A few years ago, in a desert in Morocco, a very special meteorite was found. A rock unlike anything ever found on Earth, called NWA 7034, or colloquially ‘black beauty.’ Chemical analysis in 2011 found that it originated on Mars, but it was even unlike any other Martian meteorite discovered. The scientific community was extremely excited to determine its properties through a spectroscopic analysis, and today we have some answers that are as amazing as we expected. A new paper detailing spectroscopic results of the meteorite reveal that its composition is the same as the composition of the dark Martian...
Enjoy this great little video about an asteroid hit as viewed by a dinosaur on ancient Earth. The one in the video is 10Km wide and it’s the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous-Paleogene period 66 Million Years ago. For reference, the Asteroid BL86 that passed by us this week was 300Km wide, a true killer! Sadly there’s no explosion, but hey, if we were able to see it we would be instantly vapourized so we wouldn’t be watching it anyway.
Cassiopeia A is the expanding remainder of a massive star that exploded 340 years ago in he constellation of Cassiopeia (hence we call it Cas A for short). As the star erupted, hot radioactive material was shot out in all directions, churning up the surrounding outer debris, before the star finally tore itself apart. Simulations of supernova explosions have found it difficult to model the extreme conditions during this process, even when using the world’s best supercomputers. So what are astronomers missing? By studying recent supernovae like Cas A, astronomers can study the processes that formed these massive expanding shock waves, leading...
The best ever image of a Cometary Globule has been released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Atacama desert in Chile. It looks a lot like a nebula right? In actuality a cometary globule is a very specific type of nebula. It’s very faint, and it’s formation is a matter of debate among the astronomical community. A cometary globule is small, containing the mass of a few suns worth of material. Compare this to a typical nebula, which has enough material to form thousands or even hundreds of thousands of stars. The...
There has been a lot of planetary news lately, in our own solar system and beyond. With the DAWN spacecraft approaching Ceres, New Horizons finally reaching Pluto in a few months, and the Kepler Space Telescope giving results from it’s new observing run. Not to mention comet Lovejoy, Mars Rover anniversary, and the Venus Metal Frost story. Normally I would pass on so much planetary news, even though it is one of my favourite areas of Astronomy. This story, however, is just too good to pass up. Kepler 444, a very ancient star 117 light years from Earth, about 25% smaller than...
Today was the flyby of the big Asteroid 2004 BL86. It can be seen tonight in the sky but you will need a darn good pair of binoculars or a telescope. Here’s where to find it: Scientists have also revealed some new information about it, including updating its size from 550m down to a more paltry 300m, which is still pretty big! Also, it has a moon! Crazy right? Enjoy yet another close shave by a moderately sized Space rock that could have had a devastating impact.
The Opportunity rover has just about reached it’s 11 year anniversary of it’s 90 day mission puttering around Mars. The actual day is tomorrow since the rover landed on January 25th, 2004. To mark its incredible accomplishment, the imaging team produced a lovely panorama of what the rover would see from its current position on a high point along the rim of endeavour crater. The map below shows the path of Opportunity over its past 11 years, from the Eagle crater, to endurance crater, to Victoria crater, and finally on to the much more massive Endeavour crater, where it currently...
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...
…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...
