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Submission + - Philae Found! Rosetta Spies Dead Comet Lander (seeker.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: With only a month before its mission ends, the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission swooped low over Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko to see the stranded Philae lander jammed in a crack. After months of searching for the lander, which made its dramatic touchdown on Nov. 14, 2014, mission scientists had a good idea as to the region the robot was in, but this is the first photographic proof of the lander, on its side, stuck in the craggy location called Abydos. "This wonderful news means that we now have the missing 'ground-truth' information needed to put Philae's three days of science into proper context, now that we know where that ground actually is!" said Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor in a statement.

Submission + - SPAM: Proxima Planet? ESO to Make 'Important' Announcement on Wednesday 1

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: On Wednesday, Aug. 24, we could find out whether or not the recent rumors of an "Earth-like" exoplanet existing on our interstellar doorstep are real. In a press notification on Monday, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said only that they "will host a press conference at its Headquarters in Garching, near Munich, Germany" and that the ESO's Director General, Tim de Zeeuw, will open the event. The press conference will start at 1 p.m. Central European Time (CET) — 7 a.m. EDT/4 a.m. PDT. There was no mention of the scientists who will be in attendance nor what astronomical topic the event will focus on. Though the announcement is vague, there's excitement surrounding the possibility of a potentially habitable extrasolar planet (or exoplanet) orbiting the sun's nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri. The red dwarf star is located only 4.25 light-years away and, if confirmed, the world would be the closest confirmed exoplanet to our solar system. Should this exoplanet have any "Earth-like" qualities, this historic astronomical discovery could transform our outlook of the galaxy.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Astronomers to Announce "Earth-Like" Planet at Proxima Centauri (seeker.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Scientists are preparing to unveil a new planet in our galactic neighborhood which is "believed to be Earth-like" and orbits its star at a distance that could favor life, German weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday. The exoplanet orbits a well-investigated star called Proxima Centauri, part of the Alpha Centauri star system, the magazine said, quoting anonymous sources. "The still nameless planet is believed to be Earth-like and orbits at a distance to Proxima Centauri that could allow it to have liquid water on its surface — an important requirement for the emergence of life," said the magazine. Though we need to be cautious of any report before an official announcement, this could be very exciting news as Proxima is, theoretically, within reach of an interstellar probe.

Submission + - Crimes in Space: Whose Law Will We Use? (seeker.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: A suggested way to prevent crimes in space is outlined in Room: The Space Journal by Christopher J. Newman, a reader in public law at the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom. He argues that we can't take good attitudes for granted once space tourism takes a hold. Currently, there's rigorous selection processes for space professionals that leaves little chance of space crimes being committed. But when the general public has better access to space, they won't face the same rigorous selections as today's astronaut corps, which employ a range of pilots, scientists and engineers. "Space tourism companies will seek to bring access to space to a wide range of people and, as can be seen from terrestrial air travel, such a wide pool of individuals will undoubtedly need some form of legal framework to ensure their behavior can be regulated," Newman writes.

Submission + - Chinese Chang Zheng-7 Rocket Reenters Over Western US (seeker.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Late on Wednesday night, a fireball lit up skies over Western US states, but this wasn't just any old meteor. It wasn't even connected with the Delta Aquarid meteor shower that is expected to peak tonight and Friday. It was a large piece of space junk from the upper stage of a Chinese rocket that was launched in June. The Chang Zheng-7 is an experimental rocket that is playing a key role in the future construction of China's planned space station.

Submission + - Can Crowdfunding Save the Pluto Discovery Telescope? (seeker.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: 85 years before NASA's New Horizons mission buzzed Pluto on July 14, 2015, the dwarf planet (then a planet) was found hidden in photographic plates by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh while he was working at Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Those plates came from a telescope (actually, an "astrograph," or astronomical camera) that was built specifically to hunt down the much-fabled "Planet X" that was believed to be a massive planet orbiting beyond Neptune. Though it turned out Pluto wasn't a massive planet, it was a planet nonetheless and its 1930 discovery went down in the history books as the year an American astronomer added the 9th planet to the solar system. But now, 87 years since its construction, the Pluto Discovery Telescope needs help and a Kickstarter campaign has been set up to get the telescope and its dome back in working order. There are even hopes to get its optics back up to par so it can image Pluto once more. "People have such a connection with Pluto ... there's a certain magic," said Lowell Observatory Historian Kevin Schindler. "There's a lot more feeling and emotion over Pluto than the other planets."

Submission + - "Miniature Pluto" Discovered in Outer Solar System (seeker.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Astronomers have found another Pluto-like dwarf planet located about 20 times farther away from the sun than Neptune. The small planet, designed 2015 RR245, is estimated to be about 435 miles in diameter and flying in an elliptical, 700-year orbit around the sun. At closest approach, RR245 will be about 3.1 billion miles from the sun, a milestone it is expected to next reach in 2096. At its most distant point, the icy world is located about 7.5 billion miles away. It was found by a joint team of astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on Maunakea, Hawaii, in images taken in September 2015 and analyzed in February. The discovery was announced on Monday in the Minor Planet Electronic Circular.

Submission + - Black Hole Imager Gets First View of Galactic Core (seeker.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: A powerful new instrument at one of the world's most powerful observatories is now online and capturing its first deep views of the environment surrounding the black hole behemoth center of our Milky Way. The GRAVITY instrument is currently undergoing commissioning at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) Interferometer at the ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile and it's prime mission is to ultimately probe the region immediately surrounding Sagittarius A*, the 4 million solar mass supermassive black hole that lurks in the center of our galaxy, around 25,000 light-years from Earth. This sophisticated instrument collects light from the four main 8.2 meter diameter telescopes of the VLT Interferometer, combining it as one.

Submission + - New Clues Suggest Pluto Really Does Have an Ocean (seeker.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Numerical simulations of Pluto's geology have provided new evidence that the dwarf planet is sporting its very own subsurface ocean. "Thanks to the incredible data returned by New Horizons, we were able to observe tectonic features on Pluto's surface, update our thermal evolution model with new data and infer that Pluto most likely has a subsurface ocean today," said lead author and graduate student Noah Hammond, of Brown University. "What New Horizons showed was that there are extensional tectonic features, which indicate that Pluto underwent a period of global expansion. A subsurface ocean that was slowly freezing over would cause this kind of expansion."

Submission + - Extreme Galactic 'Rainstorm' Feeds Monster Black Hole (seeker.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile has, for the first time, spotted million solar mass clouds of cold, dense molecular gas condense inside the Abell 2597 galaxy cluster, around one billion light-years from Earth. These massive clouds are now speeding their way toward a supermassive black hole, providing some compelling evidence as to how the monster black holes in the centers of galaxies get so incredibly big.

Submission + - Pluto Likely Has a Sub-Surface Ocean (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Despite being so far from the sun, tiny Pluto, which is smaller than Earth’s moon, has had an active geologic life from the start, one that continues to present day, research published on Thursday shows. The evidence is all over Pluto’s face, which was observed close-up for the first time by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015. With most of the high-resolution images from the flyby now back on Earth, scientists say Pluto’s mountains, glacial flows, rotated ice blocks, volcano-like mounds and other features rival the geology found on much larger, warmer planets like Mars. The physical and chemical conditions on Pluto, located about 40 times farther away from the sun than Earth, have played out in unusual and largely unforeseen ways. Highly volatile cryogenic ices, such as nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, vaporize into Pluto’s hazy and surprisingly compact atmosphere. Internal heating, fueled by the natural decay of radioactive elements in Pluto’s rocks and other sources, likely keeps an ocean of ammonia-rich water liquid beneath the dwarf planet’s frozen surface. This has, of course, led to excitement for the possibility of life, as not-so-subtly hinted at by New Horizons’ lead scientist Alan Stern: "Anytime you have liquid water, the astrobiologists get interested in that place. That’s as far as I’m willing to go."

Submission + - Huge Jupiter-Like Storm Rages On Cool 'Failed Star' (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Jupiter’s Big Red Spot is the largest example of a long-lived storm in the solar system, but now it has some pretty stiff competition in another star system. However, this “exo-storm” hasn’t been spied on another gas giant, it’s been spotted in the uppermost layers of a cool, small "failed star" or brown dwarf. Using 3 NASA space telescopes, new research published in The Astrophysical Journal has found that this spot isn't a starspot, but a bona fide storm that has more in common with Jupiter's famous cyclone. So is this REALLY a failed star? Or is is an "overachieving planet"?

Submission + - Confirmed: Japanese Spacecraft AKATSUKI Has New Eyes on Venus (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: The Japanese space agency JAXA has released a confirmation that their Venus mission Akatsuki did indeed enter orbit at Venus on Dec. 7 (JST) — releasing unprocessed images of the Venusian atmosphere as it entered orbit. The spacecraft is currently in a highly-elliptical 13-day, 14-hour orbit around the planet, coming within 400 kilometers (248 miles) at its closest point and reaching 440,000 kilometers (243,400 miles) away at its farthest. This mission has just become the most unlikely success story of 2015 after "missing" it's intended Venus orbit way back in 2010.

Submission + - Mauna Kea protests may end astronomy as we know it

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: If you want to explore the Universe, you need a telescope with good light gathering power, a high-quality camera to make the most out of each photon, and a superior observing location, complete with dark skies, clear nights, and still, high-altitude air. There are only a few places on Earth that have all of these qualities consistently, and perhaps the best one is atop Mauna Kea on Hawaii. Yet generations of wrongs have occurred to create the great telescope complex that's up there today, and astronomers continue to lease the land for far less than it's worth despite violating the original contract. That's astronomy as we know it so far, and perhaps the Mauna Kea protests signal a long awaited end to that.

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