Shell Game

  Oct 24, 2012 The geometry of gravity is spherical: a uniform attraction toward a center of mass that tends to produce ball-shaped objects. This “bias for balls” predisposes astronomers to interpret rings as spherical shells. The European Southern Observatory press release announcing new observations (above) of the “old” star R Sculptoris…

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Poseidon Aegaeus

Neptune's clouds in false color

  Oct 23, 2012 Neptune is the Solar System’s most remote planet. What drives its extraordinary winds? The winds on Jupiter average about 400 kilometers per hour, with the fastest streaming around the Great Red Spot at 635 kilometers per hour. On Saturn, wind speeds up to 1800 kilometers per hour have…

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Seeing Seagulls

  Oct 22, 2012 To talk about something, we have to conceive ideas and words with which to describe the thing. We can’t avoid these pre-conceptions. But will we try to compensate for this prejudice by conceiving more than one? The Seagull Nebula is a splotch of light that resembles…

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Red Clusters

  Oct 19, 2012 The light from remote globular clusters should be blue according to theory because the further away one looks the further back in time one sees. It seems as if each new observation from the Hubble Space Telescope or the Chandra X-ray Observatory adds fuel to the…

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Dione’s Dance

Dione crossing Saturn's ring plane

Oct 18, 2012 Dione exhibits some unusual features that may indicate electrical forces at work. Recently, the Cassini-Solstice spacecraft made a close flyby of the moon Enceladus. As the Picture of the Day from May 3, 2012 discussed, the bright plumes emanating from the 500 kilometer moon are most likely…

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The Pioneer Anomaly

  Oct 17, 2012 Scientists have found a small but significant deceleration in the Pioneer spacecraft as it makes its way through interstellar space. For several years, NASA analysts have reported a slow but steady “tug” on the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft as they head outward in opposite directions…

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Les Panaches De La Lune

  Oct 16, 2012 Enceladus continues to provide evidence supporting Electric Universe theories. On March 2, 2012 the Cassini-Solstice spacecraft flew by Saturn’s moon Enceladus at a distance of 74 kilometers, the closest it will come for the next three years. Cassini again passed over the “superheated geysers” erupting from…

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