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NASA's IBEX grants first glimpse of Solar System's tail. Although never actually observed, it has long been assumed that as our Solar System careers through the Universe, the heliosphere, or solar bubble, has a tail trailing behind it like a comet's.

NASA's IBEX grants first glimpse of Solar System's tail

For the first time, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), which was launched back in 2008, has mapped the boundaries of this heliotail, revealing it is shaped like a four-leaf clover. View all While telescopes have managed to spot heliotails around other stars, it has been difficult to verify if our star has one. In 2003, Pioneer 10, which was launched in 1972, lost power before it was able to move into the tail, so there was no data with which to make a solid determination.

Since the particles in a tail of this sort don't shine, they can't be seen conventionally. By combining three years of imagery from IBEX, the research team mapped out the tail, which contains a combination of fast and slow moving particles. The clover shape does not align with the Solar System precisely. SpaceX Grasshopper tests sensor system, reaches record altitude of over 1,000 feet. The SpaceX Grashopper on its most recent test flight Back in June, SpaceX's Grasshopper reusable VTOL rocket was flown to an altitude of 325 meters (1,066 feet) before landing on its original launch pad.

SpaceX Grasshopper tests sensor system, reaches record altitude of over 1,000 feet

The video of the flight (taken by a hexacopter drone hovering at 325 meters) has now been made available. The purpose of the flight was to test Grasshopper's full navigation sensor suite with the F9-R closed loop control flight algorithms to improve the precision of its landings. Grasshopper is designed to develop and test the technologies needed to return a reusable rocket from space missions.

(There is no word on whether the cowboy mannequin was carried along by Grasshopper on this flight.) Over the long run, SpaceX is depending on its ability to develop a reusable rocket launching system to carry payloads to and from orbit. Test flying of the SpaceX Grasshopper v1.0 will continue at SpaceX's private flight facility, and is intended to reach to altitudes up to 11,500 feet (3.5 km). NASA Hubble Space Telescope Discovers New, Tiny Moon Orbiting Neptune.

First Posted: Jul 15, 2013 03:23 PM EDT Hydrocarbons are a huge part of our lives on Earth.

NASA Hubble Space Telescope Discovers New, Tiny Moon Orbiting Neptune

Yet the hydrocarbon methane (CH4), which is one of the most abundant molecules in the universe, has puzzled scientists for years. Now, scientists have learned a little bit more about this hydrocarbon, helping them understand the processes and conditions found in planetary interiors. (Photo : NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)) About 2.8 billion miles from the sun is Neptune, the dark, cold planet whipped by supersonic winds. Like Us on Facebook Neptune was once thought to only possess 13 moons, six of which were discovered by Voyager 2. In comparison to Triton, the newly discovered moon is tiny. "The moons and arcs orbit very quickly, so we had to devise a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system," said Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute, in a news release.

So how did they detect the moon? Beautiful Star Death Imaged in Spectacular Picture. First Posted: Jul 13, 2013 07:15 AM EDT When a star dies, it can sometimes go out in a spectacular way, creating lights and colors that are beautiful to see in pictures.

Beautiful Star Death Imaged in Spectacular Picture

Now, scientists have gotten a closer look at one of these dying stars, known as a planetary nebula. They've imaged NGC 2392, also known as the "Eskimo Nebula," in an effort to learn a bit more about these types of nebulas. Composite image of planetary nebula NGC 2392. (Photo : X-ray: NASA/CXC/IAA-CSIC/N. When a star dies, it can sometimes go out in a spectacular way, creating lights and colors that are beautiful to see in pictures.

Like Us on Facebook Planetary nebulas form when a star uses up all of the hydrogen in its core--something that our own Sun will experience in about five billion years. In order to more closely examine NGC 2392, researchers used X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope. So what did the researchers find? Hubble Watches Star Clusters on a Collision Course (08/16/2012) - Introduction. August 16, 2012: Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have caught two clusters full of massive stars that may be in the early stages of merging.

Hubble Watches Star Clusters on a Collision Course (08/16/2012) - Introduction

The 30 Doradus Nebula is 170,000 light-years from Earth. What at first was thought to be only one cluster in the core of the massive star-forming region 30 Doradus has been found to be a composite of two clusters that differ in age by about one million years. The entire 30 Doradus complex has been an active star-forming region for 25 million years, and it is currently unknown how much longer this region can continue creating new stars. Smaller systems that merge into larger ones could help to explain the origin of some of the largest known star clusters. The Hubble observations, made with the Wide Field Camera 3, were taken Oct. 20-27, 2009.