The Sky Tonight

October 27, 2014

European Scientists Discover Smell of a Comet
Paris (ESA) Oct 27, 2014
Scientists at the European Space Agency have discovered the smell of a comet: rotten eggs, urine and formaldehyde. In their blog the scientists commented, "If you could smell the comet, you would probably wish that you hadn't," and added that these chemicals were also mixed with the aromas of alcohol and vinegar, to create a pungent cocktail. The molecules involved include hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, methanol and sulphur dioxide, and scientists have been 'sniffing the fumes ... read more

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Close Encounters: Comet Siding Spring Seen Next to Mars NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has produced a unique composite image of comet Siding Spring as it made its never-before-seen close passage of a comet by Mars. Siding Spring, officially designat ... more		NASA's SDO Observes Largest Sunspot of the Solar Cycle On Oct. 18, 2014, a sunspot rotated over the left side of the sun, and soon grew to be the largest active region seen in the current solar cycle, which began in 2008. Currently, the sunspot is ... more		MAVEN Ultraviolet Image of Comet Siding Spring's Hydrogen Coma NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft obtained this ultraviolet image of hydrogen surrounding comet Siding Spring on Friday, Oct. 17, two days before the comet's closest a ... more
				Illusions in the Cosmic Clouds Pareidolia is the psychological phenomenon where people see recognizable shapes in clouds, rock formations, or otherwise unrelated objects or data. There are many examples of this phenomenon on Eart ... more		Lucky Star Escapes Black Hole With Minor Damage Astronomers have gotten the closest look yet at what happens when a black hole takes a bite out of a star-and the star lives to tell the tale. We may think of black holes as swallowing entire ... more

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Cooling with molecules An international team of scientists have become the first ever researchers to successfully reach temperatures below minus 272.15 degrees Celsius - only just above absolute zero - using magnetic mole ... more		Galactic wheel of life shines in infrared It might look like a spoked wheel or even a "Chakram" weapon wielded by warriors like "Xena," from the fictional TV show, but this ringed galaxy is actually a vast place of stellar life. A newly rel ... 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		New window on the early universe Using two world-class supercomputers, the researchers were able to demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach by simulating the formation of a massive galaxy at the dawn of cosmic time. The ALM ... more
				NASA opens library of cosmic audio to the public American space agency NASA has made available to the public over 60 audio samples recorded on various manned and unmanned space missions. ... more		Largest sunspot in 20 years facing planet Earth Sunspot region AR2192 on the solar surface is currently both massive and active, scientists with NASA say. So big, in fact, that the sunspot is visible - with a properly protected eye - from the Earth's surface. ... more

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

Seeking 'absolute zero', copper cube gets chillingly close An Italian lab has cooled a cubic metre of copper to within a tiny fraction of "absolute zero", setting a world record, the National Nuclear Physics Institute said Tuesday. ... more		Two families of comets found around nearby star Beta Pictoris is a young star located about 63 light-years from the Sun. It is only about 20 million years old and is surrounded by a huge disc of material - a very active young planetary system whe ... 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		Organic molecules in Titan's atmosphere are intriguingly skewed While studying the atmosphere on Saturn's moon Titan, scientists discovered intriguing zones of organic molecules unexpectedly shifted away from its north and south poles. These misaligned features ... more
NASA uses ultra-black nano-coating for solar coronagraph An emerging super-black nanotechnology that is to be tested for the first time this fall on the International Space Station will be applied to a complex, 3-D component critical for suppressing stray ... more		New lunar mission to test Chang'e-5 technology China will launch a new lunar mission this week to test technology likely to be used in Chang'e-5, a future lunar probe with the ability to return to Earth. The experimental spacecraft launche ... more		Next Chinese mission to moon will return to Earth This week China will launch a new lunar orbiter, which, in contrast with previous space probes, will return to Earth after orbiting the Moon, China's official Xinhua news agency reports. Ye Pe ... more		NASA-led study sees Titan glowing at dusk and dawn New maps of Saturn's moon Titan reveal large patches of trace gases shining brightly near the north and south poles. These regions are curiously shifted off the poles, to the east or west, so that d ... more

	Suomi team ward off recent space debris threat While space debris was the uncontrolled adversary in the award-winning space thriller film "Gravity," space debris, also known as "space junk," is an ongoing real-life concern for teams managing sat ... more		Experiment provides route to macroscopic high-mass superpositions University of Southampton scientists have designed a new experiment to test the foundations of quantum mechanics at the large scale. Standard quantum theory places no limit on particle size an ... 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

'Cloud' lifts Microsoft earnings above expectations		NASA's Fermi Satellite Finds Hints of Starquakes in Magnetar 'Storm'		Partial solar eclipse to cast a shadow over the sun Thursday		POLARBEAR detects B-modes in the cosmic microwave background		Cosmic rays threaten future deep-space astronaut missions
POLARBEAR seeks cosmic answers in microwave polarization		Big Black Holes Can Block New Stars		Mars Orbiter Image Shows Comet Nucleus is Small		Hubble Finds Extremely Distant Galaxy through Cosmic Magnifying Glass		In a first, astronomers map comets around another star

Mars Odyssey Orbiter Watches Comet Fly Near

'Twisted rope' clue to dangerous solar storms

Hubble uses gravity lense to find extremely distant galaxy

Sunset Solar Eclipse

Storms to obscure peaking meteor shower in the Northeast

1980s aircraft helps quantum technology take flight

Rare 'baby rattle' molecules reveal new quantum properties of H2O and H2

MAVEN Studies Passing Comet and Its Effects

Cosmic jets of young stars formed by magnetic fields

Curious signal hints at dark matter

Probing the past

Discovery of the Benesov meteorites 20 years after the bolide event

Construction secrets of a galactic metropolis

First Evidence of a Hydrogen-deficient Supernova Progenitor

New light on the 'split peak' of alcohols

Microbes in deep-sea rocks eat methane, lots of it

Rare comet fly-by of Mars on Sunday

Milky Way Ransacks Nearby Dwarf Galaxies

Inside the Milky Way

Wobbling of a Saturn moon hints at what lies beneath

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