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NASA spacecraft nears historic dwarf planet arrival

Thursday, March 5th 2015 03:52 AM

Dawn will be the first mission to successfully visit a dwarf planet when it enters orbit around Ceres on Friday, March 6. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned new images captured on approach to its historic orbit insertion at the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn will be the first mission to successfully visit a dwarf planet when it enters orbit around Ceres on Friday, March 6. “Dawn is about to make history,” said Robert Mase, project manager for the Dawn mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Our team is ready and eager to find out what Ceres has in store for us.” Recent images show numerous craters and unusual bright spots that scientists believe tell how Ceres, the first object discovered in our solar system’s asteroid belt, formed and whether its surface is changing. As the spacecraft spirals into closer and closer orbits around the dwarf planet, researchers will be looking for signs that these stran...

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A new way to view Titan: â€œDespeckleâ€ it

Saturday, February 21st 2015 05:22 AM

During 10 years of discovery, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has pulled back the smoggy veil that obscures the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Cassini's radar instrument has mapped almost half of the giant moon's surface; revealed vast, desert-like expanses of sand dunes; and plumbed the depths of expansive hydrocarbon seas. What could make that scientific bounty even more amazing? Well, what if the radar images could look even better? Thanks to a recently developed technique for handling noise in Cassini's radar images, these views now have a whole new look. The technique, referred to by its developers as "despeckling," produces images of Titan's surface that are much clearer and easier to look at than the views to which scientists and the public have grown accustomed. Typically, Cassini's radar images have a characteristic grainy appearance. This "speckle noise" can make it difficult for scientists to interpret small-scale features or identify changes in images of the...

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Dawn captures sharper images of Ceres

Friday, February 20th 2015 08:48 AM

These two views of Ceres were acquired by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on February 12, 2015, from a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) as the dwarf planet rotated. The images have been magnified from their original size. Craters and mysterious bright spots are beginning to pop out in the latest images of Ceres from NASA's Dawn spacecraft. These images, taken February 12 at a distance of 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) from the dwarf planet, pose intriguing questions for the science team to explore as the spacecraft nears its destination. "As we slowly approach the stage, our eyes transfixed on Ceres and her planetary dance, we find she has beguiled us but left us none the wiser," said Chris Russell, from the University of California, Los Angeles. "We expected to be surprised; we did not expect to be this puzzled." Dawn will be gently captured into orbit around Ceres on March 6. As the spacecraft delivers better images and other data, the science team will be investigati...

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Amateur Astronomers Discover Mysterious Plumes on Mars

Wednesday, February 18th 2015 07:15 AM

An international network of amateur astronomers has spotted what looks like two plumes, or slender, cloudy projections, extending from the surface of Mars, and their professional counterparts have no clear idea of what they might be. "Any explanation we can think of challenges our understanding of the upper atmosphere of Mars," says Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, a professional astronomer at the University of the Basque Country, in Bilbao, Spain, and lead author of a report on the phenomenon in the journal Nature. "The fact that it was seen by multiple observers suggests pretty strongly that it's real," says Bruce Jakosky, of the University of Colorado, Boulder, principal investigator for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), which is currently orbiting the red planet. "But I find the observation puzzling." Jakosky was not involved in the research. The plumes were first picked up in March and April 2012 by Wayne Jaeschke,...

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Cassini Catches Saturn's Moon Titan Unprotected from the Solar Wind

Thursday, January 29th 2015 08:39 AM

  Researchers studying data from NASA's Cassini mission have observed that Saturn's largest moon, Titan, behaves much like Venus, Mars or a comet when exposed to the raw power of the solar wind. The observations suggest that unmagnetized bodies like Titan might interact with the solar wind in the same basic ways, regardless of their nature or distance from the sun. Titan is large enough that it could be considered a planet if it orbited the sun on its own, and a flyby of the giant moon in Dec. 2013 simulated that scenario, from Cassini's vantage point. The encounter was unique within Cassini's mission, as it was the only time the spacecraft has observed Titan in a pristine state, outside the region of space dominated by Saturn's magnetic field, called its magnetosphere. "We observed that Titan interacts with the solar wind very much like Mars, if you moved it to the distance of Saturn," said Cesar Bertucci of the Institute of Astronomy and Space Physics in Buenos Aires, who l...

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See 3 Moons of Jupiter Perform Rare Triple Transit Friday Night 1-23-15

Friday, January 23rd 2015 09:23 AM

On Friday night (Jan. 23), observers all across North America will witness a rare event when three of Jupiter's moons, and their shadows, pass across the face of the giant planet. How rare are these Jupiter triple transits? There have been two in the last 15 years, but the next one will not occur until 2032. As Galileo found early in the 17th century, Jupiter has four large, bright moons that are usually seen as points of light on one side of the planet or the other. These satellites — Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto — are known as the Galilean moons, after their discoverer. Jupiter has at least 63 smaller moons, most of which are too small to be seen with amateur telescopes. Friday's transit should be visible even with smaller amateur telescopes, even as small as 70mm, so get out and enjoy! As the Galilean moons revolve around the giant planet, they sometimes pass in front of it and sometimes are lost in its shadow or behind the planet itself. In addition, all four m...

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Astronomers: Two more planets in our Solar System

Thursday, January 22nd 2015 05:08 AM

The Solar System has at least two more planets waiting to be discovered beyond the orbit of Pluto, Spanish and British astronomers say. The official list of planets in our star system runs to eight, with gas giant Neptune the outermost. Beyond Neptune, Pluto was relegated to the status of "dwarf planet" by the International Astronomical Union in 2006, although it is still championed by some as the most distant planet from the Sun. In a study published in the latest issue of the British journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers propose that "at least two" planets lie beyond Pluto. Their calculations are based on the unusual orbital behaviour of very distant space rocks called extreme trans-Neptunian objects, or ETNOs. In theory, ETNOs should be dispersed in a band some 150 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun. An AU, a measurement of Solar System distance, is the span between Earth and the Sun -- nearly 150 million kilometres (almost 93 million miles)....

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Dawn Spacecraft Approaches Dwarf Planet Ceres

Sunday, January 4th 2015 02:38 AM

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has entered an approach phase in which it will continue to close in on Ceres, a Texas-sized dwarf planet never before visited by a spacecraft. Dawn launched in 2007 and is scheduled to enter Ceres orbit in March 2015. Dawn recently emerged from solar conjunction, in which the spacecraft was on the opposite side of the Sun, limiting communication with antennas on Earth. Now that Dawn can reliably communicate with Earth again, mission controllers have programmed the maneuvers necessary for the next stage of the rendezvous, which they label the Ceres approach phase. Dawn is currently 400,000 miles (640,000 kilometers) from Ceres, approaching it at around 450 mph (725 km/h). The spacecraft’s arrival at Ceres will mark the first time a spacecraft has ever orbited two solar system targets. Dawn previously explored the protoplanet Vesta for 14 months, from 2011 to 2012, capturing detailed images and data about that body. “Ceres is almost a complete...

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New Telescope Starter Guide

Saturday, December 27th 2014 06:39 AM

This gift-giving season maybe you got a shiny new telescope to call your own. Congratulations — you're on your way to discovering many amazing things in the night sky. Whether it's a long, sleek tube or a compact marvel of computerized wizardry, every new telescope surely has an owner itching to try it out. "Here are three important tips for getting started," advises Alan MacRobert, a senior editor at Sky & Telescope magazine. "First, get your scope all set up indoors, read the instructions, and get to know how it works — how it moves, how to change eyepieces, and so on — in warmth and comfort. "Second, take it out in the daytime and get familiar with how it works on distant scenes — treetops, buildings — to get a good sense of what it actually does. For instance, you'll find that its lowest magnification gives the brightest, sharpest, and widest views, and with the least amount of wiggles. It's much easier to find what you're trying to aim at usi...

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Rosetta discovery sparks debate on origin of Earthâ€™s oceans

Saturday, December 13th 2014 06:09 AM

The Rosetta spacecraft has determined that the water vapor on Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko doesn’t match that found on Earth, other Jupiter-family comets, or even any known Oort Cloud comet. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft has found the water vapor from its target comet to be significantly different from that found on Earth. The discovery fuels the debate on the origin of our planet’s oceans.  The measurements were made in the month following the spacecraft’s arrival at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on August 6. It is one of the most anticipated early results of the mission because the origin of Earth’s water is still an open question. One of the leading hypotheses on Earth’s formation is that it was so hot when it formed 4.6 billion years ago that any original water content should have boiled off. But, today, two-thirds of the surface is covered in water, so where did it come from?  First measurements of c...

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