New research led by Yale University scientists suggests that a rocky planet twice Earth’s size orbiting a nearby star is a diamond planet. Family portraits of two planetary systems: A simulation of the silhouette of planet 55 Cancri e passing in front of its parent star, compared to the Earth and Jupiter transiting our [continue reading]
Some three weeks ago, on July 23, 2012, a massive cloud of solar material erupted off the Sun’s right side, zooming out into space, passing one of NASA’s Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft along the way. Using the STEREO data, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center clocked this giant cloud, known as [continue reading]
A team of scientists has created an “MRI” of the Sun’s interior plasma motions, shedding light on how it transfers heat from its deep interior to its surface. The result, which appears in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, increases our understanding of how heat is transported outwards by the Sun [continue reading]
Researchers using three different telescopes — NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton in space, and the Parkes radio telescope in Australia — may have found the fastest moving pulsar ever seen. Pulsar IGR J11014-6103 in optical, infrared and X-ray. Credit: NASA The evidence for this potentially record-breaking speed comes, in part, from the [continue reading]
New results from NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) reveal that the bow shock, widely accepted by researchers to precede the heliosphere as it plows through tenuous gas and dust from the galaxy does not exist. Stars travel through the galaxy surrounded by a bubble of charged gas and magnetic fields, rounded at the front [continue reading]