Archive for the 'Planets' Category
Astronomers were able to capture, for the first time ever, planets that were outside the solar system.
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San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium, the new $20 million dollar facility that’s a part of the recently reopened California Academy of Sciences, is a technological marvel.
The Morrison Planetarium allows “astronomers not only to show traditional star charts, but to guide visitors through an immersive fly-through of our universe – realistically rendered in real-time. ”
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Here […]
Here’s a photograph that three University of Toronto scientists were able to capture images of the star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 from a distance of about 500 light years away. This image is making history as the first ever photograph of a planet in an alien solar system around a sun-like star.
This photograph will challenge currently accepted […]
I think it’s a safe statement to say that the average person knows very little about our planet. Well, just in case, here are some facts for you about the Earth. Put your thinking caps on:
The Earth is smoother than a billiard ball.
The Earth is an oblate spheroid
The Earth isn’t an oblate spheroid.
OK, […]
A white arrow points to a faint object detected by chance in 2006 as astronomers scanned the skies for distant supernovae.
The object, which resembles a tailless comet, traces a long, elliptical orbit that takes it as much as 150 billion miles (241 billion kilometers) from Earth, astronomers announced in August 2008.
The object, dubbed 2006 SQ372, […]
An artist’s impression shows the trio of super-Earths discovered by a European team and announced on June 16, 2008.
The three planets are 4.2, 6.7, and 9.4 times more massive than Earth and orbit the star HD 40307 every 4.3, 9.6, and 20.4 days, respectively.
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According to Anne Minard
File under “oh-oh”:
A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a 1 in 75 chance of slamming into the red planet on January 30, scientists said Thursday.
“These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with really long odds when we track … threatening asteroids,” said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object […]
We featured Pluto as one of the planets, but it was demoted in 2006.
More on the matter, here: “When I Was Your Age Pluto Was a Planet”
See WatchMojo.com’s video on Pluto here below, in our feature on the Nine Planets:
NEW YORK, Dec. 12 /PRNewswire/ — DISCOVER Magazine presents the top 100 science stories of 2007 in its annual January issue entitled “The Year in Science.” The issue hits newsstands today.
“We chose these 100 stories not only because of their news value but because they focus on breakthroughs that are changing the way we view […]