Wallpaper Videos See the universe come to life via animations, scientific visualizations, expert commentary, and more. Kepler Space Observatory | Alien Planets & Extraterrestrial Life Hunting down alien planets isn't just for professional astronomers anymore. Thousands of citizen scientists have been poring over data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which has so far detected 1,235 potential alien worlds. To date, the amateurs have flagged 50 candidate planets that the mission's sophisticated software may have missed, Time magazine reports. It's all part of a project called Planethunters.org, which enlists the discerning eyes of the masses to pick up patterns in mountains of data. "It really is the wisdom of the crowd," said lead project scientist Meg Schwamb of Yale, according to Time. Thousands of fresh eyes The $600 million Kepler space telescope, which launched in March 2009, finds alien planets by searching for tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet transits — or crosses in front of — it from Earth's perspective. Artist's concept of Kepler-10b, which was detected by NASA's Kepler mission. And that does happen. Happy for the help
Monster Galaxy Cluster 'El Gordo' Packs Mass of 2 Quadrillion Suns AUSTIN, Texas — The largest cluster of galaxies seen yet in the early universe, a giant that astronomers have dubbed "El Gordo," could one day reveal secrets about the invisible dark matter that fills the universe, researchers said. El Gordo — which means "the fat one" in Spanish — is officially known as ACT-CL J0102-4915 and "is located more than 7 billion light-years from Earth, at a time when the universe was half its current age," study co-author John Patrick Hughes at Rutgers University told SPACE.com. The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. The monster galaxy cluster has mass about 2 quadrillion (that's 2 followed by 15 zeroes) times that of the sun, making it "the most massive known cluster in the distant universe." A galaxy cluster behemoth Galaxy clusters form through mergers of smaller groups of galaxies. Dark energy seems to make up 73 percent of all the mass and energy in the universe, and is driving the accelerating expansion of the universe. El Gordo, a hot galaxy group
INTEGRAL The satellite was successfully launched on October 2002, the 17th. CNES was prime contractor for the SPI spectrometer, one of the two main instruments, in partnership with numerous French and foreign research laboratories. Since November 2002, the Integral Spectrometer and IBIS delivered their first images and first spectra. INTEGRAL results in some figures: Number of scientific publications on the 12th October 2010: 1397 (numbers by ESA) Scientific impact: between 1000 and 2000 scientific publications (estimation from the numbers of reference of publications recorded by ESA) Number of sources discovered by INTEGRAL on the 7th July 2010: more than 700 (CEA source, Jérôme Rodrigez) dont 20 objets de natures inconnues Number of revolution: 977 On October 2 2009, ESA's Science Programme Committee approved the extension of INTEGRAL mission operations until December 31 2012, subjected to a mid-term review in 2010.
Solar System, Solar System Information Our Cosmic Neighborhood From our small world we have gazed upon the cosmic ocean for thousands of years. Ancient astronomers observed points of light that appeared to move among the stars. They called these objects "planets," meaning wanderers, and named them after Roman deities—Jupiter, king of the gods; Mars, the god of war; Mercury, messenger of the gods; Venus, the goddes of love and beauty, and Saturn, father of Jupiter and god of agriculture. The stargazers also observed comets with sparkling tails, and meteors or shooting stars apparently falling from the sky. Since the invention of the telescope, three more planets have been discovered in our solar system: Uranus (1781), Neptune (1846), and, now downgraded to a dwarf planet, Pluto (1930). The four planets closest to the sun—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—are called the terrestrial planets because they have solid rocky surfaces. Nearly every planet—and some of the moons—has an atmosphere. Moons, Rings, and Magnetospheres
Integral Explore the high-energy Universe - competition results 31 May 2012 Students from across Europe have been selected as the winners of the ESA’s ‘Explore the high-energy Universe’ competition. Secondary school students were invited to choose from four projects relating to ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory in which they were challenged to Observe, Research, Design, or Build. To participate, students took on the roles of engineers, scientists, and astronomers to explore the extreme and ever-changing high-energy Universe, including black holes devouring matter, colossal explosions known as gamma-ray bursts, and supernova explosions. Since its launch in October 2002, Integral has been making ground-breaking observations of some of the most exotic and energetic processes in the Universe. Integral: gamma-ray observatory The students utilised similar tools and techniques used in real research. Project 1: Observe variable stars with your own telescope Winner: Ábel Ságodi, the Netherlands
Interactive 3D model of Solar System Planets and Night Sky The Heliosphere is Tilted - implications for the 'Galactic weather forecast'? | Press Releases Supersonic shock waves detected at the edge of the Solar System - a new study by European scientists clarifies conditions at our Earth's outermost shield against interstellar charged particles. The local interstellar cloudOur Solar System entered an interstellar cloud 10,000 years ago. Today it is speeding through this nebulosity at Mach 2 behind a supersonic shock wave - in much the same way that a Concorde crosses the Atlantic at supersonic speed. Since its formation 4.6 billion years ago our Solar System has encountered numerous interstellar clouds, knots, filaments, shells and bubbles of different sizes and contents on its path through the Milky Way. There is some chance that the Solar System will cross small dense clouds that have diameters up to 100 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. The heliosphereCharged particles from the Sun spiral out into space and form the solar wind. Notes The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international co-operation between NASA and ESA.
PLANCK Planck was designed to study the origin and evolution of the Universe in the submillimeter range of the electromagnetic spectrum. It will map the anisotropies, or small variations from place to place on the sky, of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which is an "afterglow" of the Big Bang which fills all of space and has a temperature of 2.73 K. Planck will make measurements with an angular resolution of about 5 arcminutes (which can be compared to the 13 arcminutes of its predecessor, WMAP) and a temperature sensitivity of about two parts per million. On November 19 2010, ESA's Science Program Committee approved an extension of Planck mission operations until December 31 2014, subjected to a mid-term review in 2012.