Carnival of Space 559

1. Universe Today – The DARKNESS Instrument Will Block Stars and Reveal Their Planets. 100 Million Times Fainter than the Star

An international team led by UC Santa Barbara physicist Benjamin Mazin has developed a new instrument known as DARKNESS. This superconducting camera, which is the world’s largest and most sophisticated, will allow astronomers to detect planets around nearby stars.

The team’s study which details their instrument, titled “DARKNESS: A Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector Integral Field Spectrograph for High-contrast Astronomy“, recently appeared in the Publications of the Astronomy Society of the Pacific. The team was led by Benjamin Mazin, the Worster Chair in Experimental Physics at UCSB, and also includes members from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the California Institute of Technology, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and multiple universities.

2. NextBigCoins.io – NASA using blockchain tech to improve space communications

3. Universe Today – Did You Know the Earth Has a Second Magnetic Field? Its Oceans

4. Universe Today – The Challenges of an Alien Spaceflight Program: Escaping Super Earths and Red Dwarf Stars

5. The Hill – Winners and losers from Jim Bridenstine’s confirmation as NASA administrator

6. Blasting News – Is NASA’s Jim Bridenstine a ‘climate denier’ and does it matter?

7. CosmoQuest – Register Now to Attend ASP2018 in Sonoma

8. CosmoQuest – StanDrawsSpaceships talks CosmoQuest, and Why We Map Craters!