Kepler Error Means Possible End To High-Accuracy Observations
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA announced on Wednesday that its Kepler spacecraft was sitting in safe mode once again, possibly putting an end to its high-accuracy observations. Kepler went into a...
Latest Lyra constellation Stories
WASHINGTON, April 18, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The Kepler-62 system has five planets; 62b, 62c, 62d, 62e and 62f. The Kepler-69 system has two planets; 69b and...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Another new planetary system has been discovered by Kepler scientists, and this one happens to be home to the smallest planet ever discovered, circling around a star that is strikingly similar to our Sun. The Kepler-37 system sits about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. Only slightly larger than our moon, smaller than Mercury, and about a third the size of Earth, one of its planets is the smallest ever identified by...
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring about one-third the size of...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online After completing a new analysis of data from the Kepler space observatory, NASA scientists announced that they have identified 461 new planet candidates — including four that closely mirror the size and distance from their sun as Earth. Kepler’s mission to find Earth-like planets was recently extended to 2016 after difficulties arose in processing the large volume of data produced by the orbiting observatory. Since the most recent...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online As the Kepler Space Telescope's prime mission comes to an end after three-and-a-half years, its new extended mission will begin. NASA's Kepler telescope has helped scientists identify more than 2,300 planet candidates, and confirm more than 100 plants. The telescope is helping to unravel more information about the universe, and gather details about what lies beyond those stars in the sky. Hundreds of Earth-size planet candidates...
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA is marking two milestones in the search for planets like Earth; the successful completion of the Kepler Space Telescope's 3 1/2- year prime mission and the beginning of an extended mission that could last as long as four years. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Scientists have used Kepler data to identify more than 2,300 planet candidates and confirm more than 100 planets. Kepler is teaching us the...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists have found one particular planetary system that crams five planets into a region less than one twelfth the size of the Earth's orbit. Dr. Darin Ragozzine, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida, reported the team's findings of KOI-500 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. The planetary system is about 1,100 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, also called...
NOAO -- Strong darkening observed around the equator of Vega suggests that the fifth brightest star in Earth's sky has a huge temperature difference of 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit from its cool equatorial region to its hot poles. Models of the star based on these observations suggest that Vega is rotating at 92 percent of the angular velocity that would cause it to physically break apart, an international team of astronomers announced today in Washington, DC, at the 207th meeting of the American...
Latest Lyra constellation Reference Libraries
Lyra Constellation -- Lyra (the lyre) is a prominent, although fairly small, northern constellation. It was one of Ptolemy's 48 constellations, and also counts among the modern 88 constellations. Its brightest star is Vega (Alpha Lyrae), which together with Altair (Alpha Aquilae) and Deneb (Alpha Cygni) forms the large asterism known as the Summer Triangle. Beta Lyr is a half separated (i.e. one of the stars reached its Rochevolume) eclipsing binary of a cream-white colour. The...
Vega -- Vega (Alpha Lyrae) is the lead star in the constellation Lyra, reaching near directly overhead the mid-northern latitudes, during the summer. It's a "nearby star" at only 25 light years distant and together with Arcturus and Sirius, one of the brightest stars in the Sun's neighbourhood. Vega is a vertex of the Summer Triangle. Its spectral class is A0V (Sirius, an A1V, is slightly less powerful) and it's firmly in the main sequence, fusing hydrogen to helium in its core....
Ring Nebula -- Discovered by Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix in 1779. The famous ring nebula M57 is often regarded as the prototype of a planetary nebula, and a showpiece in the northern hemisphere summer sky. Recent research has confirmed that it is, most probably, actually a ring (torus) of bright light-emitting material surrounding its central star, and not a spherical (or ellipsoidal) shell, thus coinciding with an early assumption by John Herschel. Viewed from this equatorial...
