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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Hubble Watches Spun-up Asteroid Coming Apart

    March 31, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    This Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the gradual self-destruction of an asteroid, whose ejected dusty material has formed two long, thin, comet-like tails. The longer tail stretches more than 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) and is roughly 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide. The shorter tail is about a quarter as long. The streamers will eventually disperse into space.
    Credits: NASA, ESA, K. Meech and J. Kleyna (University of Hawaii), and O. Hainaut (European Southern Observatory)

    A small asteroid has been caught in the process of spinning so fast it’s throwing off material, according to new data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. Images from Hubble show two narrow, comet-like tails of dusty debris streaming from the asteroid (6478) Gault...

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    Deep Groundwater may Generate Surface Streams on Mars

    March 31, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Recurrent Slope Linae on the Palikir Crater walls on Mars.
    Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

    New research suggests that deep groundwater could still be active on Mars and could originate surface streams in some near-equatorial areas on Mars. In mid-2018, researchers supported by the Italian Space Agency detected the presence of a deep-water lake on Mars under its south polar ice caps. Now, researchers at the USC Arid Climate and Water Research Center (AWARE) have published a study that suggests deep groundwater could still be active on Mars and could originate surface streams in some near-equatorial areas on Mars.

    The researchers at USC have determined that groundwater likely exists in a broader geographical area than just the poles of Mars and that there is an active system, as d...

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    Rivers Raged on Mars late into its history

    March 29, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A photo of a preserved river channel on Mars, taken by an orbiting satellite, with color overlaid to show different elevations (blue is low, yellow is high).
    Credit: NASA/JPL/Univ. Arizona/UChicago

    This complicates the picture for scientists trying to model the ancient Martian climate, said lead study author Edwin Kite, assistant professor of geophysical sciences and an expert in both the history of Mars and climates of other worlds. “It’s already hard to explain rivers or lakes based on the information we have,” he said. “This makes a difficult problem even more difficult.”

    But, he said, the constraints could be useful in winnowing the many theories researchers have proposed to explain the climate.

    Mars is crisscrossed with the distinctive tracks of long-dead rivers...

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    In Hunt for Life, Astronomers Identify most Promising Stars

    March 28, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    Artists’ concept of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite against a background of stars and orbiting planets in the Milky Way.
    Credit: European Space Agency, European Southern Observatory and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

    NASA’s new Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is designed to ferret out habitable exoplanets, but with hundreds of thousands of sunlike and smaller stars in its camera views, which of those stars could host planets like our own?

    TESS will observe 400,000 stars across the whole sky to catch a glimpse of a planet transiting across the face of its star, one of the primary methods by which exoplanets are identified.

    A team of astronomers from Cornell University, Lehigh University and Vanderbilt University has identified the most promising targe...

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