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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Water on Ancient Mars

    November 1, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A dark rock
    Black Beauty. Martian meteorite NWA 7533 is worth more than its weight in gold. © NASA/Luc Labenne

    Analysis of a Martian meteorite reveals evidence of water 4.4 billion years ago. Certain minerals from the Martian crust in the meteorite are oxidized, suggesting the presence of water during the impact that created the meteorite. The finding helps to fill some gaps in knowledge about the role of water in planet formation.

    Several years ago, a pair of dark meteorites were discovered in the Sahara Desert. They were dubbed NWA 7034 and NWA 7533, where NWA stands for North West Africa and the number is the order in which meteorites are officially approved by the Meteoritical Society, an international planetary science organization...

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    Juno Data Indicates ‘Sprites’ or ‘Elves’ Frolic in Jupiter’s Atmosphere

    October 30, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    This illustration shows what a sprite could look like in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Named after a mischievous, quick-witted character in English folklore, sprites last for only a few milliseconds. They feature a central blob of light with long tendrils of light extending down toward the ground and upward. In Earth’s upper atmosphere, their interaction with nitrogen give sprites a reddish hue. At Jupiter, where the predominance of hydrogen in the upper atmosphere would likely give them a blue hue.

    An instrument on NASA’s Juno mission spacecraft may have detected transient luminous events – bright flashes of light in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere.

    New results from NASA’s Juno mission at Jupiter suggest that either “sprites” or “elves” could be dancing in the upper atmosphere of the sola...

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    Astronomers discover Activity on Distant Planetary object

    October 29, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Panstarrs digital image
    This new image of C/2014 OG392 (PANSTARRS) and its extensive coma combines many digital images into a single 7,700 second exposure. The dashed lines are star trails caused by the long exposure. Images captured October 14, 2020 using the Large Monolithic Imager on the 4.3 m Lowell Discovery Telescope.

    Centaurs are minor planets believed to have originated in the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system. They sometimes have comet-like features such as tails and comae—clouds of dust particles and gas—even though they orbit in a region between Jupiter and Neptune where it is too cold for water to readily sublimate, or transition, directly from a solid to a gas.

    Only 18 active Centaurs have been discovered since 1927, and much about them is still poorly understood...

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    Galaxies in the Infant Universe were Surprisingly Mature

    October 28, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist’s illustration of a dusty, rotating distant galaxy
    Credit: B. Saxton NRAO/AUI/NSF, ESO, NASA/STScI; NAOJ/Subaru

    ALMA telescope conducts largest survey yet of distant galaxies in the early universe. Massive galaxies were already much more mature in the early universe than previously expected. This was shown by an international team of astronomers who studied 118 distant galaxies with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

    Most galaxies formed when the universe was still very young. Our own galaxy, for example, likely started forming 13.6 billion years ago, in our 13.8 billion-year-old universe. When the universe was only ten percent of its current age (1-1.5 billion years after the Big Bang), most of the galaxies experienced a “growth spurt...

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