Felix Baumgartner & Red Bull jump the stratos

Source: Dawn.Com

Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner celebrated his unprecedented feat Monday after becoming the first man to break the sound barrier in a record-shattering, death-defying freefall jump from the edge of space.

The 43-year-old leapt from a capsule more than 24 miles (39 kilometers) above the Earth Sunday, reaching a top speed of 833.9 miles (1,342 kilometers) per hour, or 1.24 times the speed of sound, according to organisers.

The veteran skydiver was in freefall for four minutes and 20 seconds before opening his red and white parachute and floating down to the desert in the US state of New Mexico, said Red Bull Stratos mission record keeper Brian Utley.

Mission control erupted in cheers as Baumgartner sprung from the capsule hoisted aloft by a giant helium-filled balloon to an altitude of 128,097 feet (39,044 meters), even higher than expected. – Video by Reuters

Astronomers discover planet with four suns

Astronomers have identified a giant gas planet, located just under 5,000 light-years away, that its sky is illuminated by four different suns.

According to the report published in Astrophysical Journal, the planet named PH1, after the Planet Hunters site, is slightly larger than Neptune and about six times the size of Earth. 

Two US volunteers, Kian Jek of San Francisco and Robert Gagliano from Cottonwood, Arizona, discovered PH1 using the Planethunters.org website. 

The discovery was later confirmed by a team of space experts using the Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. 

The recently discovered planet orbits one pair of stars and is in turn circled by a second pair. As a result, a total of four stars light up its sky, the astronomers explained.

Systems orbiting pairs of stars or binary star systems have been found earlier, but none of these systems were reported to have another pair of stars circling them at the same time. 

FGP/PKH
(PressTv.IR)