Category Astronomy/Space

A false-color composite image, constructed from data obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft showing the glow the aurora about 1,000 km above the cloud tops of Saturn’s south pole (credit NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/ University of Leicester)

The evidence that Saturn’s upper atmosphere may, when buffeted by the solar wind, emit the same total amount of mass per second into its magnetosphere as its moon, Enceladus, has been found by UCL scientists working on the Cassini mission. Magnetospheres are regions of space that are heavily influenced by the magnetic field of a nearby planet and can contain charged particles in the form of plasma from both external and internal sources.

In the case of Saturn, its moon Enceladus ejects water from its icy plumes which is ionised into H2O+, O+, OH+ ...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced the detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of ground-based observatories in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in his general theory of relativity a century ago, and scientists have been attempting to detect them for 50 years. He pictured these waves as ripples in the fabric of space-time produced by massive, accelerating bodies, such as black holes orbiting each other.

Just as in other areas of astronomy, astronomers need both ground-based and space-based observatories to take full advantage of this new window...

This illustration shows the locations and energy ranges of ASTRO-H science instruments and their associated telescopes. One keV equals 1,000 electron volts, which is hundreds of times the energy of visible light. Credits: JAXA/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Black hole enthusiasts, galaxy cluster aficionados, and X-ray astronomers have much to be excited about. On Feb. 12, JAXA will be launching their 6th satellite dedicated to X-ray astronomy, ASTRO-H, from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima, Japan. The observatory carries a state-of-the-art instrument and 2 telescope mirrors built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The launch is at 3:45 a.m. EST.

ASTRO-H is expected to provide breakthroughs in a wide variety of high-energy phenomena in the cosmos, ran...

An artist’s conception shows Kepler-36c as it might look from the surface of neighboring Kepler-36b. Credits: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/David Aguilar.

1,530 light years away in constellation Cygnus, Kepler-36 is a sun-like star orbited by 2 known alien worlds. The inner planet, Kepler-36b is a so-called “super-Earth,” ie larger than our home planet but smaller than Neptune; the larger Kepler-36c, resembling the solar system’s outermost planet, is described as a “mini-Neptune.” What is unusual about this planetary system is that these 2 exoworlds have very close orbits, separated only by 0.013 astronomical units (AU)—5X the Earth-moon distance...