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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Juno mission captures images of Volcanic Plumes on Jupiter’s moon Io Light from the plumes and fires of Io on Earth’s darkest night

    January 2, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Juno’s Radiation Monitoring Investigation collected this image of Jupiter’s moon Io with Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) star camera shortly after Io was eclipsed by Jupiter at 12:40:29 (UTC) Dec. 21, 2018. Io is softly illuminated by moonlight from another of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. The brightest feature on Io is suspected to be a penetrating radiation signature. The glow of activity from several of Io’s volcanoes is seen, including a plume circled in the image.
    Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI

    A team of space scientists has captured new images of a volcanic plume on Jupiter’s moon Io during the Juno mission’s 17th flyby of the gas giant. On Dec. 21, during winter solstice, four of Juno’s cameras captured images of the Jovian moon Io, the most volcanic body in our solar system...

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    New Horizons Successfully explores Ultima Thule

    January 1, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    At left is a composite of two images taken by New Horizons’ high-resolution Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), which provides the best indication of Ultima Thule’s size and shape so far. Preliminary measurements of this Kuiper Belt object suggest it is approximately 20 miles long by 10 miles wide (32 kilometers by 16 kilometers). An artist’s impression at right illustrates one possible appearance of Ultima Thule, based on the actual image at left. The direction of Ultima’s spin axis is indicated by the arrows.
    Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI; sketch courtesy of James Tuttle Keane

    NASA spacecraft reaches most distant target in history...

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    NASA Spaceship Zooms toward Farthest World ever Photographed

    January 1, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This artist's illustration obtained from NASA on December 21, 2018 shows the New Horizons spacecraft encountering 2014 MU69 – ni

    This artist’s illustration obtained from NASA on December 21, 2018 shows the New Horizons spacecraft encountering 2014 MU69 – nicknamed “Ultima Thule” – a Kuiper Belt object that orbits one billion miles beyond Pluto

    A NASA spaceship is zooming toward the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever photographed by humankind, a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule some 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away. The US space agency rang in the New Year with a live online broadcast to mark historic flyby of the mysterious object in a dark and frigid region of space known as the Kuiper Belt at 12:33 am January 1 (0533 GMT Tuesday).

    A guitar anthem recorded by legendary Queen guitarist Brian May—who also holds an advanced degree in astrophysics—was released just aft...

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    New Insights into Pion Condensation and the Formation of Neutron Stars

    December 30, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    A schematic view of the experimental setup around the hydrogen target (a). A PID plot produced with the SAMURAI spectrometer associated with the 132Sn incoming beam (b).

    Performing studies on a doubly magic isotope of tin, researchers have shown that the pion condensation should occur at around two times normal nuclear density, which can be realized in a neutron star with a mass of 1.4 times that of the Sun.

    In 1973, Russian physicist A.B. Migdal predicted the phenomenon of pion condensation above a critical, extremely high – several times higher than that for normal matter – nuclear density. Although this condensation has never been observed, it is expected to play a key role in the rapid cooling process of the core of neutron stars...

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