Dwarf Planet Gains Fifth Moon…

Not that it didn’t already have five moons.  At least.  ANYhoo…  As I was saying this time last year, when Hubble spotted a fourth moon orbiting Pluto.  The Hubble Space Telescope has been looking at the twin dwarf planet system of Pluto and Charon ahead of Nasa’s New Horizons mission expected arrival in the neighbourhood in 2015.  [Image credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)] They’ve already mapped the surface of Pluto, to an extent, and now they’ve spotted a …

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Voyager: “We are approaching the solar system’s final frontier”

Here’s a short informative video from Science at Nasa on the indications that Voyager 1 is about to enter into the vastness of interstellar space.  (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Space, remember, is very very big. And on that note, because I can, here again is some wondrous time-lapse video of the night-sky above the ESO Very Large Telescope array [VLT], in Chile, from NikoBustos. [Video credit: ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)] Or even this [Video credit: ESO/S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard) ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)] And, of course, the Milky …

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Transit of Venus 2012: The Movie

Were your skies not favourable for viewing?  Did you miss the live online coverage of the last transit of Venus until 2117?  Well, there’s a Flickr group.  Or you could take in the stunning views from Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.  Video from NasaExplorer.  [Credit: Data courtesy of NASA/SDO, HMI, and AIA science teams].  Enjoy! On June 5 2012, SDO collected images of the rarest predictable solar event–the transit of Venus across the face of the sun.  This event happens in …

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Transit of Venus 2012: “marvel at the solar system in motion”

As I mentioned back in March, tonight one of the rarest predictable astronomical events will occur – a transit of Venus.  [I’m washing my hair! – Ed]  What hair?  ANYhoo… Since the invention of the greatest human innovation, the telescope, at the beginning of the 17th century, not by Galileo, there have been only 7 such transits.  The next time it will happen will be on 11 December 2117.  Nasa’s Sun-Earth Day website will be providing a live web cast during the more than …

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Aurora Borealis over Europe

Another wondrous view of the Aurora Borealis as captured by the crew of the International Space Station.  This time as a backdrop to the equally wondrous sight of Ireland and the United Kingdom under night-time conditions [0-18s].  Video via NasaCrewEarthObs. This video was taken by the crew of Expedition 30 on board the International Space Station. The sequence of shots was taken April 5, 2012 from 00:44:21 to 00:50:07 GMT, on a pass from the North Atlantic Ocean, west of the Celtic …

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“Vesta is special”

Having arrived at the 530km-wide giant asteroid Vesta in July last year, Nasa’s Dawn Mission scientists have published some of their findings in Science magazine.  As the BBC’s spaceman, Jonathan Amos, notes They confirm that Vesta has a layered interior with a metal-rich core, just as Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury do. Using information about the shape of the asteroid and its gravity field, scientists can even say something about the likely size of this core. The Dawn team calculates …

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SDO: Year 2, approaching solar maximum…

Here’s a short video compilation of some stunning views of the Sun in 2012 – as seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). And Science at Nasa has a, erm, cheerful message as we approach solar maximum – “Enjoy the show!”  [Once more, with feeling… – Ed]  Indeed. Pete Baker

Discovery’s Final Final Flight

Having completed its final mission last February, yesterday the Space Shuttle Discovery took off from the Kenedy Space Centre for the last time on the way to its final destination – the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.  During the flight, piggy-backing on a modified Boeing 747 (Shuttle Carrier Aircraft NASA 905), Discovery took in the sights at Washington DC at an altitude of about 1,500ft (457m).  The Guardian has a number of images from the US capital …

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Riding the Boosters

Stunning images, and enhanced sound, in this video from Nasa of the view from the space shuttle’s solid rocket boosters as they push the shuttle up into orbit, and then fall back down to Earth. Enjoy! As the Guardian’s GrrlScientist says The number in the upper right hand corner is airspeed. The glint of light against the backdrop of space at 2:08 and 3:11 is the Space Shuttle going into low Earth orbit. These sounds were cleaned up and made more audible by …

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“A billion stars revealed”

A stunning image was unveiled last week at the UK-Germany National Astronomy Meeting NAM2012 in Manchester. [All images courtesy of Mike Read (WFAU), UKIDSS/GPS and VVV] The BBC’s Spaceman, Jonathan Amos, helpfully provides this combination image, with a partial zoom-in on the Galactic center. But to really appreciate the scale and detail of the image you need to use the online interactive viewer here. From the University of Edinburgh press release Astronomers have today released a picture containing more than one billion …

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“awe, curiosity, wonder, joy, amazement”

After a brief scientific explanation of the phenomena, this video from LittleSDOHMI delivers some wondrous recent views (March 3, 4 and 10) of the Aurora Australis from the International Space Station.  With music! [Video credit: NASA ISS/JSC/ Science@NASA] And here are those stunning clips by themselves. [All videos courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center (http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos/)] From Kenya to the Aurora Australis This video was taken by the crew of Expedition 30 on board the International …

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The Serpent Dust Devil of Mars

  [We’re not in Kansas anymore! – Ed]  Indeed.  Here’s a great little video from JPLNews on the 800m-tall dust devil they spotted on Mars in this wondrous image acquired, on Feb 16 2012, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. [Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona] Pete Baker

The Universe at a glance…

Well, several glances actually…  As spotted by the Guardian blog’s Tom McCarthy, NASA has released a new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky “showing more than a half billion stars, galaxies and other objects captured by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.”  And an impressive view it is. [Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA]   From the Nasa press release The sky can be thought of as a sphere that surrounds us in three dimensions. To make a map of …

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Tour of the Moon

Via NasaExplorer here’s a nice short narrated tour of the Moon, using images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, focusing in on some particular sites of interest.  [Video credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center].   Pete Baker

“Opportunity on Mars – 8 years and counting!”

Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity landed in Eagle Crater on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004, Universal Time, three weeks after its rover twin, Spirit, had landed halfway around the planet.  Opportunity completed its three-month prime mission in April that year, everything else has been bonus, extended missions.  Spirit is no longer with us.  But Opportunity carries on. [Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.] This mosaic of images taken in mid-January 2012 shows the windswept vista northward (left) to northeastward (right) from the location …

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“It’ll be back in about 600 years…”

In this short video ScienceAtNasa takes an informative look at the surprisingly robust sun-grazing Comet Lovejoy. And here’s the stunning video from the crew of the International Space Station again. [Video courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center] Pete Baker

ISS Commander: “the most amazing thing I have ever seen in space”

Having, unexpectedly, survived its solar close encounter, Comet Lovejoy is providing some spectacular views for early morning observers in the southern hemisphere.  Spaceweather has a growing collection of images. But the most spectacular view has to have been the one captured by the crew of the International Space Station (ISS).  Wow!  [Video courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center] Usually they make do with stunning views of aurorae…  Here’s ISS Commander Dan Burbank speaking to WDIV-TV …

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Sleigh Ride over the Red Planet

A short seasonal diversion from JPLnews, using images of the real landscapes of Mars taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.   Pete Baker

Comet Lovejoy is still with us!

Rumours of the demise of Kreutz sungrazing Comet Lovejoy may have been greatly exaggarated.  NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught Comet Lovejoy emerging from its scorching close encounter with the sun.  [Video Credit: NASA SDO] As the Science at Nasa press release notes Comet Lovejoy was discovered on Dec. 2, 2011, by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy of Australia.  Researchers quickly realized that the new find was a member of the Kreutz family of sungrazing comets.  Named after the German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, …

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Kepler-22b: “This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin”

By the time its last catalogue of exoplanet candidates was released in February,  Nasa’s Kepler space observatory, launched in March 2009, first light in April 2009, had identified 1,235 planetary candidates – and 54 candidates within the habitable zone. The Kepler team have now identified 2,326 planet candidates – of those, 207 are approximately Earth-size, 680 are super Earth-size, 1,181 are Neptune-size, 203 are Jupiter-size and 55 are larger than Jupiter.  And there are now 48 planet candidates in their star’s habitable zone There …

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