Super Earth!

European astronomers working with the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) Telescope in Chile have announced the discovery of 3 "Super-Earths".

These are heavy planets (from 4.2 to 9.4 times the mass of the Earth), that orbit fairly close in to the star. The three planets take mush less time to orbit there parent star than the Earth does, with the quickest completing one orbit in 4 days and the slowest in 20 days (days being Earth days). The measurements are based on how much the the star wobbles as the planet's whiz round. No direct observations of the planets can be made as they are 42 light years away (that's 399 trillion kilometres!)

For more details check out the Yahoo news article.

GLAST reaches orbit.

NASA's latest orbital telescope his been launched aboard a Delta 2 rocket.

GLAST stands for Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, and shows NASA's determination to try and make up words from the acronyms of their space craft!

Anyhow GLAST is trying to "explore the most extreme environments in the universe, searching for signs of new laws of physics, investigating the nature of dark matter, and many other things as well." The Telescope will study Gamma Ray bursts as they happen.

For more information visit the NASA News article

Into the Sun

Ever wanted to know what the Sun is like inside, well scientists are about to get one small step closer. NASA is planning to send a probe "into" the Sun to gether information on the Solar Wind and also on Magnetism. They hope that it will provide solution to two great mysteries:

1) The Corona - the outer layer of the Sun - is much hotter than the layer of gas underneath.

2) The Solar Wind - a stream of particles that come from the Sun - is felt out amongst the planets but not near the Sun.

Solar Probe+ is designed to come up with these idea, but don't hold your breath it wont be launched until 2015.

For more details see the NASA news article