The Sky Tonight

February 24, 2013

Sweeping the Dust from a Cosmic Lobster
Munich, Germany (SPX) Feb 25, 2013
A new image from ESO's VISTA telescope captures a celestial landscape of glowing clouds of gas and tendrils of dust surrounding hot young stars. This infrared view reveals the stellar nursery known as NGC 6357 in a surprising new light. It was taken as part of a VISTA survey that is currently scanning the Milky Way in a bid to map our galaxy's structure and explain how it formed. Located around 8000 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion), NGC 6357 - sometimes nicknamed th ... read more

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Hubble Sees Cosmic "Flying V" of Merging Galaxies This large "flying V" is actually two distinct objects - a pair of interacting galaxies known as IC 2184. Both the galaxies are seen almost edge-on in the large, faint northern constellation of Came ... more		NASA's Fermi Proves Supernova Remnants Produce Cosmic Rays A new study using observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals the first clear-cut evidence the expanding debris of exploded stars produces some of the fastest-moving matter in t ... more		Cassini Still Going Strong Investigating Saturn's Moons NASA's longstanding Cassini mission to Saturn continues to provide scientists with exciting new insights on moons Titan and Enceladus as well as the planet's striking rings, Planetary Science Instit ... more
				Rare asteroid sporting 'tail' spotted Asteroids, unlike comets, are seldom seen sporting a tail as they orbit the sun, but Spanish astronomers say they've observed one of these rare exceptions. ... more		Kepler helps astronomers find tiny exo planet An international team of astronomers has used nearly three years of high precision data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft to make the first observations of a planet outside our solar system that's small ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Water On The Moon: It's Been There All Along Traces of water have been detected within the crystalline structure of mineral samples from the lunar highland upper crust obtained during the Apollo missions, according to a University of Michigan ... more		3-D Observations Of The Outflow From An Active Galactic Nucleus A Japanese team of astronomers, led by Toru Misawa (Shinshu University), has used the Subaru Telescope to observe a distant gravitationally-lensed quasar (Note 1) and probed an active galactic nucle ... more		Revolutionising the Skies: How Helsing's CA-1 Europa Drone Could Transform Autonomous Warfare Lockheed Martin Sikorsky unveils scalable Nomad drone family for autonomous long-range missions Firefly Aerospace to Acquire SciTec in $855M Deal Expanding National Security Portfolio		X-ray imaging on the attosecond timescale In the blink of an eye, more attoseconds have expired than the age of Earth measured in - minutes. A lot more. To be precise, an attosecond is one billionth of a billionth of a second. The att ... more
				NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Tiny Planet System NASA's Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun. The planets are located in a system call ... more		The quantum coin toss All unpredictability in the world around us, be it the outcome of a coin flip or the weather conditions a month from now, is a fundamentally quantum rather than classical phenomenon. This is t ... more

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A Simple View Of Gravity Does Not Fully Explain The Distribution Of Stars In Crowded Clusters Gravity remains the dominant force on large astronomical scales, but when it comes to stars in young star clusters the dynamics in these crowded environments cannot be simply explained by the pull o ... more		A cool discovery about the Sun's next-door twin ESA's Herschel space observatory has detected a cool layer in the atmosphere of Alpha Centauri A, the first time this has been seen in a star beyond our own Sun. The finding is not only important fo ... more		Deep-sea mining poses new threat to sharks, rays and ghost sharks Hydropower emerges as Southeast Asia's hidden force in driving down carbon emissions An Aussie tycoon bets billions on cleaning up iron ore giant		Comet Pan-Starrs Will Be Visible In Northern Hemisphere In March Comet Pan-STARRS C/2011 L4, discovered by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala in June 2011, is expected to become visible to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere in March. The comet is curre ... more
				Space likely for rare earths search, scientists say The quest for rare earths vital to some of modern life's most indispensable technologies may see mining robots jet to the stars within decades, a world-first conference in Australia was told Wednesday. ... more		Searching for the Solar System's Chemical Recipe By studying the origins of different isotope ratios among the elements that make up today's smorgasbord of planets, moons, comets, asteroids, and interplanetary ice and dust, Mark Thiemens and his c ... more

Public to vote on names for Pluto moons

The PI's Perspective: The Seven-Year Itch

New Horizons Gets a New Year's Workout

Scientists turn eyes toward Europa in search for life

Comet dust seeding life to Jupiter moons?

Telescopes Could Detect ET Life Signs Within 25 Years

NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Tiny Planet System

Kepler helps astronomers find tiny exo planet

Searching for a Pale Blue SPHERE in the Universe

NASA Rover Confirms First Drilled Mars Rock Sample

India plans mission to Mars in 2013

Rover finds gray rock beneath Red Planet's surface

	Searching for a Pale Blue SPHERE in the Universe The Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) is now searching for Earth-like worlds. The PHL maintains the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog (HEC) in which exoplanets discoveries are classified and compar ... more		NASA's SDO Shows A Little Rain On the Sun Eruptive events on the sun can be wildly different. Some come just with a solar flare, some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and some with complex ... more		Understanding the Magnetosphere Better Than Ever On Earth, scientists can observe weather patterns, and more importantly can predict them, through the use of tens of thousands of weather observatories scattered around the globe. Up in the space su ... more		Cassini Sheds Light On Cosmic Particle Accelerators During a chance encounter with an unusually strong blast of solar wind arriving at Saturn, the international Cassini spacecraft detected particles being accelerated to ultra-high energies, similar t ... more

Renewables overtake coal but growth slows: reports

OpenAI's Fidji Simo says AI investment frenzy 'new normal,' not bubble

Tokyo stocks hit new record as markets extend global rally

Acoustic-assisted magnetic information storage		Physicists discover key to ultra-stable bearings		First Three-Year LHC Running Period Reaches A Conclusion		Asteroid Steins' hidden gems		Russian Fireball Largest Ever Detected by CTBTO's Infrasound Sensors
Radar Movie of Asteroid 2012 DA14		Asteroid 2012 DA14 Speeds Away From Earth		The Russian Meteorite		Russia Meteor Not Linked to Asteroid Flyby		How Do We Know the Russian Meteor and 2012 DA14 Aren't Related?

Gaia Will Reveal Secrets of Ultra-Cool Dwarfs

A drop of ink on the luminous sky

Bern Simulation Helps Understand Origin Of Solar System

Accelerated protons confirm origin of cosmic rays

Rare Explosion May Have Created Our Galaxy's Youngest Black Hole

Scientists claim discovery of Russian meteorites

Scientists sense breakthroughs in dark-matter mystery

Russia halts search for meteorite in stricken region

Scientists turn eyes toward Europa in search for life

Stay away from meteorites, government tells Russians

Clues to the mysterious origin of cosmic rays

Cosmic ray mystery lifted in new findings

Asteroid whizzes safely past Earth

Telescopes Could Detect ET Life Signs Within 25 Years

Cosmic rays come from exploding stars

MOND used to predict key property in Andromeda's satellites

Getting the Right Spin on a Close-Passing Asteroid

Comet dust seeding life to Jupiter moons?

U.N. committee to discuss space weather

JPL to Lead U.S. Science Team for Dark Energy Mission

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