Category Astronomy/Space

In this slice of the master clock, cells expressing an astrocyte-specific structural protein that had been stained red (top right panel) matched up well with cells that had been equipped to fluoresce green when they were expressing a clock gene (middle right panel), demonstrating that the scientists could watch astrocytes tick in the clock. Credit: Herzog Lab

Until recently, work on biological clocks that dictate daily fluctuations in most body functions, including core body temperature and alertness, focused on neurons, those electrically excitable cells that are the divas of the central nervous system. Asked to define the body’s master clock, biologists would say it is the suprachiasmatic nuclei, or SCN – in the brain that consist of 20,000 neurons...

NASA X-Ray Image of Cepheids

A surprising new class of X-ray pulsating variable stars has been discovered by a team of American and Canadian astronomers led by Villanova University’s Scott Engle and Edward Guinan. Part of the Villanova Secret Lives of Cepheids program, the new X-ray observations, obtained by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory reveal that the bright prototype of Classical Cepheids, d Cephei, is a periodic pulsed X-ray source.

The prototype star after which all Cepheids are named, d Cephei (d Cep) is 890 light years away, also one of the closest of its type. Cepheids are a famous class of pulsating variable stars and among the most astronomically important objects in the Universe...

The path of the Main Belt asteroid 12 Victoria, as imaged by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on Feb. 11, 2017, during the mission’s Earth-Trojan Asteroid Search. This animation is made of a series of five images taken by the spacecraft’s MapCam camera that were then cropped and centered on Victoria. The images were taken about 51 minutes apart and each was exposed for 10 seconds. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

During an almost 2-week search, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission team activated the spacecraft’s MapCam imager and scanned part of the surrounding space for elusive Earth-Trojan asteroids—objects that scientists believe may exist in one of the stable regions that co-orbits the sun with Earth...