The Sky Tonight

January 14, 2015

NameExoWorlds contest opens
Paris, France (SPX) Jan 14, 2015
The first ever contest allowing members of the public to name ExoWorlds begins its first round today, offering the registered clubs and non-profit organisations the chance to nominate their favourite systems to take through to the next rounds. As previously announced, the IAU is organising a worldwide contest to give popular names to selected exoplanets along with their host stars, among a list of hundreds of well-characterized exoplanets it has offered for public naming. Today the IAU offic ... read more

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Last Chance: Mercury Crater-Naming Contest Ends January 15 The MESSENGER Education and Public Outreach (EPO) Team is reminding interested parties that the competition to name five impact craters on Mercury closes on January 15, 2015. The contest, open to ev ... more		Service module of China's lunar orbiter enters 127-minute orbit The service module of China's unmanned test lunar orbiter entered a 127-minute orbit on Tuesday after three orbital transfers since Sunday. To decelerate the craft enough for it enter its targ ... more		Unusual Light Signal Yields Clues About Elusive Black Hole Merger The central regions of many glittering galaxies, our own Milky Way included, harbor cores of impenetrable darkness-black holes with masses equivalent to millions, or even billions, of suns. What is ... more
				New catalyst process uses light, not metal, for rapid polymerization A team of chemistry and materials science experts from University of California, Santa Barbara and The Dow Chemical Company has created a novel way to overcome one of the major hurdles preventing th ... more		Service Module of Chinese Probe Enters Lunar Orbit The service module of China's unmanned test lunar spacecraft successfully entered orbit in Sunday after slowing down, the Beijing Aerospace Control Center reported. According to instruction, t ... more

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Dawn of a strange new world NASA's Dawn mission is closing in on a mysterious, unknown world in the asteroid belt. The dwarf planet Ceres named after the Roman goddess of agriculture awaits to unlock its secrets. So far, we've ... more		Photonic booms may help illuminate astronomical secrets If you sweep a laser pointer across the Moon fast enough, you can create spots that actually move faster than light. Anyone can do it. At a meeting, this past week, of the American Astronomica ... more		EU states to hold talks on 'drone wall' to protect bloc Denmark military intel fails to identify source of drone flights Lithuania eases rules on shooting down drones		Hubble Gazes at R Sculptoris and its Hidden Companion This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the region around a star known as R Sculptoris, a red giant located 1,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Sculptor. Recent obser ... more
				Map of mysterious molecules sheds light on old puzzle By analyzing the light of hundreds of thousands of celestial objects, Johns Hopkins astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have created a unique map of enigmatic molecules in our galax ... more		Amateur astronomers capture comet Lovejoy on camera Comet Lovejoy was at its brightest on January 7 and 8, but it will remain visible to the naked eye - provided the weather cooperates - through the weekend. ... more

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

See comet Lovejoy with the naked eye this weekend Comet Lovejoy - or more officially, C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy - is named for the Australian amateur astronomer who spotted the glowing green ball just last year. Terry Lovejoy spied the comet through his eight-inch telescope in his backyard. ... more		Machines Teach Astronomers About Stars Astronomers are enlisting the help of machines to sort through thousands of stars in our galaxy and learn their sizes, compositions and other basic traits. The research is part of the growing field ... more		NASA ISRO radar satellite beams first Earth images from space Morocco High Atlas whistle language strives for survival China warns Papua New Guinea over Australian defence deal		Space Debris Expert Warns About Dangers of Orbital Junk The emerging problem of floating space junk becomes more and more evident and bothersome. Spacecraft and satellites are currently subject to high-speed impacts by more than 19,000 trackable objects, ... more
Map of Mysterious Molecules Sheds New Light on Century-old Puzzle By analyzing the light of hundreds of thousands of celestial objects, astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have created a unique map of enigmatic molecules in our galaxy that are res ... more		Disappearance of a Cosmic Spinning Top Scientists measured the space-time warp in the gravity of a binary star and determined the mass of a neutron star - just before it disappeared. "Our result is important because weighing stars ... more		Novel vision of the death of massive stars An international consortium, in which the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Ikerbasque and CSIC are participating, has published in a single article a compendium of data obtained after the ... more		New light shed on electron spin flips Researchers from Berlin Joint EPR Lab at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and University of Washington derived a new set of equations that allows for calculating electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) transi ... more

	Scientists Pinpoint Saturn With Exquisite Accuracy Scientists have paired NASA's Cassini spacecraft with the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio-telescope system to pinpoint the position of Saturn and its family of mo ... more		Will the Real Monster Black Hole Please Stand Up? A new high-energy X-ray image from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has pinpointed the true monster of a galactic mashup. The image shows two colliding galaxies, collectively ... more

JUNO begins decade-long mission to probe neutrino mysteries

SFL Missions to Deliver Spacecraft Buses for HawkEye 360 RF Signal Detection Expansion

Voyager debuts first space based multi cloud region to advance orbital data processing

Rosetta in 2015		CfA: Eight New Planets Found in "Goldilocks" Zone		Comet Lovejoy Glows Brightest During Mid-January		Planet-hunting satellite observes supermassive black hole		Unusual Light Signal Hints at Distant Black Hole Merger
Flashes from faster-than-light spots unveil astronomical secrets		Juno on its way to unveil Jupiter's mysteries		More accurate Saturn positioning helps improve astro navigation		Where Did All The Stars Go		"Assassin" Targets Supernovae in Our Neighborhood

A New, Public View of the Sky

Andromeda Hints at More Violent History than Milky Way

SDSS: Sloan Survey Opens New Public View of the Sky

New technology enables ultra-fast steering and shaping of light beams

Andromeda On Screen In HD

Kepler Marks 1,000th Exoplanet Discovery

'Iron Sun' is not a rock band, but a key to how stars transmit energy

Gemini Planet Imager produces stunning observations in its first year

Volunteer 'Disk Detectives' Classify Possible Planetary Habitats

Astronomer Detects Record-Breaking Black Hole Outburst

NASA closer than ever to finding Earth's 'twin'

Eight new planets found in 'Goldilocks' zone

Chinese spacecraft to return to moon's orbit

Chandra Detects Record-Breaking Outburst From Milky Way's Black Hole

Hubble Discovers That Milky Way Core Drives Wind At 2 Million Miles Per Hour

Philae lander still missing on comet

Galactic Herding: New Image Brings Galaxy Diversity To Life

Hubble Goes High Def To Revisit The Iconic Pillars Of Creation

Smashing Results About Our Nearby Galactic Neighbors

Acoustic levitation made simple

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