The Sky Tonight

November 30, 2012

Spacecraft Finds New Evidence for Water Ice on Mercury
Washington DC (SPX) Nov 30, 2012
New observations by the MESSENGER spacecraft provide compelling support for the long-held hypothesis that Mercury harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials in its permanently shadowed polar craters. Three independent lines of evidence support this conclusion: the first measurements of excess hydrogen at Mercury's north pole with MESSENGER's Neutron Spectrometer, the first measurements of the reflectance of Mercury's polar deposits at near-infrared wavelengths with the Mercury ... read more

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Record-Setting X-ray Jet Discovered A jet of X-rays from a supermassive black hole 12.4 billion light years from Earth has been detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This is the most distant X-ray jet ever observed and gives a ... more		Asteroid dust from space To the naked eye there is nothing to see, and yet the small transparent container holds something never observed before. For the first time, scientists are studying asteroid dust collected by a spac ... more		Biggest Black Hole Blast Discovered Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) have discovered a quasar with the most energetic outflow ever seen, at least five times more powerful than any that have been observed to date. Qua ... more
				A Sky Full of Planets Think back to the last time you saw the Milky Way-that faint stripe of stars that thickens and brightens as you get farther from city lights. At least 200 billion stars fill the Milky Way, our galax ... more		Large ice deposits found on planet nearest the sun Scientists Thursday announced new evidence that Mercury, the planet orbiting nearest the Sun, hosts massive caches of ice and revealed new information on how water reached our solar system's inner planets. ... more

Do missing Jupiters mean massive comet belts? Using ESA's Herschel space observatory, astronomers have discovered vast belts of comets surrounding two nearby planetary systems known to host nothing larger than Earth-to-Neptune-mass worlds. The ... more		Nine Radar Images of Asteroid 2007 PA8 A collage shows nine radar images of near-Earth asteroid 2007 PA8 that were obtained between Oct. 31 and Nov. 13, 2012, with data collected by NASA's 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network ante ... more		Iran supends cooperation with UN nuclear watchdog Rocket Lab clears key design milestone for SDA low Earth orbit constellation US halting some shipments of military aid to Ukraine		Dust Grains Highlight the Path to Planet Formation An international team of researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the Japanese universities of Kobe, Hyogo, and Saitama used the Subaru Telescope to capture a clear ... more
				NASA Technologists Test 'Game-Changing' Data-Processing Technology It's a digital world. Or is it? NASA technologist Jonathan Pellish isn't convinced. In fact, he believes a computing technology of yesteryear could potentially revolutionize everything from autonomo ... more		Low-mass planets make good neighbours for debris discs Astronomers using ESA's Herschel Space Observatory have detected massive debris discs around 61 Virginis and Gliese 581, two nearby stars that are known to host super-Earth planets. The study ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Solar systems for home and business

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Galaxy-squatting black hole set for the record books Astronomers on Wednesday said they had found possibly the biggest black hole ever observed, a leviathan with a mass 17 billion times that of the Sun, brooding at the heart of a distant galaxy. ... more		The Diner at the Center of the Galaxy Deep in the heart of the spiral Milky Way galaxy, a hot vortex of matter swirls around a black hole more than a million times as massive as the sun. Many galaxies, perhaps all, contain such a "monst ... more		Relief coming for Europe after brutal heatwave Japan updates 'megaquake' preparedness plan Fiji says would not welcome China military presence in Pacific		NIST experiments challenge fundamental understanding of electromagnetism A cornerstone of physics may require a rethink if findings at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are confirmed. Recent experiments suggest that the most rigorous predictions b ... more
				Scientists from Bangalore and Mainz develop new methods for cooling of ions Among the most important techniques developed in atomic physics over the past few years are methods that enable the storage and cooling of atoms and ions at temperatures just above absolute zero. Sc ... more		Model sheds light on the chemistry that sparked the origin of life The question of how life began on a molecular level has been a longstanding problem in science. However, recent mathematical research sheds light on a possible mechanism by which life may have gotte ... more

Halfway Between Uranus and Neptune, New Horizons Cruises On

Dwarf planet Makemake lacks atmosphere

Keck Observations Bring Weather Of Uranus Into Sharp Focus

Model sheds light on the chemistry that sparked the origin of life

Life on Mars: NASA says 'hold on a minute!'

Curious About Life: Interview with Roger Summons

Low-mass planets make good neighbours for debris discs

Do missing Jupiters mean massive comet belts?

Dust Grains Highlight the Path to Planet Formation

Regional Dust Storm Dissipating

Opportunity Gets To Work On Interesting Rock

One Year After Launch, Curiosity Rover Busy on Mars

	Curious About Life: Interview with Roger Summons The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover has 10 science instruments, and each will be used in the coming weeks and months to help characterize the environment of Mars and determine if the planet ... more		Life on Mars: NASA says 'hold on a minute!' When a NASA official said last week data from an instrument on the Mars Curiosity rover suggested something "for the history books," many people thought an announcement was imminent of the possible discovery of life on the Red Planet - until the space agency began to seriously backpedal on the story. ... more		Solar Minimum; Solar Maximum The sun goes through a natural solar cycle approximately every 11 years. The cycle is marked by the increase and decrease of sunspots - visible as dark blemishes on the sun's surface, or photosphere ... more		Cassini Finds a Video Gamers' Paradise at Saturn You could call this "Pac-Man, the Sequel." Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted a second feature shaped like the 1980s video game icon in the Saturn system, this time on the moon Teth ... more

A New Alloy is Enabling Ultra-Stable Structures Needed for Exoplanet Discovery

GE Vernova and Fortum take steps toward Nordic deployment of BWRX-300 SMRs

Asian markets mixed as trade deal cut-off looms

Astronauts bring back new life		Magnesium oxide: From Earth to super-Earth		Spanish Scientists Design a Revolutionary Data Storage Device		Putting more cores to work in server farms		The Surprising Appeal of a Cloudy Eclipse
Failed explosions explain most peculiar supernovae		Can life emerge on planets around cooling stars?		University of Glasgow and Clyde Space set to put brakes on space junk problem		Planck discovers filament of hot gas linking two galaxy clusters		LLNL scientists assist in building detector to search for elusive dark matter material

Lifting The Ceiling On Terran Lifeforms

Born-again star foreshadows fate of Solar System

NASA Innovator of Year Hunts for Extraterrestrial Amino Acids

MESSENGER Finds Unusual Groups of Ridges and Troughs on Mercury

NASA's Kepler Wraps Prime Mission, Begins Extension

Lockheed Martin Expands Range Of Cloud Computing Services for UK Government

Satellite brought closer to Earth to work

Rare image of Super-Jupiter sheds light on planet formation

Astronomers Directly Image Massive Star's 'Super-Jupiter'

Leonid meteor shower comes around

Bug repellent for supercomputers proves effective

Keeneland Project Deploys New GPU Supercomputing System for the National Science Foundation

Hubble Traps Galactic Fireflies

SETI Institute Major Donation From Qualcomm Chief Scientist Franklin Antonio

Black Holes and How to Use Them

Rare meteorites created in violent celestial collision

Titan is also a green powerhouse

Instrument Will Observe Spiral Galaxy Near Big Dipper's Handle

A Reborn Planetary Nebula

BOSS Quasars Unveil a New Era in the Expansion History of the Universe

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