Astronomy news

• Comet P/2010 V1 Ikeya-Murakami Fragments A,B,C,D,E,F

  15-02-2016 23:53
  The post Comet P/2010 V1 Ikeya-Murakami Fragments A,B,C,D,E,F appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
  
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• The Mystery of Pluto’s Floating Hills

  15-02-2016 23:32
  Among its other geologic oddities, Pluto has clusters of hills floating in a frozen "sea" dominated by nitrogen ice. These bobbing bumps might hold clues to the plain's depth and evolution.
  Within days of New Horizons' historic flyby of Pluto last July 14th, mission scientists released snapshots showing unexpectedly tall mountains partially rimming a vast and very flat plain. The plain, informally named Sputnik Planum, is dominated by frozen nitrogen (and some frozen carbon monoxide), whereas th
  
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• Airglow and Milky Way over Glacier National Park

  15-02-2016 22:49
  The post Airglow and Milky Way over Glacier National Park appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
  
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• Luke Skywalker Returns In 'Star Wars Episode VIII' Production Video

  15-02-2016 16:02 via space.com
  
  Production is underway for the next chapter in the Star Wars saga. The movie premieres in Dec. 2017.
  
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• How We Entered a New Era of Astronomy - Motherboard

  15-02-2016 15:20 via
  Motherboard
  How We Entered a New Era of Astronomy
  Motherboard
  Last week, a new era of astronomy began as Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory executive director David Reitze stood before a packed room at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, uttering the words we've been waiting a century to ...
  Gravitational waves – the Next Big Thing in astronomyCosmos
  Astronomy grows ears, hears gravitational wavesJackson Hole News&Guide
  Here's why the huge discovery of gra
  

• The mystery about the Chelyabinsk superbolide continues three years later

  15-02-2016 15:06
  Hundreds of webcams recorded the historic event: In 2013 February 15, the approach of asteroid (367943) Duende to our planet was being closely monitored by both the public and the scientific community worldwide when suddenly a superbolide entered the atmosphere above the region of Chelyabinsk in Russia. Three years and hundreds of published scientific studies later, we are still looking for the origin of such unexpected visitor, that caused damage to hundreds of buildings and injuries to nearly
  
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• In search of new Earths and life in the Universe

  15-02-2016 14:52
  
  Twenty years ago, in Geneva, PhD student Didier Queloz discovered a planet orbiting another sun – something that astronomers had predicted, but never found. Today he continues his terra hunting for extreme worlds and Earth twins in Cambridge.
  
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• Star formation in distant galaxy clusters

  15-02-2016 14:28
  
  The first stars appeared about one hundred million years after the big bang, and ever since then stars and star formation processes have lit up the cosmos, producing heavy elements, planets, black holes, and arguably all of the other interesting characters in today's universe. When the universe was about three billion years old (currently it is 13.8 billion years old), star formation activity peaked at rates about ten times above current levels. Why this happened, and whether the physical proces
  
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• Was the Big Bang just a black hole?

  15-02-2016 14:10
  
  Fraser Cain "Asks a Spaceman" Dr. Paul Matt Sutter – why do we call the Big Bang a singularity, when we also call black holes singularities?
  
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• Will the World's Largest Supercollider Spawn a Black Hole? (Op-Ed)

  15-02-2016 14:00 via space.com
  
  There's a concrete reason enormous particle accelerator experiments won't spawn black holes and end the world.
  
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• 'Ready Jet Go!' New PBS KIDS Show Brings Space Science Down to Earth

  15-02-2016 14:00 via space.com
  
  PBS KIDS and PBS SoCal touted their new animated series, "Ready Jet Go!," with a first-look screening, live musical performances and a conversation about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education here at Google's Venice office last month.
  
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• Hubble Beams Back Spectacular Image of Reflection Nebula - Sci-News.com

  15-02-2016 13:13 via
  Sci-News.com
  Hubble Beams Back Spectacular Image of Reflection Nebula
  Sci-News.com
  The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a remarkable image of a reflection nebula known as IRAS 00044+6521. This Hubble ACS image shows the irregular reflection nebula IRAS 00044+6521. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy ...and more »
  

• Hubble watches the icy blue wings of Hen 2-437

  15-02-2016 13:12
  
  In this cosmic snapshot, the spectacularly symmetrical wings of Hen 2-437 show up in a magnificent icy blue hue. Hen 2-437 is a planetary nebula, one of around 3,000 such objects known to reside within the Milky Way.
  
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• Hunting for ephemeral cosmic flashes— a conversation with astronomer Mansi Kasliwal

  15-02-2016 12:59
  
  Mansi Kasliwal (PhD '11), a new assistant professor of astronomy, searches the night sky for astrophysical transients—flashes of light that appear when stars become a million to a billion times as bright as our sun and then quickly fade away. She and her colleagues have developed robotic surveys to help detect these transient events, and she has built a global network of collaborators and telescopes aimed at capturing details of the flashes at all wavelengths.
  
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• Pan-STARRS chases source of LIGO gravity wave event

  15-02-2016 12:30
  
  The email came in the night on Sept 15.A potentially significant event had happened at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, during their engineering run. A ripple in spacetime had occurred somewhere in the universe. But where? LIGO had not yet started their formal observing run, and with only two Gravity Wave detectors, one in Hanford, WA, and one in Livingston, LA, they could not pinpoint where in the sky, amongst billions and billions of galaxies, the source of thi
  
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• Astronomers report results of first search for visible light associated with gravitational waves

  15-02-2016 12:19
  
  Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts the emission of gravitational waves by massive celestial bodies moving though space-time. For the past century gravitational waves have eluded a direct detection, but now the LIGO Virgo Collaboration has announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves, emitted by a merging pair of black holes. Catastrophic mergers of binary systems can also produce brilliant and explosive fireworks of light, so a team of astronomers, including at Harva
  
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• NASA Maps Geology of Pluto's 'Heart'

  15-02-2016 12:00 via space.com
  
  Scientists on NASA's New Horizons mission, which performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto on July 14, have put together a color-coded geological map of Sputnik Planum, the huge nitrogen-ice plain on the left side of Pluto's heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio.
  
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• NGC 1788

  15-02-2016 06:14
  
  The post NGC 1788 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
  
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• Astronomy Night at NASA Wallops Island - WMDT

  15-02-2016 03:53 via
  Astronomy Night at NASA Wallops Island
  WMDT
  The NASA Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center will be having it's second “Astronomy and Night Sky Winter Series” this week. The event will take place on Friday, February 19 from 7 to 10 PM where participants will be able to sit through an Astronomy ...
  

• Albert Einstein's vision realized: The future of gravitational wave astronomy is here - Salon

  15-02-2016 01:08 via
  Salon
  Albert Einstein's vision realized: The future of gravitational wave astronomy is here
  Salon
  Scientific American A century ago, when Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves—subtle ripples in spacetime produced by massive objects hurtling through the cosmos—he also guessed they could not ever be seen. Though the ...
  The Future of Gravitational Wave AstronomyScientific American
  Detection of Gravitational Waves Opens a “New Window” for
  

• How Astronomers Count Sunspots

  15-02-2016 01:00
  
  A multi-year investigation revealed errors in our understanding of the Sun.
  A group of sunspots, labeled as Active Region 1520 rotated into view over the left side of the sun on July 7, 2012. The large spot stretches more than 11 Earths across. This image was captured by amateur astronomer Alan Friedman on July 10th.
  Alan Friedman / Flickr
  In 1847, at a small observatory in Bern, Switzerland, a man called Rudolf Wolf started counting sunspots. He worked diligently, peering through a telescope ev
  
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