having survived its trip around the Sun on July 3, and now it's making its way towards Earth on its way out of the Solar System, giving photographers the chance to snap some pictures of a lifetime.

Astronauts aboard the ISS take hundreds of photos as they look down on Earth, sharing with us the spectacular views from their unique position and uploading them to a NASA image archive. Doran, who regularly processes NASA space imagery, edited the photographs into a time-lapse image sequence and converted it into a real-time video.

Sharing the video on twitter, Doran wrote: ?Grab a cold beverage, turn off the lights, get undressed, get comfortable, and pop this on the big TV.?

We highly recommend doing just that (but in case you're in a hurry, the comet appears at 3.17).






The comet isn?t the only phenomenon captured in these images. The video also features a beautiful green airglow as the Sun rises and noctilucent, or ?night-shining,? clouds.

An airglow is the natural ?glow? of Earth?s atmosphere as Sunlight interacts with the molecules in the atmosphere. Nightglow, which shines brightest in green, is caused by Sunlight depositing energy into the atmosphere during the day, which is transferred to oxygen molecules. This extra energy causes the molecules to rip apart, forming individual oxygen atoms. When they eventually recombine, it releases energy in the form of light. Noctilucent clouds, however, glow blue, caused by the Sunlight bouncing off the ice particles in the upper atmosphere.

These views are incredible to us back on Earth, but if you're wondering if they get a bit old hat if you live on the ISS, the answer is no, space can still blow astronauts away. Speaking to The New York Times' The Daily Podcast from the ISS last week, astronaut Bob Behnken described being excited at seeing such an awesome sight and being able to share it. 

"Right before the Sun came up, that comet became visible during that short period of time when it was still close to the Sun, but the Sun was still hidden by the Earth," Behnken said. 

"It was just an awesome sight to be able to see, and something that we try to capture. In the few moments that we do have to look out the window, we try to... capture the exciting things that we can see to try to share our view with the folks back home, the folks that are still down on Earth, and just try to give them an appreciation for just how beautiful our planet is and how important it is that we do our best to take care of it."

https://www.iflscience.com/space/wa...5F6pYtUik5PIwmQbTmpRI9EX  hMtLRV0Z-4I382Qr3uQ


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## Gregzs (Dec 4, 2020)

Watch the Devastating Moment of the Arecibo Telescope's Collapse

Astronomers and space enthusiasts around the world are still mourning the loss of Puerto Rico?s Arecibo Observatory, which collapsed on Tuesday after its instrument platform fell and crashed through the telescope dish.

Drone footage of Arecibo?s devastating collapse, released on Thursday by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns the observatory, reveals the horrible moment when the main cables holding up the suspended platform snapped in short succession.

The enormous 900-ton structure plunged down into the beloved dish that has spent decades capturing radio waves from objects in outer space and scanning the skies for signs of intelligent alien life. While the observatory was left in ruin by the platform?s fall, fortunately nobody at the site was injured.

?The Arecibo 305-meter telescope has been part of our NSF Science family for approximately 50 years, and we will miss it,? said Ralph Gaume, director of NSF?s Division of Astronomical Sciences, in a press conference on Thursday. ?NSF felt that the Arecibo telescope had a bright future, with many impressive science results yet to come.?

These plans, along with so many other hopes for Arecibo, were dashed by two cable breaks, one in August and a second in November, that tore through the dish and destabilized the entire structure, leading to its collapse on Tuesday.  

It?s not clear what the future of Arecibo will be, but NSF is optimistic that its visitor?s center and the LIDAR facility could remain in operation once the site has been cleared of hazards. But Gaume said it was too soon to say whether the giant reflector dish and its instrument platform will ever be rebuilt and revived.

?The collapse just occurred Tuesday morning and we need a full accounting of how stable the site is,? he said. ?That's our immediate focus [going] forward.? 






https://www.vice.com/en/article/4ad...-Y2UxJ5yLnzBuI3XpPKqZdeFBtWwp2d9gKAH3pOFyM4wc


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## Gregzs (May 13, 2021)




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## Gregzs (Jul 16, 2022)

The Webb's First Four (actually 7) Images Explained


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