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Mars Base

Venus Transit As Seen from the International Space Station - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...he-international-space-station

scibyte50 VenusTransit

shared by Mars Base on 06 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • This image is from NASA Astronaut Don Pettit on board the International Space Station
  • I knew the Transit of Venus would occur during my rotation, so I brought a solar filter with me when my expedition left for the ISS in December 2011
  • This is his first image, and we’ll add more as they become available
Mars Base

Telescope spies water plumes on dwarf planet Ceres - 0 views

phys.org/...spies-plumes-dwarf-planet.html

scibyte117 Asteroid Ceres

shared by Mars Base on 23 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Scientists
  • have made the first definitive detection of water vapor on the largest and roundest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres.
  • Plumes of water vapor are thought to shoot up periodically from Ceres when portions of its icy surface warm slightly
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • Ceres is classified as a dwarf planet, a solar system body bigger than an asteroid and smaller than a planet.
  • "This is the first time water vapor has been unequivocally detected on Ceres or any other object in the asteroid belt and provides proof that Ceres has an icy surface and an atmosphere,"
  • Michael Küppers of ESA in Spain
  • NASA's Dawn mission, which is on its way to Ceres now after spending more than a year orbiting the large asteroid Vesta
  • Dawn is scheduled to arrive at Ceres in the spring of 2015, where it will take the closest look ever at its surface.
  • will map the geology and chemistry of the surface in high resolution
  • International Astronomical Union, the governing organization responsible for naming planetary objects
  • Ceres was known as the largest asteroid in our solar system
  • reclassified Ceres as a dwarf planet because of its large size. It is roughly 590 miles (950 kilometers) in diameter
  • When it first was spotted in 1801, astronomers thought it was a planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter
  • Scientists believe Ceres contains rock in its interior with a thick mantle of ice that, if melted, would amount to more fresh water than is present on all of Earth
  • The materials making up Ceres likely date from the first few million years of our solar system's existence and accumulated before the planets formed.
  • Until now, ice had been theorized to exist on Ceres but had not been detected conclusively
  • far-infrared vision to see, finally, a clear spectral signature of the water vapor. But
  • did not see water vapor every time it looked
  • spied water vapor four different times, on one occasion there was no signature.
  • what scientists think is happening
  • when Ceres swings through the part of its orbit that is closer to the sun, a portion of its icy surface becomes warm enough to cause water vapor to escape in plumes
  • a rate of about 6 kilograms (13 pounds) per second
  • When Ceres is in the colder part of its orbit, no water escapes
  • The strength of the signal also varied over hours, weeks and months
  • water vapor plumes rotating in and out of Herschel's views as the object spun on its axis
  • This enabled the scientists to localize the source of water to two darker spots on the surface of Ceres
  • previously seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes. The dark spots might be more likely to outgas because dark material warms faster than light material.
  • "The lines are becoming more and more blurred between comets and asteroids," said Seungwon Lee of JPL
  • Paul von Allmen, also of JPL. "We knew before about main belt asteroids that show comet-like activity, but this is the first detection of water vapor in an asteroid-like object."
Mars Base

Invention Awards 2014: Charge Gadgets With Your Footsteps | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...-charge-gadgets-your-footsteps

scibyte129

shared by Mars Base on 04 May 14 - No Cached
  • of a hiker’s heel releases enough energy to illuminate a light bulb
  • Matt Stanton, an engineer and avid backpacker, created a shoe insole that stores it as electricity
  • Instead of using piezoelectric and other inefficient, bulky methods of generating electricity, the pair shrunk down components similar to those found in hand-cranked flashlights.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The result is a near standard–size removable insole that weighs less than five ounces, including a battery pack, and charges electronics via USB.
  • current version, to be released later this year, requires a lengthy 15-mile walk to charge a smartphone.
  • the company is working toward a design that can charge an iPhone after less than five miles of hiking and withstand about 100 million footsteps of wear and tear. 
  • How It Works
  • 1) A drivetrain converts the energy of heel strikes into rotational energy, spinning magnetic rotors
  • 2) The motion of the rotors induces an electrical current within coils of wire
  • 3) Electricity travels along a wire and into a lithium-ion polymer battery pack on a wearer’s shoelaces.
Mars Base

Mercury Passes in Front of the Sun, as Seen From Mars - Mars Science Laboratory - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte134 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • This is the first transit of the sun by a planet observed from any planet other than Earth, and also the first imaging of Mercury from Mars
  • Mercury fills only about one-sixth of one pixel as seen from such great distance, so the darkening does not have a distinct shape, but its position follows Mercury's expected path based on orbital calculations.
  • The observations were made on June 3, 2014,
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • the same Mastcam frames show two sunspots approximately the size of Earth. The sunspots move only at the pace of the sun's rotation, much slower than the movement of Mercury.
  • The next Mercury transit visible from Earth will be May 9, 2016.
  • Mercury and Venus transits are visible more often from Mars than from Earth
Mars Base

June 13 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on June 13th, died, and events - 0 views

www.todayinsci.com/...6_13.htm

scibyte134 LookingBackJun

shared by Mars Base on 05 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Sunspots
  • In 1611, a publication on the newly discovered phenomenon of sunspots was dedicated. Narratio de maculis in sole observatis et apparente earum cum sole conversione. (“Narration on Spots Observed on the Sun and their Apparent Rotation with the Sun”). This first publication on such observations, was the work of Johannes Fabricius, a Dutch astronomer who was perhaps the first ever to observe sunspots. On 9 Mar 1611, at dawn, Johannes had used his telescope to view the rising sun and had seen several dark spots on it. He called his father to investigate this new phenomenon with him. The brightness of the Sun's center was very painful, and the two quickly switched to a projection method by means of a camera obscura
Mars Base

A Brief History Of Gliese 581d and 581g, The Planets That May Not Be - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...1g-the-planets-that-may-not-be

scibyte135 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 04 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Two potentially habitable planets in the Gliese 581 system are just false signals arising out of starstuff, a new study said
  • Gliese 581d and 581g are (study authors said) instead indications of the star’s activity and rotation
  • Planets were first announced around the system in 2007
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The system has been under heavy scrutiny since a team
  • announced Gliese 581g in September 2010
  • Both 581d and 581g were considered to be in the “habitable” region around the dwarf star they orbited
  • About two weeks after the discovery, another team
  • said it could not find indications
  • Two years later
  • another research team saying that analysis of an “extended dataset” from HARPS did show Gliese 581g
  • But in a press release at the time from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory
  • the discovery would continue to be controversial
  • As of yesterday, both 581d and 581g are crossed off
  • The uncertainty arises from the delicacy of looking for signals of small planets around much larger stars
  • Astronomers typically find planets through watching them pass across the face of a star, or measuring the tug that they exert on their parent star during their orbit
  • researchers now say that only three planets exist around this star.
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