I know I'm not the only one who likes to read about new planet discoveries and other Space intrigue.  We have a new candidate for life-supporting planets, and like all the others, it's the "best one yet."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exoplanet-alien-life-search-for-found-habitable-zone-new-earth-20-signs-cetus-sea-monster-a7691576.html

Pretty exciting, really.

This is so exciting to watch unfold (no pun intended).

https://www.space.com/proxima-centauri-third-exoplanet-candidate

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The sun's nearest neighbor may actually host three planets, a new study reports.

Astronomers have found evidence of a third planet circling Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star that lies a mere 4.2 light-years from our solar system. The candidate world, known as Proxima d, is estimated to be just 25% as massive as Earth, making it one of the lightest known exoplanets if it ends up being confirmed.

artist impression:

https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-locks-first-star

Quote

The James Webb Space Telescope's key pointing instrument is working well in testing, according to two space agencies involved with the observatory's commissioning work.

The Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS), a contribution from Honeywell on behalf of the Canadian Space Agency, successfully  "locked on" to a specific guide star in tracking mode on Sunday (Feb. 13), the CSA reported Thursday (Feb. 17).

With FGS working well so far, the instrument will next be used to assist with the ongoing alignment of the 18 hexagonal segments that make up the primary mirror of the telescope, the CSA added. Last week, Webb engineers released a first image of a single star showing many separate views from the different mirror segments, which was expected since alignment is ongoing.

"In the coming weeks, with the help of the FGS, each mirror segment will be carefully adjusted to 'stack' these [individual segment] views and calibrate the rest of the telescope's optical elements, to ultimately create a highly focused image of a single star," the CSA said.

What an incredible feat of technology. I can't wait to see the images produced.

22 hours ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-locks-first-star

What an incredible feat of technology. I can't wait to see the images produced.

It's hard to believe the same species that is doing this is also carrying on like idiots here on the ground.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/exomars-delay-1.6388123

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Because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe will no longer be attempting this year to send its first rover to Mars, which was to have probed whether the planet ever hosted life.

The European Space Agency confirmed Thursday that it's indefinitely suspending its ExoMars rover mission with partner Roscosmos, Russia's state space corporation.

ESA had previously said that the mission was "very unlikely" because of Russia's war against Ukraine.

The decision to suspend cooperation with Roscosmos was taken by ESA's ruling council, at a meeting this week in Paris.

"We deeply deplore the human casualties and tragic consequences of the aggression towards Ukraine," an ESA statement said. "While recognizing the impact on scientific exploration of space, ESA is fully aligned with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its member states."

Because of their respective orbits around the Sun, Mars is only readily reachable from Earth every two years. The next launch window would be 2024.

Goddammit, Russia.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/nasa-5000-exoplanets-1.6393386

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/discovery/exoplanet-catalog/

https://www.space.com/spacex-raises-prices-launch-starlink-inflation

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-meteor-second-night-in-a-row-1.6396058

Anyone catch this last night? Happened around 9:45pm and was reportedly very bright.

1 hour ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-meteor-second-night-in-a-row-1.6396058

Anyone catch this last night? Happened around 9:45pm and was reportedly very bright.

Yes!  I just happened to be walking North in my neighbourhood at 9:45 and did see it through the neighbour's large oak tree.  It looked orange to me, but my eyeglass prescription and lens coatings can do weird things to light if I'm not looking directly at a light source.

So quick, I wasn't sure what I saw.  Asked on twitter if anyone else saw it and got a few "me too's".

 

 

                                         

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/hubble-telescope-farthest-star-1.6402889

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Astronomers have discovered the farthest star yet, a super-hot, super-bright giant that formed nearly 13 billion years ago at the dawn of the cosmos.

But this luminous blue star is long gone, so massive that it almost certainly exploded into bits just a few million years after emerging. Its swift demise makes it all the more incredible that an international team spotted it with observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. It takes eons for light emitted from distant stars to reach us.

"We're seeing the star as it was about 12.8 billion years ago, which puts it about 900 million years after the Big Bang," said astronomer Brian Welch, a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the study appearing in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

"We definitely just got lucky."

He nicknamed it Earendel, an Old English name that means morning star or rising light — "a fitting name for a star that we have observed in a time often referred to as `Cosmic Dawn.'"

 

https://www.livescience.com/first-interstellar-object-detected

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A fireball that blazed through the skies over Papua New Guinea in 2014 was actually a fast-moving object from another star system, according to a recent memo(opens in new tab) released by the U.S. Space Command (USSC).

The object, a small meteorite measuring just 1.5 feet (0.45 meter) across, slammed into Earth's atmosphere on Jan. 8, 2014, after traveling through space at more than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h) — a speed that far exceeds the average velocity of meteors that orbit within the solar system, according to a 2019 study of the object published in the preprint database arXiv.

That 2019 study argued that the wee meteor's speed, along with the trajectory of its orbit, proved with 99% certainty that the object had originated far beyond our solar system — possibly "from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disk of the Milky Way galaxy," the authors wrote. But despite their near certainty, the team's paper was never peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, as some of the data needed to verify their calculations was considered classified by the U.S. government...

 

 

Soon my pretties... soon...

 

13 minutes ago, wanna-b-fanboy said:

Soon my pretties... soon...

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/james-webb-telescope-images-1.6447622

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NASA's new space telescope is in the home stretch of testing, with science observations expected to begin in July, astronomers said Monday.

The James Webb Space Telescope beamed back the latest test pictures of a neighbouring satellite galaxy, and the results are stunning when compared with images taken by NASA's previous infrared observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Each of the 18 mirror segments on the new telescope is bigger than the single one on Spitzer.

 

Launched last December, the $10 billion US ($13 billion Cdn) Webb is the largest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever sent into space. It will seek light emitted by the first stars and galaxies close to 14 billion years ago, and keep a sharp lookout for possible signs of life.

Scientists are keeping the identity of Webb's first official target a secret.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

Astronomers reveal first photograph of a monster black hole at the heart of our galaxy

 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/8/23160209/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-meteor-strike-impact
 

17 mirrors still left 🤷‍♂️

8 minutes ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/8/23160209/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-meteor-strike-impact
 

17 mirrors still left 🤷‍♂️

Is it still under warranty? 

36 minutes ago, JCon said:

Is it still under warranty? 

Hopefully they were purchased at Costco - they take anything back, regardless of the condition!

5 hours ago, bigg jay said:

Hopefully they were purchased at Costco - they take anything back, regardless of the condition!

But they are probably not still in the original packaging.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-15/china-says-it-may-have-detected-signals-from-alien-civilizations

37 minutes ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-15/china-says-it-may-have-detected-signals-from-alien-civilizations

 

 

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/help-nasa-scientists-find-clouds-on-mars

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured these clouds just after sunset on March 19, 2021, the 3,063rd Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission. The image is made up of 21 individual images stitched together and color corrected so that the scene appears as it would to the human eye. The clouds are drifting over “Mont Mercou,” a cliff face that Curiosity studied.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

 

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NASA scientists hope to solve a fundamental mystery about Mars’ atmosphere, and you can help. They’ve organized a project called Cloudspotting on Mars that invites the public to identify Martian clouds using the citizen science platform Zooniverse. The information may help researchers figure out why the planet’s atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth’s even though ample evidence suggests the planet used to have a much thicker atmosphere.

Like Earth, Mars has clouds made of water ice. But unlike Earth, it also has clouds made of carbon dioxide (think: dry ice), which form when it gets cold enough for the Martian atmosphere to freeze locally. By understanding where and how these clouds appear, scientists hope to better understand the structure of Mars’ middle atmosphere, which is about 30 to 50 miles (50 to 80 kilometers) in altitude.

“We want to learn what triggers the formation of clouds – especially water ice clouds, which could teach us how high water vapor gets in the atmosphere – and during which seasons,” said Marek Slipski, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.