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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Captures Lovely Blue Marble during Gravity Assist Swing-by to Asteroid Bennu A color composite image of Earth taken on Sept. 22, 2017 by the MapCam camera on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft just hours after the spacecraft completed its Earth Gravity Assist at a range of approximately 106,000 miles (170,000 kilometers). Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission captured a lovely ‘Blue Marble’ image of our Home Planet during last Fridays (Sept. 22) successful gravity assist swing-by sending the probe hurtling towards asteroid Bennu for a rendezvous next August on a round trip journey to snatch pristine soil samples.Read More →

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LIGO and Virgo Observatories Detect Black Holes Colliding 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. The latest detection took place on August 14th, 2017, when three observatories – the Advanced LIGO and the Advanced Virgo detectors – simultaneously detected the gravitational waves created by mergingRead More →

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An international team of researchers has successfully used a supercomputer simulation to recreate the formation of a massive black hole from supersonic gas streams left over from the Big Bang. Their study, published in this week’s Science, shows this black hole could be the source of the birth and development of the largest and oldest super-massive black holes recorded in our universe. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

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Hey Citizen Scientists! Help NASA Analyze Images Taken from the Space Station Calling all citizen scientists, geography buffs, fans of the International Space Station and those who love that orbital perspective! CosmoQuest has a brand new project in coordination with NASA and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) where you can help identify features in photographs taken by astronauts from the space station. The project is called Image Detective. I’ve tried it out, and wow, THIS is a lot of fun! Now, I absolutely love seeing the images taken of Earth from the ISS, and I routinely follow all the astronauts on board onRead More →

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Rosetta Team Finds New, Final Image Hiding in the Data ESA scientists have found one additional image from the Rosetta spacecraft hiding in the telemetry. This new image was found in the last bits of data sent by Rosetta immediately before it shut down on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko last year. The new image shows a close-up shot of the rocky, pebbly surface of the comet, and looks somewhat reminiscent of the views the Huygens lander took of the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. A final image from Rosetta, shortly before it made a controlled impact onto Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 30 September 2016. Credit:Read More →

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This oddly-shaped galactic spectacle is bursting with brand new stars. The pink fireworks in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are regions of intense star formation, triggered by a cosmic-scale collision. The huge galaxy in this image, NGC 4490, has a smaller galaxy in its gravitational grip and is feeling the strain. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

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Researchers from the University of Bern, using an observatory on board a jumbo jet, have observed how the extrasolar Planet GJ 1214b is passing in front of its star, causing a kind of mini-eclipse. The first measurements of this kind with the observatory called SOFIA (short for Stratospheric Observatory for Infra-red Astronomy) prove that the flying observatory is well-suited to the observation of exoplanets. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

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Weekly Space Hangout -Sept 27, 2017: Dr. Jason Schneiderman of NASA’s HERA Mission Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain) Dr. Paul M. Sutter (pmsutter.com / @PaulMattSutter) Dr. Kimberly Cartier ( KimberlyCartier.org / @AstroKimCartier ) Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg ChartYourWorld.org) Special Guest: This week’s special guest is Dr. Jason Schneiderman, a neuroscientist focused on the effects of spaceflight including microgravity, isolation, confinement, and stress on the brain and behavior. He’s currently working on HERA Mission with simulated asteroid retrieval.https://www.nasa.gov/analogs/hera Announcements: If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who canRead More →

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Russia Says They’ll Be Pitching in on the Deep Space Gateway In Spring of 2017, NASA revealed their plans for what the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket would be used for: to build the Deep Space Gateway, a space station in cis-lunar orbit that’ll serve as a stepping stone to the exploration of the Solar System. Until today, it was assumed that this would be a NASA project, with the agency constructing the station over the course of several launches of the SLS from 2021 through 2026, delivering the 4 major modules. The details were hazy, though, with the various components in development withRead More →

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New Study Provides Explanation for Pluto’s Giant Blades of Ice When it made its historic flyby of Pluto in July of 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft gave scientists and the general public the first clear picture of what this distant planetoid looks like. In addition to providing breathtaking images of Pluto’s “heart”, its frozen plains, and mountain chains, one of the more interesting features it detected was Pluto’s mysterious “bladed terrain”. According to data obtained by New Horizons, these features are made almost entirely out of methane ice and resemble giant blades. At the time of their discovery, what caused these features remained unknown. ButRead More →

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For decades, astronomers have tried to pin down why two of the most common types of active galaxies, known as Type I and Type II galaxies, appear different when observed from Earth. Although both galaxy types host voracious supermassive black holes known as active galactic nuclei, which actively swallow matter and emit massive amounts of radiation, Type I galaxies appear brighter to astronomers’ telescopes. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

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In August, detectors on two continents recorded gravitational wave signals from a pair of black holes colliding. This discovery, announced today, is the first observation of gravitational waves by three different detectors, marking a new era of greater insights and improved localization of cosmic events now available through globally networked gravitational-wave observatories. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

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The latest iteration of the Cherenkov Telescope Array’s (CTA’s) science case, Science with the Cherenkov Telescope Array, was made available today via the CTA website library (www.cta-observatory.org/science/library/) and arXiv (1709.07997) and will be published in a special edition of the International Journal of Modern Physics D in the coming weeks. The work includes more than 200 pages that introduce and elaborate on CTA’s major science themes and place CTA in the context of other major observatories. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

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The Strange Structures of the Saturn Nebula The spectacular planetary nebula NGC 7009, or the Saturn Nebula, emerges from the darkness like a series of oddly-shaped bubbles, lit up in glorious pinks and blues. This colourful image was captured by the powerful MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), as part of a study which mapped the dust inside a planetary nebula for the first time. The map — which reveals a wealth of intricate structures in the dust, including shells, a halo and a curious wave-like feature — will help astronomers understand how planetary nebulae develop their strange shapes and symmetries. ESO NewsRead More →

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There are hundreds of billions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. Estimates indicate a similar number of galaxies in the observable universe, each with its own large assemblage of stars, many with their own planetary systems. Beyond and between these stars and galaxies are all manner of matter in various phases, such as gas and dust. Another form of matter, dark matter, exists in a very different and mysterious form, announcing its presence indirectly only through its gravitational effects. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →