More via the European Space Agency:
Eberswalde crater contains a rare case of a martian delta. Channels which fed the lake in the crater are very well preserved. The delta deposits and channels together provide a clear indication of liquid surface water during the early history of Mars.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
Here’s another excellent photo via APOD, and it looks great as computer wallpaper!
More on this image via APOD:
Explanation: Fix your digital camera to a tripod, start a long series of exposures, and you too can record star trails. The concentric arcs traced by the stars as planet Earth rotates on its axis often produce dreamlike scenes in otherwise familiar situations. Fall asleep, though, and the results might surprise you. Setting up on a summer night, photographer Mike Rosinski began his exposures, initially planning to capture about 45-55 minutes worth of star trails from his yard in Hartland, Michigan, USA. But he dozed, only to awaken some 3 hours later to find his camera had continued to run until the battery died. Composing the resulting images, the graceful concentric star trails were expected, along with light from a late rising Moon glinting on windows. Still, as he slept on the warm night a blizzard of yellow streaks flooded the scene, not left by fairies but fireflies.
Image: Recently, one of Saturn’s moons — Rhea — was discovered to have “an atmosphere of oxygen and carbon dioxide.” Image is via the NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
Has NASA discovered extraterrestrial life? My guess is probably not. On Thursday, NASA will “discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” To me, the press release reads like the announcement of a discovery or a new method that will improve or expand the chances of scientists finding extraterrestrial life.
Jason Kottke, of kottke.org, speculates that NASA has “discovered arsenic on Titan and maybe even detected chemical evidence of bacteria utilizing it for photosynthesis.” Phil Plait, of Bad Astronomy, is skeptical that exterrestrial life has been discovered and notes that the discovery is “most likely going to be something about conditions on another moon or planet conducive for life.” NASA’s news conference is scheduled for 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, December 2.
According to UPI.com, “European astronomers say they’ve obtained a three-dimensional view of an exploded star that confirms computer models of what happens in an exploding supernova.” Furthermore, when this supernova “was observed in 1987, it was the first naked-eye supernova seen for 383 years.”
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HE 0437-5439 is a star that is escaping from the Milky Way. It’s a rare example of a hypervelocity star, and “for every 100 million stars in the Milky Way’s population of 100 billion stars, ‘there lurks one hypervelocity star.’” According to Wikipedia, “the star appears to be receding at an extremely high velocity of 723 km/s, or 2.6 million kilometres per hour. At this speed, the star is no longer gravitationally bound and will leave the Milky Way galaxy system and escape into intergalactic space.”
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Via HubbleSite, the Antennae galaxies, which are two colliding galaxies that are located a staggering 62-million light years from Earth.
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