| | 8 new stories for 2015/08/04
Will SETI's Unprecedented New Program Finally Find E.T.?  Image Credit: Breakthrough Initatives Stephen Hawking, Frank Drake and dozens of journalists gathered at the Royal Society in London last week to hear astronomers announce a ground-breaking new project to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life called "Breakthrough Listen." They will be using two of the world's largest radio telescopes (Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia) to listen for radio messages from intelligent alien species. Scientists have chosen to target the nearest million stars as well as the nearest 100 galaxies. This project will also monitor the Galactic plane for months at a time. This unprecedented effort is a collaboration between UC Berkeley and the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, and employs an international team of astronomers and data scientists, including Frank Drake – the father of SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence).
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© lvican for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment |
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Kirk, Spock and Sulu Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before — Charon!  This image contains the initial, informal names being used by the New Horizons team for the features on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. Names were selected based on the input the team received from the Our Pluto naming campaign. Names have not yet been approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Click for a large pdf file. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute A big smile. That was my reaction to seeing the names of Uhura, Spock, Kirk and Sulu on the latest map of Pluto’s jumbo moon Charon. The monikers are still only informal, but new maps of Charon and Pluto submitted to the IAU for approval feature some of our favorite real life and sci-fi characters. Come on — Vader Crater? How cool is that?(...)
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© Bob King for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | 4 comments |
Post tags: Charon, IAU, Kirk, Maps, Pluto, Spock, Sulu
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The Resplendent Inflexibility of the Rainbow  A colorful section of rainbow begs the question – why Roy G. Biv? Credit: Bob King Children often ask simple questions that make you wonder if you really understand your subject. An young acquaintance of mine named Collin wondered why the colors of the rainbow were always in the same order — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Why don’t they get mixed up? (...)
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© Bob King for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | 18 comments |
Post tags: Frequency, Rainbow, refraction, spectrum, wavelength
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T-Minus 12 Days to Perihelion, Rosetta's Comet Up Close and in 3D  We’ve never seen a comet as close as this. Taken shortly before touchdown by the Philae lander on November 12, 2014, you’re looking across a scene just 32 feet from side to side (9.7-meters) or about the size of a living room. Part of the lander is visible at upper right. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/ROLIS/DLR With just 12 days before Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko reaches perihelion, we get a look at recent images and results released by the European Space Agency from the Philae lander along with spectacular 3D photos from Rosetta’s high resolution camera. (...)
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© Bob King for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | 8 comments |
Post tags: Comet 67P/Churymov-Gerasimenko, COSAC, MUPUS, philae, ROLIS
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Curiosity Discovers Mars Rock Like None Before, Sets Drill Campaign  Curiosity extends robotic arm and conducts test drill at "Buckskin" rock target at bright toned "Lion" outcrop on the lower region of Mount Sharp on Mars, seen at right. Gale Crater eroded rim seen in the distant background at left, in this composite multisol mosaic of navcam raw images taken to Sol 1059, July 30, 2015. Navcam camera raw images stitched and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo On the eve of the 3rd anniversary since her nail biting touchdown inside Gale Crater, NASA's car sized Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover has discovered a new type of Martian rock that's surprisingly rich in silica – and unlike any other targets found before. Excited by this new science finding on Mars, Curiosity's handlers are now gearing the robot up for her next full drill campaign today, July 31 (Sol 1060) into a rock target called (...)
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© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | 4 comments |
Post tags: 1000 Sols on Mars, Buckskin drill site, ChemCam, Curiosity, Curiosity Rover, Gale crater, habitable zone, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), JPL, MAHLI, Mars, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), mars the red planet, Mount Sharp, MSL, NASA, NASA. JPL, Navcam, organics, red planet, Search for Life
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What Are These Strange Scarlet Streaks Spotted on Tethys?  Enhanced-color image from Cassini showing red streaks on Saturn’s moon Tethys (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute) Resembling what the skin on my arms looks like after giving my cat a bath, the surface of Saturn’s moon Tethys is seen above in an extended-color composite from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft showing strange long red streaks. They stretch for long distances across the moon’s surface following the rugged terrain, continuing unbroken over hills and down into craters… and their cause isn’t yet known. (...)
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© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | 15 comments |
Post tags: arcs, Cassini, Moon, mystery, NASA, Saturn, Solar System, streaks, tethys
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Ceres Resembles Saturn's Icy Moons  Topographic elevation map of Ceres showing newly-named craters. The highest regions are in red, the lowest in blue. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA. Ceres’ topography is revealed in full (but false) color in a new map created from elevation data gathered by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, now nearly five months in orbit around the dwarf planet orbiting the Sun within the main asteroid belt. With craters 3.7 miles (6 km) deep and mountains rising about the same distance from its surface, Ceres bears a resemblance to some of Saturn’s frozen moons. “The craters we find on Ceres, in terms of their depth and diameter, are very similar to what we see on Dione and Tethys, two icy satellites of Saturn that are about the same size and density as Ceres,” said Paul Schenk, Dawn science team member and a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston, TX. “The features are pretty consistent with an ice-rich crust.” Check out a rotation video of Ceres’ topography below: (...)
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© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | 2 comments |
Post tags: ceres, dawn, dwarf planet, map, moons, names, NASA, tethys, video
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Faces of the Solar System  Move over, Pluto… Disney already has dibs on Mercury as seen in this MESSENGER photo. Image credit: NASA/JHAPL/Carnegie institution of Washington "Look, it has a tiny face on it!" This sentiment was echoed 'round the web recently, as an image of Pluto's tiny moon Nix was released by the NASA New Horizons team. Sure, we've all been there. Lay back in a field on a lazy July summer's day, and soon, you'll see faces of all sorts in the puffy stratocumulus clouds holding the promise of afternoon showers.(...)
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© David Dickinson for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | 6 comments |
Post tags: astronomy conspiracies, face of mercury, face on mars, man in the moon, New Horizons Pluto, pareidolia
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