Space

Say Hello To The First X-Class Solar Flare Of 2014

Welcome to the first big solar flare of 2014. The sun emitted a significant solar flare peaking at 1:32 p.m. EST on Jan.7, 2014. This is the first significant flare of 2014 and follows on the heels of mid-level flare earlier in the day. Each flare was cen ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 8 2014 - 9:21am

NASA's Hubble images of distant galaxies by gravitational lensing. How an astronomer sees them.

The most scientifically interesting objects are not the bright blueish white ones in the center of the image, but the small reddish looking ones off to the sides.  Here's how and why.  ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Jan 9 2014 - 8:12am

The Black Hole In Messier 83 Is Not Alone

Messier 83, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, is one of the largest and closest barred spiral galaxies to us.  At 15 million light-years away, it is one of the most conspicuous galaxies of its type in our skies.  It's in the constellation of Hydra (The S ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 9 2014 - 11:49am

Cosmic Creepy-Crawly: A Peek Inside The Tarantula Nebula

The near-infrared vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has given us a new view deep inside the Tarantula Nebula- and its more than 800,000 stars and protostars within. ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 11 2014 - 10:23am

If there is Life in Venus Cloud Tops- Do we Need to Protect Earth- or Venus- Could Returned XNA mean Goodbye DNA for Instance?

The surface of Venus is totally hostile to Earth life, a dim, hot furnace, with temperatures well over 400°C. But conditions are different at the Venus cloud tops. Temperatures are ideal, with plenty of light. The atmosphere is out of equilibrium, with H ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Sep 5 2015 - 5:06pm

MACS J0717.5+3745 Cluster Verifies Predictions Of Kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect

By observing a high-speed component of the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745, an extraordinarily dynamic cluster with a total mass greater than 10 15 (a million billion) times the mass of the sun or more than 1,000 times the mass of our own galaxy, ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 16 2014 - 11:42am

Why Phobos Might be the Best Place to go for a Sample Return from Mars Right Now

We haven't found life on Mars yet. That's not too surprising, though disappointing. You can see its surface geology from orbit, plain to view, but any life is likely to be hidden inside rocks, under the soil or beneath the ice. Pristine deposits ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Jan 25 2014 - 12:12pm

To Terraform Mars with Present Technology- Far into Realms of Magical Thinking- Opinion Piece

In Trouble with Terraforming Mars, I looked at many things that could go wrong with such a project. But setting aside those issues, Mars terraforming takes us far into the realm of magical thinking- where if you can imagine something vividly, you can make ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Sep 24 2015 - 5:55pm

HD 142527 In Lupus The Wolf May Change How We Think About Planet Formation

A young star named HD 142527 in the constellation Lupus (the Wolf) has revealed that cosmic dust, which is component material of planets, is circling around the star in a form of asymmetric ring.  By measuring the density of dust in the densest part of the ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 18 2014 - 4:25pm

Metallicity: Did The Milky Way Galaxy Form From The Inside Out?

Results using data from the Gaia-ESO project has provided some evidence backing up theoretical divisions in the chemical composition of the stars that make up the Milky Way's disc – the vast collection of giant gas clouds and billions of stars that g ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 20 2014 - 11:33am