Eclipse viewing safety: Keeping your & your kid’s vision safe People preparing to watch Monday’s total eclipse of the sun need to protect their vision during the event, eye doctors say. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
The World’s Largest Digital Camera is Complete. It Will Go Into the Vera Rubin Observatory The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, formerly the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), was formally proposed in 2001 to create an astronomical facility that could conduct deep-sky surveys using the latest technology. This includes a wide-field reflecting telescope with an 8.4-meter (~27.5-foot) primary mirror that relies on a novel three-mirror design (the Simonyi Survey Telescope) and a 3.2-megapixel Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) imaging camera (the LSST Camera). Once complete, Rubin will perform a 10-year survey of the southern sky known as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). While construction onRead More →
The universe’s accelerated expansion might be slowing down The universe is still expanding at an accelerating rate, but it may have slowed down recently compared to a few billion years ago, early results from the most precise measurement of its evolution yet suggested Thursday. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
DESI first-year data delivers unprecedented measurements of expanding universe Scientists have analyzed the first batch of data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s quest to map the universe and unravel the mysteries of dark energy. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Roman Will Learn the Ages of Hundreds of Thousands of Stars Astronomers routinely provide the ages of the stars they study. But the methods of measuring ages aren’t 100% accurate. Measuring the ages of distant stars is a difficult task. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope should make some progress. Stars like our Sun settle into their main sequence lives of fusion and change very little for billions of years. It’s like watching middle-aged adults go about their business during their working lives. They get up, drive to work, sit at a desk, then drive home. But what can change over time is their rotationRead More →
The First Atmospheric Rainbow on an Exoplanet? When light strikes the atmosphere all sorts of interesting things can happen. Water vapor can split sunlight into a rainbow arc of colors, corpuscular rays can stream through gaps in clouds like the light from heaven, and halos and sundogs can appear due to sunlight reflecting off ice crystals. And then there is the glory effect, which can create a colorful almost saint-like halo around objects. Like rainbows, glories are seen when facing away from the light source. They are often confused with circular rainbows because of their similarity, but glories are a unique effect. Rainbows are causedRead More →
Huge star explosion to appear in sky in once-in-a-lifetime event Sometime between now and September, a massive explosion 3,000 light years from Earth will flare up in the night sky, giving amateur astronomers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness this space oddity. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Webb Sees a Galaxy Awash in Star Formation Since it began operations in July 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has fulfilled many scientific objectives. In addition to probing the depths of the Universe in search of galaxies that formed shortly after the Big Bang, it has also provided the clearest and most detailed images of nearby galaxies. In the process, Webb has provided new insight into the processes through which galaxies form and evolve over billions of years. This includes galaxies like Messier 82 (M82), a “starburst galaxy” located about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. Also known as theRead More →
The Stellar Demolition Derby in the Centre of the Galaxy The region near the Milky Way’s centre is dominated by the supermassive black hole that resides there. Sagittarius A*’s overwhelming gravity creates a chaotic region where tightly packed, high-speed stars crash into one another like cars in a demolition derby. These collisions and glancing blows change the stars forever. Some become strange, stripped-down, low-mass stars, while others gain new life. The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole (SMBH) is called Sagittarius A* (Sgr. A*). Sgr. A* is about four million times more massive than the Sun. With that much mass, the much smaller stars nearby areRead More →
A New Map Shows the Universe’s Dark Energy May Be Evolving At the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, an instrument with 5,000 tiny robotic eyes scans the night sky. Every 20 minutes, the instrument and the telescope it’s attached to observe a new set of 5,000 galaxies. The instrument is called DESI—Dark Energy Survey Instrument—and once it’s completed its five-year mission, it’ll create the largest 3D map of the Universe ever created. But scientists are getting access to DESI’s first data release and it suggests that dark energy may be evolving. DESI is the most powerful multi-object survey spectrograph in the world, according toRead More →
Why is it so hard to drill off Earth? Humans have been digging underground for millennia – on the Earth. It’s where we extract some of our most valuable resources that have moved society forward. For example, there wouldn’t have been a Bronze Age without tin and copper – both of which are primarily found under the ground. But when digging under the ground on celestial bodies, we’ve had a much rougher time. That is going to have to change if we ever hope to utilize the potential resources that are available under the surface. A paper from Dariusz Knez and Mitra Kahlilidermani of theRead More →
Researchers say neutron stars are key to understanding elusive dark matter Scientists may be one step closer to unlocking one of the great mysteries of the universe after calculating that neutron stars might hold a key to helping us understand elusive dark matter. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Astronomers detect potential ‘glory effect’ on a hellish distant world for the first time Potential signs of the rainbow-like “glory effect” have been detected on a planet outside our solar system. Glory are colorful concentric rings of light that occur only under peculiar conditions. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
NASA’s NEOWISE extends legacy with decade of near-Earth object data As the infrared space telescope continues its long-duration survey of the universe, it is creating a unique resource for future astronomers to make new discoveries. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
New observations provide insights into whether the birth of brown dwarfs takes a similar course to that of stars The birth of stars is a chaotic and dynamic process, especially in the early phase, which is characterized by complex gas structures in the form of spirals and streamers. Such structures are termed “feeding filaments” because they feed the gaseous material from the surroundings to the newly born star, akin to cosmic umbilical cords. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
From black holes to proto-planets: ALMA’s top discoveries | Chasing Starlight 9 ESO Video Casts Go to SourceRead More →
Want to Start a Farm on Mars? This Rover Will Find Out if it’s Possible Travelling to Mars has its own challenges. The distance alone makes the journey something of a mission in itself. Arrive though, and the handwork has only just begun. Living and surviving on Mars will be perhaps humans biggest challenge yet. It would be impossible to take everything along with you to survive so instead, it would be imperative to ‘live off the land’ and produce as much locally as possible. A new rover called AgroMars will be equipped with a number of agriculture related experiments to study the make upRead More →
Which Animal Has Seen the Most Total Solar Eclipses? In a paper published on the 1st April, author Mark Popinchalk reported upon a fascinating piece of research focussing on which animal has seen the most solar eclipses! It turns out that, whilst us humans have seen our fair share we are nowhere near the top of the list. According to Popinchalk, the horseshoe crabs have seen a staggering 138 trillion solar eclipses across the entire species. We are hot on their heels but it won’t be until about 10 million years that we catch up! On Monday we will be treated to another total solarRead More →
NASA to launch three sounding rockets during solar eclipse Three Black Brant IX sounding rockets for the Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) mission are scheduled to launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility launch range in Virginia. The launch window opens April 8, 2024, at 2:40 p.m. EDT. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
The Moon Will Get its Own Time Zone White House officials have directed NASA to begin work on establishing a standard time for the Moon, according to a report from Reuters this week. Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) is intended to help ensure synchronization between the various lunar activities planned under the Artemis program. Timekeeping is essential to space travel. It ensures orbital maneuvers occur correctly, it helps communications between spacecraft remain secure, and it prevents errors in positioning and mapping. Without it, in other words, lunar exploration would get very complicated. We can blame Einstein and his theory of relativity for part of the problem.Read More →
