In the words of the Academy’s charter, enacted in 1780, the “end and design of the institution is…to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”
**************************************************************************
Going on “as we speak”, with dates from May 19-23, 2008, the International Astronomical Union is located at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in Cambridge... Read Full Story
“This is a crucial stepping stone to eventually characterizing prebiotic molecules on planets where life could exist” said team leader Mark Swain of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena.
************************************************************************
Orbiting around other stars are approximately 100 or more extrasolar planets, planets which orbit around a star rather than the sun. The existence of such planets is by direct astronomical observations, where it is easy... Read Full Story
Launched on January 12, 2005, the Deep Impact space probe has become one of its successes. When it made history in 2005 by directing an impact from the spacecraft in to the comet Tempel 1 on July 4, things were good. The mission has recently been extended as well, being redirected for a flyby of comet Hartley on October 11, 2010.
However in the meantime, its largest of five telescopes will be directed at a cluster of stars nearby (relatively speaking of course in the hopes of detecting... Read Full Story
Mission Guide: Corot The French-led Corot mission has taken off from Kazakhstan on a quest to find planets outside our Solar System. The space telescope will monitor about 120,000 stars for tiny dips in brightness that result from planets passing across their faces. The multinational mission will also study the stars directly to uncover more about their interior behaviour. Corot blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 1423 GMT, carried into a polar orbit on a Soyuz-2-1b vehicle... Read Full Story
There are known exoplanets that have one, two and even three suns. But one bizarre class of planet-sized objects has no suns at all, and instead floats untethered through space. Called planemos, the objects are similar to, but smaller than, brown dwarfs, failed stars too small to achieve stellar ignition.
Read Full Story
