Astronomy Portal: Featured News

PTTU Featured News

• Agreement signed for the IAU Office for Astronomy Development
  International Year of Astronomy Press Releases: The President of the South African National Research Foundation, Dr Albert van Jaarsveld and the General Secretary of the IAU, Dr. Ian Corbett, signed a landmark agreement in Pretoria today with the International Astronomical Union (IAU) which will foster and promote astronomy in the developing world.
  
  
• Blowing in the Wind: Cassini Helps with Dune Whodunit
  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features: The answer to the mystery of dune patterns on Saturn's moon Titan did turn out to be blowing in the wind.
  
  
• GRAIL Spacecraft Takes Shape
  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features: Engineers have conducted a fuel tank check of one of NASA's GRAIL mission spacecraft, scheduled for launch in 2011.
  
  
• Martian Dust Devil Whirls Into Opportunity's View
  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features: NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has photographed its first dust devil, a challenging feat in the area where in which Opportunity is working.
  
  
• DLR investigates the existence of liquid salt solutions on Mars
  German Aerospace Center (DLR): Is it possible that there are salt solutions on Mars that remain liquid despite the extremely low temperatures – a class of fluids known as cryobrines? Research findings at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have shown that this is a theoretical possibility. Prof. Diedrich Möhlmann of the DLR Institute of Planetary Research presented these initial findings on Friday 23 July and Saturday 24 July 2010 at the international COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) 2010 conference in Bremen.
  
  
• Brilliant Star in a Colourful Neighbourhood
  ESO Top News: A spectacular new image from ESO’s Wide Field Imager at the La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the brilliant and unusual star WR 22 and its colourful surroundings. WR 22 is a very hot and bright star that is shedding its atmosphere into space at a rate many millions of times faster than the Sun. It lies in the outer part of the dramatic Carina Nebula from which it formed.
  
  
• Into the Wild: Spitzer Space Telescope Surveys the Milky Way's Outback
  NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope: A new survey mission by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has turned up treasures aplenty in the outer regions of the Milky Way, where amidst fogs of interstellar chemicals some rare, young and enormous stars are blasting gas out into space.
  
  
• James Webb Space Telescope Completes Cryogenic Mirror Test
  NASA Marshall Space Flight Center: Recently, six James Webb Space Telescope beryllium mirror segments completed a series of cryogenic tests at the X-ray & Cryogenic Facility at the Marshall Center.
  
  
• Magazine Feature
  James Webb Space Telescope: Keep your eyes on the newstands - we'll be featured in a cover article in the September 2010 Astronomy Magazine!
  
  
• Cluster:Cluster makes crucial step in understanding space weather
  ESA Science & Technology: Researchers using the four spacecraft of ESA's Cluster mission have uncovered the long journey that energetic ions undergo during geomagnetic storms and how they ultimately precipitate into the Earth's atmosphere. Such precipitation affects the composition of the ionosphere, preventing GPS and communications satellites from operating correctly.
  
  
• Mass-ive results for scientists homing in on Higgs boson
  Science and Technology Facilities Council News and Press Releases: An international team of researchers, including several from the UK, at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab have announced results at the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Paris, that indicate that the quest to discover the elusive Higgs Boson particle has taken a giant leap forward, drawing closer to answering questions on the makeup of the Universe
  
  
• A moment of weightlessness: 3D virtual visit to the parabolic flight aircraft A300 ZERO-G
  German Aerospace Center (DLR): This panoramic view of the Airbus A300 ZERO-G captures a moment of weightlessness on a parabolic flight. You can scroll across the image horizontally and vertically by holding down the mouse button or by using the arrow keys. The test equipment is secured to the aircraft cabin. A number of researchers are using floor-mounted lashings to prevent themselves from floating away from the equipment.
  
  
• Curiosity Rover Grows by Leaps and Bounds
  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features: In one week, Curiosity grew by approximately 1 meter (3.5 feet) when spacecraft technicians and engineers attached the rover's neck and head (called the Remote Sensing Mast) to its body.
  
  
• NASA Spacecraft Camera Yields Most Accurate Mars Map Ever
  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features: A camera aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has helped develop the most accurate global Martian map ever.
  
  
• Comet P/2010 A2, an Activated Asteroid from the Main Asteroid Belt
  Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING): Comet-like object P/2010 A2 was discovered by the LINEAR survey on January 6, 2010. Service observations carried out using ACAM on the William Herschel Telescope on January 21, 2010, show an asteroidal nucleus detached from the dust tail. Owing to its orbital parameters and its cometary appearance, the object is classified as a main-belt comet, in other words, an activated asteroid from the main asteroid belt. Comet P/2010 A2's orbit is the nearest to the Sun known so far, for this kind of object (semi-major axis of 2.29 AU). .
  
  
• NASA Spacecraft Camera Yields Most Accurate Mars Map Ever
  NASA Breaking News: A camera aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has helped develop the most accurate global Martian map ever. Researchers and the public can access the map via several websites and explore and survey the entire surface of the Red Planet.
  
  
• NASA Telescope Finds Elusive Buckyballs in Space for First Time
  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features: Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered carbon molecules, known as "buckyballs," in space for the first time.
  
  
• Hyperfast Star Was Booted from Milky Way
  HubbleSite NewsCenter -- Latest News Releases: Get larger image formats A hundred million years ago, a triple-star system was traveling through the bustling center of our Milky Way galaxy when it made a life-changing misstep. The trio wandered too close to the galaxy's giant black hole, which captured one of the stars and hurled the other two out of the Milky Way. Adding to the stellar game of musical chairs, the two outbound stars merged to form a super-hot, blue star.
  
  
• Black Hole Jerked Around Twice
  NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: This image shows the effects of a giant black hole that has been flipped around twice, causing its spin axis to point in a different direction from before.
  
  
• Radio Astronomers Develop New Technique for Studying Dark Energy
  National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO): Pioneering observations with the National Science Foundation's giant Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have given astronomers a new tool for mapping large cosmic structures. The new tool promises to provide valuable clues about the nature of the mysterious "dark energy" believed to constitute nearly three-fourths of the mass and energy of the Universe...