If you like meteor showers and make wishes every time you see one, the night of December 13-14 is your day in 2013. The last meteor shower of the year, that of the Geminids will reach its peak of "fall" of meteors that night around 06:45 in the morning, although the show will be tarnished by the Moon that will be in one of its most luminous phases.
Mars is no longer what it was. This NASA 3D recreation shows how scientists believe the red planet was 4 billion years ago, much more like Earth than today. In fact, researchers recently discovered, Mars had an oxygen-rich atmosphere precisely 4 billion years ago, long before atmospheric oxygen emerged about 2.5 billion years ago.
The universe is still full of mysteries for science. A group of researchers has managed to measure the age of the galaxy z8_GND_5296 thanks to the spectrograph installed in the Keck telescope, ten meters in diameter and located in the middle of the Pacific, in Hawaii. Exactly the galaxy is about 13,000 million years old, that is, it formed when the universe was only five percent of its current age.
One thousand two hundred amateur and professional photographers have participated this year in the fifth edition of the astronomical photography contest "Astronomy Photographer of the Year" organized by the Royal Observatory of Greenwich (United Kingdom) and the magazine "Sky at Night". These are the finalists. The winner will be known in September.
Two teams of astronomers have used data obtained with telescopes from the European Southern Observatory to create the best three-dimensional map ever made of the central areas of the Milky Way. And so they have discovered that, from some angles, the inner regions appear to be peanut or X-shaped.
OSCAAR is the name of a new NASA program aimed at allowing amateur astronomers to identify new planets outside of our solar system. The search will be based on the observation of bright stars and the record of slight decreases in their brightness caused by the transit of celestial bodies that orbit around them and that are interposed between the observer who is located on Earth and the distant star. "
An international team led by Brazilian astronomers has used ESO's Very Large Telescope to identify and study the oldest known solar twin. Located 250 light years from Earth, the star HIP 102152 looks more like the Sun than any other solar "brother", with the exception of being almost four billion years older. This primitive but practically identical twin gives us an unprecedented opportunity to appreciate what the Sun will look like when it ages. Also, the new observations provide, for the first time, an important and clear link between the age of a star and its lithium content.
Danni Büchner is invited to Sam Dylan's Halloween party. But the "Goodbye Germany" emigrant has no desire for many other party guests. And find clear words.
