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aamukherjee A Slice of Entropie -
alchymista Alchymista -
crownedrose Fading Like A Dead Star -
expose-the-light Quarks to Quasars -
ikenbot CWL -
abluegirl A Blue Girl -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
An Incredibly Hostile Universe
Astronomer Steve Vogt describes his search for extrasolar and Earth-like planets at the Lick Observatory.
“The first habitable planet that we’ve found, Gliese 581G, is right dead-on inhabitable on orbit. It’s a place of refuge from the — the unbelievable harshness of the universe. A place where you could stand and not, you know, fly off into space, where there would be gases to breath, water that would pool in liquid form, maybe oceans. Whether there’s something living there or not, we don’t know.”
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Superman’s Home Planet Krypton ‘Found’
A prominent astrophysicist has pinned down a real location for Superman’s fictional home planet of Krypton.
Krypton is found 27.1 light-years from Earth, in the southern constellation Corvus (The Crow), says Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium in New York City. The planet orbits the red dwarf star LHS 2520, which is cooler and smaller than our sun.
Tyson performed the celestial sleuthing at the request of DC Comics, which wanted to run a story about Superman’s search for his home planet.
The new book — Action Comics Superman #14, titled “Star Light, Star Bright” — comes out Wednesday (Nov. 7). Tyson appears within its pages, aiding the Man of Steel on his quest.
“As a native of Metropolis, I was delighted to help Superman, who has done so much for my city over all these years,” Tyson said in a statement. “And it’s clear that if he weren’t a superhero he would have made quite an astrophysicist.”
You’ll have to read “Star Light, Star Bright” to find out just how Superman and Tyson pinpoint Krypton. For amateur astronomers who want to spot the real star LHS 2520 in the night sky, here are its coordinates:
Right Ascension: 12 hours 10 minutes 5.77 seconds
Declination: -15 degrees 4 minutes 17.9 seconds
Proper Motion: 0.76 arcseconds per year, along 172.94 degrees from due north
Superman was born on Krytpon but was launched toward Earth as an infant by his father, Jor-El, just before the planet’s destruction. After touching down in Kansas, Superman was raised as Clark Kent by a farmer and his wife.
Now Superman will apparently know exactly where he came from.
“This is a major milestone in the Superman mythos that gives our super hero a place in the universe,” DC Entertainment co-publisher Dan DiDio said in a statement. “Having Neil deGrasse Tyson in the book was one thing, but by applying real-world science to this story he has forever changed Superman’s place in history. Now fans will be able to look up at the night’s sky and say, ‘That’s where Superman was born.’”
Clouds regularly punctuate Earth’s blue sky, but on Venus the clouds never part, for the planet is wrapped entirely in a 20 km-thick veil of carbon dioxide and sulphuric dioxide haze.
This view shows the cloud tops of Venus as seen in ultraviolet light by the Venus Express spacecraft on 8 December 2011, from a distance of about 30 000 km.
Much of the image is occupied by the planet’s southern hemisphere, with the south pole at the bottom of the frame and the equator close to the top. The visible top cloud layer seen in the image is about 70 km above the planet’s surface.
Enceladus nightshine & plumes
Narrow-angle false color composite taken on 2006-03-22 using infrared (IR3), green and ultraviolet (UV3) filters. Because the far infrared filter was used, at wavelengths in which Saturn is less bright than in the green filter, the saturnlit portion of Enceladus looks greenish here.
The rings present their unlit side with the F ring showing a brilliant white color while the main rings are darker and more brownish. A hint of the G ring can be seen beyond the F ring.
Credit: Gordan Ugarkovic
the-universes-beautiful-mistakes:
This figure shows an actual image of a sunset on Earth compared to artistic representations for the best candidates of potential habitable worlds so far. The image corrects for the size, colors, and brightness of the star and sky as seen from an Earth-like world located in the orbits of these worlds. The size of and colors of the star of Kepler-22 b look similar to Earth because it orbits a Sun-like star. The sunsets of Gliese 667Cc and 581d look much redder because they orbit a red dwarf star, with the sky of Gliese 581d much darker due to its greater distance. The star of HD 85512b is the brightest of all cases although the star of Gliese 667Cc is the biggest. CREDIT: PHL @ UPR Arecibo.
Spica, Mars and Saturn
A beautiful conjunction between three celestial bodies with different colors.
Spica is striking blue, Mars is reddish/orange and Satrun a pale yellow.By Luis Argerich
(via ikenbot)
Possible Alien Planet Smaller Than Earth May Be Lava World
Illustration: An artist’s illustration of the alien planet UCF 1.01, a potential exoplanet 33 light-years from Earth that may be covered in lava. Credit: University of Central Florida
Scientists have discovered what appears to be an alien planet just two-thirds the size of Earth, a heat-blasted world perhaps covered in molten lava, a new study reports.
Astronomers discovered the newfound alien planet, known as UCF-1.01, using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The diminutive world is just 33 light-years away, making it a near neighbor of Earth in the cosmic scheme of things.
“We have found strong evidence for a very small, very hot and very near planet with the help of the Spitzer Space Telescope,” study lead author Kevin Stevenson, of the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, said in a statement. “Identifying nearby small planets such as UCF-1.01 may one day lead to their characterization using future instruments.”
Polar and equatorial views of Earth, the aurora, the equatorial airglow bands, and the geocorona. Two 30° x 120° nadir-centered images show Earth and its faint lights at vacuum-ultraviolet wavelengths. Features of Earth’s disk (dayglow from the sunlit atmosphere, auroral oval, and equatorial airglow) appear primarily in the emissions of atomic oxygen at about 130.4 and 135.6 nm and of the LBH bands of molecular nitrogen, while beyond the limb the instrument responses are entirely due to solar Lyman radiation resonantly scattered by Earth’s extended hydrogen atmosphere, the geocorona.
The image in the left panel shows an active auroral oval on 14 October 1981 at 2017 UT following the onset of a substorm at local midnight. Spacecraft altitude is 16,500 km at 67° N latitude. The image in the right panel provides a view of Earth’s dark hemisphere at 0222 UT on 16 February 1982 while the sun is behind Earth. Spacecraft altitude and latitude are 19,700 km and 13° N, respectively. The northern auroral oval forms a halo of light above the limb of Earth, while the equatorial airglow bands in the premidnight sector straddle the magnetic equator. Isolated points of light in both images are VUV bright stars.
Terrestrial Planets
Also known as rocky planets, these bodies are composed primarily of rock and metal and have very high densities. They also tend to be relatively small in size and have slow periods of rotation. The terrestrial planets in our solar system are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. They are the planets closest to the Sun. Terrestrial planets tend to have very few natural satellites, or moons. Of the four terrestrial planets in our solar system, only two have moons. Earth has one moon while Mars has two.
Images Credit: solarsystem.nasa.gov
expose-the-lightPictures of Saturn
1. A psychedelic view of Saturn. A composite image made from pictures taken by the Cassini spacecraft from a distance of approximately 511,000 miles (822,000 kilometers) from Saturn.
2. Saturn, The Lord of the Rings. A natural-color photograph of Saturn and its rings shot by Cassini spacecraft’s wide-angle camera from a distance of approximately 764,000 miles (1.23 million kilometers) from Saturn.
3. The Spectacular Rings of Saturn. A false-color image of Saturn’s main rings made by combining data from Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph.
4. Saturn’s moon Rhea orbiting the giant gas-planet. Rhea is 949 miles (1,528 kilometers) across and it is the second largest moon of Saturn. This picture was shot by the Cassini spacecraft from a distance of about 700,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Saturn and 422,000 miles (679,000 kilometers) from Rhea.
5. Saturn in infrared. An infrared view of Saturn and its rings captured by the Cassini spacecraft from a vantage point located 900,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) above the planet’s northern latitudes.
6. Rhea, gliding in front of Saturn. Captured by the Cassini spacecraft.
7. Saturn in false color. A false color, near-infrared, Hubble Space Telescope image of Saturn. The varying compositions and heights of its cloud layers are indicated by different colors. The clouds are thought to consist mainly of ammonia ice crystals. Tethys and Dione, two of Saturn’s moon can be seen as tiny dots in the upper right and lower left portions of the image, respectively.
8. The Dark Side of Saturn/Saturn Eclipse. A photograph of Saturn eclipsing the Sun, captured by the Cassini spacecraft on September 15, 2006. The dark side of Saturn is partially lit by sunlight reflected from its own rings. The rings themselves are lit by slight forward scattering of sunlight. In the high resolution image, the Earth is visible as a pale blue dot just above the bright main rings, on the left side of the image.
Credits: NASA, ESA, JPL/Caltech
