Category Astronomy/Space

The distribution of galaxies as mapped by various Australia, US and European survey teams. In total we have mapped the locations of over 4million galaxies that can be used to study the evolution of mass, energy and structure in the Universe over the past few billion years. Credit: ICRAR/GAMA and ESO

Astronomers studying >200,000 galaxies have measured the energy generated within a large portion of space more precisely than ever before. They confirm that the #energy produced in a section of the Universe today is only ~1/2 what it was 2B yrs ago and find that this fading is occurring across #all #wavelengths from the UV to the far infrared. The Universe is slowly #dying.

The study involves many of the world’s most powerful telescopes, including ESO’s #VISTA and #VST survey telescopes at th...

NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft operating in a new mission profile called K2. Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T Pyle Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-08-astronomers-tenth-transiting-tatooine.html#jCp

Astronomers at the 29th International Astronomical Union General Assembly will announce on Aug 14 the discovery of a new transiting “circumbinary” planet, bringing the number of such known planets into double digits. A circumbinary planet orbits 2 stars, and like the fictional planet “Tatooine” from Star Wars, this planet has two suns in its sky. The discovery marks an important milestone and comes only 4 years after the first Kepler circumbinary planet was detected...

A Perseid seen in August 2010 above the four enclosures of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope at Paranal, Chile. Credit: ESO / S. Guisard. Click for a larger image

12 Aug evening -13 August morning sees the annual maximum of the Perseid meteor shower. Meteors (‘shooting stars’) are the result of small particles, some as small as a grain of sand, entering Earth’s atmosphere at high speed. The tail of the Comet Swift-Tuttle, which last passed near Earth in 1992, leaves such debris in Earth’s path. On entering the atmosphere, these particles heat the air around them, causing the characteristic streak of light seen from the ground. This shower of meteors appears to originate from a single point, called a ‘radiant’, in the constellation of Perseus, hence the name.

#IMA...

This is a perspective rendering of the Martian chloride deposit. Credit: LASP / Brian Hynek

Mars turned cold and dry long ago, but there is evidence of an ancient lake that likely represents some of the last potentially habitable surface water ever to exist here. There is an 18-sq-mile chloride salt deposit (about the size of the city of Boulder) in the planet’s Meridiani region near the Mars Opportunity rover’s landing site. As seen on Earth in locations such as Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, large-scale salt deposits are considered to be evidence of evaporated bodies of water.

Digital terrain mapping and mineralogical analysis of the features surrounding the deposit indicate that this one-time lakebed is no older than 3...