Waking up to a new year: Exoplanet orbits its star in 8.5 hours

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In the time it takes you to complete a single workday, or get a full night's sleep, a small fireball of a planet 700 light-years away has already completed an entire year. Researchers have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet named Kepler 78b that whips around its host star in a mere 8.5 hours -- one of the shortest orbital periods ever detected.

via Science Daily

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Free-floating planets may be born free

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Tiny, round, cold clouds in space have all the right characteristics to form planets with no parent star. New observations, made with Chalmers University of Technology telescopes, show that not all free-floating planets were thrown out of existing planetary systems. They can also be born free.



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Stunning images of Andromeda demonstrate the world's most powerful astronomical camera

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(Phys.org) —Stunning images of the Andromeda Galaxy are among the first to emerge from a new wide-field camera installed on the enormous Subaru Telescope atop the Hawaiian mountain Mauna Kea. The camera, called the Hyper-Suprime Cam (HSC), is the result of an international collaboration between Princeton University astrophysicists and Japanese and Taiwanese scientists.



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Waking up to a new year: Team discovers an exoplanet that orbits its star in 8.5 hours

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In the time it takes you to complete a single workday, or get a full night's sleep, a small fireball of a planet 700 light-years away has already completed an entire year.



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New study reveals that stellar winds scatter star-forming material (w/ Video)

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(Phys.org) —A University of Alberta astrophysicist's 3-D computer animation is helping an international research team get an unprecedented look at star-forming gases escaping from a nearby galaxy.



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Air quality measurements: New manufacturing method for nano gas sensors opens doors

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Nano-sized gas sensors in mobile telephones that measure the atmospheric humidity are nothing new as such. However, so far it was necessary to rely on complex lithographic methods to produce the required nano-structure of the sensors, and they have the added disadvantage that they do not work well on uneven surfaces. A relatively new approach is the focussed electron beam deposition method – FEBID for short – in which the nano-structures can be "written directly" without requiring any pre- or after-treatment.



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Welcome to the Space Cards

Welcome to the Space Cards

Waiting for clearance in geostationary orbit to leave the home planet and explore new worlds in outer space. Digital artwork by Liz Molnar. Planets, stars, space clouds, lights were made with basic Photoshop effects and brushes, planets' surfaces created from photos.

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Carina Nebula, Argo Navis Watch

Carina Nebula, Argo Navis Watch

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Hubble's view of the Carina Nebula shows star birth in a new level of detail. The fantasy-like landscape of the nebula is sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. In the process, these stars are shredding the surrounding material that is the last vestige of the giant cloud from which the stars were born. The immense nebula is an estimated 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina the Keel (of the old southern constellation Argo Navis, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts, from Greek mythology).
The original image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of ionized hydrogen. Colour information was added with data taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission.
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image code: carnebngcttst

Image credit: Hubble Space Telescope; colour data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Chile

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