Stellary Starry Universe

 

Team Italia hopes to win the Lunar X Prize with a swarm of spider-bots.

“Team Italia has evolved,” said Piero Messina, president of the Naples-based International Association for the Aerospace Culture (AICA) that is coordinating Team Italia.

“What we are trying to leverage is that most of aerospace community in Italy is behind this project,” Messina said. “We really want to give an Italian flavor to the undertaking.”

Source: Space.com – click here for Spider-Bot Swarm article

 

 

Former Hubble Space Telescope astronomer shares his view of the sky…and profiles some GOOD astronomy. This is a short five minute video that has some interesting shots of images returned from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Source: Space.com – click here for Hubble Telescope image video

 

 

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has begun its search for other Earth-like worlds.

“Now the fun begins,” said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. “We are all really excited to start sorting through the data and
discovering the planets.”

“If Kepler got into a staring contest, it would win,” said James Fanson, Kepler project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The spacecraft is ready to stare intently at the same stars for several years so that it can precisely measure the slightest changes in their brightness caused by planets.”

Source: Space.com – click here for full article on NASA’s Planet Hunter

 

 

Herschel set to probe universe in infrared while Planck will map the relic light of the Big Bang.

The observations made by these two European observatories could revolutionize our understanding of our universe, and answer some “basic questions about our place in the universe,” said Paul Goldsmith, the NASA project scientist for Herschel at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which provided some of the key technology for the telescopes.

“Herschel’s going to really end up rewriting the books on how stars form,” Goldsmith said.

Source: Space.com – click for Obscure Cosmic Corners article

 

 

The nebula is a colorful cloud of gas and dust named Knockout 4-55 (or K 4-55).

The image is from Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. It has produced one of its last images, a fantastic and beautiful shot of a planetary nebula.

The nebula Kohoutek 4-55, is a colorful cloud of gas and dust named Kohoutek 4-55 (or K 4-55). It has an eye that appears to be looking right back this way at Hubble.

The image was taken May 4 and released today.

Source: Space.com – click for article on Hubble photographs of a Giant Eye