http://www.skynightly.com/index.html Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST en-us NASA's Dawn spacecraft has provided researchers with the first orbital analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta, yielding new insights into its creation and relation to the terrestrial planets and Earth's moon. Vesta now has been revealed as a special fossil of the early solar system with a more varied, diverse surface than originally thought. Scientists have confirmed a variety of ways Vesta ]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST So far, astrophysicists thought that super-massive black holes can only influence their immediate surroundings. A collaboration of scientists at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and in Canada and the US now discovered that diffuse gas in the universe can absorb luminous gamma-ray emission from black holes, heating it up strongly. This surprising result has important ]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST Observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to the best assessment yet of our solar system's population of potentially hazardous asteroids. The results reveal new information about their total numbers, origins and the possible dangers they may pose. Potentially hazardous asteroids, or PHAs, are a subset of the larger group of near-Earth asteroids. The PHAs ]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST Japanese scientists say they've broken the record for wireless data transmission, achieving a rate 20 times higher than the best commonly used WiFi standard. Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology focused on frequencies in the terahertz band, as consumers seeking high data rates have overwhelmed standard lower-frequency bands. Writing in Electronics Letters, the resea]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST After ten years of development, the new German solar telescope GREGOR will start operating at the Spanish Observatorio del Teide of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias on Tenerife. It is the largest solar telescope in Europe and number three worldwide. It will provide the German and the international community of solar physicists with new and better instrumentation which will enable them to]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST A strong laser beam can remove an electron from an atom - a process which takes place almost instantly. At the Vienna University of Technology, this phenomenon could now be studied with a time resolution of less than ten attoseconds (ten billionths of a billionth of a second). Scientists succeeded in watching an atom being ionized and a free electron being "born". These measurements yield ]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST Something strange is about to happen to the shadows beneath your feet. On Sunday, May 20th, the Moon will pass in front of the sun, transforming sunbeams across the Pacific side of Earth into fat crescents and thin rings of light. It's an annular solar eclipse, in which the Moon will cover as much as 94% of the sun. Hundreds of millions of people will be able to witness the event. The ecli]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST NASA wants humans to make contact with an asteroid up to three million miles away by the end of the next decade, something far beyond the scope of Earth-Moon space flight in 1969. Travelling at around 80,000 kmph around the Sun with almost non-existent gravity due to their small size, landing safely on these space rocks will present a significant challenge, the Telegraph reported. Am]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST At sunrise in some parts of China and Japan and by sunset in the western United States, a partial solar eclipse is set to slink across a narrow swath of the Earth on May 20 and 21. Depending on where people are in the eclipse's path, some may be able to witness an annular eclipse in which the moon blocks out all but a ring of the Sun's light. Others will see the Sun as a crescent, partia]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST Dust rings around distant stars, considered by many as "smoking gun" evidence of orbiting planets, can form on their own, U.S. research suggests. The finding is possible bad news for those who use the structures to guide them to stars in their search for distant planets, and may raise questions about the existence of a controversial candidate exoplanet. Sharply defined or elongat]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST The northern lights interfere with radio communications, GPS navigation and satellite communications. Researchers are now going to launch 20 satellites containing world class instruments from the University of Oslo to find out why. Satellites are becoming increasingly important in communications and navigation. This makes us more vulnerable to the northern lights, especially within offshore and ]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST People with clear skies across most of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico will experience a partial eclipse of the Sun late this Sunday afternoon (May 20, 2012). Only those near the Eastern Seaboard will miss out on this awesome cosmic event. And, if you happen to be in a swath of land running from Northern California to Texas, you'll also get a very special *kind* of partial eclipse: an annular]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST A partnership with the UK's Faulkes Telescope Project promises to boost the Agency's space hazards research while helping students to discover potentially dangerous space rocks. ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme is keeping watch over space hazards, including disruptive space weather, debris objects in Earth orbit and asteroids that pass close enough to cause concern. The as]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST There's nothing worse than a shonky pool table with an unseen groove or bump that sends your shot off course: a new study has found that the same goes at the nano-scale, where the "billiard balls" are tiny electrons moving across a "table" made of the semiconductor gallium arsenide. These tiny billiard tables are of interest towards the development of future computing technologies. In a re]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST Using state of the art computer simulations, a team of astronomers from the University of Bonn in Germany have found the first evidence that the way in which stars form depends on their birth environment. The team, based at the University of Bonn in Germany, publish their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Stars are thought to form in interstellar spa]]> Thu, 17 MAY 2012 14:55:29 AEST