ORGANIC MOLECULES FOUND ON COMET

ROSETTA MISSION LINK

According to ESA (European Space Agency),  16 organic compounds comprising numerous carbon and nitrogen-rich compounds, including four compounds – methyl isocyanate, acetone, propionaldehyde and acetamide – were found.

Ambient gases, the main components of coma gases – water vapour, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, along with smaller amounts of carbon-bearing organic compounds, including formaldehyde were also detected.

Importantly, some of these compounds detected play a key role in the prebiotic synthesis of amino acids, sugars and nucleobases: the ingredients for life. For example, formaldehyde is implicated in the formation of ribose, which ultimately features in molecules like DNA.

                                              ESA's Rosetta Mission's Philae Lander

PLUTO NEWS!

NEW PLUTO PIX AND INFO!

New Discovery at CERN: The PENTAQUARK will bring us closer to understanding what stars are made of.

Pentaquark info

WE'RE GETTING EXCITED ABOUT THE JULY 14 PLUTO FLYBY!

Heart on one side, hand prints on the other, intriguing.

PLUTO! New Horizons flyby info here

THE MAP TO A BARRED SPIRAL GALAXY CALLED MILY WAY

ON JULY 14 PLUTO WILL BE REACHED-What will the much-discussed Kuiper Belt object tell us about the outer Solar System?

Pluto!

THE LONGEST DAY IN THE SUN'S RAYS

Click here!

ASTRONOMER-FRIENDLY SKIES IN THE FORECAST

Click!

OFF THE EARTH, FOR THE EARTH

They're back!

Our amazing heroes, NASA astronaut Terry Virts, ESA astronaut Sam Cristoforetti and Rosocosmos cosmonaut Shkaplerov of mission #43 are back on Earth safely:

THE UNPREDICTABLE NATURE OF PLUTO'S SATELlITES

Astronomy Now link




Most moons in the Solar System, including Earh's satellite, rotates on its axis at the same speed as it orbits a planet, hence we see the same side of the Moon facing Earth. Not on Pluto, but then again, Pluto is not a planet. 

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE ISS

CLICK HERE!

Canadarm grapples SpaceX Dragon on the ISS:

A STEP TOWARDS LEAVING LOW-EARTH ORBIT

Humanity's next great leap in exploration resides in our ability to expand our knowledge of reality as enabled by frontier science R&D. The one-year expedition is especially close to my heart, featuring a middle aged astronaut and a cosmonaut (anyone can do science, if they really put their mind to it).

"It is the blueprint for global cooperation – one that enables a multinational partnership and advances shared goals in space exploration," says NASA. It is true, time to remember that in the best science fiction fashion (Star Trek comes to mind) not warring countries, but planets are represented in the galactic federation, and not conquest, but peaceful research and science is the ultimate goal.

Earth photographed from the ISS:

Click here!

PLANET HUNTER

The main goal of the Kepler Mission is to find Earth-like exoplanets, planets outside our Solar System. The Kepler spacecraft measures the brightness of stars, looking for signs of dimming that would indicate the presence of an orbiting planet. Transits that manifest as dimming, information can be learnt about the parent star; researchers can determine a planet's size, orbit and other characteristics. So far, more than 1800 terrestrial planets have been confirmed to exist. What an abundance of life not dissimilar to our planet's could this mean!

More on the Kepler Mission and exoplanets:

THE SEARCH FOR ANOTHER EARTH

TWO PLANETS, ONE STAR

TWO PLANETS, ONE SUN

Even though Mars is called the "Red Planet", the blue sunset is snapped by Curiosity presently doing research on Mars, and the red sunset is of Earth.

This picture evokes humanity's perennial longing to discover our neighbour. Mars is the only other planet where we can observe the Sun, our star-Mars' and Earth's-to set so identically that the two worlds seem interchangeable.

Photo credit: NASA

OF BLACK HOLES IN THE MEDUSA GALAXY

This composite image of the Medusa galaxy taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in x-ray, and Hubble Space Telescope in optical, shows an x-ray source located above the centre of the galaxy. There's a black hole in Medusa's hair! smile emoticon Why, it's a neutron star, a collapsed star that is made up of neutrons and has no empty space but extreme gravitational and magnetic fields and quadrillions of voltage running through them while they are spinning insanely.

Click here for info on black hole in Medusa!

MEDUSA GALAXY:

THE NATURE OF REALITY

Do we live in a Matrix? Listen to this idea explained by Fermilab (National Accelerator Laboratory) director Craig Hogan. Physicists theorize that 3-D objects you see around you aren’t actually 3-dimensional, but a part of something larger.

THE MATRIX: LISTEN!

HUMANS ON MARS?

Humans on Mars, click here:

So what is hindering our attempts at getting to our outer neighbour, know-how? It might be more prosaic: Cost. Read this Bill Nye opinion piece above.

Artists's concept of Mars science lab:

   

THE FORCE IS STRONG WITH THESE ONES! IT WON'T BE LONG BEFORE ALL THE JEDIS JOIN ASTRONAUT MARK KELLY ON ISS!

MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU! LET'S CELEBRATE STAR WARS DAY! :-D

CLICK TO SEE INFO ON MIMAS

Mercury and Saturn visible this week!

Click for the sky!

MERCURY-THE FIRST ROCK

SATURN-THE SIXTH ROCK

PLUTO REVEALED BY THE NEW HORIZONS SPACECRAFT

click for Pluto

THE CRAB NEBULA SEEN IN DIFFERENT WAVELENGTHS

Different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum show very different aspects of the same object.

Top left: Radio
Top right: Visible Light
Centre left: Ultraviolet
Centre right: X-Ray
Bottom left: Gamma-Ray

EVERYTHING SUN Let's look at a variety of activities visible on the Sun's surface:

SOLAR PROMINENCE:
It's a arc of gas, that erupts from the Sun's surface; a prominence can be hundreds of thousands of miles high. Strong magnetic fields hold the prominences in their place for months.

CORONAL MASS EJECTION (CME): 
It's a plasma burst that can release 100 billion kg of plasma disrupting Earth satellites.

SOLAR FLARE: 
It's a magnetic storm on the Sun; flares release large amounts of high-energy particles ejected thousands of miles from the surface of the star with a temperature that can reach 24 million F.

SOLAR WIND: 
It's a continuous stream of ions. It takes about 4.5 years for the solar wind to reach Earth. However, solar wind affects our entire Solar system. One of its beautiful effects visible on Earth is the aurora.

Solar Prominence

CME

Solar Flare

Solar Wind

THE HUBBLE IS 25!

HAPPY 25THANNIVERSARY, HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE!LET'S CELEBRATE WITH SOME MIND-BLOWING IMAGES CAPTURED BY HUBBLE. Which is your favourite?

Amazing Hubble pix:

ANDROMEDA DISCOVERED

Our galactic neighbour, Andromeda is a barred spiral galaxy, that might one day collide with us in about 4 billion years (it's ok, the dying Sun will most likely envelope us by then). Andromeda is 220 thousand light years wide emblazoned with one trillion stars. Enjoy looking around among the stars in this beautiful galaxy:

Andromeda video

BEAUTIFUL DESERT SUNSET

In the Mojave desert on Earth, orange and fuchsia in the indigo sky against a giant red orb. Wait a minute! It's not what you're seeing?The yellow setting sun is a tiny dot in the distant blue sky.Yes, because this photo snapped by Spirit shows the Sun "setting" on Mars.

MARS EXPLORED

MER-Mars Exploration Rover Mission, 2003-ongoing: Rovers SPIRIT and OPPORTUNITY.

MSL-Mars Science Laboratory Mission, 2012-ongoing: Rover CURIOSITY.

The aptly named Curiosity's main mission goal is to determine if Mars could ever have supported life. Curiosity's observations have successfully confirmed this hypothesis. Now that it's a fact that Mars once was a lush green world, Curiosity is discovering what could have led to its transformation to the red desert we all know today.

Curiosity's investigations are trackable via this website:

Mars Explored:

LYRID METEOR SHOWER TONIGHT AND TOMORROW NIGHT (APRIL 22&23)! Good luck catching the light show!

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO:METEOR SHOWER

CERES AND THE MYSTERIOUS BRIGHT SPOTS-REPORTS FROM THE DAWN SPACECRAFT

What is it?

Ceres is a dwarf planet (a C-type asteroid) comprising one-third of the mass of the asteroid belt lying between Mars and Jupiter.

"Ceres' bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, but apparently in the same basin. This may be pointing to a volcano-like origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better resolution before we can make such geologic interpretations," said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Using its ion propulsion system, Dawn will enter orbit around Ceres on March 6. As scientists receive better and better views of the dwarf planet over the next 16 months, they hope to gain a deeper understanding of its origin and evolution by studying its surface. The intriguing bright spots and other interesting features of this captivating world will come into sharper focus."-NASA April 19 Report on the Dawn Mission

Check out the bright spot here:CERES

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT STARS ARE MADE OF?

Nuclear fusion is the process how all the elements in Universe, other than hydrogen are formed. Each chemical element has a distinctive colour when they burn, it's this property that tells us what stars are made of. 

The Sun is made up of hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, neon and iron.
The Sun's atmosphere is made up of charged particles, and interestingly, the corona, the plasma that surrounds the Sun is hotter than the surface, about a million degrees Celsius.

Through most of the Sun's life, energy is produced by nuclear fusion in the core; this process converts hydrogen into helium.

The result of the Sun's thermonuclear fusion is light. The quantum of light, the photon is everywhere; 380 quadrillion photons land on your fingernail every second!
Watch the beautiful Solar prominences captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory!

Sun video by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory

The AIDA mission led by (ESA), the European Space Agency, aims to deflect a binary asteroid heading towards Earth in 2022. You would think Bruce Willis will be too old by then for such shenanigans in space! :-)

Click: AIDA Mission

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The Hubble

Here's the beauty of the Hubble Extreme Deep Field:

Released on September 25, 2012, the XDF image compiled 10 years of previous images and shows galaxies from 13.2 billion years ago. The exposure time was two million seconds, or approximately 23 days.The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, adds another 5,500 galaxies to those discovered in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) from September 24, 2003. The original Hubble Deep Filed (HDF) was taken in December 18, 1995. (Dates mark first day of multi-day exposure).

The Awesomeness of the James Webb Space Telescope

OCTOBER 2018, THE LAUNCH OF THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE-Let's see some comparative facts about the ISS, the Hubble and James Webb!

The James Webb is 1.5 million km out BEYOND the Moon! Now, that's a space telescope. To compare, the Hubble is a mere 570 km from the surface of the Earth.

The ginormous size of the optics and the ability to see in infrared (so as to be able to capture light from the birth of the universe) make the prospect of James Webb's launch extremely exciting!

JAMES WEBB FUN FACTS

GRAVITATIONAL LENSING-THE BENDING OF SPACE AND TIME...AND IT'S NOT EVEN FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE :-)

CLICK HERE!

                                                            Horseshoe Einstein Ring

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT

Click here to read article

THE KUIPER BELT AND THE OORT CLOUD

What lies beyond our inner and outer Solar system? The Horizons spacecraft is on the way to discover the Kuiper Belt where Pluto and thousands of similar plutoid objects inhabit the vacuum of space, and beyond that the Oort Cloud.

Kuiper Belt&Oort Cloud Info

LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

Life