Tag: Space telescope

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.

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