MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Bright white lights and weird, triangular shaped objects, Tennesseans are reporting some unusual things overhead. Don’t expect that to stop anytime soon, a local group that investigates UFO close encounters says sightings are on the rise. For decades millions of people have reported seeing ufo’s. A recent poll shows one in 12 Americans have seen a mysterious object in the sky, a…

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Tonight’s full moon will be the largest and brightest full moon of the year. It offers anyone with clear skies an opportunity to identify simple-to-see features on the moon.

Astronomy – Earth – Moon – Solar System – Planets

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Science editor Alan Boyle’s Weblog: The International Year of Astronomy’s legacy lives on.

Astronomy – International Year of Astronomy – Alan Boyle – Amateur – Education

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A wave of mass UFO sightings across South America is currently occurring, leaving bewildered witnesses wondering if indeed beings from other worlds might be visiting Planet Earth. Stunned residents of towns and villages across Argentina, Peru and Chile as well as other nations have seen multiple objects ranging from mother ships to Cigar-shaped crafts over the last week alone. In at least one case…

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Revelers can ring in the new year with a cosmic flourish, celebrating the first New Year’s Eve blue moon since 1990.

Lunar eclipse – Blue moon – Earth – Moon – Astronomy

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Revelers ringing in 2010 will be treated to a so-called blue moon — that is, the second full moon in a month. Some might even see a partial lunar eclipse.

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Astronomers announced this week they found a water-rich and relatively nearby planet that’s similar in size to Earth.
While the planet probably has too thick of an atmosphere and is too hot to support life similar to that found on Earth, the discovery is being heralded as a major breakthrough in humanity’s search for life on other planets.

“The huge excitement is that we have found a watery world orbiting a very nearby and very small star,” said David Charbonneau, a Harvard professor of astronomy and lead author of an article on the discovery, which appeared this week in the journal Nature.

The planet, named GJ 1214b, is 2.7 times as large as Earth and orbits a star much smaller and less luminous than our sun. That’s significant, Charbonneau said, because for many years, astronomers assumed that planets only would be found orbiting stars that are similar in size to the sun.”

Because of that assumption, researchers didn’t spend much time looking for planets circling small stars, he said. The discovery of this “watery world” helps debunk the notion that Earth-like planets could form only in conditions similar to those in our solar system.

“Nature is just far more inventive in making planets than we were imagining,” he said.

In a way, the newly learned planet was sitting right in front of astronomers’ faces, just waiting for them to look. Instead of using high-powered telescopes attached to satellites, they spotted the planet using an amateur-sized, 16-inch telescope on the ground.

There were no technological reasons the discovery couldn’t have happened long ago, Charbonneau said.

The planet is also rather near to our solar system — only about 40 light-years away.

Planet GJ 1214b is classified as a “super-Earth” because it is between one and 10 times as large as Earth. Scientists have known about the existence of super-Earths for only a couple of years. Most planets learned by astronomers have been gassy giants that are much more similar to Jupiter than to Earth.

Charbonneau said it’s unlikely that any life on the newly learned planet would be similar to life on Earth, but he didn’t discount the thought entirely.

“This planet probably does have liquid water,” he said.

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