Astronomers Find and Confirm 44 New Extrasolar Planets
An international team of astronomers has confirmed the existence of 44 new extrasolar planets. The planets were first spotted by the astronomers through data gathered from Campaign #10 of NASA’s Kepler K2 mission. According to NASA’s Kepler and K2 webpage, campaign #10 ran from July 6, 2016, to September 20, 2016. To verify their findings, […]
Astronomers Discover A Dozen New Jovian Moons
As a team of astronomers was looking beyond Pluto for the mysterious Planet 9. So far they haven’t located the giant hypothetical planet, but they did wind up discovering a dozen new moons orbiting Jupiter. “Jupiter just happened to be in the sky near the search fields where we were looking for extremely distant Solar System […]
NASA Creates New Office to Protect Us from Asteroid and Comet Impact
NASA is taking the potential threat posed by near earth objects (NEO’s), such as asteroids and comets, more seriously than ever and has established the new Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). The space agency says the new office will oversee all of its efforts in finding and characterizing all celestial objects that travel close to […]
Slumbering Giant Black Hole Awakes After 26 Years
Some 8,000 light years from Earth, in the constellation Cygnus, a binary system known as V404 Cygni has come to life for the first time in 26 years. While most binary systems consist of two stars orbiting a common center of mass, V404 Cygni is made up of a black hole and a star that […]