Featured Posts
Astro Watch
27 Jan 2015, 22:23 UTC
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), planned to be launched in August 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, is designed to discover thousands of exoplanets. Led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), TESS will focus on stars 30-100 times brighter than those surveyed by the Kepler telescope, thus, the newly discovered planets should be far easier to characterize with follow-up observations. NASA assumes that approximately 500,000 stars will be studied, including the 1,000 closest red dwarfs, across an area of sky 400 times larger than that covered by Kepler. The agency estimates that TESS will discover more than 3,000 transiting exoplanet candidates, including those which are Earth sized or larger. So is it a revolution in exoplanet hunting? David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose research focuses on exoplanets, thinks so. “I do think TESS will have a huge impact,” he told astrowatch.net. “The main impact of TESS will be to find many planets similar to the ones Kepler has been finding, but around stars that are much closer and hence much easier to study.”Previous sky surveys with ground-based telescopes have mainly picked out giant exoplanets. ...
Will NASA’s TESS Spacecraft Revolutionize Exoplanet Hunting?
27 Jan 2015, 22:23 UTC
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), planned to be launched in August 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, is designed to discover thousands of exoplanets. Led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), TESS will focus on stars 30-100 times brighter than those surveyed by the Kepler telescope, thus, the newly discovered planets should be far easier to characterize with follow-up observations. NASA assumes that approximately 500,000 stars will be studied, including the 1,000 closest red dwarfs, across an area of sky 400 times larger than that covered by Kepler. The agency estimates that TESS will discover more than 3,000 transiting exoplanet candidates, including those which are Earth sized or larger. So is it a revolution in exoplanet hunting? David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose research focuses on exoplanets, thinks so. “I do think TESS will have a huge impact,” he told astrowatch.net. “The main impact of TESS will be to find many planets similar to the ones Kepler has been finding, but around stars that are much closer and hence much easier to study.”Previous sky surveys with ground-based telescopes have mainly picked out giant exoplanets. ...
SPACE.com
27 Jan 2015, 19:38 UTC
Slated to be the world’s most powerful rocket when it flies, Falcon Heavy will attempt to return it’s core stage and boosters for rapid refurbishment and reuse. SpaceX is confident its accuracy will be sufficient to park the booster elements on land
SpaceX Falcon Heavy To Be Reusable, Animation Reveals
27 Jan 2015, 19:38 UTC
Slated to be the world’s most powerful rocket when it flies, Falcon Heavy will attempt to return it’s core stage and boosters for rapid refurbishment and reuse. SpaceX is confident its accuracy will be sufficient to park the booster elements on land
Quantum Diaries
27 Jan 2015, 19:11 UTC
With 2015 a few weeks old, it seems like a fine time to review what happened in 2014 and to look forward to the new year and the restart of data taking. Along with many interesting physics results, just to name a few, LHCb saw its 200th publication, a test of lepton universality. With protons about to enter the LHC, and the ALICE and LHCb detectors recording muon data from transfer line tests between the SPS and LHC (see also here), the start of data-taking is almost upon us. For some implications, see Ken Bloom’s post here. Will we find supersymmetry? Split Higgs? Nothing at all? I’m not going to speculate on that, but I would like to review two techniques which played a key role in two results from LHCb and a few analysis techniques which enabled them. The first result I want to discuss is the \(Z(4430)^{-}\). The first evidence for this state came from the Belle Collaboration in 2007, with subsequent studies in 2009 and in 2013. BaBar also searched for the state, and while they did not see it, they did not rule it out. The LHCb collaboration searched for this state, using the specific decay ...
Looking Forward to 2015: Analysis Techniques
27 Jan 2015, 19:11 UTC
With 2015 a few weeks old, it seems like a fine time to review what happened in 2014 and to look forward to the new year and the restart of data taking. Along with many interesting physics results, just to name a few, LHCb saw its 200th publication, a test of lepton universality. With protons about to enter the LHC, and the ALICE and LHCb detectors recording muon data from transfer line tests between the SPS and LHC (see also here), the start of data-taking is almost upon us. For some implications, see Ken Bloom’s post here. Will we find supersymmetry? Split Higgs? Nothing at all? I’m not going to speculate on that, but I would like to review two techniques which played a key role in two results from LHCb and a few analysis techniques which enabled them. The first result I want to discuss is the \(Z(4430)^{-}\). The first evidence for this state came from the Belle Collaboration in 2007, with subsequent studies in 2009 and in 2013. BaBar also searched for the state, and while they did not see it, they did not rule it out. The LHCb collaboration searched for this state, using the specific decay ...
The Planetary Society Blog
27 Jan 2015, 18:43 UTC
Chiron, which is both a centaur and a comet, may also have rings.
A second ringed centaur? Centaurs with rings could be common
27 Jan 2015, 18:43 UTC
Chiron, which is both a centaur and a comet, may also have rings.
Universe Today
27 Jan 2015, 17:06 UTC
The cosmos is continually in motion. Be it atoms, stars or snowflakes from the latest nor’easter pounding the New England seaboard, anything worth studying involves movement. And as skies and snowbound roads clear, this Wednesday and Thursday evening will give us a reason to brave the January cold, as the waxing gibbous Moon pierces the […] Getting closer… the Moon and Aldebaran from May 2014. Credit and copyright: Ziad El-Zaatari. The cosmos is continually in motion. Be it atoms, stars or snowflakes from the latest nor’easter pounding the New England seaboard, anything worth studying involves movement. And as skies and snowbound roads clear, this Wednesday and Thursday evening will give us a reason to brave the January cold, as the waxing gibbous Moon pierces the Hyades star cluster to graze past the bright star Aldebaran.(...)Read the rest of Luna vs. the Hyades! The 1st of 13 Occultations of Aldebaran Set For January 29th (975 words) © David Dickinson for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: 2015 astronomy, 2015 occultations, aldebaran occultations, deflategate, Hyades, nor'easter, superbowl XLIX Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
Luna vs. the Hyades! The 1st of 13 Occultations of Aldebaran Set For January 29th
27 Jan 2015, 17:06 UTC
The cosmos is continually in motion. Be it atoms, stars or snowflakes from the latest nor’easter pounding the New England seaboard, anything worth studying involves movement. And as skies and snowbound roads clear, this Wednesday and Thursday evening will give us a reason to brave the January cold, as the waxing gibbous Moon pierces the […] Getting closer… the Moon and Aldebaran from May 2014. Credit and copyright: Ziad El-Zaatari. The cosmos is continually in motion. Be it atoms, stars or snowflakes from the latest nor’easter pounding the New England seaboard, anything worth studying involves movement. And as skies and snowbound roads clear, this Wednesday and Thursday evening will give us a reason to brave the January cold, as the waxing gibbous Moon pierces the Hyades star cluster to graze past the bright star Aldebaran.(...)Read the rest of Luna vs. the Hyades! The 1st of 13 Occultations of Aldebaran Set For January 29th (975 words) © David Dickinson for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: 2015 astronomy, 2015 occultations, aldebaran occultations, deflategate, Hyades, nor'easter, superbowl XLIX Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
Scientific American
27 Jan 2015, 16:25 UTC
In 1990, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft briefly looked back from its journey out of the solar system, capturing a view of the faraway Earth. Carl Sagan called it the "pale blue dot." From more than 6... -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
Planet Hunters Bet Big on a Small Telescope to See Alien Earths
27 Jan 2015, 16:25 UTC
In 1990, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft briefly looked back from its journey out of the solar system, capturing a view of the faraway Earth. Carl Sagan called it the "pale blue dot." From more than 6... -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
Starts With a Bang!
27 Jan 2015, 15:08 UTC
How the moons of Jupiter can tell you exactly where on Earth you are.Continue reading on Medium »
From Heaven to Earth
27 Jan 2015, 15:08 UTC
How the moons of Jupiter can tell you exactly where on Earth you are.Continue reading on Medium »
Universe Today
27 Jan 2015, 14:10 UTC
Using data from the Kepler space telescope, an international group of astronomers has discovered the oldest known planetary system in the galaxy – an 11 billion-year-old system of five rocky planets that are all smaller than Earth. The team says this discovery suggests that Earth-size planets have formed throughout most of the Universe’s 13.8-billion-year history, […] An artist rendition of Kepler-444 planetary system, which hosts five planets, all smaller than Earth. Credit: Tiago Campante, University of Birmingham, UK. Using data from the Kepler space telescope, an international group of astronomers has discovered the oldest known planetary system in the galaxy – an 11 billion-year-old system of five rocky planets that are all smaller than Earth. The team says this discovery suggests that Earth-size planets have formed throughout most of the Universe’s 13.8-billion-year history, increasing the possibility for the existence of ancient life – and potentially advanced intelligent life — in our galaxy. “The fact that rocky planets were already forming in the galaxy 11 billion years ago suggests that habitable Earth-like planets have probably been around for a very long time, much longer than the age of our Solar System,” said Dr. Travis Metcalfe, Senior Research Scientist Space Science Institute, ...
Oldest Planetary System Discovered, Improving the Chances for Intelligent Life Everywhere
27 Jan 2015, 14:10 UTC
Using data from the Kepler space telescope, an international group of astronomers has discovered the oldest known planetary system in the galaxy – an 11 billion-year-old system of five rocky planets that are all smaller than Earth. The team says this discovery suggests that Earth-size planets have formed throughout most of the Universe’s 13.8-billion-year history, […] An artist rendition of Kepler-444 planetary system, which hosts five planets, all smaller than Earth. Credit: Tiago Campante, University of Birmingham, UK. Using data from the Kepler space telescope, an international group of astronomers has discovered the oldest known planetary system in the galaxy – an 11 billion-year-old system of five rocky planets that are all smaller than Earth. The team says this discovery suggests that Earth-size planets have formed throughout most of the Universe’s 13.8-billion-year history, increasing the possibility for the existence of ancient life – and potentially advanced intelligent life — in our galaxy. “The fact that rocky planets were already forming in the galaxy 11 billion years ago suggests that habitable Earth-like planets have probably been around for a very long time, much longer than the age of our Solar System,” said Dr. Travis Metcalfe, Senior Research Scientist Space Science Institute, ...
Science World Report
27 Jan 2015, 13:35 UTC
A new satellite may be multitasking after it's launched into space. While some satellites only monitor the Earth and other satellites only monitor the sun, the new DSCOVR satellite will keep an eye on both.
