16 October 2011
NASA recently published images relayed by the Dawn spacecraft, currently orbiting the large asteroid Vesta, revealing the discovery of a huge mountain in Vesta’s south polar region. Vesta (about 530 km across), is the most massive asteroid. Its lofty mountain, whose peak towers about 22 km higher than the surrounding terrain, is nearly three times as high as Mt. Everest, and is one of the tallest mountains in the Solar System.
12 October 2011
Our Galaxy, the Milky Way, is a large barred spiral galaxy, spanning about 100,000 light years across. It consists of over 200 billion stars. The Sun is located approximately 27,000 light years from the galactic center, and lasts about 200 million to orbit the Galaxy once. Intriguingly, astronomers have gathered strong evidence that a giant black hole, termed a supermassive black hole, resides in the Milky Way’s center. The mass of this monstrous black hole is estimated to be over 4 million times the mass of the Sun.
08 October 2011
NASA recently published an infrared image of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The image, revealing interesting terrain on Titan, was acquired by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. Titan (5,150 km across) is the second largest moon in the Solar System, after Jupiter’s moon Ganymede (5,250 km across). It is also larger than Mercury (4,880 km across), the smallest planet, and nearly twice more massive than Earth’s Moon (3,476 km across).
04 October 2011
On 1 October 2011, NASA's Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft flew by Saturn's intriguing moon Enceladus, and imaged its active ice volcanoes, which spew cold jets of water vapor and ice. Cassini approached Enceladus to within only 100 km. The close encounter was planned to allow Cassini's instruments to "taste" the jets.
28 September 2011
Saturn, the ringed giant planet, has a large satellite family, consisting of 62 moons and numerous smaller objects, known as moonlets. NASA recently published a wonderful image of Saturn, acquired by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. The image shows a wonderful view of the Saturn’s rings and five Saturnian moons.
24 September 2011
NASA recently published, as its Image of the Day, satellite images of our beautiful home planet. The picture gallery below features three pictures, acquired by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Earth’s largest artificial satellite, orbiting at an altitude of about 350 km.
21 September 2011
Many websites have assumed through videos and articles that the end of the world is near and that a huge earthquake will destroy planet earth on 26 September 2011. Many people took this for granted and panicked. Scientifically, the story begins on 10 December 2010, when the Russian astronomer Lyoned lean observed and discovered a new comet; Elenin comet, its scientific name in astronomical sheets is “C/2010_X1”. Comets are icy bodies orbiting the sun every now and then, Halley’s comet is the most famous as it orbits the sun once every 67 years.
20 September 2011
NASA recently published an interesting image, showing three beautiful galaxies, which seem somewhat overlapped, although their distances are perhaps significantly different. This triple galactic system is technically known as Arp 274, since they are the 274th entry of the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, compiled by American astronomer Halton Arp. The image was acquired by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), a sophisticated observatory, exploring the universe from Earth orbit.
12 September 2011
On 10 September 2011, NASA launched its new lunar mission, the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL). GRAIL will study the Moon’s gravitational field and internal structure. The mission consists of two small spacecrafts, and will last 90 days. The GRAIL spacecrafts were launched aboard a powerful Delta II rocket, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida.
08 September 2011
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) recently published a wonderful image of two dazzling galaxies. Interestingly, these galaxies are known as The Eyes, as they resemble shining eyes. The image was obtained by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), one of the largest and most sophisticated observatories in the world. By astronomical standards, The Eyes are nearby galaxies, located approximately 50 million light-years away. They are about 100,000 light-years apart, a distance comparable to the width of our large Galaxy, the Milky Way .