Comet Snowball near Mars



Comet Snowball near Mars

 

 

A comet the size of a small mountain is about  to skim past Mars, and NASA hopes its spacecraft will be able to photograph the once-in-a-million-years encounter. The comet, known as Siding Spring (C/2013 A1), is set to hurtle past Mars at a close distance of about 141,600 kilometeres. The closest pass is expected to happen on Monday at 4.27 am AEDT. Astronomers do not expect it will come any where near colliding with Mars, but they do hope it will be close enough to reveal clues about the origins of the solar system. That is because the comet is believed to have originated billions of years ago in the Oort Cloud, a distant region of space at the outskirts of the solar system. The comet is flying through space at a breakneck speed of 200,000 kilometres per hour. Another interesting thing about the comet, about a mile wide in diameter, is that it is only about as solid as a pile of talcum powder.

Mars Orbiter Mission

Mars Orbiter Mission

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan "Mars-craft" (Sanskrit मंगल maṅgala "Mars" + यान yāna "craft) is a Mars orbiter launched into Earth orbit on 5 November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It was successfully inserted into orbit of Mars on 24 September 2014, making India the first country in the world to successfully send a spacecraft to Mars on its very first attempt.

 

 

The success of the Mars Orbiter Mission, lauded for its low price tag of Rs 450 crore, will boost India's five-decade-old space programme.

With a spacecraft around Mars, India joins a small group of nations that have successfully sent probes to orbit or land on Mars. Others, however, failed several times initially.

Scientists Discovered a Super-Earth

Scientists Discovered a Super-Earth

Scientists have discovered a ‘super-earth’ which could have a life-supporting climate.

The planet lies in a multi-world solar system 42 light years from the sun and is seven times the size of earth. The planet's 197-day year means its climate might be sufficient for life. The longer orbit of the new planet means that its climate and atmosphere may be just right to support life.

It is, of course, too early to confirm any other similarities but the discovery will give hope to scientists of discovering other exoplanets – ‘super-earths’ circling sun-like stars.

The scientific team used the Harps instrument at the La Sill facility in Chile to make the discovery.

(Source)

Mars incredible photos

Mars incredible photos

NASA's newly landed Mars science rover Curiosity snapped the first colour image of its surroundings while an orbiting sister probe photographed litter left behind during the rover's daring do-or-die descent to the surface, scientists said Tuesday. Curiosity's colour image, taken with a dust cover still on the camera lens, shows the north wall and rim of Gale Crater, a vast basin where the nuclear-powered, six-wheeled rover touched down Sunday night after flying through space for more than eight months.

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NASA Camera captures historic lunar flags

NASA Camera captures historic lunar flags

Forty years after astronauts landed on the moon for the last time, a lunar camera has revealed what happened to the flags they left behind.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera has captured images showing that all but one of the six American flags remain in place on their poles.

The flags were left on the moon during the six lunar landings to symbolise the United States' scientific and engineering achievement.

The first was the monumental July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landing in which Neil Armstrong declared on live television, 'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ Apollo 17 took part in the final mission in 1972.

From the LROC images it is now certain that the American flags are still standing and casting shadows at all of the sites, except Apollo 11.

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NASA's Mars Exploration

NASA's Mars Exploration

The US space agency NASA has recently pieced together a panoramic view from the camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, calling it the "next best thing to being" on the Red Planet.

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Human body in a vacuum of space

If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory predicts that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.

Various minor problems sunburn, certainly some swelling of skin and underlying tissue start after ten seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known.

You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because, although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer away from a body quickly. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood. If your skin is exposed to direct sunlight without any protection from its intense ultraviolet radiation, you can get very bad sunburn.

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Mercury's days are equal to about 176 Earth days.

Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 88 Earth days. Due to the speed of its orbit, Mercury has longer days than years! A single day on Mercury is equal to two years on Mercury. It is equal to about 176 Earth days.

Mercury is normally lost in the glare of the Sun. You can see it, however, during a solar eclipse.

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The man who discovered Pluto remains to be launched to the stars

Clyde William Tombaugh was an American astronomer. He is best known for discovering the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930. He also discovered many asteroids and is also called for serious scientific research of unidentified flying objects.

In memory of the first American to discover a planet in our solar system, the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft carries a small aluminium canister containing some of Tombaugh's cremated remains, donated by his family. These remains will fly past Pluto with New Horizons on July 14, 2015, and then on past Kuiper Belt objects in the succeeding years. New Horizons will eventually escape our solar system altogether and enter interstellar space. As such, Tombaugh's remains have become the first to be launched to the stars.

The memorial canister, about two inches wide and half-an-inch tall, is attached to the inside, upper deck of the spacecraft. It also includes an inscription penned by Stern:

Interned herein are remains of American Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto and the solar system's "third zone." Adelle and Muron's boy, Patricia's husband, Annette and Alden's father, astronomer, teacher, punster, and friend: Clyde W. Tombaugh (1906-1997).

(Source)

Astronomers have found 18 new alien planets,

NASA / JPL-Caltech

This artist's image shows a newly formed planet swimming

through the gas and dust surrounding the star.

Astronomers have found 18 new alien planets, all of them Jupiter-size gas giants that circle stars bigger than our sun, a new study reports.

The discoveries increase the number of known planets orbiting massive stars by 50 percent. The researchers surveyed about 300 stars using the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and instruments in Texas and Arizona. They focused on so-called "retired" type-A stars that are at least 1.5 times more massive than our own sun.

These stars are just beyond the main stage of life , hence the name "retired" and are now ballooning out to become what's known as subgiant stars.

The team scrutinized these stars, looking for slight wobbles caused by the gravitational tug of orbiting planets. This process revealed 18 new alien worlds, all of them with masses similar to Jupiter's. All 18 planets also orbit relatively far from their stars, at a distance of at least 0.7 times the span from Earth to the sun (about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers).

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Earth-like planet Kepler 22-b

Nasa scientists have confirmed the existence of the an Earth-like planet outside our Solar System.

It's called Kepler 22-b and is circling a star similar to our Sun about 600 light years away.

The planet is about twice the size of Earth, with a temperature of around 22C.

That temperature is just right for liquid water something that's important to support life.

(Source)

Planet that's just like Earth

Scientists have discovered a planet which could have the most Earth-like environment ever found - raising a 'very compelling case' for life there.

Gliese 581g, located around 123trillion miles away, orbits a star at a distance that places it squarely in the habitable - or Goldilocks - zone, Nasa said.

The research, the product of more than a decade of observations at the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii, suggests the planet could contain liquid water on its surface.

It means it tops the league of planets and moons rated as being most like Earth.

With our planet rated at 1.0 on the Earth Compatibility Index, Gliese 581g, found in the Libra constellation, scored 0.89, ahead of Mars on 0.7.

But U.S. experts believe Saturn's moon, Titan, is still the most likely so far to support life based on surface conditions and whether vital chemical reactions are possible.

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A planet with two suns

The existence of a world with a double sunset, as portrayed in the film Star Wars more than 30 years ago, is now scientific fact. NASA's Kepler mission has made the first unambiguous detection of a circumbinary planet, a planet orbiting two stars -- 200 light-years from Earth.

The planet is cold, gaseous and not thought to harbor life, but its discovery demonstrates the diversity of planets in our galaxy. Previous research has hinted at the existence of circumbinary planets, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Kepler detected such a planet, known as Kepler-16b, by observing transits, where the brightness of a parent star dims from the planet crossing in front of it.

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Planet made of diamond

Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun.

Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.

Complete news.

Fossil find shows Martian life possible

Earliest life Earth's oldest fossils have been found in Australia and researchers say their microscopic discovery is convincing evidence that cells and bacteria were able to thrive in an oxygen-free world more than 3.4 billion years ago.

The finding suggests early life was sulphur-based, living off and metabolising sulphur rather than oxygen for energy, and supports the idea that similar life forms could exist on other planets where oxygen levels are low or non-existent.

Could these sorts of things exist on Mars? It's just about conceivable. This evidence is certainly encouraging and lack of oxygen on Mars is not a problem.

The microfossils, which the researchers say are very clearly preserved and show precise cell-like structures, were found in a remote part of Western Australia called Strelley Pool.

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“Galaxy” means “milky circle”

The word galaxy derives from the Greek term for our own galaxy, galaxias (γαλαξίας), or kyklos galaktikos, meaning "milky circle" for its appearance in the sky. In Greek mythology, Zeus places his son born by a mortal woman, the infant Heracles, on Hera's breast while she is asleep so that the baby will drink her divine milk and will thus become immortal. Hera wakes up while breastfeeding and then realizes she is nursing an unknown baby: she pushes the baby away and a jet of her milk sprays the night sky, producing the faint band of light known as the Milky Way.

In the astronomical literature, the capitalized word 'Galaxy' is used to refer to our galaxy, the Milky Way, to distinguish it from the billions of other galaxies. The term Milky Way first appeared in the English language in a story by Chaucer.

"See yonder, lo, the Galaxyë
Which men clepeth the Milky Wey,
For hit is whyt."

—Geoffrey Chaucer. The House of Fame, c. 1380.

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NASA envisions alien worlds



                                           

                                            Out of the Dust, a Planet is Born

In this artist's conception, a possible newfound planet spins through a clearing, detected around the star CoKu Tau 4 by the Spitzer Space Telescope, in a nearby star's dusty, planet-forming disc. The possible planet is theorized to be at least as massive as Jupiter, and may have a similar appearance to what the giant planets in our own solar system looked like billions of years ago.

Check out some moreinteresting pictures.

Expect to meet aliens by 2031

Russian scientists expect humanity to encounter alien civilizations within the next two decades.

"The genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms... Life exists on other planets and we will find it within 20 years," Andrei Finkelstein, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Applied Astronomy Institute, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

Speaking at an international forum dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life, Finkelstein said 10 percent of the known planets circling suns in the galaxy resemble Earth.

If water can be found there, then so can life, he said, adding that aliens would most likely resemble humans with two arms, two legs and a head.

"They may have different colour skin, but even we have that," he said.

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Scientists predict rare 'hibernation' of sunspots

For years, scientists have been predicting the Sun would by around 2012 move into solar maximum, a period of intense flares and sunspot activity, but lately a curious calm has suggested quite the opposite.

According to three studies released in the United States, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.

The signs include a missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles, said experts from the National Solar Observatory and Air Force Research Laboratory.

The fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.

Solar activity tends to rise and fall every 11 years or so. The solar maximum and solar minimum each mark about half the interval of the magnetic pole reversal on the Sun, which happens every 22 years.

Complete news.

Astronomers launch search for alien life on 86 possible Earth-like planets

Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley are aiming a radio telescope to detect signals of alien life on 86 possible Earth-like planets.

The search began on Saturday, May 8, when the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope - the largest steerable radio telescope in the world - dedicated an hour to eight stars with possible planets.

The colossal dish will gather 24 hours of data on each of the planets, which have been selected from a list of 1,235 planets identified by NASA's Kepler space telescope.

The Green Bank telescope will stare for about five minutes at stars in the Kepler survey that have a candidate planet in the star's habitable zone-that is, the planet has a surface temperature at which liquidater could be maintained.

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