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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Holographic Imaging could be used to Detect Signs of Life in Space

    July 22, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Plumes water ice and vapor spray from many locations near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus, as documented by the Cassini-Huygens mission. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

    Plumes water ice and vapor spray from many locations near the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, as documented by the Cassini-Huygens mission. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

    Engineers explore ways to sample and identify living microbes in the outer solar system. Digital holographic microscopy, which uses lasers to record 3D images, may be our best bet for spotting extraterrestrial microbes. No probe since NASA’s Viking program in the late 1970s has explicitly searched for extraterrestrial life – that is, for actual living organisms. Rather, the focus has been on finding water. Enceladus has a lot of water – an ocean’s worth, hidden beneath an icy shell that coats the entire surface...

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    NASA looks to Solar Eclipse to help understand Earth’s Energy system

    July 21, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    DSCOVR's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) will capture images similar to this one from the Lagrange 1 point, about a million miles away from Earth. Credit: NASA/Katy Mersmann

    DSCOVR’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) will capture images similar to this one from the Lagrange 1 point, about a million miles away from Earth. Credit: NASA/Katy Mersmann

    It was midafternoon, but it was dark in an area in Boulder, Colorado on Aug. 3, 1998. A thick cloud appeared overhead and dimmed the land below for more than 30 minutes. Well-calibrated radiometers showed that there were very low levels of light reaching the ground, sufficiently low that researchers decided to simulate this interesting event with computer models. Now in 2017, inspired by the event in Boulder, NASA scientists will explore the moon’s eclipse of the sun to learn more about Earth’s energy system.

    On Aug...

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    Viewing Martian Moon Orbiting the Red Planet

    July 21, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    While photographing Mars, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a cameo appearance of the tiny moon Phobos on its trek around the Red Planet. Discovered in 1877, the diminutive, potato-shaped moon is so small that it appears star-like in the Hubble pictures. Phobos orbits Mars in just 7 hours and 39 minutes, which is faster than Mars rotates. The moon's orbit is very slowly shrinking, meaning it will eventually shatter under Mars' gravitational pull, or crash onto the planet. Hubble took 13 separate exposures over 22 minutes. Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI)

    While photographing Mars, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured a cameo appearance of the tiny moon Phobos on its trek around the Red Planet. Discovered in 1877, the diminutive, potato-shaped moon is so small that it appears star-like in the Hubble pictures. Phobos orbits Mars in just 7 hours and 39 minutes, which is faster than Mars rotates. The moon’s orbit is very slowly shrinking, meaning it will eventually shatter under Mars’ gravitational pull, or crash onto the planet. Hubble took 13 separate exposures over 22 minutes. Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI)

     
    The sharp eye of Hubble Space Telescope has captured the tiny moon Phobos during its orbital trek around Mars. Because the moon is so small, it appears star-like in the Hubble pictures...
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    High-energy trap in our galaxy’s center, revealed by gamma-ray telescopes 

    July 20, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An illustration of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbiting Earth. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

    An illustration of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbiting Earth. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

    The center of our Milky Way contains a ‘trap’ that concentrates some of the highest-energy cosmic rays, among the fastest particles in the galaxy, a combined analysis of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the High Energy Stereoscopic System, a ground-based observatory in Namibia, suggests.

    “Our results suggest that most of the cosmic rays populating the innermost region of our galaxy, and especially the most energetic ones, are produced in active regions beyond the galactic center and later slowed there through interactions with gas clouds,” said lead author Daniele Gaggero at the University of Amsterdam...

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