European Association for Astronomy Education

Source: SPACE.COM

This chart explains how astronomers measure the signatures of chemicals in the atmospheres of exoplanets.
Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Any sulfurous molecules that astronomers spot on alien worlds might be a way to reveal whether or not those distant planets host life, researchers suggest.

On Earth, microbes can live off the energy available in sulfurous molecules that volcanoes release, essentially "breathing" these compounds the way humans breathe oxygen. If a similar kind of metabolism evolved on an extrasolar planet, the sulfurous molecules detected in the atmosphere of that world might help reveal the presence of alien life, according to researcher Renyu Hu, a doctoral student in planetary science at MIT.

To see what telltale signs any sulfur-dependent life might generate, Hu and his colleagues modeled Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of sun-like stars — that is, areas where worlds could  have liquid water on their surfaces. These simulated planets possessed nitrogen-based atmospheres like Earth but 1,000 times more sulfur. (read more)

Source: NASA Science News

Click to view a ScienceCast video entitled, "What Lies Inside Jupiter?"

Jupiter's swirling clouds can be seen through any department store telescope. With no more effort than it takes to bend over an eyepiece, you can witness storm systems bigger than Earth navigating ruddy belts that stretch hundreds of thousands of kilometers around Jupiter's vast equator. It's fascinating.

It's also vexing. According to many researchers, the really interesting things--from the roots of monster storms to stores of exotic matter--are located at depth. The clouds themselves hide the greatest mysteries from view.

NASA's Juno probe, scheduled to launch on August 5th, could change all that. The goal of the mission is to answer the question, What lies inside Jupiter? (read more)

Source: Science Magazine AAAS

Detailed view of the Milky Way's core.
Image credits: NASA/ESA/SSC/ CXC/ STScI

The Milky Way's center houses a supermassive black hole so sleepy that it probably hasn't swallowed a decent meal for years. Yet a growing body of evidence indicates that the now-dormant beast, about as massive as 4 million suns, fueled a firestorm of activity just a few million years ago, including the sustained emission of some of the highest energy radiation in the universe. A new study offers a dramatic explanation for these past fireworks: The sleeping giant woke when a smaller black hole from another galaxy smashed into it.(read more)

Source:  arXiv

On November 4, 2010, NASA's EPOXI spacecraft went within 450 miles of Comet Hartley 2.  Designated officially as 103P/Hartley 2, the comet thus became the fifth comet with close-up images.

Hartley 2 is a short period comet that about six and a half years to orbit the Sun and is also a small comet with about 1.5 km in diameter.

But the Solar and Heliospheric Observer (SOHO), better known for its observations of the sun, also observed comet Hartley 2. Together, the two returned data about what appears to be an irregular comet, ejecting  chunks of ice and losing water at a very fast pace.

These findings were described in an article of the June 10, 2011 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Source: NASA/SDO

Jets, known as spicules, captured in an SDO image on April 25, 2010.
Image credits: NASA/SDO/AIA

Like giant strands of seaweed some 32,000 miles high, material shooting up from the sun sways back and forth with the atmosphere. In the ocean, it's moving water that pulls the seaweed along for a ride; in the sun's corona, magnetic field ripples called Alfvén waves cause the swaying.

For years these waves were too difficult to detect directly, but NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is now able to track the movements of this solar "seaweed" and measure how much energy is carried by the Alfvén waves. The research shows that the waves carry more energy than previously thought, and possibly enough to drive two solar phenomena whose causes remain points of debate: the intense heating of the corona to some 20 times hotter than the sun's surface and solar winds that blast up to 1.5 million miles per hour.(read more)

Getting ready for ALMA’s first scientific observations
Source: ESO Organisation Release eso1127

Image credits: ESO/S. Rossi

The first European antenna for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has reached new heights, having been transported to the observatory’s Array Operations Site (AOS) on 27 July 2011. The 12-metre diameter antenna has arrived at the Chajnantor plateau, 5000 metres above sea level. Here, it joins antennas from the other international ALMA partners, bringing the total number at the AOS to 16.(read more)

Source: ESA

The International Space Station with ATV-2 and Endeavour.
Image credits: ESA/NASA.

For more than a decade, the International Space Station has been a busy orbiting research lab. But it could soon take on a new role as a testbed for ambitious missions deeper into space.

Future ventures could include Mars missions, lunar habitats or travelling to an asteroid – all needing new technologies and techniques that could be tested on the Station. Following yesterday's meeting of the orbital outpost's Multilateral Coordination Board, member agencies expect to begin identifying specific technology initiatives based on sample exploration missions.(read more)

Source: NASA/Chandra

Composite image of galaxy NGC 3115.
Image credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Alabama/K. Wong et al; Optical: ESO/VLT.

The flow of hot gas toward a black hole has been clearly imaged for the first time in X-rays. The observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory will help tackle two of the most fundamental problems in modern astrophysics: understanding how black holes grow and how matter behaves in their intense gravity.

The black hole is at the center of a large galaxy known as NGC 3115, which is located about 32 million light years from Earth. A large amount of previous data has shown material falling toward and onto black holes, but none with this clear a signature of hot gas.

By imaging the hot gas at different distances from this supermassive black hole, astronomers have observed a critical threshold where the motion of gas first becomes dominated by the black hole's gravity and falls inward. This distance from the black hole is known as the "Bondi radius." (read more)

Source: MESSENGER Mission

Image credit: NASA/MESSENGER

The MESSENGER spacecraft continued to fine-tune its orbit around Mercury yesterday afternoon when mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., successfully executed the second orbit-correction maneuver of the mission.

On July 27, the 3-minute, 8-second engine burn stretched the spacecraft’s orbit around the innermost planet from 11 hours 48 minutes to a precise 12 hours. This second of an expected five maneuvers planned for the mission’s primary orbital phase began at 5:20 P.M. EDT, and used approximately 1.9 kilograms of fuel.

“MESSENGER’s first orbit-correction maneuver, which took place in June, reset the periapsis altitude of the orbit to 200 km, but also shortened the orbital period. This second maneuver has reset the period to its nominal value of 12 hours,” says APL’s Peter Bedini, MESSENGER project manager.

MESSENGER Mission Systems Engineer Eric Finnegan, of APL, said the engine burn was “on target and a sweet success. We’re precisely where we need to be to continue to capture amazing data from Mercury’s surface.” The next orbit-correction maneuver is scheduled for September 7 and will lower the periapsis altitude from about 470 kilometers back to 200 kilometers.

Source: NASA/WISE

Earth's New Trojan Friend.
Image credit: Paul Wiegert, University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Astronomers studying observations taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission have discovered the first known "Trojan" asteroid orbiting the sun along with Earth.

Trojans are asteroids that share an orbit with a planet near stable points in front of or behind the planet. Because they constantly lead or follow in the same orbit as the planet, they never can collide with it. In our solar system, Trojans also share orbits with Neptune, Mars and Jupiter. Two of Saturn's moons share orbits with Trojans.

Scientists had predicted Earth should have Trojans, but they have been difficult to find because they are relatively small and appear near the sun from Earth's point of view.(read more)

Source: NASA

Artist's impression of Juno spacecraft passing in front of Jupiter.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Juno spacecraft completed its last significant terrestrial journey on Wednesday, with a 15-mile (25-kilometer) trip from Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Fla., to its launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The solar-powered, Jupiter-bound spacecraft was secured into place on top of its rocket at 10:42 a.m. EDT (7:42 a.m. PDT).

Juno will arrive at Jupiter in July 2016 and orbit its poles 33 times to learn more about the gas giant's interior, atmosphere and aurora. (read more)

Source: ESO Photo Release eso1126

Leo triplet of galaxies.
Image credit: ESO/INAF-VST/OmegaCAM.
Acknowledgement: OmegaCen/Astro-WISE/Kapteyn Institute

A huge image, from the new VLT Survey Telescope (VST) and its camera OmegaCAM at ESO's Paranal Observatory, shows a triplet of bright galaxies in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). But the faint objects in the background, rather than the foreground galaxies, are what may capture an astronomer’s attention. The VST’s sharp view of these dim objects hints at the power of the telescope and OmegaCAM for mapping the distant Universe. (read more)

Source: ESA

Water plumes shoot from Enceladus.
Image credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

ESA’s Herschel space observatory has shown that water expelled from the moon Enceladus forms a giant torus of water vapour around Saturn. The discovery solves a 14-year mystery by identifying the source of the water in Saturn’s upper atmosphere.

Herschel’s latest results mean that Enceladus is the only moon in the Solar System known to influence the chemical composition of its parent planet.

Enceladus expels around 250 kg of water vapour every second, through a collection of jets from the south polar region known as the Tiger Stripes because of their distinctive surface markings.

These crucial observations reveal that the water creates a doughnut-shaped torus of vapour surrounding the ringed planet.

The total width of the torus is more than 10 times the radius of Saturn, yet it is only about one Saturn radius thick. Enceladus orbits the planet at a distance of about four Saturn radii, replenishing the torus with its jets of water.  (read more)

During the next mornings  Mars, Aldebaran, Jupiter and the Moon will be making a parade for early day observers.

The image above represents the sky on July 26th before dawn where you can observe Mars, Aldebaran, Jupiter and the Moon in the same region of the sky looking East. This is a nice opportunity to see the red planet with a red star near a small waning crescent Moon. The Moon on this will be very close to Alpha Tauri and will make for a spectacular contrast.

So don't loose this observational opportunity.

Source: NASA Langley Research Center

As NASA closes the chapter on the Space Shuttle Program, a new era of exploration vehicles is beginning to take off.

Testing began this month at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., in the new Hydro Impact Basin to  certify the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) for water landings. The Orion MPCV will carry astronauts into space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel and ensure safe re-entry and  landing.

Engineers have dropped a 22,000-pound MPCV mockup into the basin. The test item is similar in size and shape to MPCV, but is more rigid so it can withstand multiple drops. Each test has a different drop velocity to represent the MPCV's possible entry conditions during water landings.

The last of three drop tests to verify the new facility is scheduled for the end of this month.

Testing will resume in September with a slightly modified test article that is more representative of the actual MPCV.

The new Hydro Impact Basin is 115 long, 90 feet wide and 20 feet deep. It is located at the west end of Langley's historic Landing and Impact Research Facility, or Gantry, where Apollo astronauts trained for moon walks.

For images and video of the tests, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/exploration/hib.html

To follow the progress of the Orion MPCV on social networking sites,
visit:

http://www.facebook.com/nasampcv

Source: NASA Mars Science Laboratory

Image credit: NASA

NASA's next Mars rover will land at the foot of a layered mountain inside the planet's Gale crater.

The car-sized Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, is scheduled to launch late this year and land in August 2012. The target crater spans 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and holds a mountain rising higher from the crater floor than Mount Rainier rises above Seattle. Gale is about the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Layering in the mound suggests it is the surviving remnant of an extensive sequence of deposits. The crater is named for Australian astronomer Walter F. Gale. (read more)

Source: NASA IT Summit

NASA is gearing up for a conference in San Francisco that aims to improve the quality of Information Technology (IT) at the agency, while drawing on the expertise and innovative spirit of California's Silicon Valley. (read more)

Source: ESA

SMOS satellite data, shows soil moisture in the Horn of Africa from April to mid-July 2011.
Image credits: CESBIO/ESA

Drought in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti is pushing tens of thousands of people from their homes as millions face food insecurity in a crisis visible from space. ESA’s SMOS satellite shows that the region’s soil is too dry to grow crops.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble Photo Release heic1112

Wide field image of the Andromeda galaxy.
Image credits: ESA/Hubble & Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble).

The Andromeda Galaxy is revealed in unprecedented detail in four archive observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. They show stars and structure in the galaxy’s disc, the halo of stars that surrounds it, and a stream of stars left by a companion galaxy as it was torn apart and pulled in by the galaxy’s gravitational forces.(read more)

Source:NASA News

Atlantis lands for the final time at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Wrapping up 30 years of unmatched achievements and blazing a trail for the next era of U.S. human spaceflight, NASA's storied Space Shuttle Program came to a "wheels stop" on Thursday at the conclusion of its 135th mission.

Shuttle Atlantis and its four-astronaut crew glided home for the final time, ending a 13-day journey of more than five million miles with a landing at 5:57 a.m. EDT at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the 25th night landing (19th night and 78th total landings at Kennedy) and the 133rd landing in shuttle history. (read more)