Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 11, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 11, 2018 10 hours ago, nudge said: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 12, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 12, 2018 Nasa's IceSat space laser makes height maps of Earth By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent, Washington DC 11 December 2018 One of the most powerful Earth observation tools ever put in orbit is now gathering data about the planet. IceSat-2 was launched just under three months ago to measure the shape of the ice sheets to a precision of 2cm. But the Nasa spacecraft's laser instrument is also now returning a whole raft of other information. It is mapping the height of the land, of rivers, lakes, forests; and in a remarkable demonstration of capability - even the depth of the seafloor. "We can see down to 30m in really clear waters," said Lori Magruder, the science team leader on the ICESat mission. "We saw one IceSat track just recently that covers 300km in the Caribbean and you see the ocean floor the entire way," the University of Texas researcher told BBC News. She was speaking here at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting - the largest annual gathering of Earth and space scientists. Nasa has been showcasing the early data from the new satellite at the AGU meeting. IceSat-2 was sent up on 15 September. It carries just the single instrument - a half-tonne green laser that fires about 10,000 pulses of light every second. Each of those shots goes down to the Earth and bounces back up on a timescale of about 3.3 milliseconds. The exact time equates to the height of the reflecting surface. Scientists will be using this optical "tape measure" to look in particular for the elevation changes in Antarctica and Greenland that might indicate melting. And the great advantage of the new laser system is that it can detect behavior in areas that have been beyond the vision of previous satellites. "We're resolving every valley in the mountains," said team member Ben Smith from the University of Washington, Seattle. "These have been really difficult targets for altimeters in the past, which have often used radar instead of lasers and they tend to show you just a big lump where the mountains are. But we can see very steeply sloping surfaces; we can see valley glaciers; we'll be able to make out very small details." As its name suggests, IceSat-2 is a follow-on mission. It is a successor and upgrades to the IceSat-1 mission that flew from 2003 to 2009. The old spacecraft helped pioneer the assessment of sea-ice volume in the Arctic. This is a measurement that involves sensing the difference in height between the top of the floating floes and the surface of the ocean. The offset - known as the freeboard - allows researchers to calculate that part of the ice submerged below water. But it requires the satellite to find the cracks in floes where the measurement can be made - and this has just become a whole lot easier thanks to the new laser's horizontal footprint of about 25-30m. "Eighty percent of the cracks are less than 50m across, so the resolution of IceSat is very important," said Ron Kwok from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Heights are calculated from just 150 photons, or particles, of reflected light, but even from just this small number, IceSat-2 is able to produce an elevation number to an accuracy of a little over 2cm. The AGU meeting was shown some of the first efforts to build a sea-ice thickness map for the Arctic. Sample data was also presented in forested areas. The laser sees the tree canopy and the ground underneath, which will enable new assessments to be made of the amount of carbon stored in vegetation across the Earth. But it is probably the bathymetry information that grabs the immediate headlines. It was suspected that the laser might be able to measure the depth of shallow coastal waters, but not this well. Already a project is being developed to use IceSat to map the near-shores of about 100 small islands in the Pacific. "You need to know the bathymetry to understand how waves will move on to the reefs and atolls," explained Sinéad Farrell from the University of Maryland. "If you have storm surges, for example, you need to know those depths to accurately model what those waves will do; and currently there's almost no bathymetry data at all for these islands." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46532975 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ Posted December 12, 2018 Subscriber Share Posted December 12, 2018 Quote Chang’e-4 spacecraft enters lunar orbit ahead of first-ever far side landing China’s Chang’e-4 lander and rover spacecraft successfully entered lunar orbit Wednesday following a four-and-half-day flight to the moon. The spacecraft entered an elliptical lunar polar orbit with a perilune of 100 kilometers at 3:45 a.m. Eastern (08:45 UTC) Dec. 12 following a lunar orbit insertion burn. The spacecraft’s single main variable thruster fired at 129 kilometers distant from the moon following the issuing of a command from the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center (BACC) at 03:39 Eastern. The China Lunar Exploration Project (CLEP) announced the success of the crucial braking maneuver within minutes and confirmed that the spacecraft was functioning well and will begin preparations for communications tests with a relay satellite and refining its orbit. Chang’e-4 was launched by a Long March 3B carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, southwest China, at 1:23 p.m. Eastern Dec. 7 for a 110-hour journey to the moon. Three trajectory correction maneuvers had been planned for the lunar transfer orbit phase, but just one, carried out Dec. 9, was required, with the first and final maneuvers deemed unnecessary and thus canceled. Consisting of a lander and a rover, the spacecraft will attempt the first ever soft landing on the far side of the moon — which due to tidal locking never faces the Earth — in early 2019. The lander and rover are equipped with cameras and science payloads to analyze the lunar surface geology and subsurface, solar wind interactions and carry out low-frequency radio observations in the unique radio-quiet environment on the far side of the moon. Communications with the spacecraft will be facilitated by the ‘Queqiao’ relay satellite launched in May and subsequently inserted into a halo orbit around the second Earth-moon Lagrange point, some 65,000-85,000 kilometers beyond the moon. More on https://spacenews.com/change-4-spacecraft-enters-lunar-orbit-ahead-of-first-ever-far-side-landing/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 12, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 12, 2018 8 minutes ago, nudge said: Consisting of a lander and a rover, the spacecraft will attempt the first ever soft landing on the far side of the moon — which due to tidal locking never faces the Earth — in early 2019. Looking forward to this landing if successful I wonder if they will find or discover something new and mysterious Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ Posted December 12, 2018 Subscriber Share Posted December 12, 2018 1 minute ago, CaaC - John said: Looking forward to this landing if successful I wonder if they will find or discover something new and mysterious Secret Nazi moon base for sure 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluewolf Posted December 12, 2018 Share Posted December 12, 2018 1 minute ago, nudge said: Secret Nazi moon base for sure Yea you laugh but.... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ Posted December 12, 2018 Subscriber Share Posted December 12, 2018 2 minutes ago, Bluewolf said: Yea you laugh but.... Is this from the Iron Sky? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluewolf Posted December 12, 2018 Share Posted December 12, 2018 Just now, nudge said: Is this from the Iron Sky? Yea.. Should be in the Sci-Fi section really.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 12, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 12, 2018 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 13, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 13, 2018 Parker Solar Probe: Sun-skimming mission starts calling home By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent 12 December 2018 Just weeks after making the closest-ever flyby of the Sun, Nasa's Parker Solar Probe is sending back its data. Included in the observations is this remarkable image of the energetic gas, or plasma, flowing out from the star. The bright dot is actually far-distant Jupiter. The black dots are repeats that occur simply because of the way the picture is constructed. Parker's WISPR instrument acquired the vista just 27.2 million km from the surface of the Sun on 8 November. The imager was looking out sideways from behind the probe's thick heat shield. The Nasa mission was launched back in August to study the mysteries of the Sun's outer atmosphere or corona. This region is strangely hotter than the star's "surface", or photosphere. While this can be 6,000 degrees, the outer atmosphere may reach temperatures of a few million degrees. The mechanisms that produce this super-heating are not fully understood. Parker aims to solve the puzzle by passing through the outer atmosphere and directly sampling its particle, magnetic and electric fields. "We need to go into this region to be able to sample the new plasma, the newly formed material, to be able to see what processes, what physics, is taking place in there," explained Nicola Fox, director of the Heliophysics Division at Nasa HQ in Washington DC. "We want to understand why there is this temperature inversion, as in - you walk away from a hot star and the atmosphere gets hotter, not colder as you would expect." Not only is Parker breaking records for proximity to the Sun, but it is also setting new speed records for a spacecraft. On the recent flyby, it achieved 375,000km/h. The fastest any previous probe managed was about 250,000km/h. Parker will go quicker still on future close passes of the Sun. The latest science from the mission is being featured here at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting - the largest annual gathering of Earth and space scientists. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46547588 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 13, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 13, 2018 Nasa's Jupiter mission Juno reveals giant polar storms By Victoria Gill Science correspondent, BBC News, Washington DC 2 hours ago Nasa's Juno mission to the gas giant Jupiter has reached its halfway mark and has revealed new views of cyclones at the poles. As it orbits the planet every 53 days - Juno performs a science-gathering dive, speeding from pole to pole. Its sensors take measurements of the composition of the planet, in an effort to decipher how the largest world in our Solar System formed. Mapping the magnetic and gravity fields should also expose Jupiter's structure. But images from JunoCam - a camera that was intended to capture images that could be shared with the public - has already given us some surprising insights. Dr. Candice Hansen, from the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, is leading the JunoCam project, which she described as "our little outreach camera". She presented some of the remarkable images from the camera - raw images downloaded and processed by members of the public - at the American Geophysical Union meeting here in Washington DC. "When we made our first pass over the poles, we knew we were seeing a territory on Jupiter we had never seen before," said Prof Hansen. "What we did not expect was that we would see these orderly polygons of cyclones; huge storms - twice the size of Texas. "We thought, wow - that's spectacular." And 16 passes later, she added, those orderly arrangements of giant storms are still there. These "pretty pictures" are starting to teach scientists about how the largest planet in the Solar System formed and evolved. "The objective for the Juno mission is to study the interior structure of Jupiter and how that structure expresses itself out on the cloud tops. That's the kind of connection we're trying to make. But we're not there yet." Jack Connerney, Juno deputy principal investigator from the Space Research Corporation in Annapolis, Maryland, said that the second half of the mission would provide an even more detailed view of "what makes the whole of Jupiter tick". You can find more of these amazing images of Jupiter on the JunoCam site. More images in the link below vv https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46547904 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ Posted December 14, 2018 Subscriber Share Posted December 14, 2018 Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo has successfully reached the edge of space and returned back yesterday... Beautiful aircraft; beautiful views Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 14, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 14, 2018 1 hour ago, nudge said: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo has successfully reached the edge of space and returned back yesterday... Beautiful aircraft; beautiful views Lol, you beat me again, just spotted this when I logged into my MSN to check my emails and thought I would post it before you did...WRONG 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ Posted December 14, 2018 Subscriber Share Posted December 14, 2018 Just now, CaaC - John said: Lol, you beat me again, just spotted this when I logged into my MSN to check my emails and thought I would post it before you did...WRONG Sorry... I followed it live yesterday on another forum haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rab Posted December 14, 2018 Share Posted December 14, 2018 6 minutes ago, nudge said: Sorry... I followed it live yesterday on another forum haha. Banned. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ Posted December 14, 2018 Subscriber Share Posted December 14, 2018 Just now, Rab said: Banned. Not a football forum though... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 14, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 14, 2018 4 minutes ago, nudge said: Not a football forum though... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 14, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 14, 2018 (edited) What chance has Nasa of finding life on Mars? By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent 1 hour ago It could be easier to detect the signs of ancient life on Mars than it is on Earth, say scientists connected with Nasa's next rover mission. The six-wheeled robot is due to touch down on the Red Planet in 2021 with the specific aim of trying to identify evidence of past biology. It will be searching for clues in rocks that are perhaps 3.9 billion years old. Confirming life on Earth at that age is tough enough, but Mars may have better preservation, say the researchers. It comes down to the dynamic processes on our home world that constantly churn and recycle rocks - processes that can erase life's traces but which shut down on the Red Planet early in its history. "We don't believe, for example, that Mars had plate tectonics in the way Earth has had for most of its history," said Ken Williford from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. "Most of Earth's rock record has been destroyed by subduction under the ocean crust. But even the rock left at the surface is heated and squeezed in ways it might not have been on Mars. "So, paradoxically, it may well be that the older rocks on Mars are better preserved than much younger rocks on Earth," he told BBC News. The new rover will be dropped into the near equatorial Jezero Crater, which satellite observations suggest once held a deep lake. Scientists hope that if microbes lived in or around this body of water, signatures of their presence will be retained in sediments that can be easily drilled today. A key target will be the carbonate deposits that seem to line what would have been the palaeo-lake's shoreline. "Carbonates are a type of mineral that precipitates out of the water and what's really great about that process is that when they precipitate out - they trap everything that's in the water. So, everything that's living there can be trapped inside the mineral," explained Briony Horgan from Purdue University in Indiana. The dream scenario would see the rover stumble upon formations that look like stromatolites. These are carbonate dome structures that on Earth have been built by microbial mats. The rover will choose the most enticing spot along the putative shoreline and drill samples that can be packed away in a canister and left on the ground for a later pick-up. Nasa and its European counterpart, Esa, are currently planning a joint venture to retrieve the rover's up-to-40 samples, probably in the early 2030s. Drs Williford and Horgan were discussing the future rover's prospects here at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in Washington DC - the largest annual gathering of Earth and space scientists. The vehicle will be a close copy of the one-tonne Curiosity robot that Nasa landed in Gale Crater in 2012. It will use the same "Skycrane" technology that put the previous machine down with such great precision - but with an important add-on. Engineers have developed an on-the-fly mapping system called Terrain-Relative Navigation which ought to bring even greater accuracy to the landing process. The expectation is that this system will place the rover right up against rocks that record the delta that fed the lake with water. Ken Farley, the mission's chief scientist, told the AGU meeting that the route the rover will take after landing had already been planned. The robot will be equipped with a sophisticated navigation system that will give it the autonomy to work out the best, most direct course between waypoints. This should dramatically speed up the arrival to different science targets. "In good terrain, we'll be driving more than a 100m a day," Dr. Farley told BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46563144 Edited December 14, 2018 by CaaC - John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ Posted December 14, 2018 Subscriber Share Posted December 14, 2018 6 minutes ago, CaaC - John said: What chance has Nasa of finding life on Mars? By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent 1 hour ago It could be easier to detect the signs of ancient life on Mars than it is on Earth, say scientists connected with Nasa's next rover mission. The six-wheeled robot is due to touch down on the Red Planet in 2021 with the specific aim of trying to identify evidence of past biology. It will be searching for clues in rocks that are perhaps 3.9 billion years old. Confirming life on Earth at that age is tough enough, but Mars may have better preservation, say the researchers. It comes down to the dynamic processes on our home world that constantly churn and recycle rocks - processes that can erase life's traces but which shut down on the Red Planet early in its history. "We don't believe, for example, that Mars had plate tectonics in the way Earth has had for most of its history," said Ken Williford from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. "Most of Earth's rock record has been destroyed by subduction under the ocean crust. But even the rock left at the surface is heated and squeezed in ways it might not have been on Mars. "So, paradoxically, it may well be that the older rocks on Mars are better preserved than much younger rocks on Earth," he told BBC News. The new rover will be dropped into the near equatorial Jezero Crater, which satellite observations suggest once held a deep lake. Scientists hope that if microbes lived in or around this body of water, signatures of their presence will be retained in sediments that can be easily drilled today. A key target will be the carbonate deposits that seem to line what would have been the palaeo-lake's shoreline. "Carbonates are a type of mineral that precipitates out of the water and what's really great about that process is that when they precipitate out - they trap everything that's in the water. So, everything that's living there can be trapped inside the mineral," explained Briony Horgan from Purdue University in Indiana. The dream scenario would see the rover stumble upon formations that look like stromatolites. These are carbonate dome structures that on Earth have been built by microbial mats. The rover will choose the most enticing spot along the putative shoreline and drill samples that can be packed away in a canister and left on the ground for a later pick-up. Nasa and its European counterpart, Esa, are currently planning a joint venture to retrieve the rover's up-to-40 samples, probably in the early 2030s. Drs Williford and Horgan were discussing the future rover's prospects here at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in Washington DC - the largest annual gathering of Earth and space scientists. The vehicle will be a close copy of the one-tonne Curiosity robot that Nasa landed in Gale Crater in 2012. It will use the same "Skycrane" technology that put the previous machine down with such great precision - but with an important add-on. Engineers have developed an on-the-fly mapping system called Terrain-Relative Navigation which ought to bring even greater accuracy to the landing process. The expectation is that this system will place the rover right up against rocks that record the delta that fed the lake with water. Ken Farley, the mission's chief scientist, told the AGU meeting that the route the rover will take after landing had already been planned. The robot will be equipped with a sophisticated navigation system that will give it the autonomy to work out the best, most direct course between waypoints. This should dramatically speed up the arrival to different science targets. "In good terrain, we'll be driving more than a 100m a day," Dr. Farley told BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46563144 ESA's and Roscosmos' ExoMars mission is arguably more important and promising in terms of searching for traces of life as it's been specifically designed for that and is explicitly focused on searching for biosignatures. Nasa's Mars 2020 rover can detect potential organic compounds in rock samples by taking images and acquiring spectra at various scales, but it doesn't have the tools to perform any sort of biological analysis, so it will be basically collecting and storing interesting rock samples from the best possible sites for eventual sample return to Earth to be examined here (if such sample return mission ever happens). Also, its drill can only dig 6-10 centimeters deep (same as the current Opportunity rover), so it's just scratching the surface which is a very harsh environment for organic molecules to survive due to intense radiation and oxidants. Meanwhile, ExoMars rover has a completely different approach - it has been equipped with a drill that can go as deep as 2 meters (!) so the chances of finding preserved organic compounds are better; and it also has a diverse suite of instruments designed specifically for that, including the most advanced mass spectrometer to be sent to space ever and an analytic instrument called MOMA (Mars Organics Molecule Analyzer) that is able to detect organic molecules at extremely low concentrations and will directly target biomarkers and conduct sample analysis on site. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 15, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 15, 2018 Scientists observe 'massive' star 40 times the size of the Sun giving birth to another star Florence Snead 12 hrs ago A young star 40 times the size of the Sun is so big that instead of creating a planet, it has given birth to a star. Leftover fragments from the formation of a new star can bind together to create planets, but on this occasion, the young star was "so massive" it made another star. Scientists made the discovery when observing "MM1A", a large young star surrounded by a rotating disc of gas and dust. Star being born They noticed a faint object, "MM1B", not far beyond which was orbiting its bigger counterpart. By measuring the radiation emitted by the dust, and subtle shifts in the frequency of light emitted by the gas, they calculated it weighed less than half the mass of our Sun. "To actually see it forming something as large as a star is really exciting." Dr. Duncan Forgan "Stars form within large clouds of gas and dust in interstellar space,” said lead researcher Dr. John Ilee, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds. "When these clouds collapse under gravity, they begin to rotate faster, forming a disc around them. In low mass stars like our Sun, it is in these discs that planets can form. "In this case, the star and disc we have observed are so massive that, rather than witnessing a planet forming in the disc, we are seeing another star being born." 'Really exciting' Dr. Duncan Forgan, a co-author from the Centre for Exoplanet Science at St Andrews University, added: "I've spent most of my career simulating this process to form giant planets around stars like our Sun. "To actually see it forming something as large as a star is really exciting." The team made their discovery in the Chilean Atacama desert with new equipment able to simulate the power of a single telescope nearly 4km across. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/scientists-observe-massive-star-40-times-the-size-of-the-sun-giving-birth-to-another-star/ar-BBQYo6r?li=AAnZ9Ug 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 15, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 15, 2018 (edited) Thursday, Dec. 6, 2 p.m.: Hubble servicing mission 25th-anniversary discussion of the history of Hubble servicing missions and the future of satellite servicing. Friday, Dec. 7, 1:30 p.m.: Hubble servicing mission 25th-anniversary-panel discussion on Hubble deployment and servicing missions. Tuesday, Dec. 11, 10 a.m.: Coverage of Russian spacewalk. Spacewalk at the International Space Station is scheduled to begin at 11:03 a.m. EST and will last around 6 hours. Tuesday, Dec. 11, 8 p.m.: Live from Washington National Cathedral: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Presents “The Spirit of Apollo”—A Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 8 Mission to the Moon. Wednesday, Dec. 12, 3 p.m.: International Space Station Expedition 59-60 news conference. Tuesday, Dec. 18, 4:25 p.m.: International Space Station Expedition 57-58 change of command ceremony. Wednesday, Dec. 19, 4:45 p.m.: Expedition 57 crew farewell at International Space Station and Soyuz spacecraft hatch closure. Hatch closure is scheduled at 5:30 p.m. EST. Wednesday, Dec. 19, 7:45 p.m.: Undocking of the Soyuz spacecraft with the International Space Station Expedition 57 crew. Undocking is scheduled at 8:42 p.m. EST. Wednesday, Dec. 19, 10:45 p.m.: Coverage of Soyuz deorbit burn and landing with the Expedition 57 crew. Deorbit burn scheduled at 11:09 p.m. EST with landing scheduled at 12:03 a.m. EST, Dec. 20. Edited December 23, 2018 by CaaC - John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 16, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 16, 2018 Astronomers discover 'evaporating' planet https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/astronomers-discover-evaporating-planet/vi-BBR0VEF Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 16, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 16, 2018 6 minutes ago, CaaC - John said: Astronomers discover 'evaporating' planet https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/astronomers-discover-evaporating-planet/vi-BBR0VEF NASA's Hubble telescope discovered an 'evaporating' planet, study says Brett Molina USA TODAY Published 2:58 PM EST Dec 14, 2018 Astronomers using NASA's Hubble telescope found an exoplanet that's evaporating, possibly holding clues into the discovery of rocky "super-Earths." Researchers at the University of Geneva Switzerland found the exoplanet GJ 3470b, which showed signs of losing hydrogen in its atmosphere, causing it to shrink. The study is part of an exploration into "hot Neptunes," planets that are the size of Neptune, sit very close to their star, and have atmospheres as hot at 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, says NASA. Finding a "hot Neptune" is rare because they sit so close to their star and tend to evaporate more quickly. In the case of GJ 3470b, scientists classify it as a "warmer" Neptune because it sits farther away from its star. This artist's illustration shows a giant cloud of hydrogen streaming off a Neptune-sized planet. NASA The exoplanet discovered by astronauts is losing its atmosphere at a rate 100 times faster than a previous "warmer" Neptune planet discovered a few years before, according to a study published Thursday in the journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics." The planet sits 3.7 million miles from its star. For comparison, Earth is 92.9 million miles from the sun. "This is the first time that a planet has been observed to lose its atmosphere so quickly that it can impact its evolution," said lead author Vincent Bourrier, a researcher in the Astronomy Department of the Faculty of Science at the University of Geneva, in a statement. Researchers say these "hot Neptune" planets shrink in size and morph into "Super-Earths," versions of our planet that are massive and more rocky. Just last month, a Super Earth was found orbiting a nearby star. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/12/14/evaporating-planet-hubble-telescope-discovers-hot-neptune/2309265002/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ Posted December 17, 2018 Subscriber Share Posted December 17, 2018 A long but fascinating read about one of the most technically complicated space missions in human history; Salyut-7 rescue mission in 1985. Highly recommended! https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/the-little-known-soviet-mission-to-rescue-a-dead-space-station/ And they recently made a movie about it too... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted December 17, 2018 Author Subscriber Share Posted December 17, 2018 1 hour ago, nudge said: And they recently made a movie about it too... Aye, and I am bloody sure I saw that on tv one night when Liz was around our daughters babysitting!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.