Astronomy needs expensive things, and lots of them. You might remember that astronomers almost literally turned the Earth into a telescope just to see a black hole, by combining lots of existing radio telescope dishes. Read more…
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An Old Satellite Dish Found on Google Maps Is Becoming West Africa’s First Radio Telescope
Astronomy needs expensive things, and lots of them. You might remember that astronomers almost literally turned the Earth into a telescope just to see a black hole, by combining lots of existing radio telescope dishes. Read more…
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An Old Satellite Dish Found on Google Maps Is Becoming West Africa’s First Radio Telescope
Astronomy needs expensive things, and lots of them. You might remember that astronomers almost literally turned the Earth into a telescope just to see a black hole, by combining lots of existing radio telescope dishes. Read more…
See more here:
An Old Satellite Dish Found on Google Maps Is Becoming West Africa’s First Radio Telescope
Astronomy needs expensive things, and lots of them. You might remember that astronomers almost literally turned the Earth into a telescope just to see a black hole, by combining lots of existing radio telescope dishes. Read more…
Read More:
An Old Satellite Dish Found on Google Maps Is Becoming West Africa’s First Radio Telescope
Astronomy needs expensive things, and lots of them. You might remember that astronomers almost literally turned the Earth into a telescope just to see a black hole, by combining lots of existing radio telescope dishes. Read more…
See the original article here:
An Old Satellite Dish Found on Google Maps Is Becoming West Africa’s First Radio Telescope
The Earth and the moon share more than an orbit around the Sun. Turns out that bits of atmosphere manage to travel the 240, 000 miles out to our nearest celestial neighbor, and have been for more than 2 billion years, according to data gathered by Japan’s moon-orbiting Kaguya spacecraft. In a study published on Monday to the journal Nature Astronomy , planetary scientist Kentaro Terada of Osaka University observes that ionized oxygen particles escape from the upper atmosphere for five days every month to bombard the surface of the moon. Terada’s data suggests that oxygen atoms in the upper atmosphere are first ionized by ultraviolet light and then accelerated into the magnetosphere , the planet’s magnetic envelope. The magnetosphere extends more than 370, 000 miles away from the Sun, fully enveloping the moon’s own orbit around the Earth. For five days every month when the moon passes through the magnetosphere, it is blasted with these ionized particles. The Osaka University team estimates that every square centimeter of the moon’s exposed surface is struck by approximately 26, 000 oxygen ions every second over the five day period. While this isn’t enough for the moon to develop a breathable atmosphere of its own, this discovery suggests that the moon’s surface could hold clues to Earth’s ancient atmosphere — much like ice cores being dug out of the Greenland and Antarctic permafrost. Source: Science News
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Some of Earth’s oxygen escapes to the moon every month
Scientists have detected thousands of exoplanets in recent years, by catching dips in light as they orbit their parent stars. These days, finding new ones isn’t usually such a big deal. But taking direct images of exoplanets, and turning them into videos so we can watch their orbits, makes these faraway worlds a… Read more…
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Incredible Animations Show Real Exoplanets Orbiting Their Stars
There’s nothing quite like Psyche anywhere else in our solar system—a small asteroid belt object made entirely of iron-nickel metal. Which is why NASA has decided to send a probe to check out the bizarre beast up close. Read more…
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NASA Is Actually Going to Visit That Insane Metallic World
An international team of astronomers have released two petabytes of data from the Pan-STARRS project that’s also known as the “world’s largest digital sky survey.” Two petabytes of data, according to the team, is equivalent to any of the following: a billion selfies, one hundred Wikipedias or 40 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with single-spaced text. The scientists spent four years observing three-fourths of the night sky through their 1.8 meter telescope at Haleakala Observatories on Maui, Hawaii, scanning three billion objects in the Milky Way 12 times in five different filters. Those objects included stars, galaxies, asteroids and other celestial bodies. According to Thomas Henning, director of the Planet and Star Formation Department of Max Planck Institute for Astronomy: “Based on Pan-Starrs, researchers are able to measure distances, motions and special characteristics such as the multiplicity fraction of all nearby stars, brown dwarfs, and of stellar remnants like, for example white dwarfs. This will expand the census of almost all objects in the solar neighbourhood to distances of about 300 light-years. The Pan Starrs data will also allow a much better characterization of low-mass star formation in stellar clusters. Furthermore, we gathered about 4 million stellar light curves to identify Jupiter-like planets in close orbits around cool dwarf stars in order to constrain the fraction of such extrasolar planetary systems.” While the immensity of two petabytes of data is already hard to grasp, that isn’t the extent of the team’s observations. The astronomers are rolling out their research in two steps: this one called the “Static Sky” is the average of each individual scan. See the image above? That’s the result of half a million 45-second exposures taken over four years. They’re releasing even more detailed images and data in 2017 — for now, you can check out what the team released to the public on the official Pan-STARRS website. Via: TechCrunch Source: Queen’s University Belfast , Pan-STARRS , Physorg
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Largest digital survey of the sky mapped billions of stars
NASA’s Juno mission is not exactly proceeding according to plan. Last month, an engine burn that would have brought the Jupiter-orbiting spacecraft into a low-altitude orbit was delayed following a malfunction with a pair of helium valves . Now, NASA has confirmed that the next opportunity to enter “science orbit” will also be missed—and that may be the case for the foreseeable future. Read more…
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NASA’s Juno Mission Faces More Delays as Engine Problem Remains Unresolved