ScienceDaily: Space & Time News

Machines teach astronomers about stars Posted: 16 Jan 2015 11:56 AM PST Astronomers are enlisting the help of machines to sort through thousands of stars in our galaxy and learn their sizes, compositions and other basic traits. The research is part of the growing field of machine learning, in which computers learn from large data sets, finding patterns that humans might not otherwise see.

Scientists pinpoint saturn with exquisite accuracy Posted: 08 Jan 2015 08:11 AM PST Scientists have paired NASA's Cassini spacecraft with the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio-telescope system to pinpoint the position of Saturn and its family of moons to within about 2 miles (4 kilometers). The measurement is some 50 times more precise than those provided by ground-based optical telescopes. The feat improves astronomers' knowledge of Saturn's orbit and benefits spacecraft navigation and basic physics research.

Asteroid to fly by Earth safely on January 26 Posted: 16 Jan 2015 11:44 AM PST An asteroid, designated 2004 BL86, will safely pass about three times the distance of Earth to the moon on January 26. From its reflected brightness, astronomers estimate that the asteroid is about a third of a mile (0.5 kilometers) in size. The flyby of 2004 BL86 will be the closest by any known space rock this large until asteroid 1999 AN10 flies past Earth in 2027.

NASA and ESA celebrate 10 years since Huygens probe landing on Saturn's moon Titan Posted: 16 Jan 2015 11:40 AM PST Ten years ago, an explorer from Earth parachuted into the haze of an alien moon toward an uncertain fate. After a gentle descent lasting more than two hours, it landed with a thud on a frigid floodplain, surrounded by icy cobblestones. With this feat, the Huygens probe accomplished humanity's first landing on a moon in the outer solar system. Huygens was safely on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

NEOWISE: A yearlong look at the sky Posted: 16 Jan 2015 11:38 AM PST NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft discovered and characterized 40 near-Earth objects (NEOs) in the first year after the mission was re-started in December 2013. Eight of the discoveries have been classified as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), based on their size and how close their orbits could come to Earth's orbit.

Crystal-rich rock 'Mojave' is next Mars drill target Posted: 16 Jan 2015 11:35 AM PST A rock target where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is using its sample-collection drill this week may have a salty story to tell. This target, called "Mojave," displays copious slender features, slightly smaller than grains of rice, that appear to be mineral crystals. A chance to learn their composition prompted the Curiosity science team to choose Mojave as the next rock-drilling target for the 29-month-old mission investigating Mars' Gale Crater. The features might be a salt mineral left behind when lakewater evaporated.

Peat fire emissions may shed light on climate change Posted: 16 Jan 2015 10:45 AM PST Researchers are beginning a study of the climatic effects of peat fire emissions. "This project is going to provide the much-needed information on peat smoke aerosol properties for integration in satellite retrieval algorithms and climate models," the lead researcher says. "Based on my initial findings, I hypothesize the peat smoke is made up of brown carbon and not black carbon. Brown carbon is a class of organic carbon aerosol which, unlike black carbon, strongly absorbs incoming solar radiation in the shorter wavelengths, or near ultraviolet."

HiRISE camera spots long-lost space probe on Mars Posted: 16 Jan 2015 07:44 AM PST The Beagle 2 Mars Lander, thought lost on Mars since 2003, has been found partially deployed on the surface of the planet, ending the mystery of what happened to the mission more than a decade ago.

Three nearly Earth-size planets found orbiting nearby star: One in 'Goldilocks' zone Posted: 16 Jan 2015 06:30 AM PST NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has discovered a star with three planets only slightly larger than Earth. The outermost planet orbits in the 'Goldilocks' zone -- where surface temperatures could be moderate enough for liquid water and perhaps life to exist. The star ranks among the top 10 nearest stars known to have transiting planets. The star's close enough for astronomers to study the planets' atmospheres to determine if they could possibly be conducive to life.

Galactic 'hailstorm' in the early Universe Posted: 16 Jan 2015 05:49 AM PST Astronomers have been able to peer back to the young Universe to determine how quasars -- powered by supermassive black holes with the mass of a billion suns -- form and shape the evolution of galaxies. Two teams of astronomers have looked back nearly 13 billion years, when the Universe was less than 10 percent its present age, to determine how quasars -- extremely luminous objects powered by supermassive black holes with the mass of a billion suns -- regulate the formation of stars and the build-up of the most massive galaxies.