Tag: Astronomy
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Youngest planet spotted around alien star
An artist’s conception shows the planet K2-33b crossing the disk of its parent star. (Credi: NASA / JPL-Caltech) Scientists say they’ve detected a giant planet circling a star that’s only 5 million to 10 million years old, which would make it the youngest exoplanet ever identified. The super-Neptune-sized planet traces a super-close-in orbit, making a complete swing…
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Most of us can’t see the Milky Way – this dark sky atlas shows you where you can
A Google Earth visualization shows the effect of light pollution on night-sky viewing in North America. Darker colors indicate lower light pollution, while warmer colors indicate higher levels. (Credit: Falchi et al., Science Advances; Jakob Grothe / NPS; Matthew Price / CU-Boulder) Eighty percent of Americans can’t see the Milky Way from where they live,…
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Holy Hubble! See a super-sized Mars get bigger than it’s looked for a decade
This image of Mars was captured on May 12 by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and UVIS. Click on the image for an annotated view. (Credit: NASA, / ESA / STScI / AURA / J. Bell / ASU / M. Wolff / STScI) For the next couple of weeks, Mars will look…
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Transit of Mercury: How you can watch an astronomical rarity despite the clouds
A multiple-exposure photo shows Mercury as a speck making its way across the sun’s disk. (Credit: NASA) For the first time in a decade, we Earthlings can watch the planet Mercury’s black speck pass across the sun today – even in Seattle, where the skies are partly cloudy at best. “This is one of the…
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Hubble bubble! Nebula shines on birthday card for 26-year-old space telescope
The Bubble Nebula, also known as NGC 7653, is an emission nebula located 8,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. (Credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team) It’s been 26 years since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit, but the Bubble Nebula picture unveiled to mark its birthday would make the great…
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Watch this week’s total solar eclipse online – and get set for 2017’s big one
The sun’s corona gleams during a total solar eclipse seen from the northern tip of Australia in November 2012. (Credit: Romeo Durscher via NASA) This week’s total solar eclipse is a bad-news, good-news, even-better-news situation for skywatchers in the United States. Solar eclipses are must-see astronomical events that occur when the moon is positioned just…
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Far out! Hubble astronomers set record for spotting most distant galaxy (again)
This image locates galaxy GN-z11 in the northern hemisphere field of the Hubble GOODS survey, which takes in tens of thousands of galaxies stretching far back into time. GN-z11, shown in the inset, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the big bang, when the universe…
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NASA finishes huge mirror for James Webb Space Telescope, due for 2018 liftoff
The James Webb Space Telescope’s 18 mirrors are fully installed. (Credit: Chris Gunn / NASA) NASA has put the 18th and final piece of the puzzle into place for the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror – marking a major milestone on the way to the observatory’s launch in 2018. The 21.3-foot-wide mirror is…
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‘Planet Nine’? Astronomers boost the case for a large, unseen Planet X
An artist’s conception shows a “super-Earth” planet far from the sun. (Credit: R. Hurt / IPAC / Caltech) For decades, astronomers have gone back and forth over whether a “Planet X” exists on the edge of our solar system – and now two researchers have laid out new evidence supporting the claim, including a rough idea…
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‘Alien megastructure’ revisited: Oddly dimming star poses new mystery
An artist’s representation shows a crumbling megastructure known as a Dyson sphere orbiting KIC 8462852. (Credit: Danielle Futselaar / SETI International) He’s not saying it’s aliens – but an astronomer has raised new questions about KIC 8462852, the strange star that stirred up a debate about “alien megastructures” months ago. In a paper submitted to Astrophysical Journal…