Here is a list of extrasolar planets that have been directly observed, sorted by observed separations. The method used works best for young planets that emit infrared light and are far from the glare of the star. Currently, this list includes both directly imaged planets and imaged planetary-mass companions (objects that orbit a star but formed through a binary-star-formation process, not a planet-formation process). This list does not include free-floating planetary-mass objects in star-forming regions or young associations, which are also referred to as rogue planets.
The data given for each planet is taken from the latest published paper on the planet to have that data. In many cases it is not possible to have an exact value, and an estimated range is instead provided. The least massive planet is Fomalhaut b, which has a mass of 2 MJ or less. The coldest and oldest is 59 Virginis b with a mean temperature of 240 °C and age of 100–500 million years.[1] This list includes the four members of the multi-planet system that orbit HR 8799.
Remember the Titan (Landing): Ten years ago today, Jan. 14, 2005, the Huygens probe touched down on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
This new, narrated movie was created with data collected by Cassini's imaging cameras and the Huygens Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR). The first minute shows a zoom into images of Titan from Cassini's cameras, while the remainder of the movie depicts the view from Huygens during the last few hours of its historic descent and landing.
It was October 15, 1997, when NASA's Cassini orbiter embarked on an epic, seven-year voyage to the Saturnian system. Hitching a ride was ESA's Huygens probe, destined for Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The final chapter of the interplanetary trek for Huygens began on 25 December 2004 when it deployed from the orbiter for a 21-day solo cruise toward the haze-shrouded moon. Plunging into Titan's atmosphere, on January 14 2005, the probe survived the hazardous 2 hour 27 minute descent to touch down safely on Titan’s frozen surface. Today, the Cassini spacecraft remains in orbit at Saturn. Its mission will end in 2017, 20 years after its journey began. More information and images from the mission at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
Our capacity to partner with biology to make useful things is limited by the tools that we can use to specify, design, prototype, test, and analyze natural or engineered biological systems. However, biology has typically been engaged as a "technology of last resort" in attempts to solve problems that other more mature technologies cannot. This lecture will examine some recent progress on virus genome redesign and hidden DNA messages from outer space, building living data storage, logic, and communication systems, and how simple but old and nearly forgotten engineering ideas are helping make biology easier to engineer.
The study of extrasolar planets has recently entered its heyday with the launch of NASA's Kepler mission. Kepler has found that planetary systems are very common in our galaxy. Along the way, we've been surprised by the diversity of planetary systems, many of which bear little resemblance to our own solar system. Josh Carter presents these most alien of alien worlds, including planets orbiting two suns and a planetary system with two very different planets very close to one another.
How do galaxies like our Milky Way form? Since our universe moves too slowly to watch, faster-moving computer simulations are created to help find out. Green depicts (mostly) hydrogen gas in the above movie, while time is shown in billions of years since the Big Bang on the lower right. Pervasive dark matter is present but not shown. As the simulation begins, ambient gas falls into and accumulates in regions of relatively high gravity. Soon numerous proto-galaxies form, spin, and begin to merge. After about four billion years, a well-defined center materializes that dominates a region about 100,000 light-years across and starts looking like a modern disk galaxy. After a few billion more years, however, this early galaxy collides with another, all while streams of gas from other mergers rain down on this strange and fascinating cosmic dance. As the simulation reaches half the current age of the universe, a single larger disk develops. Even so, gas blobs -- some representing small satellite galaxies -- fall into and become absorbed by the rotating galaxy as the present epoch is reached and the movie ends. For our Milky Way Galaxy, however, big mergers may not be over -- recent evidence indicates that our large spiral disk Galaxy will collide and coalesce with the slightly larger Andromeda spiral disk galaxy in the next few billion years.
The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.
In an effort to avoid blindness, Cory Poole (a science and math teacher), captured pictures of the event through a specially filtered telescope. He then took those images (all 700 of them), and created a time-lapse video.
At the heart of modern cosmology is a mystery: Why does our universe appear so exquisitely tuned to create the conditions necessary for life? In this tour de force tour of some of science's biggest new discoveries, Brian Greene shows how the mind-boggling idea of a multiverse may hold the answer to the riddle.
Astronomers have photographed planets from other solar systems for the first time in 2004 (super Jupiters). Here is a little summary video from the Challenger Center for Space Science Education.
IC 1101 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy at the center of the Abell 2029galaxy cluster. It is 1.07 billion light years away in the constellation of Virgo and is classified as a cD class of galaxy. It was discovered on June 19, 1790 by William Herschel. The galaxy's diffuse stellar halo light extends to at least 1.4 million light years, which makes it one of the largest known galaxies in terms of breadth.[2] It is the central galaxy of a massive cluster containing a mass (mostly dark matter) of roughly 100 trillion stars.[3][4]
Helium-3 (He-3) is a light, non-radioactive isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron. The Perfect Fuel of the Future. The abundance of helium-3 is thought to be greater on the Moon (embedded in the upper layer of regolith by the solar wind over billions of years) and the solar system's gas giants (left over from the original solar nebula), though still low in quantity (28 ppm of lunar regolith is helium-4 and from 0.01 ppm to 0.05 ppm is helium-3).
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as presenter. It was executive-produced by Adrian Malone, produced by David Kennard, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Gregory Andorfer, and directed by the producers, David Oyster, Richard Wells, Tom Weidlinger, and others. It covered a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe. The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980 and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until The Civil War (1990). As of 2009, it was still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people.
Welcome to SETI Talks - your best way to learn more about your Universe! The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Some of the most well known projects are run by Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley and the SETI Institute. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for intelligent life on other planets. For example, electromagnetic radiation is monitored for signs of transmissions from civilizations on other worlds. The United States government contributed to early SETI projects, but recent work has been primarily funded by private sources. There are great challenges in searching across the cosmos for a first transmission that could be characterized as intelligent, since its direction, spectrum and method of communication are all unknown beforehand. SETI projects necessarily make assumptions to narrow the search, the foremost being that electromagnetic radiation would be a medium of communication for advanced extraterrestrial life.
This video released by NASA/JPL is highlighting the incredible engineering feat it will be to land the Curiosity Rover onto the surface of Mars. Because of Curiosity’s weight and size, the traditional “airbag” method isn’t going to cut it. Instead, Curiosity will be lowered gently to the surface of Mars via a rocket-propelled “skycrane”. It makes the landing even more complex and dangerous, and introduces a whole new level of risk into the landing. But once we get that SUV-sized rover crawling around the surface of Mars, all that risk will be totally worth it.
Concepts for human missions to the orbits of Mars and Venus that feature direct robotic exploration of the planets’ surfaces via teleoperation from orbit. These missions are good examples of Human Exploration using Real-time Robotic Operations (HERRO), an exploration strategy that refrains from sending humans to the surfaces of planets with large gravity wells. HERRO avoids the need for complex and expensive man-rated lander/ascent vehicles and surface systems. Additionally, the humans are close enough to the surface to eliminate the two-way communication latency that constrains typical robotic space missions, thus allowing real-time command and control of surface operations and experiments by the crew. In fact through use of state-of-the-art telecommunications and robotics, HERRO could provide the cognitive and decision-making advantages of having humans at the site of study for only a fraction of the cost of conventional human surface missions. HERRO is very similar to how oceanographers and oil companies use telerobotic submersibles to work in inaccessible areas of the ocean, and represents a more expedient, near-term step prior to landing humans on Mars and other large planetary bodies. Its concentration on in-space transportation systems makes it extensible to destinations that have not been associated with human missions in the past but may be of potentially great scientific interest, such as Venus.
Gamma ray bursts are the most powerful explosions known in the universe. The light from the most distant gamma ray burst seen yet, dubbed GRB 090423, reached our world even from about 13 billion light-years away this year. That explosion, which lasted just a little more than a second, released roughly 100 times more energy than our sun will release in its entire 10 billion year lifetime. It likely originated from a dying star 30 to 100 times larger than the sun.
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