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"New Horizons" Spacecraft Reveals Secrets On Its Way To Pluto
"NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will reach Pluto in 2015. In the meantime it has provided
new data on the planet Jupiter's atmosphere, rings, magnetosphere and its moons.
On its long way to Pluto and its moon Charon...
The spacecraft is working hard, testing its instruments before the primary goal - Pluto!"
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Aurora - A Pulsing Shimmering Glow
It may appear as colored lights in the sky or a motionless green arc that stretches across
the sky.
This is a light phenomenon, a glowing, shimmering pattern, known as the “Aurora Borealis”,
occurring in northern latitudes. Its name originates from "Aurora", the Roman goddess of dawn and the
Greek name for north wind.
There is also the same phenomenon known as the "Aurora Australis", occurring in southern
latitudes and ... (with images and video)
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Did Life Begin In Space? New Evidence From Comets
Recent probes inside comets show it is
overwhelmingly likely that life began in space, according to a new paper by Cardiff University scientists.
Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and colleagues at the University’s Centre for Astrobiology have
long argued the case for panspermia - the theory that life began inside comets and then spread to
habitable planets across the galaxy...
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China And ESA Launch Moon Mission -
Chang'e-1
A bold new mission to the Moon was launched by the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA). Chang’e-1 blasted off
from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre, Sichuan, atop a Long March 3A rocket on October 24, 2007.
Chang’e-1 represents the first step in the Chinese ambition to land robotic explorers on the Moon before 2020.
Chang’e-1 has four mission goals to accomplish. The first is to make three-dimensional images of many lunar
landforms and outline maps of major lunar geological structures ... (with video)
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Astronomers Discover Sun's Twin at McDonald Observatory
Astronomers have discovered the best “solar twin” to date, using the 2.7-meter Harlan J. Smith Telescope at
McDonald Observatory.
The star, HIP 56948, is more like the Sun than any yet seen, and is 200 light-years
away in the constellation Draco, the dragon. The star may be a billion years older than the Sun
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Voyager 2 Proves Solar System Is Squashed
NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has followed its twin Voyager 1 into the solar
system's final frontier, a vast region at the edge of our solar system where the solar wind runs up
against the thin gas between the stars. However, Voyager 2 took a different path, entering this region, called the heliosheath, on August 30, 2007.
Because Voyager 2 crossed the heliosheath boundary, called the solar wind termination shock, about
10 billion miles away from Voyager 1 and almost a billion miles...
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Solar Cycle 24 Begins
NASA
January 13, 2008
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Hang on to your cell phone, a new solar cycle has just begun.
"On January 4, 2008, a reversed-polarity sunspot appeared—and
this signals the start of Solar Cycle 24," says David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Above: Images of the first sunspot of Solar Cycle 24 taken by the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
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Solar activity waxes and wanes in 11-year cycles. Lately, we've been experiencing the low ebb, "very few flares, sunspots,
or activity of any kind," says Hathaway. "Solar minimum is upon us."
The previous solar cycle, Solar Cycle 23, peaked in 2000-2002 with many furious solar storms. That cycle decayed as usual
to the present quiet leaving solar physicists little to do other than wonder, when would the next cycle begin?
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The answer is now.
"New solar cycles always begin with a high-latitude, reversed polarity sunspot," explains Hathaway. "Reversed polarity"
means a sunspot with opposite magnetic polarity compared to sunspots from the previous solar cycle. "High-latitude" refers
to the sun's grid of latitude and longitude. Old cycle spots congregate near the sun's equator. New cycle spots appear
higher, around 25 or 30 degrees latitude.
The sunspot that appeared on January 4th fits both these criteria. It was high latitude (30 degrees N) and magnetically
reversed. NOAA named the spot AR10981, or "sunspot 981" for short.
Sunspot 981 was small--only about as wide as Earth, which counts as small on the grand scale of the sun--and it has
already faded away. But its three day appearance on Jan. 4-6 was enough to convince most solar physicists that Solar
Cycle 24 is underway.
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Doug Biesecker of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, likens sunspot 981 "to the first robin of
spring. There's still snow on the ground, but the seasons are changing." Last year, Biesecker chaired the Solar Cycle
24 Prediction Panel, an international group of experts from many universities and government agencies. "We
predicted
that Solar Cycle 24 would begin around March 2008 and it looks like we weren't far off," he says.
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The onset of a new solar cycle is significant because of our increasingly space-based technological society.
"Solar storms can disable satellites that we depend on for weather forecasts and GPS navigation," says Hathaway. Radio
bursts from solar flares can directly interfere with cell phone reception while coronal mass ejections (CMEs) hitting Earth
can cause electrical power outages. "The most famous example is the Quebec outage of 1989, which left some Canadians without power for as much as six days."
Air travel can be affected, too.
Above: An increasing number of international business flights cross Earth's Arctic to save time, fuel and money.
Every year, intercontinental flights carry thousands of passengers over Earth’s poles. It's the shortest distance between,
say, New York and Tokyo or Beijing and Chicago. In 1999, United Airlines made just twelve trips over the Arctic. By 2005,
the number of flights had ballooned to 1,402. Other airlines report similar growth.
"Solar storms have a big effect on polar regions of our planet," says Steve Hill of the Space Weather Prediction Center.
"When airplanes fly over the poles during solar storms, they can experience radio blackouts, navigation errors and computer
reboots all caused by space radiation." Avoiding the poles during solar storms solves the problem, but it costs extra time,
money and fuel to "take the long way around."
Now for the good news: More solar storms also means more auroras—"the greatest show on Earth." During the last solar
maximum, Northern Lights were spotted as far south as Arizona, Florida and California. Not so long ago, only visitors to
the Arctic regularly enjoyed auroras, but with increasing attention to space weather and constantly improving forecasts,
millions of people at all latitudes will know when to go out and look.
Much of this is still years away. "Intense solar activity won't begin immediately," notes Hathaway. "Solar cycles usually
take a few years to build from solar minimum (where we are now) to Solar Max, expected in 2011 or 2012."
It's a slow journey, but we're on our way.
Note: This story was issued by NASA
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Neptune was closer to the sun than Uranus – that’s 15% of the history
of the solar system. It looked completely different than we see it today. New findings suggest
Neptune had to form closer to the sun than Uranus or you don’t get the smooth
profile...
The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission is the first satellite dedicated to the
study of these noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds.
They are called "night shining" clouds by observers on the ground because their high altitude
allows them to continue reflecting sunlight after the sun has set below the horizon ...
Using the 3.6-m telescope an international team of astronomers from France, Switzerland, and Portugal
working in the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our
Solar System. The planet's radius is estimated to be only 1.5 times
that of Earth. An unknown world seems to be covered with liquid oceans but may also be a rocky body
similar to Earth..."
Scrutiny by NASA's newest Mars orbiter is helping scientists learn the stories of some of the
weirdest landscapes on Mars, as well as more familiar-looking parts of the Red Planet ... (with images)
"It resembles a shining UFO or a wide-brimmed hat but... this isn't what it looks like. Its marked
central bulge and its lane of dark interstellar dust give the galaxy its unusual resemblance.
This is a very beautiful compiled image of the Sombrero Galaxy hovering in space. Three separate
observatory images of the galaxy, photographed by NASA's... (wonderful images!)
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"NASA scientists believe they have found a way to predict the color of plants on planets in other solar systems.
Green, yellow or even red-dominant plants may live on extra-solar planets..."
