The Sky Tonight

November 25, 2015

NEOWISE observes carbon gases in comets
Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 25, 2015
After its launch in 2009, NASA's NEOWISE spacecraft observed 163 comets during the WISE/NEOWISE prime mission. This sample from the space telescope represents the largest infrared survey of comets to date. Data from the survey are giving new insights into the dust, comet nucleus sizes, and production rates for difficult-to-observe gases like carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2) are common molecules found in the environment of the early solar system, and ... read more

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Where Alice in Wonderland Meets Albert Einstein One hundred years ago this month, Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity, one of the most important scientific achievements in the last century. A key result of Einstein's ... more		Planetary nebulae map of the Milkyway gets distancing tweak A way of estimating more accurate distances to the thousands of so-called planetary nebulae dispersed across our Galaxy has been announced by a team of three astronomers based at the University of H ... more		How DSCOVR Could Help in Exoplanet Hunting Could a space weather satellite be helpful in exoplanet hunting? Well, it now turns out it could. According to a team of scientists led by Stephen Kane from the San Francisco State University, the D ... more
				Retro Exo and Its Originators Exoplanets are mysterious, they're complicated, they're important, they're awe-inspiring. And, to a team of artists at the Jet Propulsion Lab, they're also totally fun. They're a topic for endless a ... more		Supercomputing the strange difference between matter and antimatter An international team of physicists including theorists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has published the first calculation of direct "CP" symmetry violatio ... more

Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter The solar system might be a lot hairier than we thought. A new study publishing this week in the Astrophysical Journal by Gary Prezeau of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, prop ... more		Composite images compare sunlit faces of Pluto New composite images released by NASA show Pluto and Charon lit up by the sun. The images were taken by New Horizons' cameras as the probe approached the dwarf planet and its moon. ... more		US lawmaker warns of military 'misunderstanding' risk with China Spain approves 'total' arms embargo against Israel Khamenei says Iran 'won't yield' to pressure to abandon uranium enrichment		Forming planet observed for first time An international team of scientists in Australia and the United States has captured the first-ever images of a planet in the making. The accumulation of dust and gas particles onto a new planet - th ... more
				VISTA pinpoints earliest giant galaxies Just counting the number of galaxies in a patch of sky provides a way to test astronomers' theories of galaxy formation and evolution. However, such a simple task becomes increasingly hard as astron ... more		Radiation blasts leave most Earth-like planet uninhabitable, new research suggests The most Earth-like planet could have been made uninhabitable by vast quantities of radiation, new research led by the University of Warwick research has found. The atmosphere of the planet, K ... more

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Gravity, who needs it What happens to your body in space? NASA's Human Research Program has been unfolding answers for over a decade. Space is a dangerous, unfriendly place. Isolated from family and friends, exposed to r ... more		Stormy space weather puts equatorial regions' power at risk Dr Brett Carter of the RMIT SPACE Research Centre and his team from RMIT, Boston College and Dartmouth College, found that these equatorial electrical disruptions threaten power grids in Southeast A ... more		Typhoon Ragasa hits south China after killing 15 in Taiwan Toxic homes a lasting legacy of Los Angeles fires Climate change causing havoc with global water cycle: UN		'Shrinking bull's-eye' algorithm speeds up complex modeling from days to hours To work with computational models is to work in a world of unknowns: Models that simulate complex physical processes - from Earth's changing climate to the performance of hypersonic combustion engin ... more
Ultra-short X-ray pulses could shed new light on the fastest events in physics Ultra-short x-ray pulses could shed new light on the fastest events in physics. If you've ever been captivated by slow-motion footage on a wildlife documentary, or you've shuddered when similar tech ... more		UA researchers capture first photo of planet in making There are 450 light-years between Earth and LkCa15, a young star with a transition disk around it, a cosmic whirling dervish, a birthplace for planets. Despite the disk's considerable distance from ... more		Black holes don't need to spin to spit out jets Jet streams emanating or pulsing outward from stellar objects are often the result of rotational forces. Spinning has long been the explanation for the jets of black holes. ... more		NIST team proves 'spooky action at a distance' is really real Einstein was wrong about at least one thing: There are, in fact, "spooky actions at a distance," as now proven by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Eins ... more

	Forged in the hearts of stars Apart from hydrogen, as many have heard from the Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson "Cosmos" series, every ingredient in the human body is made from elements forged by stars. The calcium in our bone ... more		Two Moons About Saturn Although Dione (near) and Enceladus (far) are composed of nearly the same materials, Enceladus has a considerably higher reflectivity than Dione. As a result, it appears brighter against the dark ni ... more

China's Alibaba teams up with Nvidia on AI robot tech

In just one year, Google turns AI setbacks into dominance

China steps into spotlight at UN climate talks

'Chemical Laptop' Could Search for Signs of Life Outside Earth		Simple errors limit scientific scrutiny		Astronomers discover a distant galaxy with a pulse		Hubble Views a Lonely Galaxy		Queen's University Belfast lead research milestone in predicting solar flares
Gaia consortium meets ahead of first data catalogue release next year		3D visualisation redefines Milky Way's local architecture		Discovery of classic pi formula a 'cunning piece of magic'		Experiment records extreme quantum weirdness		Rocket Scientists to Launch Planet-Finding Telescope

Discovery measures 'heartbeats' of distant galaxy's stars

5400mph winds discovered hurtling around planet outside solar system

New exoplanet in our neighborhood

The colors of Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko

More Than Meets the Eye - Delta Orionis in Orion's Belt

Ancient stars at the center of the galaxy contain 'fingerprints' from the early universe

Cassini Finds Monstrous Ice Cloud in Titan's South Polar Region

Astronomers eager to get a whiff of newfound Venus-like planet

Secondhand Spacecraft Has Firsthand Asteroid Experience

Rosetta and Philae: one year since landing on a comet

Oldest stars found near Milky Way center

Machine learning could solve riddles of galaxy formation

Fermi Satellite Detects First Gamma-Ray Pulsar in Another Galaxy

The glowing halo of a zombie star

Asteroid ripped apart to form star's glowing ring system

Recreating a heavenly chorus of plasma waves on Earth

A new explanation for the explosive nature of magnetic reconnection

Mercury Gets a Meteoroid Shower from Comet Encke

New Results from GPI Exoplanet Survey

Early Earth's Haze May Give Clue to Habitability Elsewhere

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