Tag: astronomy

The Scoop on Earth 2.0

 

Image Source: Pixabay.com

Yesterday, July 24, 2015, NASA made a statement saying that they believe that the Kepler spacecraft may have found Earth’s bigger, older cousin. The Kepler spacecraft  is a space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. It was named after the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler and launched on March 7, 2009.

Earth 2.0 is known to NASA as Kepler-452b. Astronomers believe that Kepler-452b might be small and cool enough to host liquid water on its surface – and might therefore be hospitable to life. So far, Kepler-452b is the closest resemblance that astronomers have found to our home. According to BBC News “Kepler-452b, orbits a parent star which belongs to the same class as the Sun: it is just 4% more massive and 10% brighter. Kepler-452b takes 385 days to complete a full circuit of this star, so its orbital period is 5% longer than Earth’s.”

What do you think? Is Kepler-452b or Earth 2.0 a habitable place for life? Tell us your thoughts!

Asteroid 2004 BL86 Coming Close to Earth!

Get excited sky watchers! There is an asteroid that will be flying by very close to Earth tonight, January 26, 2015! Asteroid 2004 BL86 will come about 745,000 miles from Earth. That is equivalent to about 3 times as far away as the moon is from Earth. This event will not pose any threat to hitting our planet but it will give researchers a chance to observe a major asteroid up close! According to NASA, “Asteroid 2004 BL86 is big — about a third of a mile (a half-kilometer) in size. It will be the closest known asteroid this large to pass near Earth until 2027, when an asteroid called 1999 AN10 flies by.” The best chance at viewing this astronomical event will be from 8pm EST Monday until 1am EST on Tuesday, but it will not be observable by the naked eye. A telescope or binoculars may just do the trick however. OR if you don’t own any of that equipment, no worries! You can watch the event from the comfort of your own computer screen.

Here is the link to the 2004 BL86 asteroid event: http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/2014/12/06/potentially-hazardous-asteroid-357439-2004-bl86-close-encounter-online-event-26-jan-2015/

Pluto Gets A Fifth Moon!

 

Once upon a time, there were nine planets in the solar system.  Then astronomers decided to remove Pluto from the equation, describing the smallest and most distant planet in the solar system as something more like a moon and less like an actual planet.  Well, scientists are taking a second look at the lone planet, because Pluto seems to have more secrets than we’ve given it credit for.  The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a fifth moon orbiting around Pluto.

“The moons form a series of neatly nested orbits, a bit like Russian dolls,” said Mark Showalter, the leader of the SETI Institute team that found the images of the fifth moon.  ”This is a very tidy system, and what that means is, it’s an orbitally evolved system.  Literally there are shells where the orbits are stable.”

The moon, which hasn’t been named yet, was given the provisional name S/2012 (134340) 1, which has been shortened to P5.  Pluto already has four moons:  Charon, Hydra, Nix, and the unnamed P4.  Scientists are holding off naming the fourth and fifth moons of Pluto due to the upcoming New Horizons space probe mission, which has the potential to discover even more moons for Pluto.  After all, while the Hubble can see far away, there’s no better vantage point than getting nice and close.

Mickey Mouse Discovered on Mercury!

Mickey Mercury or Mercury Mouse?

The space probe Messenger has traveled far closer to the sun without being destroyed than most satellites probably could.  Its purpose is to study one of the strangest planets in the solar system, the Sun’s closest neighbor Mercury.  Part planet and part comet, Mercury has been a fascinating study for NASA scientists, and Messenger has managed to take over 100,000 images of the strange planet, but no image is stranger than this.  NASA’s Messenger satellite has captured an image of Mickey Mouse on the surface of Mercury.

NASA calls the shape an ”accumulation of craters over Mercury’s long geologic history,” but I think we all know differently.  Messenger is the first spacecraft to ever orbit the planet closest to the sun, and it had to specially designed to maintain its position on Mercury given the planet’s slow rotation status and the incredible amount of heat the satellite has to endure being so close to the sun.

Solar Storms Could Impact Earth’s Weather!

 

That white blotch in the upper left quadrant? That’s a Solar Death Storm.

It seems like not that long ago, Earth was facing down some major solar energy activity from the very ball of plasma that sustains life on our planet.  In fact, it was just at the end of January when some massive solar flares impacted Earth’s magnetic field,supercharging the aurora borealis, forcing planes to adjust their travel patterns, and generally making scientists nervous.  Well, time to get nervous scientists:  a pair of massive solar flares will be impacting earth within the next 24 hours.

“Super Tuesday? You bet!” said Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  ”It’s hitting us right in the nose.  By some measures this is the strongest one since December of 2006.”

The solar flare, an X5-4-class sun storm, is expected to cause no major problems, but due to the storm’s strength, people are already taking precautions with their communications systems and air travel routes.  The NOAA’s space weather scale has been set at an R3, which means special communication precautions have been taken, but Kunches expects the storm may peak at a G3/S4 level.  That means power surges may affect the power grid and that the astronauts on the ISS will have to take shelter from the radiation bombardment.

Earth Hit By Largest Solar Radiation Storm Since 2003!

Image Source: Pixabay.com

It’s been a long time since Earth was hit by a solar storm of the magnitude of the solar storm that hit Earth’s atmostphere over the weekend; according to the NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, the earth was hit by the largest solar storm since 2003 beginning on late Sunday night and stretching into Tuesday morning.  A solar storm is a combination of two events, solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).  Basically, it means the sun’s been burping radiation at our home planet.  Even if we don’t see it (and we usually don’t), it can do some crazy things to satellite communications and the like.

“Being hit by a CME does not automatically mean aurora,” said NASA solar physicist C. Alex Young, explaining why we all didn’t get another aurora borealis sighting. ”A CME has to be what we call ‘geo-effective.’  It must have enough mass, speed and magnetic field (including the orientation of the field) in order to disturb the magnetosphere sufficiently (to generate aurorae).”

The region responsible for this storm was AR 1402 (the AR stands for active region, meaning a place with a lot of bubbling sun activity).  Expect more such eruptions, not just from this area, but from the sun in general.  The year 2013 is slated to be a solar maximum year, meaning the sun is going to be very active and earth is going to be getting a nice tan thanks to all the solar energy.

Huge Asteroid Headed For Close Encounter With Earth

A huge asteroid will pass closer to Earth than the moon Tuesday, giving scientists a rare chance for study without having to go through the time and expense of launching a probe, officials said.

Earth’s close encounter with Asteroid 2005 YU 55 will occur at 6:28 p.m. EST Tuesday, as the space rock sails about 201,000 miles from the planet.

“It is the first time since 1976 that an object of this size has passed this closely to the Earth. It gives us a great — and rare — chance to study a near-Earth object like this,” astronomer Scott Fisher, a program director with the National Science Foundation, said Thursday during a Web chat with reporters.

The orbit and position of the asteroid, which is about 1,312 feet in diameter, is well known, added senior research scientist Don Yeomans, with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“There is no chance that this object will collide with the Earth or moon,” Yeomans said.

Thousands of amateur and professional astronomers are expected to track YU 55’s approach, which will be visible from the planet’s northern hemisphere. It will be too dim to be seen with the naked eye, however, and it will be moving too fast for viewing by the Hubble Space Telescope.

“The best time to observe it would be in the early evening on November 8 from the East Coast of the United States,” Yeomans said. “It is going to be very faint, even at its closest approach. You will need a decent-sized telescope to be able to actually see the object as it flies by.”

Scientists suspect YU 55 has been visiting Earth for thousands of years, but because gravitational tugs from the planets occasionally tweak its path, they cannot tell for sure how long the asteroid has been in its present orbit.

Track the asteroid, YU55, and track it’s journey as it passes by Earth on the NASA Asteroid & Comet Watch! 

Get Asteroid Fun Facts Here! 

 

 

NASA Finds 1200 New Exoplanets

 

While NASA continues to search for more rocky planets outside of the solar system, they’re also still searching for Earth-like planets here in our own backyard.  For example, Cygnus is one of our closest neighbors, from a galactic sense, and NASA has deployed the Kepler Space Telescope to study the Milky Way galaxy. As it turns out, the Kepler Space Telescope is pretty good; NASA has discovered 1200 rocky exoplanets in the constellation Cygnus, including 58 planets with Earth-like life-friendly orbits.

There’s only one problem:  now you have to tell which exoplanets are simply rocks and which are actual planets.

 

Kepler basically measures how many objects of a certain size cross in front of the face of the star.  Given Kepler has an accuracy rating of nearly 80 percent according to CalTech, it’s likely that most of these discoveries are actually planets, which means that Earth-like planet systems may be pretty common.

You can read more about the new discovery on CNN.com or click on the link below:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/02/nasa.kepler.planets/index.html?hpt=T2

Hubble Telescope Finds Most Distant Galaxy Visible From Earth

 

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured what astronomers are claiming is the oldest galaxy in the universe. Here’s some of what NASA’s Hubble website says about the discovery

“The farthest and one of the very earliest galaxies ever seen in the universe appears as a faint red blob in this ultra-deep–field exposure taken with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. This is the deepest infrared image taken of the universe. Based on the object’s color, astronomers believe it is 13.2 billion light-years away.

The dim object is a compact galaxy of blue stars that existed 480 million years after the Big Bang, only four percent of the universe’s current age. It is tiny and considered a building block of today’s giant galaxies. Over one hundred such mini-galaxies would be needed to make up our Milky Way galaxy.”

 

Think of that – the light from this object we’re seeing now took 13.2 billion years to reach our eyes. That’s mind-boggling. We’re actually looking back in time. Anyway, the study which appears in the journal Nature, was led by Rychard Bouwens at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, and Garth Illingworth, of the University of California, Santa Cruz. The tiny smudge of light will be further studied and confirmed when the infrared-optimized James Webb Space Telescope is up and running in 2014.

You can learn more about this story by clicking the link below:

http://www.space.com/10691-oldest-galaxy-discovered-hubble-space-telescope.html