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Submission + - Earth Gets Another Quasi-Moon 1

Submitted by The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: Astronomers have found a new asteroid, 2014 OL339, that is a quasi-moon of the Earth. Discovered accidentally earlier this year, the 150-meter asteroid has an orbit that is more elliptical than Earth's, but has a period of almost exactly one year. It isn't bound to Earth like a real moon, but displays apparent motion as if it did, making it one of several known quasi-moons.

Comment Re:What's the angle? (Score 1) 35

by martenmickos (#47892887) Attached to: HP Buys Cloud Provider, Gets Marten Mickos To Head Its Cloud Division

Great question. We are seeing a lot of interest among enterprises to have AWS-like functionality in their own datacenters. And we also know that they are eager to use OpenStack. So at Eucalyptus we decided to do something about it. Here is my blog about the topic: https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/08/11/why-eucalyptus-keynoting-openstack-conference
Security

New Cridex Malware Copies Tactics From GameOver Zeus 18

Posted by samzenpus from the imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery dept.
Trailrunner7 writes The GameOver Zeus malware had a nice run for itself, making untold millions of dollars for its creators. But it was a run that ended with a multi-continent operation from law enforcement and security researchers to disassemble the infrastructure. Now researchers have identified a new variant of the Cridex malware that has adopted some of the techniques that made GOZ so successful in its day.

Researchers at IBM's X-Force research team have seen a new version of Cridex, which is also known as Bugat and Feodo, using some of the same techniques that GOZ used to such good effect. Specifically, the new strain of malware has adopted GOZ's penchant for using HTML injections, and the researchers say the technique is nearly identical to the way that GOZ handled it.

"There are two possible explanations for this. First, someone from the GOZ group could have moved to the Bugat team. This would not be the first time something like this has happened, which we've witnessed in other cases involving Zeus and Citadel; however, it is not very likely in this case since Bugat and GOZ are essentially competitors, while Zeus and Citadel are closely related. The second and more likely explanation is that the Bugat team could have analyzed and perhaps reversed the GOZ malware before copying the HTML injections that made GOZ so highly profitable for its operators," Etay Maor, a senior fraud prevention strategist at IBM, wrote in an analysis of the new malware.

Submission + - New Mars crater spotted in before-and-after pictures

Submitted by The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a new crater on the surface of Mars, and, using before-and-after pictures, the impact date has been nailed down to less than a day — it happened on or about March 27, 2012. The crater is 50 meters or so in size, and surrounded by smaller craters that may have been caused by smaller impacts due to the incoming meteoroid breaking up. Several landslides were spotted in the area as well, possibly due to the shock wave of the impact.

Submission + - Astronomers determine the length of day of an exoplanet

Submitted by The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: Astronomers have just announced that the exoplanet Beta Pic b — a 10-Jupiter-mass world 60 light years away -— rotates in about 8 hours. Using a high-resolution spectrometer and exploiting the Doppler shift of light seen as the planet spins, they measured its rotation velocity as 28,000 mph. Making reasonable assumptions about the planet's size, that gives the length of its day. This is the first time such a measurement has been achieved for an exoplanet.

Submission + - Astronomer discovers nearby brown dwarf literally as cold as ice

Submitted by The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: Using data from the orbiting WISE and Spitzer infrared space telescopes, an astronomer has discovered a brown dwarf that is just 7.2 light years away, making it the seventh closest known interstellar object to the Sun. Not only that, it's cold ; its temperature is likely 240-260 Kelvin, well below the freezing point of water. It's literally as cold as ice.

Submission + - Earth-sized planet discovered in its star's habitable zone

Submitted by The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: Astronomers have announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, a very nearly Earth-sized planet in its star's habitable zone. The planet is the fifth in a system of five orbiting a red dwarf star 500 light years away, and is located in the region where liquid water could exist on its surface. It's not know if this planet is Earth-like — that is, with water and air and the potential for life — but it's the closest we've yet seen where one could be like our own planet.

Submission + - Object seen in skydiver's helmetcam unlikely to be a meteorite 3

Submitted by The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: The viral video showing what looked like a meteorite falling past a skydiver made quite a splash, with many people assuming it was true. However, further analysis shows that it's also perfectly consistent with being a small (1-3 cm) rock that fell out of the parachute itself, which is a far more likely explanation.

Comment Re:Ummm, probably not (Score 1) 142

by The Bad Astronomer (#46664743) Attached to: Skydiver's Helmet Cam Captures a Falling Meteor
That analysis was done here: http://norskmeteornettverk.no/... (it's not in English, but google translate does a decent job). He makes a distance estimate based on speed, which itself is based on the assumption it's a falling rock at terminal velocity. But the distance, speed, and time it takes to cross the FOV are related, and if you make a stab at speed you can get distance and vice versa.

Comment Re:Ummm, probably not (Score 1) 142

by The Bad Astronomer (#46663953) Attached to: Skydiver's Helmet Cam Captures a Falling Meteor
Yes, the apparent speed is the biggest argument against it being something packed in the 'chute, I'd think. If the skydiver were still decelerating hard after the parachute opened, the rock could appear to move rapidly, but even then it appears to come from farther away than the parachute. I'm still looking into this, and will have my own thoughts posted tomorrow on my blog.

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