The Sky Tonight

December 02, 2015

A Look Back at NASA Solar Missions
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 02, 2015
Twenty years ago, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a cooperative effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, launched into space and revolutionized our study of the sun and a scientific discipline called heliophysics - the study of how the sun's influence spreads out in all directions, able to dramatically affect the space environment near Earth and throughout the solar system. But the field was far from its infancy when that observatory, also called SOHO, launched on Dec. 2, 1995. I ... read more

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SOHO Celebrates 20 Years of Space-based Science After 20 years in space, ESA and NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, is still going strong. Originally launched in 1995 to study the sun and its influence out to the very edges of th ... more		Simulation shows key to building powerful magnetic fields When certain massive stars use up all of their fuel and collapse onto their cores, explosions 10 to 100 times brighter than the average supernova occur. Exactly how this happens is not well understo ... more		Exiled exoplanet likely kicked out of star's neighborhood A planet discovered last year sitting at an unusually large distance from its star - 16 times farther than Pluto is from the sun - may have been kicked out of its birthplace close to the star in a p ... more
				Looking back 3.8 billion years into the root of the 'Tree of Life' NASA-funded researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are tapping information found in the cells of all life on Earth, and using it to trace life's evolution. They have learned that life is ... more		Collapsing super stars Hypernova or Gamma-Ray Bursts A supercomputer simulation of a mere 10 milliseconds in the collapse of a massive star into a neutron star proves that these catastrophic events, often called hypernovae, can generate the enormous m ... more

What Powers the Explosion of Stars Enormous amounts of energy are released when a massive star, many times heavier than our Sun, collapses. Some stars explode in a hypernova - ten times more powerful than a normal supernova - and may ... more		Jupiter's whirlwinds: Turning the other way The numerous whirlwinds covering Jupiter are caused by upward gas flows originating deep within the giant planet. This is the conclusion reached by scientists at the University of Alberta (Canada) a ... 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		LISA Pathfinder - the countdown is running At 5:15 CET on December 2, a Vega rocket is scheduled for launch from the European spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana) to lift a "pathfinder" into space: LISA Pathfinder will demonstrate novel techn ... more
				Many Worlds, Subterranean Edition One of the richest lines of research for those thinking about life beyond Earth has been the world of microscopic creatures that live in especially extreme and hostile environments here. The realm o ... more		The hottest white dwarf in the Galaxy Astronomers at the Universities of Tubingen and Potsdam have identified the hottest white dwarf ever discovered in our Galaxy. With a temperature of 250,000 degrees Celsius, this dying star at the o ... more

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Simulating the Death of Stars Humboldt Fellow Samuel Jones (University of Victoria, Canada) is exploring the evolution and the explosion of stars by means of highly sophisticated computer simulations in order to gain new insight ... more		Aging star's weight loss secret revealed VY Canis Majoris is a stellar goliath, a red hypergiant, one of the largest known stars in the Milky Way. It is 30-40 times the mass of the Sun and 300 000 times more luminous. In its current state, ... 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		Hubble captures a galactic waltz towards the end This curious galaxy - only known by the seemingly random jumble of letters and numbers 2MASX J16270254+4328340 - has been captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope dancing the crazed dance of ... more
NEOWISE observes carbon gases in comets 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 t ... more		MUSE observations enable prediction of once-in-a-lifetime supernova replay Astronomers have used the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE), attached to ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory, to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ... more		Neptune-size exoplanet around a red dwarf star A team of astronomers have used the LCOGT network to detect light scattered by tiny particles (called Rayleigh scattering), through the atmosphere of a Neptune-size transiting exoplanet. This sugges ... more		Scientists get first glimpse of black hole eating star, ejecting high-speed flare An international team of astrophysicists led by a Johns Hopkins University scientist has for the first time witnessed a star being swallowed by a black hole and ejecting a flare of matter moving at ... more

	President Obama signs bill recognizing asteroid resource property rights into law Planetary Resources, the asteroid mining company, applauds President Obama who signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (H.R. 2262) into law. This law recognizes the right of U.S. ... more		Comet fragments best explanation of mysterious dimming star Was it a catastrophic collision in the star's asteroid belt? A giant impact that disrupted a nearby planet? A dusty cloud of rock and debris? A family of comets breaking apart? Or was it alien megas ... 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

Planetary nebulae map of the Milkyway gets distancing tweak		How DSCOVR Could Help in Exoplanet Hunting		New U.S. space mining law may violate international treaty		Who owns space		Using light-force to study single molecules
CERN colliding lead ions at record energy using upgraded LHC		'Shrinking bull's-eye' data algorithm crunches days into hours		Quantum spin could create unstoppable, one-dimensional electron waves		Where Alice in Wonderland Meets Albert Einstein		Retro Exo and Its Originators

Supercomputing the strange difference between matter and antimatter

Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

Composite images compare sunlit faces of Pluto

Forming planet observed for first time

VISTA pinpoints earliest giant galaxies

Radiation blasts leave most Earth-like planet uninhabitable, new research suggests

Stormy space weather puts equatorial regions' power at risk

Ultra-short X-ray pulses could shed new light on the fastest events in physics

UA researchers capture first photo of planet in making

Gravity, who needs it

Black holes don't need to spin to spit out jets

NIST team proves 'spooky action at a distance' is really real

Forged in the hearts of stars

Two Moons About Saturn

'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

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