Off Worlds By way of ‘Characterization By Proxy’

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative venture of NASA, the European Area Company and the Italian Space Company. Launched in 1997, Cassini entered Saturn orbit in 2004. Its mission is planned to conclude in 2017, after it has observed a half-cycle of Saturn’s seasons. To commemorate the extension, the public participated in a Hawaiian-themed stroll on September 29. A number of families with kids attended; most of them dressed in Hawaiian print shirts and leis. Greg Sloan, senior research affiliate, astronomy, led the walk. Sloan offered common information and a few trivia about every planet alongside the way in which.

Cornell and the Ithaca Sciencenter invite the general public for this free interplanetary portrait shoot and to listen to shows July 19 from Cornell astronomers. The lectures begin at 3:30 p.m. on the Sciencenter, 601 First St. After the talks, individuals can wave on the Cassini digital camera beginning at 5:27 p.m., the second Cassini first frames Earth in Saturn’s rings. The cosmic pictures lasts about quarter-hour. Astronomers used the Near-Infrared Triple Spectrograph (TripleSpec) at California’s Mount Palomar Observatory to measure the temperatures and metallicities of small stars referred to as M dwarfs, first recorded by the NASA Kepler mission , which then led to observations of planets orbiting these stars.

The NSF feels that solar system science is just not one in every of its excessive priorities, and ought to be NASA’s accountability, said Don Campbell, Cornell professor of astronomy and former affiliate director of the NAIC. However NASA focuses on house applications, not floor-primarily based observatories. “Plus, they feel that it isn’t their duty to choose up packages previously funded by the NSF,” he mentioned. The findings had been revealed on-line April 23 in Astrophysical Journal Letters (Vol. 750, No. 2). The discovery could lead to higher research of those planets and pave the way toward discovering planets just like Earth.

The researchers focused on a handful of unexplained waves in Saturn’s C ring that didn’t appear to be linked to well-understood gravitational interactions with anything within or outside of the rings. They used data from NASA’s Cassini mission, which has repeatedly profiled Saturn’s rings utilizing “stellar occultations” by way of the spacecraft’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer instrument. The measurements report modifications in gentle from a given star because the rings go between the star and the spacecraft. Using quite a few occultation measurements of the C ring, the researchers have been capable of piece collectively dossiers on these unexplained ring options.

The overarching aim of the DISCOVER Analysis Service Group is to provide accessible paths for the curation, preservation, and mining of scientific data. Methods are needed to make knowledge units accessible bodily over both area (over a large network) and time (for the indefinite future) and also transparently, utilizing modern Internet-based mostly tools which can be expected to evolve. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) operates two extra observational websites in the Chilean Atacama. The Very Massive Telescope(VLT) is positioned on Paranal, a 2600 meter high mountain south ofAntofagasta. At La Silla, 600 kilometers north of Santiago at 2400meter altitude, ESO operates several medium-sized optical telescopes.