Dec. 22
Almost solitary giant stars
There is a new theory to
explain why Iapetus, one of
Saturn's moons, has a shape
similar to a walnut. This
moon, with a diameter of
1470 km, has an enormous
ridge, about 100 km wide and
up to 20
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Dec. 21
IceCube completed
The largest neutrino
observatory in the world has
just been completed. It's
called IceCube, and is made
up of 5504 sensors, located
within, and on the surface,
of a 1 cubic kilometre
volume of ice. The
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Dec. 20
Was the ridge on Iapetus a moon?
There is a new theory to
explain why Iapetus, one of
Saturn's moons, has a shape
similar to a walnut. This
moon, with a diameter of
1470 km, has an enormous
ridge, about 100 km wide and
up to 20
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Dec. 17
The Earth: 25 Gauss in the outer core
Using radio observations of
distant quasars to measure
tiny variations in the tilt
of the Earth's rotation
axis, Bruce A. Buffett
(University of California,
Berkeley) has succeeded in
measuring the strength of
the
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Dec. 16
2008 TC3: ureilites and much more
No less than 20 articles
were published yesterday, in
the journal Meteoritics and
Planetary Science, based on
studies of the meteorite
fragments found in the
Nubian desert, of the small
asteroid 2008 TC3. This
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Dec. 15
A cryovolcano on Titan?
At the American Geophysical Union meeting, underway in San Francisco, a new 3D map of a mountainous structure on the surface of Titan, with clear similarities to terrestrial volcanoes, has been presented.
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Dec. 14
Voyager 1 and the end of the solar wind
It is now certain that
Voyager 1 has reached a
region beyond the sphere of
influence of the solar wind.
The first signs of this
historic milestone were seen
last June, when the probe
was 17 billion kilometres
from
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Dec. 13
596 Scheila: asteroid or comet?
An asteroid 113 km in
diameter, 596 Scheila, and
belonging to the main belt
2.92 astronomical units from
the Sun, has undergone a
cometary type outburst. The
first to notice the outburst
was Steve Larson, of
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Dec. 11
The quasi-Moon of Venus
Recently, astronomers have
tried to determine the
precise rotation period and
composition of the moon of
Venus. On the 8th December
the results were finally
announced by Michael Hicks,
an
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Dec. 09
The double quasar as seen by e-MERLIN
Many would have been
disappointed by the much anticipated
announcement by NASA of the discovery of
a new kind of bacteria in Mono Lake,
California. The reason is that what has
been found is
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Dec. 07
HR 8799e, the planet of disagreement
The first extrasolar
planetary system to be directly
photographed was that around HR 8799
Pegasi, an A-type star (so bigger than
our Sun) 130 light years away, with at
least three Jupiter type planets,
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Dec. 06
Many more red dwarfs in the ellipticals
Another important discovery
from the study of elliptical galaxies:
after the confirmation that some of
these galaxies actively form new stars,
a group of astronomers from the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center
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Dec. 03
Discovered (extra) terrestrial bacteria
Many would have been
disappointed by the much anticipated
announcement by NASA of the discovery of
a new kind of bacteria in Mono Lake,
California. The reason is that what has
been found is
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Dec. 02
The atmosphere of a super-Earth
In the next issue of Nature
the results of the analysis of the
atmosphere of the planet GJ 1214b are to
be published. This planet, an example of
a so-called super-Earth, was discovered
in December 2009, and is
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Dec. 01
SO2
on Venus: mystery solved
In 2008, ESA's Venus Express
probe discovered a layer of sulphur
dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus at an
altitude between 90 and 110 km. Until
then, the molecule had only been
observed at lower altitudes,
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