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Space telescope finds 10 new planets outside our solar system that could potentially have liquid water and support life. Nasa has announced the discovery of 10 rocky, Earth-sized planets in our Milky Way Galaxy that could potentially have liquid water and support life. The US space agency released on Monday a survey of 219 potential exoplanets - planets outside of our solar system - that had been detected by its Kepler space telescope between its launch in 2009 through its first four years in space. Ten of the new discoveries were orbiting their suns at a distance similar to Earth's orbit around the sun, the so-called habitable zone - meaning surface temperatures could support liquid water and, hypothetically, life.That does not mean the planets have life, but some of the most basic requirements that life needs are there. "Are we alone? Maybe Kepler, today, has told us indirectly, although we need confirmation, that we are probably not alone," Kepler scientist Mario Perez said in a news conference. Outside scientists agreed that this is a boost in the hope for life elsewhere. "It implies that Earth-size planets in the habitable zone around sun-like stars are not rare," Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who was not part of the work, told the Associated Press news agency in an email 'Ecstatic' NASA said this was the eighth release of the survey and the most comprehensive and detailed so far. It includes 4,034 planet candidates identified by Kepler. Of those, 2,335 have been confirmed to be exoplanets. Kepler is the first space telescope capable of finding Earth-sized planets in or near the habitable zone. Before its launch, astronomers had hoped that the frequency of Earth-like planets would be about one percent of the stars. The talk among scientists at a Kepler conference in California this weekend is that it is closer to 60 percent, Alan Boss, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution, said. Kepler is not the only way astronomers have found exoplanets, and even potentially habitable ones. Between Kepler and other methods, scientists have now confirmed more than 3,600 exoplanets and found about 62 potentially habitable planets. "This number could have been very, very small," said Caltech astronomer Courtney Dressing. "I, for one, am ecstatic." Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/nasa-kepler-finds-10-earth-planets-170620013748349.html
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source + more photo's: http://www.space.com/32252-amazing-images.html -
this night there is a ‘Super Harvest Blood Moon’ harvest moon: This is when a full moon is close to the equinoctial ( the day night and day is the same ) 22 september making the moon glow fuller a super moon: due the elips of the moon when its a full moon and close to earth it looks bigger ànd as last a blood moon: this happens when the earth standing between the sun and moon making the moon look orange / red colored source: http://m.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20160916_02471687?utm_source=facebook source is in dutch I translated the main topics so there can be a translate mistake in it equinoctial
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much about jupiter but still nice to see Source and more photo's : http://www.space.com/32252-amazing-images.html
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source + more photo's: http://www.space.com/32252-amazing-images.html
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and its commercial satellite payload were destroyed by an explosion at their launch pad in Florida early Thursday (Sept. 1) during a typically routine test. The explosion occurred at 9:07 a.m. EDT (1307 GMT), as SpaceX was preparing to launch the Amos 6 communications satellite for the Israeli company Spacecom from a pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Saturday, Sept. 3. At the time, SpaceX was preparing for a static fire engine test on the Falcon 9. Such tests, which typically precede each SpaceX launch, involve firing the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage engines while the booster remains secured to the launch pad. "SpaceX can confirm that in preparation for today's static fire, there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload," SpaceX representatives wrote in a statement. "Per standard procedure, the pad was clear and there were no injuries." [spaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Explained] Black plumes of smoke billow over SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launch site at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016 . This image was captured by a NASA Kennedy Space Center webcam. Credit: NASA Kennedy Space Center NASA webcam images of the SpaceX rocket's launch site — Space Launch Complex 40 — at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station - showed a massive plume of black smoke over the pad Thursday morning. he Falcon 9 rocket is a two-stage booster designed to launch satellites and SpaceX's Dragon space capsules into orbit. The rocket stands 229 feet tall (70 m) and uses rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen for propellant. The first stage of Falcon 9 is powered by nine Merlin rocket engines, while the second stage has a single engine to make the final push into orbit with payloads. It is the first stage of Falcon 9 that SpaceX would be testing during Thursday's static fire operation. SpaceX has had a long string of successful missions with the Falcon 9 rocket, with only one major failure. In June 2015, a Falcon 9 carrying a Dragon cargo ship for NASA exploded shortly after liftoff. SpaceX traced the problem to a faulty strut and made upgrades before resuming commercial and NASA flights. Source + video's / tweets: http://www.space.com/33929-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-explodes-on-launch-pad.html
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This artist’s impression shows the exoplanet Proxima b, which orbits the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. The double star Alpha Centauri AB appears in the image between the exoplanet and its star. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser The star closest to the sun hosts a planet that may be very much like Earth, a new study reports. Astronomers have discovered a roughly Earth-size alien world around Proxima Centauri, which lies just 4.2 light-years from our own solar system. What's even more exciting, study team members said, is that the planet, known as Proxima b, circles in the star's "habitable zone" — the range of distances at which liquid water could be stable on a world's surface. "We hope these findings inspire future generations to keep looking beyond the stars," lead author Guillem Anglada-Escude, a physics and astronomy lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, said in a statement."The search for life on Proxima b comes next." [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life] A long search The discovery of Proxima b was a long time in the making. Astronomers have been hunting intensively for planets around Proxima Centauri for more 15 years, using instruments such as the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) and the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), both of which are installed on telescopes run by the European Southern Observatory in Chile. UVES, HARPS and other instruments like them allow researchers to detect the slight wobbles in a star's movement caused by the gravitational tugs of orbiting planets. Astronomers found hints of such a wobble back in 2013, but the signal was not convincing, Anglada-Escude said. So he and a number of other researchers launched a campaign to ferret out the planet. They called this effort the Pale Red Dot — a nod to Carl Sagan's famous description of Earth as a "pale blue dot," and the fact that Proxima Centauri is a small, dim star known as a red dwarf. The Pale Red Dot team focused HARPS on Proxima Centauri every night from Jan. 19, 2016, through March 31 of this year. After they combined this new data with UVES observations from 2000 through 2008 and HARPS observations from 2005 through early 2014, the signal of a possible planet came through loud and clear. Then, after analyzing observations of the star's brightness made by several other telescopes, Anglada-Escude and his colleagues ruled out the possibility that this signal could be caused by the variable activity of Proxima Centauri. "The conclusion: We have found a planet around Proxima Centauri," Anglada-Escude said Tuesday (Aug. 23) during a news conference. [The Search for Another Earth (Video)] How did Proxima b remain undetected for so long, in an era when astronomers are finding exoplanets thousands of light-years from Earth? "The uneven and sparse sampling, combined with the longer term variability of the star, seem to be the reasons why the signal could not be unambiguously confirmed with pre-2016 data, rather than the total amount of data accumulated," the researchers wrote in the new study, which was published online today (Aug. 24) in the journal Nature. The news confirms rumors first reported earlier this month by German magazine Der Spiegel. Incidentally, the team also spotted possible signs of an additional Proxima Centauri planet, which would have an orbital period of between 60 and 500 days. But that second signal is much weaker and might be caused by stellar activity, the researchers said. An Earth-like world? The HARPS and UVES data indicate that Proxima b is about 1.3 times more massive than Earth, which suggests that the exoplanet is a rocky world, the researchers said. Proxima b lies just 4.7 million miles (7.5 million kilometers) from its host star and completes one orbit every 11.2 Earth days. As a result, it's likely that the exoplanet is tidally locked, meaning it always shows the same face to its host star, just as the moon shows only one face (the near side) to Earth. For comparison, Earth orbits about 93 million miles (150 million km) from the sun. But Proxima b's relatively tight orbit puts it right in the middle of the habitable zone, because red dwarfs are so much cooler and dimmer than sun-like stars, team members said. Not much else is known about Proxima b, so it's unclear just how hospitable the planet may be to life. In fact, there are reasons to be pessimistic on this front, noted Artie Hatzes, an astronomer at the Thuringian State Observatory in Germany. Proxima Centauri fires off powerful flares, and the planet therefore experiences a much higher dose of high-energy X-ray radiation than Earth does, Hatzes, who is not part of the discovery team, wrote in an accompanying "News and Views" article in the same issue of Nature. "Energetic particles associated with the flares may erode the atmosphere or hinder the development of primitive forms of life," Hatzes wrote. "We also don't know whether the exoplanet has a magnetic field, like Earth, which could shield it from the dangerous stellar radiation." [Powerful Flares from Red Dwarf Could Hinder Evolution of Life (Video)] But the higher X-ray flux is not a "showstopper" for life, Anglada-Escude and his colleagues said. "None of this does exclude the existence of an atmosphere, or of [surface] water," co-author Ansgar Reiners, a professor at the University of Göttingen's Institute of Astrophysics in Germany, said during Tuesday's news conference. How Proxima Centauri behaved in the distant past is more relevant to the newfound planet's potential habitability than current radiation levels are, Reiners added. "What is more interesting is the history of the planet — whether in the early ages, the young ages, of this planet the star was so active, and the star emitted so much high-energy radiation, that it blew away the atmosphere and may have blown away the water also," he said. Other aspects of the planet's history also have a bearing on just how wet Proxima b may be. For example, if the alien world formed far from the star but then migrated inward, it is likely water-rich; if it formed near its present position, it likely started out much drier, study team members said. (But even this latter scenario doesn't preclude the existence of large amounts of water on Proxima b, Anglada-Escude stressed; comet and/or asteroid strikes could deliver the substance, as apparently happened here on Earth, he said.) Tidally locked planets were once regarded as inhospitable to life — baked too hot on the star-facing side, and freezing cold on the dark side. But recent research suggests that such worlds may indeed be habitable; winds in theiratmospheres could distribute heat, smoothing out temperature extremes. And if Proxima b is potentially habitable, life-forms have a long time to gain a foothold there: Red dwarfs keep burning for trillions of years, in contrast to stars like the sun, which die after 10 billion years or so. "Proxima Centauri will exist for several hundreds or thousands of times longer than the sun," Hatzes wrote in his "News and Views" piece. "Any life on the planet could still be evolving long after our sun has died." The sun is 4.6 billion years old. Proxima Centauri is thought to be slightly older — perhaps 4.9 billion years or so, study team members said. Searching for life Proxima b likely does not "transit," or cross the face of, its host star from Earth's perspective, Anglada-Escude and his colleagues said. That characteristic will make it tougher to study Proxima b further; astronomers can learn a lot about the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets by studying the starlight that passes through them. (NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in late 2018, will use this method to look for possible signs of life in the atmospheres of nearby alien worlds.) But Proxima b is close enough to Earth that scientists may soon be able to image it directly. Indeed, it should be possible to resolve the planet (separately from its host star) using a telescope with an aperture of 11.5 feet (3.5 meters), provided that the scope is outfitted with some advanced technology, such as a starlight-blocking coronagraph, Reiners said. (For perspective, NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope has an aperture of 7.9 feet, or 2.4 m.) "We are quite far from it right now, but physics allows us to do it," he said. "And then, you can study the light coming from the planet itself, and that gives you the opportunity to learn about the atmosphere spectroscopically or photometrically, or whatever you want." A trip to Proxima b? Proxima b is also a prime target for a potential up-close visit by a future space probe. This past April, scientists and engineers announced the $100 millionBreakthrough Starshot project, which aims to develop the technology required to accelerate tiny, sail-equipped "nanocraft" to 20 percent the speed of light using powerful lasers. Breakthrough Starshot team members said they hope to eventually launch flotillas of such postage-stamp-size probes to Alpha Centauri — a binary star system about 4.37 light-years from the sun. (In 2012, incidentally, astronomers analyzing HARPS data announced the discovery of a roughly Earth-size world around the star Alpha Centauri B, but later work suggested that the putative planet does not actually exist.) Spacecraft traveling at 20 percent the speed of light could make the trip to Alpha Centauri in about two decades, as opposed to thousands of years for conventionally powered probes. Proxima Centauri lies just 0.24 light-years from Alpha Centauri, and is regarded by some scientists as part of the latter system — so Breakthrough Starshot team members are recalibrating possible mission profiles a bit now. "With today's announcement, we now know that there's at least one planet, the one orbiting Proxima Centauri, that has some characteristics similar to the Earth," Pete Worden, chairman of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, said during a news conference today. "Over the next decade, we will work with experts here at ESO and elsewhere to get as much information as possible about the Proxima Centauri planet, perhaps as noted, even including whether it might bear life, prior to launching mankind's first probe towards the star," Worden added. "We also hope to obtain similar data about the other nearby stars, Alpha Centauri A and B." Source + video + links in the post: http://www.space.com/33834-discovery-of-planet-proxima-b.html
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More photo's + source: http://www.space.com/32252-amazing-images.html
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While NASA discusses how to one day send humans to Mars, a group of scientists has delved more than a half-mile (1.1 kilometers) beneath the Earth's surface to study nearby environments that resemble those of the Red Planet. For the last four years, astrobiologists with Mars Analogues for Space Exploration (MASE), a program that is funded by the European Science Foundation, have been studying the underground environment of England's Boulby Mine — a place that appears to bear some similarities to Mars. The new work, which includes analyzing salty features on the walls of the mine, will help scientists understand where to look for life on the Red Planet and how to explore the Martian environment when humans eventually get there, Charles Cockell, scientific coordinator of the MASE program, told Space.com. [Amazing Mars Photos by NASA's Curiosity Rover (Latest Images)] Signs of an ancient sea The Boulby Mine is a very large underground system that stretches for more than 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) out under the North Sea. The walls of the mine are coated in salty honeycomb-like hexagonal patterns that are believed to have formed 250 million years ago, after a giant inland sea (the Zechstein Sea) dried up. Similar evidence of a long-gone ocean has been found in other places on Earth, including Death Valley. The prominent hexagonal features found on the walls of the mine resemble those that rovers like Curiosity have observed on Mars. This is the first time that Cockell and his team have collected samples of the salty features. The MASE team collected multiple samples from deep inside the mine, which they will analyze for signatures of life over the course of the next two or three months. Credit: Charles Cockell "On Mars, areas of salt have also been observed and they have similar sorts of features," said Cockell, who is also a professor of astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh. "So, this is indicative of large salt deposits on Mars that have dried out." When seawater dries up, it leaves behind an oxygen-deprived environment in which only microorganisms tolerant of high-salt conditions can live, Cockell explained. "We're interested in trying to isolate novel microbes from extreme environments and then use them to understand the limits of life in anaerobic, oxygen-free conditions," said Cockell. "Going into deep, subsurface [environments] is a good place to look for these kinds of deep-dwelling microbes." The MASE researchers have collected multiple samples from deep inside the mine and will be analyzing the samples for signatures of life over the course of the next two or three months. The six-member team consisted of researchers from the Spanish Center for Astrobiology and the University of Edinburgh. While the MASE team was cultivating salty rock samples, a team of researchers from the University of Leicester was also in the mine developing new instruments for detecting minerals on Mars. "The main thing is they [Mars and the Boulby Mine] are similar environments, and what we are really trying to do is understand as much as we can about Mars by looking at these types of environments on Earth," Cockell said. "[The Boulby Mine] is one of the best environments we have to do these kinds of comparisons." Source: http://www.space.com/33764-mars-like-environment-beneath-earths-surface.html
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Hubble Space Telescope image of the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, which lies just 4.25 light-years from the sun. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA Astronomers have found a rocky and possibly Earth-like planet circling the star closest to the sun, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel. On Friday (Aug. 12), Der Spiegel reported that the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) La Silla Observatory in Chile had spotted evidence of a rocky, potentially habitable world orbiting Proxima Centauri, a small, dim star that lies just 4.25 light-years from the sun. Scientists with the ESO will announce the find later this month, according to Der Spiegel, which cited an unnamed astrophysicist on the discovery team as its source. [in Images: The 1st Earth-Size Alien Planets Ever Found] ESO officials neither confirmed nor denied the report. "We were surprised to see the article in Der Spiegel and do not know the source," ESO spokesman Richard Hook told Space.com via email. "ESO has no further comment to make at present." Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, a star much smaller and cooler than the sun. About three-quarters of all stars in the Milky Way galaxy are red dwarfs. Proxima Centauri lies just 0.24 light-years from the two stars of Alpha Centauri, and many astronomers regard the red dwarf as part of the latter system. In 2012, astronomers announced that La Silla's High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher instrument, or HARPS, had spotted a rocky, roughly Earth-size planet around Alpha Centauri B. This world, known as Alpha Centauri Bb, circles its host star once every 3.2 days, and is therefore much too hot to support life, discovery team members said at the time. However, a 2015 study found that the detected signal of Alpha Centauri Bb was merely an artifact and that the planet almost certainly does not exist. To date, astronomers have discovered more than 3,200 confirmed alien planets, with NASA's Kepler space telescope responsible for about two-thirds of the finds. Kepler's work suggests that, on average, every star in the Milky Way hosts at least one planet. Source + video: http://www.space.com/33751-earth-like-planet-proxima-centauri.html
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Skywatcher Rick Moore took this image when he was stargazing at the Platte River, in Louisville, Nebraska. Credit: Rick Moore Sometime the right shot just appears. Skywatcher Rick Moore took this image when he was stargazing at the Platte River, in Louisville, Nebraska. While he didn’t plan the shot, he did walk to a darker location to illuminate the Milky Way and bridge. "I was stargazing and noticed the Milky Way starting to appear. so I packed up my camera and headed to a spot that overlooks the river. I walked about a mile in the dark until I could get this shot," Moore wrote in an email to Space.com. The milky way galaxy, which contains our own solar system, is a barred spiral galaxy with roughly 400 billion stars. The stars, along with gas and dust, appear like a band of light in the sky when seen from Earth. The galaxy stretches between 100,000 to 120,000 light-years in diameter. The image is 20 images taken at varying exposures and settings and then blended together with Light room 5 and Photoshop 7. Multiple exposures are made to collect enough light for an image that would otherwise not be evident to the eye. Moore used a Canon T3i, 18-55 lens @ 18, Manual focus, on " TV" mode, at ISO 400-3200, on a tripod, 5-15 sec shots on a 10 sec timer between shots. Source: http://www.space.com/33535-milky-way-path-amazing-skywatcher-photo.html
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Source + more photo's: http://www.space.com/32252-amazing-images.html
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A trio of images from NASA MISR equipment Credit: Joshua Stevens and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory, data from NASA/GSFC/JPL, MISR Team The swirling mass of white clouds, the placid eye of the storm: Satellite imagery has become common enough that it's easy to envision the whorl of a typhoon as seen from space. But that mental picture likely doesn't include such details as the relative air temperatures, or just how strong the wind is blowing. NASA's Earth Observatory recently released satellite images, taken with three different instruments, of Super Typhoon Nepartak as it raged over the Philippine Sea before making landfall in Taiwan on July 8. The images include visualizations of the height, direction, wind speed and temperature of thevortex, which sustained winds at 113 knots (130 mph or 210 km/h). The first of the images shows the range of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR), an instrument launched in 1999 aboard Terra, a school-bus-size satellite that is considered the flagship of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS). Multiple cameras at different angles provide depth cues, allowing scientists to calculate information such as the height of clouds. [Hurricanes from Above: Images of Nature's Biggest Storms] MISR has been used for a variety of purposes, such as collecting information on wildfires, volcanic plumes and dust storms across the globe. A RapidScat image of the typhoon. Credit: Joshua Stevens, NASA Earth Observatory, RapidScat data from JPLA second image shows the direction and speed of wind near the ocean surface, based on the roughness of the water. That data comes from the RapidScat instrument aboard the International Space Station. A MODIS thermal image of the storm. Credit: Jeff Schmaltz and Joshua Stevens, NASA, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid ResponseThe thermal image came from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite. The MODIS instrument can detect a wide range of electromagnetic radiation, from microwaves to infrared, visible and ultraviolet light. And that flexibility allows it to directly or indirectly measure temperature, how much radiation is reflected by the planet's surface (albedo), photosynthesis activity and levels of airborne particles (aerosols). Nepartak began as a tropical depression on July 2, eventually building to the wind speeds that qualified it for "super typhoon" status. It killed two people and injured 72 in Taiwan before moving to Fujian Province, China, where it killed six and left eight missing. Source: http://www.space.com/33710-super-typhoon-nepartak-nasa-photos.html
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The 2016 Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight, Aug. 11-12. This composite of Perseid meteors was shot from Huntsville, Alabama, during the shower's 2011 peak. Credit: NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environment Office Here's what to expect from US weather for the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks overnight tonight (Aug. 11-12). If you're hoping to get a good view tonight, the best weather prospects favor the western U.S., most notably anywhere west of a line extending from roughly International Falls, Minnesota, southwest to El Paso, Texas. Skies are expected to be partly cloudy to clear during the late-night hours of Thursday night into Friday, thanks chiefly to a zone of high pressure spread out over the central Rockies. This promises a good view of this year's Perseid performance in that region. The exception will be near and along the northern and central California coast, where low clouds and fog — the marine layer — will move in from the Pacific and spoil the view, but anyone taking a short drive inland should find clearer skies. [Perseid Meteor Shower 2016: When, Where & How to See It] Meanwhile, in a zone stretching from the upper Great Lakes down through Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and through the Texas-Oklahoma panhandle, the weather will be problematic. Two low-pressure systems — one centered near Duluth, Minnesota, and the other near Omaha, Nebraska — and an associated frontal line stretched across the central and southern plains will team up to bring extensive cloud cover as well widespread showers and scattered thunderstorms. This Sky & Telescope chart shows the location of the Perseid meteor shower radiant in the constellation Perseus as it will appear during the peak of the 2016 Perseids display at 11 p.m. local time on Aug. 11, 2016. Credit: Sky & Telescope IllustrationAcross Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, some of the storms could be strong to severe, possibly delivering excessive amounts of rain. Put simply, the only meteors to be seen in this viewing zone will be those of the "hydro" variety. As for the rest of the central and eastern U.S., the weather will be dominated by a large "Bermuda High," a high-pressure weather pattern off the middle-Atlantic coast, producing a large area of hazy, hot and oppressively humid weather. Generally speaking, skies should be no worse than partly cloudy for Perseid viewing, but local weather disturbances interacting with such a humid air mass can produce clouds, showers and thunderstorms. One such disturbance is expected to adversely affect the weather near the central Gulf Coast, perhaps causing showers or heavy rain for parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Minor weather disturbances over parts of the Ohio Valley, heading east to the New York City area, could generate unwelcome cloud cover late Thursday night. A nearly stationary weather front draped across southern parts of Ontario and Quebec, and stretching east to northern Maine, might also throw a few unwanted clouds between the Perseids and skywatchers. Another factor that makes the Perseids popular is that the temperatures are generally comfortable: 50s and 60s Fahrenheit (10 to 20 degrees Celsius) across most of the western states (except 40s F, or4 to 10 degrees C, over the high elevations of the Rockies) and balmy 70s F (20 to 26 degrees C) over much of the eastern U.S., as well as the desert Southwest and Southern California. You can get the latest forecast for your local area here, where you'll find links to all of the National Weather Service Forecast Offices around the country. Just locate the region that you are in for the office that serves your area. I have always found that it helps to have had a late-afternoon nap and a shower, and to wear fresh clothing before going out to watch a meteor shower. Expect the temperature to be below what your local forecast suggests. When you sit quite still, close to the rapidly cooling ground, and the air is damp, you can become very chilled. Long lawn chairs, heavy blankets, sleeping bags, ground cloths, auto cushions and pillows are essential equipment. Some food or drink will also help keep you comfortable. Good luck and enjoy the show! Source + video : http://www.space.com/33713-perseid-meteor-shower-us-weather-forecast-2016.html The 2016 Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight, Aug. 11-12. This composite of Perseid meteors was shot from Huntsville, Alabama, during the shower's 2011 peak. Credit: NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environment Office Here's what to expect from US weather for the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks overnight tonight (Aug. 11-12). If you're hoping to get a good view tonight, the best weather prospects favor the western U.S., most notably anywhere west of a line extending from roughly International Falls, Minnesota, southwest to El Paso, Texas. Skies are expected to be partly cloudy to clear during the late-night hours of Thursday night into Friday, thanks chiefly to a zone of high pressure spread out over the central Rockies. This promises a good view of this year's Perseid performance in that region. The exception will be near and along the northern and central California coast, where low clouds and fog — the marine layer — will move in from the Pacific and spoil the view, but anyone taking a short drive inland should find clearer skies. [Perseid Meteor Shower 2016: When, Where & How to See It] Meanwhile, in a zone stretching from the upper Great Lakes down through Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and through the Texas-Oklahoma panhandle, the weather will be problematic. Two low-pressure systems — one centered near Duluth, Minnesota, and the other near Omaha, Nebraska — and an associated frontal line stretched across the central and southern plains will team up to bring extensive cloud cover as well widespread showers and scattered thunderstorms. This Sky & Telescope chart shows the location of the Perseid meteor shower radiant in the constellation Perseus as it will appear during the peak of the 2016 Perseids display at 11 p.m. local time on Aug. 11, 2016. Credit: Sky & Telescope IllustrationAcross Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, some of the storms could be strong to severe, possibly delivering excessive amounts of rain. Put simply, the only meteors to be seen in this viewing zone will be those of the "hydro" variety. As for the rest of the central and eastern U.S., the weather will be dominated by a large "Bermuda High," a high-pressure weather pattern off the middle-Atlantic coast, producing a large area of hazy, hot and oppressively humid weather. Generally speaking, skies should be no worse than partly cloudy for Perseid viewing, but local weather disturbances interacting with such a humid air mass can produce clouds, showers and thunderstorms. One such disturbance is expected to adversely affect the weather near the central Gulf Coast, perhaps causing showers or heavy rain for parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Minor weather disturbances over parts of the Ohio Valley, heading east to the New York City area, could generate unwelcome cloud cover late Thursday night. A nearly stationary weather front draped across southern parts of Ontario and Quebec, and stretching east to northern Maine, might also throw a few unwanted clouds between the Perseids and skywatchers. Another factor that makes the Perseids popular is that the temperatures are generally comfortable: 50s and 60s Fahrenheit (10 to 20 degrees Celsius) across most of the western states (except 40s F, or4 to 10 degrees C, over the high elevations of the Rockies) and balmy 70s F (20 to 26 degrees C) over much of the eastern U.S., as well as the desert Southwest and Southern California. You can get the latest forecast for your local area here, where you'll find links to all of the National Weather Service Forecast Offices around the country. Just locate the region that you are in for the office that serves your area. Observing tips Generally, it is thought that showers like the Perseids are the debris of comets, while larger meteors that make it to Earth as meteorites are made of the same stuff as asteroids — possibly fragmented planet material. The Perseids appear white or yellowish in the sky, numerous and bright, with some fireballs and glowing trains. At the shower's peak tonight, these meteors appear to diverge from a small area in the northern part of the constellation Perseus (hence the name, "Perseid"). This is so far north that it's above the horizon for most of the country when darkness falls. Hence, you might sight a Perseid or two during the evening hours. But only after midnight, when the radiant is high in the northeast sky and observers have been turned by the Earth onto the planet's forward-moving side, do the numbers really begin to increase to the one-per-minute rate (or more) that makes this shower so exciting. [Perseid Meteor Shower Explained - Most Active of the Year! (Video)] In the eastern U.S., observers should pay close attention for a possible brief surge of meteor activity around 1 a.m. EDT; Earth will be interacting with a localized "clump" of dusty debris shed during the 11th century by Comet Swift-Tuttle, the progenitor of the Perseid meteoroids.
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Artist's illustration of the alien planet Kepler-186f, which orbits in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-CalTech Astronomers are narrowing the field in their search for a "second Earth." An international team of researchers has identified the 20 most Earth-like worlds among the more than 4,000 exoplanet candidates that NASA's Kepler space telescope has detected to date, scientists report in a new study. All 20 potential "second Earths" lie within the habitable zones of their sun-like stars — meaning they should be able to harbor liquid water on their surfaces — and are likely rocky, the researchers said. [The Search for Another Earth (Video)] Identifying these Earth-like planets is important in the hunt for alien life, said study lead author Stephen Kane, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University (SFSU). "[it] means we can focus in on the planets in this paper and perform follow-up studies to learn more about them, including if they are indeed habitable," Kane said in a statement. Kane and his team sorted through the 216 habitable-zone Kepler planets and candidates found so far. (A "candidate" is a world that has yet to be confirmed by follow-up observations or analysis. Kepler has found about 4,700 candidates to date, more than 2,300 of which have been confirmed; about 90 percent of all candidates should eventually turn out to be the real deal, mission team members have said.) Second-Earth candidates had to be safely within the habitable zone. If a planet is too close to the inner edge, it could experience a runaway greenhouse effect like the one that occurred on Venus. And if it's too close to the outer edge, the planet could end up being a frigid world like Mars, the researchers said. In addition to categorizing the planets by their place in the habitable zone, Kane and his team also sorted them by size, ruling out worlds that were big enough to be gaseous. There are five confirmed planets in the top 20: Kepler-186f, Kepler-62f, Kepler-283c, Kepler-296f and Kepler-442b. The other 15 are unconfirmed candidates. Categorizations like this suggest that the universe is teeming with planets that could possibly harbor life, study team members said. "It's exciting to see the sheer amount of planets that are out there," study co-author Michelle Hill, an Australian undergraduate studying abroad at SFSU, said in the same statement. "[it] makes you think that there is zero chance of there not being another place where life could be found." Source: http://www.space.com/33698-alien-planets-second-earths-kepler.html
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One slice through the 3D map of 1.2 million galaxies created by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) program of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II. The image covers 1/20th of the sky; a segment 6 billion light-years wide, 4.5 billion light-years high and 500 million light-years thick. Yellower galaxies are closer to Earth, and purple ones are further. Credit: Daniel Eisenstein and the SDSS-III collaboration If you're a space traveler lost in the universe, a team of astronomers here on Earth has your back: They've made the largest ever 3D map of galaxies that humanity can see. Hundreds of physicists and astronomers gathered data from sky surveys over the course of five years to build the map, which covers about one-quarter of the sky. Called the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) program of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III, the project measured 1.2 million galaxies covering a volume of 650 cubic billion light-years, New York University researcher Jeremy Tinker said in a statement. Tinker co-lead the project's scientific team. BOSS allowed the scientists to observe the three-dimensional distribution of galaxies in the universe, and also to measure how fast the universe is expanding. To measure expansion, BOSS looks at the size of pressure waves that traveled across the universe up to when it was only 400,000 years old, a small fraction of its current 13.8-billion-year age. Since that time, evidence of those pressure waves, called baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAOs), has been "frozen" into the visible distribution of matter. This created a pattern in which galaxies tend to be separated by a certain distance most of the time. By measuring that characteristic distance, as well as the distribution of galaxies as it has changed over the history of the universe, scientists can calculate how gravity from dark matter and the repulsive effects of dark energy have acted together to control the speed of the universe's expansion. This also lets astronomers test just how accurate Einstein's theory of general relativity is. So far, the famous theory has survived almost everything that's been thrown at it. But many scientists think the theory is not complete, and that there might be areas where it doesn't describe phenomena as well as it has so far, largely because the connection between gravity and quantum mechanics is still a mystery. Speaking of which, the map shows that galaxies are moving toward parts of the universe with more matter, just as expected given the attractive force of gravity. So far, general relativity seems to be right, according to David Schlegel, an astrophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, quoted in the release. The new results were detailed this month in a series of papers submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. You can follow Space.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Space.com. Source: http://www.space.com/33544-million-galaxies-dot-huge-3d-map.html
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SpaceX pulled off its fifth rocket landing in the last seven months early Monday morning (July 18), this time bringing a booster back during a successful cargo launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) Read more / source : http://www.space.com/33443-spacex-dragon-launch-rocket-landing.html Move Over, 'Star Trek' — Hubble Telescope Sees the Real Final Frontier Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz (STScI) Just in time for the new Star Trek movie arrival in theaters this weekend, the Hubble Space Telescope released its latest image from its “Frontier Fields” program. Read more / source: http://www.space.com/33436-spectacular-emission-nebulas-up-close-photos.html Got It! Astronauts Capture SpaceX Dragon Supply Ship at Space Station Credit: NASA TV A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship will arrive at the International Space Station today (July 20) on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. read more / source : http://www.space.com/33474-spacex-dragon-supply-ship-crs9-arrival.html See the Sun Flip Out in Wild New Satellite View Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/Joy Ng The sun appears to take a dizzying flip in space in new images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) read more / source http://www.space.com/33462-sun-somersault-photos-nasa-sdo.html more photo's video's and photo information / source of all photo's : http://www.space.com/32252-amazing-images.html
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This year may be only half over, but 2016 is already on track to be the hottest year ever on record, with each of the first six months, from January to June, setting new temperature records, NASA officials announced this week. For the first time, NASA shared a , midyear climate analysis doing so because temperature averages this year have been so in excess of previous data, agency officials said. NASA's data showed that each month in 2016 was the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates to 1880. This trend suggests 2016 will surpass 2015 as the hottest year on record, NASA said. "2016 has really blown that out of the water," said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. According to Schmidt's calculations, there is a 99 percent probability that 2016, on average, will be hotter than 2015. By the numbers So far this year, the planet's average temperature has been 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 degrees Celsius) warmer than the late 19th century. In 2009, international climate negotiators agreed in the Copenhagen Accord that warming should not increase more than2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) this century. The Accord's temperature threshold was put in place to hopefully avoid the worst impacts of climate change. A strong El Niño this past year did contribute to these temperatures, but Schmidt said the continued warming trend is mostly due to the effects of greenhouse gases. While the impacts of El Niño will dissipate by 2017, leaving temperatures slightly lower than this year, Schmidt said 2017 will still average to 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) above the pre-industrial average. Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally. Credit: NASA/GISS Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said the low sea-ice extent seen in the first half of 2016 follows the continuing trend and is "not at all surprising given the warm air temperatures.These record-breaking temperatures have taken a toll on the Arctic, which has seen thinning and melting ice for more than a decade. Five of the first six months of 2016 set records for lowest respective levels of monthly Arctic sea-ice extent (the area of ocean covered by the ice). By late September,Arctic sea ice could reach its lowest extent since satellite record-keeping began, NASA said. "We're seeing the surface begin melting as much as two months ahead of schedule," he said. At the peak of summer, the Arctic sea-ice extent now covers 40 percent less area than it did in the late 1970s and early 1980s, NASA said. What this means Sustained above-average temperatures, as the planet has seen so far this century, can affect the ice sheet, global sea levels, ecosystems and more, according to Schmidt. One of the very visible effects of the warming climate is the greening of the Arctic. What was once a frozen tundra landscape has practically become a new ecosystem, said Charles Miller, deputy science lead for the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Because of longer, warmer growing seasons coupled with shorter, less brutally cold winters, we've had a significant change in the vegetation structure … really changing the landscape," Miller said. Increasing temperatures and a warmer Arctic have global implications, Meier said. The jet stream and weather patterns could shift as the Arctic ice cover continues to diminish, he said. Original article on Live Science. source I took this article from + a video in this article can be found here : http://www.space.com/33502-2016-could-be-hottest-year-on-record.html
