Category Astronomy/Space

“Chury” with his bi-lobe structure and the weakest part, the neck. Credit: © ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

Based on computer simulations, Astrophysicists at the University of Bern, Switzerland, conclude that the comet Chury did not obtain its duck-like form during the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Although it does contain primordial material, they are able to show that the comet in its present form is hardly more than a billion years old. Based on data from the Rosetta space probe, scientists have so far assumed that the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko originated from the initial phase of our solar system. Its peculiar, duck-shaped structure would have resulted from a gentle collision of 2 objects about 4.5 billion years ago.

Based on new research, Martin Jutz...

Stunning moon rise over Brokeoff Mountain, California. Jillian Kern/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

A beautiful full moon will grace our skies on Monday Nov 14 this year. Full moons always rise around sunset, so look for it towards the east during evening twilight. Every month, occasionally even twice a month, the full moon adorns the night. What makes this one so special is all the hype of the supermoon. A quick glance at the statistics and you can see what everyone’s buzzing about. The supermoon is up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than the smallest full moon of the year (which occurred last April).

What’s more, this supermoon is the closest full moon since January 26, 1948, making it the closest to date in the 21st century. The full moon won’t be this close again until November 25, 2034...

These three planetary discs have been observed with the SPHERE instrument, mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The observations were made in order to shed light on the enigmatic evolution of fledgling planetary systems. The central parts of the images appear dark because SPHERE blocks out the light from the brilliant central stars to reveal the much fainter structures surrounding them. Credit: ESO

3 teams of astronomers have made use of SPHERE, an advanced exoplanet-hunting instrument on the VLT at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, in order to shed light on the enigmatic evolution of fledgling planetary systems. The explosion in the number of known exoplanets in recent years has made the study of them one of the most dynamic fields in modern astronomy...

RainCube, due to fly in 2017, forced JPL’s engineers to get creative in order to squeeze an antenna into a CubeSat. Credit: Tyvak/Jonathan Sauder/NASA/JPL-Caltech Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-11-black-magic-earth-space.html#jCp

Black magic. That’s what radiofrequency engineers call the mysterious forces guiding communications over the air. These forces involve complex physics and are difficult enough to master on Earth. They only get more baffling when you’re beaming signals into space.Until now, the shape of choice for casting this “magic” has been the parabolic dish. The bigger the antenna dish, the better it is at “catching” or transmitting signals from far away. But CubeSats are changing that...