ESO has announced the successful first observation made using the new GRAVITY instrument on the VLT (Very Large Telescope). It’s operational on all four VLT UT 8.2-meter telescopes and the observation tests of a region near the center of the Milky Way show that it’s working extremely well to provide high quality observations.
An article about to be published in the journal “Geophysical Research Letters” boosts the theory of the existence of an underground ocean of liquid water on Pluto. An analysis of data collected by NASA’s New Horizons space probe during its July 14, 2015 flyby carried out by Noah Hammond, graduate student at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, offers some clues to support this amazing possibility.
An article published in the journal “Geophysical Research Letters” describes the discovery of an electric wind on Venus that accelerates the ionized hydrogen and oxygen atoms that make up water molecules at such a speed that they disperse in space. A team of scientists led by Glyn Collinson, a scientist of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, analyzed data from the ASPERA-4 instrument of ESA’s Venus Express space probe to find out this wind generated by Venus’ electric field.
NASA has published a comparative analysis of the spectral measurements of three moons of the dwarf planet Pluto which prove that in particular Nyx but also Hydra have a surface covered in water ice. The New Horizons space probe’s LEISA instrument carried out the measurements during the July 14, 2015 flyby. Unfortunately the location of the other two small moons, Styx and Kerberos in those hours didn’t allow spectral measurements.
At the end of last week at CERN the first particle beam was sent through the AWAKE experiment, a test of a proof-of-concept of a new type of particle accelerator. It’s currently still under construction but when finished it will prove the possibility to build plasma accelerators in which wakefield acceleration allows to build accelerators a hundred times smaller than the current ones.
