The Sky Tonight

March 18, 2013

Sunset Comet
Huntsville AL (SPX) Mar 18, 2013
March 15, 2013: For a comet, visiting the sun is risky business. Fierce solar heat vaporizes gases long frozen in the fragile nucleus, breaking up some comets and completely destroying others. That's why astronomers weren't sure what would happen in early March when Comet Pan-STARRS, a first-time visitor to the inner solar system, dipped inside the orbit of Mercury. On March 10th, NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft watched as the comet made its closest approach to the sun only 28 million miles away. At th ... read more

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Distant planetary system is a super-sized solar system A team of astronomers, including Quinn Konopacky of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, has made the most detailed examination yet of the atmosphere of a Jupi ... more		NASA's Swift, Chandra Explore a Youthful 'Star Wreck' While performing an extensive X-ray survey of our galaxy's central regions, NASA's Swift satellite has uncovered the previously unknown remains of a shattered star. Designated G306.3-0.9 after the c ... more		Earth-Directed Coronal Mass Ejection From the Sun On March 15, 2013, at 2:54 a.m. EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME), a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space and can reach ... more
				Scientists probe 'hot spots' on Jupiter Scientists say they have new clues about a phenomenon on Jupiter dubbed "hot spots," cloudless patches providing a window deep into the planet's atmosphere. ... more		'Bizarre Bacteria' in Lake Vostok Study Likely a Contaminant Last week, reports began to emerge that Russian scientists had discovered a previously unknown species of bacteria in samples of lake water from one of Antarctica's most famous subglacial lakes. Wor ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Analysis brings Higgs confirmation closer The new particle detected by the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland last summer is looking more and more like the long-sought Higgs boson, scientists report. ... more		Russian meteor million of years old The meteor that exploded over Russia last month probably broke off an asteroid and collided with another space body millions of years ago, a scientist says. ... 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		China sets moon mission re-entry test China says it will conduct re-entry tests before 2015 of a spacecraft to be used in a mission to have a lunar explorer probe bring lunar soil samples to Earth. ... more
				Fastest camera may film atomic motion British researchers say they are working on a movie camera so fast it will be able to record processes taking place inside atoms and molecules. ... more		Bursts of Star Formation in the Early Universe Galaxies have been experiencing vigorous bursts of star formation from much earlier in cosmic history than previously thought, according to new observations by a Caltech-led team. These so-cal ... more

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CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

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ALMA exposes hidden star factories in the early universe Some of the brightest galaxies in the universe - infant galaxies that churned out tens of thousands of stars each year at the dawn of the universe - evolved much sooner and in greater numbers than p ... more		Extremely rare triple quasar found For only the second time in history, a team of scientists--including Carnegie's Michele Fumagalli--have discovered an extremely rare triple quasar system. Their work is published by Monthly Notices ... 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		Earth-sized planets in habitable zones are more common than previously thought The number of potentially habitable planets is greater than previously thought, according to a new analysis by a Penn State researcher, and some of those planets are likely lurking around nearby sta ... more
				Astronomers Observe Planets Around Another Star Like Never Before Thanks to a new high-tech gadget, astronomers have observed four planets orbiting a star relatively close to the sun in unprecedented detail, revealing the roughly ten-Jupiter-mass planets to be amo ... more		ALMA rewrites history of Universe's stellar baby boom Observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) show that the most vigorous bursts of star birth in the cosmos took place much earlier than previously thought. The results ... more

'Vulcan' wins Pluto moon name vote

Public to vote on names for Pluto moons

The PI's Perspective: The Seven-Year Itch

'Bizarre Bacteria' in Lake Vostok Study Likely a Contaminant

Home toxic home

Dispute over Antarctic 'unidentified' life

Distant planetary system is a super-sized solar system

The Great Exoplanet Debate

Earth-sized planets in habitable zones are more common than previously thought

Panorama From NASA Mars Rover Shows Mount Sharp

Opportunity Departing South Soon

Particles and Fields Package Integrated on Upcoming Mars-Bound Spacecraft

	'Nuisance' data lead to surprising star-birth discovery When a batch of bright cosmic objects first appeared in maps in 2008 made with data from the South Pole Telescope, astronomers at the University of Chicago's Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics ... more		The Great Exoplanet Debate At the 2012 Astrobiology Science Conference, Astrobiology Magazine hosted a plenary session titled: "Expanding the Habitable Zone. The Hunt for Exoplanets Now and Into the Future." Originally formul ... more		Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project Seeks Public Support To Retrieve Apollo Era Moon Images The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is seeking support from the public as it continues its efforts to recover and enhance Moon images from the 1960s using modern technology. The L ... more		Herschel gets to the bottom of black hole jets Astronomers using ESA's Herschel space observatory have detected emission from the base of black-hole jets for the first time. While studying the black-hole binary system GX 339-4 in a multi-wavelen ... 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

ALMA finds 'monster' starburst galaxies in the early universe		Southampton scientist investigates Russian meteor		Soccer Balls in Interstellar Space		Early Universe bred 'starburst' mega-galaxies: study		Long Awaited, Comet PanSTARRS Now Glows in the Twilight
Home toxic home		Lunar impacts created seas of molten rock		The mercury rises for BepiColombo		Dispute over Antarctic 'unidentified' life		Astronomers Conduct First Remote Reconnaissance of Another Solar System

Distance to nearest galaxy measured

Planetary Data System Releases MESSENGER Data from Third Mercury Solar Day

Comet PANSTARRS Rises to the Occasion Mid-March

Rhea Rev 183 Raw Preview

Solar Wind Energy Source Discovered

Russian satellite hit by remnants of destroyed Chinese spacecraft

How quantum physics democratised music

Measuring the universe more accurately than ever before

Probing Extreme Matter Through Observations Of Neutron Stars

Cassini Makes Last Close Flyby of Saturnian Moon Rhea

Hubble Finds Birth Certificate of Oldest Known Star

Pan-STARRS Finds a "Lost" Supernova

CSI: Milky Way

The dynamic of Spain's population follows the maximum entropy principle

Russia admits no new life form found in Antarctic lake

Earth to get another asteroid viewing

The future of ion traps

How to Thrive in Battery Acid and Among Toxic Metals

Waves Generated by Russian Meteor Recorded Crossing the US

A Naked-Eye Comet Invites Itself To The March Sky, 2013

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