The Sky Tonight

April 17, 2015

NASA-funded Study Explains Saturn's Epic Tantrums
Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 17, 2015
The long-standing mystery of why Saturn seethes with enormous storms every 30 years may have been solved by scientists working with data from NASA's Cassini mission. The tempests, which can grow into bright bands that encircle the entire planet, are on a natural timer that is reset by each subsequent storm, the researchers report. In 140 years of telescope observations, great storms have erupted on Saturn six times. Cassini and observers on Earth tracked the most recent of these storms from Decemb ... read more

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Dawn's Ceres Color Map Reveals Surface Diversity A new color map of dwarf planet Ceres, which NASA's Dawn spacecraft has been orbiting since March, reveals the diversity of the surface of this planetary body. Differences in morphology and color ac ... more		Manned Moon Flight Planned For 2030 The lunar flight program for 2028-2029 will be unmanned, but putting a man on the moon is scheduled for 2029-2030, the head of Russia's space agency said Tuesday. "We need to begin working now ... more		NASA Chief Scientist: We'll Find Proof of Alien Life by 2025 While scientists have long suspected that we may not be alone in the universe, they've never had concrete evidence. But top NASA officials say that may not be the case much longer. In less than a de ... more
				Altimeter Assists in MESSENGER's Low-Altitude Navigation As NASA's MESSENGER mission draws to a close, an on-board science instrument that mapped the surface of Mercury is helping the navigation team with the spacecraft's low-altitude passes. MESSEN ... more		Explaining Saturn's Great White Spots Every 20 to 30 years, Saturn's atmosphere roils with giant, planet-encircling thunderstorms that produce intense lightning and enormous cloud disturbances. The head of one of these storms - popularl ... more

Space Tech Expo - Design - Build - Test - Long Beach CA - May 19-21, 2015

The World's Largest Commercial Drone Conference and Expo - Sept 9 - Las Vegas

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

Hot and Stormy at High Altitudes on Exoplanet HD 189733b Studying the atmosphere of an exoplanet, Swiss astronomers derived a temperature profile with unprecedented precision. Their results are based on data collected with a relatively small ground-based ... more		A glass fiber that brings light to a standstill Light is an extremely useful tool for quantum communication, but it has one major disadvantage: it usually travels at the speed of light and cannot be kept in place. A team of scientists at the Vien ... more		Muon Space joins SHIELD missile defense effort with next generation space systems role BlackSky expands Gen-3 satellite intelligence contracts worldwide Stratoship alliance charts staged path for smallsat payloads		Scientists hold breath for comet lander to wake Europe's comet lander Philae has remained obstinately silent since a new bid was launched to communicate with it, mission chiefs said Tuesday, but chances for contact were improving daily. ... more
				Comet 67P springs magnetic surprise In a new twist in a landmark exploration, Europe's comet-chasing Rosetta mission has found that its target, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, has no magnetic field, scientists reported Tuesday. ... more		New clue sheds some light on mysterious 'dark matter' Scientists on Tuesday said they had found tantalising evidence suggesting "dark matter" - the mysterious substance believed to comprise most of the Universe's mass - may be more dynamic than thought. ... more

Army Network Modernization 2015 - Washington DC June 23-25

NASA Experiments With 'Building Blocks' of Life in Lab A group of scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are studying the origin of life on Earth, and they've made a major breakthrough, discovering that the building blo ... more		Combined effort for structural determination Combining powder diffraction data with electron crystallography can give us a clearer view of modulated structures. Electron crystallography has begun to be used routinely for solving otherwise intr ... more		Bats use sound flow to steer through cluttered habitats Sentinel 2A trials reveal unexpected night sensing capability Solar cycles seen in Antarctic fast ice history		Researchers design first all-photonic repeaters Imagine having your MRI results sent directly to your phone, with no concern over the security of your private health data. Or knowing your financial information was safe on a server halfway around ... more
Light in a spin Light must travel in a straight line and at a constant speed, or so the laws of nature suggest. Now, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg have demonstrated that laser l ... more		Quantum physics - hot and cold at the same time Temperature is a very useful physical quantity. It allows us to make a simple statistical statement about the energy of particles swirling around on complicated paths without having to know the spec ... more		Relativistic heavy ion collider smashes record for polarized proton luminosity The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, a powerful particle accelerator for nuclear physics research at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, just shattered its own record for ... more		Launch of Europe's solar probe postponed to Oct 2018 Solar Orbiter, a probe designed to observe the Sun in unprecedented detail, will be launched in October 2018, around 15 months later than planned, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Tuesday. ... more

	Unprecedented Life Story of Milky Way Galaxy Evolution Picture, if you will, the ultimate universal home movie if not parental keepsake and life story: our Milky Way Galaxy, starting out as but a wee collection of young stars some 12 billion years ago, ... more		Demonstration of ultra-cold neutrino experiment a success An international team of nuclear physicists announced the first scientific results from the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) experiment. CUORE, located at the INFN Gran Sass ... more

It started with a cat: How 100 years of quantum weirdness powers today's tech

Quantum transport method reads open quantum states

Heavy impurities reveal new link in quantum matter theory

'Dwarf planet' Ceres spawns giant mystery		On another planet: the weird ways of water		Cosmic debris: Study looks inside the universe's most powerful explosions		Accelerating universe? Not so fast		Correction Maneuver Puts MESSENGER Right on Course
Citizen Scientists Discover Yellow "Space Balls"		Aliens Are Probably Huge 650-Pound Creatures		Intel lifted by data centers, as PC market flounders		Flip-flopping black holes spin to the end of the dance		Researchers determine origin of Annama meteorite

Universe may be expanding at slower rate than previously thought

Seasonal, year-long cycles seen on the sun

ALMA captures Juno traveling through space

Our Sun came late to the Milky Way's star-birth party

Comms system critical to delaying MESSENGER's Mercury impact

A new view of the moon's formation

Small solar eruptions can have profound effects on unprotected planets

Hubble finds phantom objects near dead quasars

NASA Extends Campaign for Public to Name Features on Pluto

Dawn in Excellent Shape One Month After Ceres Arrival

ALMA Sees Einstein Ring in Stunning Image of Lensed Galaxy

The Solar System and Beyond is Awash in Water

Sun experiences seasonal changes, new research finds

Herschel and Planck find missing clue to galaxy cluster formation

Dusty substructure in a galaxy far far away

Hunting Hidden Treasures: Antarctic Meteorites Arrive at JSC

Dawn orbiting high over the night side of Ceres

Supernova crime scene shows a single white dwarf to blame

Moon formed when young Earth and little sister collided

Black holes don't erase information, scientists say

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