Scientists now estimate that one in five sunlike stars have Earthlike planets in the habitable zone.
This conclusion is entirely statistically based, and should be treated with some skepticism. Still, it seems reasonable, and I think it is likely to be a close approximation of the truth, when we finally begin to gather some real data.
Sunrise tomorrow on the East Coast will be interesting, as the sun will rise in the middle of a partial solar eclipse.
Technically speaking, the partial eclipse could be visible as far inland as, say, Tennessee. Sky & Telescope projects that 57 percent of the sun’s diameter could be covered over at sunrise in Boston, 48 percent in New York, 44 percent in Philadelphia, 35 percent in Washington, and 36 percent in Miami. But you’d have to have a clear view of a flat horizon — and no matter where you are on the East Coast, the partial eclipse will be over within an hour after sunrise.
The first Earth-sized exoplanet, just discovered, makes no sense to scientists.
Kepler-78b is a planet that shouldn’t exist. This scorching lava world circles its star every eight and a half hours at a distance of less than one million miles – one of the tightest known orbits. According to current theories of planet formation, it couldn’t have formed so close to its star, nor could it have moved there. “This planet is a complete mystery,” says astronomer David Latham of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). “We don’t know how it formed or how it got to where it is today. What we do know is that it’s not going to last forever.”
The planet itself is only 20 percent larger than the Earth, with a comparable density that suggests its composition is similar as well.
A look at what scientists think Comet ISON is and is not.
It appears it will not be as bright as first hoped, but will certainly provide scientists with a treasure trove of new data about comets.
Europe turns off Planck.
Planck operated four-and-a-half years, three times longer than originally planned. Launched in May 2009 on an Ariane 5 rocket shared with ESA’s Herschel telescope, Planck measured the cosmic fingerprint of the Big Bang, detecting subtle variations in background light originating 380,000 years after the genesis of the universe.
While Comet ISON continues to disappoint, another comet suddenly gets one hundred times brighter.
Neither is yet visible to the naked eye.
Astronomers have discovered a galaxy farther away than any previously seen. More here.
Worlds without end: The catalog of exoplanets has now jumped to over 1,000.
How to keep an old space telescope in operation and scientifically useful.
Cassini has taken a spectacular full color image of Saturn’s hexagon-shaped storm that surrounds its north pole.
Boom! A remotely operated Russian telescope, located in New Mexico, on Wednesday discovered a kilometer wide Near Earth asteroid.
The asteroid, believed to be the 704th largest with an orbit that comes relatively near Earth, does not pose a danger of crashing into our planet, said the head of the observatory that made the discovery. “It’s a big asteroid, but it poses no danger for us,” Leonid Elenin, who lives in the Moscow Region, told RIA Novosti on Friday.
Finding a new asteroid like this illustrates that there might be other such large objects out there undiscovered. Also cool is how the Russians discovered it, using equipment in the United States!
Posted from Midland, Texas, the center of the world for the American oil industry.
Astronomers have found evidence of the remains of an exoplanet that they think was once wet and rocky.
Using observations obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope and the large telescopes of the W. M. Keck Observatory , they found an excess of oxygen – a chemical signature that indicates that the debris had once been part of a bigger body originally composed of 26 per cent water by mass. By contrast, only approximately 0.023 per cent of the Earth’s mass is water.
From what I can gather, the actual data here is somewhat skimpy, requring a lot of assumptions for the scientists to come to this conclusion. Nonetheless, the data is interesting and very tantalizing.
Posted from Memphis, Tennessee.
Is a natural rain of diamonds occurring on Jupiter and Saturn? Two scientists say yes!
In their scenario, lightning zaps molecules of methane in the upper atmospheres of Saturn and Jupiter, liberating carbon atoms. These atoms then stick onto each other, forming larger particles of carbon soot, which the Cassini spacecraft may have spotted in dark storm clouds on Saturn3. As the soot particles slowly float down through ever-denser layers of gaseous and liquid hydrogen towards the planets’ rocky cores, they experience ever greater pressures and temperatures. The soot is compressed into graphite, and then into solid diamonds before reaching a temperature of about 8,000 °C, when the diamond melts, forming liquid diamond raindrops, they say. Inside Saturn, the conditions are right for diamond ‘hail’ to form, beginning at a depth of about 6,000 kilometres into the atmosphere and extending for another 30,000 km below that, says Baines. He estimates that Saturn may harbour about 10 million tonnes of diamond produced this way, with most of it made up of rocks no bigger than a millimetre and perhaps some chunks spanning 10 centimeters.
But don’t invest your money yet in a diamond gathering expedition. This is only a theory, which many scientists dispute.
Astronomers have discovered a planet floating freely and not in orbit around a star only six times larger than Jupiter and only 80 light years away.
Posted from Manassas, Virginia. Our journey continues. Tomorrow, Thursday, we begin our drive back to Arizona.
Using archival Hubble images astronomers have rediscovered a moon of Neptune lost for twenty years.
New data suggests that Pluto’s atmosphere is thick enough to not freeze out during the planet’s decades-long winter.
Scientists believe they have identified the remains of a supervolcano on Mars.
This volcano would apparently be bigger than Mars’s four giant volcanoes that are still the biggest known in the solar system.
The weather on an exoplanet: Cloudy and clear.
Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created the first cloud map of a planet beyond our solar system, a sizzling, Jupiter-like world known as Kepler-7b. The planet is marked by high clouds in the west and clear skies in the east. Previous studies from Spitzer have resulted in temperature maps of planets orbiting other stars, but this is the first look at cloud structures on a distant world.
This result is cool, but no one should take it too seriously. They have detected evidence of that to the scientists “suggest” clouds, but no one really knows.
Comet ISON has now brightened to 11th magnitude as it approaches its flyby of Mars.
The story above is hopeful the comet will put on a show in November, but I am increasingly doubtful. To be even visible to the naked eye it must brighten to 6th magnitude, and it appears to be brightening far slower than expected.
Posted as we drive through El Paso, Texas.
