NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found the farthest supernova so far of the type used to measure cosmic distances. Supernova UDS10Wil, nicknamed SN Wilson after American President Woodrow Wilson, exploded more than 10 billion years ago.

SN Wilson belongs to a special class called Type Ia supernovae. These bright beacons are prized by astronomers because they provide a consistent level of brightness that can be used to measure the expansion of space. They also yield clues to the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the rate of expansion.

via NASA – Hubble Breaks Record in Search for Farthest Supernova.

NASA’s Kepler space telescope has witnessed the effects of a dead star bending the light of its companion star. The findings are among the first detection of this phenomenon — a result of Einstein’s general theory of relativity — in binary, or double, star systems.

The dead star, called a white dwarf, is the burnt-out core of what used to be a star like our sun. It is locked in an orbiting dance with its partner, a small “red dwarf” star. While the tiny white dwarf is physically smaller than the red dwarf, it is more massive.

“This white dwarf is about the size of Earth but has the mass of the sun,” said Phil Muirhead of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, lead author of the findings to be published April 20 in the Astrophysical Journal. “It’s so hefty that the red dwarf, though larger in physical size, is circling around the white dwarf.”

via NASA – Gravity-Bending Find Leads to Kepler Meeting Einstein.

This sequence of seven images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE)camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows wind-caused changes in the parachute of NASA’s
Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft as the chute lay on the Martian ground during months
after its use in safe landing of the Curiosity rover. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

PASADENA, Calif. – Photos from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show how the parachute that helped NASA’s Curiosity rover land on Mars last summer has subsequently changed its shape on the ground.

The images were obtained by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Seven images taken by HiRISE between Aug. 12, 2012, and Jan. 13, 2013, show the used parachute shifting its shape at least twice in response to wind.

The images in the sequence of photos are available online at http://uahirise.org/releases/msl-chute.php and at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/pia16813.html .

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