Category Astronomy/Space

This graphic shows the closest approaches of Cassini’s final two orbital phases. Ring-grazing orbits are shown in gray (at left); Grand Finale orbits are shown in blue. The orange line shows the spacecraft’s Sept. 2017 final plunge into Saturn. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft has made its first close dive past the outer edges of Saturn’s rings since beginning its penultimate mission phase on Nov. 30. Cassini crossed through the plane of Saturn’s rings on Dec. 4 at 5:09 a.m. PST at a distance of ~57,000 miles above Saturn’s cloud tops. This is the approximate location of a faint, dusty ring produced by the planet’s small moons Janus and Epimetheus, and just 6,800 miles from the center of Saturn’s F ring.

About an hour prior to the ring-plane crossing...

A deep photographic image of M83 taken using the UK Schmidt Telescope by Malin & Hadley (1997, figure reproduced with permission) where the white scale bar corresponds to 30 arcmin. The northern stream appears not to be associated with dw1335-29, circled in red. Credit: Carrillo et al., 2016.

M83, Southern Pinwheel Galaxy has a newly found dwarf satellite 85,000 light years from its host. This satellite galaxy was designated dw1335-29 and could be an irregular or a transition dwarf. Messier 83 is one of the closest and brightest barred spiral galaxies. It is located about 15 million light years away in the constellation Hydra. Finding new satellites of galaxies beyond the Local Group such as Messier 83 could provide essential insights on galaxy formation in a cosmological context.

In 2015,...

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 disintegrating in 2006 shows the tails and comas of the individual pieces of the comet; new research on comet composition included infrared spectrography of this comet during its breakup. Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (APL), M. Mutchler and Z. Levay (STScI)

A new study has revealed similarities and relationships between certain types of chemicals found on 30 different comets, which vary widely in their overall composition compared to one another. The research is part of ongoing investigations into these primordial bodies, which contain material largely unchanged from the birth of the solar system some 4.6 billion years ago.

By studying the composition of hazy comas and tails of these comets, researchers found tha...

Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo, with SpaceShipTwo attached, takes off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California on an earlier test flight. Credit: Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic’s new spaceship has made a successful first glide flight, a key step after a deadly crash of its predecessor two years ago, the spaceflight company said on Saturday. The new SpaceShipTwo, dubbed VSS Unity, was hoisted aloft by carrier airplane WhiteKnightTwo VMS Eve from the Mojave Air & Space Port in California, the company said on Twitter.

Released from the mothership, VSS Unity flew home to Earth on its own, according to the company owned by British billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson. “VSS Unity has landed...