Space

What's Still Powering Supernova Remnant 1987A?

A team of astronomers led by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have succeeded in observing the death throws of a giant star in unprecedented detail. In February of 1987 astronomers were observing the nearby dwarf galaxy known a ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 2 2013 - 9:45am

Let's Not Have Any Realistic Goals in Space for NASA

A couple of news stories related to NASA. One is that there will be money in the NASA FY14 budget to send astronauts to an asteroid and bring it back to (?) Earth. The other study is that NASA Administrator Bolden boldly stated: http://www.spacepolitics.co ...

Blog Post - Haym Benaroya - Apr 8 2013 - 6:45pm

The Ghostly Green Bubble Of Nebula IC 1295

Our sun will one day become a faint white dwarf star- but prior to that, for a few tens of thousands of years as its atmosphere is blown away into space  it could be surrounded by spectacular and colorful glowing clouds of ionized gas known as planetary n ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 10 2013 - 3:05pm

M6.5 Solar Flare Is Sun's Biggest Of The Year- So Far

NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center is the official U.S Government source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings. NASA and NOAA,as well as the US Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) and others, keep a constant watch on the sun to mo ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 11 2013 - 4:20pm

Forget The Death Star, We Need Weapons Using Gamma Ray Bursts

A new type of exceptionally powerful and long-lived cosmic explosion, powerful blasts of high energy gamma-rays, known as gamma-ray bursts, that lasts hours rather than the more common minute, may mean a new hypothesis; that they arise in the violent deat ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 16 2013 - 1:56pm

Habitable Super Earths? Three Candidates Found

The Kepler mission revealed the existence of potentially habitable planets slightly bigger than Earth.  The spacecraft named for Johannes Kepler was launched in 2009 and now it has found two new planetary systems, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69, about 1,200 light ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 18 2013 - 3:23pm

Saturday in Space: Totally Equestrian!

Horseback riding hasn't been my favourite activity. Not that I do not like horses, au contraire. I have also tried various kinds of horseback riding; like cowboys on the prairie in Texas and New Mexico; on Icelandic horses in Iceland and I did ride an ...

Blog Post - Bente Lilja Bye - Apr 20 2013 - 8:09am

Water, By Jove: Shoemaker-Levy 9 Impact Still Evident Today In Jupiter's Atmosphere

On March 24th, 1993, astronomers David Levy and Carolyn and Eugene M. Shoemaker discovered the first comet observed orbiting a planet rather than the Sun.  Named Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9), it was found to be composed of 21 fragments. Soon after that, orbital ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 23 2013 - 9:20am

Mysterious Hot Spots Observed In Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse is visible to nighttime viewers as the bright, red star on the shoulder of Orion the Hunter. The star itself is huge, 1,000 times larger than our Sun, but from 650 light years away it is a tiny dot in the sky even though it is one of the neares ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 26 2013 - 10:49am

Saturn Still Looks Young And Hot For Its Age

As planets age the general rule is that they become darker and cooler- but Saturn is an exception. Why it looks so young for its age has been a space science topic since the late 1960s but a paper in Nature Geoscience says it has some answers. ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 30 2013 - 11:01am