Nearly all asteroids are so far away and so small that the astronomical community only knows them as moving points of light. The rare exceptions are asteroids that have been visited by spacecraft, a small number of large ...
Space Exploration
Jun 4, 2018
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Astronomers have detected helium in the atmosphere of a planet that orbits a star far beyond our solar system for the very first time.
Astronomy
May 2, 2018
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Twice as big as Earth, the super-Earth 55 Cancri e was thought to have lava flows on its surface. The planet is so close to its star, the same side of the planet always faces the star, such that the planet has permanent day ...
Astronomy
Nov 16, 2017
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226
On Aug. 17, 2017, weak ripples in the fabric of space-time known as gravitational waves washed over Earth. Unlike previously detected gravitational waves, these were accompanied by light, allowing astronomers to pinpoint ...
Astronomy
Oct 18, 2017
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Scientists will use NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to study sections of the sky previously observed by NASA's Great Observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope, to understand the ...
Astronomy
Oct 4, 2017
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This bunny-suited technician is performing the important task of ensuring no unwanted infrared light interferes with the optical testing of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope inside of Chamber A at NASA's Johnson Space Center ...
Space Exploration
Sep 12, 2017
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11
Brown dwarf stars are failed stars. Their masses are so small, less than about eighty Jupiter-masses, that they lack the ability to heat up their interiors to the roughly ten million kelvin temperatures required for normal ...
Astronomy
Jul 11, 2017
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54
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope was placed in Johnson Space Center's historic Chamber A on June 20, 2017, to prepare for its final three months of testing in a cryogenic vacuum that mimics temperatures in space.
Space Exploration
Jun 22, 2017
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16
NASA's SOFIA aircraft, a 747 loaded with a 2.5-meter telescope in the back and stripped of most creature comforts in the front, took a big U-turn over the Pacific west of Mexico.
Astronomy
May 2, 2017
1
440
It's springtime and the deployed primary mirror of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope looks like a spring flower in full bloom.
Space Exploration
Apr 25, 2017
1
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