Astronomy
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An asteroid the size of the one that whizzed between Earth and the moon last year is going to cruise past our planet on Thursday June 14 and be monitored by the Slooh Space Camera, which broadcasts space phenomena online. Although the 1,650-foot-wide near-Earth asteroid 2012 LZ1 is the size of a city block, it poses no threat since it will pass 14 lunar distances from Mother Earth. About the size of last year's YU55 , it will come just close enough to make a possible cameo appearance on camera, according to Space.com . Slooh’s website brought us the Transit of Venus , the annular solar eclipse and numerous other celestial shows and will bring interested viewers a potential glimpse of the space rock from its telescope on the Canary Islands. NASA’s scoffing at the absence of a rogue, unknown planet hitting Earth in the apocalypse notwithstanding, this asteroid is newly discovered, Space.com said, popping onto astronomers’ radar just this week.
Incoming! Asteroid Flyby May Be Captured Online
Dark alien planet discovered by NASA
An alien world blacker than coal, the darkest planet known, has been discovered in the galaxy. The world in question is a giant the size of Jupiter known as TrES-2b. NASA's Kepler spacecraft detected it lurking around the yellow sun-like star GSC 03549-02811 some 750 lightyears away in the direction of the constellation Draco. The researchers found this gas giant reflects less than 1 percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it darker than any planet or moon seen up to now. [ The Strangest Alien Planets ]
Earth-sized planets near and far (NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech) Planets in habitable zones, planets orbiting twin suns, miniature solar systems , rogue planets, planets, planets, planets. If there is one single piece of information you should take away from the recent flood of incredible exoplanetary discoveries it is this: Our universe makes planets with extraordinary efficiency – if planets can form somewhere, they will. We’ve been sidling up on this fact for some time now, but it’s still a remarkable thing to acknowledge. Ten to fifteen years ago, as the first exoplanet detections began to come in, we understood that what we were seeing was potentially just the tip of the iceberg.
An Abundance of Exoplanets Changes our Universe | Life, Unbounded
Our planet's magnetic field is in a constant state of change, say researchers who are beginning to understand how it behaves and why. Every few years, scientist Larry Newitt of the Geological Survey of Canada goes hunting. He grabs his gloves, parka, a fancy compass, hops on a plane and flies out over the Canadian arctic. Not much stirs among the scattered islands and sea ice, but Newitt's prey is there--always moving, shifting, elusive. His quarry is Earth's north magnetic pole. At the moment it's located in northern Canada, about 600 km from the nearest town: Resolute Bay, population 300, where a popular T-shirt reads "Resolute Bay isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from here."
Earth's Inconstant Magnetic Field
All About Black Holes: Formation & Discovery| Black Hole Facts & Information
Black holes are some of the strangest and most fascinating objects found in outer space. They are objects of extreme density, with such strong gravitational attraction that even light cannot escape from their grasp if it comes near enough. Stellar black holes — small but deadly When a star burns through the last of its fuel, it may find itself collapsing.Asteroid Threat Becomes A Promise: New Space Venture Launches | Video
By now just about everyone is aware of the potential threat posed by Near Earth approaching Asteroids. But, compared to human life-spans, large impact events are relatively few and far between. And on much shorter timescales, these same objects could provide the raw materials to drive intriguing new industries to benefit people on Earth. At least, that’s the value proposition of the new venture known as Planetary Resources Inc.
If a diamond truly is a girl's best friend, then astronomers working from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, may have just discovered the supreme BFF: a planet made of solid diamond, according to a report by New Scientist . The planet is orbiting a pulsar about 4,000 light-years away, and it represents some serious bling. Astronomers estimate that the planet is barely under 60,000 kilometers in diameter and has a mass roughly equal to that of Jupiter. Although the planet is too far away to be seen through a conventional telescope, astronomers were able to infer its existence by observing periodic flickers in the pulsar it is orbiting. Those minor flickers represent the gravitational tug and pull of an orbiting body; a startling find since few pulsars have been discovered with planets in orbit. (Of the 1,800 known pulsars, only two others have been found to harbor planets!)
Diamond planet discovered by astronomers
Video: Must-See Solar Flare Explodes From Sun's Surface | Wired Science
An incredibly stunning solar flare erupted from the sun’s surface, throwing charged particles and searing plasma millions of miles out into space on Apr. 16. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured data from the flare — a medium-sized M-class event — which was turned into a movie by Steele Hill , media specialist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. The blast was not directed at the Earth and is unlikely to hit any of the planets in our solar system. The video above follows a trail of plasma hotter than 143,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is actually quite cool for the sun. The sun’s outer layer, called the corona, is typically between 900,000 and 10 million degrees Fahrenheit and can reach tens of millions of degrees during a flare. The sun is currently entering a time of renewed activity, following a quiet period in its 11-year solar cycle.
A rose made of galaxies
This image of a pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273 was released to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the launch of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The distorted shape of the larger of the two galaxies shows signs of tidal interactions with the smaller of the two. It is thought that the smaller galaxy has actually passed through the larger one. Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) About the Image
Life on Mars found but destroyed by mistake - Sci/Tech
Bungling NASA scientists are believed to have found tiny live microbes on Mars - but mistakenly killed them by boiling them alive, a media report said Saturday. Two spacecraft that landed on the Red Planet in 1976 are now thought to have detected microbes in Martian soil. But scientists at the time failed to spot the signs of life - and cooked the bugs at 160 degrees Centigrade during experiments, The Sun reported.