NASA’s IBEX spacecraft has discovered a vast, glowing ribbon at the edge of the solar system. One mission scientist calls the discovery "shocking" and says theorists are "working like crazy" to explain the finding.

October 15, 2009: For years, researchers have known that the solar system is surrounded by a vast bubble of magnetism. Called the “heliosphere,” it springs from the sun and extends far beyond the orbit of Pluto, providing a first line of defense against cosmic rays and interstellar clouds that try to enter our local space. Although the heliosphere is huge and literally fills the sky, it emits no light and no one has actually seen it.

Until now.

NASA’s IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) spacecraft has made the first all-sky maps of the heliosphere and the results have taken researchers by surprise. [...]

 

 

Source: Nasa Science – click here for full article

 

SYDNEY: New evidence backs up the idea that a shockwave from the explosion of massive star triggered the collapse of a dense, dusty gas cloud to form our Sun and its retinue of planets.

For many decades astronomers have postulated that the after effects of this violent supernova led to the birth of the Solar System.

But detailed models of this formation process have only produced the right results under the simplifying – and likely wrong – assumption that the temperatures during the violent events remained constant.

Devil in the details

Now, U.S. astrophysicists at the Carnegie Institution, in Washington DC, have shown for the first time that a supernova could indeed have triggered the Solar System’s formation under the more likely conditions of rapid heating and cooling.

They argue that their results, published last month in the Astrophysical Journal, resolve a long-standing debate.

“We’ve had chemical evidence from meteorites that points to a supernova triggering our Solar System’s formation since the 1970s,” said Alan Boss, lead author of the study.

“But the devil has been in the details,” he said. “Until this study, scientists have not been able to work out a self-consistent scenario, where collapse is triggered at the same time that newly created isotopes from the supernova are injected into the collapsing cloud.”

Short-lived radioactive isotopes – versions of elements with the same number of protons, but a different number of neutrons – found in very old meteorites decay on time scales of millions of years and turn into different ‘daughter’ elements.

Source: Cosmos Online – click here or title for full article

 

 

 

Venus and Jupiter are converging for a spectacular three-way conjunction with the crescent Moon–a rare gathering some are calling ‘the sky show of the year.’ Today’s story tells when and where to look.

Nov. 24, 2008: This story ends with the best sky show of the year–a spectacular three-way conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and the crescent Moon.

It begins tonight with a sunset stroll.

At the end of the day, when the horizon is turning red and the zenith is cobalt-blue, step outside and look southwest. You’ll see Venus and Jupiter beaming side-by-side through the twilight. Glittering Venus is absolutely brilliant and Jupiter is nearly as bright as Venus. Together, they’re dynamite:

Source: Nasa Science – click here for full article