Archive for the ‘space’ Category
2009
“The Opportunity rover has come across an odd-shaped, large, dark rock, about 0.6 meters (2 feet) across on the surface of Mars, which may be a meteorite. The rover team spotted the rock called “Block Island,” on July 18, 2009, in the opposite direction from which it was driving. The team then had the rover do a hard right (not really, but you know what I mean) and backtrack some 250 meters (820 feet) to study it closer. Oppy has been studying the rock with its alpha particle X-ray spectrometer to get composition measurements and to confirm if indeed it is a meteorite…
Block Island really does have a meteorite-like look to it. Stu suggested on his blog that it looks like several meteorites found on Earth, such as one of the Derrick Peak meteorites found in Antarctica, shown below. The Derrick Peak meteorites are iron meteorites, and about 27 were found in one location in Antarctica. Researchers believe they all came from one meteor shower…”
source universetoday.com
“A SECOND look at sunspot drawings from the 1700s has clarified a puzzling episode in the sun’s history, and could lead to more accurate forecasts of dangerous solar outbursts.
The sun sometimes hurls clouds of plasma our way, which can fry satellites and knock out power grids on EarthMovie Camera. The outbursts are most common during solar maxima, when the dark blemishes of sunspots appear in greatest abundance on the sun.
Although there is an average of 11 years between solar maxima, predicting the exact timing and height of each peak is difficult as there is little historical data to plug into models. About two dozen solar cycles have occurred since reasonably complete records began. Now an analysis of historic sunspot drawings suggests that this patchy record had omitted a solar cycle from the late 1700s…”
source: newscientist.com
“A liquid plume is spewing from Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus — but is it coming from heated ice on the surface, or a liquid ocean underneath?
Analysis of the plume’s chemistry, detailed in the Cassini (CICLOPS) image above and reported in Nature this week, may put the debate to rest.
Lead author Jack Hunter (J.H.) Waite, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas and his colleagues say ammonia detected in the jets from Enceladus’ south pole provides the strongest evidence yet for the existence of liquid water beneath the surface.
A previous paper led by Frank Postberg of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, published in Nature just last month, reported the discovery of salts in E-ring particles derived from the plume, also suggestive of a liquid reservoir.”
source: universetoday.com