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Weekly Space Hangout – April 14, 2017: Brad Peterson and LUVOIR Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Special Guest: This week’s special guest is Brad Peterson. Brad is a returning guest, and since his last appearance, he has been asked by NASA to serve as a community co-chair, with Debra Fischer of Yale, for the Science and Technology Definition Team for the Large Ultraviolet, Optical, and Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR). Brad has carried out research on active galactic nuclei for his entire career. He has been developing the technique of reverberation mapping for over 25 years. He is currently on appointment at STScI as Distinguished Visiting Astronomer, afterRead More →

Researchers Image Dark Matter Bridge Between Galaxies Dark matter is mysterious stuff, because we can’t really “see” it. But that hasn’t stopped scientists from researching it, and from theorizing about it. One theory says that there should be filament structures of dark matter connecting galaxies. Scientists from the University of Waterloo have now imaged one of those dark matter filaments for the first time. The two scientists, Seth D. Epps and Michael J. Hudson, present their results in a paper at the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomy Society. Theory predicts that filaments of dark matter connect galaxies together, by reaching from the dark matterRead More →

NASA Bombshell: Key Ingredient For Life Discovered On Enceladus NASA has announced the discovery of hydrogen in the plumes on Enceladus. This is huge news, and Cassini scientists have looked forward to this day. What it means is that there is a potential source of energy for microbes in the oceans of Enceladus, and that energy from the Sun is not required to support life. We’ve known about the plumes on Enceladus for a while now, and Cassini has even flown through those plumes to determine their content. But hydrogen was never discovered until now. What it means is that there is a geochemical sourceRead More →

NEO Asteroid 2014 JO25 Set to Buzz Earth on April 19th Missed us… a concept image of a large asteroid passing by the Earth-Moon system. Credit: A combination of ESO/NASA images courtesy of Jason Major/Lights in the Dark. It’s a shooting gallery out there. The spattered face of Earth’s Moon and large impact sites such as Meteor Crater outside of Flagstaff, Arizona remind us that we still inhabit a dangerous neck of the solar neighborhood. But despite the inevitable cries proclaiming the “End of the World of the Week” this coming weekend, humanity can breathe a collective sigh of relief next Wednesday on April 19th,Read More →

A Bored New Horizons Spacecraft Takes Part Time Job To Fill The Time The New Horizons probe made history in July of 2015, being the first mission to ever conduct a close flyby of Pluto. In so doing, the mission revealed some never-before-seen things about this distant world. This included information about its many surface features, it’s atmosphere, magnetic environment, and its system of moons. It also provided images that allowed for the first detailed maps of the planet. Having completed its rendezvous with Pluto, the probe has since been making its way towards its first encounter with a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) – knownRead More →

Space Station Trio Touches Down on Earth as NASA’s Next Cargo Ship Targets Apr. 18 Blastoff Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA, and Flight Engineers Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan at 7:20 a.m. EDT April 10, 2017 in their Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Comings and goings continue apace on the International Space Station! After living and working fruitfully for six months in space aboard the ISS, an international trio of astronauts and cosmonauts including NASA’s Shane Kimbrough departed the orbiting lab complex aboard theirRead More →

Juno Sees Overlapping Colliding Clouds on Jupiter The Juno mission has made some remarkable finds since it reached Jupiter in July of 2016. During the many orbits it has made around Jupiter’s poles – which occur every 53 days – some stunning imagery has resulted. Not only have these pictures revealed things about Jupiter’s atmosphere, they have also been an opportunity for the public to participate in the exploration of this giant planet. The latest feature that was publicly selected to be photographed is known as “STB Spectre“. This feature  was photographed on March 27th, 2017, at 2:06 a.m. PDT (5:06 a.m. EDT), when JunoRead More →

Carnival of Space #504 It’s that time again! This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Pamela Hoffman at the Everyday Spacer blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #504. And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want toRead More →

SpaceX Just Re-Used a Rocket. Why This Changes Everything On March 30, 2017, SpaceX performed a pretty routine rocket launch. The payload was a communications satellite called SES-10, owned by a company in Luxembourg. And if all goes well, the satellite will eventually make its way to a high orbit of 35,000 km (22,000 miles) and deliver broadcasting and television services to Latin America. For all intents and purposes, this is an absolutely normal, routine, and maybe even boring event in the space industry. Another chemical rocket blasted off another communications satellite to join the thousands of satellites that have come before. Of course, asRead More →

Hubble Sees Intense Auroras on Uranus This is a composite image of Uranus by Voyager 2 and two different observations made by Hubble — one for the ring and one for the auroras. These auroras occurred in the planet’s southern latitudes near the planet’s south magnetic pole. Like Jupiter and Saturn, hydrogen atoms excited by blasts of the solar wind are the cause for the glowing white patches seen in both photos. Credit: NASA/ESA Earth doesn’t have a corner on auroras. Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have their own distinctive versions. Jupiter’s are massive and powerful; Martian auroras patchy and weak. Auroras areRead More →

What Constellation is the Sun in? Since ancient times, astronomers have organized the stars into various constellations. We have the Big Dipper (Ursa Major), Orion the Hunter, and his “Greater Dog” and “Lesser Dog”(Canis Major and Canis Minor). And those are just some of the better-known ones. But have you ever wondered if the Sun belongs to one of these collections of stars? The simple answer is that – in accordance with both ancient astrological tradition and modern astronomy – the Sun technically has no constellation. But if you were to change locations and travel to a new star system, you would then be ableRead More →

Messier 39 – The NGC 7092 Open Star Cluster Welcome back to Messier Monday! In our ongoing tribute to the great Tammy Plotner, we take a look at the open galactic star cluster known as Messier 39. Enjoy! During the 18th century, famed French astronomer Charles Messier noted the presence of several “nebulous objects” in the night sky. Having originally mistaken them for comets, he began compiling a list of them so that others would not make the same mistake he did. In time, this list (known as the Messier Catalog) would come to include 100 of the most fabulous objects in the night sky.Read More →

Hubble Takes Advantage Of Opposition To Snap Jupiter On April, 7th, 2017, Jupiter will come into opposition with Earth. This means that Earth and Jupiter will be at points in their orbit where the Sun, Earth and Jupiter will all line up. Not only will this mean that Jupiter will be making its closest approach to Earth – reaching a distance of about 670 million km (416 million mi) – but the hemisphere that faces towards us will be fully illuminated by the Sun. Because of its proximity and its position, Jupiter will be brighter in the night sky than at any other time duringRead More →

Finally! A Low Mass Super-Earth With Some Funky Atmosphere In 2015, astronomers discovered an intriguing extrasolar planet located in a star system some 39 light years from Earth. Despite orbiting very close to its parent star, this “Venus-like” planet – known as GJ 1138b – appeared to still be cool enough to have an atmosphere. In short order, a debate ensued as to what kind of atmosphere it might have, whether it was a “dry Venus” or a “wet Venus”. And now, thanks to the efforts of an international team of researchers, the existence of an atmosphere has been confirmed around GJ 1138b. In additionRead More →

Carnival of Space #503 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Brian Wang at his Next Big Future blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #503 And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign upRead More →

When Will Mars Be Close to Earth? As neighboring planets, Earth and Mars have a few things in common. Both are terrestrial in nature (i.e. rocky), both have tilted axes, and both orbit the Sun within its circumstellar habitable zone. And during the course of their orbital periods (i.e. a year), both planets experience variations in temperature and changes in their seasonal weather patterns. However, owing to their different orbital periods, a year on Mars is significantly longer than a year on Earth – almost twice as long, in fact. And because their orbits are different, the distance between our two planets varies considerably. Basically,Read More →

Weekly Space Hangout – April 7, 2017: Weekly News Roundup Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Guests: Paul M. Sutter (pmsutter.com / @PaulMattSutter) Their stories this week: Rogue Black Hole! We use a tool called Trello to submit and vote on stories we would like to see covered each week, and then Fraser will be selecting the stories from there. Here is the link to the Trello WSH page (http://bit.ly/WSHVote), which you can see without logging in. If you’d like to vote, just create a login and help us decide what to cover! If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their siteRead More →