The Sky Tonight

September 09, 2016

NASA launches first asteroid dust-retrieval mission
Miami (AFP) Sept 8, 2016
The US space agency Thursday launched its first mission to collect dust from an asteroid, the kind of cosmic body that may have delivered life-giving materials to Earth billions of years ago. The unmanned spacecraft, known as OSIRIS-REx, blasted off at 7:05 pm (23:05 GMT) atop an Atlas V rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The $800 million mission will travel for two years on a journey to Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid about the size of a small mountain. ... read more

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Rosetta catches dusty organics Rosetta's dust-analysing COSIMA (COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser) instrument has made the first unambiguous detection of solid organic matter in the dust particles ejected by Comet 67P/Churyumo ... more		Avoiding 'traffic jam' creates impossibly bright 'lighthouse' ULXs, which are remarkably bright X-ray sources, were thought to be powered by black holes. But in 2014, the X-ray space telescope "NuSTAR" detected unexpected periodic pulsed emissions in a ULX nam ... more		Star system hosts hundreds of black holes New research by the University of Surrey published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society has shone light on a globular cluster of stars that could host several hundred bla ... more
				Reconciling dwarf galaxies with dark matter Dwarf galaxies are enigmas wrapped in riddles. Although they are the smallest galaxies, they represent some of the biggest mysteries about our universe. While many dwarf galaxies surround our own Mi ... more		Fujitsu to supply Super-Kamiokande Experiment with new computers Fujitsu has received an order for an experiment-analysis system from Kamioka Observatory, part of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research (ICRR) at the University of Tokyo. The system is destined for ... more

Transition from Operations to Decommissioning by Preparing a Safe, Cost-Effective Shut Down and Waste Management Strategy

Small asteroid flew safely past earth this week A small asteroid designated 2016 RB1 safely flew past Earth this week at a distance of about 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers, or just less than 1/10th the distance of Earth to the moon). Becau ... more		Researchers design solids that control heat with spinning superatoms Researchers found that the thermal conductivity of superatom crystals is directly related to the rotational disorder within those structures. The findings were published in an article in Nature Mate ... more		Russia launches dozens of drones as Ukraine claims 'important success' Russian jets violate Estonian air space in 'brazen intrusion' U.S. defense in free fall		Asteroid Mission Will Carry Student X-Ray Experiment At 7:05pm (EDT), Thursday, Sept. 8, NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu. Among that spacecraft's five instruments is a student experiment that will use X-rays to h ... more
				Terzan 5 Is Like No Other Globular Cluster A fossilised remnant of the early Milky Way harboring stars of hugely different ages has been revealed by an international team of astronomers. This stellar system resembles a globular cluster, but ... more		First Gravitational Waves form After 10 Million Years In his general theory of relativity, Albert Einstein predicted gravitational waves over a century ago; this year, they were detected directly for the first time: The American Gravitational Wave Obse ... more

2nd Integrated Air and Missile Defense - Securing the Complex Air Domain: Requirements for Sustainable, Global, and Reliable Solutions to Next Generation Air & Missile Threats - 28-30 September, 2016 | Washington D.C.

The World's Largest Commercial Drone Conference and Expo - Sept 7-9 - Las Vegas

Recreating Our Galaxy in a Supercomputer Astronomers have created the most detailed computer simulation to date of our Milky Way galaxy's formation, from its inception billions of years ago as a loose assemblage of matter to its present-da ... more		Massive Holes 'Punched' Through a Trail of Stars Likely Caused by Dark Matter Researchers have detected two massive holes which have been 'punched' through a stream of stars just outside the Milky Way, and found that they were likely caused by clumps of dark matter, the invis ... more		Fossil fuels harm health from 'cradle to grave': report Trash, mulch and security: All jobs for troops in Washington Rising oceans to threaten 1.5 million Australians by 2050: report		Titan's Dunes and Other Features Emerge in New Images New scenes from a frigid alien landscape are coming to light in recent radar images of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Cassini obtained the views during a close f ... more
New knowledge about the building blocks of life A study of an enzyme that helps build and repair DNA in living organisms increases our understanding of how these processes are controlled and how we can use this to combat infections. Chemist ... more		OSIRIS-REx Prepared for Mapping, Sampling Mission to Asteroid Bennu The first U.S. mission to travel to an asteroid, retrieve samples and return them to Earth is targeted for a Sept. 8 launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force ... more		T2K CP Violation Results Help Explain Workings of Universe Why the universe is dominated by matter today, instead of being comprised of equal parts matter and antimatter, is one of the most intriguing questions in all of science. One of the conditions requi ... more		One Trace of Dark Matter Vanishes A mysterious X-ray signal from clusters of galaxies recently caused some excitement among astronomers: Does it perhaps originate from dark matter, which makes up around 80 percent of the matter in t ... more

	Detailed Age Map Shows How Milky Way Came Together Using colors to identify the approximate ages of more than 130,000 stars in the Milky Way's halo, University of Notre Dame astronomers have produced the clearest picture yet of how the galaxy formed ... more		Brown Dwarfs Hiding in Plain Sight in Solar Neighborhood Cool brown dwarfs are a hot topic in astronomy right now. Smaller than stars and bigger than giant planets, they hold promise for helping us understand both stellar evolution and planet formation. N ... more

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Dawn spacecraft at Ceres: Craters, cracks, and cryovolcanos

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NASA's SDO witnesses a double eclipse

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