Venus is the most hellish place I know of in the Solar System, and maybe even the broader Universe. Even though Venus looks pretty harmless and is named for the Roman goddess of Love, beneath the soft looking clouds lies sulphuric acid rainfall, 450 degree surface temperatures, and crushing pressure 90 times the atmospheric pressure of Earth at sea level. How do we get the surface picture of Venus above? NASA’s Magellan probe in 1994 finished mapping the surface by looking at Radio wavelengths emitted by the planet and using radar to bounce waves off the surface to measure features....
This week there were just too many fantastic photo releases to pick just one and stick with it, so here are some of the great stories popping up with fantastic images to accompany them: Fine Detail From Rosetta on 67P This amazing shot from the Rosetta orbiter shows such incredible detail as comet 67P catches light from the sun. The shadows are what makes this image spectacular as you can see so many fine features. The other noteworthy part of the image is the bright streaks of material coming off the comet in the background. As the comet and the...
I always like to bring up the crazy ways in which two areas of science that seem completely disconnected can relate to each other, occasionally giving incredible insights. By looking at the ocean floor, a world human beings can’t reach without special pressurized equipment, we are learning about space, a world human beings can’t reach without special pressurized equipment. So how is the ocean teaching us about space? Physicists at the Australian National University have been studying seafloor dust that has been raining down on Earth as micrometeorites over the past 25 Million years. The dust is thought to originate...
…and not the ‘dawn’ we refer to when watching a sunrise. Dawn is a NASA spacecraft that was launched in 2007 with the goal of exploring the asteroid belt by observing its largest and most interesting objects up close. The two largest asteroids, Vesta and Ceres, have been the largest mission goals of Dawn as it has journeyed through the belt. From July 2011 to September 2012, Dawn was in orbit around the 525 Km wide Vesta, snapping amazing photos and studying the giant in detail. Since it’s departure from Vesta in September 2012, the craft has been on route...
As the Kepler Space Telescope continues work on its second mission, the slow trickle of new exoplanet discoveries has begun. In the past few weeks scientists working with Kepler data have been able to identify new planets, and of course the variation continues to surprise us all. Most Recently, Kepler discovered a system of three planets orbiting the nearby red dwarf star EPIC 201367065, which is about half the size and mass of the Sun. The planets are all super-Earths, being only 2.1, 1.7, and 1.5 times the size of Earth and receiving 10.5, 3.2 and 1.4 times the light intensity of Earth...
I couldn’t believe it when I read the story this morning. The Beagle 2 probe has been found, and partially intact even. It’s been more than eleven years since the 2003 Christmas day launch of Beagle 2 by the European Space Agency, presumed lost forever after months of attempts at establishing communication. Many scientists had assumed that Beagle 2 had smashed into Mars at high-velocity, destroying it completely, but photos from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) clearly show the lander made it to the ground safely. The issue seems to be that the Beagle’s deployable ‘petals’ did not unfurl completely. The...
It seems that in recent years, asteroids have been flying past Earth with increasing frequency. Does it mean that more asteroids are coming around? Is it the beginning of the end? Will one of them hit us soon and doom us all? Probably not, but there’s always a chance. It’s almost certain that the reason we’ve been able to find so many new asteroids, and especially near-Earth asteroids, is because of the technology increase in Astronomy the past few years. New telescopes and tracking methods exist with the sole purpose of finding near-Earth asteroids, somewhat of an early warning system...
This morning at 4am EST on the International Space Station, an Ammonia leak alarm went off, leading the crew to perform an emergency evacuation from the American capsule of the ISS. All of the astronauts are currently safe and secure in the Russian capsule of the ISS. The hatch between the two capsules has been sealed, and any non-essential equipment has been powered down. Mission Control is in the process of assessing whether the alarm was the result of an actual leak or a malfunction, though recent reports from NASA TV suggest that the alarm was due to computer glitch...
A vast number of Galaxies in the Universe have a central black hole that is incredibly massive. The Black Hole at the centre of the Milky Way, dubbed Sag A*, is estimated to have a mass as high as three Million Suns. We generally can’t see black holes, but when they start to pull in matter from surrounding gas and dust clouds, the material forms a disk around the star. This accretion disk can heat up to incredible temperatures and emit X-rays and other high energy light, allowing us to see where the black holes are. Sometimes the light from...
For Christmas I was given a green 200 mW laser! A couple of AAA batteries later and the laser can point out any star or object in the night sky, with the beam clearly visible the entire way up to infinity. Its the epitome of an Astronomer’s toolkit, at least in my eyes, and it got me thinking about all the amazing things you can see in the sky right now. It also makes me feel like I’m brandishing a light saber, and sadly it’s about as close as I’ll ever get. First off, Venus is back in the evening...
