Astronomy - February 2014

ASTRONEWS WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 21 Astronomers have discovered and confirmed one of the most distant galaxies yet: It was rapidly fo ...

22 ASTRONOMY t FEBRUARY 2014 Planetary science Does meth flow o N ine years ago, Europe’s Huy- gens probe dropped through the at ...

When not writing articles for Astronomy, Robert Zimmerman reports on science and culture at his website, Behind the Black (http: ...

24 ASTRONOMY t FEBRUARY 2014 and its presumed large size was in part an illusion caused by that atmosphere. Jupiter’s moon Ganym ...

for mapping surface details. The radar mapper, however, can penetrate the haze and see objects as small as about 1,150 feet (350 ...

26 ASTRONOMY t FEBRUARY 2014 bigger than an inch (a couple of centimeters) across. In this scenario, methane f lows only in narr ...

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 27 scale. Such megastorms would produce horrendous f lash f loods that could easily carve out the many meander ...

28 ASTRONOMY t FEBRUARY 2014 Alien life C ould the brighter inhabitants of our galaxy be hunkered down around its dimmer stars? ...

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 29 supergiants). Like top tennis players, there aren’t many, but they have high visibility. This mass-luminosi ...

101 102 103 104 105 Intensity (relative) Wavelength (nanometers) 15,000 kelvin star Sun (5800 K) 3000 K Visible light M-type K-t ...

M K G F A B O locked planets with simple atmospheres of carbon dioxide. If these simulated worlds had at least 10 percent as muc ...

B A F G K M 223 100 352 60 (^910) 32 ASTRONOMY t FEBRUARY 2014 the emptier realms farther out, a hint that perhaps the dwarfs do ...

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 33 between 1995 and 2004, took observations of approximately 1,000 nearby and mostly Sun-like stars. Because r ...

Up quark Up antiquark Electron Antineutrino Down antiquark Up quark Bottom quark Bottom antiquark 34 ASTRONOMY t FEBRUARY 2014 A ...

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 35 Physicists believe that the simplest explanation of a scientific question is often the best, so we conclude ...

10° Mid-February, 4 A.M. Looking south OPHIUCHUS VIRGO CORVUS CENTAURUS SCORPIUS LUPUS LIBRA Mars Spica Saturn Antares Mars and ...

Catch a sporadic meteor Peeking around the Moon’s eastern edge WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 37 of events. First, the satellite crosses in f ...

38 ASTRONOMY t FEBRUARY 2014 STAR DOME Sirius 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 STAR MAGNITUDES STAR COLORS A star’s color depends on its ...

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10" S W E N Venus Mars Mercury Ceres Uranus Saturn Neptune Pluto Jupiter 40 ASTRONOMY t FEBRUARY 2014 PAT HOF THE PLANETS The pl ...