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News: October 2008
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Cassini’s imaging trick earned halloween treats from Enceladus
Following the success of the ‘skeet shoot’ imaging technique employed for the 11 August Enceladus fly-by, Cassini performed the same trick to obtain more high resolution images of the icy satellite this halloween.
FULL STORY updated 04 Nov |
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Rebooted Hubble scores a perfect 10
After numerous glitches with the software onboard Hubble, the world’s favourite space telescope is finally back online, and celebrates by capturing the perfect image.
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Phoenix in "precarious times" following power fault
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander tripped into safe mode yesterday in response to a low-power fault, and unexpectedly switched on to the ‘B-Side’ of its redundant electronics, shutting down one of its two batteries in the process.
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New mineral points to a wetter Mars
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has observed a new category of minerals spread across large regions of Mars that point towards prolonged periods of water covering the red planet as recently as two billion years ago.
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Falling power forces first Phoenix heater shut down
Engineers are gradually shutting down some of Phoenix’s instruments and heaters in an attempt to prolong its lifetime as the Martian summer rapidly fades away.
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Fireball captured by Canadian cameras
For the second time this year The University of Western Ontario’s Meteor Group has captured rare footage of a meteor streaking across the sky and possibly falling to the ground.
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Double asteroid belt in
Solar System clone
Spitzer observations have discerned two rocky asteroid belts and an icy outer ring surrounding our Sun’s doppelgänger Epsilon Eridani that could have been shaped by evolving planets.
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ESA gravity mission slips
to 2009
The launch of Europe’s Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) has slipped to February 2009 due to ongoing technical faults with its launcher.
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COROT sees sunquakes in other stars
The CNES/ESA Earth orbiting COROT satellite has applied the technique of seismology to the study of stellar interiors, probing the interiors of three stars beyond our own Sun for the first time.
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Thirty Meter Telescope awarded next generation of ‘noiseless’ detectors
A zero-noise detector is in store for the future Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) that will have a light-collecting power ten times that of the largest telescopes now in operation.
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Phoenix completes
soil delivery
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has finished scooping soil samples to deliver to its onboard laboratories, and is now preparing to analyse samples already obtained before the Sun completely sets on the mission.
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The stellar nursery with a massive heart
A new ESO image reveals the vast stellar nursery of Gum 29, which hosts a small cluster of stars bearing one of the most massive double star systems known to man.
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Rare impact craters revealed in Martian
polar terrain
New HiRISE images have revealed two rare sightings of impact craters in Mars’ northern polar regions.
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Martian moon Phobos a rubble pile?
New Mars Express observations of Martian moon Phobos suggest it could be a rubble pile rather than a single solid object, but questions remain as to where the material actually came from in the first place.
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Molten planets could point to exo-Earths
Earth-like planets may be easier to spot than planet-hunters originally thought, since their hot, molten surfaces may exist for tens of millions of years, presenting them as glowing beacons as they orbit their parent stars.
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Supermassive black holes common in early Universe
Observations of a spectacular collision of galaxies in the distant Universe have revealed that colossal black holes were present when galaxies were just beginning to form.
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Fermi discovers first pure gamma ray pulsar
The Fermi spacecraft’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) has discovered the first pure gamma ray-only stellar corpse, blinking at the Earth around three times a second, and providing new insight into how stars work.
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UK camera ready to eye
the Moon
A UK-built X-ray camera that will chart the mineral inventory of the Moon is set to launch into space on 22 October aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, India’s first mission to the Moon.
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New population of faint gamma-ray bursts
ESA’s Integral gamma ray observatory has detected several faint gamma-ray bursts, confirming the existence of an entirely new population of weak bursts.
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The truth about variable black holes
By studying the flickering light in the surroundings of two black holes, astronomers have discovered that magnetic fields play a crucial role in the way these galactic monsters consume matter.
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Dwarf leaders shepherd galaxy gas
Dwarf galaxies that formed rapidly during the reionisation and global heating epoch of the Universe a billion years after the big bang, allowed other dwarfs to form by shepherding gas that would otherwise have blown away, according to a new theory.
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First spacecraft to map edge of Solar System ready for launch
The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is go for launch on 19 October and will be the first NASA spacecraft to image and map the dynamic interactions occurring at the edge of the Solar System.
FULL STORY |
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Spitzer peers inside
Comet Holmes
Comet Holmes unexpectedly exploded in 2007, and new observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope only deepen the mystery as to why the comet put on such a show.
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The Great World Wide
Star Count
Get ready for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 by joining in with the Dark Skies Awareness cornerstone project The Great World Wide Star Count during the week 20 October to 3 November 2008.
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Outer Solar System
weather report
In three different reports, scientists unveil the seasons on Uranus, a giant cyclone on Saturn and the mechanism driving the powerful jet streams on all four gas giants. In a fourth report, the exotic weather experienced on Jupiter-like exoplanets is revealed.
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Seven surveys to serve up surprises
The Legacy Survey, an international study being undertaken with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii, is an ambitious project composed of seven separate surveys that aim to understand the entire Universe, right down to the smallest planetary system.
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Tidal heating could widen habitability zone
When looking for rocky planets that could support life in other solar systems, astronomers should consider looking outside the ‘Goldilock’s Zone’ of habitability, say scientists presenting their research at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting.
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Re-writing the cratering history of the Moon
In two separate reports planetary scientists have presented new insights into the cratering history of the Moon, and used small craters to help date the ages of geological features on Mars.
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VLT captures young stars
in detail
The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope array in Chile has used its interferometric mode to capture details of young stars in unprecedented detail, which could hope to end years of debate on the behaviour of matter in young stellar systems.
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The hunt is on for
exo-Earths
Observations of the Earth by Venus Express, and supercomputer simulations of dusty discs around Sunlike stars may provide new clues in the quest to detect Earth-sized exoplanets, a goal that could be realised within the next 15 years.
FULL STORY |
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New views of enigmatic Enceladus
On 9 October, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft successfully executed a daring dive through the icy plumes emanating from the tiger stripes in the south polar region of Saturn’s enigmatic moon Enceladus.
FULL STORY |
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Galactic collisions could halt star formation
High-speed collisions between galaxies could give them enough energy to stop their gas clouds condensing into stars, offering an alternative explanation to supermassive galactic black holes stripping away gas.
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Mars Odyssey enters new orbit for extended mission
NASA’s orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft has been given the go ahead for a third two-year extension of its mission to survey the red planet, making it the longest serving of six spacecraft currently studying Mars.
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A multi-wavelength portrait of stellar birth
By combining observations at different wavelengths from telescopes on the ground and in space, astronomers have taken a fresh look at the history of star formation in a galaxy residing in the Small Magellanic Cloud.
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Phoenix digs into darkness
As the Sun falls further and further below the horizon in northern hemisphere Mars, Phoenix continues to dig soil and deliver samples to its onboard laboratory for analysis.
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Cosmic eye peers into distant galaxy
Using a technique known as gravitational lensing to magnify a distant galaxy, astronomers have peered into the heart of a young star-forming region in the distant Universe as it appeared only two billion years after the big bang.
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Cassini prepares for double flyby of Enceladus
Tomorrow, 9 October, Cassini will make the closest approach yet of Enceladus at just 25 kilometres, with a follow-up look from 196 kilometres on 31 October.
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MESSENGER reveals more of Mercury’s secrets
The MESSENGER spacecraft successfully completed its second flyby of the innermost planet yesterday, unveiling another 30 percent of the planet’s surface in over 1,200 high resolution photos.
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Small asteroid burns up in Earth’s atmosphere
According to predictions, three metre wide asteroid 2008TC3 exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere at 0246 UT above northern Sudan this morning.
FULL STORY |
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Evolving galaxies shed gas and fireballs
Astronomers studying the Coma Cluster of galaxies have discovered that galactic collisions are powerful enough to strip a galaxy of its gas and fling star-forming fireballs out into space.
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COROT discovery stirs exoplanet classification rethink
COROT scientists have discovered the most massive planet-sized object closely orbiting its parent star yet, but there remains one question: is it really a planet or is it a failed star?
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Cloudy weather on failed star twins
A team of astronomers using one of the Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea has found evidence for cloudy weather on two failed stars.
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A deserted outer Solar System
After clocking up over 200 hours of observations as part of the Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey (TAOS) to map the distribution of small Kuiper Belt objects in the outer Solar System, astronomers have come up empty-handed.
FULL STORY |
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Spitzer sees supernova flashback
Spitzer scientists studying hot spots near the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant say they are light echoes that contain the memory of the blast’s very first moments.
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Landscaping the cosmos
The Hubble Heritage Project celebrates its 10th anniversary this month with a beautiful landscape image of the ‘hills’ and ‘valleys’ of gas and dust in the giant gaseous cavity of star-forming region NGC 3324.
FULL STORY |
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Sharpening up Jupiter
The sharpest ever view of Jupiter has been achieved by using a superior technique to remove atmospheric blur, revealing changes in Jupiter's smog-like haze as part of the planet's so-called global upheaval.
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Young galaxy’s magnetism surprises astronomers
Astronomers have made the first direct measurement of the magnetic
field in a young, distant galaxy, and found it to be a surprising 10 times stronger than that of our own Milky Way.
FULL STORY |
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Hubble’s ANGST reveals diversity of galaxies
To soften the blow of any Hubble angst resulting from the current software glitch, the science team have released the details of a survey of 14 million stars in 69 galaxies from the ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST), revealing the true diversity of galaxies, and reminding us just what Hubble is capable of.
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Hubble trouble
Just weeks before the Hubble repair mission was originally set to commence, a sudden anomaly with the space telescope’s data storage and transmission devices could see the mission pushed back to next year.
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Happy 50th Birthday NASA
On the first of October 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration began operation. Fifty years on and NASA has sent man to the Moon and spacecraft to all the major planets of our Solar System.
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