Starship Asterisk*

Ok, we are not accustomed to seeing a brightly lit objects with stars in the background. Has the overexposure in this image revealed background stars or are the flecks of light surrounding the comet from some other source? I've posted a later image from the Rosetta NAVCAM on the Rosetta thread in B...

There was a discussion on the Apod thread on Feb 3rd relating to the size of "grains" emitted by and/or orbiting comet 67P/C-G. The image then was from OSIRIS, taken on 22 November 2014 This NAVCAM image, from today's Rosetta blog post, was taken on 31 January 2015 and is quite similar. Th...

ESA: Planck Reveals First Stars Were Born Late The History of the Universe http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2015/02/the_history_of_the_universe/15238293-1-eng-GB/The_history_of_the_Universe_node_full_image_2.jpg Released 05/02/2015 3:00 pm Copyright ESA Description A ...

There's a nice article in EarthSky with an animated gif of Pluto and Charon.
Hello, Pluto! New images from New Horizon

ROSETTA SWOOPS IN FOR A CLOSE ENCOUNTER 4 February 2015 ESA’s Rosetta probe is preparing to make a close encounter with its comet on 14 February, passing just 6 km from the surface. https://youtube.com/watch?v=dxF2wE24hCI Yesterday was Rosetta’s last day at 26 km from Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenk...

Thanks, I needed some reassurance tonight that I'm not completely nuts. ... :lol2: I know the sensation! However, if you were to develop a passion for comet clumps, there's a nice blog post at the ESA Rosetta blog, enticingly entitled GIADA’S DUST MEASUREMENTS: 3.7-3.4 AU ... I liked this bit: we i...

Don't hold me to this, but I think I read somewhere that those are meters-sized particles coming off the comet. Science 23 January 2015: Vol. 347 no. 6220 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa3905 Research Article Dust measurements in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko inbound to the Sun Alessandra Rot...

International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research 1 February 2015 Live fast die young galaxies lose the gas that keeps them alive Galaxies can die early because the gas they need to make new stars is suddenly ejected, research published today suggests. Most galaxies age slowly as they run out of ra...

Thank you, Markus. Together with the blog to which geckzilla linked in her post, this has helped me to get the beginnings of a grasp of the implications of this research. Thank you to geck as well

Margarita

This post is related to the opening post, not to the intervening discussion. BBC News, Scotland A team of Scottish scientists has made light travel slower than the speed of light. They sent photons - individual particles of light - through a special mask. It changed the photons' shape - and slowed t...

Planetary Society Blog:Talking to Pluto is hard! Why it takes so long to get data back from New Horizons Posted by Emily Lakdawalla 2015/01/30 15:53 UTC As I write this post, New Horizons is nearing the end of a weeklong optical navigation campaign. By taking photos of the Pluto system at regular i...

ESA Rosetta blog: WHERE IS PHILAE? WHEN WILL IT WAKE UP? These are the two most popular questions currently being asked of the mission – especially on our social media channels – and ones that we will try to answer in this post, including inputs from the OSIRIS team, and from the Lander Control Cen...

ESA Planck: Gravitational Waves Remain Illusive http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2015/01/planck_view_of_bicep2_field/15225816-1-eng-GB/Planck_view_of_BICEP2_field_medium.png Planck view of BICEP2 field 30 January 2015 Despite earlier reports of a possible detection, a...

Star for the two weeks starting Friday, January 30, 2015. The next skylights will appear February 13, 2015. STAR OF THE WEEK: HR 1035 CAM (HR 1035 Camelopardalis). Camelopardalis, the Giraffe, browses quietly, surrounded to the south by bright Cassiopeia, Perseus, and Auriga, its pasture on the othe...

No maybe so about it. It was helpful. Thanks Margarita and bystander. Glad it was helpful, Bruce. This article in last September's Science News, New analysis rescues quantum wave-particle duality also interested me - tho I admit to understanding only about one half of it. This is the paper it refer...

By chance, I've just come across this article in a December 2014 issue of a Science Daily
Quantum physics just got less complicated: Wave-particle duality and quantum uncertainty are same thing

It's tangentially related to this discussion. Maybe. Interesting, anyway.

M

Planetary Society Blog At last! A slew of OSIRIS images shows fascinating landscapes on Rosetta's comet Posted By Emily Lakdawalla 2015/01/26 17:50 UTC Last week a suite of eight peer-reviewed papers were published in Science magazine, detailing the first results of the Rosetta mission. The papers ...

University of Glasgow: Scientists slow down the speed of light travelling through air Issued: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 00:01:00 GMT Terrible headline. I agree, Chris. Press release writers again, perhaps? I've altered the thread subject line to reflect the title of the paper in Science Express , but not re...

Astrobites: Evryscope, Greek for “wide-seeing” BY GUDMUNDUR STEFANSSON ⋅ JANUARY 26, 2015 ⋅ Title: Evryscope Science: Exploring the Potential of All-Sky Gigapixel-Scale Telescopes Authors: Nicholas M. Law et al. First Author’s Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill How fantastic w...

University of Glasgow: Scientists slow down the speed of light travelling through air Issued: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 00:01:00 GMT Scientists have long known that the speed of light can be slowed slightly as it travels through materials such as water or glass. However, it has generally been thought imposs...

ESA: ROSETTA WATCHES COMET SHED ITS DUSTY COAT 26 January 2015 ESA’s Rosetta mission is providing unique insight into the life cycle of a comet’s dusty surface, watching 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko as it sheds the dusty coat it has accumulated over the past four years. The COmetary Secondary Ion Mass...

Rosetta blog: COMET ‘POURING’ MORE WATER INTO SPACE Based on the NASA-JPL press release * reporting the results of Rosetta’s MIRO instrument, NASA’s Microwave Instrument on the Rosetta Orbiter and with additional inputs from the MIRO team http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/files/2015/01/CometOrientation-...

JPL:Rosetta Comet 'Pouring' More Water Into Space JANUARY 22, 2015 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/rosetta/20150122/rosetta20150122-16.gif This animation comprises 24 montages based on images acquired by the navigation camera on the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft orbiting Comet 67P/Chury...

A number of posts have been made today by ESA ahead of the special issue of Science * , including a slide show of some Osiris images showing extremely close details of the surface of the comet An example: http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2015/01/crack_extension_in_anuk...

Thanks, Boomer! I was also wondering whether Mt. Fuji isn't likely to act up again one day? Don't know anything about it and might check that out. In theory, I would imagine, it is still considered as potentially active ... they must be monitoring its seismic status until a first warning becomes du...