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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Most Earth-like worlds have yet to be Born

    October 20, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An artist's impression of the innumerable Earth-like planets that have yet to be born over the next trillion years in the evolving universe. Credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon (STScI)

    An artist’s impression of the innumerable Earth-like planets that have yet to be born over the next trillion years in the evolving universe. Credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon (STScI)

    Earth came early to the party in the evolving universe. According to a new theoretical study, when our solar system was born 4.6 B years ago only 8% of the potentially habitable planets that will ever form in the universe existed. And, the party won’t be over when the sun burns out in another 6B years. The bulk of those planets – 92% – have yet to be born.

    This conclusion is based on an assessment of data collected by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the prolific planet-hunting Kepler space observatory...

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    Mysterious Star Stirs Controversy

    October 20, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The Kepler space telescope's planet-hunting mission was launched in 2009 but lost its key orientation abilities in 2013

    The Kepler space telescope’s planet-hunting mission was launched in 2009 but lost its key orientation abilities in 2013

    Mysterious light on a distant star could be a sign of alien civilisation, some astronomers have claimed, stirring controversy. Not so fast, said NASA.

    “The mysterious star, KIC 8462852, does have an odd light curve,” said Steve Howell, working on the Kepler space telescope’s planet-hunting mission. “It does not look like a normal exoplanet or binary star light curve. However, I think that saying that it immediately is alien is a bit of a stretch,” Howell said in an email to AFP.

    Kepler observes distant planets and stars by observing transits, or the dimming of light when another celestial body passes in front...

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    Closest Northern Views of Saturn’s Moon Enceladus

    October 19, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Closest northern views of Saturn's moon Enceladus

    NASA’s Cassini spacecraft zoomed by Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus on Oct. 14, 2015, capturing this stunning image of the moon’s north pole. A companion view from the wide-angle camera shows a zoomed out view of the same region for context. Scientists expected the north polar region of Enceladus to be heavily cratered, based on low-resolution images from the Voyager mission, but high-resolution Cassini images show a landscape of stark contrasts. Thin cracks cross over the pole — the northernmost extent of a global system of such fractures. Before this Cassini flyby, scientists did not know if the fractures extended so far north on Enceladus. North on Enceladus is up. The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera...

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    The Minimum Mass of a Proto-Solar System Disk

    October 19, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The minimum mass of a proto-solar system disk

    An image of the young star forming region IC348 in Perseus (about 2-3 million years old) as seen by the infrared cameras onboard the Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers studying the birth of solar systems have found thirteen stars in this complex with detectable disks, none of which is as massive as the early Solar system’s disk. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Muzerolle (STScI), E. Furlan (NOAO and Caltech), K. Flaherty (Univ. of Arizona/Steward Observatory), Z. Balog (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy), and R. Gutermuth (Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst) Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-10-minimum-mass-proto-solar-disk.html#jCp

    Astronomers estimate that at the time Solar system formed, its proto-planetary disk contained the equivalent of about 20 Jupiter-masses of gas and dust...

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