February 2011

A Close Look At The Sun

NASA has done it again. Yesterday, Sunday, Feb. 6th, NASA released online of the first complete, panoramic view of the the whole sun, front and back simultaneously, the entire surface and atmosphere. The are pictures in stereo? and in 3-D. They were taken by the twin Solar TErrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. The crafts are on diametrically opposite sides of the sun, one hundred eighty degrees apart. One is ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind.

NASA finds 54 potentially life-friendly planets

The NASA orbiting telescope, the Kepler, has been at it for just a year, looking, at a small part of the Milky Way galaxy, in the search for alien life, and has found, not alien life yet, but 1,235 possible planets outside our solar system, of these 54, seemingly could be hospitable to life. These planets are, not too hot or too cold.

The NASA Kepler project chief scientist William Borucki said, fifty-four possibilities is "an enormous amount, an inconceivable amount. It's amazing to see this huge number because up to now, we've had zero."