Jan 28, 2016 Saturn’s moons sport colorful bands. Mars is a faint yellowish-red color when seen with the naked eye, and its rusty surface hue is visible through the lenses of robotic rovers traveling across its landscape. Iapetus, one of Saturn’s moons, has a reddish-black deposit covering one hemisphere. Hyperion’s…
Jan 27, 2016 X-rays in space. A recent press release from the Chandra X-ray Observatory reports that “strong winds” are racing outward from the core of Pictoris A, a galaxy said to be 500 million light-years away in the constellation Pictor. A supermassive black hole (SMBH) is the culprit, according…
Jan 26, 2015 Hidden water on Mars? Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. — Mark Twain A recent press release reiterates the hope that water was once abundant on Mars and may yet be, locked in frozen vaults beneath several meters of planetary regolith. The percentages of deuterium…
Jan 25, 2016 X-rays are not created by pressure. According to a recent press release, a black hole in the center of galaxy IRAS17020+4544, about 800 million light-years from Earth (as astronomers measure distance via redshift) is almost six million Suns in mass. The most important aspect to the…
Jan 22, 2016 Astronomical viewpoints suggest alternatives. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) launched The Herschel Space Observatory on May 14, 2009. Herschel’s helium coolant system was built to last only three years, however, so on April 29, 2013 its mission came to an end. According to a…
Jan 21, 2016 Gamma ray bursts might not be so far away. Astrophysicists describe gamma-ray bursts (GRB) as due to the “merging of neutron stars” or gamma-ray light radiating from supernova explosions. Recently, the SWIFT satellite’s Burst Alert Telescope detected a beam of gamma radiation so intense that it…
Jan 14, 2016 Dwarf galaxies do not appear to follow conventional models of galaxy development. The Milky Way galaxy is not a solitary wanderer; it is accompanied by dozens of smaller galaxies with a more diffuse and irregular structure. As conventional models suggest, there are too few dwarf…
Jan 12, 2016 What force creates energetic beams that span distances measured in light-years? What confines them into narrow jets? Explaining the jets of ionized particles and X-rays often seen erupting from various galaxies and quasars ranks as one of the most difficult tasks facing modern astronomers. The prevailing theory…
Jan 11, 2016 Speculations on electrical aspects of the sun were common long before Birkeland. Might the solar corona not just resemble, but actually facilitate the terrestrial aurora? The German baron Carl Ludwig von Reichenbach (1788-1869) professed as much when he posited, in 1851, that the earth’s magnetic field…
Jan 7, 2016 Most nebulae exhibit the unmistakable characteristics of electrical activity. Previous Thunderbolts Picture of the Day articles argue for an electrical interpretation of astrophysical observations. It is an alternative available for those who want extracurricular exploration and deeper levels. Every science journal describes nebulae like NGC 6537 in…
