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| Gone for a Week... Now I'm Back |
Aug 22, 2004 - In case you hadn't noticed, I didn't update Universe Today all last week. I was just in the process of working on Monday's issue when I found out that my Grandma was very sick in the hospital, and probably wouldn't last too much longer. I rushed back to Vancouver to see her, and she ended up passing away on Tuesday morning. She was 96, and had lived a long and happy life. I spent the rest of the week hanging out with my family, and attending the memorial - I didn't really feel like working on the website. :-(
Strangely, the news didn't wait for me, so I've spent the weekend catching up. That's why the next issue's pretty big.
Thanks for all your support.
Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today |
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| Image credit: NASA |
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| Helicopter Will Catch Samples from Genesis |
| Aug 19, 2004 - NASA's Genesis spacecraft has nearly returned to Earth with its precious cargo of particles from the solar wind. On September 8, the spacecraft's sample return capsule will enter the Earth's atmosphere, and it will be captured in midair by a helicopter in Utah. The particles were collected over the course of 27 months, and captured in hexagonal wafers of pure silicon, gold, sapphire, and diamond. These are so fragile, that engineers didn't want to risk it actually striking the ground and damaging some of these wafers. Two helicopters will be in the air as the capsule parachutes down, and they should have 5 opportunities to snag it before it hits the ground. (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: ESA |
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| Rosetta Can "Smell" a Comet |
| Aug 19, 2004 - One experiment on board the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft will let it cook particles from a comet in a miniature oven, and then "smell" the results. When Rosetta arrives at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it will send down a small spacecraft to actually land on its surface. This lander will be able to scoop up and drill samples from the comet's surface and then place them in an Evolved Gas Analyser. This tiny oven can heat the particles to 800 degrees Celsius which converts them into gas which can then be analyzed to understand what chemicals are present. (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: NASA/JPL |
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| More Evidence for Past Water on Mars |
| Aug 18, 2004 - NASA's Spirit rover has dug up plenty of evidence on slopes of "Columbia Hills" that water once covered the area. Spirit has been inspecting an outcrop called "Clovis" on a hill about 9 metres (30 feet) above the Gusev Crater plains, and it's found that liquid water changed the composition of the rock. Unlike rocks in the plains, which have coatings and veins created by small amounts of water, these formations have been deeply affected by water over a long period of time. (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: ESO |
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| Estimating the Age of the Milky Way |
| Aug 17, 2004 - Here's a question that's surprisingly difficult to answer: how old is the Milky Way? A team of astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope to get an approximate age of 13.6 billion years, give or take 800 million. They reached this estimate by studying some of the oldest stars in our galaxy, which are located in globular star clusters, and born together in the same cloud of dust at the same time. They made difficult observations of a substance called Beryllium-9, which has been accumulating throughout the Universe since the Big Bang. (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: Chandra |
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| Chandra Sees Clouds Coming Together |
| Aug 16, 2004 - A new image of Abell 2125, taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, shows several intergalactic clouds of hot gas in the process of merging together; they seem to be in the process of creating a single massive galaxy cluster. Chandra's resolution allows astronomers to distinguish the clouds from the individual galaxies inside it. (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: NASA/JPL |
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| Ganymede's Lumpy Interior |
| Aug 16, 2004 - Scientists have used data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft to uncover strange rocky lumps underneath Ganymede's icy shell. One theory is that they're rock formations, lodged deep in the ice and held up for billions of years. The data was gathered by Galileo during its second flyby of the moon in 1996. This discovery challenges theories about the thickness and strength of Ganymede's ice - you would expect the rocks held up at the top, or resting at the bottom, but not somewhere in the middle. Galileo was crashed into Jupiter nearly a year ago. (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: ESA |
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| Eroded Valleys on Mars |
| Aug 16, 2004 - This image was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, and shows a system of outflow channels called the Dao Valles and Niger Valles; it was taken in June 2004, during the spacecraft's 528th orbit. The eroded channels are in a region of Mars that's near the southern flank of the Hadriaca Patera volcano, so they could have been created by fast moving lava "running off" during an eruption. (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI |
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| Cassini Discovers Two New Moons |
| Aug 16, 2004 - Cassini has uncovered two new mini-moons of Saturn, orbiting between Mimas and Enceladus. The new moons have been dubbed S/2004 S1 and 2/2004 S2, and scientists estimate that they're approximately 4 km (2.5 miles) in diameter. They were detected using automated software that scans through images taken by Cassini to look for moving objects. Scientists have two theories about moons this small: they could have survived since the formation of the Solar System, or they could have formed more recently by particles from Saturn's ring accumulating together. (Full Story) |
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