78: Proxima Centauri is more Sun like than previously thought

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*Proxima Centauri is more Sun like than previously thought A new study claims Proxima Centauri is more Sun like than previously thought. The new findings indicate our nearest stellar neighbour other than the Sun undergoes similar magnetic cycles to the Sun which however are far more dramatic. *New Horizons completes its epic data transfer from last year’s close encounter with Pluto NASA’s New Horizons mission has reached a major milestone with the last bits of science data from the July 2015 Pluto flyby finally transmitted to Earth. The valuable information had been stored on the spacecraft’s digital recorders since last year’s historic close encounter – mission managers being forced to drip feed the data back to Earth because of the huge distances involved. *New Pluto revelations continue to surprize scientists Meanwhile, data from earlier New Horizons Pluto downloads are continuing to provide surprising discoveries. Following the recent revelation that Pluto contains a large subsurface liquid water ocean -- and earlier discoveries of cryogenic ice volcanos and blue Plutonian skies -- scientists have now confirmed the dwarf planet has some of the brightest spots in the solar system reflecting an amazing 100 percent of the light they receive. *Very close asteroid flyby Astronomers have just witnessed a really close encounter with an asteroid which zoomed past the Earth between about 75 thousand and 96 thousand kilometres above the ground. The 22 metre wide space rock rocketed past the planet at over 21 kilometres per second just hours after first being spotted by the Mt. Lemmon Sky Survey in Arizona. *SpaceX hopes to be back before the end of the year SpaceX says it hopes to be back in the air before the end of the year. The company is continuing to work with NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration to determine the cause of September’s launch pad explosion at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Base which destroyed a Falcon 9 rocket and its satellite payload. *SKYWATCH Jonathan Nally the editor of Australian Sky and Telescope Magazine joins us to check out the night skies of November on Skywatch.

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#astronomy #space #technology #science #news#pluto #proximacentauri #spacex 

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