From the perspective of planet hunters and planet characterizers, a desirable solar system to explore is one that is close to ours, that has a planet (or planets) in the star's habitable zone, and has a host star that is relatively quiet. This is especially important with the very common red dwarf stars, which are …
Continue reading "Close and Tranquil Solar System Has Astronomers Excited"
The image above, courtesy of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shows the CubeSat ASTERIA as it was being launched from the International Space Station in 2017. The size of a briefcase, ASTERIA is part of a growing armada of tiny spacecraft being launched around the world and adding an increasingly important (and inexpensive) set of …
Continue reading "For First Time, Tiny CubeSat Locates a Distant Exoplanet"
Earlier last week, NASA put out a release alerting journalists to "an exciting announcement about the agency’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission." Given the controversial history of the project -- the current administration has formally proposed cancelling it for several years and the astronomy community (and Congress) have been keep it going -- …
It was not all that long ago that a "map" of our moon, of Mars, of a large asteroid such as Vesta, of Titan, or of any hard-surfaced object in our solar system would have some very general outlines, some very large features identified, and then the extraterrestrial equivalent of the warning on Earth …
When the word "virus" first came into use, it was as a "poison" and “a very small disease-causing agent.” While the presence of viruses was theorized earlier, they were not fully identified until the 1890s. So from their earliest discovery, viruses were synonymous with disease and generally of the ghastly epidemic type of disease …
Continue reading "Viruses, the Virosphere and Astrovirology"
Change is the one constant in our world-- moving in ways tiny and enormous, constructive and destructive. We're living now in a time when a rampaging pandemic circles the globe and when the climate is changing in so many worrisome and potentially devastating ways. With these ominous changes as a backdrop, it is perhaps useful …
Continue reading "Everything Changes: The Rise and Fall of the Northern Ocean of Mars"
By now, the coronavirus is an all too familiar menace to most of the peoples of the world. How it is spread, the symptoms of the disease, the absolute necessity of taking precautions against it -- most people know something about the coronavirus pandemic. But the question of what a virus actually is, what are …
Sometime in the early to mid-2020s, the capsule of the Japanese Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission is scheduled to arrive at the moons of Mars – Phobos and Deimos. These are small and desolate places, but one goal of the mission is large: to collect samples from the moons and bring them back to Earth. …
Continue reading "Planetary Protection and the Moons of Mars"
The surface of the sun, with each "kernel" or "cell" roughly the size of Texas. The movie is made up of images produced by the Daniel Inouye SolarTelescope in Hawaii. Novel and even revolutionary data and images are also expected from the Parker Solar Probe (which will travel into the sun's atmosphere, or corona) and …
Continue reading "Exploring Our Sun Will Help Us Understand Habitability"
It has been almost 60 years now that scientists -- a first a few intrepid souls and now many more -- have been searching the skies for radio signals that just might be coming from other advanced, technological civilizations. There have been some intriguing anomalies that created great interest, but nothing has to date survived …
Many Worlds 