The Sky Tonight

September 15, 2016

Mapping the Milky Way as never before
Paris (AFP) Sept 14, 2016
The Gaia space probe, launched in 2013, has mapped more than a billion stars in the Milky Way, vastly expanding the inventory of known stars in our galaxy, the European Space Agency said Wednesday. Released to eagerly waiting astronomers around the world, the initial catalogue of 1.15 billion stars is "both the largest and the most accurate full-sky map ever produced," said Francois Mignard, a member of the 450-strong Gaia mission team. In a webcast press conference at ESA's Astronomy Centre in ... read more

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ALMA locates possible birth site of icy giant planet Astronomers have found evidence of a newborn planet in the protoplanetary disk surrounding TW Hydrae, a young star located 176 light-years away. ... more		Proba-3: set the controls for the verge of the Sun By converging in orbit, a pair of small satellites will open a new view on the source of the largest structure in the Solar System: the Sun's ghostly atmosphere, extending millions of kilometres out ... more		Gaia's billion-star map hints at treasures to come The first catalogue of more than a billion stars from ESA's Gaia satellite was published today - the largest all-sky survey of celestial objects to date. On its way to assembling the most deta ... more
				Discovery nearly doubles known quasars from the ancient universe Quasars are supermassive black holes that sit at the center of enormous galaxies, accreting matter. They shine so brightly that they are often referred to as beacons and are among the most-distant o ... more		Astronomers discover 63 new quasars in early universe Astronomers have identified 63 new quasars - the largest number reported in a single scientific study. ... more

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

Rosetta's descent towards region of active pits Squeezing out unique scientific observations until the very end, Rosetta's thrilling mission will culminate with a descent on 30 September towards a region of active pits on the comet's 'head'. ... 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		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		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
				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		NASA launches first asteroid dust-retrieval mission 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. ... 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.

Dances with waves: Breakthrough in moving small objects using acoustics Researchers of Aalto University have made a breakthrough in controlling the motion of multiple objects on a vibrating plate with a single acoustic source. By playing carefully constructed melodies, ... more		Customer publishes performance evaluation of first commercial mini-synchrotron A team from the Technical University Munich (TUM) in Germany recently reported an independent analysis of the operation of the Munich Compact Light Source (MuCLS) in the Sept. 2016 issue of the Jour ... 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		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		NASA set to launch near-Earth asteroid mission US space agency NASA is poised Thursday to launch its groundbreaking first mission to a near-Earth asteroid to collect samples that could shed light on the dawn of the solar system. ... more		Proxima b Could Be a Life-Friendly Planet, Says One of the Co-Discoverers When in late August this year, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) broke the news, announcing the discovery of Proxima b, the closest exoplanet to us, it fueled hopes of finding an Earth-like pl ... more		Sulfur, Sulfur Dioxide and Graphitized Carbon Observed on Asteroid For First Time Hubble Space Telescope observations of the dwarf planet Ceres have discovered the first evidence of sulfur, sulfur dioxide and graphitized carbon found on an asteroid. The sulfur species are likely ... 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

EU to fast-track review of 2035 combustion-engine ban

Norway sovereign wealth fund drops French miner over environmental fears

EU split on 2040 climate goal ahead of UN summit

Recreating Our Galaxy in a Supercomputer		Massive Holes 'Punched' Through a Trail of Stars Likely Caused by Dark Matter		Small asteroid flew safely past earth this week		Titan's Dunes and Other Features Emerge in New Images		Researchers design solids that control heat with spinning superatoms
T2K CP Violation Results Help Explain Workings of Universe		New knowledge about the building blocks of life		Asteroid Mission Will Carry Student X-Ray Experiment		One Trace of Dark Matter Vanishes		OSIRIS-REx Prepared for Mapping, Sampling Mission to Asteroid Bennu

SLAC's high-speed 'electron camera' films atomic nuclei in vibrating molecules

A data-cleaning tool for building better prediction models

Detailed Age Map Shows How Milky Way Came Together

Brown Dwarfs Hiding in Plain Sight in Solar Neighborhood

Asteroid named for Freddie Mercury on 70th birthday

New light on the complex nature of 'hot Jupiter' atmospheres

Ice Not a Major Factor of Dwarf Planet Ceres' Surface Features

The supernova that wasn't: A tale of 3 cosmic eruptions

Dell finalizes huge EMC deal to become tech titan

Wits University scientists predict the existence of a new boson

Space Plasma Hurricanes Suggest New Sources of Energy

Plastic crystals could improve fabrication of memory devices

Missing comet lander Philae spotted at last: ESA

The Genesis Project: New life on exoplanets

Jupiter's North Pole Unlike Anything Encountered in Solar System

Dawn spacecraft at Ceres: Craters, cracks, and cryovolcanos

Images from Sun's edge reveal origins of solar wind

NASA's SDO witnesses a double eclipse

Russian Space Agency Plans to Launch Satellite to Study Sun Layers in 2025

Coming to your solar system soon: A rendezvous with an asteroid

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