telescope Archives - Defence Monitor

16 Apr

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope confirms largest comet nucleus ever seen

Los Angeles: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed the largest comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers, the agency has said. The estimated diameter of the largest icy comet nucleus is approximately 80 miles (128 km), making it larger than the state of Rhode Island, NASA said on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency reported. The nucleus is about 50 times larger than that found at the heart of most known comets. Its mass is estimated to be a staggering 500 trillion tons, a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet found much closer to the sun, said NASA. The…

27 Aug

NASA’s James Webb space telescope completes testing, ready to ship

Washington: NASA's much-awaited James Webb Space Telescope has successfully completed its final tests, the US space agency has said.Engineering teams have completed Webb's long-spanning comprehensive testing regimen at Northrop Grumman's facilities. The telescope is now being prepared for shipment to its launch site, and will be completed in September, NASA said in a statement on Thursday.The US space agency recently pushed back the target for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, touted as its next great space observatory, to October 2021. Previously, Webb was targeted to launch in March 2021.The launch has been pushed due to impacts from the…

12 Jul

Hubble telescope finds mysterious black hole disc

Washington: Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a disc very close to a starving black hole - something that should not be there - based on current astronomical theories.The unexpected thin disc of material was found encircling a supermassive black hole at the heart of the spiral galaxy NGC 3147, located 130 million light-years away, according to a study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.The presence of the black hole disc in such a low-luminosity active galaxy has astronomers surprised. Black holes in certain types of galaxies such as NGC 3147 are considered to…

20 Jun

NASA announces over 200 new planet candidates

Washington:US space agency NASA announced that its Kepler space telescope has discovered 219 new planet candidates outside our Solar System. "Of those, 10 are near-Earth size and orbiting in their star's habitable zone, which is the range of distance from a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of a rocky planet to support life," Xinhua news cited a NASA statement on Monday. With the latest release, Kepler has detected a total of 4,034 planet candidates, of which 2,335 have been verified as exoplanets. Of roughly 50 near-Earth size habitable zone candidates detected by Kepler, more than 30…