Great Blue Marble » Space-Earth

High-precision map of Milky Way’s magnetic fields charted

admin — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:15:15 +0000

Scientists have pooled their radio observations into a database, producing the highest precision map to date of the magnetic field within our own Milky Way galaxy.

Continued here:
High-precision map of Milky Way’s magnetic fields charted

Classic portrait of a barred spiral galaxy

elegant — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:24:24 +0000

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, which is found in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a similar barred spiral, and the study of galaxies such as NGC 1073 helps astronomers learn more about our celestial home.

Go here to read the rest:
Classic portrait of a barred spiral galaxy

Surface of Mars an unlikely place for life after 600-million-year drought, say scientists

creative — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:20:20 +0000

Mars may have been arid for more than 600 million years, making it too hostile for any life to survive on the planet’s surface, according to researchers who have been carrying out the painstaking task of analyzing individual particles of Martian soil.

Read the original here:
Surface of Mars an unlikely place for life after 600-million-year drought, say scientists

Stellar astrophysics: The discovery of deceleration

publisher — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:14:14 +0000

Pulsars are among the most exotic celestial bodies known. They have diameters of about 20 kilometres, but at the same time roughly the mass of our sun. A sugar-cube sized piece of its ultra-compact matter on Earth would weigh hundreds of millions of tons. A sub-class of them, known as millisecond pulsars, spin up to several hundred times per second around their own axes. Previous studies reached the paradoxical conclusion that some millisecond pulsars are older than the universe itself.

Go here to read the rest:
Stellar astrophysics: The discovery of deceleration

New super-Earth detected within the habitable zone of a nearby cool star

elegant — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:14:14 +0000

Sientists have discovered a potentially habitable super-Earth orbiting a nearby star. The star is a member of a triple star system and has a different makeup than our Sun, being relatively lacking in metallic elements. This discovery demonstrates that habitable planets could form in a greater variety of environments than previously believed.

Go here to see the original:
New super-Earth detected within the habitable zone of a nearby cool star

Hubble zooms in on a magnified galaxy

elegant — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:08:08 +0000

Astronomers aimed Hubble at one of the most striking examples of gravitational lensing, a nearly 90-degree arc of light in the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623. Hubble’s view of the distant background galaxy, which lies nearly 10 billion light-years away, is significantly more detailed than could ever be achieved without the help of the gravitational lens.

See more here:
Hubble zooms in on a magnified galaxy

Do black holes help stars form?

creative — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:43:43 +0000

The center of just about every galaxy is thought to host a black hole, some with masses of thousands of millions of Suns and consequently strong gravitational pulls that disrupt material around them. They had been thought to hinder the birth of stars, but now astronomers studying the nearby galaxy Centaurus A have found quite the opposite: a black hole that seems to be helping stars to form.

The rest is here:
Do black holes help stars form?

NASA mission returns first video from moon’s far side

publisher — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:21:21 +0000

A camera aboard one of NASA’s twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the moon. MoonKAM, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, will be used by students nationwide to select lunar images for study.

Go here to see the original:
NASA mission returns first video from moon’s far side

Sun delivered curveball of powerful radiation at Earth

elegant — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:24:24 +0000

A potent follow-up solar flare, which occurred Jan. 17, 2012, just days after the Sun launched the biggest coronal mass ejection seen in nearly a decade, delivered a powerful radiation punch to Earth’s magnetic field despite the fact that it was aimed away from our planet.

View post:
Sun delivered curveball of powerful radiation at Earth

Scientists help define structure of exoplanets

creative — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Using models similar to those used in weapons research, scientists may soon know more about exoplanets, those objects beyond the realm of our solar system. Astronomers have come up with new methods for deriving and testing the equation of state of matter in exoplanets and figured out the mass-radius and mass-pressure relations for materials relevant to planetary interiors.

View original post here:
Scientists help define structure of exoplanets