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Ten near-Earth size planets in habitable zone of their star
NASA’s Kepler space telescope team has released a mission catalog of planet candidates that introduces 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth size and orbiting in their star’s habitable zone, which is the range of distance from a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of a rocky planet.
This is the most comprehensive and detailed catalog release of candidate exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system, from Kepler’s first four years of data. It’s also the final catalog from the spacecraft’s view of the patch of sky in the Cygnus constellation.
With the release of this catalog, derived from data publicly available on the NASA Exoplanet Archive, there are now 4,034 planet candidates identified by Kepler. Of which, 2,335 have been verified as exoplanets. Of roughly 50 near-Earth size habitable zone candidates detected by Kepler, more than 30 have been verified.
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Nasa is to host a major press conference on a “discovery beyond our solar system”.
The event will see the revelation of major information about exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars other than our sun, according to a release. It made no further mention of the details of what would be revealed.
Exoplanets are the major hope for life elsewhere in the universe, since many have been found that resemble our own Earth and could have the building blocks of life. More of them are being discovered all the time.
The event will take place on 22 February at 1pm New York time, it said. It will be streamed live on Nasa’s television station and on its website.
Attending the press conference will be astronomers and planetary scientists from across the world.
Nasa said that the public will be able to ask questions using the hashtag #AskNasa during the conference. The agency will also hold a Reddit AMA, or ask me anything, session straight after the briefing.
What is the point of space exploration?
A few curiosities of astronomy and astrophysics
Astronomy and Astrophysics: Facts
Here is a list of some curiosities of astronomy and astrophysics. From our solar system to interstellar space.
Rings of Saturn: With an estimated local thickness of as little as 10 m and as much as 1 km, they are composed of 99.9% pure water ice with a smattering of impurities that may include tholins or silicates. The main rings are primarily composed of particles ranging in size from 1 cm to 10 m.
Valhalla (crater): Valhalla is the largest multi-ring impact crater on Jupiter’s moon Callisto and in the Solar System. It is named after Valhalla, the God Odin’s hall in Norse mythology where warriors are taken after death.
Europa (lineae): Europa’s most striking surface features are a series of dark streaks crisscrossing the entire globe, called lineae (English: lines). Close examination shows that the edges of Europa’s crust on either side of the cracks have moved relative to each other. The larger bands are more than 20 km (12 mi) across, often with dark, diffuse outer edges, regular striations, and a central band of lighter material. The most likely hypothesis states that the lineae on Europa may have been produced by a series of eruptions of warm ice as the Europan crust spread open to expose warmer layers beneath. The effect would have been similar to that seen in Earth’s oceanic ridges.
Tartarus Dorsa: The western part of Pluto’s northern hemisphere consists of an extensive, highly distinctive set of 500-meter-high mountains informally named Tartarus Dorsa; the spacing and shape of the mountains looks similar to scales or tree bark.
Mountain in Ceres: Ahuna Mons is the largest mountain on the dwarf planet and asteroid Ceres. It protrudes above otherwise smooth terrain, it is not an impact feature, and it appears to be the only mountain of its kind on Ceres. Bright streaks run top to bottom on its slopes; these streaks are thought to be salt, similar to the better known Cererian bright spots, and likely resulted from cryovolcanic activity from Ceres’s interior. It is named after the traditional post-harvest festival Ahuna of the Sumi Naga people of India.
Pluto has a tenuous atmosphere consisting of nitrogen (N2), methane (CH4), and carbon monoxide (CO), which are in equilibrium with their ices on Pluto’s surface. According to the measurements by New Horizons, the surface pressure is about 1 Pa(10 μbar), roughly one million to 100,000 times less than Earth’s atmospheric pressure. It was initially thought that, as Pluto moves away from the Sun, its atmosphere should gradually freeze onto the surface; studies of New Horizons data and ground-based occultations show that Pluto’s atmospheric density increases, and that it likely remains gaseous throughout Pluto’s orbit.
Sagittarius A*: Sagittarius A* is a bright and very compact astronomical radio source at the center of the Milky Way, near the border of the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius. It is part of a larger astronomical feature known as Sagittarius A. Sagittarius A* is thought to be the location of a supermassive black hole, like those that are now generally accepted to be at the centers of most spiral and elliptical galaxies.
Double Pulsar: PSR J0737−3039 is the only known double pulsar. It consists of two neutron stars emitting electromagnetic waves in the radio wavelength in a relativistic binary system. The two pulsars are known as PSR J0737−3039A and PSR J0737−3039B. It was discovered in 2003 at Australia’s Parkes Observatory by an international team led by the radio astronomer Marta Burgay during a high-latitude pulsar survey.
IC 1101: IC 1101 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy at the center of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster, approximately 320 megaparsecs (1.04 billion light-years) from Earth. IC 1101 is among the largest known galaxies, but there is debate in the astronomical literature about how to define the size of such a galaxy.
A rogue planet (also termed an interstellar planet, nomad planet, free-floating planet, orphan planet, wandering planet, starless planet, sunless planet, or Planemo) is a planetary-mass object that orbits the galaxy center directly. Such objects have been ejected from the planetary system in which they formed or have never been gravitationally bound to any star or brown dwarf. The Milky Way alone may have billions of rogue planets.
souce: wikipedia
Image credit: NASA/JPL/SwRI, Ted Stryk, John Rowe Animations, commons.wikimedia
This month in space
Astronomical & Astrological Events in November 🌌
November 1st: Moon at Aphelion; Jupiter conjunct Haumea
November 2nd: Saturn square Chiron; Moon conjunct Eris
November 3rd: Jupiter quintile Pluto
November 4th: Full Moon in Taurus; Taurids Meteor Shower
November 5th: Mercury enters Sagittarius; Moon at Perigee; Taurids Meteor Shower
November 7th: Venus enters Scorpio
November 10th: Moon conjunct Ceres; Last Quarter Moon in Leo
November 11th: Saturn trine Uranus; Venus conjunct Haumea
November 13th: Venus conjunct Jupiter
November 14th: Close approach of the Moon and Mars; Moon conjunct Makemake
November 16th: Moon conjunct Haumea and Venus
November 17th: Leonids Meteor Shower
November 18th: New Moon in Scorpio; Mars conjunct Makemake; Leonids Meteor Shower
November 20th: Moon conjunct Mercury; Moon at Perihelion
November 21st: Sun enters Sagittarius; Moon at Apogee
November 22nd: Neptune Direct; Jupiter sesquiquadrate Chiron; Moon conjunct Pluto; Mercury at Greatest Brightness
November 24th: Mercury at Greatest Eastern Elongation
November 26th: First Quarter Moon in Aquarius
November 28th: Mercury at Dichotomy; Mercury conjunct Saturn
November 30th: Moon conjunct Eris
We had a visitor from outside the solar system, check out this video about the interstellar asteroid
An asteroid from another star system visited us!
NASA Hubble image of Barred SPiral Galaxy NGC 1300
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300
Credit: Hubble Heritage Team, ESA, NASA
Saturn as seen from the Cassini probe
A view of Saturn from the Cassini probe
via reddit
Flying cars are coming soon, yes really. Flying cars are no longer restricted to the realms of science fiction. Check out our article on the flying cars currently under development.
It takes the American beaver 24 hours to learn to swim after being born. Learn more about beavers and how they shape the world around them.
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Follow the link to learn about hibernation, including all the different forms of hibernation, how animals do it, why they do it plus some adorable pictures of animals that hibernate.
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