Celestia Forums

Expect for its apparently huge size, the planet is fairly regular. At this point, the more exciting news is that COROT's photometry is far better than anticipated -- it should be able to spot Earth-size planets around red dwarfs and maybe even around orange dwarfs.

The P/T mass extinction event wiped out almost every (but fortunately for us, not all!) mammal-like reptile aka synapsid which were the top land animals at that time. Synapsids managed to regain their status in the early Triassic until they were supplanted by dinosaurs. If I remember correctly, abou...

You might like to check the The Geneva-Copenhagen survey of the Solar neighbourhood catalog, which contains lots of data (including ages) on Sunlike stars in the solar neighborhood.

According to the RECONS survey, Gliese 644, the 94th closest system to us is a quintuple system, consisting of three red dwarfs and two as of yet unclassified companions. Gliese 570, the 70th system is quatruple (K5+M1+?+T8). There are two other quatruple systems within 10 parsecs.

There's no point to take color images of these events, because Cassini's camera is very slow and the events are really fast. Everything would move between the exposures making the color image construction painful.

Yeah, the division between pro-space community is especially unfortunate because the real enemy is common to both factions. Human spaceflight is obvious investment for future, but it is pointless without unmanned missions, which in turn provide much better science/money ratio. Main problem (lack of ...

Well, if you think that NASA has too much bureaucracy, compare it to ESA... I've heard that mission approval procedure is much more complicated in ESA, an already accepted mission may be tossed around again... NASA has been more straightforward on this. The success of Mars Express has been important...

I wonder how much images the SMART-1 mission has taken. Judging on the press release rate, that would be a few.

Mass, as usual, determines what happens. Supernova Ia progenitors must lie very close to the maximum white dwarf mass, called Chandrasekhar limit, about 1.4 Solar masses. Only a very few white dwarfs are that massive.

selden wrote:The spectral classification for our Sun is controversial, for example.

Really?

Yeah, you read it right. There will be no mission to Ceres or Vesta.

In the case of novae, only the outer hydrogen layers of the white dwarf start fusion reaction and explode. Type Ia supernovae form when the critical density is reached and fusion reaction starts in the whole star at once.

If you want to see really high-res images, I recommend you to visit the Hubble website at http://www.hubblesite.org . There you can find huge high-resolution images well over 10,000 pixels wide. It is likely that your web browser is unable to view them, though.

Yet another similarity with Pluto!

The albedo maps of Charon and Pluto were created by watching the change in light level as Pluto and Charon eclipsed one another as seen from Earth. Most of the others don't have moons, so this technique can't work for them. 2003 EL61 and its moon mutually eclipsed each other in 1999. Next time this...

Itokawa is by far the smallest asteroid imaged so far from a close range. It is more like a group of rocks connected with dust resembling pretty much the large boulders seen on Eros.

Malenfant wrote:Isn't there a mission (Dawn?) off to go image them? I know that was being planned at some point, did it ever get off the ground?

It is currently being assembled. The launch is in June, 2006.

Like it been has said before, it's time to scrab the old simple major/minor planet system and replace it with more complex taxonomical system. The current system is way too simple; for example, although Pluto is much smaller than Mercury, it is considerably more Mercury-like than Jupiter. The giant ...

Disappear? You can always select a target and choose observation time: newest. But yes, there are many good views in this batch, including the best views of Mimas Cassini can acquire during the whole primary mission. Images showing the crescent Tethys nightside lit with Saturnshine plus two large cr...

There is yet another giant Kuiper Belt object announcement. The object, 2005 FY9, is even brighter than 2003 EL61. Not much information is available about it, except the discovery MPEC. It has been detected with Spitzer and seems to be 50%-75% Pluto's size.