The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) captured this strip of stars and galaxies in the southern sky all the way through one 30-minute duration on Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2018. Created through combining the view from all four of its cameras, here is TESS’ “crack of dawn,” from the 1st staring at sector that can be used for making a choice on planets around other stars. Notable features in this swath of the southern sky come with the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds and a globular cluster known as NGC 104, also known as 47 Tucanae. The brightest stars within the image, Beta Gruis and R Doradus, saturated an entire column of camera detector pixels at the satellite’s moment and fourth cameras.
The National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico that caught the attention of the world when it was shut down on September 6 citing a “security issue” by FBI agents who reportedly swooped on the facility after arriving in Blackhawk helicopters, has asked for “patience” as it continues to be locked down. Members of the FBI, the Albuquerque Journal reported, were on the scene.
During NASA’s Cassini mission’s final distant encounter with Saturn’s giant moon Titan, the spacecraft captured this view of the enigmatic moon’s north polar landscape of lakes and seas, which are filled with liquid methane and ethane containing organic molecules that likely could possibly, even under such inhospitable conditions, form structures similar to the lipid bilayers of living cells on Earth.
Recently, Budweiser announced its plans to be “the first beer on Mars,” as part of a plan to study barley in the weightless environment of the International Space Station. how its ingredients react in microgravity environments so that when we get to Mars, Budweiser will be there,” it said in a press release.
Scientists at Southwest Research Institute studied an unusual pair of asteroids and discovered that their existence points to an early planetary rearrangement in our solar system. These bodies, called Patroclus and Menoetius, are targets of NASA’s upcoming Lucy mission.
“Rather that simply recognizing that a planet hosts life, we may be able to say something about how the activities of its biosphere vary in space and time,” says astronomer Stephanie Olson.
