RSSfeeds – Renfrewshire Astronomical Society

A New Kind of Rocket that’s Lightweight and Easier to Construct: a Rotating Detonating Engine. Unfortunately, it’s Also Completely Unpredictable

A New Kind of Rocket that’s Lightweight and Easier to Construct: a Rotating Detonating Engine. Unfortunately, it’s Also Completely Unpredictable A new type of engine – known as the rotating detonation engine – could revolutionize rocketry and make space exploration more cost-effective The post A New Kind of Rocket that’s Lightweight and Easier to Construct: […]

New binary millisecond pulsar discovered in NGC 6205

New binary millisecond pulsar discovered in NGC 6205 Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), astronomers have detected a new binary millisecond pulsar (MSP) in the globular cluster NGC 6205. The newly found pulsar received designation PSR J1641+3627F. The finding is reported in a paper published February 14 on the arXiv pre-print repository. phys.org […]

Image: Hubble fingerprints a galaxy

Image: Hubble fingerprints a galaxy The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is no stranger to spiral galaxies. The telescope has brought us some of the most beautiful images ever taken of our spiral neighbors—and the galaxy known as NGC 4689 is no exception. phys.org Go to Source

Trailer for “The Planets 360”

Trailer for “The Planets 360” ESO Video Casts Go to Source

Who was Aristotle?

Who was Aristotle? In the history of science, few scholars have as much of an enduring influence as classical philosopher Aristotle, whose theories would become canon for almost 2000 years. The post Who was Aristotle? appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to Source

Solar Orbiter is Already Starting to Observe the Sun

Solar Orbiter is Already Starting to Observe the Sun The ESA’s Solar Orbiter, which took to space over earlier this month, recently sent back its first batch of data to mission controllers on Earth. The post Solar Orbiter is Already Starting to Observe the Sun appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to Source

Dust Devils Have Left Dark Streaks All Over This Martian Crater

Dust Devils Have Left Dark Streaks All Over This Martian Crater There may be no life on Mars, but there’s still a lot going on there. The Martian surface is home to different geological process, which overlap and even compete with each other to shape the planet. Orbiters with powerful cameras give us an excellent […]

Nutrient-Poor and Energy-Starved. How Life Might Survive at the Extremes in the Solar System

Nutrient-Poor and Energy-Starved. How Life Might Survive at the Extremes in the Solar System Our growing understanding of extremophiles here on Earth has opened up new possibilities in astrobiology. Scientists are taking another look at resource-poor worlds that appeared like they could never support life. One team of researchers is studying a nutrient-poor region of […]

How Interferometry Works, and Why it’s so Powerful for Astronomy

How Interferometry Works, and Why it’s so Powerful for Astronomy When astronomers talk about an optical telescope, they often mention the size of its mirror. That’s because the larger your mirror, the sharper your view of the heavens can be. It’s known as resolving power, and it is due to a property of light known […]

XMM-Newton reveals giant flare from a tiny star

XMM-Newton reveals giant flare from a tiny star A star of about eight percent the Sun’s mass has been caught emitting an enormous ‘super flare’ of X-rays—a dramatic high-energy eruption that poses a fundamental problem for astronomers, who did not think it possible on stars that small. phys.org Go to Source

Japan Is Sending a Lander to Phobos

Japan Is Sending a Lander to Phobos Sending a mission to moons of Mars has been on the wish list for mission planners and space enthusiasts for quite some time. For the past few years, however, a team of Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) engineers and scientists have been working on putting such a mission together. […]

SETI Researchers Release Petabytes of Data in the Search For Aliens

SETI Researchers Release Petabytes of Data in the Search For Aliens Breakthrough Listen, the most extensive SETI survey in history, has just made its second release of data, and its once again the biggest ever made! The post SETI Researchers Release Petabytes of Data in the Search For Aliens appeared first on Universe Today. Universe […]

Both Stars in This Binary System Have Accretion Disks Around Them

Both Stars in This Binary System Have Accretion Disks Around Them Stars exhibit all sorts of behaviors as they evolve. Small red dwarfs smolder for billions or even trillions of years. Massive stars burn hot and bright but don’t last long. And then of course there are supernovae. Some other stars go through a period […]

Beyond the brim, Sombrero Galaxy’s halo suggests turbulent past

Beyond the brim, Sombrero Galaxy’s halo suggests turbulent past Surprising new data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope suggests the smooth, settled “brim” of the Sombrero galaxy’s disk may be concealing a turbulent past. Hubble’s sharpness and sensitivity resolves tens of thousands of individual stars in the Sombrero’s vast, extended halo, the region beyond a galaxy’s […]

Sub-Neptune sized planet validated with the habitable-zone planet finder

Sub-Neptune sized planet validated with the habitable-zone planet finder A signal originally detected by the Kepler spacecraft has been validated as an exoplanet using the Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF), an astronomical spectrograph built by a Penn State team and recently installed on the 10m Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas. The HPF provides the […]

How newborn stars prepare for the birth of planets

How newborn stars prepare for the birth of planets An international team of astronomers used two of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world to create more than three hundred images of planet-forming disks around very young stars in the Orion Clouds. These images reveal new details about the birthplaces of planets and the […]

Eighteen-hour-year planet on edge of destruction

Eighteen-hour-year planet on edge of destruction Astronomers from the University of Warwick have observed an exoplanet orbiting a star in just over 18 hours, the shortest orbital period ever observed for a planet of its type. phys.org Go to Source

Stargazing with computers: What machine learning can teach us about the cosmos

Stargazing with computers: What machine learning can teach us about the cosmos Gazing up at the night sky in a rural area, you’ll probably see the shining moon surrounded by stars. If you’re lucky, you might spot the furthest thing visible with the naked eye—the Andromeda galaxy. It’s the nearest neighbor to our galaxy, the […]

One small step: Getting started with astronomy

One small step: Getting started with astronomy Keen to get into astronomy or stargazing, but no idea how to start? Don’t worry—it’s easier than you think. phys.org Go to Source

Weekly Space Hangout: February 19, 2020 – John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic

Weekly Space Hangout: February 19, 2020 – John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain) Dr. Brian Koberlein (BrianKoberlein.com / @BrianKoberlein) Carolyn Collins Petersen (TheSpaceWriter.com / @spacewriter) Michael Rodruck (@michaelrodruck) Tonight we are airing Fraser’s interview with John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic Technology. John earned his Master of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in […]