ESA

The Magellanic Clouds and an interstellar filament seen by the Planck Surveyor satellite (Image ESA and the Planck Collaboration)

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ESA has released an image created using data from the Planck Surveyor satellite offering a very special portrait of an interstellar filament and the Magellanic Clouds. Those are two dwarf galaxies that are part of the Milky Way’s neighborhood and Planck detected the dust between the stars within them during its mission. The main purpose of this satellite was to study the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB or CMBR), but the data collected are also useful to map the galaxies’ dust and magnetic fields.

The SoyuzTMA-18M spacecraft approaching the International Space Station (Image ESA)

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A little while ago the Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft docked to the International Space Station. On board there are ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen and cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Aidyn Aimbetov. The three of then were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan last Wednesday. In a couple of hours the hatches between the Soyuz TMA-18M and the Station will be opened and the newcomers will be welcomed by the rest of the crew.

Examples of the fractures detected on the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (Image ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)

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While the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko started moving away from the Sun, new studies have been published based on data collected over the past months. An article published in the journal “Geophysical Research Letters” describes the exam of the many fractures photographed after the arrival of ESA’s space probe Rosetta. Another article published in the journal “Annales Geophysicae” provides an explanation for the “song” of the comet discovered last year.

Picture of the galaxy NGC 428 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (Photo ESA/Hubble and NASA and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast))

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A photograph of the galaxy NGC 428 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows its distorted and warped structure. Together with traces of a significant amount of stars being formed, it’s the sign of the merger between two galaxies. For this reason, its appearance could give us an idea of ​​what will happen in a few billion years to the Milky Way in its merger with Andromeda.