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An artist rendition of Kepler-444 planetary system, which hosts five planets, all smaller than Earth. Credit: Tiago Campante, University of Birmingham, UK. Using data from the Kepler space telescope, an international group of astronomers has discovered the oldest known planetary system in the galaxy – an 11 billion-year-old system of five rocky planets that are all smaller than Earth. The team says this discovery suggests that Earth-size planets have formed throughout most of the Universe's 13.8-billion-year history, increasing the possibility for the existence of ancient life – and potentially advanced intelligent life — in our galaxy. “The fact that rocky planets were already forming in the galaxy 11 billion years ago suggests that habitable Earth-like planets have probably been around for a very long time, much longer than the age of our Solar System,” said Dr. Travis Metcalfe, Senior Research Scientist Space Science Institute, who was part of the team that used the unique method of asteroseismology to determine the age of the star. (...)Read the rest of Oldest Planetary System Discovered, Improving the Chances for Intelligent Life Everywhere (805 words) © nancy for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: exoplanets, Extrasolar Planets, Kepler, Kepler-444 Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh [...]
The asteroid Vesta as seen by the Dawn spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCAL/MPS/DLR/IDA I don't think I ever learned one of those little rhymes – My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas – to memorize the order of the planets, but if I had, it would've painted for me a minimalist picture of the solar system. (Side question: what is my Very Educated Mother serving now that we only have Dwarf Pizzas?) After all, much of the most exciting work in planetary science today happens not at the planets, but around them. Ask an astronomer where in the solar system she'd like to visit next and you're just as likely to hear Europa, Enceladus, Titan, or Triton as you are Venus, Mars, or Neptune. Our solar system hosts eight planets but nearly 200 known moons. And moons, it turns out, are just the start. We've detected more than a million asteroids; surely that's just a fraction of what's lurking beyond our limits of observation. Let's not even think about the billions, perhaps even trillions, of Kuiper belt and Oort cloud objects – we could be here all day! So, while the planets may dominate the solar system gravitationally, they are pitiful numerically.(...)Read the rest of Are Asteroids the Future of Planetary Science? (926 words) © Morgan Rehnberg for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh [...]
Illustration by artist Ron Miller of the gigantic ring system around J1407b. (© Ron Miller. Used with permission.) Astronomers watching the repeated and drawn-out dimming of a relatively nearby Sun-like star have interpreted their observations to indicate an eclipse by a gigantic exoplanet's complex ring system, similar to Saturn's except much, much bigger. What's more, apparent gaps and varying densities of the rings imply the presence of at least one large exomoon, and perhaps even more in the process of formation! (...)Read the rest of “Super Saturn” Has an Enormous Ring System and Maybe Even Exomoons (455 words) © Jason Major for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | 6 comments | Post tags: eclipse, exomoon, exoplanet, J1407, leiden university, rings, Saturn, University of Rochester, WASP Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh [...]
This animation, created from 20 individual radar images, clearly show the rough outline of 2004 BL86 and its newly-discovered moon. Click for larger animation. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Wonderful news! Asteroid 2004 BL86, which passed closest to Earth today at a distance of 750,000 miles (1.2 million km), has a companion moon. Scientists working with NASA's 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, have released the first radar images of the asteroid which show the tiny object in orbit about the main body.(...)Read the rest of News Flash: Asteroid Flying Past Earth Today Has Mini-Moon! (411 words) © Bob King for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | 6 comments | Post tags: 2004 BL86, 90 Antiope, asteroid, binary, Moon Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh [...]
Carnival of Space. Image by Jason Major. This week's Carnival of Space is hosted by Joe Latrell at his Photos To Space blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #390 (...)Read the rest of Carnival Of Space #390 (89 words) © susie for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Carnival of Space Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh [...]
This artist's rending shows “before” and “after” images of a changing look quasar. Credit: Yale University. Last week, astronomers at Yale University reported seeing something unusual: a seemingly stedfast beacon from the far reaches of the Universe went quiet. This relic light source, a quasar located in the region of our sky known as the celestial equator, unexpectedly became 6-7 times dimmer over the first decade of the 21st century. Thanks to this dramatic change in luminosity, astronomers now have an unprecedented opportunity to study both the life cycle of quasars and the galaxies that they once called home. (...)Read the rest of Astronomers Catch A Quasar Shutting Off (586 words) © Vanessa Janek for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | 2 comments | Post tags: AGN, black hole, Black Hole Jets, Early Universe, quasar, quasars, supermassive black hole Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh [...]
The first qualification motor for NASA's Space Launch System's booster is installed in ATK's test stand in Utah and is ready for a March 11, 2015 static-fire test. Credit: ATK The first solid rocket booster qualification motor for NASA's mammoth new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is aimed and ready to fire in a major ground test after NASA and ATK finished its installation at a test stand in Utah, and confirms that the pace of SLS development is gaining momentum. (...)Read the rest of NASA Marching Towards Milestone Test Firing of Space Launch System Booster (917 words) © Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | 2 comments | Post tags: ATK, EFT-1, humans to Mars, KSC, NASA, Orion crew module, Orion EFT-1, RS-25, SLS, sls core stage, solid rocket booster, Space Launch System (SLS), Space Shuttle Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
Oldest Planetary System Discovered, Improving the Chances for Intelligent Life Everywhere
by Nancy Atkinson
by Nancy Atkinson
The European Gaia spacecraft launched about a year ago with the ambitious goal of mapping one billion years in the Milky Way. That's 1% of all the stars in our entire galaxy, which it will monitor about 70 times over its 5-year mission. If all goes well, we'll learn an enormous amount about the structure, movements and evolution of the stars in our galaxy. It'll even find half a million quasars. (...)Read the rest of Astronomy Cast Ep. 365: Gaia (46 words) © Fraser for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: esa, Gaia, galaxy, mapping, stars Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh [...]
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