Space In The News: April 2014

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

NASA Carbon-Counting Satellite Arrives at Launch Site


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NASA Carbon-Counting Satellite Arrives at Launch Site
A NASA spacecraft designed to make precise measurements of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., to begin final preparations for launch. › Read full story

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ScienceDaily: Dark Matter News

The intergalactic medium unveiled

Posted: 29 Apr 2014 03:50 PM PDT

Astronomers have taken unprecedented images of the intergalactic medium -- the diffuse gas that connects galaxies throughout the universe -- with the Cosmic Web Imager. Until now, the structure of the IGM has mostly been a matter for theoretical speculation. However, with observations from the Cosmic Web Imager, deployed on the Hale 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory, astronomers are obtaining our first three-dimensional pictures of the IGM.

ScienceDaily: Galaxies News

The intergalactic medium unveiled

Posted: 29 Apr 2014 03:50 PM PDT

Herschel discovers mature galaxies in the young Universe

Posted: 29 Apr 2014 03:36 PM PDT

New Herschel results have given us a remarkable insight into the internal dynamics of two young galaxies. Surprisingly, they have shown that just a few billion years after the Big Bang, some galaxies were rotating in a mature way, seemingly having completed the accumulation of their gas reservoirs.

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

The intergalactic medium unveiled
Search for extraterrestrial life more difficult than thought
Herschel discovers mature galaxies in the young Universe

The intergalactic medium unveiled

Posted: 29 Apr 2014 03:50 PM PDT

Search for extraterrestrial life more difficult than thought

Posted: 29 Apr 2014 03:50 PM PDT

A new study suggests the search for life on planets outside our solar system may be more difficult than previously thought. The study finds the method used to detect biosignatures on such planets, known as exoplanets, can produce a false positive result.

Herschel discovers mature galaxies in the young Universe

Posted: 29 Apr 2014 03:36 PM PDT

ScienceDaily: Extrasolar Planets News

Search for extraterrestrial life more difficult than thought

Posted: 29 Apr 2014 03:50 PM PDT

ScienceDaily: Cosmic Rays News

The intergalactic medium unveiled

Posted: 29 Apr 2014 03:50 PM PDT

Monday, April 28, 2014

Commercial Products Benefit From NASA Technology


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NASA Spinoff 2013 Shows How Much Space is in Our Lives
Water filtration bottles, comfortable car seats and remote medical monitoring devices all have one thing in common -- they all have benefited from NASA technology. › Read full story

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Saturday, April 26, 2014

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

Star is discovered to be a close neighbor of the Sun and the coldest of its kind

Posted: 25 Apr 2014 01:23 PM PDT

A 'brown dwarf' star that appears to be the coldest of its kind -- as frosty as Earth's North Pole -- has been discovered by astronomers. The object's distance at 7.2 light-years away, making it the fourth closest system to our Sun.

Asteroids as seen from Mars -- A Curiosity rover first

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 04:41 PM PDT

A new image from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is the first ever from the surface of Mars to show an asteroid, and it shows two: Ceres and Vesta. These two -- the largest and third-largest bodies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter -- are the destinations of NASA's Dawn mission. Dawn orbited Vesta in 2011 and 2012, and is on its way to begin orbiting Ceres next year. Ceres is a dwarf planet, as well as an asteroid.

ScienceDaily: Extrasolar Planets News

Star is discovered to be a close neighbor of the Sun and the coldest of its kind

Posted: 25 Apr 2014 01:23 PM PDT

Friday, April 25, 2014

NASA's Spitzer, WISE Find Sun's Close, Cold Neighbor


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NASA's Spitzer, WISE Find Sun's Close, Cold Neighbor
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered what appears to be the coldest "brown dwarf" known. › Read full story

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ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

Cosmic illusion revealed: Gravitational lens magnifies supernova
Astronomical forensics uncover planetary disks in NASA's Hubble archive
Equipped with new sensors, Morpheus preps to tackle landing on its own

Cosmic illusion revealed: Gravitational lens magnifies supernova

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 11:36 AM PDT

Astronomers have announced the discovery of a galaxy that magnified a background, Type Ia supernova thirty-fold through gravitational lensing. This first example of strong gravitational lensing of a supernova confirms the team's previous explanation for the unusual properties of this supernova.

Astronomical forensics uncover planetary disks in NASA's Hubble archive

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 11:09 AM PDT

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have applied a new image processing technique to obtain near-infrared scattered light photos of five disks observed around young stars in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes database. These disks are telltale evidence for newly formed planets.

Equipped with new sensors, Morpheus preps to tackle landing on its own

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 08:27 AM PDT

A test flight later this week will challenge a set of sensors to map out a 65-yard square of boulder-sized hazards and pick out a safe place to land. Mounted to an uncrewed prototype lander called Morpheus that flies autonomously several hundred feet above the ground, the sensor system will have 10 seconds to do its work: six seconds really, as it will take four seconds to map the area before choosing a landing site. The sensor system is a 400-pound set of computers and three instruments called ALHAT, short for Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology.

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Astronomical forensics uncover planetary disks in NASA's Hubble archive

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 11:09 AM PDT

Thursday, April 24, 2014

ScienceDaily: Cosmic Rays News

Some astronauts at risk for cognitive impairment, animal studies suggest

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 10:24 AM PDT

Rats exposed to high-energy particles, simulating conditions astronauts would face on a long-term deep space mission, show lapses in attention and slower reaction times, even when the radiation exposure is in extremely low dose ranges, new research shows. The cognitive impairments — which affected a large subset, but far from all, of the animals — appear to be linked to protein changes in the brain, the scientists say.

Physicists consider implications of recent revelations about the universe's first light

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 01:23 PM PDT

Recent evidence that the universe expanded from microscopic to cosmic size in a mere instant brings with it important implications. During a live Google Hangout, leading astrophysicists from the University of Chicago and Stanford University discussed what this potential 'crack in the cosmic egg' means for our understanding of the universe.

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

Some astronauts at risk for cognitive impairment, animal studies suggest

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 10:24 AM PDT

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

NASA Hubble Exhibit at National Air and Space Museum


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NASA Hubble Exhibit at National Air and Space Museum
Two instruments that played critical roles in NASA's Hubble Space Telescope discoveries now are on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington. › Read full story

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Drought May Take Toll on Congo Rainforest


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Drought May Take Toll on Congo Rainforest
A new NASA study shows Africa's Congo rainforest, the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world, has undergone a large-scale decline in greenness over the past decade. › Read full story

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ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

Red stars and big bulges: How black holes shape galaxies
Solved: Mysteries of a nearby planetary system
'Upside-down planet' reveals new method for studying binary star systems

Red stars and big bulges: How black holes shape galaxies

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 05:46 AM PDT

The universe we can see is made up of thousands of millions of galaxies, each containing anywhere from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of billions of stars. Large numbers of galaxies are elliptical in shape, red and mostly made up of old stars. Another (more familiar) type is the spiral, where arms wind out in a blue thin disk from a central red bulge. On average stars in spiral galaxies tend to be much younger than those in ellipticals. Now a group of astronomers has found a (relatively) simple relationship between the color of a galaxy and the size of its bulge: the more massive the bulge, the redder the galaxy.

Solved: Mysteries of a nearby planetary system

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 05:46 AM PDT

Mysteries of one of the most fascinating nearby planetary systems now have been solved. A new study presents the first viable model for the planetary system orbiting one the first stars discovered to have planets - the star named 55 Cancri. Numerous studies since 2002 had failed to determine a plausible model for the masses and orbits of two giant planets located closer to 55 Cancri than Mercury is to our Sun. Astronomers had struggled to understand how these massive planets orbiting so close to their star could avoid a catastrophe such as one planet being flung into the star, or the two planets colliding with each other.

'Upside-down planet' reveals new method for studying binary star systems

Posted: 21 Apr 2014 06:13 PM PDT

What looked at first like a sort of upside-down planet has instead revealed a new method for studying binary star systems. Astronomers confirmed the first "self-lensing" binary star system -- one in which the mass of the closer star can be measured by how powerfully it magnifies light from its more distant companion star. Though our sun stands alone, about 40 percent of similar stars are in binary (two-star) or multi-star systems, orbiting their companions in a gravitational dance.

ScienceDaily: Extrasolar Planets News

Solved: Mysteries of a nearby planetary system

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 05:46 AM PDT

'Upside-down planet' reveals new method for studying binary star systems

Posted: 21 Apr 2014 06:13 PM PDT

ScienceDaily: Galaxies News

Red stars and big bulges: How black holes shape galaxies

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 05:46 AM PDT

'Upside-down planet' reveals new method for studying binary star systems

Posted: 21 Apr 2014 06:13 PM PDT

ScienceDaily: Cosmic Rays News

Collider reveals sharp change from 'quark soup' to atoms

Posted: 18 Apr 2014 11:07 AM PDT

Scientists using the atom smasher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have observed a phase transition different than the smooth transition of the early universe from the hot "soup" of subatomic particles to the atoms, made up of neutrons, protons and electrons that are the building blocks of matter.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Exoplanets soon to gleam in the eye of NESSI

Posted: 21 Apr 2014 06:05 AM PDT

The New Mexico Exoplanet Spectroscopic Survey Instrument (NESSI) will soon get its first "taste" of exoplanets, helping astronomers decipher their chemical composition. Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars beyond our sun. NESSI got its first peek at the sky on April 3, 2014. It looked at Pollux, a star in the Gemini constellation, and Arcturus, in the Boötes constellation, confirming that all modes of the instrument are working.

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

God of the Gap: Pan keeps Encke gap open in Saturn's rings

Posted: 21 Apr 2014 07:37 AM PDT

Saturn's moon Pan, named for the Greek god of shepherds, rules over quite a different domain: the Encke gap in Saturn's rings. Pan keeps the Encke gap open through its gravitational influence on the ring particles nearby.

Exoplanets soon to gleam in the eye of NESSI

Posted: 21 Apr 2014 06:05 AM PDT