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Hubble Reveals Curious Auroras on Uranus - 0 views

  • an international team of astronomers
  • spotted two instances of auroras on the distant planet… once on November 16 and again on the 29th.
  • Uranus — which has an 84-year-long orbit
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  • Further investigations of Uranus’ auroras and magnetic field can offer insight into the dynamics of Earth’s own magnetosphere and how it interacts with the solar wind, which in turn affects our increasingly technological society.
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Auroras Seen on Uranus For First Time - 0 views

  • Two fleeting, Earth-size auroral storms were imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope as they flared up on the dayside of the gas giant in November 2011. (
  • Auroras tend to surround a planet's poles, where magnetic field lines converge and funnel incoming charged solar particles into the planet's atmosphere. There, the particles collide with air molecules, making the molecules glow
  • Scientists tried unsuccessfully to detect auroras on Uranus in 1998 and 2005
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  • team learned of an impending solar storm directed toward Uranus, which sits about 2.5 billion miles (4 billion kilometers) from Earth.
  • timed their Hubble observations specifically to coincide with the solar storm, and about six weeks later, Hubble spotted the auroras flaring up in Uranus's upper atmosphere
  • the other seven planets, Uranus's magnetic axis is 60 degrees off from its spin axis
  • spin axis itself has a bizarre 98-degree tilt relative to the solar system's orbital plane
  • , the planet seems to roll around on its side as it orbits the sun.
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ScienceShot: Hubble Spots Auroras on Uranus - ScienceNOW - 0 views

  • auroral glows in the atmosphere above our planet can flicker for hours
  • those seen on the planet's sunlit side—apparently last for only a couple of minutes
  • Researchers caught their first glimpse of the brief auroras from our planet's neighborhood with the Hubble Space Telescope in November 2011, 3 months after a strong gust in the solar wind raced past Earth on its way to Uranus
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  • Previously, scientists had observed the planet's auroras only once, during a Voyager flyby in 1986
  • instruments had a much better view of the glows
  • lasted longer, covered a larger area, and festooned the unlit side of Uranus
  • other factors were different
  • planet's rotational axis was pointed almost directly at the sun
  • in 2011 the axis lay almost perpendicular to the flow of solar wind
  • new observations should help scientists better understand Uranus's odd magnetic field, whose axis is both offset from the center of the planet and tilts at an angle of 60° from the rotational axis.
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March 13 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on March 13th, died, and events - 0 views

  • Pluto
  •   In 1930, the discovery of a ninth planet was announced by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory. It is only one-tenth as large as Earth and four thousand million miles away. The planet was named Pluto on 24 May 1930.
  • Uranus
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  • In 1781, English astronomer William Herschel detected Uranus in the night sky, but he thought it was a comet. It was the first planet to be discovered with the aid of a telescope. By 1787, he had also observed the Uranian satellites Titania and Oberon (11 Jan 1787), which were later given these names by his son, John Herschel.
  • In 1930, the discovery of a ninth planet was announced by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory. It is only one-tenth as large as Earth and four thousand million miles away. The planet was named Pluto on 24 May 1930.
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Interesting Facts About Asteroids - 0 views

  • D class asteroids: They are also known as Trojan asteroids of Jupiter and are dark and carbonaceous in composition.
  • C class asteroids: They are found in the Earth’s outer belt and are darker and more carbonaceous than the ones found in the S class.
  • S class asteroids: They are found in the Earth’s inner belt, closer to Mars and are composed of mostly stone and iron.
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  • V class asteroids: They are a far-out group of asteroids that follow a path between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus, and are made of igneous, eruptive materials.
  • Asteroid composition has been classified in the following way:
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Kepler finds first multi-planet system around a binary star - 0 views

  • NASA's Kepler mission has found the first multi-planet solar system orbiting a binary star
  • proves that whole planetary systems can form in a disk around a binary star
  • binary star in question is called Kepler-47
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  • primary star is about the same mass as the Sun, and its companion is an M-dwarf star one-third its size
  • inner planet is three times the size of Earth and orbits the binary star every 49.5 days
  • outer planet is 4.6 times the size of Earth with an orbit of 303.2 days.
  • outer planet is the first planet found to orbit a binary star within the "habitable zone,"
  • the planet's size (about the same as Uranus) means that it is an icy giant, and not an abode for life
  • "The challenging thing is that this is a very faint star," Endl said, "about 6,000 times dimmer than can be seen with the naked eye."
  • The secondary star is too faint to measure
  • taking spectra of the system
  • These values, along with the Kepler eclipse and transit timings, were plugged into a model that calculated the relative sizes of all the bodies involved
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Sugar Molecules Discovered Around Sun-Like Star | Search for Life & Alien Planets | Spa... - 0 views

  • The young star
  • , is part of a binary
  • similar mass to the sun and is located about 400 light-years away
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  • sugar molecules, known as glycolaldehyde, have previously been detected in interstellar space
  • according to the researchers, this is the first time they have been spotted so close to a sun-like star
  • the molecules are about the same distance away from the star as the planet Uranus is from our sun.
  • glycolaldehyde, which is a simple form of sugar, not much different to the sugar we put in coffee
  • found the sugar molecules using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile
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February 18 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on February 18th, died, and ev... - 0 views

  • Pluto
  • In 1930, the planet Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh, when comparing two photographic plates taken six days apart the previous month. He found a starry speck that changed position between them. The search for Planet X was started three decades earlier (before Tombaugh was born) at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, by Percival Lowell. Deviations in the positions of Uranus and Neptune were suspected to be due to the gravity of an undiscovered ninth planet. Locating it meant sifting through the millions of star images for one dim dot that moved. Lowell was unsuccessful, but in his will decreed that the hunt should continue. Clyde Tombaugh was a Kansas farmboy when Lowell Observatory director Vesto Slipher hired him in 1929. Pluto was the only planet found by an American
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March 10 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on March 10th, died, and events - 0 views

  • Syzygy
  •   In 1982, a syzygy occurred when all nine planets aligned on the same side of the Sun. The planets are spread out over 98 degrees on this date. The four major planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, span an arc of some 73 degrees.
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