Category Astronomy/Space

This artist’s impression shows the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/P. Delorme/R. Saito/VVV Consortium.

CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9 (CFBDSIR 2149-0403 for short) is being investigated by a team in order to reveal its true nature. The object is assumed to be a young isolated planetary-mass object or a high-metallicity low-mass brown dwarf. The results could help distinguish between these two classes. CFBDSIR 2149-0403 was detected in 2012 by Philippe Delorme’s team of Grenoble Alpes University in France as a possible member of the AB Doradus moving group. After its discovery, it was classified by the researchers as a unique T-type isolated planetary-mass candidate...

These raw, unprocessed images of Saturn’s moon Pan was taken on March 7, 2017 by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

New raw, unprocessed images of Saturn’s tiny moon, Pan, were taken on March 7, 2017, by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The flyby had a close-approach distance of 24,572 kilometers (15,268 miles).
These images are the closest images ever taken of Pan and will help to characterize its shape and geology.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington...

Still image from a movie clip showing a global map of Mars with atmospheric changes from Feb. 18, 2017, through March 6, 2017, a period when two regional-scale dust storms appeared. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

A regional dust storm currently swelling on Mars follows unusually closely on one that blossomed less than 2 weeks earlier and is now dissipating, as seen in daily global weather monitoring by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Images from the orbiter’s wide-angle Mars Color Imager (MARCI) show each storm growing in the Acidalia area of northern Mars, then blowing southward and exploding to sizes bigger than the United States after reaching the southern hemisphere.

That development path is a common pattern for generating regional dust storms during spring and summer in Mars’ south...

This is a HSC-SSP image of a massive cluster of galaxies in the Virgo constellation showing numerous strong gravitational lenses. The distance to the central galaxy is 5.3 billion light years, while the lensed galaxies, apparent as the arcs around the cluster, are much more distant. This is a composite image in the g, r, and i band, and has a spatial resolution of about 0.6 arcseconds. Credit: NAOJ/HSC Project

The first massive data set of a “cosmic census” has been released using the largest digital camera on the Subaru Telescope. With its beautiful images now available for the public at large, figuring out the fate of the Universe has come one step closer. Data from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) was released to the public on February 27th, 2017...