The Sky Tonight

January 21, 2013

NASA's IRIS Spacecraft Is Fully Integrated
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jan 21, 2013
NASA's next Small Explorer (SMEX) mission to study the little-understood lower levels of the sun's atmosphere has been fully integrated and final testing is underway. Scheduled to launch in April 2013, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) will make use of high-resolution images, data and advanced computer models to unravel how matter, light, and energy move from the sun's 6,000 K (10,240 F / 5,727 C) surface to its million K (1.8 million F / 999,700 C) outer atmosphere, the corona. Suc ... read more

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Titan Gets a Dune "Makeover" Titan's siblings must be jealous. While most of Saturn's moons display their ancient faces pockmarked by thousands of craters, Titan - Saturn's largest moon - may look much younger than it really is ... more		Comet of the Century? Out near the orbit of Jupiter, a faint speck of light is moving through the black of space. At first glance it doesn't look like much, no brighter than a thousand distant stars speckling the velvet ... more		Light From The Darkness An evocative new image from ESO shows a dark cloud where new stars are forming, along with a cluster of brilliant stars that have already emerged from their dusty stellar nursery. The new picture wa ... more
				Dynamic, dark energy in an accelerating universe It was cosmology that drew Irene Sendra from Valencia to the Basque Country. Cosmology also gave her the chance to collaborate with one of the winners of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics on one of t ... more		Jupiter Dances with the Moon on January 21st Stargazers in the Americas have an extraordinary opportunity on the night of Monday, January 21, 2013. Jupiter, the second-brightest planet, will appear less than a finger-width from the Moon throug ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

New Sunspots Producing Space Weather On Jan. 13, 2013, at 2:24 a.m. EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME. Not to be confused with a solar flare, a CME is a solar phenomenon that can send solar partic ... more		Russian scientists get first ice samples from Antarctic Lake Vostok Russian scientists have obtained first ice samples from Lake Vostok, a huge body of liquid water buried under the Antarctic ice. The scientists presume that the ice from the lake may have special ph ... more		EU 'must respond' to Russia's 'hybrid warfare': von der Leyen Russia says missile strike kills three in Belgorod region: governor Trump unlikely to win Nobel Peace Prize, but who will?		Laser sends Mona Lisa into space NASA scientists say they beamed an image of the Mona Lisa to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, in a test of communicating with a satellite using a laser. ... more
				US, Europe team up for moon fly-by The US and European space agencies announced a new partnership Wednesday pairing a European cargo module with NASA's Orion space capsule, which aims to take astronauts into deep space. ... more		Russia to Launch Lunar Mission in 2015 Russia will launch a robotic lunar station in 2015, Federal Space Agency Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin said on Tuesday. Luna-Glob will lift off from the Vostochny space port in Russia's Fa ... more

Solar systems for home and business installations

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Herschel intercepts asteroid Apophis ESA's Herschel space observatory made new observations of asteroid Apophis as it approached Earth this weekend. The data shows the asteroid to be bigger than first estimated, and less reflective. Ca ... more		US, Europe team up for moon fly-by The US and European space agencies on Wednesday announced a new partnership pairing a European cargo module with NASA's Orion space capsule, which aims to take astronauts into deep space. ... more		No peace: Trump's smoldering Nobel obsession Virtual Jesus? People of faith divided as AI enters religion New species of poisonous frog discovered in Amazon; Snakebite surge as Bangladesh hit by floods		Hubble Views a Dwarf Galaxy The constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear) is home to Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy. Messier 101 is one of the biggest and brightest spiral galaxies in the night sky. Like the Milky Way, Me ... more
				NASA's SDO Has Plenty of Content for Ultra HD TVs A new kind of television made headlines at the 2013 annual Consumer Electronics Show in early January, 2013 - Ultra High Definition TV. With four times as many pixels as a current high definition (H ... more		Neon lights up exploding stars An international team of nuclear astrophysicists has shed new light on the explosive stellar events known as novae. These dramatic explosions are driven by nuclear processes and make previously unse ... more

The PI's Perspective: The Seven-Year Itch

New Horizons Gets a New Year's Workout

Halfway Between Uranus and Neptune, New Horizons Cruises On

Russian scientists get first ice samples from Antarctic Lake Vostok

Life possible on extrasolar moons

Biologists unlock "black box" to underground world

Earth-size planets common in galaxy

NASA's Hubble Reveals Rogue Planetary Orbit For Fomalhaut B

NASA, ESA Telescopes Find Evidence for Asteroid Belt Around Vega

Choosing the right people to go to Mars

ChemCam follows the 'Yellowknife Road' to Martian wet area

US scientists find evidence of ancient Martian lake

	Nearby dwarf galaxy and possible protogalaxy discovered Peering deep into the dim edges of a distorted pinwheel galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear), astronomers at Case Western Reserve University and their colleagues have discovered a ... more		Notre Dame astronomers find massive supply of gas around modern galaxies Galaxies have a voracious appetite for fuel - in this case, fresh gas - but astronomers have had difficulty finding the pristine gas that should be falling onto galaxies. Now, scientists have provid ... more		Life possible on extrasolar moons In their search for habitable worlds, astronomers have started to consider exomoons, or those likely orbiting planets outside the solar system. In a new study, a pair of researchers has found that e ... more		A Jumble of Exotic Stars This new infrared image from ESO's VISTA telescope shows the globular cluster 47 Tucanae in striking detail. This cluster contains millions of stars, and there are many nestled at its core that are ... more

Gold tops $4,000 for first time as traders pile into safe haven

Tesla shares fall on doubts that latest autos will boost sales

In Simandou mountains, Guinea prepares to cash in on iron ore

Cloudy Mystery Bursts From Milkyway Center		Do Pockmarks on the Moon Hold the Key to Our Origins		Russian astronomers discover new huge comet		New Chandra Movie Features Neutron Star Action		Radio telescopes give clues to structure, history of Milky Way
The Supernova That Cried Wolf		First "Bone" of the Milky Way Identified		Adaptive Optics Brings Remarkable Details To Stellar Nursery		Sofia Spots Recent Starburst In The Milky Way Galaxy'S Center		Dark Energy Alternatives to Einstein Are Running Out of Room

Solar Variability and Terrestrial Climate

Cluster Mission Indicates Turbulent Eddies May Warm the Solar Wind

Testing Einstein's E=mc2 in Outer Space

The farthest supernova yet for measuring cosmic history

Earth-size planets common in galaxy

Astronomers spot biggest structure in Universe

Cassini Suggests Icing On A Lake

NASA Telescopes See Weather Patterns in Brown Dwarf

UT Arlington researchers try new approach for simulating supernovas

News from the world of quantum physics: A non-causal quantum eraser

From the Amazon rainforest to human body cells: Quantifying stability

Kepler Gets a Little Help From Its Friends

Herschel intercepts asteroid Apophis

Rogue asteroid a fifth bigger than thought: space agency

Asteroid Impact Delivered Carbon To Giant Asteroid Vesta

Detecting dusty clouds and stars in our galaxy in a new way

NASA, ESA Telescopes Find Evidence for Asteroid Belt Around Vega

NASA's NuStar Catches Black Holes In Galaxy Web

Massive outburst in neighbor galaxy surprises astronomers

NASA's Hubble Reveals Rogue Planetary Orbit For Fomalhaut B

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