Monday 9 January 2017

How Earth's previous moons collided to form the moon: New theory

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A new theory suggests the Moon we see every night is not Earth's first moon, but rather the last in a series of moons that orbited our planet. Moons formed through the process could cross orbits, collide and merge, slowly building the bigger moon we see today.
via Science Daily
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Trilobites: Looking at Your Home Planet from Mars

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The camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter needed to be calibrated, so it made this image of the moon and Earth, which NASA released on Friday.
via New York Times

In the Center of Spiral Galaxy NGC 5033

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What's happening in the center of spiral NGC 5033? Many things -- some circular, some energetic, and some not well understood. NGC 5033 is known as a Seyfert galaxy because of the great activity seen in its nucleus. Bright stars, dark dust, and interstellar gas all swirl quickly around a galactic center that appears slightly offset from a supermassive black hole. This offset is thought to be the result of NGC 5033 merging with another galaxy sometime in the past billion years. The featured image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2005. NGC 5033 spans about 100,000 light years and is so far away that we see it only as it existed about 40 million years ago.

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Two–faced moon

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Space Science Image of the Week: A global colour mosaic of Saturn’s moon Dione shows striking contrasts between its two faces
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2017/01/Global_colour_mosaic_of_Dione