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Post by eos on Feb 1, 2012 3:50:05 GMT -5
Well something has been happening to our sun --some sort of C.M.E. Couple of days ago we are having the Northern Lights here in the U.K. From NASA 'The sun erupted late on January 22, 2012 with an M8.7 class flare, an earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME), and a burst of fast moving, highly energetic protons known as a "solar energetic particle" event. The latter has caused the largest proton event since October 2003.' The Northern Lights where seen down as far as Northern England but we where clouded out. The Same Sunspot group today put another CME out though on the far side of the Sun
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Post by eos on Feb 1, 2012 5:03:16 GMT -5
This was the Previous CME
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Post by pod 7 on Feb 22, 2012 4:15:17 GMT -5
A humid, watery world with temperatures hot enough to potentially harbour never-seen-before materials such as 'hot ice' has been confirmed.
Astronomers say the exoplanet - known as GJ 1214b - is larger than our own, with a large proportion of it made up of water.
GJ 1214b was first spotted in 2009 by Dr Zachory Berta and his team from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Their recent observations using the Hubble telescope have revealed its likely composition in more detail, and researchers believe it has a dense atmosphere of water vapour.
Dr Berta said: "The high temperatures and pressures would form exotic materials like 'hot ice' or 'superfluid water', substances that are completely alien to our everyday experience."
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Post by pod 7 on Feb 22, 2012 13:23:27 GMT -5
Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (CfA) leads the team of astronomers who have published these findings, Berta said: "GJ 1214b is like no planet we know of. A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water.
"The high temperatures and high pressures would form exotic materials like ‘hot ice’ or ‘superfluid water’, substances that are completely alien to our everyday experience.
"We’re using Hubble to measure the infrared colour of sunset on this world. The Hubble measurements really tip the balance in favour of a steamy atmosphere."
GJ 1214b is about 2.7 times Earth’s diameter and weighs almost seven times as much. It orbits a red-dwarf star every 38 hours at a distance of 2 million kilometres, giving it an estimated temperature of 230C.
The observations of GJ 1214b were made using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) when the planet crossed in front of its host star. During such a transit, the star’s light is filtered through the planet’s atmosphere, giving clues to the mix of gases.
The planet is around 40 light-years from Earth and is likely to be one of the first places studied by the new James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to be launched later this decade.
JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT THE NEW DISCOVERY---- well if we get that far out we can stop and make a cup of coffee/tea ,
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Post by pod 7 on Feb 29, 2012 14:40:08 GMT -5
Recent orbit computations on an asteroid discovered last December indicated that it was virtually certain that it would pass within the moon's distance of the earth a little more than 30 years from now. Refined computations, based on prediscovery images from 1990, show that the miss distance is now a rather comfortable 600 thousand miles.
The asteroid, known as 1997 XF11, was discovered by Jim Scotti in the course of the Spacewatch program at the University of Arizona. This program utilizes modern electronic technology on a 36-inch telescope at Kitt Peak that was built 77 years ago
If it looks bad, i will be in a pub some where---if it looks OK tell me, i will have to go home,Dam!! really best excuse in years he he .
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Post by pod 7 on May 16, 2012 9:26:45 GMT -5
Sorry but its only an artists impression of "KEPLER 22b" which the boffins say could hold life
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Post by pod 7 on Jun 4, 2012 11:48:34 GMT -5
Maybe our Galaxy in 4 billion years time ??
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