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50 Interesting Astronomy Facts

Tuesday, July 8th 2014 04:17 AM

1-Saturn would float if you would put it in water.2-If you placed a pinhead sized piece of the Sun on the Earth you would die from standing within 145 km (90 miles) from it.3-Space is not a complete vacuum, there are about 3 atoms per cubic meter of space.4-Only 5% of the universe is made up of normal matter, 25% is dark matter and 70% is dark energy.5-Neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoon of them would be equal to the weight of the entire Earth’s population.6-The Sun is 400 times larger th an the Moon but is 400 times further away from Earth making them appear the same size.7-The star Lucy in the constellation Centaurus is a huge cosmic diamond of 10 billion trillion trillion carats.8-Seasons last 21 years on Uranus, while each pole has 42 years of sunlight followed by 42 years of darkness.9-Venus,on the other hand, does not have any seasons at all. 10-1 year on Mercury consists of less than 2 days on Mercury.11-There are as many oxygen atoms in a breath as breaths of air...

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NASA 'Flying Observatory' Featuring Infrared Telescope Mounted on a Boeing 747

Tuesday, July 8th 2014 12:20 AM

American space research agency Nasa, which has set a 2021 take-off target for its most ambitious Manned Mars Mission, has now shown off a 17-tonne telescope that is mounted on a Boeing 747 jetliner.  Nasa terms the huge telescope Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (Sofia), and as the name itself suggests, the 17-tonne telescope will be used to capture infrared images of stars and heavenly bodies.  Sofia, along with the Boeing 747 jetliner, forms an entire 'Flying Observatory,' which gives astronomers an edge over conventional ground-mounted telescopes. With Sofia, astronomers will be able to conduct effective study of 'mysterious' events such as supernova occurrences and extraterrestrial activities like comets passing by earth.  'Data provided by Sofia cannot be obtained by any other astronomical facility on the ground or in space," states Nasa in apress release.  According to Nasa, the 'Flying Observatory', after take-off, can sta...

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Our Universe in Detail

Friday, July 4th 2014 12:06 AM

Astronomy magazine writer wins planetary science journalism award

Thursday, July 3rd 2014 06:09 AM

The Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society has awarded the 2014 Jonathan Eberhart Planetary Sciences Journalism Award to James Oberg. In his winning entry, “Torrid Mercury’s icy poles,” fromAstronomy magazine’s December 2013 issue, Oberg expertly explores the history of the search for the innermost planet’s water ice and what the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft, launched in 2004, is revealing. The saga of water ice hiding in the shadows on Mercury ranks among the most fascinating chapters in the story of the solar system’s birth and evolution. (You can read the full award-winning text below.)Oberg is a science journalist, space consultant, and retired “rocket scientist.” He spent the first 22 years of his career as a space engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he specialized in space shuttle operations and orbit...

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Two Theories Could Solve How The Moon Formed

Thursday, July 3rd 2014 12:08 AM

Our Moon is weird. It’s pretty big compared with Earth, for one. It has a way lower density than Earth, but seems to have some similarities in chemical composition to our planet. It’s also two-faced: The near side looks a lot different than the far side, as you can see from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image above. The near side is splattered with dark regions (called maria, the plural of mare, Latin for “sea”). The far side barely has any.  Further study shows an odd anomaly: The crust on the far side is a lot thicker than it is on the near side. That explains the lack of maria; the thicker crust means it was harder for giant impacts to pierce the crust and get darker basaltic lava bubbling up. But why is the far side crust thicker? And why is this so neatly divided by the two hemispheres?  That question has bugged planetary scientists for decades. Recently, two competing hypotheses have come up which can exp...

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Flying Saucer Almost Ready to Land on Mars

Wednesday, July 2nd 2014 05:29 AM

NASA engineers launched a giant helium balloon into the upper fringes of the atmosphere Saturday to test technologies that could lead to future landings of larger rovers on the surface of Mars. The balloon took off from the U.S. Navy Pacific Missile Range on Kauai, Hawaii, and reached an altitude of 120,000 feet a couple of hours later. Then the balloon released NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator, a saucer-shaped test vehicle fitted with a rocket motor to propel the testbed to a velocity four times the speed of sound to mimic the conditions space probes encounter when they enter the Martian atmosphere. The craft inflated a novel braking system as designed, but a new supersonic parachute spanning about 100 feet in diameter did not completely deploy. The testbed was supposed to gently descend into the Pacific Ocean under the chute, but the partially-deployed parachute slowed the craft's fall enough for recovery teams to retrieve the vehicle intact. NASA officia...

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When To Look For Mars, Saturn, Mercury and Venus in July's Night Sky

Wednesday, July 2nd 2014 04:24 AM

The July night sky is filled with planets to the delight of stargazers and astronomers, but you'll have to know when and where to look to get your summer solar system fix.  All through July, the planet Mars and the bright star Spica glow in the west-southwest sky during the evening hours. Saturn, the so-called "Lord of the Rings," can be found to that pair's left and will climb a bit higher (and set a bit later) each night.  Toward the end of the night this month, Venus and Mercury rise up in the dawn twilight above the east-northeast horizon, just ahead of the sun. The only bright planet "out of the loop" this month is Jupiter, which will be too near to the sun to be visible through July.  To help you make the most of your stargazing nights in July, we've rounded up the most promising planetary sights to behold with telescopes, binoculars and the unaided eye. To help locate your targets, you can use your clenched fist at arm's length — equal to roughly 1...

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Giant Waves Reveal Surprising True Size of Sun's Atmosphere

Wednesday, July 2nd 2014 03:39 AM

The sun's volatile atmosphere is even bigger than expected, a NASA spacecraft revealed through observations of gigantic waves.  While the sun itself is 864,938 miles (1.392 million kilometers) wide, NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, found that the solar atmosphere, known as the corona, stretches 5 million miles (8 million km) above the sun's surface.    "We've tracked sound-like waves through the outer corona and used these to map the atmosphere," Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in astatement from NASA. "We can't hear the sounds directly through the vacuum of space, but with careful analysis we can see them rippling through the corona."  These waves, called magnetosonic waves, are a cross between sound waves and magnetic waves called Alfven waves. They oscillate only about once every four hours and span 10 times the width of Earth, NASA officials said.  When mag...

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2014 Astronomy Photographer Of The Year Submissions

Tuesday, July 1st 2014 11:43 PM

Below are some of the stunning shortlisted images for this year's Astronomy Photo competition Celestial Dance © Claus Possberg (Germany) The spectacular Northern Lights pictured unfolding over a fjord, in Skjervøy, Troms, Norway. The vibrant colours are produced at various altitudes by different atmospheric gases, with blue light emitted by nitrogen and green by oxygen. Red light can be produced by both gases, while purples, pinks and yellows occur where the various colours mix and intersect. Centre of the Heart Nebula © Ivan Eder (Hungary) Situated 7500 light years away in the ‘W’-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia, the Heart Nebula is a vast region of glowing gas, energized by a cluster of young stars at its centre. The image depicts the central region, where dust clouds are being eroded and moulded into rugged shapes by the searing cosmic radiation. Eclipse and Old Faithful © Robert Howell (USA) Visitors witness the Old Faithful geyse...

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Scientist Plan New Massive ATLAST Telescope

Thursday, June 26th 2014 04:58 AM

The James Webb Space Telescope is still years away from launch in 2018. But space scientists are already planning its successor. And they envisage a huge new instrument that will dwarf the JWST.  No final design has yet been agreed for the new Advanced Technology Large Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST). But it could have a light-collecting main mirror 20 metres in diameter, making it powerful enough to image exoplanets orbiting nearby stars and to check their atmospheres for signs of life.  Its great size means that it will probably have to be assembled by astronauts in space before is is deployed rather than launching on a single rocket.  US and European astronomers and engineers are collaborating on this exciting concept mission. Sen spoke to one of them, Professor Martin Barstow, of the University of Leicester, which is one of the UK’s leading space science facilities.  Professor Barstow is current President of the Royal Astronomical Society an...

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