The Sky Tonight

January 08, 2016

Student-Built Experiment Integrated onto NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jan 08, 2016
A student-built experiment aboard NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has been integrated onto the spacecraft. The Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) will determine elemental abundances on the surface of asteroid Bennu, complementing the mineral and chemical mapping capabilities provided by two other instruments on the spacecraft. "The students worked incredibly hard to get to this point," said Mike Donnel ... read more

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NASA Office to Coordinate Asteroid Detection, Hazard Mitigation NASA has formalized its ongoing program for detecting and tracking near-Earth objects (NEOs) as the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). The office remains within NASA's Planetary Science D ... more		Galaxy Quakes Could Improve Hunt for Dark Matter A trio of brightly pulsating stars at the outskirts of the Milky Way is racing away from the galaxy and may confirm a method for detecting dwarf galaxies dominated by dark matter and explain ripples ... more		Black hole affecting galactic climate team of researchers led by Eric Schlegel, Vaughn Family Endowed Professor in Physics at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), has discovered a powerful galactic blast produced by a giant bl ... more
				Former COD Student Working in Antarctica on IceCube Neutrino Project Former College of DuPage student Robert Zill is spending his winter break at the bottom of the world. The Burr Ridge resident is currently in Antarctica as part of IceCube, the neutrino cosmology ex ... more		Getting Down to Earth with Space Hazards Magnetic storms can interfere with the operation of electric power grids and damage grid infrastructure. They can also disrupt directional drilling for oil and gas, radio communications, communicati ... more

Most distant massive galaxy cluster identified The early universe was a chaotic mess of gas and matter that only began to coalesce into distinct galaxies hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang. It would take several billion more years ... more		Ancient Gas Cloud May Be Relic from First Stars Saint Michael's College physics professor John O'Meara has teamed with researchers Neil Crighton and Michael Murphy from Australia in the recent discovery of a distant, ancient cloud of gas that may ... more		HawkEye 360 expands signals intelligence network with operational deployment of Cluster 12 York confirms successful deployment and health of 21 satellites for SDA Tranche 1 mission Spain faces uphill battle to cut Israel military ties: experts		Momentum builds for creation of 'moon villages' Villages on the moon, constructed through cooperation between astronauts and robotic systems on the lunar surface, could become a reality as early as 2030. That's the consensus of a recent internati ... more
				AAVSO observers contribute to understanding the black hole binary V404 Cygni V404 Cygni has been known as a variable star residing in the constellation Cygnus since the 18th century. It was believed to be a nova, a compact binary system containing a white dwarf primary and a ... more		Bacteria, electrons spin in similar patterns There are certain universal patterns in nature that hold true, regardless of objects' size, species, or surroundings. Take, for instance, the branching fractals seen in both tree limbs and blood ves ... more

Military Radar Summit 2016 - Washington DC - February 29

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

'Seeing' black holes with the naked eye All you need is a 20 cm telescope to observe a nearby, active black hole. An international research team reports that the activity of such phenomena can be observed by visible light during outbursts ... more		NASA Telescopes Find 'Twins' of Superstar Eta Carinae Eta Carinae, the most luminous and massive stellar system within 10,000 light-years of Earth, is best known for an enormous eruption seen in the mid-19th century that hurled at least 10 times the su ... more		Climate change causing havoc with global water cycle: UN Schools shut, flights cancelled as Typhoon Ragasa nears Hong Kong Over 60,000 Europeans died from heat during 2024 summer: study		VLA Reveals New Evidence About Star, Planet Formation A detailed study of young stars and their surroundings has produced dramatic new evidence about how multiple-star systems form and how the dusty disks that are the raw material for planets grow arou ... more
40-Year-Old Mystery on Size of Shadowy Galaxies Solved Using the world's largest telescopes, researchers have discovered ancient cold gas clouds larger than galaxies in the early universe. The discovery was announced Monday at a press conference at the ... more		Chang'e-3 landing site named "Guang Han Gong" The landing site of China's first moon lander Chang'e-3 has been named "Guang Han Gong" or "Moon Palace", more than two years after the spacecraft made a successful soft-landing on the moon in Decem ... more		Galactic merger reveals an unusual black hole that has shed its stars In this season of post-holiday gym memberships, black holes have shown that they too can lose a lot of the weight of the stars that surround them. One unusually star-deprived black hole at the site ... more		Runaway Stars Leave Infrared Waves in Space Astronomers are finding dozens of the fastest stars in our galaxy with the help of images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. When some speedy, mass ... more

	Strong magnetic fields discovered in majority of stars Strong magnetic fields discovered in majority of stars - Finding to impact understanding of stellar evolution. An international group of astronomers led by the University of Sydney has discovered st ... more		A Triple Play Out Saturn Way What looks like a pair of Saturnian satellites is actually a trio upon close inspection. Here, Cassini has captured Enceladus (313 miles or 504 kilometers across) above the rings and Rhea (949 ... more

Tariff uncertainty delays World Cup orders for China's merch makers

EU business lobby head says China rare earths snag persists

IEA feels the heat as Washington pushes pro-oil agenda

New research suggests sun's magnetic field may soon change		New way to measure gravity at the surface of distant stars		Mysterious radio signals from space much better test of General Relativity		The Space Environment		Lab discovery gives glimpse of conditions found on other planets
Globular clusters could host interstellar civilizations		It's official! Element 113 was discovered at RIKEN		Quantum Foam		NASA's Chandra Finds Supermassive Black Hole Burping Nearby		Russian scientists to develop dark matter detection model

Strong magnetic fields in the cores of many stars

Aging stars stop slowing down

Rotational clock for stars needs recalibration

Beam-beam compensation scheme doubles proton-proton collision rates

How to Catch a Glimpse of a New Year's Comet

Watch: Six decades worth of space junk orbit Earth

Engineers demo first processor that uses light for ultrafast communications

South Korea to launch lunar exploration in 2016, land by 2020

Death rumors of Russian lunar program 'greatly exaggerated' - Deputy PM

Monkey King in China dark matter space quest sends data home

Researchers found an unconventional phase transition in photonic structures

A quantum of light for material science

Serpentinization: Nutrients of biological organisms in hydrothermal fields

Aurora borealis could make New Year's Eve appearance

Russia Postpones Plans on Extensive Moon Exploration Until 2025

Astronomers look to high-mass stars for clues to the origins of life

Description of mechanism that halts solar eruptions

Asteroid 2003 SD220 Sleighs by Earth on Christmas Eve

Is evolution more intelligent than we thought

Giant comets may threaten Earth: astronomers

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