28 September 2007
On 27 September 2007, NASA launched the Dawn spacecraft into the asteroid belt. Dawn will explore Vesta (530 km across), one of the largest asteroids, and Ceres (about 950 km across), the smallest dwarf planet. This is the first mission ever in which a single spacecraft orbits two Solar System objects.
27 September 2007
NASA's space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) recently pictured a curious tailed galaxy. The tail formed as the galaxy plunged into a cluster of galaxies, expelling material and forming stars behind it. In the CXO image, the galactic debris extends for 200,000 light years, twice the breadth of the Milky Way Galaxy.
26 September 2007
The NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft discovered a new comet. SOHO discovered over 1350 comets, but its latest discovery is peculiar as the spacecraft spotted it twice before. This is SOHO's first periodic comet.
25 September 2007
An international team of astronomers using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has discovered that the south pole of Neptune is the hottest region of the planet. This is consistent with the fact that it is late southern summer in Neptune and this region has been in sunlight for about 40 years.
24 September 2007
Whether or not people are heating up the planet, the best course of action is to do something about global warming, some experts are arguing. However, others think that is moving too fast.
24 September 2007
NASA recently published an impressive picture of three moons of Saturn, which were parading near the outer edge of the planet's graceful rings. The image was acquired by the Saturn-orbiter Cassini spacecraft.
23 September 2007
NASA recently published an interesting image of Hyperion, Saturn's enigmatic deformed moon. The image was acquired by the Saturn-orbiter Cassini spacecraft.
19 September 2007
Two of NASA's Great Observatories, the Spitzer Space Telescope (SST) and the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), teamed up to observe a dazzling cosmic view, a star-birth region containing a young star cluster in its heart. This region, known as the Coronet, lies in the constellation Corona Australis, the Southern Crown.
19 September 2007
You are drinking lots of cola at a party, when suddenly it hits: You! Are! Hyper! You jump around. You talk too fast. You laugh so hard that soda squirts out of your nose. Later, you cannot fall asleep, and the next day, you are tired and feel awful. Sound familiar?
18 September 2007
Nearly 30 years after Nobel laureate Linus Pauling famously and controversially suggested that vitamin C supplements can prevent cancer, a team of Johns Hopkins scientists have shown that in mice at least, vitamin C and potentially other antioxidants can indeed inhibit the growth of some tumors just not in the manner suggested by years of investigation.