Titan back in the spotlight

saturn really has some amazing moons. who can forget the release of esa's huygens images of the surface of titan back in 2005? the image above was made by an amateur image processor who had access to the huygens data, and it makes titan look strangely familiar. today, esa announced that the amount of liquid hydrocarbons on titan's surface surpass the total amount on earth by a factor of hundreds. there, hydrocarbons rain from the sky and collect in lakes and pools.

are we off to titan now, bush?

seriously, this is really cool. especially from the perspective of astrobiology and our interest in how complex chemistry forms in environments very different from that on earth.

Olympus Mons

here is a mosaic image of olympus mons, the highest volcano on mars, released today by the esa. the volcano reaches about 28km into mars' atmosphere (mount everest, by comparison, is barely 9km high).

Travel to Mars!!!

well, except not quite. the esa is looking for volunteers for a 520-day simulated mars mission to take place in a special facility in moscow. volunteers will be selected in a similar process to astronauts, except with greater emphasis on psychological strength. basically, all the stress and confinement without actually getting to see the red planet in the end. interested? apply here. read more about the simulated mission here. (image credit: NASA/JPL of course)

World Day to Combat Desertification

today is world day to combat desertification. according to the UN, desertification puts the health and well-being of more than 1.2 billion people at risk. read more in the esa article here. (image credit: esa)

Deuteronilus Mensae by Mars Express

the deuteronilus mensae region on mars, captured by esa's mars express.

[sorry about the long absence from posting, the spring quarter is nearing its end, and there is an unbelievable amount of stuff to get done.]

COROT Discoveres Its First Exoplanet

woohoo. though over 230 extrasolar planets have been discovered since 1995, this is still impressive: ESA's (and CNES - the french space agency) COROT mission, the first mission whose primary objective is the detection of extra-solar planets, announced its first exoplanet discovered today! the planet was discovered using the transit method (developed by dear professor sasselov at the cfa), has a radius of around 1.78 times that of jupiter, and orbits a sun-like star located around 1500 lightyears away from us with an orbital period of around 1.5 days (for comparison, jupiter's orbital period is 4333 days). most impressively, given the success of this first discovery, the researchers on the project believe that COROT will be able to detect earth-sized planets using the transit method, which was not the original plan. (image credit: esa)

Enceladus

enceladus, one of saturn's 56 known (!) moons, is, in my opinion, one the solar system's most beautiful moons. (though, star wars fans might opt for mimas, which bears a striking resemblance to the death star.) since the nasa/esa/isa cassini-huygens spacecraft - whose objective is the study of saturn and its moons - began observing the moon, it has made a number of interesting discoveries. one of these is that the moon has geysers that are spewing ice (water ice, that is) into space. now, scientists are proposing that the decay of radioactive isotopes of aluminum and iron is producing a large amount of heat within the moon's core. this heat is then released through cracks in the moon's surface, thereby spewing out water from pockets of liquid water near the surface. very cool. plus, now i have another bubble picture on my blog.

Binary Stars HD 5980 in X-Rays

the european space agency's xxm-newton x-ray observatory has observed the collision of the winds from two binary stars in the smc radiating energy at a rate about a million times that of our sun. each star is emitting the equivalent of one earth mass of material in its wind every month; this material is then accelerated away from the star by the radiation it is simultaneously emitting. the result? the collision zone is emitting - in x-rays alone - 10 times the amount of energy emitted by our sun. the optical image is above, and the x-ray image below (click for animation). (image credits: esa)