Thursday, May 30, 2013

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

Cassini finds hints of activity at Saturn moon Dione

Posted: 29 May 2013 06:51 PM PDT

From a distance, most of the Saturnian moon Dione resembles a bland cueball. Thanks to close-up images of a 500-mile-long (800-kilometer-long) mountain on the moon from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, scientists have found more evidence for the idea that Dione was likely active in the past. It could still be active now.

NASA's WISE mission finds 'lost' asteroid family members

Posted: 29 May 2013 06:49 PM PDT

Data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to a new and improved family tree for asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers used millions of infrared snapshots from the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE all-sky survey, called NEOWISE, to identify 28 new asteroid families. The snapshots also helped place thousands of previously hidden and uncategorized asteroids into families for the first time. The findings are a critical step in understanding the origins of asteroid families, and the collisions thought to have created these rocky clans.

'Low sodium diet' key to old age for stars: New observations challenge current stellar theories

Posted: 29 May 2013 10:32 AM PDT

Astronomers expect that stars like the Sun will blow off much of their atmospheres into space near the ends of their lives. But new observations of a huge star cluster made using ESO's Very Large Telescope have shown -- against all expectations -- that a majority of the stars studied simply did not get to this stage in their lives at all. The international team found that the amount of sodium in the stars was a very strong predictor of how they ended their lives.

Cosmic glitch: Astronomers discover new phenomenon in neutron star

Posted: 29 May 2013 10:05 AM PDT

The physics behind some of the most extraordinary stellar objects in the universe just became even more puzzling. A group of astronomers has discovered a new kind of glitch in the cosmos, specifically in the rotation of a neutron star.

NASA IRIS: Improving our view of the sun

Posted: 29 May 2013 10:01 AM PDT

In late June 2013, NASA will launch a new set of eyes to offer the most detailed look ever of the sun's lower atmosphere, called the interface region. This region is believed to play a crucial role in powering the sun's dynamic million-degree atmosphere, the corona. The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph or IRIS mission will provide the best resolution so far of the widest range of temperatures for of the interface region, an area that has historically been difficult to study.
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