June 2017 (Page 2)

Hubble Finds a Dead Galaxy that was Finished Making Stars Just a Billion Years After the Big Bang Thanks to recent improvements in space-based and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have been able to probe deeper into the Universe than ever before. By looking billions of years back in time, we are able to test our theories about the history of galactic formation and evolution. Unfortunately, studying the very early Universe is a daunting task, and one that is beyond the capabilities of our current instruments. But by combining the power of the Hubble Space Telescope with a technique known as gravitational lensing, a team of astronomersRead More →

Saturn Rides Bareback On The Galactic Dark Horse The bright dot is Saturn and it shines on the back of the Galactic Dark Horse, a collection of dark nebulae in the constellation Ophiuchus that resembles a prancing horse. The head is to the right with a wisp of a tail to the left. The photo, taken on June 20, 2017, has been turned 90° to the right, so the horse stands upright. Credit: Bob King I didn’t notice it with the naked eye, but as soon as the time exposure ended and I looked at the camera’s back display, there it was — Saturn ridingRead More →

See NASA’s Curiosity Rover Simultaneously from Orbit and Red Planet’s Surface Climbing Mount Sharp NASA’s Curiosity rover as seen simultaneously on Mars surface and from orbit on Sol 1717, June 5, 2017. The robot snapped this self portrait mosaic view while approaching Vera Rubin Ridge at the base of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater – backdropped by distant crater rim. This navcam camera mosaic was stitched from raw images and colorized. Inset shows overhead orbital view of Curiosity amid rocky mountainside terrain taken the same day by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo You can catch a glimpse of what its likeRead More →

Is Human Hibernation Possible? Going to Sleep for Long Duration Spaceflight We’ve spent a few articles on Universe Today talking about just how difficult it’s going to be to travel to other stars. Sending tiny unmanned probes across the vast gulfs between stars is still mostly science fiction. But to send humans on that journey? That’s just a level of technology beyond comprehension. For example, the nearest star is Proxima Centauri, located a mere 4.25 light years away. Just for comparison, the Voyager spacecraft, the most distant human objects ever built by humans, would need about 50,000 years to make that journey. I don’t knowRead More →

Let’s Clean up the Space Junk with Magnetic Space Tugs After 50 years of sending rockets, satellites, and payloads into orbit, humanity has created something of a “space junk” problem. Recent estimates indicate that there are more than 170 million pieces of debris up there, ranging in size from less than 1 cm (o.4 in) to a few meters in diameter. Not only does this junk threaten spacecraft and the ISS, but collisions between bits of debris can cause more to form, a phenomena known as the Kessler Effect. And thanks to the growth of the commercial aerospace industry and the development of small satellites,Read More →

LISA is On! Gravitational Wave Detection is Going to Space The discovery of gravitational waves by the LIGO experiment in 2015 sent ripples through the scientific community. Originally predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, the confirmation of these waves (and two subsequent detections) solved a long-standing cosmological mystery. In addition to bending the fabric of space-time, it is now known that gravity can also create perturbations that can be detected billions of light-years away. Seeking to capitalize on these discoveries and conduct new and exciting research into gravitational waves, the European Space Agency (ESA) recently green-lighted the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission. ConsistingRead More →

An Astronomical Detective Tale and the Moon of 2007 OR10 These two images reveal a moon orbiting the dwarf planet2007 OR10. NASA/Hubble/ESA/STScI It isn’t every day we get a new moon added to the list of solar system satellites. The combined observational power of three observatories — Kepler, Herschel and Hubble — led an astronomical detective tale to its climatic conclusion: distant Kuiper Belt Object 2007 OR10 has a tiny moon. The dwarf planet itself is an enigma wrapped in a mystery: with a long orbit taking it out to a distant aphelion 101 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, back into the environs ofRead More →

Astronomy Cast Ep. 453: Favorite Things We’ve Done These 10 Years 10 years of Astronomy Cast… wow. It’s been a long, fun journey. What are some of our favorite episodes and adventures over the decade we’ve been doing this show. Visit the Astronomy Cast Page to subscribe to the audio podcast! We usually record Astronomy Cast as a live Google+ Hangout on Air every Friday at 1:30 pm Pacific / 4:30 pm Eastern. You can watch here on Universe Today or from the Astronomy Cast Google+ page. The post Astronomy Cast Ep. 453: Favorite Things We’ve Done These 10 Years appeared first on Universe Today.Read More →

NASA Announces 10, That’s Right 10! New Planets in Their Star’s Habitable Zone The Kepler space telescope is surely the gift that keeps on giving. After being deployed in 2009, it went on to detect a total of 2,335 confirmed exoplanets and 582 multi-planet systems. Even after two of its reaction wheels failed, it carried on with its K2 mission, which has discovered an additional 520 candidates, 148 of which have been confirmed. And with yet another extension, which will last beyond 2018, it shows no signs of stopping! In the most recent catalog to be released by the Kepler mission, an additional 219 new planetRead More →

Carnival of Space #514 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Brad Rogers at The Evolving Planet blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #514. And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out,Read More →

Messier 47 – the NGC 2422 Open Star Cluster Welcome back to Messier Monday! In our ongoing tribute to the great Tammy Plotner, we take a look at Orion’s Nebula’s “little brother”, the De Marian’s Nebula! During the 18th century, famed French astronomer Charles Messier noted the presence of several “nebulous objects” in the night sky. Having originally mistaken them for comets, he began compiling a list of them so that others would not make the same mistake he did. In time, this list (known as the Messier Catalog) would come to include 100 of the most fabulous objects in the night sky. One ofRead More →

The Aerospike Engine Was Considered for the Shuttle, But Never Flew. That’s About to Change The aerospike engine is a time-honored concept. In the past, NASA tested the concept extensively on the ground and hoped to incorporate it into the Space Shuttle and their next-generation Venture Star program (a Single-Stage-To-Orbit (SSTO) vehicle). However, due to budget constraints, the Space Shuttle ended up being equipped with bell-shaped nozzles instead, and the Venture Star never saw the light of day. But thanks to New Mexico-based aerospace company ARCA, the aerospike engine is getting a new lease on life. This coming August, they will conduct a test flightRead More →

Gravitational Astronomy? How Detecting Gravitational Waves Changes Everything Just a couple of weeks ago, astronomers from Caltech announced their third detection of gravitational waves from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory or LIGO. As with the previous two detections, astronomers have determined that the waves were generated when two intermediate-mass black holes slammed into each other, sending out ripples of distorted spacetime. One black hole had 31.2 times the mass of the Sun, while the other had 19.4 solar masses. The two spiraled inward towards each other, until they merged into a single black hole with 48.7 solar masses. And if you do the math, twiceRead More →

Elon Musk Details His Vision for a Human Civilization on Mars Elon Musk has never been one to keep his long-term plans to himself. Beyond the development of reusable rockets, electric cars, and revolutionizing solar power, he has also been quite vocal about establishing a colony on Mars within his lifetime. The goal here is nothing less than ensuring the survival of the human race by creating a “backup location”, and calls for some serious planning and architecture. These and other aspects of Musk’s proposed mission to Mars were outlined in an essay titled “Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species“, which was published in the JuneRead More →

Opportunity Reaches ‘Perseverance Valley’ Precipice – Ancient Fluid Carved Gully on Mars Opportunity rover looks south from the top of Perseverance Valley along the rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars in this partial self portrait including the rover deck and solar panels. Perseverance Valley descends from the right and terminates down near the crater floor. This navcam camera photo mosaic was assembled from raw images taken on Sol 4736 (20 May 2017) and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com Now well into her 13th year roving the Red Planet, NASA’s astoundingly resilient Opportunity rover has arrived at the precipice of “Perseverance Valley” – overlooking theRead More →

The Corona Borealis Constellation Welcome to another edition of Constellation Friday! Today, in honor of the late and great Tammy Plotner, we take a look at the “Northern Crown” – the Corona Borealis constellation. Enjoy! In the 2nd century CE, Greek-Egyptian astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus (aka. Ptolemy) compiled a list of all the then-known 48 constellations. This treatise, known as the Almagest, would be used by medieval European and Islamic scholars for over a thousand years to come, effectively becoming astrological and astronomical canon until the early Modern Age. One of these constellations was Corona Borealis, otherwise known as the “Northern Crown”. This small, faint constellation isRead More →

Weekly Space Hangout – June 16, 2017: Dr. Natalie Batalha and NASA’s NExSS Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Special Guest: Dr. Natalie Batalha is an astrophysicist at NASA Ames Research Center and project scientist for NASA’s Kepler Mission. Dr. Batalha leads the effort to understand planet populations in the galaxy based on Kepler’s discoveries, and in 2015 she joined the leadership team of NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet System Science Coalition (NExSS,) a multidisciplinary team dedicated to searching for evidence of life beyond the Solar System as well as understanding the diversity of exoplanetary worlds and which of these worlds are most likely to harbor life. OnRead More →

This is Kind of Sad. Astronomers Find a Failed Star Orbiting a Dead Star Death is simply a part of life, and this is no less the case where stars and other astronomical objects are concerned. Sure, the timelines are much, much greater where these are concerned, but the basic rule is the same. Much like all living organism, stars eventually reach old age and become white dwarfs. And some are not even fortunate enough to be born, instead becoming a class of failed stars known as brown dwarfs. Despite being familiar with these objects, astronomers were certainly not expecting to find examples of bothRead More →