Skywatch
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Episode 450: Life's Building Blocks in Space
Using new technology, researchers have discovered an important pair of pre-biotic molecules in interstellar space. The new discoveries indicate that some basic chemicals are key steps on the path to life and may have formed on dusty ice grains floating between stars. National Radio Astronomy Observatory news release on the discovery The Daily Galaxy discusses the discovery NASA on meteorites and life's components
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Episode 451: HubbleWatch for May 2013
Hubble studies a strange, ancient visitor to our galaxy. Join HubbleWatch for a discussion of the "Methuselah star" HD 140283, a fast-moving star with a long and odd past. Hubble Finds Birth Certificate of Oldest Known Star
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Episode 449: Chemistry for Life on Europa?
New NASA research shows that hydrogen peroxide is abundant across much of the surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa. If this material could mix into the ocean below the moon’s icy surface, it could be important energy supply for simple forms of life. Keck Observatory news release on the discovery NASA discusses the findings NASA’s Europa overview
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Episode 448: Missing Martian Lander Found?
Gone but not forgotten, the Russian Mars 3 lander descended to the surface of the red planet in 1971. This first lander on Mars was meant to take images, but it unexpectedly failed and its transmissions were short-lived. Through the power of citizen scientists, the lander may have been found in images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Data from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) appear to have captured objects on the surface of Mars which are consistent with the...
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Episode 447: Horse of a Different Color
The iconic Horsehead nebula has been the subject of astronomical imagery by amateurs and professionals alike. The region has clouds of ionized hydrogen as well as areas of dark dust that obscure new-forming stars. A new image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows new features and hidden stars not seen in the other optical images. A 3D movie of the image gives perspective to the structure of the nebula. HubbleSite news release
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Episode 446: Closest Star System Found in Century
The NASA spacecraft WISE has discovered a pair of stars that is now known to be the third-closest star system to Sun. The last closest system to Earth was discovered in 1916. The newly discovered star pair is composed of two cool “brown dwarfs” 6.5 light years away from our Sun. Penn State news release on the discovery The WISE mission page
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Episode 445: The Disappearing Van Allen Belt
The solar system -- especially the inner part -- is bathed in charged particles from the Sun and cosmic radiation. Several planets with magnetic fields, including Earth, are somewhat protected from the particles because they become trapped high above the surface by magnetic field lines. The Van Allen belts, discovered in the 1950s, are a pair of radiation belts encircling the Earth. Surprisingly, two new NASA probes discovered a short-lived third belt. NASA Science on the discovery of the...
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Episode 444: Meteors and Asteroids, Oh My
The impact of a meteorite in Russia in February 2013 and the flyby of asteroid debris highlights that the solar system is full of rocky material. While the asteroid has been observed for some time, the smaller meteorite was unexpected. Many meteorites hit the Earth each year, but these events indicate how important it is to develop international plans for threat avoidance and early warning systems. Meanwhile, researchers are digging through the meteorite remains to see what they can learn....
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Episode 443: Life on Mars Once Possible
Rock samples collected in February 2013 by NASA's Curiosity rover show ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. The rover found the soil contains sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon – all elements critical for life. NASA news release on the discovery Mars Science Laboratory page
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Episode 442: Seeing the Sun Like Never Before
In the three years since NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the spacecraft has provided continuous, high-resolution views of the Sun, helping us better understand our star and its influence on us. Among other accomplishments, SDO also has studied the atmosphere of Venus as the planet passed in front of the Sun, and it revealed how a comet’s tail was buffeted by the solar wind as the comet passed near the Sun. Solar Dynamics Observatory mission SDO video of Venus transit...
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Show 441: Sailing on Sunlight
In Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Sunjammer," a spaceship designer develops a spacecraft with a large "solar sail" that propels it through space using radiation pressure from the Sun. In recent years, solar sails have jumped from the pages of science fiction into real life. In 2014, NASA plans to launch its own Sunjammer spacecraft -- the largest solar sail ever sent to space.
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Show 440: Oh No, Mini-Neptunes!
A new study suggests that many of the "super-Earth" planets astronomers have discovered orbiting other stars are probably more like "mini-Neptunes" than like our rocky planet. However, moons orbiting these planets might still hold potential for hosting life.
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Show 439: Vesta Shaped by Violent Collisions
In 2011 and 2012, NASA's Dawn spacecraft orbited the second-largest asteroid in our solar system, Vesta, providing unprecedented views of its surface. Computer simulations based on Dawn's observations suggest that violent collisions with two other space rocks carved out two giant craters on the asteroid and melted Vesta's crust, making it thicker than expected.
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Show 438: HubbleWatch for February 2013
Hubble finds that a planet orbiting the bright star Fomalhaut takes a wild and potentially destructive path through a vast debris field surrounding the star.
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Show 427: HubbleWatch for December 2012
There's a mystery at the center of a giant elliptical galaxy. And Hubble finds seven galaxies from the early universe, galaxies that existed just 350-600 million years after the Big Bang started it all.
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Show 426: HubbleWatch for September 2012
Hubble finds Pluto has a fifth moon. A faint galaxy is one of the most distant objects ever detected. And a new Deep Field image, the Extreme Deep Field, combines all Hubble's images of a tiny sliver of space
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Show 411: Earth's Oldest Impact Crater
A huge, new asteroid impact crater discovered in Greenland is thought to be a billion years older than any other known asteroid impact crater on Earth. Erosion features on Earth -- rain, wind, continental shift -- make finding evidence of impact craters very difficult. This new crater is about 62 miles across and believed to be 3 billion years old.
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Show 410: Pluto's New Moon
The dwarf planet Pluto is never out of the news. It is an object of study because it formed and evolved in the outer part of the solar system called the Kuiper Belt. In support of the NASA New Horizons mission, launched in 2006 and on its way to Pluto, Hubble Space Telescope observations are probing the system so the spacecraft can navigate through it. Although the first moon of Pluto, Charon, was discovered in 1978, 3 more moons were discovered between 2004 and 2011 using Hubble. Now a...
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Show 409: A Small Planet
Astronomers are keen to find extrasolar planets that are similar in size to Earth, as well as those significantly smaller. Now during observations of a planetary system known to have at least one orbiting planet, a second very small planet was found. The object, called UCF-1.01, orbits around the red-dwarf star GJ 436.
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Show 408: Perseid Meteor Shower
The annual Perseid meteor shower is the best and most watched annual shower, and the best viewing for 2012 occurs Saturday evening, August 11 through Sunday evening, August 12. At its very best, about 90 meteors per hour are visible.
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Show 407: Mars' Wet Interior
The interior of Mars contains huge reservoirs of water, with some locations seemingly as wet as the interior of Earth. This new research is a result of examining two meteorites that formed in the mantle of Mars, were blasted off the planet by a meteorite impact long ago, and landed on Earth more than two million years ago.
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Show 406: HubbleWatch for July 2012
Our massive nearby neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, is headed straight for the Milky Way. Hubble watches a star fry a planet's atmosphere. And dim "ghost galaxies" pose a stellar mystery.
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Show 397: HubbleWatch for May 2012
It's Hubble's 22nd anniversary, and the telescope is celebrating with a glorious image of the 30 Doradus star-forming region. Hubble catches sight of brief auroras on Uranus, and will turn its eye closer to home in June, using the Moon to watch the Venus transit.
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Show 390: Finding The Milky Way's Black Hole
Astronomers have suspected that a gigantic black hole resides at the center of our Milky Way galaxy for some time now, but they can't say for sure. Now scientists are hoping to image this mysterious object with a world-wide array of radio telescopes.
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Show 391: HubbleWatch for April 2012
The universe's mysterious dark matter gets a little more mysterious. And Hubble celebrates its 22nd birthday by showing off its keen vision, capturing an immense and detailed view of a nearby star-forming region.
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Show 383: HubbleWatch for March 2012
Famously fractious star Eta Carinae is replaying one of its greatest hits -- an explosion witnessed on Earth 170 years earlier. And Hubble has discovered a new type of planet -- a hot super-Earth made up mostly of water and ice.
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Show 378: HubbleWatch for February 2012
Hubble discovers a strange variety of blue star in our galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. And astronomers learn the reason behind a nearby stellar explosion.
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Show 373: Voyager Reaches Edge of Solar System
NASA's Voyager 1 is now 11 billion miles from Earth. The spacecraft has entered a new region between our Solar System and interstellar space. The data from Voyager over the past year reveals a new region where the wind of charged particles from Sun has diminished, and particles from inside the solar system seem to be "leaking" out into interstellar space.
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Show 372: New Stonehenge Revelations
Two new discoveries about Stonehenge indicate an even longer history of solar significance and a connection with a site in Wales where builders quarried stones.
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Show 371: HubbleWatch for January 2012
Astronomers apply a new technique to old Hubble data to discover planets. And Hubble finds a multitude of stars arising from minute galaxies.
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Show 331: Titan Rain
For the first time, scientists have captured signs of rain appearing on Saturn's giant moon, Titan, at latitudes close to the equator, where conditions have been dry for years. At Titan's frigid temperatures, the precipitation that descends is not water rain, but methane rain.
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Show 330: HubbleWatch for April 2011
A strange green blob creeps up on an unsuspecting galaxy. And Hubble monitors a cosmic explosion unlike anything ever seen before.
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Show 323: Planets in the Habitable Zone?
NASA's Kepler mission is designed to discover planets. It looks for the dimming in a star that occurs as a passing planet blocks a tiny fraction of its star's light. The Kepler team has released new results that suggest that at least one system it examined contains several planets in the habitable zone, the area where water might exist. Water is a necessity for an environment that can sustain life as we know it.
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Show 321: Galaxy X
You've heard of Planet X -- the idea, popular with science fiction enthusiasts and conspiracy addicts, that there might be an undetected planet out there in our solar system. But how about Galaxy X? Astronomers using numerical models predict the presence of a dwarf galaxy 600,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way. The galaxy may be too faint to see in visible light - but observers with infrared and radio telescopes could find it.
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Show 320: Cosmic Rays Alter Biodiversity?
There's a pattern of forms of life on Earth growing both more and less diverse over time, and we may be able to trace it back to our solar system's path through the Milky Way galaxy. Every 60 million years or so, our solar system emerges north out of the average plane of the galaxy's disk, and the variety of Earthly life drops. It may be due to increased exposure to high-energy cosmic rays.
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Show 319: Really Hot Planet
Many extrasolar planets have been found using the transit technique. This occurs when a planet blocks some of the light from its parent star as it orbits in front of it. If astronomers detect a repeating pattern, they can glean information about the planet's orbit. Most of these planets are very close to their host stars, and so they are very hot. A new record has been set in the WASP-33 system. The planet, called WASP-33b, appears to be 3200 degrees Celsius, or about 5800 Fahrenheit!
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Show 317: HubbleWatch for February 2011
Hubble has located the faintest galaxy yet seen, a dim collection of blue stars that existed just 480 million years after the Big Bang. And astronomers find that tiny red dwarf stars can unleash mighty eruptions, making life difficult for any planets orbiting nearby.
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Show 312: Comet Hartley 2
The EPOXI Deep Impact comet investigation team, known for its flyby of Comet Tempel 1, was able to re-use its spacecraft to fly near a second comet, Hartley 2. The second flyby was executed in November 2010. The close approach of the spacecraft showed the comet's unusual shape, and jets emerging from various lumps. The images are now being analyzed to glean clues to the formation of Hartley 2.
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Show 311: Elliptical Galaxies Have Hidden Depths
Elliptical galaxies are traditionally thought of as old objects where most star formation happened long ago and then evened out. They appear smooth and more or less featureless. However, Hubble observations reveal that elliptical galaxies may not be so undisturbed. These objects, judging by a galaxy called NGC 4150, may actually cannibalize smaller galaxies. In doing so, they become the sites of localized star formation, though less than in spiral galaxies.
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Show 310: Lunar Eclipse
A total eclipse of the Moon took place in the morning hours of December 21. Eclipses of the Moon only happen when the Moon is full, and it passes through the shadow cast by our planet. This eclipse was visible for all of North America.
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Show 272: HubbleWatch for May 2010
Hubble celebrates its 20th anniversary with a new image and a way for people to make their love for the telescope known. An X-shaped debris trail marks the path of a mysterious object, and an object circling a brown dwarf looks like a planet -- but is it?
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Show 271: Planet Trio Visible
A trio of planets is now shining in our skies. Venus is rising higher in the western sky, Mars is still visible but getting fainter, but Saturn is now at its brightest for the year. Saturn is visible just about all night, rising at sunset, highest in southern sky at midnight.
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Show 269: Wild Terrain on Titan
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, continues to show indications of its intriguing surface. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004 and recently came across signs of floods, large impacts, and even ice volcanoes under the smoggy atmosphere. Long obscured by thick hazy clouds, Titan is finally revealing its secrets to Cassini.
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Show 268: Jurassic Galaxies
Astronomers know that in the early universe, small galaxies merge to form larger ones. Observations of distant galaxies are difficult and tricky to decipher. Fortunately a group of galaxies, called the Hickson Compact Group 31, was observed with the Hubble Space Telescope, and astronomers found evidence that these galaxies are just forming, as if they were located in the early universe. The conclusions were confirmed with observations from the Spitzer Infrared Telescope, SWIFT and other...
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Show 255: Solar Tsunamis Are Real
Incredibly powerful waves of plasma are rippling across the Sun's surface. These "solar tsunamis" were once thought to be an optical illusion. The first witnessed wave, taller than the Earth and creating a rippling pattern millions of kilometers around, was so amazing researchers thought they might be seeing some kind of flaw or trick in the satellite's vision instead of a real wave. The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft were able to confirm the tsunamis existence.
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Show 254: Baby Brown Dwarfs
Brown dwarfs are objects that are bigger than planets but not massive enough to become stars, yet have nuclear reactions in their cores. How do they form? Are they more like planets, or more like stars? A team of astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope discovered two objects that appear to be brand-new brown dwarfs. Observatories across the globe are participating in the hunt for new information.
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Show 253: Heart of the Milky Way
As the International Year of Astronomy draws to a close, a dramatic composite image of the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy was unveiled. The image was a combination of observations from NASA's Great Observatories: Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra. In addition to the composite image, the public can view the individual images obtained by each observatory.
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Show 252: Titanic Explosion
Astronomers observing the tremendous stellar explosions known as gamma ray bursts have gained new insights into the nature of the most distant objects ever observed in the universe. A huge explosion detected in April 2009 by NASA's Swift satellite has been deemed to be more than 13 billion light years from Earth.
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Show 251: More Exoplanets!
A survey of a carefully selected list of stars has turned up 32 new planets beyond our solar system. An instrument called the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) in La Silla, Chile, provided the information after a five-year effort. Several stars appear to have multiple planetary systems, and a number of super-Earths, planets a few times the mass of Earth, were located.
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Show 250: HubbleWatch for December 2009
Hubble takes a picture of the Southern Pinwheel, a dazzling galaxy with three spiral arms. The images show the aftermath of star death and the rise of new stars. In commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Galileo turning a telescope on the skies, Hubble teams up with the Chandra and Spitzer space telescopes to capture the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.
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Show 249: IBEX Maps the Edge
Our Sun creates an insulating bubble, called the "heliosphere" around our solar system. This heliosphere shields us from a tenth of the galactic radiation pouring in from space. In 2008, NASA launched the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) to study the particles in this region. The first IBEX maps are now available, and they reveal much more complexity than models predicted.
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Show 248: Ares 1 Under Testing
NASA developed the Ares 1 rocket to carry a new crew vehicle into space upon the retirement of the space shuttle. A test conducted in fall 2009 included a six-minute flight with myriad sensors to provide data on the rocket's performance. The test went well, but the re-entry parachutes did not perform as expected, and a booster was dented on impact with the ocean. The expensive test and the projected budget calls into question whether this technology can be further developed.
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Show 247: Icy Craters
Astronomers using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have located some new craters on the surface of Mars. This isn't unusual - the surfaces of planets and moons are pocked by plummeting space rocks happen all the time. But this time, the craters were so fresh that scientists were able to see water ice within them. Apparently the small impacts had exposed a layer of ice beneath Mars' dust.
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Show 246: ALMA
The largest astronomical project in existence is getting under way in the high plains of northern Chile. The Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA, will be comprised of 66 giant 40-foot and 23-foot antennas, spread over 11.5 miles, operating as a single, giant radio telescope. ALMA will help astronomers answer questions about our cosmic origins and will observe some of coldest and most distant objects in the cosmos.
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Show 245: Hubble Restored
In September, NASA declared the Hubble Space Telescope back in full working order. All the instruments are in excellent shape after being checked out and calibrated. The new instruments are the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which can see wavelengths ranging from the optical into the infrared, and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), which studies the ultraviolet. The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which had partially stopped working, has new circuitry and functioning as well as ever. The...
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Show 244: Mercury Flyby
The three Mercury flybys of the Messenger spacecraft are complete. Despite a glitch during the third pass, most of the surface of Mercury has been imaged. The Messenger team is examining the craters, bright and dark spots, and other surface features in the hopes of understanding the geologic history of Mercury.
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Show 243: Mysteries of Saturn's Rings
Saturn's rings have fascinated us ever since Galileo first spotted them in his telescope in 1610 -- almost 400 years ago. But how these icy rings came into being remains a mystery. Saturn's rings are thought to consist of roughly 35 trillion trillion tons of ice, dust and rock. Cassini and Voyager spacecraft have revealed many new details of the rings, but many mysteries still remain.
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Show 242: LCROSS
The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission is designed to determine whether water ice is present on the Moon. Water is always an issue for future lunar exploration. LCROSS has two components -- a rocket that will impact a shadowy Moon crater and excavate it, and a satellite that will sample the plume produced by the impact. If ancient ice lies buried on the Moon, it may be ejected and then detected by specialized instruments.
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Show 241: Asteroid Tracking Falls Short
NASA says that without more funding, it will not meet the asteroid tracking goals mandated by Congress. NASA hopes to spot 90% of potentially dangerous objects by 2020. Large asteroids could cause global catastrophe if they strike Earth, and the U.S. is the only country with an asteroid-detection program.
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Show 240: Space Debris
Leftover pieces of satellites orbit the earth as debris. Some of this debris has been hazardous for the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle, as well as orbiting satellites. The debris re-enters Earth's atmosphere at the rate of about one piece per day. One of the most famous pieces of orbital debris, a tool box dropped by an astronaut while performing a space walk, re-entered the atmosphere on August 3, 2009.
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Show 239: Is Titan like Earth?
Saturn's moon Titan is far from Earth, but both worlds have some things in common -- wind, rain, volcanoes and tectonics. These forces sculpt features on Titan, as on Earth, but in an environment more frigid than Antarctica. Titan looks more like Earth than any other body in the solar system, despite the huge differences in temperature and environment.
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Show 238: Solar Cycle and Weather
A new link has been established between the Sun's 11-year cycle and global climate. It shows that solar activity has effects on Earth resembling La Nia and El Nio events in the Pacific Ocean. We've known for years that long-term solar variations affect certain weather patterns, including droughts and regional temperatures, but establishing a real connection between solar cycles and global climate patterns has proven elusive.
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Show 237: HubbleWatch for September 2009
The newly upgraded and repaired Hubble Space Telescope has released its first showcase images, spotlighting galaxies drawn together by gravity, star clusters, dying stars and more. For the first time, Hubble will circle the Earth with a full set of five instruments, opening new horizons for scientific study.
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Show 236: Solar System Shake Up
Was the solar system always the organized clockwork system envisioned by Isaac Newton? According to a computer model of the early epoch of the solar system, the answer is "no." The large outer planets may have been closer to the Sun and migrated outwards while encountering small bodies called planetesimals. As the big planets moved outward, small objects cascaded toward the inner solar system, bombarding the four small, rocky planets. The model also predicts other oddities of the solar...
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Show 235: Edvard Munch's Painting
Researchers at Texas State University have found more interesting conclusions about Edvard Munch's paintings in Norway. Previously they had found that the vivid colors in Munch's painting, The Scream, could be attributable to dust spewed into the atmosphere by the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. In new findings, the group has concluded that a mysterious orb in the sky that Munch painted in "Girls on the Pier" depicts the Moon rather than the Sun. The group also explains why Munch didn't paint the...
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Show 234: Sunspot Model
A new model of sunspots shows striking, beautiful detail, and may help unlock mysteries of Sun and its impact on Earth. This first-ever comprehensive computer model of sunspots, made possible by advances in supercomputers, drew on increasingly detailed observations from a network of ground- and space-based observatories to verify that model captured sunspots realistically.
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Show 233: Snow on Mars
The red planet Mars conjures up images of rocks and arid, dusty plains, but last year NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander showed that it snows on Mars. The Phoenix robot observed ice crystals falling to the Martian surface. Now new research could shed light on the past and present water cycle on the Martian surface, and possibly characterize the potential habitability of the red planet.
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Show 232: Stellar Oscillations
A massive star -- 10 times the mass of the Sun -- called V1449 Aquilla, turns out to have oscillations similar to the Sun. The observations were obtained over 150 days with the Convection, Rotation and Planetary Transits (CoRoT) satellite. No other massive star is known to have such oscillations, and the striking similarity to the Sun helps us study the Sun and understand the precursors to supernovae eruptions.
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Show 230: HubbleWatch for July 2009
Servicing Mission 4 went off without a hitch in May, a team of astronauts successfully completing what was perhaps the most challenging Hubble mission ever. Since then, Hubble has been slowly coming awake as scientists and engineers carefully restore its many components to full power. It'll be another month before the first official new images from Hubble, but in July an unexpected astronomical event gave us a sneak preview of one of the telescope's new instruments.
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Show 229: Incredible Shrinking Star
The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is shrinking, and astronomers aren't sure why. One of the largest stars we know, Betelgeuse could occupy the space from the Sun out to the Planet Jupiter, engulfing the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Since 1993, it's shrunk about 15 percent. Betelgeuse's size determines that it will die as a supernova, lighting up Earth's skies for months after the light from its explosion reaches us.
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Show 228: Planetary Free-For-All
Astronomers calculate that there's a tiny chance, a billion or more years from now, that Mars or Venus could collide with Earth. The new finding comes from simulations that show how orbits of planets might evolve. There's also a chance that Mercury could strike Venus and merge into larger planet, that Mars might experience a close encounter with Jupiter, or even that Jupiter's gravity could hurl the Red Planet out of the solar system.
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Show 227: A Strange Birthplace
The center of our Milky Way galaxy is a chaotic, harsh place, home to shock waves, intense radiation, and a supermassive black hole. You might think all these elements would prohibit new stars from forming or rip apart any object shortly after it was formed. But a few years ago, infrared observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope indicated that clusters of stars could indeed form in this region. Now new observations have detected brand new stars near the galaxy center. The "baby" stars...
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Show 226: Starshades
Astronomers are inventing new ways to find planets around other stars. Most of the methods used thus far don't involve actually seeing the planet; its presence is inferred from observations of the parent star. A large, Jupiter sized planet can be detected b y the "wobble" its gravity causes in the parent star's motion. Other planets pass in front of their host stars, making them detectable by the dimming of the stars' light. A new idea is to block out the light from a bright star so that...
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Show 225: Neutron Stars' Crispy Shells
Neutron stars are the remnants of dead stars that have collapsed into small objects with incredible density. Their crusts could be 10 billion times stronger than steel. Forces from within the star crack the crust during "star quakes," events similar to earthquakes, and blast powerful gamma rays into space.
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Show 224: Asteroid Bombardment
Asteroids - were they a boon or bane when they struck Earth billions of years ago? One would think the period of bombardment was not a good thing for a planet! But a new study shows that the bombardment may actually have created environments where microbial organisms could have survived if they were already there. The study also suggests that such environments may have existed on other planets, such as Mars.
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Show 223: Extreme Life
A former NASA astronaut is searching for signs of hardy life on Mount Everest, which could provide a window into extreme environments that organisms might inhabit on hostile-appearing planets elsewhere in universe. Scott Parazynski's mission makes him the first astronaut to scale Mount Everests.
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Show 211: Approaching Dawn
NASA’s Dawn mission is on its way to the asteroid belt. Once there, the spacecraft will orbit two asteroids, Ceres and Vesta, gathering information with its two cameras. The asteroids are pieces left over from the formation of the solar system, so scientists hope the mission will help us understand how the solar system evolved.
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Show 199: Solar Wind Rips Up Mars Atmosphere
Mars has an extremely thin atmosphere compared to Earth’s. But scientists think the red planet once had a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Where did it go? Scientists now think it’s possible that Mars’ uneven magnetic field may have contributed to the stripping away of the atmosphere by the solar wind.
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Show 198: Cosmic Ray Invasion
A series of balloon flights over Antarctica was designed to count up the kinds of cosmic rays that shower through the solar system from distant regions of the galaxy. These cosmic rays are usually produced by violent events such as supernovae explosions. The Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC) detectors did indeed find lots of high energy particles, but many more high energy electrons than expected. This is curious because it is hard for the electrons to travel over large distances —...
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Show 197: A New Mission to Titan?
A proposal to learn more about Saturn’s fascinating moon, Titan, involves three parts: an orbiting spacecraft, a hot air balloon, and a surface probe. The landing probe could be fitted with a helicopter rotor that would help transport it from area to area, and a scoop to pick up soil and analyze it. The orbiter would map the surface. And the balloon would examine the hazy atmosphere, potentially similar to that of primordial Earth.
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Show 196: Loner Galaxy Has Company
Why does a small, nearby, isolated galaxy pump out stars faster than any other galaxy in our local neighborhood? The secret is in the details. Maybe this puzzling galaxy, the loner starburst galaxy NGC 1569, is not as nearby as we thought. Hubble discovered new information about the galaxy using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. Detailed analysis is important for determining accurate distances to galaxies, and therein lies the clue to this mystery.
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Show 195: Magnetic Shield for Spacefarers
Future astronauts could benefit from a magnetic “umbrella” that deflects harmful space radiation around a spacecraft. The Sun is a constant source of charged particles that stream into space and pose significant threat to astronauts on any long-duration mission, such as to Moon or Mars. Now researchers have come up with a way to avert these dangerous particles and protect traveling space crews.
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Show 192: Life on Enceladus?
In 2005, NASA’s Cassini probe revealed a plume of ice particles and water vapor shooting out from the south pole region of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. It’s thought the moon may hold ocean of liquid water beneath surface and be a potential habitat for extraterrestrial life. Cassini could be used to look for organic chemicals in the plume.
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Show 191: Hubble Spies a Planet
Hubble recently took the first image of a planet around another star. Planets are typically found by looking for changes in their parent stars that indicate the presence of a planet — a wobble that shows a gravitational tug, a dimming that shows something is passing in front of the star. But this giant planet was bright enough, and far enough away from its star, for Hubble to capture a picture.
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Show 190: Building on the Moon
Future lunar bases could be built from concrete made directly from Moon dust, which would be much cheaper than transporting materials from Earth to Moon. NASA hopes to send four astronauts to Moon for seven days by 2020. The plan is to eventually build long-term Moon bases.
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Show 189: Dead planets -- or Not?
We talk about “habitable zones” around stars being confined to predictable regions, where temperatures are not too cold and not too hot, so that planets can retain liquid water and support life as we know it. But perhaps there’s more leeway than we thought. A new study has discovered that some extrasolar planets that we assumed were too cold to host life could in fact be livable.
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Show 188: Meteorites and Molecules
Amino acids are organic molecules that form proteins. Proteins, essential to cells, are one of the first steps in the creation of life. Several — but not all — types of amino acids have also been found in meteorites – chunks of rock that reached Earth from space. Scientists are studying meteorites, like the Murchison meteorite that fell in Australia in 1969, to see if they can give clues to how amino acids link to form the structure of proteins.
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Show 187: Space Tourist
Game developer Richard Garriott recently paid $30 million to spend some time on the International Space Station, where he participated in NASA experiments. Creator of the Ultima gaming series, Garriott is the son of retired astronaut Owen Garriott. Part of his 12 days on the space station was spent undergoing a series of microgravity experiments, including analysis of sleep patterns.
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Show 186: Cosmic Conundrum
Astronomers using Hubble recently came across a mysterious object in the direction of the constellation Botes that slowly brightened over 100 days then dimmed back to invisibility. Astronomers are used to supernovae — exploding stars — brightening the sky, but that flash happens quickly. This slow change in brightness doesn’t match anything on the books. Nor does the object’s spectrum line up with anything that could help identify it
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Show 185: Dust Devils in Martian Arctic
Dust devils have been photographed raging across the arctic plains of Mars. They were captured by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, which saw at least six of the whirlwinds. The dust devils often occur when the Sun warms Mars’ surface.
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Show 184: Possible planet?
Astronomers have found almost 300 planets outside our solar system, but they haven’t been able to take pictures of any of them — the planets are too small, dim and distant. But the Gemini Observatory recently took a picture of a star and a nearby object — could it be the first picture of an extrasolar planet?
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Show 183: Venus Rising
The planet Venus is now visible very low in western sky right after sundown. This evening appearance of Venus will become even better in coming weeks as the planet rises higher and higher each night throughout the fall and winter. The brilliant “evening star” will be at its brightest on Feb. 19.
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Show 182: Stellar Streams
The Milky Way galaxy is part of a group of galaxies, including several small “dwarf galaxies,” that interact with one another. The outer portion of the Milky Way, called its “halo,” is filled with clouds of gas, star clusters, dark matter and streams of stars gathered from those dwarf galaxies by the power of the Milky Way’s gravity. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) revealed these multiple, previously unknown streams.
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Show 181: Clusters in a Cluster
About 54 million light-years from Earth, roughly 2,000 galaxies have ganged up in a gravitational grouping called the Virgo Cluster. Centering that cluster is a massive galaxy that is itself surrounded by many clusters-in this case, star clusters. But this massive galaxy has more of these star clusters than astronomers expected it to have. Could it be stealing from its neighbors?
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Show 180: Hubble Hits 100,000 Orbits
In August, the Hubble Space Telescope completed its 100,000th orbit around Earth. Understandably, the venerable observatory is due for a little maintenance. In October, astronauts will be returning to Hubble to install two new science instruments, repair two other instruments, and upgrade other critical components on the telescope.
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Show 178: Cassini and the Jets
The Cassini spacecraft performed a daring flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus on March 12, flying about 15 kilometers per second (32,000 mph) through a geyser-like jet spurting from the moon’s surface. It captured sample molecules from the jet. In August, it used special techniques to get pictures of the jets. Scientists want to know where the jets come from and whether Enceladus has water.
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Show 179: HubbleWatch for August 2008
Hubble celebrated a new milestone in August – 100,000 orbits around the planet Earth. Scientists think they know why a certain galaxy has more globular clusters than its neighbors. And a black hole-inhabited galaxy is sending tendrils into the universe.
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Show 177: Water from a Rock
Could Earth’s Moon have water locked up inside its rocks? Samples brought back from the Apollo Moon mission may indicate that the answer is yes. Water may be locked up in volcanic glass beads within the rocks.
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Show 176: Giant Lurks in Kuiper Belt?
The Kuiper Belt is a region past Neptune, full of icy, comet-like objects. Pluto is the most famous Kuiper Belt object. Some of these objects have odd orbits that don’t fit with our knowledge of the solar system. A computer model suggests that the region may contain a really large body — 30 to 70 percent as massive as Earth — that affects the orbits of objects around it.
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Show 175: New Moon?
The Moon may be younger than originally thought – by about 30 million years. The Moon is thought to have formed after an object hit the Earth, partially melting the planet and propelling material into space. Because the Earth and Moon formed around the same time, this also brings up questions about our planet’s formation.
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Show 174: Two for the Price of One
The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project scans the skies for asteroids in an attempt to find 90% of all the asteroids larger than 0.6 mile (1 km) in diameter by the end of 2008. In January 2008, LINEAR found an object now called Asteroid 2008 BT18. Original calculations suggested the asteroid was going to pass nearby the earth. Asteroid orbits can be altered by the Earth’s gravity, so the trajectory was uncertain. Luckily the object passed almost six times the distance...
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Show 173: HubbleWatch for July 2008
A cluster of stars boasts no less than three different ages. Open clusters of stars are usually easy to date, but this one is confusing scientists with mixed messages. Scientists have new information about the bars of stars that develop in the centers of galaxies. Barred spiral galaxies are common in today’s cosmos, but were scarce in the universe’s early history.
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Show 172: The Moon's Bullseye
A new, Earth-based radar has examined material ejected from a massive impact on the Moon. The impact early in the Moon’s history, by an asteroid 20-40 miles in diameter, created the crater known as Mare Orientale, a huge basin 600 miles across. Its study may help us better understand the early impact history of both Moon and Earth, and the role these impacts played in our planet’s evolution.
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Show 171: Black Hole Appetites
Black holes incredibly dense objects that can form at the end of a massive star’s life. Scientists thought that because black holes range in size from several times to several billion times the size of the Sun, their behavior would differ as well. But multiple observations of the black hole at the center of the galaxy M81 prove otherwise.
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Show 170: Catch Some Rays
The Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) launched on June 11. This observatory will scan the universe for the most powerful form of radiation known, possibly shedding light on dark matter, microscopic black holes and other cosmic mysteries. Gamma rays have the most energy of any type of light, and are created by some of the most violent events in universe.
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Show 169: Dust Gets In Your Eyes
Astronauts who have visited the Moon quickly discovered that they would get covered with Moon dust whenever they left their spacecraft. NASA is putting together a team to look at the dust and figure out how it could affect a return to the Moon. NASA is concerned that the dust could pose health problems or clog machinery.
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Show 167: HubbleWatch for June 2008
A third red spot has appeared on the surface of Jupiter, heralding the creation of a new, violent storm. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a storm that’s been whirling away through the planet’s atmosphere for perhaps hundreds of years. These new storms may indicate changing weather on the gas giant. A white dwarf star is missing from the center of the nebula that should house it, according to a Hubble scientist working with a team on ground-based telescopes.
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Show 166: Hardy Microbes
Could microbes have developed and survived in the frigid below-ground region of Mars or other solar system bodies? New results from a team developing drilling and sampling of subsurface soil in Spain found a startling result. Very tough microbes can indeed survive underneath the ground if the conditions are right, and the Mars Astrobiology Research and Technology Experiment (MARTE) team may have found the right environment.
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Show 165: Brightest Explosion Ever Seen
NASA’s SWIFT telescope monitors the sky for emission from powerful outbursts. On March 19, 2008, it glimpsed an explosion so bright it could be seen with the naked eye for 30 seconds despite being 7.5 billion light years away — the farthest object ever seen with human eyes. It was a gamma ray burst, one of the incredible explosions credited to the explosions of tremendously massive stars.
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Show 164: HubbleWatch for May 2008
And you think losing your car keys is a pain. Scientists have known since the 1960s that about half of the ordinary matter is missing from the universe. Now they've found some of it in an unusual location. A rare black hole may be nestled in the center of a cluster of stars. And astronomers are recalculating the Hubble Constant -- the rate at which the universe is expanding.
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Show 163: Mars' Hard Shell
New radar observations from NASA's latest mission to Mars indicate that the red planet's crust and upper mantle are stiffer and colder than previously thought, which suggests any liquid water existing below surface and any organisms living in that water would have to exist deeper than suspected.
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Show 162: Solar Tsunami
The first footage of a solar "tsunami" has been captured by NASA's Stereo spacecraft. This tsunami, obviously, has nothing to do with water -- it's a wave of pressure traveling extremely fast across the surface of the Sun. The shock wave hurtled through Sun's atmosphere at more than 620,000 mph.
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Show 161: Gas Attack
A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is speeding toward a collision with our Milky Way galaxy. When it hits, it may set off spectacular display of stellar fireworks in a tremendous burst of star formation. But not to worry, it will be 20-40 million years before its core smashes into our galaxy.
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Show 160: Intense Explosion
On March 19, the most intense explosion ever recorded appeared in the night sky. It shone dimly for less than a minute, then vanished. It was a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, but so bright it could be seen -- though faintly -- by the naked eye. Astronomers estimate that the burst was as bright as 10 million galaxies combined. Such bursts are thought to be caused by hypernovae, the explosion of a star much more massive than our Sun.
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Show 159: One Cool Brown Dwarf
Brown dwarfs are not quite stars and not quite planets. They are the missing links between the lowest mass stars and the highest mass planets possible. Scientists recently discovered the coolest brown dwarf known -- an important discovery that may shed light on the development of planets beyond our solar system.
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Show 158: HubbleWatch for April 2008
A distant, dim flash in the sky marks the location of the biggest explosion ever recorded, as astronomers monitor a gamma ray burst brighter than 10 million galaxies combined. And astronomers have found tiny, early galaxies so thick with stars that they might never experience night as we do.
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Show 157: A Ringed Moon
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found evidence of material orbiting Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon, which means Rhea could have rings. This is the first time rings have potentially been found around any moon. Astronomers speculate that a collision in the moon's distant past led to the rings' formation.
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Show 156: Water on Enceladus
The Cassini space probe was launched in 1997 and flew by Earth, Venus and Jupiter. It entered orbit around Saturn in 2004. One of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, is believed to have liquid water below its crusty surface. A daring flyby of Cassini into geyser plume of Enceladus has bolstered the idea.
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Show 154: Titan's Internal Ocean
Saturn's moon, Titan, may have a deep, hidden ocean. The second largest moon in the solar system, Titan has long been thought to have an environment similar to that of early Earth, before life began putting oxygen into atmosphere. If the ocean prediction is true, Titan will join three other solar system moons suspected of hiding underground oceans.
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Show 151: Venus Collision
Venus is much like planet Earth its composition, but also very different in other ways -- it's bone-dry with little sign of water, experiences temperatures hot enough to melt lead, is enshrouded in a thick poisonous atmosphere of CO2 and sulfuric acid, and even rotates "backwards." Now we may have an explanation for this weirdness -- a tremendous head-on collision of two bodies may have formed our planetary neighbor.
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Show 150: Natural Telescopes
Gravitational lenses are like giant magnifying glasses in the sky. They occur where huge accumulations of matter, like galaxy clusters, create enough gravity to warp and magnify the light of objects beyond them. This enables us to see objects normally too far away to be viewed by even the most powerful telescopes. Gravitational lenses were once thought to be rare. But astronomers using Hubble have found several, and new sky surveys found more. Scientists are now training a "digital robot" to...
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Show 147: Orphan Stars
Stars were recently found forming in a long tail of gas trailing away from a galaxy. We normally would not expect to see stars being born so far from their parent galaxy. Scientists believe the pressure of the galaxy's motion through space as it plummeted toward the center of a huge cluster of galaxies stripped away the gas that formed these "orphan stars."
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Show 148: HubbleWatch for February 2008
Gravitational lensing is highly useful quirk of the universe. When vast amounts of matter accumulate -- as in enormous clusters of galaxies -- the intense gravity created distorts and magnifies the light of objects behind the cluster. The effect is like creating a giant magnifying glass in space. Astronomers recently used the effect to find one of the youngest galaxies ever seen, and track the placement of dark matter.
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Show 146: NASA's 2008 Launch Plans
NASA has a full launch schedule coming up, with something being launched nearly every month. Astronauts will make four shuttle flights to the International Space Station, as well as a critical trip to Hubble to make repairs and add new instruments to the telescope. NASA will also provide the vehicle for lifting new science spacecraft into orbit, in addition to a few military launches. Finally, in 2009, NASA will launch the Kepler mission, meant to find Earth-sized planets around other stars.
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Show 145: Lunar Eclipse
Get ready for a total eclipse of the Moon on Feb. 20. Eclipses of the Moon only happen when the full Moon passes through the shadow cast by our planet. This eclipse is visible for most of North America, all of South America, western Europe and western Africa.
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Show 144: Message to Mercury
Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, is hard to observe from Earth. We know a little about it from the Mariner 10 spacecraft that flew by Mercury in 1974, but a large part of the planet was never mapped. Messenger, launched in 2004, recently reached Mercury, taking color pictures and probing the planet's mysterious magnetic field.
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Show 141: A Small Problem
In 1908, a tremendous explosion rocked a sparsely populated region of Siberia, destroying hundreds of square miles of forest. The destruction was likely caused by an asteroid colliding with Earth. Now new computer simulations point toward a smaller asteroid than was previously thought. That smaller asteroids could cause such devastation is an eye-opener for astronomers who look to protect Earth from inevitable future collisions.
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Show 140: Mammoth Headache
What a headache! New findings from examination of mammoth tusks and bison skull remains suggest that 30,000 to 40,000 years ago a meteorite shower peppered the Alaska region with pellets. Amazingly some of the animals may have survived this event, although they were probably severely injured. The individual who found these tusks, Allen West, later searched through over 15,000 artifacts to find the micrometeorites imbedded in some of the tusks and bones. With help from Lawrence Berkeley Lab,...
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Show 137: HubbleWatch for December 2007
Dying red giant stars may zoom out of position as they expire. The stars may eject their mass mainly in one direction, causing the star to move in the opposite direction. Comet Holmes continues to defy understanding, shielding its secrets with a cloud of bright dust. And we bring you a special report on dark energy from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
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Show 136: Galactic Coverup
Sometimes those serene, rounded elliptical galaxies harbor much deeper and more interesting structures. In Hubble Space Telescope observations, one elliptical galaxy shows shells-shaped groups of stars that probably originated in a violent collision between galaxies. The material from the merger is feeding a supermassive black hole in the galaxy's center, creating a quasar that emits enough energy to be seen across the universe.
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Show 135: Imagining Alternate Earths
We've found planets beyond our solar system, but nothing Earth sized. Still, astronomers are considering what such a world might look like. Computer models provide ideas of 14 different theoretical planet types, to help planet hunters spot telltale indicators. Researchers hope that the models will provide information about planet composition and similar characteristics when astronomers begin finding Earth-sized planets.
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Show 134: To the Moon
Want to win a quick $30M? Just finance and successfully land a robotic mission on the moon! The X Prize Foundation and Google have combined to offer a prize for a lunar lander to rove around, take pictures and video and send data back to us on Earth. The foundation and Google expect private companies from around the world to compete for the prize and the achievement. About 347 inquiries have already been made!
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Show 132: Solar Twins
Astronomers search for stars similar to the Sun in order to understand how the Sun formed and if it is unique. So far, the stars we've found that are like the Sun have had notable differences. The closest candidate was analyzed recently and found to have a composition that strongly resembles our Sun. The research gives us ideas about the nuclear fusion processes that take place in the cores of Sun-like stars and clues about the formation of planetary systems.
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Show 131: Death Rays
Every 62 million years or so, a mass extinction occurs on Earth. A new theory about the motion of the solar system around the Milky Way says cosmic rays may be involved. Charged particles caused by the motion could expose the Earth to high-energy radiation, damaging the biosphere and affecting the environment.
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Show 129: Comet Holmes
A bright new comet flared into naked eye visibility a few weeks back and continues to be bright enough to see, perhaps for another few weeks. Comet Holmes went through a similar outburst that led to its discovery 115 years ago. It's acting strangely, so go outside and check out this celestial wonder.
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Show 128: Water Vapor Planetary System
Water vapor is raining down on a young star system, pouring from the cloud of gas and dust around the star onto the dusty disk where planets may form. In the system known as NGC 1333-IRAS 4B, the icy material found in the cloud is dropping towards the star and vaporizing as it reaches the disk. The process could show how water first shows up on planets like our own.
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Show 123: Moon Robots
A duo of robots recently surveyed a desolate part of Devon Island in northern Canada, in preparation for one day doing similar survey work on the surface of the Moon. This NASA program tested the ability of human and robotic teams working together to get best results when surveying rugged, unforgiving sites.
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Show 122: When Galaxies Collide
The nearby Andromeda Galaxy may one day capture our Sun and planets. Now more than two million light years distant, Andromeda and our own Milky Way galaxy are approaching each other. In the far distant future, the two galaxies will collide with drastic results.
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Show 121: Through the Veil
When a star explodes, it leaves behind a glowing cloud of heated gas called a supernova remnant. Hubble recently took pictures of one of these remnants -- the Veil Nebula, 1,400 light years away. The nebula's star would have exploded thousands of years ago, leaving behind an expanding bubble of gas. Scientists are fascinated by supernovae because the explosions create and scatter certain vital elements around the universe.
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Show 120: Solar Ripples
It's a puzzle - the outer atmosphere of the Sun, called the corona, is actually much hotter than the Sun itself. Now scientists using the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory think they may have found one of the reasons why: waves that run along the Sun's magnetic field and reach far into space. The ripples of plasma may transfer energy to the corona.
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Show 118: Canary Islands Telescope
Tests have begun on one of world's largest optical telescopes, located on a mountaintop on the Canary Islands. Situated 7,900 feet above sea level, the huge Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) consists of a mirror measuring 34 feet across and is made up of 36 separate hexagonal mirror segments. This Spanish-led telescope will be able to spot some of faintest, most distant objects in universe.
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Show 117: Earth and Sky
Google Earth let users explore the planet through satellite imagery. Now it's letting those users turn their attention to the heavens. Google Earth, working with the Space Telescope Science Institute, now offers a feature that explores the night sky. Users can browse the cosmos and zoom in to get Hubble images, background information and links. And speaking of satellites, 2007 is the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year, declared in 1957. Sixty-seven countries participated...
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Show 115: One Lunar Eclipse Coming Up
Two to four times a year, the Moon passes through a portion of the Earth's shadow, causing an eclipse. On August 28, skywatchers will be treated to a total lunar eclipse starting at 4:30 a.m. EST. All of North America will be able to see some portion of the eclipse. From the eastern USA, the Great Lakes region and Ontario, the Moon will sets while total eclipse. Only observers to the west of the Rockies (including Alaska) will be treated to the entire event.
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Show 116: HubbleWatch for August 2007
A strangely shaped cloud of dust around a newborn star has astronomers scratching their heads. The lopsided disk may have been caused by the gravity of planets sweeping up debris in the disk, or by the gravity of a nearby star. And Uranus' rings are about to go missing. Every 42 years, Uranus' orbit brings its thin rings in line with Earth, making them vanish like a sheet of paper held up on its edge at eye level. Astronomers use the opportunity to search for moons that might otherwise be...
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Show 113: The Space Sponge
One of the solar system's strangest looking moons is Hyperion, which orbits the ringed planet Saturn. The Cassini spacecraft, now orbiting Saturn, photographed Hyperion a few years ago and revealed a moon that looks more like a sponge or coral than rock or ice. Now scientists think they know what causes the strange appearance.
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Show 112: Looking for Life in all the Wrong Places?
When we are planning research to look for biological activity elsewhere, are we -- to borrow a lyric -- "looking for life in all the wrong places?" A recent report from the National Academy of Science (NAS) points out that researchers are concerned that the assumption that life is water-based and uses DNA to encode important life information will limit our ability to recognize life elsewhere. The report advises NASA and other research agencies to expand research beyond conventional views.
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Show 111: Small Wonders
New details about some of the interesting smaller objects in the solar system are shedding some light on the "planet controversy." Astronomers have been trying to establish what constitutes a planet, taking size, orbit and other factors into consideration. One of the important objects astronomers have been studying is Eris, discovered in 2005. Astronomers suspected Eris was bigger than Pluto, but now they know for sure that Eris has 1.27 times more mass that Pluto. Eris appears to have a...
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Show 110: Caves on Mars
New images from Mars reveal football field-sized openings in the planet's surface that likely lead to caves. Seven entrances to subterranean caves range from about 330 to 820 feet across, and there is absolutely nothing visible inside the holes, indicating that they are very deep. Perhaps one day robots will be able to explore the caves, revealing their now-hidden contents.
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Show 109: Details of a Distant Star
For the first time, researchers have taken a picture of surface of Altair, a star like our own Sun. Even to the largest telescopes, stars look like mere points of light, but a new technique by the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy allows us to see detail on this distant star. And a strange star it is - orbiting so fast that it's distorted, wider at its equator than at its poles.
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Show 108: SOFIA Honors Historic Flight
NASA's new Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is a highly modified 747 airliner that carries a 45,000-pound infrared telescope system. SOFIA's purpose is to fly above the water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere that impedes infrared light, allowing its telescope to make powerful infrared observations. NASA recently commemorated the 80th anniversary of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh's historic transatlantic flight by bestowing the name Clipper Lindbergh on the flying...
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Show 106: Ring Around the Galaxies
What happens when astronomers go on the hunt for dark matter with the Hubble Space Telescope? They find some unusual configurations. Recently astronomers reported that observations with the Advanced Camera for Surveys suggested that a ring of the mysterious dark matter exists in a cluster of galaxies. This had never been seen before, and the surprised researchers thought maybe something was wrong with the data analysis. After scrutiny, it appeared a collision of two galaxy clusters shaped...
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Show 107: HubbleWatch for June 2007
Hubble is staring into the galaxy M81, a shining spiral galaxy rife with star formation, for clues to how stars are born in galaxies outside our own. M81 is a great place to study this since it's both a spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way and it's close enough to allow us to distinguish individual stars. We can look at M81 and compare its star formation to what we know about stars in our own galaxy. The icy, tiny object Eris helped demote Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet. Eris, three...
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Show 105: Globular Cluster Baby Booms
Globular clusters are tightly packed groups of hundreds of thousands to millions of stars. Based on observations of their stars, it seems that the clusters formed when the universe was young, and that the stars within them formed simultaneously. New observations with the Hubble Space Telescope suggest at least one globular cluster has had several episodes of star formation, billions of years ago. All of the stars were born within 200 million years, very early in the life of the...
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Show 104: Sickness in Space
NASA is looking into health concerns for astronauts on long journeys, such as a potential Mars trip. A journey to Mars would take 20 to 30 years, meaning the crew would have to be prepared for serious medical crises. Just asking questions of Earth on such a trip could take half an hour or more for the message to travel, so astronauts will have to be ready to handle such situations on their own. A host of other health issues require rules and policies to be established in advance to prevent...
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Show 103: China Shoots for the Moon
China plans to launch its first lunar probe this year and expects to land an astronaut on the Moon within 15 years. This year's probe will provide 3-D images of Moon, survey the lunar landscape, study lunar microwaves and estimate the thickness of Moon's soil. Other missions will follow, including a soft landing - one designed to avoid damage - in 2012 and return of lunar samples by 2017.
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Show 102: Water Everywhere?
A remarkable planetary system around a red dwarf star, called Gliese 581, seems to have at least three planets. One planet, close to the parent star, appears to be five times the mass of Earth and only 1.5 times its radius. It whizzes around the star in only 13 days! Most intriguingly, its position could mean that its temperatures would be mild enough to allow liquid water to exist. This is the first Earth-like planet found in that important range, known as the "habitable zone."
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Show 100: Stupendous Supernova
Astronomers have detected one of the brightest supernova ever seen and surmised that the star that exploded may have been 150 times the mass of the Sun. The exploding star, 240 million light years away in galaxy NGC 1260, swiftly became the object of scrutiny by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Telescope as well as a number of ground-based telescopes. Before the explosion, the star ejected a great deal of mass. Scientists have seen this behavior in another star - Eta Carinae, in our own Milky Way...
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Show 101: HubbleWatch for May 2007
Where scientists find galaxies, they find blobs of dark matter. Recently, astronomers discovered something unique - a ring of dark matter within a cluster of galaxies. Scientists believe the ring formed when galaxies smashed into one another. It's the first time scientists have observed dark matter reacting to gravitational forces, just like normal matter. Did Hubble find water vapor on a planet beyond our solar system? One scientist's theoretical model says it did. Scientists are always...
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Show 99: ALMA Radio Telescope
A new radio telescope array is under construction in one of Earth's most inaccessible places. The telescope, called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), is located in Chile's mountainous Atacama Desert at an altitude of 16,500 feet. The wavelengths the telescope will be observing are absorbed by moisture in the atmosphere, so the dry, high-altitude desert air is essential for the telescope to work. The array will not be complete until 2012, but some of its components have...
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Show 98: New Horizons Heads to Pluto
The satellite New Horizons is headed to Pluto. Launched in January 2006, it is destined to arrive at Pluto in 2015. What is it doing along the way? It received a gravity assist to send it in the right direction at Jupiter and it also snapped imagery of Jupiter and its satellite Io. Also, the Hubble Space Telescope is working with the New Horizons mission, obtaining complementary images from Hubble's vantage point, in orbit around the Earth.
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Show 96: A Space Exploration Anniversary
This year marks a momentous anniversary in the history of space exploration. It is both the 150th birthday of the Russian space visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the first Earth-orbiting satellite. The man most responsible for that historic accomplishment is Sergey Korolyov, almost completely unheard of during his lifetime but now recognized as the man who likely sparked the competition between the former Soviet Union and United States to...
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Show 97: HubbleWatch for April 2007
Hubble has stared into the Carina Nebula to view star formation in intense detail. Stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation from the giant stars that have formed in the nebula are shredding the surrounding gas that contributed to their formation. Some of the stars are at least 50 to 100 times the mass of the Sun. Our Sun and solar system may have formed from a similar situation 4.6 billion years ago. At least 50,000 galaxies have turned up in another Hubble image, revealing new information...
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Show 94: Stargazing in the Snow
In February, a new telescope opened its gaze to the sky. A new telescope isn't that unusual, but this one's location stands out. The telescope is located at the South Pole. The South Pole Telescope, funded primarily by the National Science Foundation, is designed to help answer some fundamental questions about the universe. Many of the telescope's observations will be focused around dark matter and dark energy, twin mysteries that present a major hole in our understanding of the cosmos.
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Show 93: Ulysses Solar Satellite
We know quite a bit about the Sun's surface and what goes on at the Sun's equator, but the poles remain a puzzle. We can't see the poles very well, and most solar satellites have viewed the sun from mid-latitudes. The Ulysses satellite has been circling the Sun over the poles to sample these exotic regions. The poles spew out charged particles in a blast of plasma. Observations taken in February 2007 of the Sun's south pole will be compared with observations of the north pole in 2008.
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Show 92: Titan's Seas
Titan, the mysterious moon of Saturn, has surprised scientists again. NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected what looks like large seas in Titan's northern hemisphere. The largest of the seas is bigger than either our Lake Superior or the Black Sea. The seas are not filled with water, but rather methane and ethane.
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