SciBuff.com

Top Stories

Gliese 581g, that new “goldilocks” exoplanet we got excited about a few weeks ago, might not exist – A group of Swiss astronomers announced yesterday at the International Astronomical Union’s annual meeting in Turin, Italy, that they couldn’t detect the “goldilocks” exoplanet found by U.S. researchers a few weeks ago. -Discovery Blogs

SOHO sheds new light on solar flares – After detailed analysis of data from the SOHO and GOES spacecraft, a team of European scientists has been able to shed new light on the role of solar flares in the total output of radiation from our nearest star. Their surprising conclusion is that X-rays account for only about 1 per cent of the total energy emitted by these explosive events. -ESA SOHO

Giant Star Goes Supernova, Smothered by its Own Dust – Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered that a giant star in a remote galaxy ended its life with a dust-shrouded whimper instead of the more typical bang. -JPL/NASA

iPhone Equipped Balloon Leaves Brooklyn for the Edge of Space - Video from a camera attached to a weather balloon that rose into the upper stratosphere and recorded the blackness of space. Seven-year-old Max Geissbuhler and his dad Luke Geissbuhler dreamed of visiting space… -NASA Hack Space

[more stories]

Videos

Photos

ISS View of the Southwestern USA

Crew of STS-133 arrives at KSC

NGC 1316

NGC7000 + IC 5070 in Ha/sG/OIII

Gallery Pick of the Day

Olympus Mons stands 27 kilometres high above the mean surface of Mars, being the tallest known volcano and mountain in the Solar System. It is about three times taller than Earth's Mt. Everest.

The photo above is “Pick of the Day” from one of the three galleries: Astronomy Gallery, Space Shuttle Gallery and Space Station Gallery.

Top Stories

Flying to the Moon – From the Space Station? - Last month the International Space Station partner agencies met to discuss the continuation of space station operations into the next decade and its use as a research laboratory. They also did a little forward thinking, and talked about some unique possibilities for the station’s future, including the potential for using the space station as a launching point to fly a manned mission around the Moon. -Nancy Atkinson – Universe Today

NASA Administrator Thanks President Obama and Congress for Agency’s New Direction Support – The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in support of President Obama’s signing of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010 on Monday, Oct. 11, 2010 … -NASA

Solar storms coming our way this week? – The Sun is getting back into the swing of things: a big active region on its limb erupted yesterday (October 10), sending out a small storm of subatomic particles into space. We weren’t in the line of fire, but over the next few days the rotation of the Sun will bring Active Region 11112 closer to the center of the Sun’s disk, and if that region erupts it may send a storm our way. -Phil Plait / Bad Astronomy

[more stories]

Videos

Photos

Active Region 11112

Milky Way, Jupiter and Scorpio

Sunrise

Obama Signs NASA Authorization Act

Gallery Pick of the Day

Latest image of aurora borealis above Yellowknife, taken at 03h10 MDT October 10, 2010.

The photo above is “Pick of the Day” from one of the three galleries: Astronomy Gallery, Space Shuttle Gallery and Space Station Gallery.

Top Stories

Could a Human Mars Mission Be Funded Commercially? – What will it take to actually get humans to Mars? The best answer is probably money. The right amount of cold, hard cash will certainly solve a lot of problems and eliminate hurdles in sending a human mission to the Red Planet. But cash-strapped federal space agencies aren’t currently in the position to be able to direct a mission to another world – at least in the near term – and seemingly, a trip Mars is always 20-30 years off into the future. But how about a commercially funded effort? -Nancy Atkinson / Universe Today

Soyuz launches to space station – A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut has left Earth bound for the International Space Station (ISS). – BBC

European South Observatory: Top 100 Images – The European Southern Observatory is a veritable factory of mind-blowing space photos, and now they’ve compiled their top 100 images ever all in one place. -Wired / ESO

Water Discovered on Second Asteroid, May Be Even More Common – Water ice on asteroids may be more common than expected, according to a new study that is being presented at the world’s largest gathering of planetary scientists. -Science Daily

[more stories]

Videos

Photos

M42 - Orion Nebula

Deep Sky Orion

NGC 2264 and the Christmas Tree cluster

IC 434 - Horsehead Nebula

Gallery Pick of the Day

Recorded on September 27, this well-planned composite of consecutive multiple exposures captured Jupiter and Uranus in their remarkable celestial line-up accompanied by their brighter moons. The faint greenish disk of distant planet Uranus is near the upper left corner. Of the tilted planet's 5 larger moons, two can be spotted just above and left of the planet's disk. At the right side of the frame is ruling gas giant Jupiter, flanked along a line by all four of its Galilean satellites. Farthest from Jupiter is Callisto, with Europa and Io all left of the planet's disk, while Ganymede stands alone at the right. - Credit: Peter Knappert / APOD

The photo above is “Pick of the Day” from one of the three galleries: Astronomy Gallery, Space Shuttle Gallery and Space Station Gallery.

Top Stories

Daylight Venus transit of the ISS – Venus is the brightest celestial body in the night sky after the Moon. It could get as bright as an magnitude of -4.6. When Theo Ramakers and Frank Garner photographed its beauty on the afternoon of Sep.25, Venus was right behind the path of ISS. -Xiao Sun / Astronomy Cameras Blog

Birth of the Space Age – History changed on Oct. 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial satellite. About the size of a beach ball and weighing about 184 pounds, it took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race. -NASA

STS-133 completes hyper loading – Discovery may star in Transformers movie – With the departmental Flight Readiness Reviews (FRRs) ongoing – leading up to the SSP (Space Shuttle Program) FRR set for next week – Discovery continues to enjoy a smooth pad flow, as the milestone of hyper loading (S0024) was completed on Saturday. The veteran orbiter is also enjoying a weekend at the movies, as filming of Transformers 3 picks up at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). -NASA Spaceflight

ESA and oil industries explore applications from space – Members of the space and oil and gas sectors have come together in the first meeting of its kind to discuss current Earth observation capabilities and the evolving information requirements within the oil and gas industry. -ESA

[more stories]

Videos

Jupiter's rotation with Great Red Spot and Europa moon - Credit: Emanuele Baldani

Photos

Comet 103P/Hartley

M42 - Orion Nebula

Io in true colors

Daily sunrise

Gallery Pick of the Day

Daylight Venus transit of the ISS - Credit: Theo Ramakers and Frank Garner

The photo above is “Pick of the Day” from one of the three galleries: Astronomy Gallery, Space Shuttle Gallery and Space Station Gallery.

Top Stories

NASA and NSF-Funded Research Finds First Potentially Habitable Exoplanet – A team of planet hunters from the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of a planet with three times the mass of Earth orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star’s “habitable zone.” -NASA

Related stories – Universe Today, University of Hawaii, University of California – Santa Cruz

All Systems Go for NASA’s $19 Billion Budget – The House of Representatives voted late Wednesday to accept the Senate’s version of NASA’s $19 billion fiscal 2011 budget proposal, which would provide money for an additional shuttle flight, kick-start development of a new heavy-lift booster for deep space exploration, and fund the development of commercial manned spacecraft for trips to and from low-Earth orbit. -CBS News

Largest Clouds Ever Seen on Titan – The Cassini spacecraft recently swooped by Saturn’s largest moon Titan and captured images of large patches of clouds. – Nancy Atkinson / Universe Today

NASA’s EPOXI Mission Sets Up for Comet Flyby – Earlier today, navigators and mission controllers for NASA’s EPOXI mission watched their computer screens as 23.6 million kilometers (14.7 million miles) away, their spacecraft successfully performed its 20th trajectory correction maneuver. The maneuver refined the spacecraft’s orbit, setting the stage for its flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4. – NASA/JPL-Caltech

High School students co-author scientific paper – Ten Sydney high-school students have taken a first step into the world of research by co-authoring a scientific paper with professional astronomers about a dying star. -Faulkes Telescope Project

Compete and find your way to Jupiter! – The ESA Advanced Concepts Team is celebrating World Space Week (4-10 October 2010) with the release of ‘The Space Game’, an online game for interplanetary trajectory design. -ESA

[more stories]

Videos

Photos

IRAS 22298+6505

Moon tonight

Cloud shadows at sunset

NGC 2683

NGC 7293 - Helix Nebula

M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy

M101 - Pinewheel Galaxy

M33 - Triangulum Galaxy

Gallery Pick of the Day

Jupiter and its moons tonight. From left, Callisto, Ganymede, Io and Europa. Uranus at top left - Credit: Richard Fleet

The photo above is “Pick of the Day” from one of the three galleries: Astronomy Gallery, Space Shuttle Gallery and Space Station Gallery.

Top Stories

Two Russian Companies Plan to Build First Commercial Space Station – Will there soon be another human destination in low Earth orbit, or is this a redundant pipe dream? Two Russian-based companies hope to build the first-ever commercial space station, named, fittingly, Commercial Space Station (CSS). -Nancy Atkinson / Universe Today

House to vote on Senate NASA bill – The US House of Representatives is slated to vote on a NASA appropriations bill WEDNESDAY. The bill is essentially the same the Senate passed recently. The House had a compromise bill up for debate, but decided yesterday there wasn’t time before Congress goes on vacation. So they are going to vote on the Senate version instead. -Phil Plait / Bad Astronomy

Kepler Mission Manager Update – Science team members are preparing to announce the mission’s latest discovery in early November. Additionally, the science team is expected to validate the Kepler 9d planet in the near future. Kepler 9d, which is about one and a half times larger than Earth, was announced as a planetary candidate at a media telecon held Aug. 26, 2010. -Kepler / NASA

Scientists Catch First Glimpse of ‘Pseudo’ Hawking Radiation – There’s a bit of buzz this week in science news about the first observation of “Hawking radiation” in the laboratory by scientists at the University of Milan. It’s interesting, to be sure, and definitely worthy of note, but let’s be clear about one thing: we’re talking about an analogue of a black hole emitting Hawking radiation, not the real deal… -Discovery News

[more stories]

Videos

Photos

Manama, Bahrain

An Airplane in Front of the Moon

Widefield Orion's Sword in HaRGB

Light Show Over the VAB

Gallery Pick of the Day

Composite image of the Crab Nebula (M1) with data from three of NASA's Great Observatories. The Chandra X-ray image is shown in blue, the Hubble Space Telescope optical image is in red and yellow, and the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared image is in purple - Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Seward; Optical: NASA/ESA/ASU/J.Hester & A.Loll; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. Minn./R.Gehrz

The photo above is “Pick of the Day” from one of the three galleries: Astronomy Gallery, Space Shuttle Gallery and Space Station Gallery.

A star’s spectacular death in the constellation Taurus was observed on Earth as the supernova of 1054 A.D. Now, almost a thousand years later, a super dense object — called a neutron star — left behind by the explosion is seen spewing out a blizzard of high-energy particles into the expanding debris field known as the Crab Nebula. X-ray data from Chandra provide significant clues to the workings of this mighty cosmic “generator,” which is producing energy at the rate of 100,000 suns.