The Sky Tonight

October 19, 2014

Mars Odyssey Orbiter Watches Comet Fly Near
Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 20, 2014
The longest-lived robot ever sent to Mars came through its latest challenge in good health, reporting home on schedule after sheltering behind Mars from possible comet dust. NASA's Mars Odyssey was out of communications with Earth, as planned, while conducting observations of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring on Sunday, Oct. 19, as the comet flew near Mars. The comet sped within about 88,000 miles (139,500 kilometers) of Mars, equivalent to about one-third of the distance between Earth and Earth's moo ... read more

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MAVEN Studies Passing Comet and Its Effects NASA's newest orbiter at Mars, MAVEN, took precautions to avoid harm from a dust-spewing comet that flew near Mars today and is studying the flyby's effects on the Red Planet's atmosphere. The ... more		Cosmic jets of young stars formed by magnetic fields Astrophysical jets are counted among our Universe's most spectacular phenomena: From the centers of black holes, quasars, or protostars, these rays of matter sometimes protrude several light years i ... more		Curious signal hints at dark matter Space scientists at the University of Leicester have detected a curious signal in the X-ray sky - one that provides a tantalising insight into the nature of mysterious Dark Matter. The Leicester tea ... more
				Probing the past Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have made what may be the most reliable distance measurement yet of an object that existed in the Universe's formative years. The galaxy is one ... more		Hubble Finds Extremely Distant Galaxy through Cosmic Magnifying Glass Peering through a giant cosmic magnifying glass, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a tiny, faint galaxy - one of the farthest galaxies ever seen. The diminutive object is estimated to be mo ... more

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Discovery of the Benesov meteorites 20 years after the bolide event Astronomy and Astrophysics is publishing the spectacular discovery of meteorite fragments 20 years after the corresponding bolide was seen in the skies of the Czech Republic. This discovery was made ... more		Construction secrets of a galactic metropolis Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the Universe held together by gravity but their formation is not well understood. The Spiderweb Galaxy (formally known as MRC 1138-262 [1]) and its surroun ... more		India signs $7 bn deal for 97 domestically made fighter jets France doubles down on threat to build future fighter jet alone US approves $1.2 bn missile sale to Germany		First Evidence of a Hydrogen-deficient Supernova Progenitor A group of researchers led by Melina Bersten of Kavli IPMU recently presented a model that provides the first characterization of the progenitor for a hydrogen-deficient supernova. Their model predi ... more
				Milky Way Ransacks Nearby Dwarf Galaxies Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, along with data from other large radio telescopes, have discovered that our nearest galactic neighbor ... more		Inside the Milky Way Is matter falling into the massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way or being ejected from it? No one knows for sure, but a UC Santa Barbara astrophysicist is searching for an answer. Carl G ... more

Startup in the Land of the Rising Sun; A Japanese Solar Venture - by Bradley L. Bartz

Wobbling of a Saturn moon hints at what lies beneath Using instruments aboard the Cassini spacecraft to measure the wobbles of Mimas, the closest of Saturn's regular moons, a Cornell University astronomer publishing in Science, Oct. 17, has inferred t ... more		Messenger Images Ice Near Mercury's North Pole NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft has provided the first optical images of ice and other frozen volatile materials within permanently shadow ... more		Simulations of Exoplanet Formation May Help Inform Search for Extraterrestrial Life Ancient hot springs reveal how microbes thrived before Earth gained oxygen Framework proposed to study planetary scale impact of life		Tiny "Nanoflares" Might Heat the Sun's Corona Why is the Sun's million-degree corona, or outermost atmosphere, so much hotter than the Sun's surface? This question has baffled astronomers for decades. Today, a team led by Paola Testa of the Har ... more
NASA Spacecraft Provides New Information About Sun's Atmosphere NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) has provided scientists with five new findings into how the sun's atmosphere, or corona, is heated far hotter than its surface, what causes the su ... more		Microbes in deep-sea rocks eat methane, lots of it Most methane is buried deep in the ground. Some of it, however, bubbles up to escape, and that's good news for methane-loving microbes living in rocks that gather along the ocean's floor near methane sea vents, munching away on the colorless, odorless assembly of hydrocarbons. ... more		Rare 'baby rattle' molecules reveal new quantum properties of H2O and H2 The experiments were carried out on endofullerenes, molecules of C60 into which smaller molecules of Hydrogen (H2) had been inserted. The results, published in Physical Review Letters, represent the ... more		Rare comet fly-by of Mars on Sunday A fast-moving comet is about to fly by Mars for a one-in-a-million-year encounter with the Red Planet, photographed and documented by a flurry of spacecraft, NASA said. ... more

	Getting To Know Super-Earths "If you have a coin and flip it just once, what does that tell you about the odds of heads versus tails?" asks Heather Knutson, assistant professor of planetary science at Caltech. "It tells you alm ... more		ESA confirms the primary landing site for Rosetta ESA has given the green light for its Rosetta mission to deliver its lander, Philae, to the primary site on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 12 November, in the first-ever attempt at a soft touchdown on ... more

Uranium enrichment: Why Iran refuses to step back

Redwire to Deliver Solar Array Wings for Axiom Station's First Module

Germany's Merz rejects claims he is slowing green shift

Astronomers Spot Faraway Uranus-Like Planet		Rosetta Selflessly Beams Back Comet Selfie		Slow-Growing Galaxies Offer Window to Early Universe		Dead star shines on		Getting sharp images from dull detectors
Europe gives green light for comet landing site		Leaky, Star-Forming Galaxies Help Understanding The Universe		Hubble Catches a Dusty Spiral in Virgo		Measurements on Cl-36 samples refute decay rate on distance between Earth and Sun		Alternative Earths Team To Join NASA Astrobiology Institute

Russian Luna-25 Mission to Cost Billions

New Batch of Lunar Soil to be Delivered to Earth in 2023-2025

NASA Mission Finds Widespread Evidence of Young Lunar Volcanism

China's ailing moon rover weakening

Moons Can Help Planets Remain Stable Long Enough for Life to Form

Russia to make Moon exploration core part of space program

Zooming in on 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Researchers: Volcanoes on the moon recently active

NASA Prepares its Science Fleet for Oct. 19 Mars Comet Encounter

NuSTAR Telescope Discovers Shockingly Bright Dead Star

First space weather forecast center opens in Britain

NASA's Hubble Maps the Temperature and Water Vapor on an Extreme Exoplanet

Failing was fun: Japan Nobel winner

New subatomic particle sheds light on fundamental force of nature

A Warm Dark Matter Search Using XMASS

UA Planetary Scientists, Japanese to Trade Hard-Rock Stories

CU-Boulder-led team study origins and evolution of life in universe

Hungry black hole eats faster than thought possible

Hubble project maps temperature, water vapor on wild exoplanet

Dark matter half what we thought

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