Latest Space Stories
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The building blocks of stars, clouds of molecular gases, are strewn across the Milky Way, and a new survey from the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA has found that scientists have been underestimating the amount of gas in the galaxy by about one-third. According to a new report in journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, the discovery was made possible by the orbiting Hershel Space Observatory, a joint venture between the two space...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The European Space Agency's (ESA's) Euclid module under development in France will be helping to explore dark energy and dark matter in the universe. Euclid will be launching in 2020 to help scientists better understand the evolution of the Universe since the Big Bang and its present accelerating expansion. Dark matter is invisible to normal telescopes, making it hard to study. However, the elusive subject plays a vital role in...
WASHINGTON, June 10, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The public is invited to a free lecture called "Exotic Earths: Exploring Planets Around Other Stars" by NASA astrobiologist Avi Mandell at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The free lecture will be held on Wednesday, June 19, at 11:30 a.m. EDT in the Pickford Theater of the Library of Congress. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) During the past 15 years, hundreds of planets have been discovered...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Sponsored by the International Astronomical Union (AIU), a team of astronomers is working on a technique capable of detecting faint dust clouds around other stars where Earth-like planets could be hiding. This new technology could dramatically improve the odds of discovering planets with conditions suitable for life. "Current technology allows us to detect only the brightest clouds, those that are a few thousand times brighter than the...
PALO ALTO, Calif., June 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- On December 15-16, 2011, a Sun-grazing comet, designated Lovejoy (C/2011 W3), passed deep within the hot solar atmosphere - the corona - effectively probing a region that could never be visited by spacecraft because of the intense heat radiating from the nearby solar surface. In a paper published today in the journal Science, researchers from several institutions - including the Solar & Astrophysics Lab at the Lockheed Martin...
ESA The face-on Pinwheel spiral galaxy is seen at ultraviolet wavelengths in this image taken by ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope. Also known as M101, the galaxy lies 21 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It measures 170 000 light-years across – nearly twice the diameter of our own Milky Way Galaxy – and contains at least a trillion stars. About a billion of these stars could be similar to our own Sun. More often seen in visible light, here the Pinwheel...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The intrepid comet Lovejoy flew right into the Sun's violent atmosphere and lived to tell scientists the story and help them understand more about our local star. In December 2011, comet Lovejoy plowed into the Sun's atmosphere, withstanding temperatures that would have obliterated any man-made object. Telescope images taken of the comet's miraculous feat showed how the comet's tail was pulled about by an intense magnetic field. This...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Stars have an alluring pull on the planets that surround them, especially a class of planets known as hot Jupiters. These planets are gas giants that form farther from their stars before migrating inward and heating up. Hot Jupiters, despite their close-in orbits, are not regularly consumed by their stars, as a new study conducted with data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope reveals. These planets remain in fairly stable orbits...
With more than 400 meteors per hour, it was one of the most intense meteor showers in the last decade Every 6.6 years, the comet Giacobini-Zinner circulates through the inner solar system and passes through the perihelion, the closest point to the Sun of its orbit. Then, the comet sublimates the ices and ejects a large number of particles that are distributed in filaments. The oldest of these particles have formed a swarm that the Earth passes trough every year in early October. The result...
John P. Millis, PhD for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online As telescopes peer into the distant background of the Universe they are, in effect, looking back in time. The light emitted from these objects has been traveling across the Universe for perhaps billions of years. So by analyzing the background light of the sky researchers can get a picture of the composition of the Universe early in its evolution. New data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and NASA’s infrared Spitzer...
Latest Space Reference Libraries
The prominent feature that allows for the existence of life on Earth is the Sun. Radiation from our closest star provides heat and energy to our planet, driving biological processes and providing the necessary conditions for liquid water to naturally exist. But our Sun is only but one star in this vast Universe. And as it turns out, most stars are quite different than the one that illuminates our day. For this reason, scientists have, for hundreds of years, attempted to study the other...
Image Caption: Artistic concept of a planetary system. Credit: Wikipedia/NASA/JPL-Caltech The term Astronomy encompasses a broad range of topics, including the study of stars, galaxies, and planets. In order to focus on the different areas of study, many subfields of astronomy emerge. One such area is the study of planets known, appropriately, as Planetary Astronomy. Observational Planetary Astronomy Even within the field of Planetary Astronomy, there are several divisions to...
Ad Astra is a quarterly-published journal of the National Space Society (NSS). The name “ad astra” means “to the stars.” The journal was established following the merger of the L5 Society and the National Space Institute, which formed the NSS in 1987. The NSS is a non-profit aerospace advocacy and educational institution based in Washington DC. On November 28, 2007, the NSS announced MM Publishing Inc. as the newest publisher of Ad Astra. MM Publishing officially took on the role...
Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on October 22, 1992 at 1:09 PM EDT and landed at Kennedy on November 1 at 9:05 AM EST. The shuttle orbited 159 times at an altitude of 163 nautical miles at an inclination of 28.45 degrees and travelled 4.1 million miles. The mission lasted 9 days, 20 hours, 56 minutes, and 13 seconds. The mission launched several satellites for international partners. The primary mission objectives were the deployment of the Laser Geodynamic Satellite II...
Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on June 25,1992 at 12:23 PM EDT and landed at Kennedy on July 9 at 7:42 AM EDT. The shuttle orbited 221 times at an altitude of 160 nautical miles at an inclination of 28.45 degrees and travelled 5.8 million miles. The mission lasted 13 days, 19 hours, 30 minutes, and 4 seconds. This was the longest mission to date, close to 14 days. The mission's primary purpose was to study the effects of microgravity on humans. The primary payload was the...
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