NASA MAVEN: Instrument delivered to study Martian atmosphere

NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission has reached its next stage, with the delivery of a remote sensor instrument to the company assembling the spacecraft, Lockheed Martin.

The Remote Sensing package will help scientists find clues as to how Mars lost its atmosphere.

The instrument, which was designed and is being built by the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (CU/LASP) under a NASA contract, will now be integrated into the spacecraft.

"Three of the big milestones in an instrument builder's life are the day you get selected to fly on a mission, the day you deliver the instrument to the spacecraft to get ready for launch, and the day that it gets where it's going and data starts flowing back from space," said Mark Lankton, Remote Sensing package program manager from CU/LASP.

The delivery is important because it means the team are shifting from assembling the basic spacecraft to focusing on getting the science instruments installed.

Bruce Jakosky, professor of geological sciences and associate director of science at CU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics

Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator from CU/LASP adds "This is a major step toward getting us to launch and then getting the science return from the mission."

Jupiter's Big Moon Ganymede Albedo Mapped by Amateur Astronomer

An amateur astronomer has created the first-ever homemade brightness map of Jupiter's huge moon Ganymede in a magnificent display of how non-professional skywatchers can contribute to the field of observational astronomy.

Greek skywatcher Emmanuel Kardasis of the Hellenic Amateur Astronomy Association (HAAA) created the new Ganymede map using a common "hobby" telescope and off-the-shelf camera and computer equipment.

His map matches up well with images of Ganymede's surface taken by professionals, said officials with the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC), which is meeting this week in Madrid.

For example, Kardasis' reflected brightness (or albedo) map identifies such Ganymede features as Phrygia Sulcus, a system of grooves and ridges thousands of miles across, and a low-lying dark area called the Nicholson region.

To create the images, Kardasis attached a camera to his telescope and recorded a video of the ice-covered Ganymede, which is the largest moon in the solar system at 3,273 miles (5,268 kilometers) across.

He picked the video's sharpest frames, then enhanced them using photo-editing software, EPSC officials said.

"Ganymede has a tiny disk as seen from Earth so was a good test for my techniques," Kardisis said in a statement.

"If the same methods were applied to other worlds, perhaps [Jupiter's] volcanic moon Io, we could capture surface fluctuations."

"Professional observatories may create better images, but they cannot monitor our rapidly and ever-changing universe."

"The equipment amateurs need to generate products like his Ganymede map is relatively easy to find" Kardasis said.

"Creating useful images of planets requires a telescope with a diameter of at least eight inches. For tiny discs, such as the moons of Jupiter, bigger is definitely better," he said.

"My Ganymede images were made using an 11-inch telescope. You also need a good motor drive on your tripod, a sensitive camera, some freely available software and lots of patience!"

Saturn's Icy Moon, Iapetus struck by 50-Mile Wide Landslides

A giant landslide on Iapetus reaches halfway across a 75-mile (120 kilometer) impact crater.

CREDIT: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Long landslides spotted on Saturn's moon, Iapetus, could help provide clues to similar movements of material on Earth.

Scientists studying the icy satellite have determined that flash heating could cause falling ice to travel 10 to 15 times farther than previously expected on Iapetus.

Extended landslides can be found on Mars and Earth, but are more likely to be composed of rock than ice.

Despite the differences in materials, scientists believe there could be a link between the long-tumbling debris on all three bodies.

"We think there's more likely a common mechanism for all of this, and we want to be able to explain all of the observations," lead scientist Kelsi Singer of Washington University, Dept of Earth and Planetary Sciences, reported.

Chasing Venus: When the world came Together

In 1716, sixty-year old Sir Edmund Halley called on astronomers all over the world to leave their cozy observatories, travel to the edges of the known world, set up their telescopes, and turn their eyes toward the sunrise on the morning of June 6th, 1761, when the first Transit of Venus of the scientific age would march across the face of the sun.

In the eighteenth century, the solar system had a shape but not a size.

Captain Cook's 1792 Drawing

By timing the entrance and the exit of Venus across the sun from latitudes all over the world, Halley explained, astronomers could roughly calculate the distance between the Earth and the Sun — a “celestial yardstick” for measuring the universe, as Andrea Wulf calls it in her excellent book Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens.

1882 Film of Venus transit

 It was the first worldwide scientific collaboration of its kind, a mathematical olympiad six hours in duration, with years of planning and seconds that counted.

Today, more than 250 years after this grand experiment that required astronomers all over the world to gather together and look to the sky at the exact same moment, we will experience the last transit of our lifetime (unless modern medicine makes us survive to December 2117, when the next one will take place).

NASA PLANET: The Milky Way's 100 Billion Planets

This artist's illustration gives an impression of how common planets are around the stars in the Milky Way.

The planets, their orbits and their host stars are all vastly magnified compared to their real separations.

A six-year search that surveyed millions of stars using the microlensing technique concluded that planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception.

The average number of planets per star is greater than one. This means that there is likely to be a minimum of 1,500 planets within just 50 light-years of Earth.

The results are based on observations taken over six years by the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration, which was founded in 1995. The study concludes that there are far more Earth-sized planets than bloated Jupiter-sized worlds.

This is based on calibrating a planetary mass function that shows the number of planets increases for lower mass worlds. A rough estimate from this survey would point to the existence of more than 10 billion terrestrial planets across our galaxy.

The results were published in the Jan. 12, 2012, issue of the British science journal Nature.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Kornmesser (ESO)

Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron

Small, water-rich near-Earth asteroids can be captured by spacecraft, allowing their resources to be extracted, officials with the new company Planetary Resources say.

CREDIT: Planetary Resources, Inc.

A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.

Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself but it also aims to advance humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system.

"If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to the near-Earth asteroids," Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson reported.

"They're just so valuable, and so easy to reach energetically. Near-Earth asteroids really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system."

UK Space Industry Survey 2012: Health and Effectiveness

The UK Space Agency has embarked on its biennial survey of the space industry and has contracted Oxford Economics to undertake the task.

The survey will cover the traditional providers of space technology (upstream) and those who exploit the technology (downstream).

However there are many companies whose business is partially or wholly dependent on space but who do not deal directly with space organisations or see themselves as part of the space industry. If you fit in this category, we are particularly keen to hear from you.

Download a letter (PDF, 36 Kb)  from David Williams, Chief Executive, UK Space Agency explaining the background and importance of the survey. To participate in the survey, please visit the Oxford Economics website.

You are invited to answer the survey online, but if you would prefer a hard copy version to complete and return by email or post, please inform Pete Collings, tel: 0207 803 1411.

If you wish to discuss your involvement with the UK Space Agency, please contact George Pritchard, on 01793 418 060.

NASA - Compact Planetary System

This artist's concept depicts a planetary system so compact that it's more like Jupiter and its moons than a star and its planets.

Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission and ground-based telescopes recently confirmed that the system, called KOI-961, hosts the three smallest exoplanets currently known to orbit a star other than our sun.

An exoplanet is a planet that resides outside of our solar system.

The star, which is located about 130 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation, is a red dwarf that is one-sixth the size of the sun, or just 70 percent bigger than Jupiter. The star is also cooler than our sun, and gives off more red light than yellow.

The smallest of the three planets, called KOI-961.03, is actually located the farthest from the star, and is pictured in the foreground.

This planet is about the size of Mars, with a radius of 0.57 times that of Earth. The next planet to the upper right is KOI-961.01, which is 0.78 times the radius of Earth. The planet closest to the star is KOI-961.02, with a radius 0.73 times the Earth's.

All three planets whip around the star in less than two days, with the closest planet taking less than half a day.

Their close proximity to the star also means they are scorching hot, with temperatures ranging from 350 to 836 degrees Fahrenheit (176 to 447 degrees Celsius).

The star's habitable zone, or the region where liquid water could exist, is located far beyond the planets.

The ground-based observations contributing to these discoveries were made with the Palomar Observatory, near San Diego, Calif., and the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

High-Res Show Crust-Mantle Boundary - Moho, Where Is Earth's Mantle?

This map shows the global Mohorovičić discontinuity, better known as Moho, based on data from the GOCE satellite.

CREDIT: GEMMA project

Beneath the Earth's crust, the outermost hard shell that makes up just 1 percent of the volume of the planet, lies a hot, viscous layer of rock called the mantle.

Together, the crust and upper portion of the mantle. called the lithosphere, are where most important geological processes occur, such as mountain-building, earthquakes and the source of volcanoes.

The slow churning and overturning of the mantle is what drives the movements of Earth's tectonic plates.

New methods of observation using satellites are helping scientists learn more about this important layer of the Earth's inner and outer layers and where it begins under different regions of the planet.

Andrija Mohorovičić
Until just a century ago, we didn’t know Earth has a crust. In 1909, Croatian seismologist Andrija Mohorovičić found that at about 50 km underground there is a sudden change in seismic speed.

Ever since, that boundary between Earth’s crust and underlying mantle has been known as the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or Moho.

Even today, almost all we know about Earth’s deep layers comes from two methods: seismic and gravimetric.

Seismic methods are based on observing changes in the propagation velocity of seismic waves between the crust and mantle.

Gravimetry looks at the gravitational effect due to the density difference caused by the changing composition of crust and mantle.

But the Moho models based on seismic or gravity data are usually limited by poor data coverage or data being only available along single profiles.

GEMMA Project

GEMMA’s Moho map is based on the inversion of homogenous well-distributed gravimetric data.

For the first time, it is possible to estimate the Moho depth worldwide with unprecedented resolution, as well as in areas where ground data are not available.

This will offer new clues for understanding the dynamics of Earth’s interior, unmasking the gravitational signal produced by unknown and irregular subsurface density distribution.

GEMMA is being carried out by Italian scientist Daniele Sampietro and is funded by the Politecnico di Milano and ESA’s Support To Science Element under the Changing Earth Science Network initiative.

This initiative supports young scientists at post-doctoral level in ESA Member States to advance our knowledge in Earth system science by exploiting the observational capacity of ESA missions

Read more at the ESA Goce website

ESA: Astrophysicist Anthony Marston one of the minds behind ESA Science

Excellence and perseverance - astrophysicist Anthony Marston is one of the brilliant minds behind ESA Science

Mars HiRise Image: Spring on Mars

Spring on Mars. This image provided by NASA/JPL and the University of Arizona shows barchan (crescent-shaped) sand dunes in the North Polar region on Mars. 

In this image, taken during the northern spring season, the dunes and ground are still covered in seasonal frost.

The speckled appearance is due to the warming of the area.

As the carbon dioxide frost and ice on the dunes warms, small areas warm and sublimate (turn from solid to gas) faster, creating small jets that expose/deposit dark sand and dust onto the surface. 

Notice that there are no spots on the ground between the dunes - that is because the ground stays more uniformly cold, unlike the darker dune sand.

Picture: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/AFP/Getty

Scotland Space Scientific Research and Innovation is reaching for the stars

At last Scotland is being seen as playing a leading role in the space sector after decades of being the engineers, scientists and innovators that break down technological barriers in other countries' space programs.

The space sector contributes £5.6 billion to the UK economy, as well as supporting 68,000 high-value jobs. Not only that, it has soared above the recent economic headwinds, growing an average of 9 per cent each year since 1999.

Scotland-based companies are playing a key role in that success story. Clyde Space is leading the design and manufacture of the UKube-1 satellite – the UK’s first satellite commissioned by the UK Space Agency.

Other examples include Star-Dundee, which sells its data-handling test products to almost every international space agency, while Selex Galileo, in Edinburgh, is tapping into the market for European satellites.

Commercial success also goes hand in hand with globally recognised academic excellence, with the recent launch of the Space Glasgow research cluster by the UK Science Minister David Willetts.

Scotland is also involved with key instruments for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will replace Hubble Space telescope (HST), currently jointly managed by NASA and ESA.

But don’t think that space research is something that can only be applied out in the great beyond. In fact, on 6 March, Glasgow will host the second Scottish Space Symposium, exploring the theme of “Bringing space down to earth”. Download a copy of the Program here

Scottish Enterprise is supporting the event in partnership with University of Strathclyde to showcase the benefits of using space-based information and technologies.

For example, use of space-based data will allow Network Rail to improve safety by monitoring landslides remotely via satellite rather than sending engineers to remote locations.

Edinburgh-based Ecometrica is also using satellite data to monitor CO2 levels, putting them at the vanguard of carbon trading and tariffs which the EU is investigating placing on businesses as a means of tackling climate change.

So the Scottish Space Symposium will explore how businesses can benefit from terrestrial applications in such key fields as communications and transport. Science fact, as opposed to science fiction.

Hubble WFC3 Instrument discovers a true water world

Source: Hubblesite.org

Our solar system contains three types of planets: rocky, terrestrial worlds (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn), and ice giants (Uranus and Neptune).

Planets orbiting distant stars come in an even wider variety, including lava worlds and “hot Jupiters.”

Observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have added a new type of planet to the mix. By analyzing the previously discovered world GJ1214b, astronomer Zachory Berta (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and colleagues proved that it is a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere.

“GJ1214b is like no planet we know of,” said Berta. “A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water.”

GJ1214b was discovered in 2009 by the ground-based MEarth (pronounced “mirth”) Project, which is led by CfA’s David Charbonneau.

This super-Earth is about 2.7 times Earth’s diameter and weighs almost 7 times as much.

It orbits a red-dwarf star every 38 hours at a distance of 1.3 million miles, giving it an estimated temperature of 450 ° Fahrenheit.

In 2010, CfA scientist Jacob Bean and colleagues reported that they had measured the atmosphere of GJ1214b, finding it likely that the atmosphere was composed mainly of water.

However, their observations could also be explained by the presence of a world-wide haze in GJ1214b’s atmosphere.

Berta and his co-authors used Hubble’s WFC3 instrument to study GJ1214b when it crossed in front of its host star. During such a transit, the star’s light is filtered through the planet’s atmosphere, giving clues to the mix of gases.

“We’re using Hubble to measure the infrared colour of sunset on this world,” explained Berta.

Hazes are more transparent to infrared light than to visible light, so the Hubble observations help tell the difference between a steamy and a hazy atmosphere.

They found the spectrum of GJ1214b to be featureless over a wide range of wavelengths, or colours. The atmospheric model most consistent with the Hubble data is a dense atmosphere of water vapour.

“The Hubble measurements really tip the balance in favour of a steamy atmosphere,” said Berta.

Since the planet’s mass and size are known, astronomers can calculate the density, which works out to about 2 grams per cubic centimeter.

Water has a density of 1 g/cm3, while Earth’s average density is 5.5 g/cm3. This suggests that GJ1214b has much more water than Earth, and much less rock.

As a result, the internal structure of GJ1214b would be very different than our world.

“The high temperatures and high pressures would form exotic materials like ‘hot ice’ or ‘superfluid water’ – substances that are completely alien to our everyday experience,” said Berta.

Theorists expect that GJ1214b formed farther out from its star, where water ice was plentiful, and migrated inward early in the system’s history.

In the process, it would have passed through the star’s habitable zone. How long it lingered there is unknown.

GJ1214b is located in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, and just 40 light-years from Earth.

Therefore, it’s a prime candidate for study by the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

A paper reporting these results has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online.

This release is being issued jointly with NASA

NASA: First sublime planet foreshadows Mercury's fate

Now rocky planets can do this too (Image: NASA, European Space Agency, Alfred Vidal-Madjar (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS))

A rocky exoplanet about the size of Mercury appears to be evaporating before our eyes.

If confirmed, this would be the first time a rocky planet has been found turning to gas, demonstrating just how wacky alien planets can be.

The provocative suggestion may also foreshadow the fate of Mercury.

"My first reaction was disbelief," says Dan Fabrycky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the new analysis. 

After playing with the data himself, however, he has come around – though he is still cautious. "After turning it over in my mind a few days, I cannot come up with a more natural theoretical explanation," he says.

The evaporation was inferred from observations by NASA's Kepler space telescope. These show that a star called KIC 12557548, which is slightly smaller than the sun, is dimming every 15.685 hours precisely. 

That suggests an orbiting companion is transiting, or passing in front of the star. Unlike other transits seen by Kepler, though, the dimming in this system varies wildly from one pass to another.

The best explanation is a rocky planet about the size of Mercury that is subliming – turning directly to a gas - due to the intense radiation from its star, conclude a team led by Saul Rappaport of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Hot rocks

The planet's orbital period suggests it is just 1 per cent of Earth's distance from the sun, where it should attain a temperature of 2000 kelvin. 

"That's well above what you would need to vaporise pyroxene and olivine – common minerals that make up rocky planets," says team member Eugene Chiang of the University of California, Berkeley.

As a result, the subliming planet is leaking rock vapour and dust into space, the team say, forming a large cloud around the planet that blocks starlight when it passes in front of the star. 

This is similar to the way sunlight vaporises ice from comets, producing a dusty cloud called a coma. The planet may even have a comet-like tail, the team say.

The cloud fluctuates in size over time, explaining why the amount of dimming varies from one event to another, they say.

No rocky planets have been seen evaporating before, although gas giants have.

Kepler discovery establishes new class of planetary systems

Using data from NASA's Kepler Mission, astronomers announced the discovery of two new transiting "circumbinary" planet systems - planets that orbit two stars.

This work establishes that such "two sun" planets are not rare exceptions, but are in fact common with many millions existing in our Galaxy.

The work was published on-line in the journal Nature and was presented by Dr. William Welsh of San Diego State University at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, TX on behalf of the Kepler Science Team.

The two new planets, named Kepler-34 b and Kepler-35 b, are both gaseous Saturn-size planets.

Kepler-34 b orbits its two Sun-like stars every 289 days, and the stars themselves orbit and eclipse each other every 28 days.

The eclipses allow a very precise determination of the stars' sizes. Kepler-35 b revolves about a pair of smaller stars (80 and 89 percent of the Sun's mass) every 131 days, and the stars orbit and eclipse one another every 21 days.

Both systems reside in the constellation Cygnus, with Kepler-34 at 4900 light-years from Earth, and Kepler-35 at 5400 light-years, making these among the most distant planets discovered.

While long anticipated in both science and science fiction, the existence of a circumbinary planet orbiting a pair of normal stars was not definitively established until the discovery of Kepler-16 b, announced by the Kepler Team last September. Like Kepler-16 b, these new planets also transit (eclipse) their host stars, making their existence unambiguous.

When only Kepler-16 b was known, many questions remained about the nature of circumbinary planets - what kinds of orbits, masses, radii, temperatures, etc., could they have? And most of all, was Kepler-16 b just a fluke? With the discovery of Kepler-34 b and 35 b, astronomers can now answer many of those questions and begin to study an entirely new class of planets.

"It was once believed that the environment around a pair of stars would be too chaotic for a circumbinary planet to form, but now that we have confirmed three such planets, we know that it is possible, if not probable, that there are at least millions in the Galaxy," said Welsh, who led the team of 46 investigators involved in this research.

Dr. Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute, co-author of this paper and lead-author of the Kepler-16 discovery, further stated, "With this paper, the new field of comparative circumbinary planetology is now established."

The discovery was made possible by the three unique capabilities of the Kepler space telescope: its ultra-high precision, its ability to simultaneously observe roughly 160,000 stars, and its long-duration near-continuous measurements of the brightness of stars. Additional work using ground-based telescopes provided velocity measurements of the stars needed to confirm that these candidates are really planets.

"The search is on for more circumbinary planets," said co-author Dr. Joshua Carter of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "and we hope to use Kepler for years to come."

A circumbinary planet has two suns, not just one. The distances between the planet and stars are continually changing due to their orbital motion, so the amount of sunlight the planet receives varies dramatically.

"These planets can have really crazy climates that no other type of planet could have," said Dr. Jerome Orosz, a co-author from San Diego State University. "It would be like cycling through all four seasons many times per year, with huge temperature changes."

Welsh adds, "The effects of these climate swings on the atmospheric dynamics, and ultimately on the evolution of life on habitable circumbinary planets, is a fascinating topic that we are just beginning to explore."

Hobby-Eberly Telescope Finds Three planets - each orbiting its own giant, dying star

Three planets - each orbiting its own giant, dying star - have been discovered by an international research team led by Alex Wolszczan, an Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope.

Penn State is a major partner in the design, construciton, and operation of this telescope, which is one of the largest in the world. In 1992, Wolszczan became the first astronomer ever to discover planets outside our solar system. 

Credit: Marty Harris/McDonald Obs./UT-Austin

One of the massive, dying stars has an additional mystery object orbiting it, according to team leader Alex Wolszczan, an Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, who, in 1992, became the first astronomer ever to discover planets outside our solar system. 

The new research is expected to shed light on the evolution of planetary systems around dying stars. It also will help astronomers to understand how metal content influences the behavior of dying stars.

 

The research will be published in December in the Astrophysical Journal. The first author of the paper is Sara Gettel, a graduate student from Penn State's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the paper is co-authored by three graduate students from Poland.

The three newly-discovered planetary systems are more evolved than our own solar system. "Each of the three stars is swelling and has already become a red giant - a dying star that soon will gobble up any planet that happens to be orbiting too close to it," Wolszczan said.

"While we certainly can expect a similar fate for our own Sun, which eventually will become a red giant and possibly will consume our Earth we won't have to worry about it happening for another five-billion years." 

Wolszczan also said that one of the massive, dying stars - BD +48 738 - is accompanied not only by an enormous, Jupiter-like planet, but also by a second, mystery object.

According to the team, this object could be another planet, a low-mass star, or - most interestingly - a brown dwarf, which is a star-like body that is intermediate in mass between the coolest stars and giant planets.

"We will continue to watch this strange object and, in a few more years, we hope to be able to reveal its identity," Wolszczan said.

 

Hawaii Astronomers Find Planet in the Process of Forming

Artist's conception of the area near the planet LkCa 15 b. Click on picture for larger view. Credit: Karen L. Teramura, UH IfA.

The first direct image of a planet in the process of forming around its star has been captured by University of Hawaii astronomer Adam Kraus.

What astronomers are calling LkCa 15 b, looks like a hot "protoplanet" surrounded by a swath of cooler dust and gas, which is falling into the still-forming planet.

Images have revealed that the forming planet sits inside a wide gap between the young parent star and an outer disk of dust.

Kraus (UH Institute for Astronomy) and colleague Michael Ireland (Macquarie University and the Australian Astronomical Observatory) combined the power of the 10-meter Keck Observatory telescopes with a bit of optical sleight of hand.

"LkCa 15 b is the youngest planet ever found, about 5 times younger than the previous record holder," said Kraus.

"This young gas giant is being built out of the dust and gas. In the past, you couldn't measure this kind of phenomenon because it's happening so close to the star. But, for the first time, we've been able to directly measure the planet itself as well as the dusty matter around it."

Kraus will be presenting the discovery at an Oct. 19 meeting at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The meeting follows the acceptance of a research paper on the discovery by Kraus and Ireland by The Astrophysical Journal.

The optical sleight of hand used by the astronomers is to combine the power of Keck's Adaptive Optics with a technique called aperture mask interferometry. The former is the use of a deformable mirror to rapidly correct for atmospheric distortions of starlight.

The latter involves placing a small mask with several holes in the path of the light collected and concentrated by a giant telescope. With that, the scientists can manipulate the light waves.

"It's like we have an array of small mirrors," said Kraus. "We can manipulate the light and cancel out distortions." The technique allows the astronomers to cancel out the bright light of stars. They can then resolve disks of dust around stars and see gaps in the dusty layers where protoplanets may be hiding.

"Interferometry has actually been around since the 1800s, but through the use of adaptive optics has only been able to reach nearby young suns for about the last 7 years." said Dr. Ireland.

"Since then we've been trying to push the technique to its limits using the biggest telescopes in the world, especially Keck."

The discovery of LkCa 15 b began as a survey of 150 young dusty stars in star-forming regions. That led to the more concentrated study of a dozen stars.

"LkCa 15 was only our second target, and we immediately knew we were seeing something new," said Kraus. "We could see a faint point source near the star, so thinking it might be a Jupiter-like planet we went back a year later to get more data."

ESA Astronauts Learn to use ExoSkeleton: Controlling Robotic Planetary Explorers

Astronaut Christer Fuglesang works with an exoskeleton device in the European Space Agency's robotics lab.

CREDIT: ESA - J. v. Haarlem

When human space travelers arrive above an alien world, it's likely that they would send down the robotic explorers first.

Now astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) can remotely control rovers and androids on Earth as practice for future missions to the moon, Mars and asteroids.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has created a four-wheel rover with two arms, called Eurobot, as a pioneer test subject for remote control by humans in space. The space station crew will try to operate Eurobot from more than 200 miles above the Earth with a computer that has special screens and a joystick.

Eurobot is lowered into the Neutral Buoyancy Facility at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC), in Cologne, Germany. 

Under the watchful eye of the Test Director, Hervé Stevenin, the Eurobot WET model is lowered into the pool ahead of testing to verify the operational concept for Eurobot.

Credits: ESA - S.Koenen

"The Space Station is the perfect orbital platform to simulate very realistic scenarios for human exploration," said Kim Nergaard, ESA's coordinator for the Multi-purpose End-To-End Robotic Operations Network (Meteron) program.

METERON

NASA Genesis: Mission Data Suggests Sun and Planets Constructed Differently

Researchers analyzing samples returned by NASA's 2004 Genesis mission have discovered that our sun and its inner planets may have formed differently than previously thought.

Data revealed differences between the sun and planets in oxygen and nitrogen, which are two of the most abundant elements in our solar system.

Although the difference is slight, the implications could help determine how our solar system evolved.

"We found that Earth, the moon, as well as Martian and other meteorites which are samples of asteroids, have a lower concentration of the O-16 than does the sun," said Kevin McKeegan, a Genesis co-investigator from UCLA, and the lead author of one of two Science papers published this week.

"The implication is that we did not form out of the same solar nebula materials that created the sun - just how and why remains to be discovered."

The air on Earth contains three different kinds of oxygen atoms which are differentiated by the number of neutrons they contain. Nearly 100 percent of oxygen atoms in the solar system are composed of O-16, but there are also tiny amounts of more exotic oxygen isotopes called O-17 and O-18.

Researchers studying the oxygen of Genesis samples found that the percentage of O-16 in the sun is slightly higher than on Earth or on other terrestrial planets. The other isotopes' percentages were slightly lower.

Another paper detailed differences between the sun and planets in the element nitrogen. Like oxygen, nitrogen has one isotope, N-14, that makes up nearly 100 percent of the atoms in the solar system, but there is also a tiny amount of N-15.

Researchers studying the same samples saw that when compared to Earth's atmosphere, nitrogen in the sun and Jupiter has slightly more N-14, but 40 percent less N-15.

Both the sun and Jupiter appear to have the same nitrogen composition. As is the case for oxygen, Earth and the rest of the inner solar system are very different in nitrogen.

"These findings show that all solar system objects including the terrestrial planets, meteorites and comets are anomalous compared to the initial composition of the nebula from which the solar system formed," said Bernard Marty, a Genesis co-investigator from Centre de Recherches Petrographiques et Geochimiques and the lead author of the other new Science paper.

"Understanding the cause of such a heterogeneity will impact our view on the formation of the solar system."

Data were obtained from analysis of samples Genesis collected from the solar wind, or material ejected from the outer portion of the sun. This material can be thought of as a fossil of our nebula because the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that the outer layer of our sun has not changed measurably for billions of years.

Carl Sagan - SETI and Planetary Science

Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, author, cosmologist, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences.

During his lifetime, he published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he advocated skeptical inquiry and the scientific method.

He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

Sagan became world-famous for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote.

A book to accompany the program was also published. Sagan also wrote the novel, Contact, the basis for the 1997 film of the same name.