A Burst in the Night

  Oct 3, 2018 Many phenomena could be due to something astronomers do not expect. Some things are familiar, even though they are not easily explained. The aurorae at each of Earth’s poles are familiar to most people, although the way they form is not completely understood. Similarly, lightning bolts…

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Earth’s Electric Fields

  Oct 2, 2018 Magnetic reconnection does not drive electromagnetic events. Upper regions of Earth’s atmosphere are influenced by solar emissions, because the ionosphere is connected to the Sun by filaments of electric charge. At 150 kilometers altitude, Earth’s electromagnetic field exhibits the greatest conductivity in what is called the…

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Bigger

Oct 1, 2018 A ring of gas and stars is said to be orbiting the Milky Way. Galaxies are mysterious. Astronomers are still not sure if they are a rotating collection of individual stars held together by gravity, or if they are a discrete object, behaving as a whole. Consensus…

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Recent Arrival

  Sep 27, 2017 Martian meteorites are most likely a few thousand years old, at most. The Martian lithosphere is composed of iron and silicon, although they are primarily bound with oxygen. Silicon dioxide and iron oxides are the main constituents of Martian regolith. The atmospheric density on Mars is…

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Gassy Dust

Sep 26, 2018 Methane dust on Titan? NASA launched the Cassini-Huygens mission on October 15, 1997. The six ton orbiter was the largest satellite ever deployed, entering orbit around Saturn on June 30, 2004. Its name was changed twice during its run: Cassini Equinox Mission on July 1, 2008, following…

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Dry Sands

  Sep 25, 2018 The search for water on Mars continues. According to a recent press release, Mars may not possess the large quantities of water-ice that previous observations suggested. Data provided by the Mars Express orbiter points to, “ice-free, porous, windblown sand” and not subsurface ice. Thomas R. Watters,…

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