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Galaxies Swell due to Explosive Action of New Stars In 1926, famed astronomer Edwin Hubble developed his morphological classification scheme for galaxies. This method divided galaxies into three basic groups – Elliptical, Spiral and Lenticular – based on their shapes. Since then, astronomers have devoted considerable time and effort in an attempt to determine how galaxies have evolved over the course of billions of years to become these shapes. One of th most widely-accepted theories is that galaxies changed by merging, where smaller clouds of stars – bound by mutual gravity – came together, altering the size and shape of a galaxy over time. However,Read More →

Cassini Conduct a Final Flyby of Titan Before Crashing into Saturn When the Cassini spacecraft arrived around Saturn on July 1st, 2004, it became the fourth space probe to visit the system. But unlike the Pioneer 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 probes, the Cassini mission was the first to establish orbit around the planet for the sake of conducting long-term research. Since that time, the spacecraft and its accompanying probe – the Huygens lander – have revealed a startling amount about this system. On Friday, September 15th, the Cassini mission will official end as the spacecraft descends into Saturn’s atmosphere. In part of thisRead More →

Unexpected Solar Flare is Also the Largest in Twelve Years The past summer has been a pretty terrible time in terms of weather. In addition to raging fires in Canada’s western province of British Columbia, the south-eastern United States has been pounded by successive storms and hurricanes – i.e. Tropical Storm Emily and Hurricanes Franklin, Gert, Harvey and Irma. As if that wasn’t enough, solar activity has also been picking up lately, which could have a serious impact on space weather. This past week, researchers from the University of Sheffield in the UK and Queen’s University Belfast detected the largest solar flare in 12 years.Read More →

Gravitational Waves will let us see Inside Stars as Supernovae Happen On February 11th, 2016, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the first detection of gravitational waves. This development, which confirmed a prediction made by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity a century ago, has opened up new avenues of research for cosmologists and astrophysicists. Since that time, more detections have been made, all of which were said to be the result of black holes merging. However, according to a team of astronomers from Glasgow and Arizona, astronomers need not limit themselves to detecting waves caused by massive gravitational mergers. According to aRead More →

Messier 56 – the NGC 6779 Welcome back to Messier Monday! We continue our tribute to our dear friend, Tammy Plotner, by looking at the the globular star cluster known as Messier 56. Enjoy! In the 18th century, while searching the night sky for comets, French astronomer Charles Messier kept noting the presence of fixed, diffuse objects in the night sky. In time, he would come to compile a list of approximately 100 of these objects, with the purpose of making sure that astronomers did not mistake them for comets. However, this list – known as the Messier Catalog – would go on to serveRead More →

Juno Missions Make Mysterious Finds about Auroras on Jupiter Even after decades of study, Jupiter’s atmosphere continues to be something of a mystery to scientists. Consistent with the planet’s size, its atmosphere is the largest in the Solar System, spanning over 5,000 km (3,000 mi) in altitude and boasting extremes in temperature and pressure. On top of that, the planet’s atmosphere experiences the most powerful auroras in the Solar System. Studying this phenomena has been one of the main goals of the Juno probe, which reached Jupiter on July 5th, 2016. However, after analyzing data collected by the probe’s instruments, scientists at Johns Hopkins UniversityRead More →