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| Artist illustration of the early Universe. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC). Click to enlarge. |
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| First Light of the Universe? |
| Nov 2, 2005 - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope might have captured images of the first stars in the Universe, glimpsing an era more than 13 billion years ago; a time when the glow of the Big Bang faded. A 10-hour observation by Spitzer's infrared camera array in the constellation Draco captured a diffuse glow of infrared light. It's believed this glow is coming from the first stars, more than a hundred times more massive than our Sun, which survived for only a few million years before exploding as the first supernovae. (Full Story) |
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| View of the desert in Utah. Image credit: Mars Desert Research Station. Click to enlarge. |
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| Methane Producing Bacteria Found in the Desert |
| Nov 2, 2005 - Researchers have discovered methane-producing microbes in some of the most inhospitable deserts here in Earth, bolstering the theory that methane detected in the Martian atmosphere was caused by life. The scientists collected soil samples near the Mars Desert Research Station in the Utah desert. They added a growth medium to the soil, and detected methane gas being released. This isn't conclusive evidence of life on Mars, but it helps make the case that microbial life can and might exist on the Martian surface. (Full Story) |
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| That Neutron Star Should Be a Black Hole |
| Nov 2, 2005 - Astronomers were expecting that a massive star in the Westerlund 1 star cluster should have collapsed into a black hole. Instead, it became a neutron star. Since this star was 40 times the mass of the Sun before it collapsed, it should have been a prime black hole candidate. So why did it end up as a neutron star? It's possible that the star blew off most of its mass at the end of its life, so there just wasn't enough material to form a black hole. (Full Story) |
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| Mars Express Instrument Working Again |
| Nov 2, 2005 - When Mars Express' Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) malfunctioned a few months ago, mission controllers weren't sure they could get it working again. Well, they were wrong. It turns out that the pendulum motor, which drives various parts of the PFS had failed, and they were able to recover by using a back-up motor. PFS is a very sensitive instrument capable of detecting minute traces of various gasses in the Martian atmosphere, including methane which could indicate current life on the Red Planet. (Full Story) |
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| The area marked in yellow is the region imaged by Huygens as it landed. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI. Click to enlarge. |
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| Pinpointing Huygens |
| Nov 2, 2005 - During Cassini's recent Titan flyby on October 28, 2005, it imaged the area where Huygens landed earlier this year. Of course it couldn't see the probe, but scientists were able to match up Cassini's images to Huygen's images to show exactly where it landed. The colour image is was actually taken in infrared (red areas are brighter and blue is darker, and the the black-and-white image was produced by Cassini's synthetic aperture radar. (Full Story) |
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