The Sky Tonight

January 10, 2014

NASA's SDO Sees Giant January Sunspots
Washington DC (SPX) Jan 10, 2014
An enormous sunspot, labeled AR1944, slipped into view over the sun's left horizon late on Jan. 1, 2014. The sunspot steadily moved toward the right, along with the rotation of the sun, and now sits almost dead center, as seen in the image above from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Sunspots are dark areas on the sun's surface that contain complex arrangements of strong magnetic fields that are constantly shifting. The largest dark spot in this configuration is approximately two Earths wide, and ... read more

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Recently Reactivated NASA Spacecraft Spots Its First New Asteroid NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft has spotted a never-before-seen asteroid - its first such discovery since coming out of hibernation last year. ... more		Surprising new class of 'hypervelocity stars' discovered escaping the galaxy An international team of astronomers has discovered a surprising new class of "hypervelocity stars" - solitary stars moving fast enough to escape the gravitational grasp of the Milky Way galaxy. ... more		New kind of planet or failed star? Astrophysicists discover category-defying celestial object An object discovered by astrophysicists at the University of Toronto nearly 500 light years away from the sun may challenge traditional understandings about how planets and stars form. The obj ... more
				NASA's Kepler Provides Insights on Enigmatic Planets More than three-quarters of the planet candidates discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft have sizes ranging from that of Earth to that of Neptune, which is nearly four times as big as Earth. Such pl ... more		Powerful Planet Finder Turns Its Eye to the Sky After nearly a decade of development, construction, and testing, the world's most advanced instrument for directly imaging and analyzing planets around other stars is pointing skyward and collecting ... more

SF State astronomers discover new planet in Pisces constellation A team led by SF State astronomer Stephen Kane has discovered a new giant planet located in a star system within the Pisces constellation. The planet, perhaps twice the mass of Jupiter, could help r ... more		Habitable zones around stars ten times wider than we thought Life on Earth-like planets can exist at least ten times farther away from their stars than previously thought, scientists found, putting in question our whole perspective on habitable zone distances ... 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?		U of Maryland undergraduates discover rare eclipsing double asteroid Students in a University of Maryland undergraduate astronomy class have made a rare discovery that wowed professional astronomers: a previously unstudied asteroid is actually a pair of asteroids tha ... more
				Research: Smaller exoplanets found to be covered in gas U.S. researchers say they were surprised to find a number of exoplanets in the Milky Way that are only a few times bigger than Earth but covered in gas. ... more		NASA: Planet-size storms may be roiling surface of brown dwarf stars Space telescope observations suggest swirling, turbulent clouds in planet-size storms may be ever-present on cool celestial orbs called brown dwarfs, NASA says. ... more

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U.S. undergraduates impress astronomers with asteroid discovery University of Maryland undergraduates have impressed professional astronomers by finding a rare pair of asteroids that orbit and regularly eclipse one another. ... more		Planet-hunting telescope camera returns first images of exoplanets U.S. astronomers say the world's most powerful exoplanet-hunting camera has turned it eye to the skies and returned its first images. ... 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		Supernova's super dust factory imaged with ALMA Galaxies can be remarkably dusty places and supernovas are thought to be a primary source of that dust, especially in the early Universe. Direct evidence of a supernova's dust-making capabilities, h ... more
				NASA Kepler Provides Insight About Enigmatic But Ubiquitous Planets, Five New Rocky Planets More than three-quarters of the planet candidates discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft have sizes ranging from that of Earth to that of Neptune, which is nearly four times as big as Earth. Such pl ... more		Does a Planet Need Life to Create Continents? If not for life, Earth may not have possessed the continents it does now, instead becoming a planet covered nearly entirely in ocean, researchers say. These new findings suggest that any continents ... more

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NASA's Kepler Provides Insights on Enigmatic Planets

Research: Smaller exoplanets found to be covered in gas

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	NASA's Fermi Makes First Gamma-ray Study of a Gravitational Lens An international team of astronomers, using NASA's Fermi observatory, has made the first-ever gamma-ray measurements of a gravitational lens, a kind of natural telescope formed when a rare cosmic al ... more		Newfound planet is Earth-mass but gassy An international team of astronomers has discovered the first Earth-mass planet that transits, or crosses in front of, its host star. KOI-314c is the lightest planet to have both its mass and physic ... more		Newly discovered three-star system to challenge Einstein's theory of General Relativity A newly discovered system of two white dwarf stars and a superdense pulsar-all packed within a space smaller than the Earth's orbit around the sun-is enabling astronomers to probe a range of cosmic ... more		ALMA Spots Supernova Dust Factory Striking new observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope capture, for the first time, the remains of a recent supernova brimming with freshly formed dust. If ... 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

Wake Up Yutu		Supernova remnant yields evidence of source of dusty galaxies		Earth appears to be an oddity, astronomers say		NASA's Hubble Sees Cloudy Super-Worlds With Chance for More Clouds		SciTechTalk: Particle physicists ready to go beyond the 'God particle'
Pulsar in stellar triple system makes unique gravitational laboratory		Another step towards understanding the quantum behaviour of cold atoms		Power boost for particle accelerator could unlock physics secrets		The First Discovered Asteroid of 2014 Collides With The Earth - An Update		Researchers use Hubble Telescope to reveal cloudy weather on alien world

Sun 'flips upside down' while reversing magnetic poles

Chang'e-3 satellite payload APXS obtained its first spectrum of lunar regolith

Two Solar Flares Say Goodbye 2013 and Welcome 2014

Russian Anti-Gravity Observation Satellite Delayed Until 2015

First Asteroid Discovered in 2014 Has Little Impact

Watch the 2014 Quadrantid Meteor Shower Live on Ustream

New Studies Give Strong Boost to Binary-Star Formation Theory

New computer memory can hold data 20 years without power

Dawn passes halfway mark to Ceres

Chang'e 3 Lander and Rover From Above

Birth of black hole kills the radio star

Hubble Eyes Galaxy as Flat as a Pancake

Russian dark energy satellite's launch pushed back to 2015

Starless Cloud Cores Reveal Why Some Stars Are Bigger Than Others

SDO Shows the Sun's Rainbow of Wavelengths

Britain's Met Office to begin offering space weather forecasts

China's moon rover "sleeps" through lunar night

Dwarf Planet Ceres - 'A Game Changer in the Solar System'

Scientific data lost at alarming rate

Electron 'antenna' tunes in to physics beyond Higgs

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