The Sky Tonight

October 17, 2013

The active Sun boosts Titan's outer atmosphere
Paris (ESA) Oct 17, 2013
The NASA-ESA-ASI Cassini spacecraft has been observing the Saturn system, including the giant satellite Titan, for more than 9 years. A detailed analysis of Cassini data has now confirmed predictions that the density of Titan's ionosphere is directly linked to the 11 year cycle of solar activity. All planets and satellites with atmospheres possess an ionosphere, a region in the upper atmosphere which is dominated by ionised (electrically charged) particles - electrons and ions. These ionospheres a ... read more

Previous Issues

Oct 16

Oct 15

Oct 14

Oct 13

Oct 12

Astronomers find clues to decades-long coronal heating mystery Drs. Michael Hahn and Daniel Wolf Savin, research scientists at Columbia University's Astrophysics Laboratory in New York, NY, found evidence that magnetic waves in a polar coronal hole contain enou ... more		Astronomer see misaligned planets in distant system data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered a distant planetary system featuring multiple planets orbiting at a severe tilt to their host star. ... more		Gravitational waves help understand black-hole weight gain Supermassive black holes: every large galaxy's got one. But here's a real conundrum: how did they grow so big? A paper in the latest issue of Science pits the front-running ideas about the growth of ... more
				Chelyabinsk meteorite fragment weighing almost 600 kg lifted from Lake Chebarkul Moscow (Voice of Russia) Oct 18, 2013 A giant fragment of the Chelyabinsk meteorite was lifted from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul near the city of Chelyabinsk in the Russian Urals Mountains on Wedne ... more		Finding alien worlds on Earth Have you ever wondered which places on Earth most resemble other planets? For some of us, imagining the landscape of other worlds might just be for fun, but scientists and engineers wonder about wha ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Comet ISON Appears Intact A new image of the sunward plunging Comet ISON suggests that the comet is intact despite some predictions that the fragile icy nucleus might disintegrate as the Sun warms it. The comet will pass clo ... more		Spacecraft images of asteroid reinforce telescope observations NASA scientists say a spacecraft's close-up view of an asteroid can work with ground-based telescopes to clarify our understanding of a solar system object. ... more		Denmark closes airspace to civilian drones amid rise in sightings Top diplomats of North Korea, China agree to oppose 'hegemonism' What is the high seas treaty?		British engineers hope to reboot 50-year-old computer Engineers in Britain said they are working to reboot a 50-year-old computer nicknamed Flossie, one of the oldest surviving mass-produced computers. ... more
				Two new cosmic explosions unveiled in sky survey analysis Astronomers say software analysis of sky surveys created by telescopes in California has allowed them to link a supernova to the star from which it exploded. ... more		Biggest star is ripping itself apart - astronomer The biggest known star in the cosmos is in its death throes and will eventually explode, astronomers said on Wednesday. ... more

Space Situational Awareness Conference 2013

Solar systems for home and business

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Russia pulls huge 'Chelyabinsk meteor chunk' from lake Russian divers Wednesday pulled from a murky lake in the Urals a half-tonne suspected meteorite said to have been part of a meteor whose ground-shaking shockwave hurt 1,200 people in February. ... more		Rosetta: 100 days to wake-up ESA's comet-chasing mission Rosetta will wake up in 100 days' time from deep-space hibernation to reach the destination it has been cruising towards for a decade. Comets are the primitive buil ... more		The first animals on Earth may have been sea sponges, study suggests Wildfire-induced thunderstorms recreated in Earth system models for first time Fengyun satellite strengthens China global weather forecasting capacity		Comet ISON Details Emerge as it Races Toward the Sun Scientists are unraveling more information on Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) as it continues on its journey toward the Sun. Comet C/ISON will skim 730,000 miles above the Sun's surface on Nov. 28 and has th ... more
				Telescopes Large and Small Team Up to Study Triple Asteroid 87 Sylvia Combining observations from the world's largest telescopes with small telescopes used by amateur astronomers, a team of astronomers discovered that the large main-belt asteroid (87) Sylvia has a com ... more		Water discovered in remnants of extrasolar rocky world orbiting white dwarf Astrophysicists have found the first evidence of a water-rich rocky planetary body outside our solar system in its shattered remains orbiting a white dwarf. A new study by scientists at the Un ... more

SwRI study finds that Pluto satellites' orbital ballet may hint of long-ago collisions

Archival Hubble Images Reveal Neptune's "Lost" Inner Moon

New Horizons - Late in Cruise, and a Binary Ahoy

Finding alien worlds on Earth

LSU Researchers Discover How Microbes Survive in Freezing Conditions

Methane seeps of the deep sea: A bacteria feast for lithodid crabs

Astronomer see misaligned planets in distant system

Kepler Finds First Signs of Other Earths

Water discovered in remnants of extrasolar rocky world orbiting white dwarf

Russia to make another attempt to bring back Mars moon material

Curiosity rover finds proof of Mars origin of meteorites

Phobos-Grunt-2: Russia to probe Martian moon by 2022

	Blurring the lines between stars and planets Astronomers including Niall Deacon of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) captured an image of an unusual free-floating planet. As the object has no host star, it can be observed and exami ... more		Kepler Finds First Signs of Other Earths A new analysis of observations from the Kepler spacecraft reveals what may be the first earth-sized planets with earthlike temperatures found orbiting sunlike stars. Until now, Kepler's nearly ... more		Quantum particles find safety in numbers LMU researchers have uncovered a novel effect that, in principle, offers a means of stabilizing quantum systems against decoherence. The discovery could represent a major step forward for quantum in ... more		Scientists prove Heisenberg's intuition correct An international team of scientists has provided proof of a key feature of quantum physics - Heisenberg's error-disturbance relation - more than 80 years after it was first suggested. One of t ... more

NASA ISRO radar satellite beams first Earth images from space

India plans mega-dam to counter China water fears

Breakthrough in UAV swarm intelligence as SRI redefines topology mapping

LSU Researchers Discover How Microbes Survive in Freezing Conditions		Watery asteroid discovered in dying star points to habitable exoplanets		European 'big bang' space telescope to be switched off		Approaching Earth flyby to slingshot Juno to Jupiter		Quantum computers: Trust is good, proof is better
Controllers prepare to awaken comet hunter from deep-space sleep		A close look at the Toby Jug Nebula		Scientists generate first map of clouds on an exoplanet		Methane seeps of the deep sea: A bacteria feast for lithodid crabs		Space 'graveyard' reveals bits of an Earth-like planet

Diamond 'super-earth' may not be quite as precious

Evidence for a new nuclear 'magic number'

Comet ISON's chances of surviving close brush with the Sun

Soft shells and strange star clusters

NASA's moon landing remembered as a promise of a 'future which never happened'

First ever evidence of a comet striking Earth

Search for alien life more complicated than thought, scientists say

Lonely planet without a star discovered wandering our galaxy

First-ever comet material discovered on Earth: scientists

Englert And Higgs Awarded Nobel Prize In Physics For 2013

Recent Study Reduces Casimir Force to Lowest Recorded Level

Louisiana Tech physicists aid in new findings of international research team

Russia could build manned lunar base

Researchers Find that Bright Nearby Double Star Fomalhaut Is Actually a Triple

Asteroid near-miss reported by Russian scientists

Do black holes have hair

NASA Space Telescopes Find Patchy Clouds On Exotic World

First HiRISE Images of Comet ISON

Cassini Finds Ingredient of Household Plastic in Space

SUNRISE Offers New Insight on Sun's Atmosphere

Free Newsletters - Space - Defense - Environment - Energy

Buy Advertising

Media Advertising Kit

Editorial & Other Enquiries

Privacy statement

The contents herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2013 - SpaceDaily. AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy statement