Astronomers Get First Look at Protoplanetary "Rainfall"
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An embryonic star, just beginning its life as the center of a planetary system, is apparently deluged with massive rainfall as icy material vaporizes and refreezes. Astronomers are observing one such star in a nebula about 1,000 light years from Earth with the Spitzer Space Telescope.
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Astronomers using a giant telescope atop a volcano have discovered a hot spot at the tip of Saturn's south pole. The infrared images captured by the Keck I telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea on the Big Island suggest a warm polar vortex &#151; a large-scale weather pattern likened to a jet stream on Earth that occurs in the upper atmosphere. It's the first such hot vortex ever discovered in the solar system.
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Tooling up in the hunt for aliens For the first time, astronomers have measured the composition of a planet outside the solar system, in what NASA says is a key step in its quest for extraterrestrial life.â¦
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For the first time, scientists have found rings of dust around planet-bearing stars - an important confirmation of theories about how planets form, NASA announced Thursday.
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Scientists taking their first "sniffs of air" from planets outside our solar system are a bit baffled by what they didn't find: water.
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PASADENA, Calif.  - The world got its first look  at the surface of the Saturnian moon Titan on Friday when  pictures from the European space probe Huygens showed a  possibly rocky surface with "drainage channels" for liquids.
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Astronomers detect a torrent of water ice pelting an embryonic star system.
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If humans live on the moon some day, they might turn on the weather forecast just as they do on Earth. But in space, they won't fear rain storms, but sun storms.
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A team of American astronomers have for the first time analysed the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system by measuring its infrared emissions, according to a study published Wednesday.
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By SETH BORENSTEIN  WASHINGTON - The first "sniffs of air" of two huge far-away planets reveal that they seem to be missing water, a surprising finding amid weather unlike any planets in our solar system with blast furnace-like gusts amid supersonic winds.
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Astronomers discover a newborn planet in a solar system that is still in the process of forming.
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A giant cloud half the size of the United States has been imaged on Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft. The cloud may be responsible for the material that fills the lakes discovered last year by Cassini's radar instrument.
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Astronomers believe they've glimpsed light from some of the universe's first stars through the world's largest telescope on the Big Island.
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Astronomers say they may have detected the light from some of the earliest stars to form in the Universe.
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People encounter rain and snow every day, and scientists have studied precipitation for centuries, yet it's amazing how much we still don't know about water that falls from the sky.
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It may take much longer than scientists have thought for violent turbulence to turn grains of space dust into new planets. A NASA telescope recently discovered evidence that
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On Tuesday morning, Aug. 28th, a team of astronomers and engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center will attempt something never done before--to observe meteoroids hitting the Moon and exploding during a lunar eclipse.