How typical is our Solar System? The question bedevils planetary scientists, but making detections of analogous features in other planetary systems is pretty hard. Yet astronomers have just made one - of a Kuiper belt-like feature around a star 320 light-years away.
It is, they say, the first polarimetric detection of the inner ring circling the star we call HD 141569A. And it's revealing new details about a crucial period of planetary development.
Many things are taking place:
Wash U Scientists Study Moon Ice To Help Astronauts Explore Solar System | KBIA
Space explorers could someday use the moon to mine for elements needed to make rocket fuel on the moon, making it a launchpad to other worlds.
But first, scientists need to study the moon's ice deposits. A team of astrophysicists at Washington University this month received a $7 million agreement with NASA to study the origins of lunar ice, ammonia and methane over the next five years.
Recent images from NASA spacecrafts have shown signs of ice in shadowy craters near the Moon's poles. When water's split into hydrogen and oxygen, that can be used to make rocket fuel, said Ryan Ogliore, a Wash U physics professor.
How Far Outside Our Solar System Will Voyager 1 and 2 Actually Go? | wtol.com
Solar wind slows farther away from the Sun: Research could help predict when New Horizons
Measurements taken by the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft are providing important new insights from some of the farthest reaches of space ever explored. In a paper recently published in the Astrophysical Journal , a team led by Southwest Research Institute shows how the solar wind -- the supersonic stream of charged particles blown out by the Sun -- evolves at increasing distances from the Sun.
"Previously, only the Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 missions have explored the outer solar system and outer heliosphere, but now New Horizons is doing that with more modern scientific instruments," said Dr. Heather Elliott, a staff scientist at SwRI, Deputy Principal Investigator of the SWAP instrument and lead author of the paper.
Many things are taking place:
How to Get Solar Power on a Rainy Day? Beam It From Space | WIRED
Earlier this year, a small group of spectators gathered in David Taylor Model Basin, the Navy's cavernous indoor wave pool in Maryland, to watch something they couldn't see. At each end of the facility there was a 13-foot pole with a small cube perched on top. A powerful infrared laser beam shot out of one of the cubes, striking an array of photovoltaic cells inside the opposite cube. To the naked eye, however, it looked like a whole lot of nothing.
The laser setup managed to transmit 400 watts of power—enough for several small household appliances—through hundreds of meters of air without moving any mass. The Naval Research Lab, which ran the project, hopes to use the system to send power to drones during flight. But NRL electronics engineer Paul Jaffe has his sights set on an even more ambitious problem: beaming solar power to Earth from space.
First interstellar comet may soon break apart as it nears the Sun | Astronomy.com
In the months since, astronomers have been measuring the comet’s every move as it heads toward perihelion — the point in its orbit closest to the Sun. It should make that approach in early December. By studying Borisov’s movement, brightness and chemical makeup, scientists have found it’s not that different from comets in our own solar system. And that may also mean it could make a dramatic spectacle as it nears the Sun.
Too much wind and solar raises power system costs.
Because as we add more solar panels and wind farms, their productivity declines. And while the cost of individual solar panels is low, when there are enough of them, they impose real costs on the rest of the system.
A new study from a team of researchers at MIT (including myself) examines these trends and explains why this creates an important role for both existing and new nuclear power plants in an affordable decarbonized energy system.
Solar system of 7.5 MW goes online at Six Flags' California theme park
December 2 (Renewables Now) - Borrego Solar Systems Inc and sPower at the end of last week put on stream a 7.5-MW solar plant at a Six Flags Entertainment Corporation amusement park in Vallejo, northern California.
The solar carport constructed over the main guest parking lot at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom will produce 11.9 GWh of power a year, covering 80% of the park's energy needs. The installation will also save 8,400 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions a year.
Happening on Twitter
Black holes are known as destructive forces in the universe. But astronomers have witnessed a black hole that is ac… https://t.co/l4OYjYJ9UP CNN Sun Dec 01 16:01:08 +0000 2019
Astronomers might have found the long-lost cinder of a conflagration that left them spellbound more than three deca… https://t.co/xjPmpzJZJE nature (from London) Sun Dec 01 02:19:00 +0000 2019
Astronomers have uncovered a black hole that may have sparked the births of stars over a mind-boggling distance, an… https://t.co/rNZMHzxv89 SETIInstitute (from Mountain View, CA) Sat Nov 30 15:15:02 +0000 2019
Astronomers have captured the best and closest image to date of an interstellar comet from outside of our solar sys… https://t.co/GVsaC5TCLI CNN Tue Nov 26 22:53:36 +0000 2019
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