Jun 16, 2014 The Sun influences all the planets. Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. It is so massive, that it is greater than all the other planets and moons combined. Jupiter is 142,984 kilometers in diameter at its equator, but it rotates so fast its day…
Jun 12, 2014 Some stars are said to be surrounded by haloes of hot water mixed with carbon dust. Astronomers using the Herschel infrared space observatory discovered a putative cloud of hot water surrounding a giant star in the constellation Leo known as IRC+10216. They were also puzzled by the discovery…
Jun 11, 2014 What is the object in Saturn’s ring plane? Cassini entered orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004. On August 11, 2009 the spacecraft was in position to observe the giant planet’s equinox, when its rings turned edge-on to the Sun, something that happens every 15 years. The…
Jun 10, 2014 The Big Bang theory dominates cosmological theories. A recent press release announced that astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and the twin, 10-meter Keck telescopes, have found an object 13.1 billion light-years from Earth, making it “…officially the most distant object ever detected.” Casey Papovich, an astronomer at Texas…
Jun 9, 2014 Many fast, high energy 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,…
Jun 06, 2014 Is the Hubble Space Telescope seeing billions of years into the past? How far away are things? In an Electric Universe, the answer is not what is commonly presented in science journals. Astronomers are fitted with spectacles that can see distances only in terms of redshift…
Jun 05, 2014 An X-2 class solar flare recently missed a direct impact with Earth. Heliophysicists classify solar flares according to their brightness in X-ray wavelengths. C-class flares are the smallest on the scale, with X-ray measurements in the 10^-6 watts per square meter range (W/m^2), while X-class flares can…
Jun 4, 2014 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko recently formed a coma. After almost ten years of travel time, the Rosetta Cometary Probe is preparing itself for orbital insertion around its target, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, (chur-ee-uh-moff, yer-uh-sim-yenko) or “Chury” for short. In the last few weeks, Chury began to exhibit signs of activity, even though it…
Jun 03, 2014 “Bubbles” of magnetic energy are said to surround the Sun’s heliosheath. “In all our quest of greatness, like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care, we follow after bubbles, blown in the air.” — John Webster Shortly after the event, astronomer Merav Opher of Boston University’s Voyager team…
Jun 02, 2014 Some galaxies exhibit polygonal structures. The term “diocotron instability” is not generally well known. Its use is confined to the field of plasma physics and refers to the distortions that occur when two sheets of plasma flow past each other. It is often confused with the Kelvin-Helmholtz…
