Space

Using Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, flying aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists are getting their first look inside the moon's coldest, darkest craters.  The images show the floors of permanently-shadowed polar craters on the moon that aren't visible from Earth. Scientists are using the instrument to map and search the insides of the craters for water ice.  The images, taken on Nov. 17, 2008, cover part of the Haworth crater at the moon's south pole and the western rim of Seares crater, an impact feature near the north pole. Bright…

Being in college is somewhat hard, stressful, and fun. We does have a lot of coursework such as term paper, research paper, and some architecture students project (you know what i mean). I saw an article while doing some papers and got curious on it. I just want to share it to everyone.

Galaxies are the building blocks of the Universe. Each of them comprises some hundred billion radiant stars, such as our sun, which extend across about 50,000 light years. Every galaxy is embedded in a spherical halo made of dark matter that cannot be seen but is detected through its massive gravitational attraction. The exact nature of this matter is still unknown.  The galaxies are composed into two major types: spiral and elliptical. The spiral galaxies, such as our Milky Way, are rotating disks, rich in hydrogen gas, and are constantly forming new stars. The young stars give the…

In 1960, Dr. Frank Drake developed an equation that predicts the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. It's a simple equation -- the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy is equal to the product of all the following numbers: The total number of stars in the galaxy The fraction of stars that have planets orbiting them The number of planets orbiting each star that are capable of supporting life The fraction of planets capable of supporting life that actually do support life The fraction of planets supporting life that support intelligent life The fraction of planets…

NGC 253 is one of the brightest and dustiest spiral galaxies in the sky but we are always learning new things about it.   Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope's (VLT) near-infrared eye called NACO, an adaptive optics instrument, are now saying that the  center of NGC 253 hosts a scaled-up version of Sagittarius A*, the bright radio source that lies at the core of the Milky Way, and which we know harbors a massive black hole. "We have thus discovered what could be a twin of our Galaxy's Centre," says co-author Almudena Prieto, part of the group of astronomers from the…

Transiting exoplanets are routinely detected when they pass in front of their parent star as viewed from the Earth, which only happens by chance. The transit event causes a small drop in the observed starlight, which can then be detected. Fifty-five exoplanets have been detected this way since the observation of the first transiting planet HD 209458 b in 1999. When the planet revolves around its star or when it goes behind, the light coming from the system also varies, though the resulting smaller modulation is much harder to detect. This is mostly due to the small amount of light emitted by…

In an article in the International Journal of Astrobiology, P. McCafferty discusses the possibility of a red, blood-like life form living inside meteors. This conclusion raises the possibility that, in space, there are objects that contain red, blood-like cells. In other words, comets possibly harbour life. Such an image of a comet, containing a liquid interior teeming with red cells, is difficult to imagine and even harder to accept. So when faced with the prospect that the fall of red rain in Kerala is extraterrestrial in origin, it is tempting to apply Occam’s Razor and to dismiss any…

At 1014 gauss, atoms are compressed into tiny needles whose widths are only 1% of their lengths. X-ray photons readily undergo an exotic process where they change into matter and anti-matter particles briefly, before rejoining and turning back into light. Even at a distance of 1000 km, the slight polarization of water molecules would tear apart any Earth organism. So where do you find magnetic fields of such awe-inspiring strength? Attached to exotic objects in deep space, of course. When a star has exhausted all of its nuclear fuel and it's sufficiently massive (several times the amount of…

The unique planetary nebula NGC 2818 is nested inside the open star cluster NGC 2818A. Both the cluster and the nebula reside 10,400 light-years (3.2 kiloparsecs) away, in the southern constellation Pyxis, also called the Compass. NGC 2818 is one of very few planetary nebulae in our galaxy located within an open cluster. Open clusters, in general, are loosely bound and they disperse over hundreds of millions of years. Stars that form planetary nebulae typically live for billions of years. Hence, it is rare that an open cluster survives long enough for one of its members to form a planetary…

What is life is a valid question to some because they would simply like to make some.  Yet others, although they don't know what it is, search for life in other planets like Mars. How do you find life if you don't know what it is? Ken Nealson, Director of Center for Life Detection in Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA/Caltech) informs: "What we've discovered is that virtually any environment that allows liquid water to be there, will be compatible with life... that life has a way of inhabiting every place that has liquid water on this planet."[1] He is…