Mar 2, 2018 The Rosette Nebula reveals its plasma structure. “I turn my eyes to the schools & universities of Europe And there behold the loom of Locke whose woof rages dire Washed by the water-wheels of Newton. black the cloth In heavy wreaths folds over every nation; cruel…
March 1, 2018 What gives a globular cluster its structure? The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) began operations a day after its December 11, 2009 dedication ceremony. One of its major contributions is the ability to “see through” dust clouds that obscure background objects. In the…
Feb 27, 2018 Rapid fluctuations in nebular “protostars”. Young stars in the Orion Nebula are changing in brightness faster than previously thought possible. Instead of it requiring years for gaseous envelopes surrounding so-called “proto-planetary disks” to heat up and cool down, it is happening in weeks. The information was…
Feb 26, 2018 Liquid water on Europa? The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched the Galileo spacecraft on October 18, 1989. After a six year flight, Galileo entered orbit around Jupiter on December 7, 1995. After eight years in orbit, Galileo was burned up in Jupiter’s atmosphere, in order to prevent…
Feb 23, 2018 In 1997, two teams of astronomers studying Type 1a supernovae found there was “something wrong” with their observations. Type 1a supernovae are a sub-class of stellar explosions involving binary stars, but they are thought to occur through a different process. Their particular way of exploding is…
Feb 22, 2018 A new Mars rover. Sometime in late July or early August 2020 NASA will launch the next Mars lander, based on the design of the Mars Science Laboratory, otherwise known as Curiosity. The Mars 2020 rover includes a new drill design that can collect, sort, and…
Feb 21, 2018 There is an electrical structure called a magnetotail extending away from Earth for millions of kilometers. In 1966, the U.S. Navy satellite, TRIAD, recorded electromagnetic disturbances as it passed over Earth’s poles and through the Van Allen Radiation Belts. Those vertical electric currents that flow to Earth from…
Feb 20, 2018 Enceladus exhibits electrical scarring. A previous Picture of the Day reported that the Cassini Saturn orbiter flew through one of the plumes of vapor that erupt from the southern plains of 494-kilometer-wide Enceladus, a small moon, so cold no chemical reactions can occur. It was assumed…
Feb 19, 2018 Neptune’s clouds contradict consensus viewpoints. On July 12, 2011 Neptune completed its first orbit around the Sun since it was discovered on September 23, 1846. This means that observations are limited, since great distance strains technology’s ability. Spectrographic data about Neptune, for instance, is limited to…
Feb 16, 2018 A ring of galactic plasma. There is a twisted ring of material surrounding the nucleus of Galaxy Centaurus A; an “active galaxy” that exhibits axial jets and a doughnut-shaped plasma discharge. Active galaxies are brighter than other galaxies of the same type, since they radiate excess…
