Jun 30
How long is the day on Neptune?
The answer is 15 hours, 57
minutes and 59 seconds with
an uncertainty of a few
seconds. Neither the
question nor the answer are
simple however, as measuring
the the exact rotation
period of a gaseous
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Jun 29
Space junk near miss with the ISS
Yesterday the International Space Station risked a collision with a small unidentified object, a piece of so-called "space junk". According to NASA spokesman Stephanie Schierholz, the size of the object is
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Jun 28
SOFIA sees Pluto occult a star
An international research
team of American and German
astronomers and engineers
has succeeded in the
delicate task of observing
the occultation of a distant
star caused by the transit
of the dwarf
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Jun 27
Close flyby of 2011 MD
Today sees the close flyby,
at only 12,000 km from
Earth, of the little
asteroid 2011 MD. Its
trajectory will take it over
the southern Atlantic ocean
and at its closest approach
it will be over the
Antarctic
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Jun 24
The nebular complex of Betelgeuse
The red supergiant Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis) is one of the brightest stars in the sky, and also one of the largest stars known, with a volume that could fill almost all of space within the orbit of Jupiter
(shown
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Jun 23
L1448-MM, a giant stellar hydrant
For their entire lives, stars do nothing but blast their surroundings with heat, but in the first phases of their birth there is a period, whose duration is uncertain, in which they actually produce water!
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Jun 22
The strange planetary system of UZ For
In the southern constellation of Fornax is an eclipsing binary, called UZ For, that consists of two small stars, a white dwarf and a red dwarf, that orbit their common barycentre in just a couple of hours. Their
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Jun 21
The solar system after its demise
The ultimate destiny of the Sun is the transformation into a white dwarf in approximately 5 billion years, after which it will cool very, very slowly to become almost invisible. The fate of the planets is less
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Jun 20
Phobos "grazes" Jupiter!
The European Space Agency
has released images of a
grazing occultation of
Jupiter by the martian
satellite Phobos, that took
place on the first of this
month. The only witness of
the unusual
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Jun 17
Super black hole devours a star
Some results were previewed
yesterday in Science Express
describing research on an
exceptionally unusual gamma
ray flash: unusual because
it has lasted for two and a
half months! In fact, this
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Jun 16
May be no sunspot cycle 25!
This is news that will leave
many people open-mouthed,
because the effects of even
slight, long term variations
on our star could have
serious consequences here on
Earth. Three independent
works
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Jun 15
Solved, the mystery of Iapetus
Iapetus, one of the biggest satellites of Saturn, has a peculiarity, that since its discovery by Cassini in 1671, has made it one of the most curious objects in the solar system: one half of its surface is
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Jun 14
The Milky Way's new arm
A few days ago we referred
to the similarity between
our own galaxy and NGC 6744,
a beautiful spiral visible
in the southern hemisphere.
Now we receive the
surprising news of the
discovery of a new
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Jun 13
Markarian 739: two nuclei, two black holes
Looking oddly like a smiley
face, this image shows a
pair of interacting galaxies
in the process of merging
into a single object. This
system is called Markarian
739 (and NGC 3758) and lies
at a distance of
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Jun 10
The organic chemistry of chondrites
According to many
scientists, the organic
chemicals found in
meteorites played a
fundamental role in the
appearance of life on Earth.
Given the presence of
certain chemicals in
meteorites, there is little
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Jun 9
SN1987A continues to brighten
An article in today's issue of Nature, led by Josefin Larsson (University of Stockholm) reports that the remains of the supernova that exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud over 24 years ago, supernova
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Jun 8
Black holes: feeding habits in X-rays
Although black holes are not
observable directly, as they
emit no light, the
environment that surrounds
them, and in particular an
accretion disk that forms
around them when material
falls towards the hole
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Jun 6
Opportunity exceeds 30 km on Mars
10 days or so ago we gave
news of the loss of the
martian rover Spirit, that
had lost its ability to
communicate with Earth. In
contrast, at the start of
this month, its twin,
Opportunity, reached a
milestone
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Jun 3
NGC 6744, the Milky
Way look-a-like
(may be)
An image released by the European Southern Observatory, that portrays the galaxy NGC 6744, a beautiful spiral visible even with modest telescopes, in the southern constellation of Pavo, has
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Jun 2
Sp1149 and the perfect
gravitational lens
Gravitational lenses are a
unique instrument for the
observation of very distant
galaxies, otherwise
invisible. The lens is
normally made up of a
cluster of galaxies between
us and the remote object.
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Jun 1
Neutron stars with extreme masses
After the discovery in
October of last year of a
neutron star (PSR
J1614-2230) with a mass
equivalent to about two
Suns, astronomers have begun
to ask how such an object
forms, given that almost
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