Portrait of NGC 281

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Look through the cosmic cloud cataloged as NGC 281 and you might miss the stars of open cluster IC 1590. Still, formed within the nebula that cluster's young, massive stars ultimately power the pervasive nebular glow. The eye-catching shapes looming in this portrait of NGC 281 are sculpted columns and dense dust globules seen in silhouette, eroded by intense, energetic winds and radiation from the hot cluster stars. If they survive long enough, the dusty structures could also be sites of future star formation. Playfully called the Pacman Nebula because of its overall shape, NGC 281 is about 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. This sharp composite image was made through narrow-band filters, combining emission from the nebula's hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms in green, red, and blue hues. It spans over 80 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 281.

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3-D Printing for Space Exploration

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Branch Technology is developing a 3-D printing process that can build structures on Mars. Step into their Tennessee workspace in 360 degrees.
via New York Times

Trilobites: Rosetta’s Lost Picture From Moments Before It Struck a Comet

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One year after the spacecraft dived into Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it gave scientists a gift from beyond the grave.
via New York Times

Small collisions make big impact on Mercury's thin atmosphere

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Mercury, our smallest planetary neighbor, has very little to call an atmosphere, but it does have a strange weather pattern: morning micro-meteor showers.
via Science Daily
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A fresh look at older data yields a surprise near the Martian equator

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Scientists taking a new look at older data from NASA's longest-operating Mars orbiter have discovered evidence of significant hydration near the Martian equator -- a mysterious signature in a region of the Red Planet where planetary scientists figure ice shouldn't exist.
via Science Daily
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Puppis A Supernova Remnant

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Driven by the explosion of a massive star, supernova remnant Puppis A is blasting into the surrounding interstellar medium about 7,000 light-years away. At that distance, this colorful telescopic field based on broadband and narrowband optical image data is about 60 light-years across. As the supernova remnant (upper right) expands into its clumpy, non-uniform surroundings, shocked filaments of oxygen atoms glow in green-blue hues. Hydrogen and nitrogen are in red. Light from the initial supernova itself, triggered by the collapse of the massive star's core, would have reached Earth about 3,700 years ago. The Puppis A remnant is actually seen through outlying emission from the closer but more ancient Vela supernova remnant, near the crowded plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Still glowing across the electromagnetic spectrum Puppis A remains one of the brightest sources in the X-ray sky.

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Tonight: Researchers’ Night at CERN

Elon Musk Set to Update His Plans for Colonizing Mars

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Mr. Musk is likely to describe a scaled down rocket and a more plausible business plan for getting people to Mars.
via New York Times

Solving the Mystery of Pluto's Giant Blades of Ice

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NASA’s New Horizons mission revolutionized our knowledge of Pluto when it flew past that distant world in July 2015. Among its many discoveries were images of strange formations resembling giant knife blades of ice, whose origin had remained a mystery. Now, scientists have turned up a fascinating explanation for this “bladed terrain”: the structures are made almost entirely of methane ice, and likely formed as a specific kind of erosion wore away their surfaces.
via Science Daily
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NASA's Hubble observes the farthest active inbound comet yet seen

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the farthest active inbound comet ever seen, at a whopping distance of 1.5 billion miles from the Sun (beyond Saturn's orbit). Slightly warmed by the remote Sun, it has already begun to develop an 80,000-mile-wide fuzzy cloud of dust, called a coma, enveloping a tiny, solid nucleus of frozen gas and dust. These observations represent the earliest signs of activity ever seen from a comet entering the solar system's planetary zone for the first time.
via Science Daily
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Perovskite solar cells reach record long-term stability, efficiency over 20 percent

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Scientists have greatly improved the operational stability of perovskite solar cells by introducing cuprous thiocyanate protected by a thin layer of reduced graphene oxide. Devices lost less than 5 percent performance when subjected to a crucial accelerated aging test during which they were exposed for more than 1,000 hours to full sunlight at 60°C.
via Science Daily

Supersonic gas streams left over from the Big Bang drive massive black hole formation

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A super-computer simulation by an international team of researchers has shown the formation of a rapidly growing star from supersonic gas streams in the early universe left over from the Big Bang. The star ends its life with catastrophic collapse to leave a black hole with a mass of 34,000 times that of the Sun.
via Science Daily
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Band gaps, made to order

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Engineers have created atomically thin superlattice materials with precision.
via Science Daily

NASA's Hubble Observes the Farthest Active Inbound Comet Yet Seen

The Comet that Came in from the Cold

A solitary frozen traveler has been journeying for millions of years toward the heart of our planetary system. The wayward vagabond, a city-sized snowball of ice and dust called a comet, was gravitationally kicked out of the Oort Cloud, its frigid home at the outskirts of the solar system. This region is a vast comet storehouse, composed of icy leftover building blocks from the construction of the planets 4.6 billion years ago.

The comet is so small, faint, and far away that it eluded detection. Finally, in May 2017, astronomers using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii spotted the solitary intruder at a whopping 1.5 billion miles away - between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. The Hubble Space Telescope was enlisted to take close-up views of the comet, called C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS (K2).

The comet is record-breaking because it is already becoming active under the feeble glow of the distant Sun. Astronomers have never seen an active inbound comet this far out, where sunlight is merely 1/225th its brightness as seen from Earth. Temperatures, correspondingly, are at a minus 440 degrees Fahrenheit. Even at such bone-chilling temperatures, a mix of ancient ices on the surface - oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide - is beginning to sublimate and shed as dust. This material balloons into a vast 80,000-mile-wide halo of dust, called a coma, enveloping the solid nucleus.

Astronomers will continue to study K2 as it travels into the inner solar system, making its closest approach to the Sun in 2022.

via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2017-40

Bursting with starbirth

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This oddly shaped galactic spectacle is bursting with brand new stars. The pink fireworks in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are regions of intense star formation, triggered by a cosmic-scale collision. The huge galaxy in this image, NGC 4490, has a smaller galaxy in its gravitational grip and is feeling the strain.
via Science Daily
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Unexpected surprise: a final image from Rosetta

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Scientists analysing the final telemetry sent by Rosetta immediately before it shut down on the surface of the comet last year have reconstructed one last image of its touchdown site.

via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Unexpected_surprise_a_final_image_from_Rosetta

LIGO-Virgo GW170814 Skymap

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From around planet Earth three gravitational wave detectors have now reported a joint detection of ripples in spacetime, the fourth announced detection of a binary black hole merger in the distant Universe. The event was recorded on 2017 August 14, and so christened GW170814, by the LIGO observatory sites in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana, and the more recently operational Virgo Observatory near Pisa, Italy. The signal was emitted in the final moments of the coalescence of two black holes of 31 and 25 solar masses located about 1.8 billion light-years away. But comparing the timing of the gravitational wave detections at all three sites allowed astronomers to vastly improve the location of the signal's origin on the sky. Just above the Magellanic clouds and generally toward the constellation Eridanus, the only sky region consistent with signals in all three detectors is indicated by the yellow contour line in this all-sky map. The all-sky projection includes the arc of our Milky Way Galaxy. An improved three-detector location of the gravitational wave source allowed rapid follow-up observations by other, more conventional, electromagnetic wave observatories that can search for potentially related signals. The addition of the Virgo detector also allowed the gravitational wave polarization to be measured, a property that further confirms predictions of Einstein's general relativity.

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Black holes with ravenous appetites define Type I active galaxies

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Type I and Type II active galaxies do not just appear different -- they are, in fact, very different from each other, both structurally and energetically, new research shows. According to the results of a new study, the key factor that distinguishes Type I and Type II galaxies is the rate at which their central black holes -- or active galactic nuclei -- consume matter and spit out energy.
via Science Daily
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Total solar eclipse viewed from space

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While people across the nation gazed at August's total solar eclipse from Earth, a bread loaf-sized NASA satellite had a front row seat for the astronomical event.
via Science Daily
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New light shed on how Earth and Mars were created

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Analysing a mixture of earth samples and meteorites, scientists have shed new light on the sequence of events that led to the creation of the planets Earth and Mars.
via Science Daily
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New Gravitational Wave Detection From Colliding Black Holes

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Virgo, a new detector for gravitational waves, joined the L-shaped antennas seeking space-time reverberations from colliding black holes.
via New York Times

LIGO and Virgo observatories jointly detect black hole collision

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The first observation of gravitational waves has been discovered by by three different detectors, marking a new era of greater insights and improved localization of cosmic events now available through globally networked gravitational-wave observatories.
via Science Daily
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215 Million Americans Watched the Solar Eclipse, Study Finds

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It was bigger than the Super Bowl. Many more watched it in person or electronically than voted last year.
via New York Times

Trilobites: A Deep Blue Vision of Earth From an Asteroid Hunter

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As it slingshotted past Earth at 19,000 miles per hour on Friday, NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft made a composite portrait of the planet.
via New York Times

The strange structures of the Saturn nebula

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The spectacular planetary nebula NGC 7009, or the Saturn Nebula, emerges from the darkness like a series of oddly-shaped bubbles, lit up in glorious pinks and blues. This colourful image was captured by the MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). The map -- which reveals a wealth of intricate structures in the dust, including shells, a halo and a curious wave-like feature -- will help astronomers understand how planetary nebulae develop their strange shapes and symmetries.
via Science Daily
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Graphene forged into three-dimensional shapes

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Researchers have discovered how graphene, a single-atom-thin layer of carbon, can be forged into three-dimensional objects by using laser light. A striking illustration was provided when the researchers fabricated a pyramid with a height of 60 nm, which is about 200 times larger than the thickness of a graphene sheet. The pyramid was so small that it would easily fit on a single strand of hair.
via Science Daily

Layers of a Total Solar Eclipse

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Neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night can keep a space-based spacecraft from watching the Sun. In fact, from its vantage point 1.5 million kilometers sunward of planet Earth, NASA's SOlar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) can always monitor the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona. But only during a total solar eclipse can Earth-based observers also see the lovely coronal streamers and structures - when the Moon briefly blocks the overwhelmingly bright solar surface. Then, it becomes possible to follow detailed coronal activity all the way down to the Sun's surface. In the outside layer of this composite image, SOHO's uninterrupted view of the solar corona during last month's eclipse is shown in orange hues. The middle, donut-shaped region is the corona as recorded by the Williams College Eclipse Expedition to Salem, Oregon. Simultaneously, the inner view is from NASA's Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, which, being outside of totality, was able to image the face of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light, shown in gold.

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Near-Earth asteroid CubeSat goes full sail

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NASA's Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, a small satellite the size of a shoebox, designed to study asteroids close to Earth, recently performed a full-scale solar sail deployment test. The test was performed in an indoor clean room to ensure the deployment mechanism's functionality after recent environmental testing.
via Science Daily
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Cartography of the Cosmos

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There are hundreds of billions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy, interspersed with all manner of matter, from the dark to the sublime. This is the universe that one group of researchers is trying to reconstruct, structure by structure, combining telescope surveys with next-generation data analysis and simulation techniques currently being primed for exascale computing.
via Science Daily
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Cassini's Last Ring Portrait at Saturn

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How should Cassini say farewell to Saturn? Three days before plunging into Saturn's sunny side, the robotic Cassini spacecraft swooped far behind Saturn's night side with cameras blazing. Thirty-six of these images have been merged -- by an alert and adept citizen scientist -- into a last full-ring portrait of Cassini's home planet for the past 13 years. The Sun is just above the frame, causing Saturn to cast a dark shadow onto its enormous rings. This shadow position cannot be imaged from Earth and will not be visible again until another Earth-launched spaceship visits the ringed giant. Data and images from Cassini's mission-ending dive into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15 continue to be analyzed.

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Helicopter test for Jupiter icy moons radar

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A long radar boom that will probe below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moons has been tested on Earth with the help of a helicopter.

via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Helicopter_test_for_Jupiter_icy_moons_radar

LHC rocks the seesaw model

Lava tubes: the hidden sites for future human habitats on the Moon and Mars

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Lava tubes, underground caves created by volcanic activity, could provide protected habitats large enough to house streets on Mars or even towns on the Moon, according to new research. A further study shows how the next generation of lunar orbiters will be able to use radar to locate these structures under the Moon’s surface. 
via Science Daily
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Physicists demonstrate using a laser to control a current in graphene within just one femtosecond

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Controlling electronic current is essential to modern electronics, as data and signals are transferred by streams of electrons which are controlled at high speed. Demands on transmission speeds are also increasing as technology develops. Scientists have now succeeded in switching on a current with a desired direction in graphene using a single laser pulse within a femtosecond. This is more than a thousand times faster compared to the most efficient transistors today.
via Science Daily

IceCube helps demystify strange radio bursts from deep space

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Scientists are turning IceCube, the world's most sensitive neutrino telescope, to the task of helping demystify powerful pulses of radio energy generated up to billions of light-years from Earth.
via Science Daily
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The material that obscures supermassive black holes

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New research examines the material that obscures active galactic nuclei obtained from infrared and X-ray observations.
via Science Daily
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The melody of magnets

Massive Shell-Expelling Star G79.29+0.46

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Stars this volatile are quite rare. Captured in the midst of dust clouds and visible to the right and above center is massive G79.29+0.46, one of less than 100 luminous blue variable stars (LBVs) currently known in our Galaxy. LBVs expel shells of gas and may lose even the mass of Jupiter over 100 years. The star, itself bright and blue, is shrouded in dust and so not seen in visible light. The dying star appears green and surrounded by red shells, though, in this mapped-color infrared picture combining images from NASA's Spitzer Space Observatory and NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer. G79.29+0.46 is located in the star-forming Cygnus X region of our Galaxy. Why G79.29+0.46 is so volatile, how long it will remain in the LBV phase, and when it will explode in a supernova is not known.

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Ever-changing view

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Highlighting Rosetta’s ever-changing view of the comet, a year since the mission concluded
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2017/09/Rosetta_s_ever-changing_view_of_a_comet

How to Identify that Light in the Sky

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What is that light in the sky? Perhaps one of humanity's more common questions, an answer may result from a few quick observations. For example -- is it moving or blinking? If so, and if you live near a city, the answer is typically an airplane, since planes are so numerous and so few stars and satellites are bright enough to be seen over the din of artificial city lights. If not, and if you live far from a city, that bright light is likely a planet such as Venus or Mars -- the former of which is constrained to appear near the horizon just before dawn or after dusk. Sometimes the low apparent motion of a distant airplane near the horizon makes it hard to tell from a bright planet, but even this can usually be discerned by the plane's motion over a few minutes. Still unsure? The featured chart gives a sometimes-humorous but mostly-accurate assessment. Dedicated sky enthusiasts will likely note -- and are encouraged to provide -- polite corrections.

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A Conjunction of Comets

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A conjunction of comets is captured in this pretty star field from the morning of September 17. Discovered in July by a robotic sky survey searching for supernovae, comet C/2017 O1 ASASSN is at the lower left. The visible greenish glow of its coma is produced by the fluorescence of diatomic carbon molecules in sunlight. Nearing its closest approach to the Sun, the binocular comet was only about 7.2 light-minutes from Earth. In the same telescopic field of view is the long-tailed, outbound comet C/2015 ER61 PanSTARRS at the upper right, almost 14 light-minutes away. Many light-years distant, the starry background includes faint, dusty nebulae of the Milky Way. The well-known Pleiades star cluster lies just off the top right of the frame.

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Trilobites: Sputnik for Sale, if You’ll Settle for a Beeping Replica

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Just ahead of the 60th anniversary of the first Earth launch of a satellite, an auction house will take bids on a replica of the shiny Soviet spacecraft.
via New York Times

NASA'S OSIRIS-REx spacecraft slingshots past Earth

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NASA's asteroid sample return spacecraft successfully used Earth's gravity on Friday to slingshot itself on a path toward the asteroid Bennu, for a rendezvous next August.
via Science Daily
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Positive, negative or neutral, it all matters: NASA explains space radiation

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Charged particles may be small, but they matter to astronauts. NASA's Human Research Program (HRP) is investigating these particles to solve one of its biggest challenges for a human journey to Mars: space radiation and its effects on the human body.
via Science Daily
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Enhancing the sensing capabilities of diamonds with quantum properties

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When a nitrogen atom is next to the space vacated by a carbon atom, it forms what is called a nitrogen-vacancy center. Now, researchers have shown how they can create more NV centers, which makes sensing magnetic fields easier, using a relatively simple method that can be done in many labs.
via Science Daily

Solar Eclipse Solargraph

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Today is the September equinox. Heading south, the Sun's path through the sky will cross the celestial equator at 20:02 UT. Of course the equinox date results in (mostly) equal night and day all over planet Earth. But on August 21 the Sun's path through the sky found a little extra-night for some. Made with a drink can pinhole camera and light-sensitive paper, this creative solargraph follows the Sun's path on that date. An all-day exposure, it traces the Sun's arc still rising high in northern skies, aligned with a panoramic snapshot of the local landscape at the bottom. The gap in the arc represents the duration of the partial and total phases of the solar eclipse in clear skies over Lowman, Idaho, USA. There, the extra-night (totality) lasted for about 2 minutes. The broad gap in the Sun's arc also covers the loss of sunlight during the more extended partial eclipse phases.

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To 20 Tesla and beyond: the high-temperature superconductors

Hope to discover sure signs of life on Mars? New research says look for the element vanadium

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A new article suggests NASA and others hunting for proof of Martian biology in the form of 'microfossils' could use the element vanadium in combination with Raman spectroscopy to confirm traces of extraterrestrial life.
via Science Daily
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Solar eruption ‘photobombed’ Mars encounter with Comet Siding Spring

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When Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) passed just 140,000 kilometers from Mars on 19th October 2014, depositing a large amount of debris in the Martian atmosphere, space agencies coordinated multiple spacecraft to witness the largest meteor shower in recorded history. It was a rare opportunity, as this kind of planetary event occurs only once every 100,000 years.
via Science Daily
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NASA’s Osiris-Rex Spacecraft Is Headed for a Flyby With Earth

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The spacecraft will make a flyby of Earth on Friday, using the planet’s gravity to steer it toward Bennu, an asteroid it will visit next year.
via New York Times

Next stop: the superconducting magnets of the future

A September Morning Sky

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The Moon, three planets, and a bright star gathered near the ecliptic plane in the September 18 morning sky over Veszprem Castle, Hungary. In this twilight skyscape, Mercury and Mars still shine close to the eastern horizon, soon to disappear in the glare of the Sun. Regulus, alpha star of the constellation Leo, is the bright point next to a waning crescent Moon, with brilliant Venus near the top of the frame. The beautiful morning conjunction of Moon, planets, and bright star could generally be followed by early morning risers all around planet Earth. But remarkably, the Moon also occulted, or passed directly in front of, Regulus and each of the three planets within 24 hours, all on September 18 UT. Visible from different locations, timing and watching the lunar occultations was much more difficult though, and mostly required viewing in daytime skies.

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From stars to galaxies

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Explore stellar nurseries in our Milky Way and other galaxies as viewed through the infrared eye of the Herschel space observatory
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Herschel/Highlights/From_stars_to_galaxies

CERN openlab tackles ICT challenges of High-Luminosity LHC

CERN computing centre in 2017 (Image: Robert Hradil, Monika Majer/ProStudio22.ch)

CERN openlab has published a white paper identifying the major ICT challenges that face CERN and other ‘big science’ projects in the coming years.

CERN is home to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. The complexity of the scientific instruments at the laboratory throw up extreme ICT challenges, and make it an ideal environment for carrying out joint R&D projects and testing with industry.

A continuing programme of upgrades to the LHC and the experiments at CERN will result in hugely increased ICT demands in the coming years. The High-Luminosity LHC, the successor to the LHC, is planned to come online in around 2026. By this time, the total computing capacity required by the experiments is expected to be 50-100 times greater than today, with data storage needs expected to be in the order of exabytes.

CERN openlab works to develop and test the new ICT solutions and techniques that help to make the ground-breaking physics discoveries at CERN possible. It is a unique public-private partnership that provides a framework through which CERN can collaborate with leading ICT companies to accelerate the development of these cutting-edge technologies.

With a new three-year phase of CERN openlab set to begin at the start of 2018, work has been carried out throughout the first half of 2017 to identify key areas for future collaboration. A series of workshops and discussions was held to discuss the ICT challenges faced by the LHC research community — and other ‘big science’ projects over the coming years. This white paper is the culmination of these investigations, and sets out specific challenges that are ripe for tackling through collaborative R&D projects with leading ICT companies.

The white paper identifies 16 ICT ‘challenge areas’, which have been grouped into four overarching ‘R&D topics’ (data-centre technologies and infrastructures, computing performance and software, machine learning and data analytics, applications in other disciplines). Challenges identified include ensuring that data centre architectures are flexible and cost effective; using cloud computing resources in a scalable, hybrid manner; fully modernising code, in order to exploit hardware to its maximum potential; making sure large-scale platforms are in place to enable global scientific collaboration; and successfully translating the huge potential of machine learning into concrete solutions       .

“Tackling these challenges — through a public-private partnership that brings together leading experts from each of these spheres — has the potential to positively impact on a range of scientific and technological fields, as well as wider society,” says Alberto Di Meglio, head of CERN openlab.

“With the LHC and the experiments set to undergo major upgrade work in 2019 and 2020, CERN openlab’s sixth phase offers a clear opportunity to develop ICT solutions that will already make a tangible difference for researchers when the upgraded LHC and experiments come back online in 2021,” says Maria Girone, CERN openlab CTO.

 

Follow the launch event for the white paper live via webcast from 09:50 CEST today.

via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/09/cern-openlab-tackles-ict-challenges-high-luminosity-lhc

Unique type of object discovered in our solar system

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Astronomers have observed the intriguing characteristics of an unusual type of object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter: two asteroids orbiting each other and exhibiting comet-like features, including a bright coma and a long tail. This is the first known binary asteroid also classified as a comet.
via Science Daily
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Comet or Asteroid? Hubble Discovers that a Unique Object is a Binary

An Asteroid That Split in Two 5,000 Years Ago Is Spouting a Comet Tail

Astronomers categorize the minor bodies in the solar system according to their location and physical composition. Comets are a loose collection of ice and dust that fall in toward the Sun from beyond the orbits of the major planets, and grow long tails of dust and gas along the way. Asteroids are rocky or metallic and are relegated to a zone between Mars and Jupiter. But nature isn't that tidy. The Hubble Space Telescope photographed a pair of asteroids orbiting each other that have a tail of dust, which is definitely a comet-like feature. The odd object, called 2006 VW139/288P, is the first known binary asteroid that is also classified as a main-belt comet. Roughly 5,000 years ago, 2006 VW139/288P probably broke into two pieces due to a fast rotation.

via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2017-32

New concept of terrestrial planet formation

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Scientists are proposing a new way of understanding the cooling and transfer of heat from terrestrial planetary interiors and how that affects the generation of the volcanic terrains that dominate the rocky planets.
via Science Daily
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Naked molecules dancing in liquid become visible

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Moving, vibrating and leaping molecules make up our world. However, capturing their movement is not an easy task. Scientists were able to see the movement of molecules stored inside a graphene pocket without the need to stain them. This study paves the way for observing the dynamics of life building blocks, like proteins and DNA, as well as the self-assembly of other materials.
via Science Daily

Solar wind impacts on giant 'space hurricanes' may affect satellite safety

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Could the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Costa Rica set off a hurricane in California? For most people, this hypothetical scenario may be difficult to imagine on Earth -- particularly when a real disaster strikes. Yet, in space, similarly small fluctuations in the solar wind as it streams toward the Earth's magnetic shield actually can affect the speed and strength of 'space hurricanes,' a researcher explains.
via Science Daily
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The Big Corona

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Most photographs don't adequately portray the magnificence of the Sun's corona. Seeing the corona first-hand during a total solar eclipse is unparalleled. The human eye can adapt to see coronal features and extent that average cameras usually cannot. Welcome, however, to the digital age. The featured picture is a combination of forty exposures from one thousandth of a second to two seconds that, together, were digitally combined and processed to highlight faint features of the total solar eclipse that occurred in August of 2017. Clearly visible are intricate layers and glowing caustics of an ever changing mixture of hot gas and magnetic fields in the Sun's corona. Looping prominences appear bright pink just past the Sun's limb. Faint details on the night side of the New Moon can even be made out, illuminated by sunlight reflected from the dayside of the Full Earth.

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Detectors: unique superconducting magnets

Size matters in the detection of exoplanet atmospheres

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A group-analysis of 30 exoplanets orbiting distant stars suggests that size, not mass, is a key factor in whether a planet’s atmosphere can be detected. The largest population-study of exoplanets to date successfully detected atmospheres around 16 ‘hot Jupiters’, and found that water vapor was present in every case.
via Science Daily
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What do we need to know to mine an asteroid?

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The mining of resources contained in asteroids, for use as propellant, building materials or in life-support systems, has the potential to revolutionise exploration of our Solar System. To make this concept a reality, we need to increase our knowledge of the very diverse population of accessible Near Earth Asteroids (NEA).
via Science Daily
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Nanosat fleet proposed for voyage to 300 asteroids

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A fleet of tiny spacecraft could visit over 300 asteroids in just over three years, according to a mission study. The Asteroid Touring Nanosat Fleet concept comprises 50 spacecraft propelled by innovative electric solar wind sails (E-sails) and equipped with instruments to take images and collect spectroscopic data on the composition of the asteroids. Each nanosat would visit six or seven asteroids before returning to Earth to deliver the data.
via Science Daily
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