Universe Today (Page 24)

Uranus and Neptune are Actually Pretty Much the Same Color In the late 1980s, the Voyager 2 spacecraft snapped the “canonical” up-close images of Uranus and Neptune. In those views, Uranus was a pretty greenish-blue and Neptune appeared a deep azure color. It turns out that both planets are pretty close in color: a greenish-blue more akin to Uranus’s appearance. No, Uranus and Neptune haven’t swapped color values. It turns out that those images aren’t precise recordings of their actual colors. Planetary scientists re-examined the Voyager 2 images and compared them to more recent observations made with both space-based and ground-based observatories. Then they createdRead More →

NASA Selects the MAGGIE Solar-Powered Aircraft for the 2024 NIAC Program Since 1998, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program has fostered innovation by accepting new and unconventional proposals from the scientific community. Those selected are awarded funding to conduct early-stage technology studies that could lead to applications that help advance the agency’s scientific and exploration objectives. In a recent press statement, NASA announced the 13 concepts it has selected for Phase I development, which will receive a combined award of up to $175,000 in grants to assess the concepts’ feasibility and develop the technology further. Through the NIAC, NASA maintains a strong tradition where game-changingRead More →

Titan’s “Magic Islands” Could Be Floating Blobs of Organic Solids When the Cassini spacecraft returned radar scans of the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan, the results were mindblowing. It revealed giant lakes or seas of liquid methane, a complete absence of waves and what seemed to be islands in the giant bodies of water. Now a team of scientists think they may be blobs of organic molecules that form in the atmosphere, collect in the lakes and float around! The bus sized space probe Cassini was launched in October of 1997. The journey took the craft 3.5 billion km using gravitational slingshots following launch fromRead More →

Japan’s New X-Ray Observatory Sees First Light XRISM, the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, is a joint NASA/JAXA mission led by JAXA. The X-ray space telescope began its mission in low-Earth orbit on September 6th, 2023. Science operations won’t begin until later this year, but the satellite’s science team has released some of the telescope’s first images. XRISM is a stop-gap telescope. Our existing X-ray observatories, XMM Newton and Chandra, are aging, and their missions will end soon. Their replacement, the European Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (ATHENA), won’t launch until 2035, leaving a years-long gap with no X-ray telescope coverage. Japan’s Hitomi X-ray observatoryRead More →

Multiple Supernova Remnants Merging in a Distant Nebula The key to astronomy is careful observation. Unlike many sciences, astronomers can’t often do their work in a lab. Sure, they can build space telescopes and large ground observatories, but even with tools as simple as sticks and stones astronomers were able to change our understanding of the Universe with patience and observation. That tradition still holds true today, as a recent study in The Astronomical Journal shows. The study focuses on a small nebula in the southern hemisphere known as 30 Doradus B. It is part of a star-forming region that has been creating stars forRead More →

Should We Send Humans to Pluto? Universe Today has examined the potential for sending humans to Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, the planet Venus, and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, all despite their respective harsh environments and vast distances. These conversations with planetary science experts determined that humans traveling to these worlds in the foreseeable future could be possible, despite the harsh conditions and travel time, specifically to Titan. But what if we were to send humans farther out into the Solar System, and much farther out than Titan? Here, we will continue this conversation with planetary science experts to determine whether the dwarf planet Pluto couldRead More →

ESA Gives Us a Glimpse of its Future Space Exploration Plans with a Cool New Video The European Space Agency (ESA) has made incredible contributions to space exploration and space-based science. Last year, the agency launched the Euclid space telescope, which will survey the Universe back to 3 billion years after the Big Bang to measure cosmic expansion and the influence of Dark Energy. After more than a decade of development, the Ariane 6 launch vehicle conducted its first full-scale dress rehearsal, which included an engine fire test. In a recent video, the ESA showcased its plans for the future, which include some new launchRead More →

GJ 367b is Another Dead World Orbiting a Red Dwarf It’s not looking good for red dwarf habitability, and that’s nothing new. Astronomers studied the atmosphere of the often-mentioned exoplanet GJ 367b and found, well, nothing. The planet likely lost whatever volatiles it had long ago, and the red dwarf star it orbits is responsible. Gliese 367 is a red dwarf star about 30 light-years away with three known exoplanets orbiting it. Astronomers found GJ 367b and its siblings with NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) in 2021. GJ 367b is an ultra-short period planet that takes only 7.7 hours to complete one orbit andRead More →

Hubble Watches an Exoplanet Atmosphere Change Over Three Years If you want to know more about an exoplanet atmosphere, watch how it changes over time. That’s the mantra of a group of astronomers who just reported on conditions at Tylos, otherwise known as WASP-121 b. Tylos is a hot Jupiter world. It lies in a tidally locked 30-hour orbit around WASP-121. That means the planet shows the same face toward its star. As a result, one hemisphere is heated to over 3000 K. Such “overheating” affects the weather on Tylos and creates a hotspot on the star-facing side. Astronomers wanted to track the heat-driven atmosphericRead More →

Spending Time in Space? Maximize Your Health with this Space Salad Space exploration carries with it many challengs and one of them is eating, or more accurately the provision of food. During short duration missions then its reasonable to take pre-packaged meals that have been provided from Earth. For long germ missions its a different story, not only will the fearless space explorers crave fresh food its also more of a logistical challenge to take enough food for a trip spanning many years. Researchers have now developed a healthy ‘space salad’ from ingredeints that could be grown in space. Travelling in space is a demandingRead More →

Do Neutron Stars Have Mountains? Gravitational Wave Observatories Could Detect Them The surface gravity of a neutron star is so incredibly intense that it can cause atoms to collapse into a dense cluster of neutrons. The interiors of neutron stars may be dense enough to allow quarks to escape the bounds of nuclei. So it’s hard to imagine neutron stars as active bodies, with tectonic crusts and perhaps even mountains. But we have evidence to support this idea, and we could learn even more through gravitational waves. One of the ways we know neutron stars are active is through pulsars. Pulsars are neutron stars thatRead More →

Falcon Heavy Launches Space Force’s Mysterious X-37B Space Plane Rocket launches seem to have become a bit mundane for many these days yet the odd launch captures peoples imagination. One such launch took place on 29th December when a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carried an uncrewed and autonomous craft into orbit. The configuration of the Falcon Heavy was such that the boosters landed safetly but the central booster was setup as expendable to carry the plane to its heighest altitude yet but its mission remains a mystery.  The Falcon Heavy lifted off from NASA’ Kennedy Space Centre on Friday morning at 01:07 GMT, its payload,Read More →

This Globular Cluster is Plunging Toward the Milky Way’s Centre Globular clusters (GCs) are spherical groups of stars held together by mutual gravity. Large ones can have millions of stars, and the stars tend to be older and have lower metallicity. The Milky Way contains more than 200 globulars, possibly many more, and most of them are in the galaxy’s halo, the outer reaches of the galaxy. But they’re not all in the halo, and astronomers are keen to find ones nearest the galactic centre. Now, researchers have found one GC that’s plunging toward the Milky Way’s Centre. Astronomers use globular clusters as a wayRead More →

Astronomers Test an Exoplanet Instrument on Jupiter The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has a high-resolution spectrograph called  ESPRESSO, designed specifically to detecting and characterize exoplanets. Astronomers recently ran a test with the instrument, studying the atmosphere and winds of Jupiter. They used a technique called Doppler velocimetry to measure the reflection of light from the Sun in the planet’s clouds, allowing for instantaneous measurement of the clouds’ wind speeds. The technique has also been used on Venus and will guide the future study of exoplanets. ESPRESSO is the Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations.  The instrument combines the lightRead More →

Want to Find Life? See What’s Missing in an Atmosphere The world runs on carbon. Not just fossil-fuel-driven human society, but all life on Earth. Carbon-based organic molecules are a part of every living thing on Earth. Along with oxygen, nitrogen, and water, carbon is a necessary ingredient for life as we know it. So one way to look for life on other worlds could be to look for carbon in its atmosphere. But a new study shows that it’s actually a lack of carbon that could be the best clue to life on another world. One of the more common carbon molecules for terrestrialRead More →

Iron Snow Could Explain the Magnetic Fields at Worlds Like Ganymede Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, features a surprisingly strong magnetic field for its size. Tidal effects from Jupiter continually stretch and squeeze the moon, keeping its core warm and driving the magnetic field. But the exact geological processes occurring within the core are not fully understood. Now, a new experimental study has put one of the leading models of core dynamics to the test: the formation of crystalized ‘iron snow’. The iron snow theory is like a geological ‘weather model’ for a planetary core: it describes how iron cools and crystalizes near the upper edgeRead More →

China’s FAST Observatory is Playing a Key Role in the Search for Aliens Some years ago I rememeber running the SETI at Home screensaver and would watch it for hours to see if any peaks appeared naively thinking they might be signals from an alien civilisation! There is no doubt that the search for extraterrestrials (ET) has captivated the minds of many people across the years. The search has of course to date, been unsuccesful despite multiple observations that seem to suggest the conditions for life across the cosmos may actually be more common than we first thought. Now Chinese agencies are funding projects toRead More →

Ingenuity’s 69th Flight is its Farthest So Far When NASA decided to send the little Ingenuity rotorcraft to Mars on the belly of the Perseverance rover, they weren’t certain of success. Nothing like it had ever been attempted in Mars’ extremely thin atmosphere. Mission planners hoped and planned for a total of five flights, enough for a technology demonstration. But now, as almost everyone knows, Ingenuity has wildly exceeded NASA’s initial expectations. NASA’s Ingenuity has racked up important milestones since it detached itself from the Perseverance Rover’s underbelly in April 2021 and got to work. On April 19th, 2021, it became the first aircraft toRead More →

Juno Makes its Closest Flyby of Io NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been getting closer and closer to Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io with each recent orbit. Juno is in its 57th orbit of Jupiter, and on December 30th, Juno came to within 1500 km (930 miles) of Io’s surface. It’s been more than 20 years since a spacecraft came this close. The Galileo spacecraft travelled over the moon’s south pole in 2001, coming to within 181 km (112 miles.) Galileo showed us a lot about the nature of Io’s surface. But Juno is a different spacecraft with more modern instruments and cameras that will fly byRead More →

The Oldest Known Spiral Galaxy Has Ripples Like the Surface of a Pond Astronomers have detected pond-like ripples across the gaseous disk of an ancient galaxy. What caused the ripples, and what do they tell us about the distant galaxy’s formation and evolution? And whatever happened, how has it affected the galaxy and its main job: forming stars? This discovery concerns the oldest known spiral galaxy. It’s over 12 billion years old, and it’s called BRI 1335-0417. As the oldest known spiral, it holds an important place in our study of how galaxies form and evolve. According to scientists, the ripples in the disk ofRead More →