Planet Pluto Lower Atmosphere

The large telescope used by the astronomers has revealed the lower atmosphere of the farthest planet pluto. The scientists found unexpectedly large amounts of methane in the atmosphere, and also discovered that the atmosphere is hotter than the surface by about 40 degrees, although it still only reaches a frigid minus 180 degrees Celsius.

These properties of Pluto's atmosphere may be due to the presence of pure methane patches or of a methane-rich layer covering the dwarf planet's surface. Pluto, which is about a fifth the size of Earth, is composed primarily of rock and ice. As it is about 40 times further from the Sun than the Earth on average, it is a very cold world with a surface temperature of about minus 220 degrees Celsius!

It has been known since the 1980s that Pluto also has a tenuous atmosphere, which consists of a thin envelope of mostly nitrogen, with traces of methane and probably carbon monoxide. As Pluto moves away from the Sun, during its 248 year-long orbit, its atmosphere gradually freezes and falls to the ground. In periods when it is closer to the Sun as it is now, the temperature of Pluto's solid surface increases, causing the ice to sublimate into gas.With lots of methane in the atmosphere, it becomes clear why Pluto's atmosphere is so warm.

Water Ice in Mars

NASA Scientists have discovered water ice on the surface craters of Mars. Scientists controlling instruments on the orbiter found bright ice exposed at five Martian sites with new craters that range in depth from approximately half a meter to 2.5 meters. The craters did not exist in earlier images of the same sites. Some of the craters show a thin layer of bright ice atop darker underlying material.

The bright patches darkened in the weeks following initial observations, as the freshly exposed ice vaporized into the thin Martian atmosphere. One of the new craters had a bright patch of material large enough for one of the orbiter's instruments to confirm it is water-ice. The finds indicate water-ice occurs beneath Mars' surface halfway between the north pole and the equator, a lower latitude than expected in the Martian climate.

Look on Dark Asteroids

The main feature of the dark asteroids is that they remain dark emitting very little light and so they are able to move in shadows between bright places. scientists are building by far the most sensitive set of wide-angle infrared goggles ever, a space telescope called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

WISE will scan the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, creating the most comprehensive catalog yet of dark and dim objects in the cosmos: vast dust clouds, brown dwarf stars, asteroids -- even large, nearby asteroids that might pose a threat to Earth. Surveys of nearby asteroids based on visible-light telescopes could be skewed toward asteroids with more-reflective surfaces. If there's a significant population of asteroids nearby that are very dark, they will have been missed by these previous surveys.

The full-sky infrared map produced by WISE will reveal even these darker asteroids, mapping the locations and sizes of roughly 200,000 asteroids and giving scientists a clearer idea of how many large and potentially dangerous asteroids are nearby. WISE will also help answer questions about the formation of stars and the evolution and structure of galaxies, including our own Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers Tracking an Asteroid

The Astronomers found a meteroite that matched with an asteroid. This work has not been done ever before. It gives them a glimpse into the past when planets formed and an idea how to avoid a future asteroid Armageddon.The astronomers tracked a small non-threatening asteroid heading toward Earth before it became a "shooting star" something they had not done before. It blew up in the sky and scientists thought there would be no space rocks left to examine.

This was a meteorite that was not in the existing collection and a completely new material. For years, astronomers have been lobbying to send a robot probe to an asteroid, grab a chunk of it and return it to Earth for labs to analyze the material. Instead a piece of an asteroid dropped in their laps and the researchers were able to track where it came from and where it landed.

The asteroid, which mostly burned in the atmosphere 23 miles above the ground, is likely a leftover from when chunks of rock tried and failed to become a planet, about 4.5 billion years ago. It's a beautiful example of looking at an earlier stage of planet development that was arrested, halted.But it also serves as a lesson for the future if this asteroid's big brother comes hurtling toward Earth.

There are many different types of asteroids, all classified from afar based on color and light wavelengths. This type is called class F and turns out to be mostly porous and fragile. It's unlikely that a class F asteroid could be any danger to Earth, even if it's bigger, because of its porous makeup which would cause it to break up before hitting.It was full of metals, such as iron and nickel, and organics such as graphites. And most interesting is that it has "nanodiamonds." These diamonds are formed by collisions in space and high pressure and they are all over the rocks, making them glitter like geodes and were of small size.

China's Lunar Probe Lands on Moon

China's lunar mission aiming to send 'robotic explorers' before 2020, landed its first satellite on Moon, as the Communist nation braces to compete in space technology with countries like US, Russia and India. the Lunar probe makes its impact on the Moon today.It represents the first step in the Chinese ambition to land robotic explorers on the moon before 2020.

The satellite ended its 16-month mission when it hit the lunar surface at 1.50 degrees south latitude and 52.36 degrees east longitude. The probe named as Chang'e-1 began to reduce its speed under remote control by two observation and control stations in east China's Qingdao and northwest China's Kashi.

This was the first phase of China's three-stage moon mission, which will lead to a landing and launch of a rover vehicle around 2012, the official Xinhua news agency reported.Chang'e-1 was launched into space on October 24, 2007 and sent the first full map of the moon's surface back to China one month later.A dozen performance tests were carried out while Chang'e-1 was in orbit to find out its orbit adjustment capability. "Chang'e" is named after a legendary Chinese moon goddess.

Exo Planet Super Neptune Discovered

Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a planet somewhat larger and more massive than Neptune orbiting a star 120 light-years from Earth. While Neptune has a diameter 3.8 times that of Earth and a mass 17 times Earth's, the new world is 4.7 times the size of Earth and has 25 Earth masses.

Transit detections are particularly useful because the amount of dimming tells the astronomers how big the planet must be. By combining transit data with measurements of the star's "wobble" made by large telescopes like Keck, astronomers can determine the mass of the planet.A number of Neptune-like planets have been found recently by radial velocity searches, but HAT-P-11b is only the second Neptune-like planet found to transit its star, thus permitting the precise determination of its mass and radius.

The newfound world orbits very close to its star, revolving once every 4.88 days. As a result, it is baked to a temperature of around 1100 degrees F. The star itself is about three-fourths the size of our Sun and somewhat cooler.


HAT-P-11 is in the constellation Cygnus, which puts in it the field of view of NASA's upcoming Kepler spacecraft. Kepler will search for extrasolar planets using the same transit technique pioneered by ground-based telescopes. This mission potentially could detect the first Earth-like world orbiting a distant star. "In addition, however, we expect Kepler to measure the detailed properties of HAT-P-11 with the extraordinary precision possible only from space.