Friday, July 23, 2010

Astronomy News

Hyperfast Star Was Booted From Milky Way "A hundred million years ago, a triple-star system was traveling through the bustling center of our Milky Way galaxy when it made a life-changing misstep. The trio wandered too close to the galaxy's giant black hole, which captured one of the stars and hurled the other two out of the Milky Way. Adding to the stellar game of musical chairs, the two outbound stars merged to form a super- hot, blue star."

NASA Telescope Finds Elusive Buckyballs in Space "Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered carbon molecules, known as 'buckyballs,' in space for the first time. Buckyballs are soccer-ball-shaped molecules that were first observed in a laboratory 25 years ago. They are named for their resemblance to architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, which have interlocking circles on the surface of a partial sphere. Buckyballs were thought to float around in space, but had escaped detection until now. " They are the largest molecules to have been found in space.

NASA Spacecraft Camera Yields Most Accurate Mars Map Ever "A camera aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has helped develop the most accurate global Martian map ever...The map was constructed using nearly 21,000 images from the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, a multi-band infrared camera on Odyssey. Researchers at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility in Tempe, in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have been compiling the map since THEMIS observations began eight years ago."

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