May 27th, 2008
I love this image, it’s awe-inspiring and highlights what our science is capable of… it makes me proud to be part of mankind.
NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander can be seen parachuting down to Mars, in this image captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is the first […]
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February 3rd, 2008
This “smiley face” crater was imaged by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter last week.
The unnamed crater is about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) across. It is located among the Nereidum Montes, north of the Argyre basin, near 45.1°S, 55.0°W. North is toward the right and sunlight illuminates the scene from the upper right.
Credit: NASA / JPL / […]
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December 22nd, 2007
According to astronomers there is a 1 in 75 chance that an asteroid will slam into Mars on 30 January 2008.
The asteroid, called 2007 WD5, was discovered on 20 November by a 1.5 metre telescope near Tucson, Arizona, US, that combs the skies as part of NASA’s efforts to detect asteroids with a chance […]
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December 4th, 2007
The sharpest ever image of the spiral galaxy M81 was released last week at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.
A spiral-shaped system of stars, dust, and gas clouds, the galaxy’s arms wind all the way down into the nucleus. Though the galaxy is located 11.6 million light-years away, the Hubble Space Telescope’s […]
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November 13th, 2007
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has captured some impressive high definition footage of our nearest neighbor. The images were taken on October 31 by the KAGUYA spacecraft.
The image shooting was carried out by the onboard high definition television (HDTV) of the KAGUYA, and it is the world’s first high definition image data acquisition of […]
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October 18th, 2007
Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory in Chile have discovered the most “earth-like” extrasolar planet spotted so far.
The planet is in orbit around a red dwarf star called Gliese 581 which is 20 light years away in the direction of the constellation Libra.
Initial measurements suggest that the planet, called Gliese 581C, is about 1.5 […]
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October 5th, 2007
Star Trek actor George Takei who played helmsman Hikaru Sulu on the USS Enterprise has had an asteroid named after him.
The piece of rock formally known as asteroid 1994 GT9 is located somewhere between Mars and Jupiter and was discovered in 1994.
It has been renamed as 7307 Takei.
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July 22nd, 2007
A new moon has been discovered orbiting Saturn, which brings the number of satellites known to be spinning around the ringed giant to an impressive 60. The discovery was made by the Cassini Imaging Team studying images taken by the Cassini spacecraft back in May this year.
The moon has not been officially named as yet […]
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July 12th, 2007
Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer space telescope have detected water vapour in the atmosphere of extrasolar planet HD 189733b. The planet is far from being habitable though with an average temperature of about 1000 degrees Kelvin, however the discovery has led scientists to believe that water is more common out there in the Universe than was […]
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July 7th, 2007
It may or may not be the answer to life, the Universe and everything, but coincidentally 42 is the mass of our galaxy, 3 x 10 to the power of 42 kilograms to be more precise.
The mass of the Milky Way Galaxy was determined by an international team of scientists and presented this week at […]
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June 6th, 2007
This is a vid on the Pale Blue Dot, an iconic image captured by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a distance of 6.4 billion kilometres (4 billion miles) on February 14, 1990.
The vid has been put together by aspiring film maker David Fu and it’s a great piece of work. Carl Sagan’s narration is […]
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May 11th, 2007
NASA says that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is on track for launch in 2013. The new telescope will replace the awesome Hubble telescope which has been responsible for a multitude of scientific discoveries and has captured countless amazing images of our universe since its launch in 1990. The JWST will be siginificantly larger […]
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