Exoplanets & Exomoons

Preview of This Week's Space Science Announcement

By Keith Cowing
June 5, 2006

NASA FUSE Mission Briefing: Carbon-rich gas around a young star that may be forming terrestrial planets

“NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Wednesday, June 7, about the discovery of carbon-rich gas around a young star that may be forming terrestrial planets. The discovery was made with NASA’s Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer spacecraft and will be featured in the June 8 issue of Nature.”

The Carbon-Rich Gas in the Beta Pictoris Circumstellar Disk

“Here we report the detection of singly and doubly ionized carbon (CII, CIII) and neutral atomic oxygen (OI) gas in the Beta Pic disk; measurement of these abundant volatile species permits a much more complete gas inventory. Carbon is extremely overabundant relative to every other measured element.[Accepted for publication in Nature].”

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻