Hubble spies exocomets’ plunge into star

Interstellar forecast for a nearby star: Raining comets! The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered doomed, wayward comets plunging into the star HD 172555. Artist’s concept of comets speeding across a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust, heading straight for the youthful star HD 172555.

Ready Jet Go

READY JET GO! takes viewers ages 3-8 on a journey into outer space, building on children’s curiosity about science, technology and astronomy. “Mission to the Moon” – Sean tells Jet, Sydney, and Mindy about the Apollo 11 mission, and the kids decide to do a real-life reenactment of man’s first mission landing on the Moon! Curriculum: The first manned mission to the Moon took place on July 20, 1969, and the first two humans on the Moon were Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

In 2022 we’ll be able to watch an 1,800-year old star collision

A star created 1,800 years ago after the collision of two distant suns is set to appear in the night sky for the first time – as the light from the crash finally reaches the Earth. Scientists predict that for six months in 2022, stargazers will be able to witness the birth of the new star, which formed at the time of the Romans’ war with Scottish tribes, by fixing their telescopes near the Pisces and Cygnus constellations.

Three ways to die on Venus, and other space facts

Today we call it the “Big Dipper,” but in the year 75000, we may look up in the night sky and admire a constellation known affectionately as the “Big Spatula.” As astronomer Dean Regas explains, that’s because the stars are moving relative to our position here.

Hubble Looks at Voyager’s Future

Nothing built by humans has ever gotten as far from our planet as Voyager 1, which is now almost 21 billion kilometers from Earth. We’ve talked about the future of both Voyagers before in these pages – Voyager 1 passes within about 1.6 light years of the star Gliese 445 in some 40,000 years, its closest approach to a neighboring star.

Top Science Stories This Week

A mighty membrane in our digestive system had been considered a fragmented structure for hundreds of years but it turns out to be single, continuous. Named the mesentery, the structure has been upgraded to an organ.

Hubble creates interstellar road map for future galactic trek

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is creating a road map for the two Voyager spacecraft, that will travel through unexplored territories beyond our solar system, by measuring the material along the probes’ future trajectories. Even after the Voyagers run out of electrical power and are unable to send back new data, which may happen in about a decade, astronomers can use Hubble observations to characterise the environment of through which these silent ambassadors will glide.

Hubble Discovers Comets Plunging onto a Young Star

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered comets plunging onto the star HD 172555, which is a youthful 23 million years old and resides 95 light-years from Earth. Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Feild and G. Bacon The above illustration image shows several comets speeding across a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust and heading straight for the youthful, central star.

Hubble Discovers Comets Plunging onto a Young Star

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered comets plunging onto the star HD 172555, which is a youthful 23 million years old and resides 95 light-years from Earth. Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Feild and G. Bacon The above illustration image shows several comets speeding across a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust and heading straight for the youthful, central star.

Chandra image reveals black hole treasure trove

Washington, Jan 6 – NASA said its Chandra X-ray Observatory has obtained an image that gives astronomers the best look yet at the growth of black holes over billions of years beginning soon after the Big Bang. This is the deepest X-ray image ever obtained, collected with about eleven and a half weeks of Chandra observing time, the US space agency said in a statement.

NASA’s new mission to study black holes set for 2020 launch

NASA said it plans to launch in 2020 a $188 million mission that will allow astronomers to explore, for the first time, the hidden details of some of the most extreme and exotic astronomical objects, such as stellar and supermassive black holes, neutron stars and pulsars. Objects such as black holes can heat surrounding gases to more than a million degrees.

NASA’s new mission to study black holes set for 2020 launch

NASA said it plans to launch in 2020 a $188 million mission that will allow astronomers to explore, for the first time, the hidden details of some of the most extreme and exotic astronomical objects, such as stellar and supermassive black holes, neutron stars and pulsars. Objects such as black holes can heat surrounding gases to more than a million degrees.

Earth ‘will be destroyed in October 2017’ – and the …

Don’t bother sticking to those New Year’s Resolutions, because in autumn this year, a massive death planet is about to hit our planet, killing us all. Or at least that’s what ‘researcher’ David Meade, author of ‘Planet X: The 2017 Arrival’ reckons – saying that ‘overwhelming evidence’ proves that a planet will collide with Earth in September or October this year.

Today in science: Discovery of Ceres

Ceres was the first asteroid ever discovered, in 1801, and it’s still the largest body in the asteroid belt. Nowadays, we call it a dwarf planet, and a spacecraft has been orbiting it! Ceres’ Occator Crater in false colour showing surface composition via NASA’s Dawn spacecraft / JPL/ Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA.

Hubble Gazes at A Cosmic Megamaser

This galaxy has a far more exciting and futuristic classification than most — it hosts a megamaser. Megamasers are intensely bright, around 100 million times brighter than the masers found in galaxies like the Milky Way.

Pulsations Detected in A Hot, Helium-Atmosphere White Dwarf

Astronomers have recently discovered non-radial oscillations in a hot, helium-atmosphere white dwarf designated PG 0112+104. The newly detected 11 independent pulsation modes in this white dwarf could be essential for researchers testing the radial differential rotation and internal compositional stratification of highly evolved stellar remnants.

News 13 mins ago 5:25 a.m.Look to the sky for New Year’s Eve comet

“Say farewell to 2016 in cosmic style by looking up to see the #NewYearsEve #comet on December 31,” the laboratory said in a Wednesday Instagram post. Say farewell to 2016 in cosmic style by looking up to see the #NewYearsEve #comet on December 31 YZ< #NewYear #astronomy #nightsky #comet45p #planets #NASA #JPL #WhatsUp #NYE #newyears The comet, NASA said, was expected to appear in the western horizon on Dec. 15 and had a bluish-green head by Dec. 21. The comet is a periodic comet, which returns to the inner solar system about every 5 years.

How Do We Colonize Saturn’s Moons?

Welcome back to our series on Colonizing the Solar System! Today, we take a look at the largest of Saturn’s Moons – Titan, Rhea, Iapetus, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, and Mimas. From the 17th century onward, astronomers made some profound discoveries around the planet Saturn, which they believed was the most distant planet of the Solar System at the time.