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By USH
A high-resolution image of Pluto taken in 2015 by New Horizons Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) in “ride-along” mode with the LEISA spectrometer shows a region called 'the dark, forbidding region informally known as Cthulhu Regio, and the mysterious, possibly cryovolcanic edifice Wright Mons.'
Among the many notable details, is a saucer-shaped object with on top a cylindrical tube located at the bottom of a crater.
It doesn't appear to have formed naturally, suggesting that the circular object could be the top of an extraterrestrial base built inside the crater or... maybe it's a parked disk-shaped alien craft?
Link Image:https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-findings-from-nasa-s-new-horizons-shape-understanding-of-pluto-and-its-moons
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:02:36 Meet Hera, our very own asteroid detective. Together with two small CubeSats – Milani the rock decoder and Juventas the radar visionary – Hera is off on an adventure to explore Didymos, a double asteroid system that is typical of the thousands that pose an impact risk to planet Earth.
Suitable for space enthusiasts young and old, this episode of ‘The incredible adventures of the Hera mission’ is all about craters. What are they? Why are they important? Why is NASA’s DART spacecraft about to collide with an asteroid to create the Solar System’s newest – and perhaps most important – crater? And why do we need Hera to unveil the secrets of this crater?
Watch the other episodes of The incredible adventures of the Hera mission
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By European Space Agency
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is showing off its capabilities closer to home with its first image of Neptune. Not only has Webb captured the clearest view of this peculiar planet’s rings in more than 30 years, but its cameras are also revealing the ice giant in a whole new light.
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By USH
Scientist Judy Schmidt: Nope, I don't know what this is. Some kind of spiral nebula around WR140. I'm sure we'll find out more later.
The Universe, truly, is full of wonders, and the James Webb Space Telescope has just given us our best views of one of them yet.
The object in question is a star around 5,600 light-years away, and Webb's infrared eye has picked out an extraordinary detail: it's surrounded by what appear to be concentric rings of light radiating outward.
While Webb's characteristic diffraction spikes are not 'real', those concentric rings are – and there's a wonderful and fascinating explanation for them.
The star is actually a binary pair of rare stars in the constellation of Cygnus, and their interactions produce precise periodic eruptions of dust that are expanding out in shells into the space around the pair over time.
These shells of dust are glowing in infrared, which has allowed an instrument as sensitive as Webb's MIRI to resolve them in exquisite detail.
The star is what is known as a colliding wind binary, consisting of an extremely rare Wolf-Rayet star, called WR 140, and a hot, massive O-type star companion – another rare object.
Wolf-Rayet stars are very hot, very luminous, and very old; at the end of their main-sequence lifespan. They are significantly depleted in hydrogen, rich in nitrogen or carbon, and losing mass at a very high rate.
O-type stars are among the most massive stars known, also very hot and bright; because they are so massive, their lifespans are incredibly brief. View the full article
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By European Space Agency
Image: Deep within the Sahara Desert lies one of the best-preserved craters on Earth. On Asteroid Day, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the almost-perfectly circular Tenoumer Crater in Mauritania. View the full article
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