LDN 483 is located about 700 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens (The Serpent). The cloud contains enough dusty material to completely block the visible light from background stars. Particularly dense molecular clouds, like LDN 483, qualify as dark nebulae because of this obscuring property. The starless nature of LDN 483 and its ilk would […]
Tuesday’s launch of an unmanned cargo ship to the International Space Station by a private company was canceled shortly before lift-off from the U.S. spaceport in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida. The countdown for the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was halted with just over one minute left due an unexpected technical problem. […]
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has entered an approach phase in which it will continue to close in on Ceres, a Texas-sized dwarf planet never before visited by a spacecraft. Dawn launched in 2007 and is scheduled to enter Ceres orbit in March 2015. Dawn recently emerged from solar conjunction, in which the spacecraft is on the […]
Weddell seals have biological adaptations that allow them to dive deep–as much as of hundreds of meters–while hunting, but also an uncanny ability to find the breathing holes they need on the surface of the ice. Now, researchers supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) believe they have figured out how they do it–by using […]