The Sky Tonight

March 12, 2015

Rocky grains stir theories of life on Saturn moon
Paris (AFP) March 11, 2015
Grains of rock spewed into deep space suggest a small moon of Saturn has hydrothermal vents, boosting theories it may harbour microbial life, scientists said Wednesday. Reporting in the journal Nature, astrophysicists in the United States offered a solution to a decade-old mystery over dust observed streaming from Saturn's rings. The grains are disgorged from a mineral-rich, balmy sea beneath the planet's ice-crusted moon Enceladus, they suggested. It is the first indication of ongoing hydro ... read more

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New dwarf galaxies discovered in orbit around the Milky Way A team of astronomers from the University of Cambridge have identified nine new dwarf satellites orbiting the Milky Way, the largest number ever discovered at once. The findings, from newly-released ... more		Billionaire Teams Up with NASA to Mine the Moon Another player in the field of commercial space travel, a California-based company just made a major stride toward the creation of the first commercial robotic spacecraft to be sent to the moon. It' ... more		Scientists Will Try to Contact the Comet Lander on March 12 Scientists from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) will make the first attempt to contact the stranded comet lander Philae on Thursday Mar. 12. "The first attempt will take place already this week, o ... more
				Gamma rays from dwarf galaxy may point to dark matter A newly discovered dwarf galaxy orbiting our own Milky Way has offered up a surprise - it appears to be radiating gamma rays, according to an analysis by physicists at Carnegie Mellon, Brown, and Ca ... more		Milky Way isn't a flat disk, it's corrugated According to a new study by a team of international astronomers, the Milky Way's galactic disk resembles the undulating ripples seen after a pebble is tossed into a pond. In other words, it's not flat - it's corrugated, like a steel roof. ... more

Human 2 Mars Conference Mat 5-7 2015 - Washington DC

Nuclear Decommissioning Conference Europe May 2015

Cosmic dust discs withstand hellfire A team of scientists led by astronomers at the University of Bonn discovered an unusual phenomenon in the centre of the Milky Way: They detected about 20 rotating dust and gas discs in each cluster ... more		Comet mission in bid to contact dormant Philae probe Ground controllers will open a communications line Thursday with a robot lab perched on a comet zipping through space, hoping for signs it is alive, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Wednesday. ... 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		Rare dwarf galaxy candidates found in Dark Energy Survey data Scientists on two continents have independently discovered a set of celestial objects that seem to belong to the rare category of dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting our home galaxy, the Milky Way. ... more
				Latest MESSENGER data includes new targeted mosaics of Mercury NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS) has released data collected from the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission during its 37th through 42nd months in orbit ... more		China Gets One Step Closer to Completing its Ambitious Lunar Mission China successfully tested unmanned docking on the lunar orbit this week to determine whether key technology planned to be used in its Chang'e-5 mission to the Moon was working, according to the Stat ... more

Carina Nebula survey reveals details of star formation A new Rice University-led survey of one of the most active star-forming regions in the galactic neighborhood is helping astronomers better understand the processes that may have contributed to the f ... more		Electrons in slow motion A process that is too fast to be measured and analysed. Yet a group of international scientists did not lose heart and conceived a sort of highly sophisticated moviola film-editing system, which all ... 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		'Habitable' planet GJ 581d previously dismissed as noise probably does exist The planet candidate was spotted using a spectrometer which measures the 'wobble', small changes in the wavelength of light emitted by a star, caused as a planet orbits it. In 2014 researchers revis ... more
Particle jets reveal the secrets of the most exotic state of matter Shortly following the Big Bang, the Universe was filled with a chaotic primordial soup of quarks and gluons, particles which are now trapped inside of protons and neutrons. Study of this quark-gluon ... more		Physicists propose new classification of charge density waves LSU Professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy Ward Plummer and Jiandi Zhang, in collaboration with their colleagues from the Institute of Physics, Beijing, China, have published a paper ... more		Scientists: Nearby Earth-like planet isn't just 'noise' Astronomers are having a war of words across the Atlantic over the existence - or not - of the first exoplanet ever discovered in a star's habitable zone, the nearby GJ581d. ... more		Dawn: We Have Arrived at Ceres Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres has been known as a planet, then as an asteroid, and later as a dwarf planet. Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Daw ... more

	Breakthrough in particle control creates special half-vortex rotation A breakthrough in the control of a type of particle known as the polariton has created a highly specialised form of rotation. Researchers at the Universities of Strathclyde and Pittsburgh, and ... more		Exorings on the Horizon Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the University of Antioquia (Medellin-Colombia), have devised a novel method for identifying rings around extrasolar planets (exo ... 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

Ceres' mysterious existence has long puzzled scientists		Fastest Star in Our Galaxy Propelled by a Thermonuclear Supernova		Planet 'Reared' by Four Parent Stars		CU students probe magnetic reconnection with MMS tools		First scientific publication from data collected at NSLS-II
Subaru Telescope Observes Rapid Changes in a Comet's Plasma Tail		NASA's Chandra Observatory Finds Cosmic Showers Halt Galaxy Growth		Bright lights on dwarf planet perplex NASA as probe nears		Pennies reveal new insights on the nature of randomness		Galactic 'rain' could be key to star formation

Comet flyby: OSIRIS catches glimpse of Rosetta's shadow

NASA space probe 'Dawn' enters orbit of dwarf planet

Far from home: Wayward cluster is both tiny and distant

UGR scientists provide new data on the nature of dark matter

An explosive quartet

Why isn't the universe as bright as it should be?

Astronomers see star explode 4 times

ESA experts assess risk from exploded satellite

The first ever photograph of light as a particle and a wave

OSIRIS-REx Mission Completes System Integration Review

OSIRIS catches glimpse of Rosetta's shadow

NASA-Funded Study Finds Two Solar Wind Jets in the Heliosphere

Taiwan snubs Alibaba funding pledge

Could Ionized Gas Do A Better Job of Sterilizing Spacecraft

An Old-Looking Galaxy in a Young Universe

Debris Fills Orbit as US Satellite Explodes

Living on the Edge: Stars Found Far from Galaxy Center

Astronomers Find Dust in the Early Universe

ALMA and VLT Probe Surprisingly Dusty and Evolved Galaxy

NASA Spacecraft Nears Historic Dwarf Planet Arrival

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