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As astronomers count down the years until a NASA spacecraft makes its way to the Kuiper Belt, many experts are currently making predictions about what the probe will find once it flies past the orbit of Pluto. The object is the cause of a dispute that has been raging on for about 5 years now.
Members of the Inter... |
6 September 2011
03:52 GMT |
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Pluto was once a fully-fledged planet, considered by astronomers to be the ninth such object from the Sun. However, following a length and very divisive discussion in the international scientific community, the celestial body was demoted to a dwarf planet back in 2006. Since then, many experts have been arguing about... |
23 August 2011
09:21 GMT |
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The number of objects in our solar system just got bigger, with the recent detection of what may very well be three previously-unknown dwarf planets. The objects were discovered near the orbit of Pluto, which is itself classified as a dwarf planet. However, Pluto is not the only celestial body in this class in the Ku... |
4 August 2011
05:57 GMT |
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Now that astronomers established the existence of a new moon around Pluto, they also have to name the object. Given the significance that names of the dwarf planet and its other three moons have, it stands to reason that the fourth will also have to be named in a similar fashion.
In Roman mythology, Pluto was the... |
21 July 2011
02:54 GMT |
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The international astronomical community was less than a month ago fired up by the release of a study claiming the discovery of the first known habitable exoplanet. New data now suggest that the space body may not exist at all.The extrasolar planet has been dubbed Gliese 581g, because it spins around the red dwarf by... |
13 October 2010
02:53 GMT |
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Astronomers estimate that a near-Earth object (NEO) could pass close to our planet this week, but say that there is very little chance that an impact will take place following the event. Tracking stations estimate that the object is less than 10 meters in diameter, although no clear data on its actual size are availa... |
11 October 2010
04:58 GMT |
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Expert Michael Shao, currently based at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, is one of the leading experts in the field of stellar interferometry. This is an imaging technique that allows astronomers to peer deep into the heart of the Universe, observing numerous exoplanets, and other bo... |
24 July 2010
06:04 GMT |
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The way the International Astronomical Union (IAU) goes about defining planets is a topic that many are uncomfortable with. A large proportion of all astronomers in the organization do not agree with the definitions by which the IAU decided which space object is classified as a planet, and which as a dwarf planet. Th... |
12 April 2010
08:41 GMT |
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Starting yesterday, November 18, a large number of space telescopes around the world have begun to map the skies around our planet, with the express goal of creating a new reference system for future space observations. Just like the GPS reports your position depending on latitude and longitude, so too the position o... |
19 November 2009
03:06 GMT |
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Since the International Astronomical Union (IAU) started changing the definitions of what planets, asteroids, and dwarf planets looked like, the faith of many large, cosmic objects in the solar system has remained undecided. One such example is the giant rock 2 Pallas, which is, in fact, a protoplanet – a Moon-... |
9 October 2009
06:36 GMT |
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The decision of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to declassify Pluto as a planet, and to move it to the lesser class of “dwarf planets” sparked widespread protests and disagreement in 2006. The move resulted from the fact that the new definition of the term “planet,” coined at the IA... |
27 July 2009
09:38 GMT |
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This evening, people in several countries will be treated to the largest astronomical event in the 400 years of the discipline. A grass-root movement will be spread around the world, in a 100-hour marathon that will hopefully involve more than 1 million individuals. Basically, amateur and professional astronomy assoc... |
2 April 2009
09:58 GMT |
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Yesterday, March 13, Illinois' Senate passed a bill that re-instated Pluto to a full planetary status, despite the fact that the celestial body lost an “election” with the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) some three years ago, in which its classification was changed to t... |
14 March 2009
07:41 GMT |
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This year will see the introduction of new space- and Earth-based observatories into use, taking advantage of new technologies and wavelengths that have never before been probed. Astronomers praise the International Year of Astronomy as potentially the most important in the field's 400 years of history. New Near... |
13 January 2009
05:01 GMT |
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It may look like the stars live for ever and never change position in the sky or even that planets have extremely precise orbits, but the truth is anything but that. That's the reason why a team of astronomers from the St Mary University in Canada are proposing a redefinition of the astronomical unit. The scient... |
7 February 2008
04:34 GMT |
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