Astronomy // Current TV

Jupiter in an April 23 snowstorm

Jupiter in the snow http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8387/8676422775_2af024e7f5_b.jpg

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NASA confirms they have a plan to "bag" an asteroid

Not a joke. NASA confirms they have a plan to "bag" an asteroid. Literally... more

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Scientists believe they may have found Dark Matter

Wicked cool! "A massive particle detector mounted on the International Space... more

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Last-ever closeup of tiny Rhea

Does anyone know where Rhea is? Maybe not the last-ever, but the last one for a... more

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Cool Science: Comet PanSTARRS racing the moon across evening skies

Comet Pan-STARRS dazzled stargazers while streaking across the skies of North America... more

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NASA temporarily loses contact with crew of International Space Station

NASA temporarily lost all communications with the International Space Station (ISS)... more

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Iran launches monkey into space

Iran says they have successfully launched a live monkey into space in what it says is... more

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LIVE from the web: asteroid to fly by Earth tonight

Watch an impact caught on the planet Jupiter. This evening, an asteroid the length... more

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Fifth Moon Discovered Around Pluto

A fifth moon orbiting the dwarf planet Pluto has turned up in new Hubble Space Telescope images. Planetary scientists say the newfound moon serves as yet another reminder of how little we really know about this remote, chaotic world.

"Every time we look harder, we find new stuff," said Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., and a member of the moon's discovery team. In recent decades, he and his colleagues have identified signs of an atmosphere on the dwarf planet, as well as polar caps, a high albedo (highly reflective surface), and of course, a growing collection of moons.

But in-depth investigation of Pluto has proven tremendously difficult from 3 billion miles away. The best images we have of the icy world come from the Hubble Telescope, but to the untrained eye, they're not much to behold. At a slim 1,429 miles wide — roughly the distance from Maine to the tip of Florida — Pluto will likely remain a dim blur until NASA's New Horizons spacecraft arrives there in July 2015.

RELATED: Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz!

What secrets might lie in wait? [The Greatest Mysteries of the Planets]

For one thing, the dwarf planet could possess a set of everyone's favorite cosmic accessories. "It's a very distinct possibility and the theoretical arguments are very strong that Pluto has rings that come and go with time," Stern told Life's Little Mysteries.

Space rocks and other debris litter the Kuiper belt, where Pluto resides, and they probably pepper the icy world and its moons. "The moons are being hit all the time, and the ejecta [collision debris] escapes, making a ring," Stern said. "And then radiation and gravity depletes the ring through erosion."

Computer models of this cycle suggest that all the dwarf planet's rings sometimes get eroded before a new one forms. "When you model that on a computer there is randomness to [the spacing of the collision events], and so the rings come and go according to these models," he said.

Beneath those fleeting rings, and beneath Pluto's thin, nitrogen-rich atmosphere, it's anyone's guess how the surface will appear when viewed up close. In Hubble images, the dwarf planet's mottled façade varies between extremes of charcoal black, dark orange and white. What materials compose these assorted regions? And do they give rise to cold-liquid-spewing cryovolcanoes or geysers? The surface's geochemistry might even hint at a giant underground ocean. [The True Stories of 5 Mystery Planets]

More data is also needed to clarify how Pluto wound up in its frigid Kuiper belt domain. Astronomers think it and its neighbors formed from the same disk of material around the sun that coalesced into the other major bodies in the solar system. But at some point early on, a planetary collision probably sent Pluto ricocheting far beyond the rest, forever to carry the mark of this fateful encounter in the form of its strange, oval path around the sun, which lies off the plane of the other planetary orbits.

Considering all the mysteries that remain, Pluto's newfound moon almost definitely won't be the last of its surprises. "When New Horizons gets there, I think it's going to knock our socks off," Stern said. "It's going to be a whole new world."

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0716/Fifth-moon-discovery-reminds-us-how-little-we-know-about-PlutoA fifth moon orbiting the dwarf planet Pluto has turned up in new Hubble Space... more

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Pluto isn't a planet, but it has FIVE moons

Hubble discovers a fifth moon around Pluto. Can you name three of Pluto's... more

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A black hole awaits its galactic dinner

A huge gas cloud is floating through our Milky Way. Its end is near. It is going to be... more

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11 months ago
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NASA’s Spitzer Telescope May Have Spotted Universe’s First Objects

NASA scientists have isolated an ethereal glow permeating parts of the sky that may be... more

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Astronomers prepare for rare transit of Venus

June 5, astronomers will witness an astronomical event that has been observed in the modern era only six times previously, a passage or transit of the planet Venus across the face of the sun. The next time such an event will occur is 2117, so researchers are gearing up to devote as many resources as possible to view the transit from both Earth and space. Among other things, scientists hope observations of the transit will inform efforts to detect extrasolar planets -- those around distant stars -- a feat that is achieved in part by observing the dimming of a star as a planet passes between it and the Earth.

Venus' orbit around the sun lies in a slightly different plane than the Earth's, so transits occur only rarely and in pairs. The cycle of transits is 243 years long, with intervals of 8, 105.5, 8 and 120.5 years. The last transit was in 2004 and was also heavily observed, but the upcoming transit will be the first in which astronomers also have a satellite, the Venus Express, in orbit around the planet.

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When Venus is fully in front of the sun, it will be visible to the naked eye -- although one should never look directly at the sun without an approved filter to block rays that could damage the eye -- but it will dim the sun's light by only 0.1%. A similar dimming of distant stars observed by NASA's Kepler spacecraft has identified more than 1,000 potential exoplanets, but so far only about 100 of them have been confirmed as actual planets. One problem is that the eruption of sunspots can cause a similar dimming and it can be hard to distinguish between the two events. The 2004 transit of Venus occurred at a time when sunspot activity was at a minimum, but this year's event will be at a time when sunspot activity is fairly high. That should provide astronomers new insight into ways to distinguish between the two events.

The transit will begin about 3:04 p.m. PDT on June 5 and will be visible in its entirety only from the western Pacific, eastern Asia, eastern Australia and at high northern latitudes. The transit will be shown on NASA TV, which is available on many cable and satellite transmission systems, and on NASA TV's website. Astronomers from the European Space Agency will also be blogging the event from a viewing site on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen.

More at the linkJune 5, astronomers will witness an astronomical event that has been observed in the... more