Tempest-from-hell seen on Saturn (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists analyzing data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft now have the first-ever, up-close details of a Saturn storm that is eight times the surface area of Earth. On Dec. 5, 2010, Cassini first detected the storm that has been raging ever since. It appears approximately 35 degrees north latitude of Saturn. Pictures from Cassini's imaging cameras show the storm wrapping around the entire planet covering approximately 2 billion square miles (4 billion square kilometers). The storm is about 500 times larger than the biggest storm previously seen by Cassini during several months from 2009 to 2010. "Cassini shows us that Saturn is bipolar," said Andrew Ingersoll, an author of the study and a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. At its most intense, the storm generated more than 10 lightning flashes per second. The storm's results are the first activities of a new "Saturn Storm Watch" campaign.
Saturn Moon Has Oxygen Atmosphere An oxygen atmosphere has been found on Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea, astronomers announced Thursday—but don't hold your breath for colonization opportunities. For one thing, the 932-mile-wide (1,500-kilometer-wide), ice-covered moon is more than 932 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. For another, the average surface temperature is -292 degrees Fahrenheit (-180 degrees Celsius). And at less than 62 miles (100 kilometers) thick, the newfound oxygen layer is so thin that, at Earthlike temperatures and pressure, Rhea's entire atmosphere would fit in a single midsize building. Still, the discovery implies that worlds with oxygen-filled air may not be so unusual in the cosmos. At about 327,000 miles (527,000 kilometers) from Saturn, Rhea orbits inside the planet's magnetic field. The Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Galileo probe found in 1995 that a similar process creates tenuous oxygen atmospheres on Jupiter's ice moons Europa and Ganymede.
The Unsolved Mystery of Saturn's Hexagon -4 Times the Size of Earth "Cassini is indebted to Voyager for its many fascinating discoveries and for pavingthe way for Cassini," says Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL, who started her career working on Voyager from 1977 to 1989. "On Cassini, we still compare our data to Voyager's and proudly build on Voyager's heritage." But the Voyager Mission left a few mysteries that Cassini has not yet solved. One of the most perplexing mysteries is Saturn's hexagpn. 'Now that we can see undulations and circular features instead of blobs in the hexagon, we can start trying to solve some of the unanswered questions about one of the most bizarre things we've ever seen in the solar system, said Kevin Baines, Atmospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory after viewing Cassini images in 2009. After the sunlight faded, darkness shrouded the north pole for 15 years. The hexagon was originally discovered in images taken by the Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s.
Enceladus Saturn II Enceladus ("en SEL a dus") is the eighth of Saturn's known satellites: orbit: 238,020 km from Saturn diameter: 498 km mass: 7.30e19 kg In Greek mythology Enceladus was a Titan who was defeated in battle and buried under Mount Etna by Athena. Discovered in 1789 by Herschel. Craters and smooth plains Enceladus has the highest albedo (>0.9) of any body in the solar system. At least five different types of terrain have been identified on Enceladus. This means that Enceladus must have been active until very recently (and perhaps is still active today). Enceladus is much too small to be heated solely by the decay of radioactive material in its interior at present. Cassini closeup view (looks like Europa?) Enceladus is locked in a 1:2 resonance with Dione (similar to the situation between Io and Europa). Enceladus is very likely the source of the material in Saturn's tenuous E ring. More about Enceladus Open Issues What is the resurfacing mechanism? Home ...
The Sounds of Pulsars A pulsar is a highly magnetised neutron star, with a radius of 10-15 km, having somewhat greater mass than the Sun which has a radius of approximately 1 million km. Radiation is beamed out along the magnetic poles and pulses of radiation are received as the beam crosses the Earth, in the same manner as the beam from a lighthouse causes flashes. Being enormous cosmic flywheels with a tick attached, they make some of the best clocks known to mankind. These sounds directly correspond to the radio-waves emitted by the brightest pulsars in the sky as received by some of the largest radio telescopes in the world. To listen to the pulses of a radio pulsar, click on its arrow icon.
Enceladus Enceladus [en-SELL-ah-dus] is one of the brightest objects in our solar system. Covered in water ice that reflects sunlight like freshly fallen snow, Enceladus reflects almost 100 percent of the sunlight that strikes it. Because Enceladus reflects so much sunlight, the surface temperature is extremely cold, about -201° C (-330° F). About as wide as Arizona, Enceladus is quite similar in size to Mimas but has a smoother, brighter surface. Unlike Mimas, Enceladus displays at least five different types of terrain. Parts of the moon show craters no larger than 35 kilometers (about 22 miles) in diameter.
Scientists Now Know: We're From Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy! Scientists Now Know: We're Not From Here! Summary & comments by Dan Eden for Viewzone "This first full-sky map of Sagittarius shows its extensive interaction with the Milky Way," Majewski said. "Both stars and star clusters now in the outer parts of the Milky Way have been 'stolen' from Sagittarius as the gravitational forces of the Milky Way nibbled away at its dwarf companion. The study's map of M giants depicts 2 billion years of Sagittarius stripping by the Milky Way, and suggests that Sagittarius has reached a critical phase in what had been a slow dance of death. "After slow, continuous gnawing by the Milky Way, Sagittarius has been whittled down to the point that it cannot hold itself together much longer," said 2MASS Science Team member and study co-author Martin Weinberg of the University of Massachusetts. Does this mean we are at a unique moment in the life of our galaxy? Implications in Global Warming? Other changes happening in our system * A growth of dark spots on Pluto. Dave
Seriously jaw-dropping picture of the Sun Need your slice of awesome today? Then check out this truly astonishing picture of a detached prominence off the limb of the Sun: Holy wow! Click to ensolarnate. And I mean it: you want to see the bigger version of this. This picture was taken by Alan Friedman, who is no stranger to this blog: his picture of the boiling Sun last year was hugely popular, and so amazing I featured it as one of my top pictures of 2010. And with this he’s done it again… and maybe even topped it. Alan used a filter that lets through only a very narrow wavelength of light emitted by hydrogen (called Hα for those of you keeping track at home), so this tracks the activity of gas on the solar surface. The scene-stealer is that detached prominence off to the left. The beauty of this picture belies its violence and sheer magnitude: the mass of material in a prominence can easily top 10 billion tons! Yegads. You really need to go and see the rest of Alan’s photography at his site, Averted Imagination. Related posts:
Quark Star (update) Some of the strange stuff that is coming out about quark stars: 1) that quark stars may be connected to dark matter (or even dark energy?) Some dark matter might just be “strangelets” roaming the cosmos, blasted free from quark stars: or 2) That some smaller sized black holes may actually be quark stars: “Some black holes may actually be ‘quark stars’:” or 3) The light given off by a quark star is called bremsstrahlung emissions. “quark star: gives off dim light (called bremsstrahlung emission), emitted by a thin layer of electrons on its surface:” or 4) It takes about 1.6 minutes to from a quark star from a neutron star. Like this: Like Loading...
BBC Solar System – Uranus orbits the Sun tilted on its side Darkest exoplanet spotted by astronomers 12 August 2011Last updated at 11:09 By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News TrES-2b is literally darker, on average, than coal A dark alien world, blacker than coal, has been spotted by astronomers. The Jupiter-sized planet is orbiting its star at a distance of just five million km, and is likely to be at a temperature of some 1200C. The planet may be too hot to support reflective clouds like those we see in our own Solar System, but even that would not explain why it is so dark. The research will be published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The planet, called TrES-2b, is so named because it was first spotted by the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey in 2006. It also lies in the field of view of the Kepler space telescope, whose primary mission is to spot exoplanets using extremely sensitive brightness measurements as far-flung worlds pass in front of their host stars. 'Exotic chemistry' Continue reading the main story
Dark alien planet discovered by NASA | MNN - Mother Nature Network - StumbleUpon An alien world blacker than coal, the darkest planet known, has been discovered in the galaxy. The world in question is a giant the size of Jupiter known as TrES-2b. NASA's Kepler spacecraft detected it lurking around the yellow sun-like star GSC 03549-02811 some 750 lightyears away in the direction of the constellation Draco. The researchers found this gas giant reflects less than 1 percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it darker than any planet or moon seen up to now. [The Strangest Alien Planets] "It's just ridiculous how dark this planet is, how alien it is compared to anything we have in our solar system," study lead-author David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SPACE.com. "However, it's not completely pitch black," co-author David Spiegel of Princeton University said in a statement. "It's a mystery as to what's causing it to be so dark," Kipping said. This article was reprinted with permission from SPACE.com.
Black Holes NOTE: This section is about stellar-mass black holes. For information about black holes that measure in the billions of solar masses, see Active Galaxies & Quasars . There are many popular myths concerning black holes, many of them perpetuated by Hollywood. Television and movies have portrayed them as time-traveling tunnels to another dimension, cosmic vacuum cleaners sucking up everything in sight, and so on. It can be said that black holes are really just the evolutionary end point of massive stars. But somehow, this simple explanation makes them no less mysterious, and no easier to understand. Black holes: What are they? Black holes are the evolutionary endpoints of stars at least 10 to 15 times as massive as the Sun. But contrary to popular myth, a black hole is not a cosmic vacuum cleaner. The Schwarzschild radius can be calculated using the equation for escape speed: vesc = (2GM/R)1/2 R = 2GM/c2 If we can't see them, how do we know they are there? Last Modified: December 2010
Diamond Planet Discovered By Astronomers The nursery song "twinkle twinkle, little star" might have a whole new meaning now that astronomers have found a planet they believe to be made almost entirely of diamonds. Scientists say the planet exists about 4,000 light years away from Earth, and is probably the remnants of a once-large dead star, Reuters reports. (Scroll down for video.) "The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon," Matthew Bailes of the University of Technology in Melbourne told Reuters. The Daily Mail reported that, even though the planet is small in size, it has slightly more mass than the planet Jupiter. Scientists were able to find the planet by tracking its companion star, or a pulsar, using the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia. As to what the diamond planet looks like, Ben Stappers of the University of Manchester told The Macadonean International News Agency (MINA) it's probably not what everyone pictures: "I don't know I could even speculate.