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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Europa’s Heaving Ice might make more Heat than Scientists thought

    April 15, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    As the moon Europa's icy shell is pushed and pulled by Jupiter's gravity, it heaves up and down. That process creates enough heat, scientists think, to create a global subsurface ocean on Europa. Experiments by Brown University researchers suggests that this heating process, known as tidal dissipation, creates more heat in ice that scientists have generally assumed. The insight could help scientists model the thickness of Europa's icy shell. Credit: NASA/JPL

    As the moon Europa’s icy shell is pushed and pulled by Jupiter’s gravity, it heaves up and down. That process creates enough heat, scientists think, to create a global subsurface ocean on Europa. Experiments by Brown University researchers suggests that this heating process, known as tidal dissipation, creates more heat in ice that scientists have generally assumed. The insight could help scientists model the thickness of Europa’s icy shell. Credit: NASA/JPL

    Jupiter’s moon Europa is under a constant gravitational assault. As it orbits, Europa’s icy surface heaves and falls with the pull of Jupiter’s gravity, creating enough heat to support a global ocean beneath the moon’s solid shell...

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    Supernova Iron found on the Moon

    April 15, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Since the moon generally provides a better cosmic record than Earth, the scientists were also able to specify for the first time an upper limit for the flow of 60Fe that must have reached the moon. Credit: © SkyLine / Fotolia

    Since the moon generally provides a better cosmic record than Earth, the scientists were also able to specify for the first time an upper limit for the flow of 60Fe that must have reached the moon. Credit: © SkyLine / Fotolia

    Confirmation of supernova explosion in the neighborhood of our solar system. ~2 million yrs ago a star exploded in a supernova close to our solar system: Its traces can still be found today in the form of an iron isotope found on the ocean floor. Now scientists have found increased concentrations of this supernova-iron in lunar samples as well. They believe both discoveries to originate from the same stellar explosion.

    Estimation of the local fluence of Fe60 on the Moon’s surface. The dashed curves represent two different integration scenarios.

    Estimation of the local fluence of Fe60 on the Moon’s surface. The dashed curves represent two different integration scenarios.

    Increased concentrat...

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    New image of Spectacular Concentration of Galaxies: Fornax Cluster

    April 14, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The Fornax Galaxy Cluster is one of the closest of such groupings beyond our Local Group of galaxies. This new VLT Survey Telescope image shows the central part of the cluster in great detail. At the lower-right is the elegant barred-spiral galaxy NGC 1365 and to the left the big elliptical NGC 1399. Credit: ESO. Acknowledgement: Aniello Grado and Luca Limatola

    The Fornax Galaxy Cluster is one of the closest of such groupings beyond our Local Group of galaxies. This new VLT Survey Telescope image shows the central part of the cluster in great detail. At the lower-right is the elegant barred-spiral galaxy NGC 1365 and to the left the big elliptical NGC 1399. Credit: ESO. Acknowledgement: Aniello Grado and Luca Limatola

    Clusters can contain anything between about 100 and 1000 galaxies and can be between about 5 and 30 million light-years across. Galaxy clusters do not come in neatly defined shapes so it is difficult to determine exactly where they begin and end. However, astronomers have estimated that the centre of the Fornax Cluster is in the region of 65 million light-years from Earth...

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    1917 Astronomical Plate has 1st-ever evidence of Exoplanetary system

    April 13, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Caption: The 1917 photographic plate spectrum of van Maanen's star from the Carnegie Observatories’ archive. The pull-out box shows the strong lines of the element calcium, which are surprisingly easy to see in the century old spectrum. The spectrum is the thin, (mostly) dark line in the center of the image. The broad dark lanes above and below are from lamps used to calibrate wavelength, and are contrast-enhanced in the box to highlight the two “missing” absorption bands in the star. Available here as a standalone image. Credit: Carnegie Institution for Science.

    Caption: The 1917 photographic plate spectrum of van Maanen’s star from the Carnegie Observatories’ archive. The pull-out box shows the strong lines of the element calcium, which are surprisingly easy to see in the century old spectrum. The spectrum is the thin, (mostly) dark line in the center of the image. The broad dark lanes above and below are from lamps used to calibrate wavelength, and are contrast-enhanced in the box to highlight the two “missing” absorption bands in the star. Available here as a standalone image. Credit: Carnegie Institution for Science.

    Researchers didn’t know it a year ago, but it turns out that a 1917 image on an astronomical glass plate from the Carnegie Observatories’ collection shows the first-ever evidence of a planetary system beyond our own Sun...

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