EarthSky News - Sept 13 - Life from Interstellar Space?

September 13 Life from Interstellar Space? by:

Does organic material in comets predate our solar system? "If cometary organic molecules were indeed produced in interstellar space—and if they played a role in the emergence of life on our planet—might they not also have seeded life on many other planets of our galaxy?" Farthest lunar perigee today The moon reaches perigee - its closest point to Earth - once each month. Today's perigee is the most distant one of 2017. Andromeda galaxy: Milky Way’s next-door neighbor The Andromeda galaxy is the closest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way and the most distant thing you can see with your eye alone. Find it in your night sky! Openings in Antarctic sea ice affect global climate Heat escaping through openings in sea ice influences sea and atmospheric temperatures and wind patterns around the globe - even rainfall around the tropics, says new study.

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Use Cassiopeia to find Andromeda galaxy Note the M or W shape of Cassiopeia. Note that one half of the W is more deeply notched than the other half. This deeper V is your “arrow” in the sky, pointing to the Andromeda galaxy. Here's how you find Cassiopeia.

Use Great Square to find Andromeda galaxy Imagine the Great Square of Pegasus as a baseball diamond. Think of the star Alpheratz as 3rd-base. An imaginary line from the 1st-base star through Alpheratz points in the galaxy's general direction. Here's how you find the Great Square. Submit your photo to EarthSky here!

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EarthSky News - Sept 12 - Age of Humans in a Galactic Context

September 11 Age of Humans in a Galactic Context by:

Our Age of Humans in a galactic context    A proposed new classification system - somewhat like the well-known Kardashev scale for classifying extraterrestrial civilizations - and a new way of thinking about human sustainability on Earth. Cassini makes 'goodbye kiss' flyby of Titan Cassini's final flyby of Titan - Saturn's large moon - went as planned yesterday. The spacecraft is now on a course that'll bring a fiery end to its mission, this Friday. X-ray astronomy and planet-hosting stars X-ray astronomers explored how quickly young stars settle down after blasting the space around themselves - including any possible planets - with energetic radiation. Ultraviolet light key to life search, too? Too little UV light, and life might not start. Too much, in the form dramatic UV flares from stars, and the atmospheres of orbiting planets might undergo damage.

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Another X-flare from the sun We're near solar minimum, but the sun has been active! Click here for a video of solar flares so far in September and for news of Sunday's X-flare.

Last night's moon over Freedom Tower Gowri Lakshminarayanan wrote: "This is a 21-image composite of the rising waning gibbous moon (~63%) over the Freedom Tower in New York. I made it as a mark of respect for those innocent lives lost 16 years back ..." Submit your photo to EarthSky here!

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