The Sky Tonight

September 30, 2016

Rosetta: The end of a fairytale
Darmstadt, Germany (AFP) Sep 30, 2016
The European Space Agency bid a poignant farewell Friday to intrepid space explorers Philae and Rosetta, brought to "life" as loveable cartoon characters that it has had to abandon on a cold, dark comet surface. As the real steel and bolts Rosetta spacecraft made a planned crash-landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, its fairytale counterpart is depicted going through a range of emotions as she approaches her end. Cartoon Rosetta grins widely as she beams photos and data home to Earth, ... read more

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Rosetta measures production of water at comet over two years Over the past two years, Rosetta has kept a close eye on many properties of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, tracking how these changed along the comet's orbit. A very crucial aspect concerns how mu ... more		Alice Ultraviolet Spectrograph Completes Rosetta Mission to Comet 67P After a two-year orbital tour around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, ESA's Rosetta spacecraft - carrying Southwest Research Institute's Alice ultraviolet spectrograph - will end its mission this we ... more		Rosetta's comet adventure in numbers Europe's ground-breaking quest to unravel the Solar System's mysteries concludes Friday with the Rosetta comet chaser crashlanding onto the cosmic wanderer's rocky surface. ... more
				Farewell Rosetta: ESA Mission to Conclude on Comet's Surface The European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta mission will come to a dramatic end on Friday, Sept. 30, with a controlled touchdown of the spacecraft on a region of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko known ... more		Protoplanetary Disk Around a Young Star Exhibits Spiral Structure Astronomers have found a distinct structure involving spiral arms in the reservoir of gas and dust disk surrounding the young star Elias 2-27. While spiral features have been observed on the surface ... more

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

ALMA catches stellar cocoon with curious chemistry A hot and dense mass of complex molecules, cocooning a newborn star, has been discovered by a Japanese team of astronomers using ALMA. This unique hot molecular core is the first of its kind to have ... more		Where Primordial Galaxies Lurk In the ongoing hunt for the universe's earliest galaxies, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has wrapped up its observations for the Frontier Fields project. This ambitious project has combined the powe ... 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		Discovery of an Extragalactic Hot Molecular Core Astronomers have discovered a 'hot molecular core,' a cocoon of molecules surrounding a newborn massive star, for the first time outside our galaxy. The discovery, which marks the first important st ... more
				NASA-Funded Sounding Rocket Solves One Cosmic Mystery, Reveals Another In the last century, humans realized that space is filled with types of light we can't see - from infrared signals released by hot stars and galaxies, to the cosmic microwave background that comes f ... more		Construction of Most Sensitive Dark Matter Detector Moves Forward LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), a next-generation dark matter detector that will be at least 100 times more sensitive than its predecessor, has cleared another approval milestone and is on schedule to begin its de ... more

6th Annual Modular Construction Summit for Oil and Gas Agenda - December 7-9 - Houston

Nuclear Plant Digitalization Conference - Nov 15-16 - Charlotte NC USA

Moon and Mars on a plane Who wouldn't want to run an experiment in lunar or martian gravity? ESA is offering European researchers the chance to test their theories on aircraft flights that offer 20 seconds of reduced gravit ... more		NASA's Asteroid-Bound Spacecraft Aces Instrument Check Its science instruments have been powered on, and NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft continues on its journey to an asteroid. The spacecraft has passed its initial instrument check with flying colors as i ... 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		Astronomers discover dizzying spin of the Milky Way Halo Astronomers at the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) discovered for the first time that the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the s ... more
How to Merge Two Black Holes in a Simple Way If we had to choose the most important and newsworthy piece of science news for 2016, the discovery of gravitational waves would have every chance of winning first prize. The two signals that have b ... more		New Low-Mass Objects Could Help Refine Planetary Evolution When a star is young, it is often still surrounded by a primordial rotating disk of gas and dust, from which planets can form. Astronomers like to find such disks because they might be able to catch ... more		Planet Mercury Found to Be Tectonically Active Images acquired by NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft show geologic features that indicate Mercury is likely still contracting today, joining ... more		Cosmic Dust Demystified by British Researchers The solar system is a dusty environment, with trillions of cosmic dust particles left behind by comets and asteroids that orbit the sun. All this dust forms a relatively dense cloud through which th ... more

	Hubble spots possible water plumes erupting on Jupiter's Moon Europa Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have imaged what may be water vapor plumes erupting off the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. This finding bolsters other Hubble observations suggesti ... more		Rosetta: The end of a space odyssey Europe's trailblazing deep-space comet exploration for clues to the origins of the Solar System ends Friday with the Rosetta orbiter joining robot lab Philae on the iceball's dusty surface for eternity. ... 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

Rosetta: How to end the fairytale		Messenger probe images fault scarps on Mercury's surface		Cosmology Safe as Universe Has No Sense of Direction		Yoyager's Golden Record not just for aliens anymore		ALMA uncovers "golden age" of galaxy formation in new Deep Field
Regional Forecasts of Solar Storms Set to Begin Oct. 1		New research undermines 'RNA world' of early evolution		Reconciling dwarf galaxies with dark matter		Fujitsu to supply Super-Kamiokande Experiment with new computers		Rosetta spacecraft headed for comet suicide crash

Universe is without direction, astronomers say

Galactic Fireworks Illuminate Monster Hydrogen Blob

Hubble Finds Planet Orbiting Pair of Stars

Summer fireworks on Rosetta's comet

NASA scientists find 'impossible' cloud on Titan

NASA to reveal 'surprising' activity on Jupiter's moon

Stellar activity can mimic misaligned exoplanets

JPL seeks robotic spacecraft development for Asteroid Redirect Mission

NASA's extends IRIS Space Observatory for deeper look at the Sun

Hubble Ultra Deep is deepest millimetre observation of Early Universe

Physicists reveal the role of diffusion in the early Universe

ALMA uncovers secrets of Giant Space Blob

In Rotating Galaxies normal matter precisely determines acceleration

New book links flow of time with Big Bang

RAVE complements Gaia with Fifth Data Release

Scientists teleport quantum information across four-mile cable

Introducing the Daily Minor Planet: delivering the latest asteroid news

Exploration Team Shoots for the Moon with Water-Propelled Satellite

Explaining why the universe can be transparent

Hubble spots luminous lenticular galaxy

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